Chapter III: Preface

SEVERAL people, having read the sermons of Mr. Talmage in which he reviews some of my lectures, have advised me not to pay the slightest attention to the Brooklyn divine. They think that no new arguments have been brought forward, and they have even gone so far as to say that some of the best of the old ones have been left out.

After thinking the matter over, I became satisfied that my friends were mistaken, that they had been car- ried away by the general current of modern thought, and were not in a frame of mind to feel the force of the arguments of Mr. Talmage, or to clearly see the candor that characterizes his utterances.

At the first reading, the logic of these sermons does not impress you. The style is of a character calculated