Life and Select Discourses of Rev. Samuel H. Stearns

they were committed to paper, that inaccuracies of orthography may possibly be detected.

Mr. Stearns wrote his sermons after much reflection.

But none of them were considered by him as finished, none of them had been revised, and prepared for publication. They were written, not to be read, but to be delivered, not for the scrutiny of critics, but for the ear and heart of men whose eternal interests are at stake. Had they gone to the press under the watchful eye of their author, perhaps some passages would have been erased, new matter might in some instances have been introduced, and the whole would doubtless have been shaped and fashioned with laborious exactness. But since the only individual who was authorized to modify them is no more, it is thought best to submit them to the public just as they stood in the manuscripts, and rather hazard the possibility of slight inaccuracies, than attempt to correct or alter them.

One word as to the arrangement of the Sermons as they appear in the present volume. The first two were preached in the Old South Church, by Mr. Stearns, the first Sabbath after his ordination. The third discourse is the last which he preached to his people, the last that he ever preached. The fourth is a fragment. It was intended as a farewell sermon, but his health proved in the event insufficient to deliver or complete it. The remaining discourses are arranged with some reference to subjects, rather than to local circumstances, or to the order in which they were written.

Boeken