Gossip shares the passion and the problems of the ministry with his brethren and its exultations and quiet joys. The lectures are full of illustrations from his own experience as a parish minister and chaplain.
In the first lecture, which deals with the preacher in the modern world, he asserts the primacy of preaching. "Always it has been through preaching that revivals have come and always by preaching that the Spirit has made the tired Church young again."5
He seeks to set before the ministerial students he is addressing the greatness of the office of the ministry and the glory of the Master and the splendor of their task.
In the second lecture on the bases of preaching Gossip begins thus: "Preaching resembles music in this respect: that for real success three things are required -- a theme worth hearing, a sufficient instrument, and a master whose deft touch can draw from both what his soul finds in them."6
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The secret of successful preaching lies in the personality of the preacher. "We are meant to move among our people unconscious proofs of all we say, clear and final evidence of the enormous difference Christ makes. One flash of temper may undo more than a hundred sermons have slowly accomplished."7
If the preacher is to keep from running dry, and from only having a few subjects about which to preach, reading is essential. The most rewarding work for the preacher is that spent on the Bible, for there is no interpreter of Scripture like Scripture itself. Nevertheless, Gossip urges the preacher to read all kinds of things, for almost nothing comes amiss: all is grist to the homiletic mill. The more the preacher knows, the more points of contact he has with other people.
The problem of how to retain what is read is a real one. Gossip confesses that he had tried an Interleaved Bible -- on which Alexander Whyte set such store -- along with notebooks and commonplace books but found his untidy mind could not work like that. He believed in underlining his books and said he found it much easier to train himself to remember where a thing was than to carry it bodily away.
The third lecture deals with the object of the sermon. Gossip declared that preaching ought to be more expository, more directly founded upon and soaked in Scripture, especially in days when the Bible is not so much read or so well known as formerly. He advises against strange, out-of-the-way texts, and urges the use of big central texts and themes.
Preaching fails unless it leads to action. The note of appeal, the call for decision must be sounded. Only once, says Gossip, was a sermon of his completely successful, and that only to one hearer. He was preaching in a small village church, and he noticed a distinguished-looking man, obviously an American, with a curiously rapt look on his face during the sermon.
Months later he learned that the worshipper had a strange experience. When the sermon began, he saw Christ standing behind the preacher, and as it proceeded, the latter faded out, and for him there was no one there except Jesus and he was looking straight at Him. If we knew our business, says Gossip, and did it thoroughly, that is what ought to happen every time we preach.8
