As it respects doctrine, no leniency is asked. If error is found when the writer, or the preacher, is taken in the true sense, or, as he intended, let the critics come, and let the expose be most rigid. The impression made by false teaching is false, and should not be permitted to go on. If there is an erroneous principle inculcated, an argument attempted that is not fair and scriptural, in the following discourses, the author is not aware of it, and would be thankful to have it soon pointed out. No matter how good the intentions of any man, a false principle, an unfair or an unscriptural argument is always damaging.
Truth needs no such support.
Not one of the following discourses was ever written till prepared for this volume. The author could not now repeat a single paragraph in the volume word for word. For thirty years he has never prepared a note for preaching, and only occasionally stopped to read from the Bible or any book. His speaking has been purely extemporaneous. In the greater portion of the following discourses, those accustomed to hear the author will readily recognize trains of thought so near like what they have heard, that they would not know, from memory, that they had not been reported by a stenographer.