THE COURAGE OF THE COWARD AND OTHER SERMONS BY CHARLES F. AKED, D.D. NEW YORK IR CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH PREFACE The sermons contained in this volume are all "morning sermons "-the preacher will understand what the phrase is intended to cover. They are evangelical, but scarcely evangelistic. They are in the main addressed to those who are already more or less closely attached to the Church. They represent, with two exceptions, the preaching of a few months, for they followed each other in almost orderly succession. Hence, amid variety of subject and treatment, there is similarity of mood. For a preacher has his moods like other men, and, if he is wise, he preaches out of the mood of the day and the hour. If he is living a full, well-rounded life there is little danger of monotony, even though the mood holds him through a year of preaching; while, in the course of his life's ministry, he will speak as a living man to living men and women, to their ever varying circumstances and needs. It will happen that at one time some great fundamental truth of the Christian faith holds the preacher in its grip; and although he has known it and loved it and preached it all his life, yet, while its domination lasts, it dwarfs to his vision truths of equal consequence, and the proclamation of it, for a season, excludes phases of ministry not |