A Lecture

ON THE

POPULARITY OF CHRISTIAN MINISTERS,

BY

THE REV. JAMES KENDALL.

LONDON:

WHITTAKER AND CO.; IRONBRIDGE: J. SLATER.

MDCCCXLVII.

PREFACE.

THE reader is respectfully informed that in preaching and subsequently revising and enlarging the following Lecture, the writer imposed on himself severe restraint.

He could have introduced a great mass of additional observations, arguments, and illustrative facts. But he recollected that he was going to publish, not an octavo volume (such as the subject discussed in all its bearings would require), but a lecture-a long one truly, but yet brief, considering the importance of the subject. The popularity of christian ministers, is often referred to by eminent writers, in voluminous desertations on the christian ministry; but we have not seen in any of their publications the causes and effects of popularity discussed in a separate and distinct form. But the time is now "fully come when a serious regard for the true dignity of the British pulpit, and the mighty interests of the christian religion demand such a discussion. Delicate and difficult as the subject is to manage, so as not to give offence, it must be undertaken, and the