Excerpt from The Breakers of the Yoke: Sketches and Studies, of the Men and Scenes of the Reformation

These discourses are simply what they are called - sketches and studies of the men and times of the Reformation. They are not exhaustive biographies, nor even finished monographs. Such they were never designed to be. The aim was to sketch graphically the great men who broke for us and our fathers the intolerable yoke of papal bondage, and to study carefully the age and the circumstances in which they each lived and wrought. These lectures formed a series of evening discourses delivered in connection with the Luther and the Zwingle commemorations. They were prepared from week to week amid all the distractions and under the pressure of steady pastoral work. Yet an honest effort was made to render them as accurate and as attractive as the themes themselves demanded and the audiences deserved. Of publication there was not at the first any thought. Those who heard the discourses, however, desired to possess them for themselves and for their friends in a permanent form, and at the request of the session and the trustees of the Second Presbyterian Church they have been printed. A few generous friends, ever ready to kindly deeds, have borne the cost of publication, which as to style leaves nothing to be desired. The discourses are published just as they were delivered. Many changes in form and expression the writer wished to have made, and many additions with a view to greater completeness, but the incessant demands of the pulpit and the pastorate forbade any such alterations.

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