re
are remarkable exceptions no doubt--but they are exceptions. Now and
then there are remarkable novels which scourge with the whips of the
Furies, as indeed most of Savonarola's sermons flagellated.

With all your faith and the fervor of it, be full of thought. Merely
to believe burningly is not enough. Nobody will listen to you declaim
the confession and then declaim it over and over again and nothing
more. Even pious monotony palls. Bread is the staff of life; and yet
too much bread eaten at one time will kill. Food, taken in excess,
becomes poison.

I have emphasized the necessity for faith because it will always be
the very soul of your influence over your audience. It is the power
behind your ideas. Faith is the dynamics of truth. But do not forget
that you have got to _have_ ideas. You have got to _have_ truth.

In every word you utter you must be a teacher.

After all, teaching is the only oratory. Luke says of the Master that
"he _taught_ the people." In reporting the Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew says that "he opened his mouth and _taught_ them." Time and
again I have heard hard-headed business men and sturdy farmers say of
a particularly instructive sermon: "I like to hear that preacher; I
always _learn_ something from him."

And let your discourse be full of "sweet reasonableness." Peter tells
you "to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you
a reason for the hope that is within you," although Peter himself
seldom gave a reason for anything.

You cannot do this without study. "After you have shot off a gun you
have got to load it before you can shoot it off again," said a wise
old preacher who retained the hold of his youth upon his
congregations. Never cease to renew yourself from every possible
source of thought and knowledge.

Books, society, solitude, the woods, the crowded streets--all things
in this varied universe have in them replenishings for your mind.
Don't become burnt powder. Keep young. That is your problem and
life's. For mind and soul that is no hard problem, after all.

Don't repeat your sermons if you can help it. That is hard advice, I
know; but to repeat your sermons is a phase of arrested development
and a method of bringing it about. It is unfortunate for you that
things are so ordered that you must preach a new sermon every Sunday.

The Saviour did not do it, nor did any of his personal followers. They
taught when "the spirit moved them." I think none of