ands are as
empty as the day you started, with this disadvantage, that you
have lost the habit of labour you acquired at college--a serious
loss. When a man permits the fine edge of college industry to
become blunted, the best day of his usefulness is passed. This
treadmill of ineffectual toil fills with disgust, till finally
all efforts are abandoned, and the people are treated to Hamlet's
reading: "Words, words, words." This is the usual series of
evolutions through which an extemporary preacher passes. He
begins with good intentions and bad theories. The system breaks
down, but his habits are now too set to try another, and so he
runs to seed. Here you have explained the fruitlessness, indeed
the paralysis, of many a pulpit.

In the written sermon, on the other hand, you have a treasure for
life; years pass, but your sermon remains, an instrument becoming
more flexible and telling every time you use it. You are
independent of your mood, on which the extemporary preacher has
to lean so much. You can also defy chance that may call you to
the pulpit at a day's notice. Your motto is: _Semper paratus_.
Your brain may be barren and your feelings frigid, but here are
thoughts already made and shaped. They are your own; and the mind
instinctively responds to the children of its own birth. It
rises, clasps, and embraces them. The passion glow enkindles
afresh; and heart and words are aflame with the ancient fires.
When for the first five years you lay aside a well-written sermon
a month, what a handsome stock-in-trade is at your disposal for
life--your fortune is made.

[Side note: Incitements to toil]

The world is in no humour to stand half-hearted work; it will bow
its proud head only to the man who pours out sweat; and
Bourdaloue's standard of excellence will hold for all time. His
answer to the question "What was your best sermon?" is: "The one
I took the most pains with." His labour at the desk was the
precise measure of his success in the pulpit. The French have a
proverb, "_Tout vaut ce qu'il coute_." ("Everything is worth what
it costs.")

See how laymen put our lethargy and its apologists to shame. Look
at the author with pallid cheek and fevered brow, half starving
in an attic, perfecting his style, polishing his periods. There
is the actor, haggard, jaded, toiling for hours at a single
passage, that he may interpret its meaning and enchain his
audience. While the world is dreaming the barrister is studying