said; but,
hardly less, on who says it. There are men, says Emerson, who are
heard to the ends of the earth though they speak in a whisper.[44] We
are so constituted that what we hear depends very much for its effect
on how we are disposed towards him who speaks. The regular hearers of
a minister gradually form in their minds, almost unawares, an image of
what he is, into which they put everything which they themselves
remember about him and everything which they have heard of his record;
and, when he rises on Sunday in the pulpit, it is not the man visible
there at the moment that they listen to, but this image, which stands
behind him and determines the precise weight and effect of every
sentence which he utters.

* * * * *

Closely connected with the force of personality is the other power,
which St. Paul possessed in so supreme a degree, of taking an interest
in others. It is the manhood in ourselves which enables us to
understand the human nature of our hearers; and we must have had
experience of life, if we are to preach to the life of men.

Some ministers do this extremely little. Not once but many a time, I
have heard a minister on the Sabbath morning, when he rose up and
began to pray, plunging at once into a theological meditation; and in
all the prayers of the forenoon there would scarcely be a single
sentence making reference to the life of the people during the week.
Had you been a stranger alighted from another planet, you would never
have dreamed that the human beings assembled there had been toiling,
rejoicing and sorrowing for six days; that they had mercies to give
thanks for and sins to be forgiven; or that they had children at home
to pray for and sons across the sea.

There is an unearthly style of preaching, if I may use the term,
without the blood of human life in it: the people with their burdens
in the pews--the burden of home, the burden of business, the burden
of the problems of the day--whilst, in the pulpit, the minister is
elaborating some nice point, which has taken his fancy in the course
of his studies, but has no interest whatever for them. Only now and
then a stray sentence may pull up their wandering attention. Perhaps
he is saying, "Now some of you may reply"; and then follows an
objection to what he has been stating which no actual human being
would ever think of making. But he proceeds elaborately to demolish
it, while the hearer, knowing it to b