Page:Heralds of God.djvu/119

THE PREACHER'S STUDY but do it vigorously and with all your might and make it your great and serious business."

The preparation of two sermons a week, to say nothing of other talks and addresses, is indeed a tremendous task. I would urge you, for your own peace of mind, to systematize your days. Aim at having one sermon finished by Wednesday night, the other by Friday. As far as lies in your power, guard your mornings from interruption. God, says Jeremiah, "rises up early," to send His prophets: on which John Oman comments pithily, "Naturally His prophets should follow His example." "A man in his study in his bedroom slippers, unshaved and in his dressing-gown, is in about as perilous a state for his soul as a man who takes to secret drinking." "These," says Phillips Brooks, "are the race of clerical visionaries who think vast, dim, vague thoughts, and do no work." A lifelike picture! It would probably be agreed that a sermon which cannot be prayed over before it is preached is hardly likely to set the heather on fire, or to bring to any seeking soul "the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ." And can we honestly pray over a bit of scamped work, or any sermon into which we have not cared to put our best? Dr. Sloane Coffin once declared that "the recipe for compounding many a current sermon might be written: 'Take a teaspoonful of weak thought, add water, and serve.' The fact that it is frequently served hot, may enable the concoction to warm the hearers; but it cannot be called nourishing." You will remember how mercilessly 113