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HERALDS OF GOD

We pass now from the making of the sermon to its delivery. You have found your message. In the quietness of your study you have pondered it and wrestled with it. You have fashioned it to the best of your ability. But that is not the end. There still remains the all-important final stage of the process. You have now to send that message to work as a living thing in other minds. You have to endeavour, face to face with a company of your fellow men and women, to get the Word of the Lord out of your heart into theirs. No wise man will underrate this ultimate task. Far too many a competent and carefully constructed sermon has been nullified and ruined by a careless or incompetent delivery. To-day, more than ever before in the history of preaching, this matter is vital. Broadcasting has brought right into the homes of the nation distinguished voices speaking on all manner of subjects—literature, politics, science, religion: and people who have thus grown accustomed to well-articulated and effective speech are less likely to be indulgent to a preaching manner that is ponderous or mumbling or uncouth, or to the dull tedium of that hateful thing, the "pulpit voice." The message entrusted to the preacher is not less but far more important than any wireless talk however fascinating on a literary, scientific or sociological theme. That a message of such vast consequence should be delivered in a manner which virtually denies its urgency is witless and inexcusable. 176