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 the great preachers ever spoke with machine-like periodicity—­certainly Savonarola did not.  He preached only when occasion demanded it.

But that is neither here nor there.  Preaching every Sunday is our custom and therefore preach every Sunday you must.  I repeat that it is hard on you, and we sympathize with you; but, as a practical matter, it is all the more reason why you should ceaselessly fertilize your intellect.  Your audience will pity you, but they are not going to listen to any twice-told tales, pity or no pity.

The practise of having short sermons helps you out.  I beseech you, as you wish to hold your hearers, observe this practise.  Please remember that this is America and everybody is in a hurry.  They ought not to be, but they are.  Make thirty minutes the limit of your time.  Twenty minutes is long enough.

It was a very good sermon Paul preached on Mars Hill before the most critical and cultured audience in the world.  And still, allowing for all deliberation of delivery and for portions of his speech which are not reported, it could not have taken him longer than fifteen minutes.

Even the Master, when expounding the whole of the Christian religion in the Sermon on the Mount, could not have occupied more than half or three-quarters of an hour; yet he was covering a multitude of subjects, whereas Paul covered but one.  Indeed, the Saviour also made it a practise to speak upon only one subject at a time.