Your judgment is staggered by two apparently contradictory facts—­it was a fine sermon, yet every idea may be found in the theological treatise.

To enable you to extricate yourself from the puzzle, ratify your first opinion and confound the critic; picture another set of circumstances.  You stand before St. Peter’s, wrapped in admiration at this world’s wonder.

  “Power, glory, strength and beauty, all are aisled
   In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.”

You are marvelling how did human brains conceive and human hands embody this mighty dream of art.  One of the pest tribe yclept “critic” comes pitying your simple heart; he leads you to a quarry, and triumphantly pointing says:  “Here every stone of that building was found.  Now, what becomes of the glory simple people like you bestow on Bramante and Michael Angelo?” How would you answer him?  Easily enough.  Make him a present of the quarry, and ask him to produce another St. Peter’s.  The challenge is conclusive.  You have him impaled.

Come back now to the library.  Present the preacher’s critic with a hundred tomes, give him all this raw material multiplied ten times over out of which that masterpiece of sacred eloquence was built, and ask him to enthral those thousands that hung spellbound on that man’s lips, whose thrilled hearts were aflame, who left the church examining their consciences and vowing better lives.  Alas! he who was so eloquent in tearing others to rags when he himself essays their task himself—­angels well might weep.

No department of life is secure against this sophistry.

You listen till you are dazed with admiration at one of those masterpieces of forensic pleading that have flung a deathless glory around the names of Russell and Whiteside; but the critic, with a superior toss of his head, assures you that this can be found in Magna Charta and the Statute book.  Here is the tantalising half truth.

To be sure the principles and groundwork of reasoning are there; but the office of the advocate was to draw them from the dust and darkness, to gather these scattered articles, statutes and precedents into his capacious brain, and from them evolve a framework of argument to fit his purpose.  He moulds them into an impregnable bulwark of law and reasoning to shelter his client.  So naturally does he bend them to his case that every listener is impressed with the conviction that surely the framers of these statutes and principles must have a case like this before their minds when they committed them to parchment.

Yet in the judgment of the critic the variety of talents brought to this complex task count for nothing.

Here we see what a distinction must be made between the office of theologian and preacher, and what a confusion of thought is saved by keeping this line of demarcation in view.

[Side note:  Parting advice]

Now that the subject of pulpit oratory is swept clear from misleading theories and set in its true light before the young preacher’s eyes, let us see how further we can assist him to discharge his high office with honour and efficiency.