First, then, young man aspiring to the Pulpit, the world expects you to be above all other things a minister of the Gospel.  It does not expect you to be, primarily, a brilliant man, or a learned man, or witty, or eloquent, or any other thing that would put your name on the tongues of men.  The world will be glad if you are all of these, of course; but it wants you to be a preacher of the Word before anything else.  It expects that all your talents will be consecrated to your sacred calling.

It expects you to speak to the heart, as well as to the understanding, of men and women, of the high things of faith, of the deep things of life and death.  The great world of worn and weary humanity wants from the Pulpit that word of helpfulness and power and peace which is spoken only by him who has utterly forgotten all things except his holy mission.  Therefore merge all of your striking qualities into the divine purpose of which you are the agent.  Lose consciousness of yourself in the burning consciousness of your cause.

Very well; but if you do that you must be very sure of your own belief.  Any man who assumes to teach the Christian faith, who in his own secret heart questions that faith himself, commits a sacrilege every time he enters the pulpit.

Can it be that the lack of living interest in certain church services is caused by a sort of subconscious knowledge of the people, that the minister himself is speaking from the head rather than from the heart; that what he says comes from his intellect and not as the “spirit gives him utterance”; and, to put it bluntly, that he himself “no more than half believes what he says.”

“The man spoke as if he were bored with endless repetition of sermons,” said a close observer of a weary parson.

Certain it is that even in political speaking the man who believes what he says has power over his audience out of all comparison with a far more eloquent man whom his hearers know to be speaking perfunctorily.

No matter how much the latter kind of speaker polishes his periods, no matter how fruitful in thought his address, no matter how perfect the art of his delivery, he fails in the ultimate effect wrought by a much inferior speaker whose words are charged with conviction.

He is like the chemist’s grain of wheat, perfect in all its constituent elements except the mysterious spark of life, without which the wheat grain will not grow.

If then you do not believe what you say and believe it with all your soul, believe it in your heart of hearts, do not try to get other men to believe it.  You will not be honest if you do.  The world expects you to be sure of yourself.  How do you expect to make other people sure of themselves if you are not sure of yourself?

    “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye,
    but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

    “Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote
    out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?