material; of the aesthetic folly and ethical dubiety of simulated
extempore speaking and genuinely impromptu prayers, would not be
superfluous. But, on the other hand, we may hope to accomplish
much of this indirectly today. Because there is no way of handling
specifically either the content of the Christian message or the
problem of the immediate needs and temper of those to whom it is to
be addressed, without reference to the kind of personality, and the
nature of the tools at his disposal, which is best suited to commend
the one and to interpret the other.

Hence such a discussion as this ought, by its very scale of values--by
the motives that inform it and the ends that determine it--to condemn
thereby the insincere and artificial speaker, or that pseudo-sermon
which is neither as exposition, an argument nor a meditation but a
mosaic, a compilation of other men's thoughts, eked out by impossibly
impressive or piously sentimental anecdotes, the whole glued together
by platitudes of the Martin Tupper or Samuel Smiles variety. It is
certainly an obvious but greatly neglected truth that simplicity
and candor in public speaking, largeness of mental movement, what
Phillips Brooks called direct utterance of comprehensive truths, are
indispensable prerequisites for any significant ethical or spiritual
leadership. But, taken as a main theme, this third topic, like the
others, seems to me insufficiently inclusive to meet our present
exigencies. It deals more with the externals than with the heart of
our subject.

Again we might address ourselves to the ethical and practical
aspects of preaching and the ministry. Taking largely for granted
our understanding of the Gospel, we might concern ourselves with its
relations to society, the detailed implications for the moral and