HERALDS OF GOD
greatest difficulty in drawing to a conclusion. "I must desist," exclaims Beecher, taking a sudden grip of himself at the close of his great discourse on "Hindrances to Religious Life," and openly and undisguisedly ramming on the brakes, "I must desist! The clock gets through before I do, every Sunday. I would that it were slower; for, though I often begin sorrowfully and heavily, the time for me to stop never arrives that I do not feel that I would fain continue till the going down of the sun." No doubt, with a Beecher in the pulpit, men may listen gladly for hours on end. But if you are wise, you will cultivate conciseness. And it is no easy art. Someone once asked Woodrow Wilson how long he took to prepare a ten-minute speech. "Two weeks," was the answer. "How long for a speech lasting an hour?" continued the questioner. "One week," declared the President. "How long for a two-hour speech?" "I am ready now!" Prolixity needs no midnight oil ; but to be concise, to achieve compression, to nail down the issue and bring the whole matter to a terse and trenchant close—hoc opus, hic labor est. But such toil and care are never wasted. You desire your sermon, under God, to make a difference to human lives. You hope that the result may be some vow secretly ratified, some bondage broken, some cross more resolutely shouldered, some song in the night more bravely sung, some area of life more thoroughly surrendered to the sovereignty of Christ. The weakness of too many sermons is that they meander along and beat about the bush; never
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