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.
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