There should be order in the sermon, and the ideas should be linked together, and should mutually support each other. But it should not be laid down as an invariable rule always to follow those categorical divisions which necessarily cut up a truth into two or three parts, these to be cut up again into two or three sections of truth, giving the speaker the air of a man who is amusing himself with pulling a machine to pieces, and then putting it together again. The Fathers did not ordinarily follow that course. Indeed all discourses cannot be so subdivided; for not every subject will bear it without losing much of its interest. ... Most sermons seem to be modelled on the same pattern, so much so, that the hearer is disposed at the very outset to remark:--"I have heard that already twenty times over, set forth just in the same way. What use is there in my listening to it again?" This is one drawback, in addition to the consideration that it is not prudent to take the audience into your confidence as to the conclusion to which you intend to lead them. ... Or another listener will say:--"Alas! we are still at the second subdivision of the first part. {122} What a long sermon it will be!" He is seized with _ennui_, and then farewell to all feeling of interest in the Divine word, and to all hope of any benefit to be derived from it. It is preferable to have a range of ideas known to yourself alone, with intervening pauses. In that way you will carry the hearers along with you. They will listen, will be moved, will forget how time passes, and at the conclusion will not feel tired with having followed you. It appears that the mania for subdividing every thing is a complaint of long standing. La Bruyère has passed his judgment upon it; which, apart from exaggeration--the inseparable companion of criticism--is not inapplicable at the present day.