The above description might be continued, but enough has been said for the present purpose, which is to call attention to this point. At the beginning the priest's preaching has been a struggle to get through without breaking down. When he has been sufficiently long at it for this danger to have passed away, he still has the practical feeling--his aim is to fill up the requisite amount of time with respectably good matter, so as to discharge his duty. It has hardly at all come before him in the light of a privilege to speak the Word of God, a source of grace to himself as well as to others, an expression of his own spiritual thoughts put forth for the benefit and instruction of those entrusted to his pastoral charge; and this is to a large extent responsible for the want of fervour and of soul and interest in his sermons. It is always easier to state an evil than to suggest a remedy; but it is something towards the desired end if we are able to diagnose the true cause of our difficulty. The conclusion urged is that it is not enough to insist on an elaborate direct preparation; on a scientific knowledge of the way to order a discourse; on rules of elocution and rhetoric; highly desirable as some of these may be. Still less would one ask a priest to write and learn all his sermons, which even if practically possible, is not in any way desirable. The true remedy is rather to teach our young priests the spiritual side of preaching, to train them to look on the sermon as part of their pastoral office. If this view is planted in their minds at the outset of their priestly career, it will grow rapidly and strongly, as by actual contact with their parishioners they feel their own power for good in the pulpit, and see before their eyes their people growing and living on the strength of words heard in their sermons. It is this consciousness which will elevate the duty in their minds from an irksome task to that of one of the most privileged of their pastoral duties. In this point of view we see the key of the remark often made that the remote preparation for preaching is more important than the proximate. By the remote preparation is meant the priest's daily life, his union with God, his supernatural views of the things of this world, and the acquiring of his store of thoughts from his prayer, his meditation, his spiritual reading, and, not least important, his pastoral work among the poor, the sick and the dying. "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." [2] If the truths of faith are so vividly present to us that God's dealings with mankind are as things we have actually seen and heard, we shall long that others may share our privilege, and we shall feel the greatest joy in instructing them in Christ's Name. But if this spirit be wanting, all human eloquence will be of no avail. The value of the sermon is the reflection of the life of the preacher.