Let us fix our ideas by a definite instance. In all St. Paul's career there was no one sermon which would have needed greater care than his sermon at Athens. He had to speak to a highly educated audience, of people without belief even in God, most of them eaten up with pride, listening to him with a supercilious curiosity; and he knew that for most of them his sermon would be the one opportunity of their lifetime. If any sermon of his would have needed previous thought and preparation, it would have been this one. Of course we have no authority for saying how much preparation he gave to it. We can well imagine his carefully thinking over what he was going to say, thinking of his initial outburst about the Unknown God, carefully considering his line of argument about the Resurrection of our Lord, his reference to the Greek poet with whom both he and they were familiar, and so forth. But equally we most assuredly cannot for a moment imagine him writing out and learning his discourse. Had he done so, it would have lost all its force and reality. Any gain in the artificial rhetoric, or the choice of words, or the like would have been far more than compensated for by the hollowness and want of fervour _hic et nunc_. Other instances might be adduced and the same reasoning applied to them: St. Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, St. Stephen's speech to his murderers, and many others. From internal evidence we can see that these were thought out and prepared beforehand; but we cannot even imagine their having been written out and committed to memory. Our future preparation may perhaps be something of this kind. First we have to fix on our subject--not always the easiest part of our work. Let us suppose that on reading through the Sunday Gospel some aspect of it or some incident in it appeals to us from a particular point of view, and that point we decide to develop. Possibly something we have read in the past occurs to mind, and we get out a book--or perhaps several books--to suggest to us a few ideas. Then the first stage of our work is done. The next process is to think. We have to make the ideas our own, and develop them according to the bent of our own minds. This cannot easily be done as we sit at our desks. Thoughts will not come to order. Developing a subject in one's mind is a gradual process, and takes time. It can well be done as we walk from place to place, or exercise any light employment. It is specially suitable to do it as we go about our pastoral work. The words we use in our visits to members of our flock are the reflection of our mind and will bear close resemblance to our words in the pulpit. If we find plenty to say, and are conscious of the consolation we give by saying it to the poor individually, why should it not be so likewise when we address them from the pulpit?