If it is your duty, go to preaching the gospel. How shall you learn to preach? Just as the carpenter learns how to be a carpenter. Does he sit down and study books about tools, about hammers and axes? Oh, no! He goes to boring with the bit, and smoothing with the plane, and smiting with the hammer, and striking with the axe; and in this way he gets to be a carpenter.
So, the way to learn how to preach the gospel is to preach it.
Yonder is a man who ought to be preaching. He has not been ordained, and he never will be. He could not be, perhaps. It may be he has not brains enough, or time enough, or money enough. But he is ordained of God. Let him preach. Here is another. He may not perhaps be able to round his sentences, or make elegant allusions or fine quotations; and yet he may be able to save a soul from death and hide a multitude of sins.
Oh! for five thousand men such as Moody to come out of Chicago, and five thousand George H. Stuarts, to come out from Philadelphia, and five thousand Henry F. Durants to come out from Boston, and preach this glorious gospel, waiting for no other ordination except that which comes from the hand of the Lord Almighty.—TALMAGE.
