"Even mediocre preachers are acceptable, provided their discourses are short; whereas even the best preachers are a burden when they speak too long."
Is not long preaching very much like an attempt to surpass these men, who were so highly imbued with the spirit of Christianity?
On the other hand, we have to deal with the most intelligent, keen, and sensible people in the world. They understand a thing when only half stated, and very often divine it. You hardly speak before they are moved to accept or to reject; and yet we overcharge them with long and heavy dissertations. To act in this way, is to evince an utter unacquaintance with one's people, and to display our own ignorance, in spite of all the learning which we may possess. Moreover, it tends to excite antipathy. The Frenchman does not care to be treated like a German: he does not wish to be told every thing, thereby depriving him of the pleasure of working out the truth for himself. Open the vein, lance his imagination and feelings, let them flow on the road to truth, and he will pursue it alone; perchance more quickly and further than you. Nothing impairs intelligence, sentiment, and the effusion of thought so much as redundancy of words and even of ideas.
A sharp working man, who had been listening to a sermon, was once asked—
"What did the preacher say? What do you remember of his sermon?"
"Nothing at all."
"How's that? Surely you heard him?"
"Perfectly."
"How is it, then, that you did not understand any thing?"
"Ah," replied he, in an original language, which only the people can command, "because all he had to say was hid behind a mass of words."