will not speak without book equally well, just as their voices are not equally clear and loud, or their manner equally impressive. Eloquence, I repeat, is a gift; but most men, unless they have passed the age for learning, may with practice attain such fluency in expressing their thoughts as will enable them to convey and manifest to their audience that earnestness and devotion to their object, which is the life of preaching,—which both covers, in the preacher's own consciousness, the sense of his own deficiencies, and makes up for them over and over again in the judgment of his hearers.

Lecture VII.

Christianity and Physical Science. A Lecture in the School of Medicine.