IN CONCLUSION
repairs, when John Wesley—not so big a man perchance as you—preached, not five thousand sermons, but forty-two thousand sermons—and good ones too?
And so charming and delightful a man he was to men of even the highest intellectual equipment that Samuel Johnson said that Wesley's only drawback was that he had so many engagements that you could never see half enough of him. Yet of such perfect nerve and balance, and in such good condition was he that it was said that no one ever saw him in a hurry. Do you not think that that tough, wiry, little, trained English body of his, without "an ounce of superfluous flesh; exceedingly symmetrical and strong; exceedingly muscular and strong," had a good deal to do with his success in the giant battle of a lifetime that he fought so grandly—quite as much, perhaps, at least, as the fighter's good body has to do in any other contest?
If Demosthenes saw the need of these things, and worked for them till he got them; merely to make his guardians disgorge the funds that they had embezzled—is it not worth your while to work at least as hard as he did for the eternal salvation of souls?
Do you think that oratory is no power? That it will not be a mighty aid to you in your chosen life's work? Can you name any other power its equal, except that of a great character behind it? How was it that it could be said of Chalmers: "What ruler of men ever subjugated them more effectually by his sceptre than Chalmers, who gave law from his pulpit for thirty years—who drew tears from Dukes and Duchesses, and made the Princes of the blood and Bishops start to their feet, and break out in rounds of the wildest applause"? Name some city that you know of which has many eloquent men in the pulpit, or out of it; so many that you can-
471