Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/195

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE PRIEST AS PREACHER.
183

not be able to utter in speech what they know in thought. But these are exceptions, and may be set aside. Nervous agitation, want of self-command, fear, anxiety, desire to succeed, and the like often make men lose their self-possession. Then they stammer and forget. But as a law of our mind we may lay it down that whatever is really known can be surely said. Verbaque prævisam rem non invita sequentur. We think in words, and every thought clothes itself as it arises in the mind. If, then, we acquire the habit of thinking, we should acquire simultaneously a habit of mental utterance in words, and the utterance of the tongue would follow by a law of nature. The chief hindrance to this is the want of thinking. We read or copy the thoughts of other men, which, therefore, are not our own: we appropriate them by memory. But memory is not thought; and to think and to remember at the same time is a feat that few can accomplish. We may trust to memory altogether, or to thinking altogether; but the two mental processes impede each other, and cannot be safely combined. While men are remembering, thinking ceases; and when men think, memory is suspended. What need of memory when a man speaks out of the fulness of his present consciousness? It is a proverb that