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32. And so our Christian orator, while he says what is just, and
holy, and good (and he ought never to say anything else), does all
he can to be heard with intelligence, with pleasure, and with
obedience; and he need and so far as he succeeds, he will succeed more
by piety in prayer than by gifts of oratory; and so he ought to pray
for himself, and for those he is about to address, before he attempts
to speak. And when the hour is come that he must speak, he ought,
before he opens his mouth, to lift up his thirsty soul to God, to
drink in what he is about to pour forth, and to be himself filled with
what he is about to distribute. For, as in regard to every matter of
faith and love there are many things that may be said, and many ways of
saying them, who knows what it is expedient at a given moment for us to
say, or to be heard saying, except God who knows the hearts of all?
And who can make us say what we ought, and in the way we ought,
except Him in whose hand both we and our speeches are? Accordingly,
he who is anxious both to know and to teach should learn all that is to
be taught, and acquire such a faculty of speech as is suitable for a
divine. But when the hour for speech arrives, let him reflect upon
that saying of our Lord's as better suited to the wants of a pious
mind "Take no thought how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be
given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that
speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." The
Holy Spirit, then, speaks thus in those who for Christ's sake are
delivered to the persecutors; why not also in those who deliver
Christ's message to those who are wilting to learn?
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