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Life, p. 192. His excellent son’s preparation for the pulpit was equally unremitting. ‘To that leading object every other was subordinate. All he said, and all he saw, as well as the things he heard, were regarded by him with less or with more attention, as they bore upon that. Nothing crude or indigested found its way through his agency into the solemn assembly. ‘Take heed’ (he would say) ‘of growing remiss in your work. Take pains while you live. Do not think that after a while you may relax, and go over your old stock. The scripture still affords new things to those who search them. Continue searching. How can you expect God’s blessing on your people’s observance, if you are careless?’—Life, p. 112, 113. Eliot’s view of the importance of preparation is admirable—‘He liked no preaching, except what had been well studied for; and he would very much commend a sermon which he could perceive had required some good thinking and reading in the author of it. I have been present,’ (says his biographer) ‘when he thus addressed a preacher who had just come home from the assembly with him—‘Brother, there was oil required for the service of the sanctuary, but it must be beaten oil; I praise God that I saw your oil so well-beaten today. The Lord help us always by good study to beat our oil, that there may be no knots in our sermons left undissolved, and that there may be a clear light thereby given in the house of God.’ And yet he likewise looked for something in a sermon beside and beyond the mere study of man. He was for having the Spirit of God breathing in it and with it; and he was for speaking those things, from those impressions and with those affections, which might compel the hearer to say—‘The Spirit of God was here’—I have heard him complain—‘It is a sad thing, when a sermon has that one thing—the Spirit of God—lacking in it.’ Mather s Life of Eliot.