What is preaching without praying! Sermons are but pulpit performances, learned essays, rhetorical orations, popular lectures, or it may be political harangues, until God gives, in answer to earnest prayer, the preparation of the heart, and the answer of the tongue. It is only he who prays that can truly preach. Many a sermon that has shown no intellectual genius and has violated all homiletic rules and standards has had dynamic spiritual force. Somehow it has moved men, melted them, molded them. The man whose lips are touched by God’s living coal from off the altar may even stammer, but his hearers soon find out that he is on fire with one consuming passion to save souls.
Arthur T. Pierson, The Fundamentals, Vol. IX., P.67 as found in Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.435
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