[Sombre]

I don't think it's silly logic at all. You're talking about producing an H2 priest instead of a mage fairly early in the game.

I deduce early in the game, because there's no way the effectiveness of sermon of courage competes with even lesser spells later in the game and you're talk about throwing him in with a mundane army that needs an extra 2 points of morale on a bunch of troops.

How much research is the mage going to get done over the course of the game? He can fill a support role then later go research, or more likely the other way around. The priest can't.

I'm not saying H2 mages are useless, I'm simply saying I've never built a pure H2 national mage and I don't follow the logic that because sermon of courage can be useful (which is certainly true) it would be worth doing so over a mage slot.