There is an
awful sentence in Butler that should be written in letters of fire in
every minister's conscience, to the effect that continually going over
religion in talk and making fine pictures of it in the pulpit, creates a
professional insensibility to personal religion that is the everlasting
ruin of multitudes of eloquent ministers. That is true. We ministers
all feel that to be true. Our miserable experience tells us that is only
too true of ourselves. What a flood of demoralising talk has been poured
out from the pulpits of this one city to-day!--demoralising to preachers
and to hearers both, because not intended to be put in practice. How few
of those who have talked and heard talk all this day about divine truth
and human duty, have made the least beginning or the least resolve to
live as they have spoken and heard! And, yet, all will in words again
admit that the soul of religion is the practick part, and that the tongue
without the heart and the life is but death and corruption.
Let us, then, this very night begin to do something practical after all
this talk about talk.
Pages:
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253