HERALDS OF GOD
come forth throbbing with a fervour and reality totally unlike the pseudo-animation of a pretentious and self-conscious delivery. "When the work of the composer," wrote Jebb of the Greek poets, "failed to be vital and sincere, this, the unpardonable fault, was described by the expressive word psychros, frigid. The composition was then no longer a living thing, which spoke to the hearers and elicited a response. It was stricken with the chill of death." Jebb might have been writing there of the Christian preacher. In the moment when sincerity goes, the whole business of preaching is stricken with the chill of death; and the obtrusion of self is always destructive of sincerity. In the last resort, everything depends on the degree in which awareness of self is swallowed up in the vision of God. As he delivers his sermon, the man who has himself entered through worship into the holy place will preach with something of the glow and freedom which mark true inspiration. Among those listening to him there will be some who, as the sermon proceeds, are conscious less of the actual speaker than of a ringing and authentic "Thus saith the Lord!"—some who beyond the human tones will hear, pleading and commanding, the very voice of Jesus. And long after the sermon is finished, that voice will keep sounding on. Paul plants, Apollos waters; but the real issues are wrought out at levels where Paul, Apollos and every other human factor have vanished out of sight. It is not your personality that has to be impressed redeemingly upon other souls—thank heaven for that; it is
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