THE PREACHER'S INNER LIFE
upon the gaping needs of men. The trouble is, as Richard Baxter put it bluntly to the clergy of his day, that "many a tailor goes in rags that maketh costly clothes for others; and many a cook scarcely licks his fingers, when he hath dressed for others the most costly dishes." It is a solemnizing thought for any preacher that what he speaks to men in the name of God is going to be mightily reinforced or mercilessly negatived by the quality of life behind it. Chaucer summed it up succinctly when he wrote of his good priest:
Christes lore, and His apostles twelve,
He taught, and first he folwed it him-selve.
It might indeed be supposed that the very nature of the preacher's calling would guarantee an invincible fidelity and consecration. But all sacred things are double-edged; and if the tasks of the ministry may be a safeguard and a panoply they have also their peculiar perils, and they exact vengeance from those who handle them with undue familiarity, Robertson of Brighton was right when he spoke of "the hardening influence of spiritual things"; for the prophetic awe and wonder in presence of the revelation of God can all too easily deteriorate into a mere mechanical trafficking with the ordinances of religion. To quote Baxter again: "It is a sad thing that so many of us preach our hearers asleep; but it is sadder still if we have studied and preached ourselves asleep, and have talked so long against hardness of heart, till our own grow hardened under the noise of our own reproofs." There is no sure
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