HERALDS OF GOD
God help the preacher who tries to ply this work with no overpowering sense of its urgency! When you remember, as you stand in your pulpit, that some around you there have been lifting you to God, to gird your soul with strength and your words with the authority of Jesus; that never a congregation gather, but some expectant souls are presents hoping and hungering for the open heavens and the vision of the Lord; that always there are some trembling on the verge of spiritual decision, so that for them this very service might be the hour of life's supreme encounter; that every one of those into whose faces you look is so infinitely precious that for their sakes Christ was willing to endure the Cross and despise the shame—when you reflect on this, must not your spirit catch fire, and all listlessness and formality be burned up in the glow of the evangel? Here is the source of authentic inspiration, "the demon of preaching," as it is sometimes called. When all is said and done, the supreme need of the Church is the same in the twentieth century as in the first: it is men on fire for Christ.
I beg you not to commit the fearful blunder of damping down that flame. It is, of course, understandable and right that you who are going out into the ministry should distrust, and set your faces against, the spurious fervour which notoriously brings discredit on the faith. But the pity is that there are preachers so frightened of this taint that they have actually done violence to the flame Christ has kindled within them, choosing deliberately an attitude of cool and imperturb-
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