"Pray, what
do you mean by PROPHECY?"
"I mean what I take to be the sense in which St. Paul uses the
word--I mean the highest kind of preaching. But I will come to the
point practically: a man, I say, who does not feel in his soul that
he has something to tell his people, should straightway turn his
energy to the providing of such food for them as he finds feed
himself. In other words, if he has nothing new in his own treasure,
let him bring something old out of another man's. If his own soul is
unfed, he can hardly be expected to find food for other people, and
has no business in any pulpit, but ought to betake himself to some
other employment--whatever he may have been predestined to--I mean,
made fit for."
"Then do you intend that a man SHOULD make up his sermons from the
books he reads?"
"Yes, if he cannot do better. But then I would have him read--not
with his sermon in his eye, but with his people in his heart. Men in
business and professions have so little time for reading or
thinking--and idle people have still less--that their means of
grace, as the theologians say, are confined to discipline without
nourishment, whence their religion, if they have any, is often from
mere atrophy but a skeleton; and the office of preaching is, after
all, to wake them up lest their sleep turn to death; next, to make
them hungry, and lastly, to supply that hunger; and for all these
things, the pastor has to take thought.
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