Page:Heralds of God.djvu/47

Rh after literary effect; the whole thing is told in short, quiet, almost staccato sentences; not a word is wasted. Yet how packed with emotion it is, how truly and profoundly moving! Or take the chapter which describes how David in the unguarded hour broke faith with his own soul and with God. Could any flamboyant eloquence of denunciation have equalled the overwhelming effect of those quiet words at the close: "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord"? Above all, take the Passion narratives in the Gospels. How their restraint rebukes our vain embellishments! How crude and turgid those cherished purple passages begin to look in the light of the Word of God! Christ's messengers are sent forth armed with a Word able to break men's hearts and heal them. But remember—as Richard Baxter told the preachers of his day—"you cannot break men's hearts by patching up a gaudy oration." Be real in language!

Finally, I would say this: Be real in your total attitude to the message. There is something wrong if a man, charged with the greatest news in the world, can be listless and frigid and feckless and dull Who is going to believe that the tidings brought by the preacher matter literally more than anything else on earth if they are presented with no sort of verve or fire or attack, and if the man himself is apathetic and uninspired, afflicted with spiritual coma, and unsaying by his attitude what he says in words? There is no prayer that ought to be more constantly on your lips 41