Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/422

414 You want to be radiant, eloquent ministers, ministers of great influence and success. Do you want to sit on the Lord's right hand and on His left? Then give Him your heart, so that in humility, in gentleness, in unfailing sweetness, in patience under all circumstances, you shall be like Him.

He that would speak Divine things in a language which living men of to-day can comprehend, must keep up with the researches and discoveries of men who study nature, and put her words into the speech of the present. —.

One great want of the times is a commanding ministry—a ministry of a piety at once sober and earnest, and of mightiest moral power. Give us these men, "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost," who will proclaim old truths with new energy, not cumbering them with massive drapery nor hiding them beneath piles of rubbish. Give us these men! men of sound speech, who will preach the truth as it is in Jesus, not with faltering tongue and averted eye, as if the mind blushed at its own credulity—not distilling into it an essence so subtle and so speedily decomposed that a chemical analysis alone can detect the faint odor which tells it has been there—but who will preach it apostlewise, that is, "first of all," at once a principle shrined in the heart and a motive mighty in the life—the source of all morals, and the inspiration of all charity—the sanctifier of every relationship, and the sweetener of every toil. Give us these men! men of zeal untiring—whose hearts of constancy quail not although dull men sneer, and proud men scorn, and timid men blush, and cautious men deprecate, and wicked men revile. —.

Many young ministers are poor men, but that is no reason, gentlemen, why you should be poor ministers.