PREACHING.
How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach, except they be sent.—Romans, x. 14, 15.
For, after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.—I. Corinthians, i. 21.
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine.—II. Timothy, iv. 2.
He bore his great commission in his look,
But sweetly tempered awe, and softened all he spoke.
He preached the joys of Heaven, and pains of hell,
And warned the sinner with becoming zeal,
But on eternal mercy loved to dwell.
Dryden.
But above all, in her own light array’d,
See mercy’s grand apocalypse display’d!
The sacred book no longer suffers wrong,
Bound in the fetters of an unknown tongue;
But speaks with plainness, art could never mend,
What simplest minds can soonest comprehend.
God gives the word, the preachers throng around,
Live from his lips, and spread the glorious sound:
That sound bespeaks salvation on her way,
The trumpet of a life-restoring day;
’Tis heard where England’s eastern glory shines,
And in the gulfs of her Cornubian mines.
And still it spreads. See Germany send forth
Her sons to pour it on the farthest north:
Fired with a zeal peculiar, they defy
The rage and rigour of a polar sky,
And plant successfully sweet Sharon’s rose
On icy plains, and in eternal snows.
Cowper.
No studied eloquence was there displayed,
Nor poetry of language lent its aid;
But plain the words that from the preacher came;
A preacher young, and all unknown to fame;
While youth and age a listening ear inclined,
To learn the way the pearl of price to find.
Elizabeth Bogart.