So end the extracts from my Diary.
I have just been reading an article in the Christian Advocate, and I can't resist the temptation to give a short extract or two.
"Not only is there an emasculated theology, but there is not a little emasculated preaching.
"Nothing is emptier or feebler than cant—ringing the changes on what may be called the stock phrases of one's sect. John Wesley once said, 'Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal, that has neither sense nor grace, bawl out something about 'Christ,' or 'His blood,' or 'justification by faith,' and there are not wanting those who will cry out, 'What a fine Gospel sermon!' For myself, I prefer a sermon on either good tempers or good works to such 'Gospel sermons.'
"Take away from certain preachers their 'heavenly tone,' as the old lady called it—their sing-song cadences, and their favorite pulpit phrases—and you take away the principal part of their stock in trade. Out upon such 'words without knowledge'—sound without sense!
"Quite as destitute of Gospel power is that preaching which consists largely in the presentation of old worn-out theories, musty scholastic philosophies about religion, usually paraded under the pretentious title of 'doctrine.'
"The devil, it is said, once inspired a dead priest to preach an orthodox sermon. On being questioned by his imps why he ventured on such a deliverance, he replied very significantly, that nothing made infidels more effectually than orthodoxy preached by dead men's lips."