Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
"I did hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business had been compromised accordingly." "You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it."
I wonder what a parson would say, if a man who never goes to church save when his babies are christened, or by accident to get out of a shower, should volunteer his advice about sermon-making? or an artist, to whom the man without arms, who is wheeled about in the streets for coppers, should recommend a greater delicacy of touch?
I was the world compass of his life, always sitting in his amen corner with my attention fixed anxiously upon the spiritual pulse of the congregation, always giving him the most nourishing food our limited means afforded, always standing between him and sordid dickering with the butcher and candlestick maker, always making myself a Chinese wall to separate him on sermon-making days from the church public.
Lydia slid helplessly into the naïve question, "Well, did his father drown?" before the meaning of the little parable struck her. She began to laugh, with her gay, sweet inability to resent a joke made at her own expense. "Don't you think you are a good hand at sermon-making!" she mocked him. "It's all very well to preach, but just you tell me what you would have done in my place."
"I don't pretend to teach you sermon-making: I only tell you that, such as sermons mostly are, precious little help or comfort can be derived from them." Mr. Jones again made his characteristic grimace, expressive of the contempt for secular opinion with which he was morally so well cushioned, but he had a kind heart and refrained from crushing his poor old opponent with too severe a rejoinder.
And yet, after having been trained for a year in the rough-and-ready oratory of the streets, subject to interruptions and interjected sneers, The General was called upon, in order to be recognised as fit for registration as a lay preacher, to mount the pulpit and preach a "trial sermon"! Accustomed as he had become to talk out his heart with such words and illustrations as involuntarily presented themselves to the simple-minded, though often wicked and always ignorant crowds, who gathered around the chair on which he stood; able without difficulty to hold their attention when he had won it, and drive the truth home to their souls, in spite of the counter-attractions of a busy thoroughfare, he took very hardly to the stiff, cold process of sermonising and sermon-making such as was then in vogue, and it was some time before he had much liberty or made much progress in the business.
When he once got on to this sermon-making line he took the best models he could find men like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and, above all, C. G. Finney, who he could be certain had never sought in their preaching for human applause, but for the glory of God and the good of souls alone.
"I did hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business had been compromised accordingly." "You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking