Saturday, April 04, 2009

Yes.


"I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snow-storm was falling all around us. The snow-storm was real; the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had not one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were non the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely to convert life into truth, he had not learned..."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from a lecture given to the Harvard Divinity School in 1838

"I am persuaded that one reason why our working-men so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways. If they saw us, in the pulpit and out of it, acting like real men, and speaking naturally, like honest men, they would come around us...The vice of the ministry is that ministers will parsonificate the Gospel. We must have humanity along with our divinity if we would win the masses. Everybody can see through affections, and people are not likely to be taken in by them. Fling away your stilts, brethren, and walk on your feet; doff your ecclesiasticism, and array yourselves in truth."
Spurgeon, from a lecture entitled The Minister's Ordinary Conversation

2 comments:

Whitney said...

Awesome! I'm so thankful that I married a REAL MAN!

Unknown said...

Dang, I love this post, too! Word verification is "champol".

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