561 USEFULNESS OF THE PASSIONS. passions on all sides, if by any means they may save a soul froi hell ? Happy preachers, who approach this divine pattern ! Can any of us now content ourselves to bring cold and languid discourses into the pulpit, with this bible under our hands ? Will not all the sacred fervors ofthese inspired preach- ers reproach us to our faces, while we read and explain their ser- mons ! Shall we go on to affect a calm'and stupid politeness of phrase, in the very face of these warm and heavenly orators ? Can we be content any longer to be the cold and lifeless rehears- ers ofthe great and glorious things of our religion ? Canwe go on to speak to perishing sinners, who lie drowsy and slumbering on the brink of hell, in so soft, so calm and gentle amanner, as though we were afraid to awaken them ? What shall we say to these things ? Does divine-love send dreaming preachers to call dead sinners to life ? Preachers that are content to leave their hearers asleep on the precipice of eternal destruction ? Have they no such thing as passion belongs to them ? Have they no pity ? Have they no fear ? Have they no sense of the worth ofsouls ? Have they no springs of affection within them ? Or do they think their hearers have none ? Or is passion so vile a power, that it must be all devoted to things of flesh and sense, and must never be applied to objects divine and heavenly ? Who taught any ofus this lazy and drowsy practice ? Did God or his prophets, didChrist or his apostles, instruct us in this modish art ofstilllife, this lethargy of preaching, as it hasbeen called bya late writer ? Did the great God ever appoint statues for his ambas- sadors, to invite sinners to his mercy ? Wordsof grace, written upon brass. or marble, would do the work almost as well. Where thepreachers become stone, no wonder if the hearers are move- less : But let the ministers of the living world, who address men upon matters of infinite concernment, skew, if possible, that they are infinitelyconcerned about them. This my thoughts to the next remark. IV. "How kindly has the grace and wisdom of God dealt with us, inappointing men of like passions with ourselves, to become his ministers and our teachers in the things of religion !" Men, who have the same natural affections, who can feel within themselves all the train of devout passions, and express it in their holy ministrations ! Men, who are subject to the same sins and follies, and are capable of the same religious fear, and penitent sorrow ! Men who stand inneed of the same salvation, andmust be trained up to heaven, by the exercise of the same faith, and love, and hope. If angels had been made the only messengers of the gos- pel, angels, who have no flesh and blood, no communion in the same animal nature, no share of our fears and sorrows, no in- terest in the same redeeming mercy and pardon, they could not
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