Feeble preachers, feeble Christians

I go on now to mention another qualification for the sacred office, and which the earnest minister will anxiously cultivate with a view to the great object of his life and labours, and to which I advance with a praying mind, an anxious heart, and a trembling hand, ardently desirous to set it forth in such manner as shall secure for it the attention which its importance demands; I mean personal religion. We are weak in the pulpit, because we are weak in the closet. An earnest man will not only train his mind to understand his object, and draw around him the resources requisite for its accomplishment, but will discipline his heart: for there, within, is the spring of his energies, the seat of impulse, and the source of power. There the life that quickens must reside, and thence it must be felt to emanate. If the heart beat feebly, the whole circulation must be sluggish, and the frame inert. So it is with us ministers: our own personal religion is the mainspring of all our power in the pulpit. We are feeble as preachers, because we are feeble as Christians. Whatever other deficiencies we have, the chief of all lies in the heart. The apostle said, "We believe, and therefore speak." We not only speak what we believe, but as we believe: if the faith be weak, so will be the utterance. In another place the same inspired writer said, "Knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." It was when standing as amidst the solemnities of the last judgment, that apostles besought men to be reconciled to God. The flame of zeal which in their ministrations rose to such a height and intensity as to subject them to the charge of insanity, is thus accounted for, "The love of Christ constraineth us." We have too much forgotten that the fount of eloquence is in the heart; and that it is feeling which gives to words and thoughts their power.

—John Angell James, 'An Earnest Ministry: The Want of the Times', 56–57