THE PREACHER'S INNER LIFE
able detachment, and perhaps even confounding frigidity with philosophic depth and logical precision with spiritual power. Let us have precision of utterance and clarity of exposition by all means: but even precision and logic are bought too dear if they stifle the living flame. The radical mistake, of course, is in supposing that precision and the heart on fire are somehow exclusive of each other. It is a supposition manifestly disproved by every page of the New Testament, but it can do untold damage to the Church. "I indeed baptize you with water," said John to his desert congregation, "but He that cometh after me shall baptize you with fire"; and the weakness of many an otherwise competent ministry is that it has been content with the first baptism and neglected the second, has tried to do with water what can be accomplished only with the fire of Christ. "She introduced me," said Frederic Myers of that noble woman Josephine Butler, "to Christianity as by an inner door: not to its encumbering forms, but to its heart of flame." That, under God, is your high calling; and how shall you tend the flame upon other altars if it is not burning on your own? The whole nation was destined to know the impact of the hour when John Wesley in the Aldersgate Street meeting-house felt his heart "strangely warmed" within him; and even in the wilder chaos of the twentieth century there is nothing which the Holy Spirit might not accomplish through a generation of preachers on fire for Christ.
Yours is the greatest of all vocations. You will stint
221
