" This was my experience in the present instance; for the thought
of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, "Why should I talk about
death? Every man's heart is now full of death. We have enough of that--even
the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the tempest. What I have to
do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to speak of life." It flashed
in on my mind: "Death is over and gone. The resurrection comes next. I will
speak of the raising of Lazarus."
The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not
give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of them
would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them with
sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought to
be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would have
called a _caput mortuum_, or death's head, namely, a lifeless lump of
residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the living
human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the hearers.
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