HERALDS OF GOD
tongue; and that is the basic condition of effective preaching still. Have something to say, and when you are saying it avoid periphrasis and over-elaboration: say it as clearly as you can. Dr. L. P. Jacks maintains that "two lines of Wordsworth—
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
are a more adequate expression of human grief than all the funeral sermons ever preached." It is simple directness, not literary embellishment, that moves the hearts of men.
Let us hark back, by way of contrast, to St. Paul's Cathedral at Christmastide 1624, and listen to this trumpet-toned, tremendous utterance of John Donne. He is speaking of the Psalmist's word, "I will sing of mercy and judgment." "If some King of the earth," cries Donne, "have so large an extent of Dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his Dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his Dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together; He brought light out of darknesse, not out of a lesser light; He can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the wayes of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frosen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate
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