“SUCH BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE”
By Christian
It is not unusual to hear people express their estimate of a preacher in words something like this: “But he uses such beautiful language!” His “beautiful language” or “elegant diction” forms the basis of their approval or condemnation. But what does he say? Nobody seems to remember or tell much about that, but his “language” is “beautiful.” It is a beautiful cup, but it contains no water; the plate is beautiful, but there is little food; instead of good seed, he sows beautiful beads and buttons; but what shall the harvest be? He applies a beautiful plaster, but there is no balm of Gilead about it, and it possesses no healing power; he is a beautiful physician, but his patients die. He gives medicine in beautiful vials, but they are deadly poisons. Think of a man crying “fire!” in the most chaste and elegant forms of expression, and so softly, too, that the slumberers sleep on, and those who are awake are persuaded that there is no danger. In a world like this, there is something besides sweetness and beauty. There are awful facts of sin, and wrath, and judgment, which concern mankind; and we have something to do besides listening to quaint conceits, beautiful expressions, and smoothly drawn sentences which have no grip on the conscience, and which allow men to sleep quietly while judgment and damnation are hastening on their track. There is sin, there is sorrow, there is danger, there is death on every hand, and shall we be lulled to rest with “beautiful language,” and neglect the warnings which God has given, and the judgments which he has pronounced against sin and iniquity? Oh, better far listen to a voice of one crying in the wilderness, that warns, and wakes, and rouses slumbering souls, and bids us flee the wrath to come, ere it shall burst in thunder on an unsuspecting world.