p. 43 | A Ministerial Error by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 3, 1865

A Ministerial Error.

By James White

It is, I think, an error into which many of our modern ministers, whose education has been carried to a high pitch, have fallen; that everything is to be done by the head rather than the heart. We know very well that the true method is to reach the heart through the head, and men must be made to feel by being shown why they should feel, and what is to make them feel. But in very many cases, especially in the least educated, the head is to be reached by appeals to the heart. We often hear the remark, "Yes, it was a smart sermon, but wanted heart. It sparkled like the stars, or shone like the moon on a wintry night, but it warmed no one." I have been sometimes struck, as every one else must have been, with the varying effect produced by different speakers at a public meeting; and how much more power over an audience, and how much more the object of the meeting has been accomplished by a few gushes of simple eloquence from the heart of some earnest and ardent advocate, than by the elaborate, but passionless pleader. The latter was coldly admired, and admitted to be an eloquent speaker; but the former melted and moved his audience by the depth and intensity of his own feeling.—James.