Luke 5:1-3 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed on him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret,… The nameless and potent charm of intense personality cannot all go down into a dead book. Truth in personality is where the hidings of power are. We look in vain along the pages of Whitefield for the secret of his mighty effectiveness. We search the famous sermon of Edwards, and wonder what there was in it that moved men so. It was not the sermon on the printed page; it was the sermon in the living preacher. While men are men, a living man before living men will always be more than white paper and black ink. And therein will for evermore lie the supremest possibilities of pulpit power, which no competing press, however enterprising and ubiquitous, can rival. The Founder of Christianity made no mistake when He staked its triumphal progress down through all ages, and its victorious consummation at "the end of the "world," on "the foolishness of preaching." He chose the agency in full view of the marvels of these later centuries, and the pulpit is not therefore likely to be despoiled of its peculiar glory and made impotent to its work by any device born of the inventive genius of man. (Dr. Herrick Johnson, of Chicago.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, |
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