1. There are some who preach BEFORE their people, like actors on the stage, to display themselves and to please their audience.
2. There are others
who preach OVER their people. Studying
for the highest, instead of doing
so for the lowest, in intelligence, they elaborate learned treatises, which
float like mist, when delivered over the heads of their hearers.
3. There are some
who preach PAST their people. Directing their praise or their censure to
intangible abstractions, they never take aim at the views and the conduct of
the individuals before them. They step carefully aside, lest their hearers
should be struck by their shafts, and aim them at phantoms beyond them.
4. There are others
who preach AT their people, serving out in a sermon the gossip of the
week, and seemingly possessed with the idea, that the transgressor can be
scolded out of the ways of iniquity.
5. There are some
who preach TOWARDS their people. They aim well, but they are weak. Their
eye is along the arrow towards the hearts of their hearers, but their arm is
too feeble for sending it on to the mark. Superficial in their experience and
in their knowledge, they reach not the cases of God s people by their doctrine,
and they strike with no vigour at the consciences of the ungodly.
6. There are others
still, who preach ALONG their congregation. Instead of standing with
their bow in front of the rank, these archers take it in line, and reducing
their mark to an individual, never change the direction of their aim.
7. But there are a
few who preach TO the people directly and seasonably the mind of God in
His word, with authority, unction, wisdom, fervour, and love.
