Preacher and Prayer

Three things make a divine--prayer, meditation, temptation. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry as he did me, to teach you to pray. Remember Luther's maxim, "e;To have prayed well is to have studied well."e; Get your text from God, your thoughts, your words.Recreation to a minister must be as whetting is with the mower--that is, to be used only so far as is necessary for his work. May a physician in plague-time take any more relaxation or recreation than is necessary for his life, when so many are expecting his help in a case of life and death? Will you stand by and see sinners gasping under the pangs of death, and say: "e;God doth not require me to make myself a drudge to save them?"e; Is this the voice of ministerial or Christian compassion or rather of sensual laziness and diabolical cruelty?