Excerpt from Dictionary of Anecdote, Incident, Illustrative Fact, Selected and Arranged for the Pulpit and the Platform And it is to Truth embodied in a tale our Poet Laureate has given the palm; Where truth in closest words shall fail. Can anything be more dreary than a day's reading of the ordinary sermons of the past generation? Theology violently divorced from human life becomes inevitably dull and acrid, stale and unprofitable. How many hearers have sat in the condition so graphically described by Emerson - the snowstorm without, real and beautiful, the preacher within, merely spectral; listening to one who had never learned the capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth! It is the wise saying of a great modern preacher, If, a man cannot speak the language of men, he will stand outside of mankind, in spite of all he can do. How these divine verities we preach afiect humanity to day is the great question, and if we are wise advocates for Christ we shall quote precedent and example, we shall illustrate and exemplify; just as the skilled lawyer does, in order that he may prove his case. The whole field of sacred and profane literature is ours, as well as the open pages of that Holy Book whose words have quickening power unto eternal life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.