This book
is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves,
repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and
honest humility of their better ones, so that, as one has said of our
Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by
their faults.
The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding. Two and sometimes
three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the
beginning of their labors. Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to
the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes;
besides which they labored conversationally from house to house with
individuals.
Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any
means the only or the highest aim of their preaching. They sought to
make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and
to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked
and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters.
They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate,
all-pervading, thorough.
Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without
corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong
logical appeals to the understanding.
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