"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." They hear words, but get no ideas. Religion does not come to them from the pulpit as a reality. It does not make itself felt as truth. Books and lecturers on science treat of realities, and treat of them in words that can be understood; but many books on religion, and many preachers, seem to deal only in words. And the consequence is, many fancy religion is a delusion, a fanaticism, a dream. Others believe there is something in it, but they cannot conceive what it is. Yet teachers and preachers appear not properly to understand why so many get weary of sermons and religious books. Let them talk in plain good English, and say nothing but what has some great Christian reality under it, and sermons and religious books will be the most popular things on earth. --I would never sacrifice Christian truth to conciliate the world; but I would sacrifice everything at variance with Christian truth; and I would present Christian truth itself in as intelligible and taking a form as possible. --The antinomian theology has had a terribly corrupting effect on many members of churches. I meet proofs of it every day. God help me to do my duty. Some of my hearers say to me, 'We come to church to be comforted, and not to be continually told to do, do, do.' I do not wish people to be comforted unless they will do their duty; and they will never _lack_ comfort if they _do_ do it. Comfort is for those who labor to comfort and benefit others, and not for those who care only for themselves. I try to make the easy-going, indolent and selfish professors miserable: and in some cases I succeed. But I make others happy, thank God, by inducing them to give themselves heartily to Christian work. --Here are a few more good words from Baxter: 'Many proclaim the praise of truth in general, but reject and persecute its various portions. The _name_ of truth they honor, but the truth itself they despise.' 'Passion is a great seducer of the understanding, and strangely blindeth and perverteth the judgment.' 'When passion hath done boiling and the heart is cooled, and leaveth the judgment to do its work without clamor and disturbance, it is strange to see how things will appear to you to be quite of another tendency than in your frenzy you esteemed them.' 'Be more studious to hold and improve those common truths which all profess, than to oppose the particular opinions of any, except so far as those common truths require you to do so.' 'Be not borne down by the censoriousness of any, to outrun your own understanding and the truth, and to comply with them in their errors and extremes; but hold to the truth and keep your station. 'Let them return unto thee, but return not thou unto them.' Jer. xv. 19.' 'Believe nothing that contradicteth the end of all religion. If its tendency be against a holy life, it cannot be truth.'