Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE IMPRESSION AND EXPRESSION OF THE GOOD NEWS FOUR phases of the process of preaching we shall study briefly in this chapter. They must be understood in their right relations by any one who is to preach the good news successfully in the modern age. The first is the impression of the good news upon the preacher. This has been considered at such length in the previous chapter that we only revert to it again here. The Gospel must have made a deep impression upon the whole life of the preacher before he can effectively impress it upon others. It must be the greatest truth he knows, the noblest engagement to which he can possibly dedicate himself. Thus the Gospel must have been impressed upon his very spirit. It must have laid hold on the deepest springs of his action; it must be translated into motives; it must shape the major program of the preacher’s life. No man who goes into the pulpit merely because he is interested in what he is going to do or say there, or because he enjoys the music, or because he likes the stately order of aservice, will be a preacher. But something must have been impressed upon him so deeply that he is under the spell of its mighty urgency and feels that he absolutely must do something about it. There lies the source of his power. It is the drive and the compulsion derived from a commanding truth. It is no ground for boasting or claim to glory when a man upon whom the good news has been so deeply and vitally impressed seeks to preach it, or to express it. Indeed, he could not do anything else and be true to the deepest that is in him. Paul states this fact in one of those little revelations of himself that he gives occasionally in his letters:
For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of; for necessity is laid upon me; for woe is un…