Warm, heartfelt preaching nourishes believers more effectively than cold, impersonal sermons.
"As warm milk is fitter to nourish a babe than that which is cold, so the word of God delivered by a lively voice hath a greater congruity and suitableness to the work of grace." Moreover, "there is no milk for a babe like that which comes warm from the mother's breast. Reading the word, or hearing a borrowed sermon, is like a child's sucking from a bottle; but as that child grows best which takes its nutriment fresh from the mother, so hearing warm-hearted discourses, fresh from the preacher's heart, is the most nourishing to the child of God. There is no warmth like heart-warmth, and no testimony like that of experience. This is the grand distinction between one preaching and another. One sermon is delivered with a cold propriety, as if the preacher had no concern in it, nor his hearers either, and as a rule it fails to satisfy the soul. Another discourse may have less food in it than the first, but as it comes from the preacher's inmost soul, and he speaks it with warmth of zeal and melting affection, it enters into the auditor, is assimilated by him, and makes him grow thereby. Surely there can be no greater farce than dull, lifeless preaching. As by taking the soul out of a man we cause him to become a loathsome and offensive corpse, so has the doctrine of the gospel, when it has been divorced from the affection of the minister, become a heartless creed, bringing more of bondage to men's intellects than of sustenance to their souls. If the shepherd is not alive, what will the sheep be? If men are compelled to feed upon ice, and to dwell among icebergs, they will be frozen; while those who are warmed by an ardent ministry are likely to become fervent Christians. Lord, let me rather be dumb than so preach thy word as to deprive it of that holy warmth which makes it nourishing food for thy children. Let me not set thy sick ones down to cold meats for which they will have no stomach. If I be not eloquent, yet let me be affectionate; if I cannot speak with the wisdom of a father, yet let me speak with the heart of a brother.
