Today's Expositor's Quote is from John Leland (1754-1841), a Baptist preacher in Virginia and New England, who was mightily used by God in the revival that swept Virginia in the late 1780's. Leland continued preaching well past his 86th birthday:
It is of primary importance that the preacher should be clothed with the garment of salvation; that he should be filled with a sense of the immense worth of the truth, the guilt, depravity and danger man is in; the unsearchable love of Christ in the bloody purchase, and his ability and willingness to save redeemed penitents. Without this robe, he will preach a distant Jesus, by an unfelt gospel, and with an unhallowed tongue.
John Leland, The Writings of Elder John Leland, (Gallatin, Tenn: Church History Research and Archives, 1986; originally published in 1845), p. 679. Cited in Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), p. 303.
[May we never preach with unhallowed tongues! May we feel the gospel, and may the Jesus we preach be the real Jesus, the imminent Jesus, the Jesus of unsearchable love -- Coty]
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