Read Psalm 19, Meditation (5)

The testimony of the Church.

·       F. B. Meyer: Keep in Touch with Jesus.

Avoid the spirit of fault-finding, criticism, uncharitableness, and anything inconsistent with His perfect love. Go where He is most likely to be found, either where two or three of His children are gathered, or where the lost sheep is straying. Ask Him to wake you morning by morning for communion and Bible-study. Make other time in the day, especially in the still hour of the evening twilight, between the work of the day and the avocations of the evening, when you shall get alone with Him, telling Him all things, and reviewing the past under the gentle light which streams from His eyes.

 

Charles Hadden Spurgeon (1834-1892) was an English Particular Baptist preacher.  Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, to some of whom he is known as the “Prince of Preachers.”

 

Robert Murray McCheyne was a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1835-1843.  He was born in Edinburgh on 21 May 1813, was educated at the university and at the Divinity Hall of his native city, and was assistant at Larbert and Dunipace. … McCheyne, though wielding remarkable influence in his lifetime, was still more powerful afterwards, through his Memoirs and Remains, edited by Andrew Bonar, which ran into far over a hundred English editions.  Some of his hymns became well known and his Bible reading plan is still in common use.

 

·       C. H. Spurgeon: The Blessings of Private Prayer.

Some have tried to imitate unction by unnatural tones and whines; by turning up the whites of their eyes, and lifting their hands in a most ridiculous manner. McCheyne’s tone and rhythm one hears from Scotchmen continually: we much prefer his spirit to his mannerism; and all mere mannerism without power is as foul carrion of all life bereft, obnoxious, mischievous. Certain brethren aim at inspiration through exertion and loud shouting; but it does not come: some we have known to stop the discourse, and exclaim, “God bless you,” and others gesticulate wildly, and drive their fingernails into the palms of their hands as if they were in convulsions of celestial ardor. Bah! The whole thing smells of the green-room and the stage. The getting up of fervor in hearers by the simulation of it in the preacher is a loathsome deceit to be scorned by honest men. “To affect feeling,” says Richard Cecil, “is nauseous and soon detected, but to feel is the readiest way to the hearts of others.”