Communications to Elder Hull
405
and out, a mighty influence would attend your preaching. You do
not closely search your own heart. You have studied many works
to make your discourses thorough, able, and pleasing; but you have
neglected the greatest and most necessary study, the study of yourself.
A thorough knowledge of yourself, meditation and prayer, have come
in as secondary things. Your success as a minister depends upon
your keeping your own heart. You will receive more strength by
spending one hour each day in meditation, and in mourning over
your failings and heart corruptions and pleading for God’s pardoning
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love and the assurance of sins forgiven, than you would by spending
many hours and days in studying the most able authors, and making
yourself acquainted with every objection to our faith, and with the
most powerful evidences in its favor.
The reason why our preachers accomplish so little is that they do
not walk with God. He is a day’s journey from most of them. The more
closely you watch your own heart, the more watchful and guarded you
will be, lest by your words or acts you dishonor the truth, give occasion
for the tongue of slander to follow you and the truth, and cause souls
to be lost through your neglect of self-examination, of heart study,
and of vital godliness. The holy deportment of the minister of Christ
should be a rebuke to vain, frothy professors. The beams of truth
and holiness shining from your serious, heavenly conversation will
convict others and lead them to the truth, and those around you will be
compelled to say, God is with this man, of a truth. It is the carelessness
and looseness of professed ministers of Christ that gives them so little
influence. There are many professors, but there are few praying men.
If our preachers were men who prayed more in secret, who carried
their preaching into practice in their families, who ruled their houses
with dignity and gravity, their light would indeed shine to those around
them.
Brother Hull, I have been shown that if you would dedicate your-
self to God, hold communion with Him, meditate much, watch your
failings, mourn and lament before the Lord in the deepest humility
on account of them, relying upon Him for strength, you would be in
the most profitable business in which you were ever engaged; for you
would be drinking at a living fountain, and could then give others to
drink from that same fountain which revived and strengthened you.