EMPTY PREACHING
I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more… A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real, the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt that sad contrast in looking at him and then out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of snow. He had lived in vain. He had not one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended or cheated or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it… The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life — life passed through the fire of thought. By Ralph Waldo Emerson
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