The Bible Alive--The Church Dead

"Revelation is a vast field of every description of moral and spiritual truth that can touch the sensibilities of the soul; and reading through a Scripture history, prophecy, gospel, or epistle, is like perambulating the famed gardens of Hesperides, wandering through the vales of Tempe, or climbing the heights of Parnassus, Tabor, Pisgah, Sinai, Olivet, or Lebanon.

"Doubtless Palestine was chosen as the Fatherland of the Prophets, that men whose minds were nursed in the midst of the loveliest and grandest natural scenery might be able, from their earliest associations, to clothe divine truth in all the beauty and majesty of earth and heaven. Hence there is nothing dull or lifeless in the Scriptures. Even its genealogies have a biographical and poetic charm. There is, in fact, freshness and verdure everywhere, from Moses to John the Divine. And yet we shall not err if we say that not one of ten thousand in the Christian world is alive to these enchanting beauties.

"We have contrived by Sectarianism, Dissection, and System, to destroy life and loveliness. You cannot play the anatomist and preserve the vitality of your subject. Death and dissection generally go together. A collection of dry bones, of withered muscles and nerves, would be but a sorry representation of Adam and Eve in their original beauty and dignity. Our bodies of Divinity and Systematic Theology are very much of this character. They are mere skeletons, and stink of the sepulchre. Graves, in more senses than one, are associated with churches and chapels. Too often you have as many dead above as below the turf. You have corpses in gowns and bands as well as in coffins, and the surplice may not be a bad emblem of the winding-sheet. The president, tutor, and preacher, are sometimes dead while they live, and stiff and cold, by way of anticipating dissolution. All is dark, and damp, and chilling. You have not only skeletons of sermons, but skeleton-sermons, and the sanctuary is made a mental and spiritual charnel-house. The priest is dead, the hearers are dead, for the divinity is dead."