Jonathan Edwards on preaching

Well this is too good not to note:

...the impressing divine things on the hearts and affections of men is evidently one great and main end for which God has ordained that His Word delivered in the holy Scriptures should be opened, applied, and set home upon men, in preaching. And therefore it does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; becasue although these may tend as well as preaching to give men a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the things of the Word of God, yet theu have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's heats and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of His Word to men in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of the things of religion, and their own misery and necssity of a remedy, and the glory and sifficiency of a remedy provided; and to stir up the pure minds of the saints and quicken their affections, by often bringing the great things of religion to their remebrance and setting them before them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in the already...

Edwards' Religious Affections is to my mind the best piece on Christian spirituality there is. He got the emotions just right it seems to me. What I can't understand is why conservatives and charismatics don't sit down and read it together: I think both groups would feel rebuked and encouraged by what he says.

(it almost makes up for that terrible sermon, Sinners in the hands of an angry God. But that's another story...)