indescribable difference between the same arguments and truths, as
presented by him who earnestly feels and desires to persuade, and by him
who designs only a display of intellectual strength, or an exercise of
rhetorical skill. In the latter case, the declamation may be splendid,
but it will be cold and without expression; lulling the ear, and
diverting the fancy, but leaving the feelings untouched. In the other,
there is an air of reality and sincerity, which words cannot describe,
but which the heart feels, that finds its way to the recesses of the
soul, and overcomes it by a powerful sympathy. This is a difference
which all perceive and all can account for. The truths of religion are
not matters of philosophical speculation, but of experience. The heart
and all the spiritual man, and all the interests and feelings of the
immortal being, have an intimate concern in them. It is perceived at
once whether they are stated by one who has felt them himself, is
personally acquainted with their power, is subject to their influence,
and speaks from actual experience; or whether they come from one who
knows them only in speculation, has gathered them from books, and
thought them out by his own reason, but without any sense of their
spiritual operation.

But who does not know how much easier it is to declare what has come to
our knowledge from our own experience, than what we have gathered coldly
at second hand from that of others;--how much easier it is to describe
feelings we have ourselves had, and pleasures we have ourselves enjoyed,
than to fashion a description of what others have told us;--how much
more freely and convincingly we can speak of happiness we have known,
than of that to which we are strangers. We see, then, how much is lost
to the speaker by coldness or ignorance in the exercises of personal
religion. How can he effectually represent the joys of a religious mind,
who has never known what it is to feel them? How can he effectually aid
the contrite, the desponding, the distrustful, the tempted, who has
never himself passed through the same fears and sorrows? or how can he
paint, in the warm colors of truth, religious exercises and spiritual
desires, who is personally a stranger to them? Alas, he cannot at all
come in contact with those souls, which stand most in need of his
sympathy and aid. But if he have cherished in himself, fondly and
habitually, the affections he would excite in others, if he have
combat