Effective Preaching

By far the most effective ingredient of good preaching is the personal piety of the preacher himself. How little must the presence of God be felt in that place, where the high functions of the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated exchange of entertainment, on the one side, and of admiration, on the other! and surely it were a sight to make angels weep when a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded by his fellow-sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgement along with them, finds it a dearer object to his bosom to regale his hearers by the exhibition of himself, that to do, in plain earnest, the work of his Master.

- Thomas Chalmers (March 17, 1780 - May 31, 1847), Scottish mathematician, minister of the gospel, leader and first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland in the Disruption of 1843; born at Anstruther in Fife.