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I. IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO BELIEVING LITERATURE. Literature is one of the mightiest of human institutions, and of all literature that produced by believers on Christian subjects is incomparably the most valuable. But the best of these is destitute of the power which goes with believing speech. The latter has the presence of the author. The presence of a man before his brother is itself a power. Truth through the pen is truth in lunar ray. However clear, it is cold. Under its influence landscapes will wither and rivers freeze. Truth in the living voice, is a sunbeam penetrating the cold regions of death, and touching all into life. Hence Christ, who knows human nature and how best to influence it, committed the propagation of His gospel to the living voice. He commanded His disciples to go everywhere and preach the gospel.

II. IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO PROFESSIONAL TALK. Millions are preached to every Sunday who are never effectively influenced by the truth. Why? There is the living voice, but that voice is not the organ of the believing soul.

1. Evident honesty. Few hearers can fail to detect the difference between the utterance of conviction and that of a mere professional talker.

2. Living manhood. The man who speaks those things which have never become convictions with him stands before his audience only as a piece of mechanism. The mechanism may be symmetrical in form, graceful in movement; still it is mechanism, not manhood. But he who speaks his convictions rings out his manhood in his words.

3. Irrepressible influence. The man who preaches without faith does his work more or less as a task. Two things give this irrepressibility.

(1) The relation of the subjects believed to his social affections. The subjects of Christianity are essential to the salvation of the race, and his philanthropy urges him to make them known.

(2) The relation of these subjects to his religious sympathies. They have to do with the glory of God, whom he loves supremely, and hence his piety urges him to proclaim them.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

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KJV: We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;

WEB: But having the same spirit of faith, according to that which is written, "I believed, and therefore I spoke." We also believe, and therefore also we speak;