Part 695

_Direct._ X. Lastly, Be oft in the use of quickening means: live, if you can attain it, under a quickening, zealous minister. There is life in the word of God, which, when it is opened and applied livelily, will put life into the hearers. Read the holy Scriptures, and such lively writings as help you to understand and practise them. As going to the fire is our way when we are cold, to cure our benumbedness, so reading over some part of a warm and quickening book, will do much to warm and quicken a benumbed soul: and it is not the smallest help to rouse us up to prayer or meditation, and put life into us before we address ourselves more nearly unto God. I have found it myself a great help in my studies, and to my preaching: when studying my own heart would not serve the turn, to awake me to serious fervency, but all hath been cold and dull that I have done, because all was cold and dull within, I have taken up a book that was much more warm and serious than I, and the reading of it hath recovered my heat, and my warmed heart hath been fitter for my work. Christians, take heed of a cold, and dull, and heartless kind of religion; and think no pains too much to cure it: death is cold, and life is warm; and labour itself doth best excite it.