It's Friday today on Things Unseen and all week we've been reflecting on the subject of preaching.

Not in any systematic way, in a kind of random way, but also because preaching is important if our souls are going to be

fed and nourished.

And so we've thought about preaching for the last few days, and chiefly to encourage us all

to pray for those who preach and to pray for ourselves as we receive preaching. Yesterday we were reflecting on the way God gifts our preachers

differently from each other. That reminds me of some words written by an English merchant

who on a visit to Scotland heard three of Scotland's greatest preachers, David Dixon, Robert Blair,

and Samuel Rutherford.

He wrote that he had sat under the ministry of a well-favored proper old man with a long beard who showed me all my heart, and that was David Dixon.

Then he said he had a sweet, majestic-looking man who showed me the majesty of God,

that was Robert Blair.

And then he heard a little fair man who showed me the loveliness of Christ, and that was Samuel

Rutherford.

Three great preachers, but very different men with different burdens from the Lord.

And that's it, isn't it?

The same spirit, but a diversity of operations.

And like that merchant, we should rejoice in it.

But with the diversity there's a common thread, isn't there? And it ought to be more than

the fact that a preacher's sermon meets the standards of his preaching professor's preaching

grid. I remember Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones saying that he felt he could forgive almost any failure

in a preacher, as long as the preaching brought him into the presence of God.

Now what does that? I think the answer is, at least in part, what our forefathers used to call,

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