02.02. The Pastor in the Pulpit

II. THE PASTOR IN THE PULPIT;

We are living in an age of good preaching. The pulpit is faithful and courageous in applying the truth to the sins of the day. It has a special care for children and youth. It urges a large benevolence. The preaching of the times stimulates lay activity, calling not only men but Christian women and youth into service. It pleads for the planting and endowing of Christian institutions and has enlarged conceptions of duty and service to the whole world, seeking to win all nations to Christ. Thus many preach, and the power of these truths is manifest. But this preaching of Christ with so much beauty and sweetness, often leaves out of sight and untouched the awful fact of human sin and guilt, and thus fails of the full effect that would be secured, if the two great truths of man’s danger in sin and Christ’s redemption were kept side by side. It makes a onesided gospel. Love is set forth, but not righteousness; salvation, but not punishment; heaven, but not hell. It is easy to break over all barriers of God’s Word at this point, and conclude that Christ, so wondrous in his love, will save all men sometime somewhere. So preachers often lay more stress on widening the gate and broadening the way of salvation, than in fitting men to walk in the path which God has appointed in his word.

Sin is not less in the human heart because less is said in the pulpit. Out in the great world sin is stem and desperate, and relentless unto death. Make salvation easier in book and sermon, still the way of the transgressor Is hard. Till sin lets go its hold on the soul, preaching against sin cannot cease. We must preach the great salvation “warning every man,” l)ecause sin and punishment are so great. The sermon must be judged by the Bible fruit it bears in leading souls out of sin into the new life. It may be good when it ought to be better. The final test of pulpit discourse is the result that follows after the pattern of the gospel. One of the dangers of the ministry is that, preaching well, it shall yet stop short of reaching the most important result. ’They went forth,” says Mark 16:20, “and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following.^^ This is the fruit the pulpit should bear. We need often to review our preaching, searching out its defects. Paul calls us to judge ourselves, that we may not be judged by God. “ Not he who commendeth himself is approved, but he whom the Lord commendeth.” 2 Corinthians 10:18.

Some of the defects in modem preaching, according to Bible tests, are these: —

1. Unbelievers are not converted. There are few adequate “ signs following “ the Word. The gains in many places are not equal to the losses. The mill runs on, but little comes of it. Revivals are seldom, and there is much distaste for them. In those portions of the country where means and opportunities for saving souls are greatest, conversions are fewest. There is a want of direct, aggressive, gospel work. Pastors are compelled to lament, “The harvest is passed, the summer is ended, but the souls under our charge are not saved.” It is a terrible impeachment of our preaching. The exceptions only make the failures the more humiliating. We who sit in the seats of Moses, and yet lead so few people forth, do not feel as we should the great force of this charge against us. We have stopped in the wilderness, while Providence goes on and leaves us. Where is the old passion for souls? How little revival power 1 How few call on the mighty God. We offer excuses, try new schemes of doctrine, and find fault with the Bible, but God lays the charge at our door. To save lost men was Christ’s first work, and it is ours, and nothing can blind God’s eyes to our failure here.

2. Tbe modern pulpit does not reach the masses, the great multitude of the people. With the whole field given us, we lose ground each year. Churches do not increase as fast as the population does relatively, nor as fast as they ought and could. The world waxes powerful and pours past the church doors every Sabbath a vast, restless throng untouched. Our churches mainly give up, and do not try to reach them. The ministers are educated often away from the masses, and keep away. Few could stand up on a street comer and deliver a simple powerful gospel message. They are not masters of assemblies, having little taste or inclination to handle the crowd, and fasten the gospel in their hearts as a nail in a sure place. The disciples “ so spake that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed.” Acts 14:1. Many of our clergymen read a paper to a church circle of cultured people of their own set at the top of society (what right has any minister to have a set?), and leave the great, sturdy, powerful, rising multitudes at the bottom, untouched. They preach to magazines and reviews and controversial books, and only a few even of their hearers know or care anything about the sermon. The pulpit becomes a literary bureau, while the people, the vast, untamed, restless throng, infidel toward God and his Book, trampling on his day and law, impatient of all authority, setting up a beer saloon and divorce court on every corner, are swelling in numbers and rising in power, and threaten soon to come to the top of society and rule. With vigorous body, and all their faculties sharpened by contact with the world, their dislike to church-people intensified, they will come to leadership, — they have now in many places, — and the fine people who have taken the cream of the gospel for themselves, and forgotten the needs of the many, will be crushed and powerless in these vast upheavals. God brings us the masses. Failing to invite them in, the bulk of the people go in the great trains thundering on, and the church rides in a dainty parlor-car behind. Christianity ought to be conductor of the train. The answer to the blind groping of the people in England for Christian leadership is the Salvation Army; and the English Church, from the classic shades of Oxford and Cambridge, is listening to learn what can be done for the people. The solution of this question from Christ is, “ The poor have the Gospel preached unto them.” The example from the apostles is, “They went everywhere preaching the Word.” God’s suggestion for us is Moody. How truly the preaching of our time on this subject has lost its way. God and his Book point one way, and we go another. Under our preaching unbelief thrives, and discontent increases. But God and his Word will both hold us to account in eternity.

3. Our lack of effort for foreigners is another defect. The tide of foreign life is rising around us every day, higher. We go on, unmindful of the amazing changes going on in society, and learn next to nothing from their presence among us — preaching and conducting church affairs as if these people did not exist. Seven million Germans among us; in several States more children of foreigners born than of natives, and in many States the ratio of births in a foreign family far greater than in the native family; immiofration cominor in at the rate of one million a year, like the invasions of earlier centuries when the character of whole continents was changed. Yet what minister has converted a German? Who has really cast his nets in on that side? Our church is great in learning, and translates tons of German skepticism. Who has preached a sermon to the Germans in their tongue? We discourse to one small class on one phase of thought and philosophy, and scarcely make any impression on these raging millions of our population who imagine a vain thing, and in whose hands are the destinies of the Republic and the church of God. We are seeking after “ wisdom,” spinning our theories and speculations, as Nero fiddled when Rome burned. The wisdom of God’s Book is greater than all human learning, and the power of his Spirit above all human power. The foolishness of God is wiser than man. God has put the means for this work in our hands. For this duty God has brought this nation to its present high standpoint in history. How vast its achievement might be across the whole continent, if it would address itself in its Christian might to its work as Paul wrought for the Gentiles! 4. The pulpit of the day does not call young men to the work of the ministry as it ought. We are losing here each year, and the decade past makes sad revelations of decline. We call, they do not come. We preach in their ears, and they go out to business. There is some note wanting in the voice of the ministry where this is true. There is a judgment seat in every young man’s soul. Roll the facts of his duty on him, show him man’s sin and need of the Gospel, and no work will be more attractive to him than work for Christ. What doctrine does the missionary preach, the evangelist, the pastor in revivals? This doctrine of deliverance from sin through Christ, pressed on the conscience. It brings times of refreshing, fills the church with missionary power, and begets ministers and teachers. These truths have dropped out of much of our preaching, and hence its want of effectiveness. The people slide down into all sorts of errors, and young men have no heart for the ministry. Call them to preach because it is an easy service: they can find easier ones in the world. Call them to sufierins: and sacrifice, to toil and heroic service for Christ’s sake, and they will come. Nothing was difficult to Paul when Christ called him. In these things » and others, our preaching has turned aside somewhat into the pleasant groves of the academy, and does not lay hold of the great wicked world, and change its ways as it should. Its movements are often sidewise and hesitating. We suffer from the delays of unbelief, and the grand work of the age which God appoints us to waits and wants the power which fails to come, “the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven.” These are grievous faults, and more so as we study them. The remedy is in a firmer adherence to the Word and Spirit of God, anointing the soul with holy fire. If we make the Bible teach what we think it ought, instead of what it plainly does, in order that it may seem consistent always with human thought, and broad and liberal toward sin from our standpoint, marking out new channels for God’s grace, instead of standing by his own methods, we shall preach the gospel of the natural heart instead of the Gospel of the Son of God, and so loss of power is certain. The highest test of our love to God is our obedience to his Word; and obedience to God’s Word in the pulpit is mighty power over the souls of men. “ Forever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in Heaven.”