The false prophet exposes that he
may exploit his age; the true prophet portrays that he may purge it.
Like Jeremiah we may well dread to undertake the task, yet its day and
hour are upon us!
I have already spoken to this point at length, in a little book
recently published. I merely add here that in a day of obvious
political disillusionment and industrial revolt, of intellectual
rebellion against an outworn order of ideas and of moral restlessness
and doubt, an indispensable duty for the preacher is this
comprehensive study and understanding of his own epoch. Else, without
realizing it,--and how true this often is,--he proclaims a universal
truth in the unintelligible language of a forgotten order, and applies
a timeless experience to the faded conditions of yesterday.
Indeed, I am convinced that a chief reason why preaching is
temporarily obscured in power, is because most of our expertness in it
is in terms of local problems, of partial significances, rather
than in the wider tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the
ultimate laws of conduct which should govern them. We ought to be
troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical situation, with its
taint of an almost frantic immediacy. Not only are we not sufficiently
dealing with the Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and
effect of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our
generation.
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