It is
this emasculated preaching, mulcted of its spiritual forces, which
awakes the bitterest distrust and deepest indignation that human
beings know. They are fighting the foes of the flesh and the enemies
of the spirit, enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
standing by the open graves of their friends and kindred, saying
there, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." And then,
with all this mystery and oppression of life upon them they enter the
doors of the house of God and listen to a polite essay, are told of
the consolations of art, reminded of the stupidity of evil, assured of
the unreality of sin, offered the subtle satisfactions of a cultivated
intelligence. In just so far as they are genuine men and women, they
resent such preaching as an insult, a mockery and an offense. No, no;
something more is needed than the humanist can offer for those who are
hard-pressed participants in the stricken fields of life.
Religious preaching, then, begins with these two things: man's
solitary place in nature, man's inability to hold that place alone.
Hence two more things are necessary as essentials of great preaching
in a pagan day. The clear proclamation of the superhuman God, the
transcendent spirit who is able to control and reinforce the spirit of
man, and the setting forth of some way or some mediator, through whom
man may meet and touch that Spirit so far removed yet so infinitely
near and dear to him.
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