Shelving the Gospel

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 15, 1908

Shelving the Gospel

REV. W. L. WATKINSON, of the Wesleyan Church, gives the following reason for the loss of several thousand members in that denomination during the last year: “It was through preaching politics in the pulpit and absorption in socialistic themes.” Concerning this admission the editor of the Christian Herald says:—

Those preachers in whose congregations the decline was most pronounced were men who, if they did not forget the gospel, at all events put it on the shelf for a time, while they undertook to instruct their people on politics, sociology, and various other extraneous topics, which the hearers felt could be more skilfully and far more appropriately discussed in the pages of some magazine or weekly publication. When a pulpit is secularized, its spiritual influence instantly declines; it loses its power to draw men when it fails to lift up Christ.

This is a correct diagnosis of the trouble, and if such pastors could see the mistake, and turn their feet into the right path, we might reasonably expect to see the evil complained of eradicated. The tendency, however, is in the other direction. The secularization of the pulpit goes on unabatedly; hearts that might have been won by the preacher of the gospel remain unconverted; and, to add to the sorrowful picture, those who do attend are taught to look for faults and contradictions in the only Book that unerringly points out the way of life.