FEEDING GIRAFFES | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1881

FEEDING GIRAFFES.

"Feed my lambs," and "Feed my sheep," were the Saviour's commands; but according to Mr. Spurgeon's observation, as well as our own, many preachers seem to be aiming to feed the giraffes. The rack is put so high above the heads of many flocks that they cannot reach it, and the starving sheep are heard bleating for fodder.

A great mistake is made by not a few preachers as to the character and style of discourse adapted to the wants of the people. Learned and profound sermons have their time and place, but for ordinary occasions and to meet the every-day wants of the great majority of all our congregations, simple, direct and practical preaching is the manifest need of our times. The sober judge, who arrested the grandiloquent flight of the lawyer by reminding him that his sky-scraping periods reached beyond the jurisdiction of the court, suggests an admonition in the same direction to some ministers. The function of the pulpit is not to display oratory or learning, but to teach religious truth and impress it on the heart. To accomplish this, plainness of speech and earnestness of manner will be found much better adapted than flights of fancy and frigid dogmatism.

The fact is, the style of not a little preaching is incomprehensible, and its matter is entirely foreign to its purpose. Its aim is not manifest, and it has so little application to the practical relations of life and to the conscious wants of the soul that it utterly fails of its object.

The pulpit, to be efficient, must adapt itself to the necessities of the people. The truths of the gospel must be brought down to the understanding, and be pressed home upon the hearts of those who come to hear them. Never more than now has there been greater need of this style of preaching, and in the measure that ministers meet this condition will the people be reached and the pulpit prove itself a power.—Baptist Weekly