Solving Preaching

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 21, 1871

Solving Preaching.

The great thing now is to make men know what wickedness is. The tables of the law want brightening up. The old lettering has been so often and so badly washed over with modern gilt, that men can hardly make out the true reading. The age is intelligent enough; but its moral conceptions are woefully confused. Men lie, steal, commit adultery, commit murder, without knowing it. Conscience scarcely stirs under a load of guilt which, if it were rightly felt, would wring from it a sweat of blood. But fashion has made it common, and sophistry has filed off its sharp edges, until it sits comfortably upon the poor soul which is sinking into a gulf of perdition. There is no remedy for this but plain speaking. The finger of the preacher must be put upon the very sin. This which you call the course of law, or the custom of trade is stealing. This skillful evasion of the truth is lying. This defeating of the law of nature is murder. The invasion of your neighbor's domestic rights, though sanctioned by human law, is adultery. The use of the Lord's day for your own pleasure is Sabbath-breaking. And not only should these things be plainly said, but they should be strongly proved. The commandment and its breach should be laid side by side, and the utter repugnancy of the principles upon which they severally move, be demonstrated so that none can sin in ignorance. Then when the conscience is torn and smitten with a sense of guilt, and the soul lies humbled in the dust before its God, the gospel will find place for its gentle ministries, and Christ be looked to, not as a “minister of sin,” but as a Saviour from sin.—Exchange.