Criticising the Preacher.
By The Lutheran
A PLAIN, earnest preacher entered the pulpit of a fashionable church, in which the hearers were supposed to exhort the minister to help them heavenward delicately. The preacher went right on, as was his duty, telling the people, not exactly rhetorically, but strictly according to the Holy Bible, that they were sinners against God, and in danger of hell. In the audience were a man and his wife—he irreligious, she a professor of religion. No sooner had they reached the pavement, at the close of the service, than she began a heartless criticism of the preacher and his sermon—how he was rough, unrefined, and lacked all the requisites which make the orator—the train of remark was kept up until it became noticeable that her husband made no reply. She turned and looked into his face. He was weeping—a convicted sinner. Let parents beware what they say about the sermon or the preacher before their children, in whose hearts the word of God may be seeking a lodgment. Why pray in the morning for the conversion of sinners, and then, by cold criticism of the sermon, neutralize the very means by which it pleases God to save? Thoughtless comments at the dinner-table will do this far more effectually than all the profanity the children hear as they pass the drinking-saloons on their way to school. Parents, beware!—The Lutheran.