The Gospel Needs Proclaiming
THE gospel needs to be proclaimed much more than it needs to be explained, while it needs apologies least of all. That Christian, and especially that preacher, makes a great mistake who, for fear of claiming too much for the Bible, and of failing to seem to stand in the van of modern scholarship, allows himself to declare, or even imply, that its direct and positive statements need to be qualified and allegorized. The pictorial portions of the divine revelation are apparent, and where God means to be understood as teaching through allegory, the fact is not often, if ever, hard to discern. Some good people, who themselves have no real doubt of the authority of the Bible, are doing more than they are aware of to undermine its power over others, by treating its authority as probable rather than as positive and indisputable. No preaching ever yet has been mighty in saving men, no personal Christian life ever has been powerfully promotive of holiness, which has had only a timid and apologetic confidence in the declarations of God's word.—Congregationalist.