Plain Talk by a Veteran.
By T. L. Cuyler
AN attendant upon the meetings of the Presbytery of Brooklyn would be struck with the resemblance which one of its members bears to the portraits of John Wesley. The high brow, thin nose, placid expression, and whole contour of the countenance recall at once the founder of Methodism. The venerable Presbyterian with the Methodist physiognomy is good old Dr. James M. Sherwood, once the editor of Hours at Home, and for many years the editor of the Presbyterian Review. An old war-horse does not like to be unsaddled and turned out to grass; neither does a veteran reviewer like to lay down his pen. Dr. Sherwood's brain is as active as it ever was, and increasing years have only increased the intensity of his convictions on all religious questions. He doesn't believe that all the young crop of ministers are in advance of their predecessors in either grace, or grit, or gumption; in short, he feels towards them as the senior Spurgeon (who is now nearly eighty) felt toward his extraordinary son, when he said playfully to a friend, "My boy Charley does not always know as much as he thinks he does." Accordingly Dr. Sherwood has kept his busy pen from rusting by writing a very vigorous volume entitled, "The Lamb in the Midst of the Throne; or, the History of the Cross." The main idea of the work is to present the evangelical view of redemption. It glows with the most fervent love of the incarnate Saviour, and is in fullest accord with the core-truths of the gospel as held by the reformers of Geneva, Scotland, and the Westminster Assembly. My friend Sherwood does not believe that the new things in theology are the true things, or that any "modern improvements" have been made on the fundamental points of the faith once delivered to the saints. To which the present writer doth heartily say, Amen. It is about time that ministers made up their minds that the Bible system of salvation and its code of daily conduct are as perfect as their divine Author could make them; therefore they had better be done with tinkering the system, and preach it with all their might and main. What troubles my friend—and very reasonably, too—is that the great central doctrines of human depravity, full vicarious atonement by Jesus Christ, thorough conversion by the Holy Spirit, probation in this world alone, and a Heaven or hell in the next world, are not proclaimed as faithfully and pungently by the average pulpit of to-day as they were by the pulpit of the days gone by. His righteous soul is stirred and vexed by modern attempts to mangle God's word by irreverent "higher criticisms," especially by everything that tends to belittle either the sinfulness of sin or the sufficiency of the Saviour. On two or three practical questions I am glad that the veteran "relieves his mind" in a very pithy and perspicacious fashion. He has no patience with the sermons and sentimental style of hymns with which our Sunday-schools are flooded. Some of them are imported into the prayer-meetings of too many churches; in comparison with the genuine and Bible-inspired hymns of Toplady, Cowper, Wesley, Watts, and Palmer, they are pious slip-slop. The tunes are a mixture of Scotch reels and plantation melodies; the words are hardly above the doggerel sung by the "Salvation Army;" their language often describes the heavenly inheritance of the saints as a sort of celestial picnic on the banks of a stream that throws up its "silver spray," and is lined with innumerable orchestras. The author tells us that when he listens to the popular piece, "Along the River of Time We Glide," it produces no more spiritual emotions in his mind than to witness the antics of a man swimming! We sympathize fully with the venerable author, who was brought up on the strong meat of the immortal hymns of ages, and cannot be turned off with such baby-treacle as modern Sunday-schools are taught to swallow. He is right. Many of the hymns now temporarily popular, breed a gross, sensual, and self-indulgent conception of eternal things; they are as much below the standard of a revealed gospel as Mrs. Stuart Phelps' "Gates Ajar" is below the apostle John's descriptions of the New Jerusalem. The currency of such pious trash is a symptom of demoralization. As might be expected, Dr. Sherwood waxes indignant over sensational sermons which betray greater familiarity with the daily newspapers than with God's word and the vigorous treatises of the great Master of divinity. Right again. All this style of handling the word deceitfully, or of handling some popular topic in place of the word, is a direct bribe to the love of self-gratification, and degrades both pulpit and pew. The more popular it becomes, the worse for the church of God, and the worse for society, whom the church is set to purify and spiritualize. Every success of "sensationalism" is an obstacle to the entrance of a high order of brain and heart into the ministry. When God's ministers turn "show-men" on the Sabbath, their hearers will play the fool during the week. If the fervent, intelligent, powerful, and prayer-steeped preaching of God's message of life will not attract souls, then our skirts are clear, and we must leave people to settle it with God. We have done our duty, whether "men will bear or forbear." This suggestive book of my veteran friend Sherwood abounds in blunt and manly utterances which will set God's people to thinking. It is the voice of age, and of wisdom taught by the "wisdom from above." Jesus Christ is honored on every page.—T. L. Cuyler.