PREACHING THE GOSPEL by E. H. Dewart

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 32.

PREACHING THE GOSPEL.

By E. H. Dewart

[By E. H. Dewart, D.D., in Homiletic Review.]

THE history of the preaching of the Gospel is the history of Christianity. When the pulpit has given an uncertain sound or conformed to an earthly philosophy, the church has been smitten with feebleness and failure. But when the teaching of the pulpit has been a message of spiritual power, the hosts of the Lord have gone forward to victory. From the day of Pentecost, when the preaching of Peter brought conviction of sin and the knowledge of salvation to three thousand in one day, down to the present time, the preaching of the Gospel by a living ministry has been the most potent means of winning the moral victories that have extended the kingdom of Christ in the world. The missionaries who have lifted up the standard of the cross amid barbarism and idolatry, the reformers who have rejected the canonized heresies and corruptions of their times, and the leaders in the great revivals of religion that have quickened the languishing life of the church in times of prevailing unbelief and worldliness, all achieved the work which has made their memory an inspiring legacy to succeeding generations, simply by preaching “the truth as it is in ‘Jesus’” “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”