Preaching After Their Own Lusts
"THEY . . . will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts." If a preacher wants popularity, let him preach what his hearers already believe; at all events, let him not declare against that which they do believe. Men and women who will not go to any Christian church will clamber up into some ill-seated hall to sit by the hour hearing a weak-minded brother or a strong-minded sister rant against Christianity, or rhapsodize in praise of natural religion and spiritual affinities. And every preacher in one of these outlandish gatherings feels sure of his audience. He knows, to begin with, that all who come to hear him believe what he believes—or what he is going to say he believes. He is a preacher—"after their own lusts." This is the trouble with the theater as "a school of morals"—as some would call it. The people who attend a theater are not disposed to patronize plays which are not in the main "after their own lusts." The truths which they most need to hear cannot be proclaimed there without a danger of thinning out the audience.—Sel.