Oratory Versus Spiritual Insight in the Pulpit
The Alliance of Sept. 13, 1879, speaking of the power of oratory and its unworthy use, says:— “When the orator is a preacher, his power is nearly doubled. Men go to hear him, not perhaps to be persuaded of the realities of religion, but to be charmed, to be magnetized, to be pleased. Indeed, as has been remarked by another, oratory, and not spiritual insight, is the demand of the church in America just now. This demand has drawn some men into the American pulpit, who have no more right there than the younger sons of English noblemen whose chief delight is a fox-hunt, or a good dinner, have in the pulpits of the Established Church of England. There are men in pulpits that we could name who are disgracing the cloth they wear, but whose wonderful power of tickling the fancies of men make them an amusement not to be foregone. Such men are degrading the profession even more than the ‘Reverend’ business men of good or evil report.” Let us see: did not Paul have something to say quite similar to this, when predicting a peculiar state of things in the religious world in the last days? How does this language fit? “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” We believe that time has now come; and the words of the Alliance bear good testimony to that fact.