More Gospel

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1875

MORE GOSPEL.—The American style of preaching is radically wrong. The oration is the model. This is favorable to rhetoric and oratory, but not to instruction. The Bible is used as a mere suggester of themes, texts are chosen to preach from, not to be expounded and enforced as the word of God. Here it is the preacher who holds the chief place before the people rather than God; his words rather than God's words; his skill, eloquence, reasoning-power, rather than God's authority and grace. The minister represents himself more than his King, preaches himself more than he does the gospel, and results are small, superficial, intransient. The real business of the preacher is to open and enforce the word of the Lord, to interpret his message, to make the people feel that the King is talking with them, that they have to deal with Jehovah, not with mortal man. In order to this, preaching must be expository rather than topical; it must be the aim of the preacher in his preparations and addresses to bring forth what God has put into the text, and, as nearly as possible, bring him face to face with the hearers. That will give a power to the pulpit which it does not now possess, a power greatly needed, from the lack of which the very churches are losing faith in the gospel. They employ men to feed them with the word of life, and they give them human words, gilded chaff; discouraged, dissatisfied, and not comprehending the cause, they fall into skepticism, and lose the fire of love. Preachers must give the people more gospel, or zeal in religion will never be revived.—Baptist Union.