The Essential in Preaching
By Pilgrim
"Judge, why don't you go to church any longer?" frankly asked a prominent minister of an eminent judge who, he had heard, seldom, if ever, attended the church he had long been associated with. "I will tell you," said the judge, who, by the way, was not a professing Christian. "My minister tells us that a man is not naturally sinful; that we are falling up, and not down, and coming out right in the end, and that really there is nothing to be saved from, and no one to save us; that Jesus Christ was simply a good man whom it would be well to imitate. "If this is so, it doesn't seem to me worth while to go to the trouble of going to church or the expense of keeping it up; so I let those who like that sort of a rose-water lecture pay for it." The judge was right, unless the minister was wrong. There is not enough vitality in such religion to keep it sweet. At the basis of all religion lie the needs of man, the deep soul-needs that can be satisfied only by a divine Saviour. Even heathen religions, the worst of them, recognize this need, and are feeling after such a Saviour, if haply they may find Him. The religion of Bethlehem and Calvary has found Him, and with love and pity offers Him to all the world. Whatever we leave out of our creed, if we are Christians, we can not leave out the thought of man's need as a sinner, and Christ's sufficiency as a Saviour.—Pilgrim.