All Sorts of Preaching
By John Angell James
It is my sad and serious belief that, if the evangelical pulpit is losing its power, it is just because it is losing sight of its object and aim. The cultivation of the intellect and the advancement of knowledge in the present day, are lifting both preachers and hearers above the plain simple Gospel of Christ. Sermons are with many persons no longer heard as the word of God, but as the word of man; not as the means and aids of salvation, but an intellectual exercise on religious topics, for the gratification of the taste, intellect, and imagination, on Sunday. And it must be confessed that the preachers of them are, by their artificial and excessive elaboration, and the introduction of new topics, teaching their hearers so to regard them, and are training them thus to be a kind of amateur hearers of sermons. [J. Angell James]