Yes, and we've underestimated the problem. The problem isn't just that man isn't sufficiently interested. So it's not just the production of sufficient excitements. It is really is a proclamation of something that is beyond our wildest hopes. Yes, and which proves its reality by the fact that it lasts.
Excitement is a very short-lived thing.
Our Lord talks about stony ground hearers, who receive the Word with joy, but it simply doesn't last. When the altar calls came in, simultaneously came in that method of announcing that we had 500 conversions last night. And that is so remote from biblical Christianity. That brought great disrepute upon the church, because everybody knew that many of these supposed converts didn't stand. In other days, we saw Puritanism shaping the culture at a much higher level, with Jonathan Edwards as an evangelist but also as the president of Princeton.