The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-05
OUR RELIGIOUS COLUMN.


The following is an extract from the sermon
preached before the Convention of the Episco-
pal Diocese of Pennsylvania in this city, May
IL, by Rev. Phillips Brooks
"And what shall we say of Preaching? Only
that If men can preach, and preach the very
truth OF Christ, year after year. and yet souls,
thirsty for the water of life sit at the dry mouths
of their wel-built channels and thirst in vain for
help and salvation, then it must be that the mere
telling of the Truth as the mind can understand
1t and the lips can speak it, is necessarily tne
communication of the Gospel Life, III we clailil I
the Gospel as the invariable minlstratlon OF
Christ to the willing soul, then by the GOspel
we must mean, as indeed we ought 10 mean,
something more than mere facts stated most
clearly from the most reverend ana orthodoX
pulpit in the land; something more than mere
preaching preaching Yitalized by some deeper
personal power which alone gives ii its effect.
We talk of sensational preaching. We are rather
fond of talking of it and decrying it in our
Church When we rightly decTy it we decry
preaching that is only sensational. All preach
ing at first and simply as preaching, is
sensational. 1t can create only sensa-
ton, which is valueless unless it become after
wards the medium of perceptions and faiths,
which alone are the real life.
''And so we put all machinery aside from
highest to lowest, and still look for the true
communication of life. And is the thing which
we know exists, and always intallibly recognize,
hard to find, hard to define. Why should it not
be? IL behind muscles and blood and brain, you
know that there is a vital force, which utters
itself through them, but which is another thing
than they which would live even if they were
dead then it is not strange to say that be-
hind all morality, and order, and rites, and
work, and preaching, there is vital power of
the Church, which utters itself through them,
but which is another thing than they, with
out which they were dead, but which might
live though every one of them should die That
life-power is Christ always entering into the
Church. as TRUTH and guidance, and love; and
always passing out from the Church into hui
manity by the otherwise dead functions vital
lied by Him, of teaching, and government, and
active work.
1t seems perhaps vague and unsatisfactory,
but it is not strange, as we just now suggested
in relation to the physical economy, that life
should be able to manifest itself only through
n certain machinery, and yet be some
thing entirely distinct and different from ali
machinery. And so it is in the Church. The priet
moves silently without the bells but the priest
is before and above the bells. and they do not
move at all without him. And just this analogy
/ would trace in all our instances. Integrity
must be filed with its true motive, the love of
God and Christ, or it is not vital. The Church
system must be afame with holy zeal and pur-
pose, or it too is dead. The rites and ceremo-
nies must be clearly significant of truth, and
not, like the malignant ritualism of our day, sig
niicant of error, nor, like the tawdry ritualism
of our day, significant of nothing, ghost of
dead incantations. And our preaching must be
full of the spirit as well true to the letter of
the Gospel, or no life passes out of the living
Church to make dead world live. Christ, by
whom the Church lives in herself, must be the
vitality of every energy which she uses to com
municate her life to His mankind"