The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1882-12-19

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1882.
SENSATIONAL PREACHING.

it, these days, but who has definitely
settled just what is and what is not
sensational pulpit utterances
They who write or speak about this
style of preaching, generally
do so in derogatory, and even
severely coudemnatory terms. They
pronounce it as almost an impious in
fringement upon the accepted sacred
ness of the desk. and ,,old Up hands in
holy horror at the decoration Of the
altar. That there is such a thing as
sensational preaching, We suppose is o
conceded fact. but just where the line
of demarkation between this and the
good old fashioned, sleepy and sleep
producing style Of preaching. We
hardly can locate.
Let US say that the great riddle Of
to-day for clergymen to solve is this
Why the pews are filled with women
to the exclusion of men? The answer
is not that men are more careless of
the welfare of their souls than the
gentler sex. True, woman is naturally
devout, but so are men.
There is no subject 60 interesting to
any man, no matter how wicked he
NAV be, as his chance of salvation, the
Being he calls God. and the personal
relation he holds to Him. He will go
to hear the preacher who can tell him
the bare truth about himself and his
daily life, and be will respect him, tor.
He does not 60 to hear the ordinary
preacher, because his sermons are dry,
stale and fat. They do not touch him.
self, his temptations or cravings, or
the phases of life known to him in
Office, store or shop. They are not
practical sermons /; there IS no sympa-
thy in them with life as it Is; they
are merely abe:ruse definitions of more
abstruse theological terms and systems.
1t is said by those who have visited
England in the past few years. and
have attended church there, that it is
the almost invariable rule for the SER
mon to treat of the subject which, for
the time. occupies public attention.
1t is different in America. Here, our
ministers. as a class, live too far re-
moved fror" humanity. They deem
tnt ir mission to be the expcunding
of the hard-to-be-understood passages
of scripture, or to maintain, with fiery
zeal and, too often, with the bitterness of
sectarian bigotry, the peculiar tenets
of their church. Theoretic discourses
they are, but with as little to do with
the actual life of the street and house,
as the colored lines in map have to
do with the real water in q river or
the dust in the road.
But does this sort Of preaching pay?
And by that We do not mean the sala-
~ of the preacher, but the benefits
which ought to accrue to the hearers. |
We say no; it does not. There is no
help in or from such sermons, so far
as practical christian teaching is con-
eerned. And why are such discourses
. frequent? Simply because the
minister is afraid to grapple, bare
handed. with individual dishonesty,
he drunkenness, the false rules of life.
# his neirhbor and supporter. He is
luntiag constantly for devil 10 fight
vho is not at all a daily familiar of his
riend in his pew. The Unitarian
weighs against the i'll done by the
doctrine OF the Trinity the Romanist
'oks upon heresy as the incurable
vii, and the Protestant regards the /.
'hurch of Rome as Antichrist while {
,e devil makes war on all and drags t
Is victims down TO destruction. Il
The truth Of the matter Is, there Is i
OF enough Of sensational preaching, I
hen We mean BY this term the kind '
,hich boldly, yet kindly, attacks the
assions, the tellies and the fashionable +