The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1884-12-20
BISHOP FOSTER ON PREACHERS.

At the opening of the Methodist Centennial
Conference, at Mount Vernon Place Church, Bal
timore on the 18th inst, Bishop Foster of Boston,
preached a wonderful sermon, speaking for about
two hours and half, the immense audience listen
ing with undated interest throughout its delivery.
After referring to the necessity for intellectual
vigor in the pulpit the Bishop continued:
"But if there is demand for increased intel
lectual vigor, what shall we say of spiritual
power? Is there not alarming reason to fear a
still greater want here? The deep, dead earnest
ness of the fathers was their power. 1t inspired
them, made them go beyond themselves, put
meaning and emphasis in plain, crude words, and
common thoughts, which, without graces of speech
of aid of learning, made them mighty. They
burned, and men felt the heat. They aimed at
results, and reached thein. I'm | mistaken when
say mere is to-day vast amount of aimless,
spiritless preaching? Is it any marvel that men
are not moved when they are piled with pati
tudes-when there is not ripple on the dead
sea of stagnant thought-not breath of desire
even to stir it? Is it wonder that the cry is
raised about empty churches, about the masses
that never enter the sanctuary? There is
reason. Can we affirm with truth that it is be-
cause men feel no interest in religious things? Is
it that we are averse to c0ncourse? Can 1t be
ascribed to disrelish of harangues or public ad-
dresses? Is worship distasteful? Or must we find
the cause in some other reason? Men weary Of
platitudes. They have disgust of crudities
| They tire of spiritless, dry and heartess FORMS
They believe in sincerity and earnestness. They
relish manly words. They like to feel the pull of
| a great soul on their souls-the tug and draw OF
| a sympathetic heart. They require the grip of
mind. They must believe in the absolute honesty
of the preacher. In every service of worship
they demand with the force of an instinct that it
| oil bo vvorshin-it must have soul.
! "Let the pulpit fame with thought, with
| earnest gospel images and other truths which
illustrate and give force to its teachings let the
preacher feel the gravity of his great commission,
and let him PROFOUND and expound the doctrines
of faith as if he believed Them felt them, and the
complaint of deadness and neglect of the house OF
Oh -..~-r--~c~..-.a- - 49,.
that one of the most crying needs of the Church
of God today, if not the very greatest is revival
of the spirit and fervor of religion in the pulpit,
and sorry am to say it, in no pulpit is it more
needed than own. The need is both with
respect to the mind and heart, one as much as
the other. There is lack of manly strength, lack
of devotement and devotion, lack of earnest pety,
lack of prestly propriety, lack-it is to be feared
of any proper purpose, and in some cases OF
desire even. The people are hungry, and for
bread they are fed on husks-worse than that,
often, mere wind and sound. These are unsavory
words, but dare not withhold moderate them.
"Ifth convention might result in setting us
all to think upon this point alone-if, standing
here at the door Of our second century, it might
be so laid upon our hearts that the pulpit OF
Methodism should be reused to its ancient zeal
its ancient hunger for souls, its ancient herosm-
it would send thrill of joy through thousand
discouraged, starving churches, and quickened
| life that would stir the land from rim to rim.
There is no mistake, brothers, it is tho great need
of the hour. There are thousands of honest
great-souled, earnest men of God in the pulpit
p1vf nnltr so 80. h al,
cause from perishing, but they are weighed down
and neutralized by, fear, an equal, if not much
greater, number of intellectually and spiritually
half dead pastors, who study only their and
support. o, for the awakening of the pulpit Of
| Christendom
GAS between the honest earnestness of inlet
tered rustcs-but, alas rustios are not all earnest
our most educated and cultured ministers are
not the deadest; on the cOntrary,I think that
| they are by far the most ave-the dead are the
1 ignorant and unframed more frequently; but as
between the honest, earnest rustics, who, out of
their souls speak they feel and what they feel,
simple truths in homey garb, and the diletante,
who reads or speaks his vapid nothings with a
parade of literary finish and rhetorical and
evolutionary flourish, let us have the rustic. But
why have either in Gods pulpit? Is this place,
| in this age of crudeness, for pantomime, for
tricks and acts to show off insipidties? Is this
time for wind when the battle of ideas and
principles which to determine the destiny OF
the world is raging The man who has the
effrontery to stand in Christian pulpit in the
nineteenth century, ignorant of its thought and
hunger, unconscious of the forces about him,
without sense of the gravity of the situation,
to waste the time and abuse the patience of a
suffering congregation in trashy sentimental
ism or the frippery and sylabub of meaningless
and spiritless quirks and fancies, pompous
and hollow rodomontade deserves to be whipped
from the temple as a harlequin"