The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1886-11-06
A LAYMAN'S CRITICISM. =

| L.

We sigh for the application of the
principles of religion to the realities we
know; to home, society, therearing of
children, business struggles, the dis
couragements and consultations of a
great moral warfare in which we are
all engaged. We want to be inspired
in lines of conduct, which call into ex-
ercise all the better impulses and heroic
sacrifices of the higher manhood which
Christianity portrays, and toward which
every doctrine and precept of it infal-
libby points. We want to feel that
each subject discussed takes hold of
the human interest in US, and touches
vitality and responsively those common
experiences and practical problems that
every day encompass us about. We go
to church in this frame Of mind, asking
for this kind of bread, and we come
away, alas-too often, bearing with us
a pile of stones. | knew minister to
go away from listening to thoroughly
dgested, powerfully argued, sermon of
this kind-this time himself in the
pew, and write down in his larry, This
day listened to flint sermon on the
tender subject of the fatherhood of
God" Adopting this term, am COM
PEELED to say that the most of the SER
mons we hear, no matter what the
theme on which they may be engaged,
are more or less "fiint sermons" be-
cause of the lack of human interest
which they so uniformly betray.
My ministerial brother, becoming a
little FESTIVE under this sweeping crit
icisn of mine, may call me to time, by
reminding me it is not the human in
terest in the sermon that must be up-
perm0st, but the divine interest; the
interest, rather that calls the human
heart away from its secular engross-
ment to look after its relation with
God. He. may tell me that l am fairly
committed to this in the concession l
have made, that the line of distinction
between things spiritual and things
secular cannot be broken down and
that l have emphatically announced
that the minister forgets his place, by
allowing his ideas and standards to
drop down into the secular scale. All
this 1 grant, but still it is altogether
consistent with this to hold that all
preaching is efficient in proportion as it
exalts the human interest to the chief
place. We need have no controversy
here. We are all agreed that it is the
minister's business to apply spiritual
truths to secular affairs; to inspire and
help men to get these truths incorpo-
rated into their lives. The truths are
of no avail unless they are thus incor-
porated into the life. And all the
learned service in the world directed
simply toward establishing the truth of
these truths, whether of argument, or
rhetoric, or eloquence, or zeal, misses
the mark, because the human applica-
ton of these truths is dropped out of
view. This is exactly what l mean by
claiming that the human interest should
have the absorbing place in every SER
mon that is preached. The evil,
think, lies specially here, that the
preacher in the preparation of the ser
mon, and in all the subsequent use he
makes of it, is more anxious for the
triumphant maintenance of his views,
than he is for the triumphant workings
of the truth in the various and multifa-
rious experiences of human life. When
this is the case, all liberal pretensions
to the contrary, notwithstanding the |
READ at Iowa Convention at Cedar Rapids.