The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-03-12

ever in haste. As Charles Sumner used to say, Nothing is settled till it is settled right" But as the power of the pulpit depends upon the sufliciency as well as upon the certainty of truth there is coming to be popular de- mand for an increase in the volume or acknowledged truth Measured by the formalities of the creeds there has been | large shrinkage. Has there been Tn reality a shrinkage Has there not been an extension of natural and re- Vealed truth, if we keep to the old dls- | functions in all directions. Is not the thought of God larger, closer, more pervasive than ever before? Does not Jesus Christ hold a more fundamental and central position than he held at the time when Christianity began to be re-eXamined? Is the Bible less true in it's new freedom than when it was in bondage to inerrancy and infalliblllty? Are the problems of human destiny less serious or awful because studied III the terms of a larger Christianity? Surely if we are straitened it is not in the truth, it is in ourselves.
 do not underestimate the work of
 generation just emerging from peri |
 must be patient. No progress is made
 in running in advance of facts. But
 there comes a time, we are always to
 remember, when the pulpit antici-
 pates the schools Great truths an-
 nounce their presence before they are. | formulated. They are tried, proven,
 experienced, before they are ready for
 the confessions. The proclamation of
 the incoming truth always precedes by
 necessity and therefore by right the
 formulation of it. This has been the
 history of the great doctrines. The de- ity of our Lord, and in due time His
 humanity justification by faith, the sovereignty of God, the universality of
 the Atonement, were all apprehended
 and declared by the clearer and braver
 souls before they became the doctrines
 of the church. It is at the dawn, be-
 fore truth has faded into the light of
 common day, that the preacher has
 the rare, inspiring, authoritative op-
 portunity. Let no man be deceived by
 the shallow dictum, the true is not
 new, the new is not, true. Truth is al-
 ways coming into the world under con-
 ditions which make it for the first time
 clear and imperative. Then 1t Is as
 new as if 1t had not always existed.
 It was justification by faith on the
 background of penance, indulgences
 and superstition, which gave us the
 Reformation. It was the sovereignty
 of God over against spiritual tyranny
 In high places which gave us Puritan
 ism. It was a universal atonement
 made necessary through the conscious
 ness of the church of an opening world
 which gave us modern missions It is
 no less evidently true that the imma
 hence of God could not have come into
 the real apprehension of the world un-
 til modern science had prepared the
 way for it. nor that the conception of
 the Kingdom of God on earth could really become hope and an expecta-
 tion until men had begun to see, as in
 our time, the capacity of human socie- ty, and had begun to feel as we are
 feeling those strange and well nigh un- iversal yearnings for the brotherhood of man. The process is always going on. It is the divine method to bring
 out truths, to force them to the front. to make them new Blessed are the
 ages in which the work is most evil dent. Blessed are the men who at such time have vision.
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
 When a new planet swims into his ken; |, Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
 He stared at the Pacifc-and all his
 men
 ! Looked at each other with wild sur- misc
 . Silent. upon peak in Darien." But you may say to me, every , preacher as he begins his work, has
 something more than the uncertain f ties of his time to contend with. He
 has the uncertainties of his own mind
 How then can he have authority? Dr
 Dale quotes the saying of young !, friend, "A minister when he is just be- :. ginning to preach. must sometimes 7 write a sermon to clear his own mind on a subject" To which he adds the shrewd remark "a sermon which is !. written to clear the mind of the \ preacher will be very likely to perples and confuse the minds of the hearers ' It would strike you as very odd, he goes on to say. if politician told yor that he had made a speech in congress ' in order to clear his own mind on the
 true economical doctrine about mon. U ey." No, that particular exhibit would
 not strike us as very odd, but barring the illustration we will take the princi. 7 pie.
 c I may be pardoned if refer to an ex-
 perience of this sort in my own early a ministry. I had prepared a sermon a which had been, I doubt not, profitable n to me, but which was so utterly inef. $ fective as a sermon, that I took tho o liberty of asking a very discerning e friend what was the difficulty with it e His reply was the best criticism I ever , received. You seemed to me-" ht f said, "to be more concerned about the il truth than about men" Yes. that was
 the difficulty. l saw it in 0 moment.
 had no right as a preacher to be con
 cerned about the truth. I should have . had the truth in command, so that :. could have given my whole concern tc V men. As it was the sermon lacked au |, | thority.
 |, It is not so practical a question as wt V may at first suppose, How far can thu Q preacher be searcher after truth ant n yet be the preacher? A searcher aftel S truth he must be to be the preacher q The preacher ought to have the two