The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-11-13
What Is the Matter with the Church."


Rev B. E. Parker has been asking of the men
and women of this community. We beg leave to
add word to the friendly and suggestive an
swers which have been given already by some
three hundred or Of interested persons.
There is only one thing that can make a
church go, and that is a gospel.
Early Christians freely left home and kin
they expatriated and alienated themselves from
all the deaBest associations; they went into
strange and barbaric lands suffering every prl-
walton; they were taken into slavery; they freely
consented to remain in slavery where duty de-
manded they fed to big pixies that hung IN
Roman aquaria and private garden pools; they
were strung UP on crucifixes along the Appian
Way: they were made into torches to illuminate
Nero's garden parties; they were boiled IN
pitch, flung to the lions, flayed alive, halved and
quartered, and treated to every piece of refined
cruelty that COULD be suggested by pagan cum
ming and lust.
But in spite of all, their numbers grew.
Their faith spread. They began with a handful;
they ended with capturing the Roman Empire.
Rich and poor begged the privilege of dying in
the name of the Christ.
And why?
Because the early Christians had a gospel to
proclaim.
And gospel as the very word itself literally
implies means good news" The reason people
were willing to leave home and kin, suffer tor
lures and embrace death was that they received
good news.
People still do that During last springs
floods, thousands walked with blistered feet,
rode atop freight cars, waded icy streams, and
placed themselves in thousand dangers merely
III.
friends were safe
If war were to break out the gentlest women
in the community would mob newspaper and tel
egraph offices to secure a word from sons and
husbands at the front
If news, really good news, were proclaimed
from the pulpits the same mob would overflow
all the benches and into the streets People will
give all they possess to have the they
most want.
Christ brought Galilean peasants news they
had waited centuries to hear. He brought them
news from the very heavens. '"To whom shall
we go? Thou hast the news of eternal life!'
If there is preacher in Richmond who sends
a timorous, hating message across dreary
wastes of empty pews, who is impressed
by the multitudes absent than by the handful
present, suggest that he ask himself what
news he is preaching.
Preachers who don't get grip on peoples
hearts usually have two causes for their failure
One may be that they are not giving their
listeners real NEWS. What they say may be
GOOD but is not new. Things that happened
long while ago are often interesting but they
don't grip very hard. We know all about them
already.
Thomas Carlyle said: What happened in
Palestine two thousand years ago is of great i'm
portance, doubt, but the thing of greatest i'm
portance is what happens in England today" or
words to that effect
Or, if our preacher delivers News he probably
doesn't give GOOD news. Many ministers seem
to have prediction for picking out of present
day conditions the most repulsive most discour-
aging, and most gloomy features. They give the
news. but not the kind of news people will wade
through blood to hear. If they talk of politicians
it is only to condemn; if they speak Of business
it is to deprecate if Of literature it is to crit-
cise if of society it is to castgate if of amuse-
ments it is to anathematize, and if of the world
in general, it is to damn
God is moving about in the world TODAY. He
is hard at work in midst He is doing great
new things He has never done before. If the
church. with its old time utter abandon will but
place itself as trumpet to His lips He will blow
through it blast that will bring the masses
once more to the deserted affairs
William Watsons Change of Mind
Nobody has ever given much weight to DEATH
bed conversions or repentance. When man is