II. But men say, preach the love of Christ as much as you like, but do not touch the hard doctrines. A clergyman was once invited to preach for a church as a candidate, but was warned not to preach the doctines, especially the doctrines called hard. He did preach the doctrine of faith, and left that people to find, if they could, some one who would be willing to stultify himself and his pulpit by tying his sermons to the unceasing cry of nothing but love. Men seem to have suddenly acquired an unusual passion for hearing about the love of Christ; as if the love of Christ could signify anything if there were not threatening in the back-ground to give vividness and meaning to it. The theory of some men seems to be that God is too weak to have any indignation against sin least any indignation worth mentioning. They do not seem to remember or know that the threatenings of God add immensely to the effectiveness of His love. We can not preach the attributes of God effectually unless we mingle the threats with the promises. It is not safe to let men forget that God is angry with the wicked every day. It is not safe to conceal from men the fact that God has declared that He will miserably destroy incorrigible sinners. Hence effectual preaching will, to some extent, draw force for its appeals from the terrors of the law. Knowing the terrors of the law we persuade men. - - at It is true that men do not like to hear the severe doctrines discussed. They would rather hear about love than justice. Churches are formed for the express purpose of preaching the former and excluding the latter. Men who make so much of mercy seem to forget that God can not be merciful till He has been just. If the doctrine of justice is eliminated, or kept hidden from view, what power of appeal is left to the preacher? If you can not tell a man that he is in danger, how will you persuade him to change his course of life? It is very true that some men are moved by the consideration of God's love; but others are moved only when they are afraid. Future punishment must be made to seem to them a reality as fearful as it is. If we are to use all means to save men, this must be included. Men often get the most impressive sense of one's love for them when trembling under a sense of incurred displeasure. Great discretion is necessary in treating the severe doctrines so as to give them their full force; but they must be treated. Every appeal that has force derives it more or less directly from the threats of the Bible. When does God's love for men have more influence, or appear more distinctly, than when presented with the implied fact that this love, if slighted, must, in the nature of the case, ensure endless misery. This is not a wholesome truth, yet it is one of the prominent threads in that net-work of doctrine which underlies every truth of the Bible. If, then, the doctrine of punishment is not evangelically held, all appeals must be lame. This is proved by the spiritual history of those denominations which hold that God is too good to punish any man eternally, no matter how incorrigible a sinner he is. They make God's love a vapid, foolish thing, without any sense whatever of what is just. If a preacher does not believe and preach the doctrine of Eternal Punishment, what shall he urge men to shun? Why urge men to accept salvation since they are sure of it ultimately whether they accept it or not; whether they repent or not! Remove the doctrine in question, and you remove the necessity of preaching. It becomes morally and rhetorically a farce. Then, instead of being saved by the foolishness of preaching, men will be made fools by the foily of preachers. If this doctrine is not true, or, if true, is not to be mentioned in the pulpit, pull down the churches and hush the voice of the preacher. Some may say: Preach the popular virtues, make society better, restrain crime, etc. But what will be gained if the people are virtuous, society is made better, crime is restrained, since the ultimate result, which is most important, will not be materially affected? Preaching which entirely ignores the doctrine of punishment would not hinder crime from overrunning the universe, disaffecting the hosts of heaven, casting God from His throne. We must hold and preach squarely the doctrine of punishment; for we must declare the whole counsel of God, of which this is part, whether men wince under it or not. III. Then God, in all His attributes, should be the burden of our preaching; its center, its circumference, its all. Any preaching which departs from this standard is vicious. Perhaps man-exalting divines are becoming, in some instances, facile princeps among American preachers. A tendency sometimes seems to be creeping into some pulpits to glorify man at God's expense. Such preaching may attract crowds; so does a carcass, swarms of flies. But one is not more deadly poisonous than the other. It is a sad fact that the overflowing houses of some preachers are to be accounted for partly by this glorification of man. Said a lady to us, in speaking of the multitudes who flock to a certain church, of which she is a member: There are always people enough who will go to hear orthodoxy berated. Perhaps a cause for this tendency is, that God is a truism of our belief; and so a constant utterance of it is abandoned, and the theme does not have its due prominence in the discussions of the pulpit, and is not brightened into its due lustre, and swelled into its due proportions. But the tendency of such neglect is none the less harmful. This tendency to drop God out of view-God in His fully rounded character-ought to be resisted. Coleridge says, we can seldom be more usefully employed than in "rescuing admitted truths from the neglect caused by their universal admission. Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors." Perhaps this is one reason why doctrinal preaching has fallen into such comparative desuetude, if not disrepute. The doctrines of the Scriptures may have come to be considered so true, that they are left to lie untouched, as if exploded errors. While it is true beyond a doubt, that improper and unnatural presentations of the doctrines of God and His complete character, repel men and give rise to an erroneous belief, it is equally true that entire omission of these doctrines from sermons, makes Christianity simply contemptible. It is difficult to say which evil is greater. Neither need be the result. God, as He is revealed to us in the Bible, as it is evangelically interpreted, furnishes material, and the only material, upon which preachers can rely, for awakening in their hearers a permanent interest in their ministrations. Fortunately the day is past, when the minister was the arbiter of all affairs, both secular and spiritual, in his parish. Now he has peers in the pews in respect to secular matters. But if he be a man of God, thoroughly furnished for his work, his peers, in spiritual matters, do not sit in the pews before him. Therefore, Dr. Alexander says rightly of the preacher: "While there is any religion in the world, he will hardly fail to interest his flock, who feeds them with knowledge and understanding." He might have said, with truth, interest and instruct. A healthful interest can not be awakened by eliminating God from the place of prominence in the themes of the pulpit. Such elimination is most thoroughly accomplished, when God is represented as a goodish being, who is too weak to have any sense of justice -to easy to be indignant at sin. Dr. Emmons always preached to an audience of eager listeners. Yet his sermons were, in a remarkable degree, clear and icy metaphysical reasonings, far less attractive and interesting than the plain truths of the Scriptures; and they were read off in the most passionless manner. He was accustomed to say, in his curt way: "I have generally found that people will attend, if you give them anything to attend to." Perhaps the manner of the old divines would be ill suited to meet the popular demands now. But people should be made to understand that their attention will be taxed on the Sabbath, and their souls plied with the truths of the Gospel-not that their fancies will be tickled with the threads of fine-spun theories. God, as the absorbing thought of our preaching, should be set forth in language that will find its way to the popular heart, to influence it imperatively in all the practical relations of life. The Psalmist said of the wicked: "God is not in all his thoughts." May not this be true now, partly because God is not sufficiently in our sermons? God will be in the thoughts of our hearers, at least one day in seven, if we preach what we were commissioned to preach. IV. Justice is not the only attribute of God. Mercy has a place by its side. This is possible, only through the death of Christ. If, then, we would hold up to view God's complete character, we must preach Him, as revealed to us in Christ. We must preach Christ. This is our vantage ground when we would vividly portray God's love. For the Atonement was that crowning act of mercy which rendered forgiveness possible on grounds consistent with justice. The Atonement emphasizes God's mercy and justice; both alike— neither at the expense of the other. The definition of mercy proves this. It is remission of penalty, for sufficient reason, which was justly deserved. The death of Christ furnishes this ground, and thus gives equal honor to both these apparently contradictory attributes. The more exalted our conception of Christ's character, the higher will be our conception of the fact and spirit of the Atonement. The "Liberal Christian," under the editorial care of Dr. Bellows, takes a stand, in the following declaration of belief, which at once robs those of this faith of all power in preaching Christ. "The deity of Christ is incredi ble. The New Testament does not assert it, if it did it would disprove its own credibility." This is putting galling fetters upon the pulpit. It genders bondage. Much has been said of the bondage of the pulpit. This statement hints at the only servited really to be feared; such bondage to human reason, that even the declarations of the Gospel would not be believed, should this reason pronounce them incredible. The piety developed under the shadows of such belief, committed to accept the guidance of reason against the guidance of truth and the Spirit, is sickly and dwarfed, like a plant hid from the sun. It is a fact that cheap views of Christ lead to equally cheap views of the Atonement, and the reverse. Cheap views of Christ and the Atonement, tend to beget cheap piety and |