22
January 1929
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
How’s This for a
”Prayer” ( ?) Meeting? An unusual snapshot, made at Delhi, India, showing the faithful of the flock o f Mo hammed responding to the call of muezzin, in front of the f a m o u s Jama Masjid Mosque. It will be noted that the zvomen and children wor shipers are separated f r o m their menfolk, by a cloth fence that stretches across the square in the rear. Allah insists on a separation of the a|jG§|j
What Have Tou Done To Lighten Their Darkness ?
behind you on the bus, and as I recognized you from your photograph, and heard you described as one of our great preachers, I was bold enough to take my scissors from my pocket and snip a lock of your hair. I meant to add it to my few mementoes of the great, but after hearing you preach tonight, I beg, sir, to return to you your property.” What was wrong? He had failed to put into his message the only note that reaches down to the deep, spiritual need of the human heart. Dr. Jowett once said: “You never find John Wesley on some remote circum ference of human need. He did not dwell in the outer suburbs of men’s lives, where real necessity shades off into something which a man does not really want. He dealt with needs which were urgent, present, funda mental.” He then asked the question: “What was John Wesley preaching about ?” and gives his texts as follows: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” ; “If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink” ; “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” ; “And because they had noth ing wherewith to pay, He frankly forgave them both” ; “The Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” “Are those great needs outworn?” asks Dr. Jowett. “Is the message now obsolete? Are we to leave it for something better? Have we found another secret? I am speaking my own conviction, at any rate, when I say that, as compared with the rich, nutritious truth of these themes, a lot of modern substitutes are like so much miserable skilly.” T he F undamental M essage There are sermons beautiful in rhetoric, perfect as disquisitions on secular themes, “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.” No Christ! No Cross! No Scripture! And no authority for anything, except the ipse dixit of a man whose breath is in his nostrils. Is it any wonder that when the church bell rings, men with hungry hearts say: “You can’t fool me. I can get just as much bv reapin'? the magazine at home” ?
An article in The Expositor said: “After all, congre gations are most interested in the fundamental, permanent truths of religion. People have no real use for the church except as it points the way to the kingdom of God or helps the soul forward in that way. The cross ‘draws’ better than anything else. Our Master was right when He said, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.' Christ lifted up is the great magnet, and preachers are magnetic only as they preach Christ and Him crucified.” Dr. James Burrell’s word to preachers is: “In all the world there is nothing greater than to be a preacher of the unsearchable riches of Christ. To preach science is to preach something which the hearer can get better and cheaper in any nearby lecture hall. To preach politics is to preach something which the hearer can find every morning in his newspaper. To offer music or moving pictures is to enter into hopeless competition with places of amusement. But to preach the Gospel! Ah, here is our coign of vantage! Why should we turn to adventitious attractions when we have such a monopoly ? Our ministry is the greatest of syndicates. It drives all competitors to the wall. It furnishes a life-giving Gospel on such divinely generous terms that nobody can compete with it.” T h e M atter of C ongregations It may not be an invariable rule that the preacher who declares the whole counsel of God in the power of the Spirit will have a crowded house, for there are local conditions which sometimes have their effect upon congre gations. However, Dr. Burrell has said; “There are multitudes of churches where the old-time religion is faithfully preached; and rarely, if ever, will you hear their pastors asking with a lamentable voice, ‘Why do not the people come to Church ?’ I have yet to learn of any lack of worshipers in churches where the people can listen to the ‘old time religion.’ ” A writer in The Expositor cites the case of a minister with a large congregation who began to preach extreme liberalism under the guise of religious terms, and in less
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