January 1929
23
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
than five years has emptied his church. In that same city the preachers who secure the largest hearing are those who are presenting the Gospel pure and simple. “We believe that the same testimony would be given the world over,” says this writer. “Let us rest assured that the alienation of the masses (where they are alienated) from hearing the Gospel is largely to be accounted for by the fact that it is so frequently not the Gospel that they hear, and all else falls short of what their souls need and in wardly crave.” Mr. Spurgeon gives his own testimony concerning his congregations: “Every Sunday, with few exceptions, for thirty years, that great building was crowded morning and evening; and the Thursday evening congregations, often overflow ing in the top gallery, were more wonderful than all. Somebody asked me how I got my congregation,” he once said. “I never got it at all. I did not think it was my duty to do so. I only had to preach the Gospel. My congregation got my congregation.” S ermons S aturated W ith S cripture There is something for every preacher to meditate upon in the story told about Dr. Van Osdel. It is said that a man once accused him of getting his sermons out of a book. “And what is more, I ’ve got the book at home,” asserted the accuser. The minister’s reply was mild. All he said was: “Will you be so good as to bring that book to church with you next Sunday?” And Dr. Van Osdel admitted the truth of the charge the next Sunday morning, when the parishioner stalked down the aisle to the pulpit with a huge volume which bore in big embossed letters that all the congregation could read, the words: “Holy Bible.” Many an orthodox preacher these days finds himself sidetracked by numerous demands for sermons on special subjects. Scarcely a week goes by that he does not get an appeal like this: “Next Sunday is ‘Healthy Babies Sunday’ ” or. “Homeless Cats and Dogs Day” or some other kind of a special Sunday. He is furnished with material for his sermon and may be saved hours of prayer and meditation in the Word by making use of some of these ready-cut sermons. But he forgets that every day is "the day of salvation and that the enemy of souls is bent upon keeping him from delivering the one message that God has bidden him give, “in season and out of sea son.” O UR attention has boon attracted to an- article in the July Bibliotheca Sacra (Dr. Melvin Grove Kyle, editor), which so clearly sets forth our own convictions regarding the extreme tendencies, acting and counter acting in the religious world today, that we have been tempted to appropriate several paragraphs from it. The writer, Dr. Charles F. Wishart, president of Wooster University, says : “I am more and more convinced that the exponents of such extreme tendencies are exceedingly few. I am speaking, I think, for the vast majority of churchmen when I say that of the two extremes I choose neither. There is a great middle-ground group, in my judgment The Middle-Ground Group B y D r . C harles F. W ishart
overwhelming in numbers, but not yet become articulate. The extremes have been vocal, but for the most part we have not been. “Let it be said, then, once and for all, that we occupy middle ground not from fear or caution or policy or weariness or timidity. Rather is that middle ground taken upon conviction, upon the imperative mandate of a con science as sincere as any man or right or left can boast. We have no part nor lot with rationalism. We hold steadily by the rights of the whole man as over against the presumption of the intellect alone. We are passionately devoted to supernatural religion. We stand absolutely and without equivocation upon our solemn ordination vows. We accept the great doctrines of historic Protestantism. We believe the miracles of the Gospel from the virgin womb to the virgin tomb. But our view of the doctrines of grace is vital, not legal. “The Bible is to us the only infallible rule of faith and conduct; but we think of it, not as the rule of a legal document, still less as a confining cell of stone and masonry. Rather to us it is vibrant with life. It is to us like a tree with many parts, roots and trunk and limbs and branches and leaves varying in position, but one in sym metry, and while parts of it are more vital than others, yet to every small twig and leaf there goes thrilling the marvelous life of God. We rest in the shade of that tree. We love its beauty and its symmetry, for we believe that they are from God. We test its fruitage, and we know the life of God is there. We have seen that its leaf never withers, and that it is to us the supreme apologetic for its unique divinity. “We hold by an atonement that is vicarious, yes, that is substitutionary; but we think of it not so much in the legal terms of the mart and marketplace as in the vital terms of a personal, voluntary substitution grounded in the infinite love of God. We think of the Church as a body,, warm and living and active, thrilling with love, reaching out in service. And our relations to it are vital. We believe that man’s relationship to this great living organism must be judged principally not by the tech nicality of an ancient document, but primarily by the spirit of the living Christ. And we agree that if a preacher has lost his conviction of a supernatural salvation bring ing men back to a personal God and Father through the vicarious love of a risen Saviour, he has no legitimate place among the heralds of our Gospel.” Old Folks Ordered to Work On one occasion the late Rev. C. Silvester Horne preached a sermon at Whitefield’s Tabernacle, London, specially for elderly men and women. Relating the inci dent to a friend, he remarked that he had never before seen so many walking-sticks in a church, nor such a con gregation of men and women who seemed physically feeble. “Now, tell me,” Silvester Horne said to his friend, “what was my text?” “Oh,” came the reply, “was it the greatest of all, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that are weary’?” “No; you are wrong,” said Mr. Horne. “Then it was the second great text in the world, ‘At eventide it shall be light.’ ” “No. It was this,” said the preacher: " ‘And about the eleventh hour He went out [into the mar ket-place], and saith unto them, Go ye also into My vine yard’ ” (Matt. 20:6, 7).
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker