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“Preach the Word”
Of course there is a connection between science and religion. So there is between bread-baking and religion. The scientific man ought to be religious. So ought the bread-baker. Science can furnish examples of God’s wonders in nature. So can bread-baking. But such connections cannot put the subjects on the same level. Science is merely the study of matter, an examination into natural sequences; but what has that to do with man’s immortal soul, and the Word of God to that soul? Who dares to bring the latter down to the level of the former? What has the analysis of any body and its division into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen to do with my eternal relation to God as a responsible and sinful being? Why mingle things so utterly diverse? And yet this babble about science and religion (where science is always ever put first) is heard ad nauseam from those who are commissioned to preach the Word. Is this Paul’s way? Is this John’s way? Is this Christ’s way? Then why should it be the way of our modern Timothys? Science at its utmost reach can never touch the sphere of the soul’s pressing wants. All its truths together can make no impression on a guilty conscience needing the Divine pardon. Nature is as dumb as any of its own stones in the matter of the soul’s salvation. Then why meddle with it in the pulpit? Why bow to it as a teacher? Why be guilty of the blasphemy of putting it on a level with the Word of God? It is as preachers depart from that Word that their preaching becomes barren and fruitless. The Divine Spirit will only accompany the Divine Word. His mighty power will act only in His own way and by His own means. The Word is supernatural, and woe to the preacher who leaves the supernatural for the natural; who sets aside the sword of the Spirit to use in its stead a blade of his own tempering!
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