102 The Fundamentals and fashionable pewholders, are the baits to lure people into the churches, and a church is called prosperous as these wretched devices succeed. The preacher delights to get him- self into the newspaper and he accommodates his preaching to the newspaper level. Such churches will, of course, have worldly-minded officers and a worldly-minded membership, while godly souls either flee from them, or else mourn in secret, if they are not themselves chilled by the lack of Gospel heat. It is directly against all this that the holy apostle utters his clarion cry down through the ages, “Preach the Word.” What is the Word? I t is not man’s philosophy nor man’s rhetoric. I t is the Divine revelation. It is called the Word of God, because it is not of man. As God’s it has both authority and power—authority to demand attention, and power to convert and save the soul. It is not to be pounded in man’s mortar, nor run into man’s mould. I t is not to be twisted and fitted to man’s preconceived ideas. It is not to be filtered through man’s strainer, nor mixed with man’s conceits. I t is God’s and as God’s let no man dare add to it, or take from it, or alter it in any way. The Lord Jesus stands by His cross, where He offered up the sacri- fice for sin, and points backward to the Old Testament, and forward to the New, as alike the Word of God. Of the former He cries, “Search the Scriptures” ; of the latter He tells His apostles that the Paraclete would come and teach them all things, and they should bear witness. This Old and New Testament is one revelation of God—one Bible—one unerring rule of faith. God has not given us a doubtful and deceitful light for our path. He has not given us a bundle of truth and fable tied up together. He has not left us to our weak and discordant reason, and thus made revelation superfluous. He has given His people a “sure word of prophecy” as the only reasonable guide for our weak reason and our sinful natures; and on this sure
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