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THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NE S S What is the Sermon Good For? The sermon should be made for a purpose and not for its own sake. It should not be primarily a work of art. It could be icily regular and splendidly null and still be all that. The question is, Does it do the business? Does it make Felix tremble? Does it make men and women sit up and take notice? If it doesn’t do this, it is fit only to be cast out and trodden under foot or to be broken to pieces and made over.— Biederwolf. A Sermon to Preachers. I am greatly disappointed with some preachers of today, With their logic and their ethics— their aristocratic way; With their science and their theories, and their new theology Full of everything but Jesus and His love for you and me. There is plenty in the Bible for the preachers of today If they will but search its pages, and for help divine would pray; For God’s Word is everlasting, and it never will grow old— ’Tis indeed a priceless treasure— far more precious e’en than gold. What we want is consecration in a good true man of God, With a Bible education, and a love for God’s dear Word; Who can lead us and direct us to the Truth, the Life, the Way, Which brings peace to soul and body through the burdens of the day. If the preachers in our churches would preach Jesus crucified-— How through love for us He suffered, and through love for us He died, Then our pews would not be empty, as so many are today, But be filled to overflowing, in a Pente costal way. What we need is just plain Gospel, in the good old-fashioned way,
Place of Emerson or Shakespeare, or some topic of the day. What care we for all their sayings, or their teachings true and tried? We want just the dear old story of the Savior crucified. That alone can make men better, that alone can make men free— Just the precious dear old story of God’s love for you and me; That is what the people’s wanting, there is where the crowd will be; Where they hear the same old story which they heard at mother’s knee. Luetta Cummins, in the Christian Herald WHAT THE CHURCH IS FOR Said a friend to us: “ Music in our churches should not try to compete with grand opera, for the opera stars can lay the church artists in the shade. The sermon should not try to compete with newspapers and popular iectures in dealing with the topics of the day. The press and the platform have the pulpit beat before it begins on these matters. From ordinary common sense and good strategy, the music and the sermon should deal in values in which the others cannot compete with or supplant it. Of course this worldly wisdom does not really bring offending churches to their senses, how ever. Only the Spirit of. God can do that. If the music shall interpret the hunger of human souls for God, and if the sermon shall shed a radiance from the Sun of Righteousness on the fitful and sin-beclouded souls of men, they shall have no competitors. Moreover, they shall give what millions of Ameri can men and women most want to hear in the churches. They shall fill more empty pews than all the newspaper tooting and queer sermonic antics under heaven can fill.” We think our friend spoke the words of truth and soberness. Western Recorder.
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