|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 47
Is it not clear, then, that preaching must deal again, never more
indeed than now, with the religion which offers a redemption from sin?
This is still foolishness to the Greeks, but to those who believe it
is still the power of God unto salvation. Culture is not religion.
When the preacher substitutes the one for the other, he gives stones
for bread, and the hungry sheep go elsewhere or are not fed. It is
this emasculated preaching, mulcted of its spiritual forces, which
awakes the bitterest distrust and deepest indignation that human
beings know. They are fighting the foes of the flesh and the enemies
of the spirit, enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
standing by the open graves of their friends and kindred, saying
there, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." And then,
with all this mystery and oppression of life upon them they enter the
doors of the house of God and listen to a polite essay, are told of
the consolations of art, reminded of the stupidity of evil, assured of
the unreality of sin, offered the subtle satisfactions of a cultivated
intelligence. In just so far as they are genuine men and women, they
resent such preaching as an insult, a mockery and an offense. No, no;
something more is needed than the humanist can offer for those who are
hard-pressed participants in the stricken fields of life.
Religious preaching, then, begins with these two things: man's
solitary place in nature, man's inability to hold that place alone.
Hence two more things are necessary as essentials of great preaching
in a pagan day. The clear proclamation of the superhuman God, the
transcendent spirit who is able to control and reinforce the spirit of
man, and the setting forth of some way or some mediator, through whom
man may meet and touch that Spirit so far removed yet so infinitely
near and dear to him. It is with these matters that we shall be
occupied in the next chapter.
CHAPTER SIX
THE ALMIGHTY AND EVERLASTING GOD
If the transcendent element in man which endows him with the proud if
tragic sense of personality is the first message of the preacher to
a chattering and volatile world, and the second is the setting forth
of what this endowment demands and how pitiably man fails to meet it,
then the third message is of the Rock that is higher than he, even
inclusive of his all, in whose composed and comprehensive Being his
baffled and divided person may be gathered up, brought to its own
consummation of self. The rivers that pour tumultuously to their ocean
bed, the ascending fire ever falling backward but leaping upward to
the sun, are poor figures to express the depth and irresistible urge
of the passion in man for completeness, for repose, for power, for
self-perception in self-expression, for victory and the attainment
of the end. Conscious and divided spirit that he is, man turns away,
sooner or later, with utter weariness and self-disgust from the nature
which pleases him by betraying him, which maims his person that he
may enjoy his senses, and reaches out after the other-worldly, the
supernatural, the invisible and eternal Hope and Home of the Soul.
Humanism which bids men sufficiently find God within themselves, if
they think they need to find Him at all, seems not to comprehend this
passion of pride and humility, this inner perception of the futility
and the blunder of the self-contained life. Life is so obviously
not worth its brevity, its suffering, its withheld conclusions, its
relative insignificance, if it must thus stand alone. All that can
save it, preserve to it worth and dignity, maintain its self-respect
and mastery, is to find that abundant power without which confesses,
certifies and seals the divinity within.
How foredoomed to failure, then, especially in an age when men are
surmounting life by placating it, enjoying it by being easy with
themselves--how foredoomed to failure is the preaching which continues
in the world of religion this exaltation of human sufficiency and
natural values, domesticating them within the church. It is to laugh
to see them there! It means so transparent a surrender, so pitiable a
confession of defeat. If anything can bring the natural man into the
sanctuary it is that there he has to bring his naturalness to the bar
of a more-than-natural standard. If he comes at all, it will not
be for entertainment and expansion but because there we insist on
reverence and restraint. If church and preacher offer only a pietized
and decorous naturalism, when he can get the real thing in naked and
unashamed brutality without; if they offer him only another form of
humanistic living, he will stay away. Such preaching is as boresome
as it is unnecessary. Such exercise of devotion is essentially
superfluous and a rather humorous imposition upon the world. The only
thing that will ever bring the natural man to listen to preaching is
when it insists upon something more-than-the-natural and calls him to
account regarding it; when it speaks of something different and better
for him than this world and what it can offer. "Take my _yoke_ upon
you" is the attractive invitation, "make inner obeisance and outward
obedience to something higher than thy poor self."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|