1.A 07. Man-Building, the Preacher's Business

Man-Building, the Preacher’s Business.

I will add only one thing more, for I shall resume this subject; and that is, that I have participated with a great many in one experience. I have been under the penumbra of doubt. I look upon the progress of physical science and see the undermining influences that are going on. I see that probably Churches as they are now constituted will not stand, and that a vast amount of what is called technical theology will have to undergo great mutations. I know there are many minds in the darkness of cloud who ask, Is there a God? or, Is it a Pan theistic God? or, Is there a revelation? Can there be an inspiration in this world? The whole of this reacts on the community, so that a young man who is thinking about preaching may say to himself, “I will not go into a profession which seems likely to be overthrown before long; where, in a few years, all my employment will drop out of my hands, scepticism is prevailing to such an extent.”

Young gentlemen, I want to tell you my belief upon that point. True preaching is yet to come. Of all the professions for young men to look forward to, I do not know another one that seems to me to have such scope before it in the future as preaching.

I mean this. There is one fact that is not going to be overturned by science; and that is the necessity of human development, and the capability there is in man of being opened up and improved. If there is one thing that can be substantiated more clearly than another, it is that the development indicated by Christianity is right along the line of nature.

Men walk from the fleshly up to the spiritual. If there can be one thing shown to be more true than another, it is that Christianity is walking toward spiritual love as the polar star, the grand centre, If there is one thing in this world more worthy of being worked than another, it is the human soul. And if there is one business better worth a man’s thought than another, it is a profession that under takes to educate men along this common line, of nature and Christianity together, and lift them up from basilar conditions and methods to the coronal (heights where understanding, moral sentiment, taste,) imagination, and love are intermingled. That is the business of the preacher. It is not to grind a Church. It is not to turn a wheel. It is not to cuff about the controversies of theology.

It is a living work, building- work. If you are to be true preachers, you are to be man-builders; and in the days yet to come there is to be no labour so worthy of a man’s ambition as that of building men worthily, that at last you may present them spotless before the throne of God.