1.D 04. Weakness of Gospel-Preaching in the Past

Weakness of Gospel-Preaching in the Past.

It is said by some, “Has not Christianity been preached by plain men, who did not understand so very much about human nature, in every age of the world?” It has; and what have eighteen hundred years to show for it? To-day three-fourths of the globe is heathen, or but semi-civilized. After eighteen hundred years of preaching of the faith under the inspiration of the living Spirit of God, how far has Christianity gone in the amelioration of the condition of the race? I think that one of the most humiliating things that can be contemplated, one of the things most savoury to the scorner, and which seems the most likely to infuse a sceptical spirit into men, is to look at the pretensions of the men who boast of the progress of their work, and then to look at their performances. I concede that there lias been a great deal done, and there has been a great deal of preparation for more; but the torpors, the vast retrocessions, the long lethargic periods, and the wide degeneration of Christianity into a kind of ritualistic mummery and conventional usage, show very plainly that the past history of preaching Christianity is not to be our model. We must find a better mode.