Article May 24, 1947 Issue

Signs of the Times

The Mission of the Pulpit

with contributions from Roy L. Smith, Charles A. Wells, Dana McLean Greeley, Alfred Grant Walton, Allan Knight Chalmers

Mercury Guelph, Ontario, Canada

The great mission of the pulpit must be essentially to the inner life. Such a ministry is slow and laborious; it costs more in study and living than superficial handling of popular themes; it is not showy, nor does it bring the applause of the majority; it is a constant, loving, living warfare against selfishness. It is a ministry that aims firstly to improve the spirit, the attitude, rather than the actions and conditions of men. It brings before men the fundamental conceptions of God as the sovereign ruler and provider, who has a plan for the life of every man and to whose orderings every man can trust to the full.

It preaches a constant subordination of the outward and visible and temporal to the inward and unseen and eternal; it presses home on this materialistic age the utter disregard shown by Jesus to wealth and station and learning and orthodoxy, where the fruits of love were absent; ... it believes that the eternal truth should never be bound up in form and doctrine that change from age to age.

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