Article July 13, 1907 Issue

Sermons and discourses from the pulpit belong to the...

Chicago Daily Tribune

Sermons and discourses from the pulpit belong to the passing order—are out of date. Like the crusades, they have had their day in the religious world and now must give way before a new era in the manner of getting people into close association with the Church. The new period in religion is "personal work." This is the belief of the Rev. Johnston Myers, pastor of the Immanuel Baptist Church, expressed before an audience of more than one hundred young divinity students at the University of Chicago yesterday [June 26]. The occasion was Dr. Myers' second lecture of a series on the general topic of "Modérn Evangelism." He did not strike a hard blow at the sermon in itself, but he classified it as too antiquated to be of great use in the modern world. He pointed out as proof that it was not the failure of congregations to grow in size, the indifference with which church members attended services, and the competition of sermons with the Sunday paper that caused the new era.

"Mere preaching ceases to told a large place in the work of the Church nowadays," he declared. "People are tired of it. However, it is given still a more or less prominent place, and the clergy are still trying to preach, with a certain amount of success. Compared with the congregations of a few years ago, and considering the enlarged size of the neighborhoods from which they have to draw, there are few large congregations in the country to-day, as large as those to which Beecher, Talmage, and Spurgeon preached.

"There has been a great change. The preaching is as good, it is true, and the preachers now are as great as they used to be. But this is not the age of the sermon. Ours is the age of personal work. Considering the cheapness of printing and the wide circulation of printed good literature, it is a marvel that people come to hear the preacher now. I believe they only come out from a feeling of a sense of duty. It is not because they are interested, but to please us who do the preaching. The real reason sermons are going out of date is because we fail to get definite results from the sermon.

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
To the Editor of The Sun—Sir: There was recently...
July 13, 1907
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit