Article August 5, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from P. T. Forsyth, K. C. Anderson, Frank N. Riale, E. P. Powell, Ransom A. Greene

[Prin. P. T. Forsyth, M.A., D.D., in British Congregationalist.]

The word is much more than the man. We have heard it said that the great thing is not the pulpit, but the man in it. That is more false than true. The great thing is the message for which the pulpit stands. It is lamentable and pathetic to see how when a popular man goes from a church the church itself melts. That is because it is the man who has been the attraction and not the message. What sustain a church is the word, the revelation, the message of the gospel, the Holy Spirit, the living and present Christ. The man is there for the sake of the message. The word must be a living word; not because it comes from a "live" man, but because it is the word of a living God. It is a question not man's vitality or energy, but of the indwelling of the eternal life. We have not so much to improve men as to vivify them, to make them alive, to regenerate them; not only to teach them new ways of living, but to have the power of making new men by the word in our hands. The demand upon the preacher is more and more that his word should have the note of reality; not mere sincerity. A man may be wonderfully sincere to a word which is not real. We must do much more than practise what we preach; we must experience what we preach. We must do more than live it; we must live upon it. What we preach to our people, if we are preaching to good purpose, will only be the overflow of what we are presenting in our own soul to God.

[Universalist Leader.]

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