"POPULAR” PREACHING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2168, 26 August 1920, Page 1

"POPULAR” PREACHING.

In a leading article, which has for its subject the improvement of preaching and some of the reasons why tiie average sermon of to-day is so ineffective, one of the leading English Church newspapers has some-> thing pertinent and wise to say about the dangers of popular preaching.

“We have,” says the Church Times, “no doubt, our ‘popular' preachers, yet too many of them illustrate rather than disprove the degeneracy of modern preaching. Some achieve a certain kind of reputation by saying outrageous things. They may attract a crowd, yet they can scarcely believe that reverence in the pew is best promoted by irreverence in the pulpit. Others are popular because they take pains to supply what a largo section of the public likes to receive. They roll forth platitudes with theatrical vehemence. They find their themes in topics of tho day rather than in truths of eternity. They repeat on Sunday what the newspapers have said from Monday to Saturday. They grow eloquent or denunciatory over tho perils of Bolshevism, the latest labour crisis, the address of a leading man, or the undress of a leading lady. And they seem to feel no unfitness in prefacing such discourses ■with the Invocation. Of such sermons we need say no more than- that they arc a shameful degradation of the pulpit. Probably those who preach them seldom realise their full effect. They sec the crowded church and the newspaper paragraphs; they do not sec the pain, dismay, and resentment they create among the thought ful people ■ who, looking for a sermon, are given stamp-oratory. Some of. these clergy may he conscientiously anxious to satisfy criticism of a certain type by proving themselves ‘in loach with modern thought.’ Mven (his aim, however, is not: best fulfilled by sermons from which all real thought, ancient or modern, is strikingly absent.’’