MODERN SERMONS.

Shannon News, 26 February 1926, Page 4

MODERN SERMONS.

HEED FOR GREAT PREACHERS. The Rev. Dr. J. D. Jones made his ( striking plea for a better pulpit, reinforced by a better pew, in his presidential address at the autumnal assembly of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, at Bournemouth, recently (says an English exchange). What ought they to do, iie asked to make a forward spiritual movement possible, and to make their ..hurchec throb with life and power. His answer was preaching—preaching with grip and reality in it, with a redeemng Gospel at the heart of it. But to make great preachers tnere nrusL be ,?reat hearers. A chilly congregation would freeze the passion and fervour out of a preacher. The first thing they r>ee*ded for a recovery of prosperity was a revival of i'aith in tno special and distinctive. things for which they stood. "What strikes me often is the complacency of the Christian church in the face of the actual situation. The situation is this: The great ma is of our people seem to be drifting away from religion; the habit of worship is i'ailtig uto •disuse*, the Sabbath is i&pidly ceasing to be a day of ve.it; lb per cent, of the manhood of our country, it has been estimated are clean outside all the churches. "Many things combine to account for this. There is the unsettlement of faith caused by new views of. the world and the Bible Many people who get their information from i-ewspapers and magazines have a vagiie sort of idea that Ch.risti.mity b an .vxjfloded superttition. Thsre is a concentration of men's thoughts upon the so-called good things in life.

"Finally, though we are too polite to say much about it in these kidgiove days there is what St. Paul bluntly called the carnal mind. All these things are operative, and the last is probably the most potent of a 1!. Serious though the situation is, I am no pessimist. I do not beiisve the Church is an effete institution, tha\ religion is on its dying bed." Havng spoken oi what he described as the tragic fact chat, according to statistics the Church was in the" same parlous plight as France, inasmuch as the birth rate did hot keep pace with the cU-ath rate, Dr. Jones asked what effort they were making to fill their half-filled churchs. £Le had no admiration for a church that prided itself on being select. He had heard people speak disparagingly and half-contemp tuously of the popular preacher. If the contempt was a pose and an affectation, it was a remarkably silly one. If it represented the man's real mind it argued a complete failure to unt derstand what preaching is. "J would give a great, deal .for a supply of popular preachers. Jesus Himself was a popular preacher. The common peopk'. publicans and sinners came together re near Him. It is to the common people we have to make our appeal. The world is fuli of, them. God must have liked the common people, Abraham Lincoln said. He made so many of them. We are indeed all common people. The differences made by culture and training are all on the surface. We are all common people in that we have common needs, common sorrows, common sins." The common people surged up to our l very church doors. What were we doing to bring them in? When churches got a "concern" for the out eider it might be they would discover that they had to adopt new methods. A church might be strangled by red tape, crippled by sheer routine and some churches obstinately clinging to ancient grooves seemed to be busy digging ttieir own graves.