THE PREACHER'S THEME
Thou that stupendous truth believed;
And now the matchless deed's achieved,
Determined, darred, and done.
Surely it is a great thing to realize that, just as the early Church knew itself commissioned for something far more vital and incisive than vague talk about topical problems, far more dynamic and explosive than the propagating of interesting ideas or the fostering of a new type of piety, so you are being sent forth to-day to thrust God upon men, to announce that in the fact of Christ God has bridged the gulf between two worlds, has shattered the massive tyranny of the powers of darkness, has changed radically and for ever the human prospect and the total aspect of the world, and brought life and immortality to light! Here is no academic speculation or cold, insipid moralizing; here is no dull collection of views and impressions, schemes and theories; here is a Gospel, able to bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim deliverance to the captives, and bid a distracted world stand still and see the glory of the coming of the Lord.
How foolish, then, the clamour for non-doctrinal preaching! And how desperately you will impoverish your ministry if you yield to that demand! The underlying assumption is, of course, that doctrine is dull: a perfectly absurd misapprehension. It is indeed lamentably true that the sublimest doctrine can be treated in a way that will reduce the average congregation to leaden apathy and boredom. "Buy a theological barrel-organ, brethren," growled Spurgeon scathingly,
67
