THERE is what is properly enough called, preaching the gospel. There is a great deal of it in all protestant countries. Yet for many years it seems to have been comparatively powerless to the conversion of sinners. The question is even asked, how long ere our churches will be extinct, unless the proportion of additions to losses turn in their favor, and that soon. And why, it is with reason asked is there so general an indifference to religion, not to say contempt of it? Why so little of that real seriousness, which is at least, part of the essence of a religious temper, which certainly marked the character of our forefathers, and which must always accompany the fear of God, and a just sense of eternal things?
Probably one great reason of all this, is that the Law of God and the truths that circle round it, are not fully and forcibly enough preached. We who are ministers do not present the law in all its demands. We do not, enough, make it seen and felt, that God’s Law claims every one’s entire and unqualified obedience and submission, even to the thoughts and intents of the heart. We do not carry back the demand to the first dawn of the hearer’s reason and conscience, and lay that holy law along side of all the dark past of his life, from the beginning till now. We do not strip sinners of the thousand and one refuges of lies to which they flee, to justify or to excuse themselves for not having kept the law, or
even to make it out that they have kept it sufficiently well. We do not, as we should, open the gates of the bottomless pit before their eyes, and by the light of those eternal fires, make them read for themselves the inscription written in letters of flame, ” This is the place of torment.”
Again, we are apprehensive that we do not realize and set before men, as fully as we ought, the utter alienation of their hearts by nature from all that God requires. We believe the doctrine; that is, it is in our creed, and so according to the rules of the world the credit of believing the doctrine belongs to us. And sometimes perhaps we do deliver it, but its full force and significance we do not habitually feel and deliver.
Are not these the true reasons why our churches, instead of filling up with humble converts, are diminishing? Does not this account, in part at least, for the exceeding distance of men’s minds and thoughts from God and eternity ? Does not this in a measure account for the merely decent religious exterior of some the open irreligion of others, the absorbing worldliness of the many, and the fraud and violence perpetually breaking out over all the land, like the eruptions of a volcano ?
It is worse than of no avail to sing the song of redeeming love, unless the trumpet have first rung effectually the thunders of Sinai! Of what use to assure forgiveness to one who feels no particular need of forgiveness? What is a feast to a full man? What is wine to him that has “well drunk ?” What is the best physician to the hale and hearty, to whom sickness and death are not only distant, but unrealized ? What is civil pardon to the good citizen, who is at large and about his business as usual, and knows he has violated no law ?
Not only the gospel, but even the office of preaching it is made contemptible, by sinking the moral law out of sight. Restore the law to its place; make its terms the actual terror of men’s hearts, and pentecostal seasons will return. Converts will be multiplied. Public conscience will become a reality. Fashionable religion, along with fashionable vice, will hide its diminished head. Public men will shun commercial and political fraud, as they would shun the fires of perdition. The work of preaching the gospel with all its self-denials will be in honor, and the best talent, as well as the purest piety, will offer itself for the service.
The Advent Review and Herald May 15 1855