d tendency, too much disregard that
side of human nature. Possibly it is so. But for all that I
profoundly believe that if religion is to be strong it must have a
very, very small infusion of these external aids to spiritual
worship, and that few things more weaken the power of the Gospel that
Paul preached than the lowering of the flag in conformity with
desires of men of sense, and substituting for the simple glory of the
preached Word the meretricious, and in time impotent, and always
corrupting, attractions of a sensuous worship.

Further, 'The Greeks seek after wisdom.' They wanted demonstration,
abstract principles, systematised philosophies, and the like. Paul
comes again with his 'We preach Christ and Him crucified.' The wisdom
is there, as I shall have to say in a moment, but the form that it
takes is directly antagonistic to the wishes of these wisdom-seeking
Greeks. The same thing in modern guise besets us to-day. We are
called upon, on all sides, to bring into the pulpit what they call an
ethical gospel; putting it into plain English, to preach morality,
and to leave out Christ. We are called upon, on all sides, to preach
an applied Christianity, a social gospel--that is to say, largely to
turn the pulpit into a Sunday supplement to the daily newspaper. We
are asked to deal with the intellectual difficulties which spring
from the collision of science, true or false, with religion, and the
like. All that is right enough. But I believe from my heart that the
thing to do is to copy Paul's example, and to preach Christ and Him
crucified. You may think me right or you may think me wrong, but here
and now, at the end of forty years, I should like to say that I have
for the most part ignored that class of subjects deliberately, and of
set purpose, and with a profound conviction, be it erroneous or not,
that a ministry which listens much to the cry for 'wisdom' in its
modern forms, has departed from the true perspective of Christian
teaching, and will weaken the churches which depend upon it. Let who
will turn the pulpit into a professor's chair, or a lecturer's
platform, or a concert-room stage or a politician's rostrum, I for
one determine to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him
crucified.

III. Lastly, observe the all-sufficient comprehensiveness which this
theme secures.

Paul says 'nothing but'; he might have said 'everything in.' For
'Jesus Christ and Him crucified' covers all the ground of men