's
needs. No doubt many of you will have been saying to yourselves
whilst you have been listening, if you have been listening, to what I
have been saying, 'Ah! old-fashioned narrowness; quite out of date in
this generation.' Brethren, there are two ways of adapting one's
ministry to the times. One is falling in with the requirements of the
times, and the other is going dead against them, and both of these
methods have to be pursued by us.

But the exclusiveness of which I have been speaking, is no narrow
exclusiveness. Paul felt that, if he was to give the Corinthians what
they needed, he must refuse to give them what they wanted, and that
whilst he crossed their wishes he was consulting their necessities.
That is true yet, for the preaching that bases itself upon the life
and death of Jesus Christ, conceived as Paul had learned from Jesus
Christ to conceive them, that Gospel, whilst it brushes aside men's
superficial wishes, goes straight to the heart of their deep-lying
universal necessities, for what the Jew needs most is not a sign, and
what the Greek needs most is not wisdom, but what they both need most
is deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. And we all, scholars
and fools, poets and common-place people, artists and ploughmen, all
of us, in all conditions of life, in all varieties of culture, in all
stages of intellectual development, in all diversities of occupation
and of mental bias, what we all have in common is that human heart in
which sin abides, and what we all need most to have is that evil drop
squeezed out of it, and our souls delivered from the burden and the
bondage. Therefore, any man that comes with a sign, and does not deal
with the sin of the human heart, and any man that comes with a
philosophical system of wisdom, and does not deal with sin, does not
bring a Gospel that will meet the necessities even of the people to
whose cravings he has been aiming to adapt his message.

But, beyond that, in this message of Christ and Him crucified, there
lies in germ the satisfaction of all that is legitimate in these
desires that at first sight it seems to thwart. 'A sign?' Yes, and
where is there power like the power that dwells in Him who is the
Incarnate might of omnipotence? 'Wisdom?' Yes, and where is there
wisdom, except 'in Him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge'? Let the Jew come to the Cross, and in the weak Man
hanging there, he will find a mightier revelation of th