us that, we do not like such
doctrinal preaching." But doctrinal preaching need not be antiquated
or belated, it may be fresh, it may be couched in the language in
which men were born, it may use for its illustrations the images and
figures and analogies which are uppermost in men's imagination. And
whenever it does this there is no preaching which is so thrilling
and uplifting and mighty as the preaching which deals with the great
fundamental doctrines.

In one sense, the Christian religion never changes, in another sense
it is changing all the time. The facts of Christianity never change,
the interpretations of those facts alter from age to age. It is with
religion as it is with, the stars, the stars never change. They move
in their orbits in our night sky as they moved in the night sky of
Abraham when he left his old Chaldean home. The constellations were
the same at the opening of our century as they were when David watched
his flocks on the old Judean hills. But the interpretations of the
stars have always changed, must always change. Pick up the old charts
which the astrologers made and compare them with the charts of
astronomers of our day. How vast the difference! Listen to our
astronomers talk about the magnitudes and disunites and composition of
the stars, and compare with their story that which was written in
the astronomy of a few centuries ago. The stellar universe has not
changed, but men's conceptions have changed amazingly. The facts of
the human body do not change. Our heart beats as the heart of Homer
beat, our blood flows as the blood of Julius Caesar flowed, our
muscles and nerves live and die as the nerves and muscles have lived
and died in the bodies of men in all the generations--and yet, how the
theories of medicine have been altered from time to time. A doctor
does not want to hear a medical lecturer speak who persists in using
the phraseology and conceptions which were accepted by the medical
science of fifty years ago. Conceptions become too narrow to fit the
growing mind of the world, and when once outgrown they must be thrown
aside. As it is in science, so it is in religion. The facts of
Christianity never change, they are fixt stars in the firmament of
moral truth. Forever and forever it will be true that Christ died for
our sins, but the interpretations of this fact must be determined by
the intelligence of the age. Men will never be content with simple
facts, they must go behind them to