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Title: Sermons to the Natural Man

Author: William G.T. Shedd

Release Date: August 17, 2004 [EBook #13204]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SERMONS TO THE NATURAL MAN.

BY

WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, D. D.,

AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE," "HOMILETICS AND PASTORAL.
THEOLOGY," "DISCOURSES AND ESSAYS," "PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY," ETC.

NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 654 BROADWAY. 1871.

PREFACE.

It is with a solemn feeling of responsibility that I send forth this
volume of Sermons. The ordinary emotions of authorship have little place
in the experience, when one remembers that what he says will be either a
means of spiritual life, or an occasion of spiritual death.

I believe that the substance of these Discourses will prove to accord
with God's revealed truth, in the day that will try all truth. The title
indicates their general aim and tendency. The purpose is psychological. I
would, if possible, anatomize the natural heart. It is in vain to offer
the gospel unless the law has been applied with clearness and cogency. At
the present day, certainly, there is far less danger of erring in the
direction of religious severity, than in the direction of religious
indulgence. If I have not preached redemption in these sermons so fully
as I have analyzed sin, it is because it is my deliberate conviction
that just now the first and hardest work to be done by the preacher, for
the natural man, is to produce in him some sensibility upon the subject
of sin. Conscience needs to become consciousness. There is considerable
theoretical unbelief respecting the doctrines of the New Testament; but
this is not the principal difficulty. Theoretical skepticism is in a
small minority of Christendom, and always has been. The chief obstacle to
the spread of the Christian religion is the practical unbelief of
speculative believers. "Thou sayest,"--says John Bunyan,--"thou dost in
deed and in truth believe the Scriptures. I ask, therefore, W