The Power of the Pulpit Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. But there is a different thought from any of those to which our attention has been thus far directed. In aiming at the great and single object the pulpit has in view, it gains other things; things which it does not so directly aim at, but which belong to it as its natural allies, which are incidental to it, and follow in its train of influences and blessings. The mere fact that it has a ready and almost constant access to the minds of the people, is itself an index of its power. " To the poor the Gospel is preached." The pulpit is a popular and democratic institution, fitted to protect the rights of all classes of men, and to diffuse a universal spirit of industry, virtue, kindness, and peace. In the organization of human society, it is the only official bond between the aristocracy and democracy of the Christian world. Its sphere of influence lies first and chiefly with the middle and lower classes; nor is there one of the institutions which are designed to make them better and more useful men, but may be traced to the pulpit as its founder. I am ashamed that, in one respect, the corrupt Church of Rome reads an affecting lesson to Protestants; and it is in their solicitude to bring the poor to the house of God. There are no churches for the rich in Papal lands; this is an expedient of Protestantism, and a modern refinement upon that Christianity which teaches that " the poor ye have always With you." " The rich and the poor meet together : the Lord is the Maker of them all." So it ought to be, and so it will be, in every prosperous church. These select churches ought all to have died with lukewarm Laodi- cea. In other spheres we look for distinctions among men; Christianity looks for them; but not in the Church of God. The pulpit i...Read More