Within minutes after the Holy Spirit’s coming the disciples began preaching to the world

Here in epitome is the substance of the Gospel: “Thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46, 47).

Two of these three propositions—the death and resurrection of our Lord—are the great foundational facts of our Christian faith. The third, the proclamation of repentance and remission of sins in his name, might scent to belong not to the substance of our faith but to the realm of obedience and action and thus to the program of the Church.

But a closer look reveals a striking coordination of the three affirmations. In the original, even the grammatical form is the same: three infinitives—to suffer, to rise, to be preached. All these are part of the Gospel, the third no less than the first two. For the death and resurrection of Christ are not the Good News in the fullest sense unless the forgiveness of sins is offered to all men through repentance and faith in him. Good news does not become good news until it is proclaimed.

This centrality of the proclamation is demonstrated in the immediate response of the disciples at Pentecost. Within minutes after the coming of the Holy Spirit they began preaching to the world; and within one generation the Gospel had been carried far and wide. What gives the proclamation centrality is its content—namely, Christ’s death and resurrection and the forgiveness of sins for all who repent and believe.

There is no scriptural sanction for the idea that God’s grace and salvation are automatically effective for the universal redemption of man. The Gospel operates only in a context of acceptance and faith. It has to be preached and believed. This is the consistent teaching of the New Testament. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” The writings of Paul abound with such references. He speaks of being “justified by faith,” of “the righteousness which is by faith,” and of the righteousness which is “unto all and upon all that believe.” Or again, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent?… So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Now if God uses the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe, if faith comes by hearing and if by faith a man may lay hold on eternal life, and if all this is a part of the Good News we are commissioned to proclaim, ought we not to declare as strongly as possible the supreme importance of evangelism as the first business of the Church?

This is an age of very great social sensitivity. Yet evangelism must continue to be the Church’s primary task. Let no man underestimate the relevance of the Gospel. It is no mere theory or abstraction. In working with the souls of men the Church handles the very fabric of which life is woven. She is never so relevant to life as when she is proclaiming the Gospel of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ. This is her unique message, not only for individual salvation but also for the redemption of society and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. There can be no redeemed society apart from redeemed men. While we know that in his sovereignty and in the exercise of his common grace, God has used some non-Christians to ameliorate social injustices, we must also realize that as Christians we minister most effectively to the problems of those around us only when we bring to them that love of neighbor which is the overflow of the love of Christ, the sharing of the joys and benefits of our own salvation, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit in them that believe.

The Church is deeply concerned with human relations, with justice and social righteousness—so deeply that she would bring to these problems nothing less than the greatest and most radical solution, the transformation of the human heart through the grace and Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The deep hurt of the world is spiritual, and nothing less than a spiritual remedy will suffice. The cure must be related to the disease. It is easy to be found treating symptoms instead of causes, although symptoms are often very painful and must in mercy be relieved. And while we can never shirk the responsibility of giving a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, yet we must be sure that we get to the source of humanity’s trouble and that we do not exhaust our efforts in dealing with surface ailments that are but eruptions from poisons that lie deeper down.

The Church must never lose sight of her redemptive and evangelistic mission through absorption in the overwhelming social issues of the day. Not that we should be unconcerned about industrial relations, and civil rights, and world order; such things are vitally important. But we cannot suspend a great society in a spiritual vacuum. There are signs that our social concern is moving away from a spiritual motivation inherited from a generation that had a deeper and more virile faith than ours. We cannot live indefinitely on the spiritual capital of our fathers but must ourselves go to the source of grace and power.

The Gospel is relevant. We do not have to make it so. “Let the Church be the Church”—not a political action committee, or an economic conference, or a sociological congress, or a foreign policy association. Let her proclaim anew the great themes of sin and repentance, of faith and salvation. Let her exalt her glorious spiritual mission, beseeching men to be reconciled to God and to obey all of her divine Lord’s commands. This is her supreme commission and her inescapable obligation.

Not To Be Taken For Granted

On the edge of a Great Society that promises material abundance for us and for the world, we come to the Thanksgiving season fully aware that one or two years’ harvest separates all men from starvation. Already millions of people around the world starve to death every year, and the birth rate continues to soar while the production rate of food lags. Thus it is not trite but necessary to suggest that prayers of gratitude be raised to Almighty God for the many temporal blessings of this past year. We need also to remember that this earthly abundance did not come to us because we are good or because we are better than others; it came because of God’s grace.

We take almost all of our blessings for granted; but then God grants us many blessings that we do not take. Thus we cannot assume that life consists only in the abundance of the things we possess. It also has spiritual aspects, one of which, the new birth, is God’s greatest gift. We should pause to thank him for the gift of eternal life and the blessings that flow out of it. While we rejoice in spiritual and temporal blessings, such rejoicing may be nothing more than hypocrisy unless it leads us to open our purses to help the less fortunate of the world. James said: “If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful for the body; what doth it profit?” (Jas. 2:15, 16).

Most of us fail to take seriously the universals of the Bible, such as Paul’s admonition that we are to give thanks “always for all things” (Eph. 5:20). We forget that this includes the afflictions of life allowed by God and ordered for our sanctification. How easy it is to thank God for plenty; how hard to thank him for suffering and privation. How easy to rejoice when health is good; how hard to give thanks when serious illness strikes us down. How easy to thank God for the turkey; how hard to be satisfied with mere bread.

On no day, least of all Thanksgiving, should the Christian fail to take time to thank God—thoughtfully, unhurriedly, and as Scripture invites us—for his unfailing mercies. We recommend that before the turkey is carved, the 118th Psalm be read aloud for all the table guests to hear.

The Living God And Atheist Theologians

“Christian atheism” is the newest twist in a sick theological world. A group now vocal in some theological seminaries is spoken of as the “God is dead” movement. In terms the average layman can understand, a secular news magazine (Time, Oct. 22 issue) has spelled out this blasphemy, while denominational publications apparently are silent.

Here we are not confronted only with theological modernism, or with the heresy of universalism. Men who carry a “Christian” banner and whose salaries come from Christian sources teach and preach a new form of atheism. “Tenure” is being maintained by men who, if operating in the business world, would be dismissed out of hand for disloyalty and treason to the institutions employing them. Academic freedom is being misused to destroy the foundations that made such freedom possible.

One of the “new breed” theologians, Professor Thomas J. J. Altizer of Emory University, calls us to “recognize that the death of God is a historical event: God has died in our time, in our history, in our existence.” The “death of God” theologians assert that Christianity, if it is to survive, will have to do so without God. This “Godless Christianity” affirms there must be a “nonreligious interpretation of Biblical concepts” amenable to the secular society “now come of age.” It casts off the anchor of revealed religion. It turns from Christianity to secularism, from a supernatural Christ to humanism with, at best, a Jesus-inspired morality. Within the Church in our generation few men have so blatantly denied everything the Christian faith stands for. While these men ridicule any fearful waiting for the judgment of the God whose death they herald, those who head up institutions in which such blasphemy is taught also bear a heavy responsibility. If administrators and trustees act responsibly they will do much to clarify the true nature of the Christian faith, a clarification that is long overdue in theologically tolerant circles.

No one will deny these men the right to be atheists; but (we say it reverently) for God’s sake let them be atheists outside of institutions supposedly training men to spread the Gospel that God is alive and that faith in his Son means life from the dead.

A ‘Stunning’ Improvement

Since the assignment of more policemen to patrol the subway trains and stations in New York last April, crime in the subways, which have been notorious for breaches of the law, has been reduced 61.5 per cent. Mayor Robert F. Wagner has with good reason called the decrease “stunning.”

Sociological conditions in New York have changed little during the time of this reduction in subway crime. It must therefore be the increase of police protection and the consequent fear of punishment that has so effectively deterred would-be criminals.

Statistics show a continuing upward trend of major crimes in this country. But in making its subways so much safer, New York has shown that something can be done about crime. Police protection, though not the only answer, is still a powerful deterrent.

Rome And The Vatican Council

Conscientious coverage of Vatican Council II can be one of the most frustrating journalistic assignments. After three years the disorganization in the press office is tolerated rather than remedied. Behind the desk, when it is manned at all, are Italian youths evidently chosen for their inability to understand any other language. If perchance the exasperated scribe should somehow stumble on the unadvertised fact that a press conference in English is about to be held in another building, disappointment dogs him even there. An American priest reads at breakneck speed a summary of recent council proceedings, and makes for the door. Given a seat near the front and a reasonable turn of speed, an inquiring journalist might just nail the fleet-footed cleric with a question. Gradually it becomes apparent that the council is still essentially a domestic Roman Catholic occasion, with carefully prepared press releases telling the reporter all that he and his constituents need know.

Now and then, however, an element of liveliness creeps into the wooden accounts, like the remark of Archbishop Franjo Franic of Split and Makarska, Yugoslavia. Intervening in the discussion on priestly life and ministry, he urged the necessity of communion in temporal as well as in spiritual things. Twenty years of living under Marxism, he declared, had demonstrated the truth of the Russian philosopher’s words: “If God cannot produce justice in the world through his children, then he will do it through the devil.”

One section of the schema dealing with the Roman Catholic Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions cleared the Jewish people of deicide. By 1875 votes to 188 the fathers affirmed that “responsibility for the death of Christ is not to be attributed indiscriminately to all Jews then living nor to the Jews of today,” and thereafter stated that the Jews are not to be regarded as cursed. Christians living in the Near East had made it clear beforehand that such a declaration would complicate their lives in predominantly Arab countries.

A significant contribution was made to the debate on missionary activity when Father Omer Degrijse, Superior General of the Missionaries of Scheut, criticized the text of the schema. He said it was deficient in its treatment of the ecumenical aspects of mission activity; did not give a clear picture of the harm done in the missions by the divisions of Christendom; and did not sufficiently stress the importance of re-establishing unity. He suggested cooperation in the actual work of evangelization as a concrete symbol of unity, provided adequate measures were taken to forestall any danger of confusion. Others agreed that rivalry between religions in mission territories is a cause of scandal to non-believers and of immense harm to the Church. Bishop Jean Gay of Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, suggested that many young people who might feel the attraction of a missionary vocation were becoming discouraged because of a growing trend to teach that the chief aim of missionary activity is not to preach the Gospel but to prepare those human conditions that will make acceptance of the Gospel possible. The Right Rev. Paul Yu Pin, Archbishop of Nanking now resident on Formosa, asked that missionaries be trained for the time when they might return to the Communist Chinese mainland.

Just as the arrival of the council in 1962 made noticeably little impression on the Eternal City, so the intervening eleven hundred days have apparently done nothing to change that. La dolce vita has lost none of its sweetness; Roman drivers are still the most reckless in Europe and play a perpetual game of bluff that regards neither age nor sex nor clerical status; the café 200 yards from St. Peter’s Square that made capital out of foreign ignorance of lire is still up to the old malarkey. Militant Protestants no longer take turns reading aloud Revelation 17 on the edge of the square, but there is still opposition, albeit a different kind. Specchio, a Roman weekly and no respecter of persons, is currently running a series of articles on “red priests” at the council.

Twenty Years Of Nssa

The American Sunday school was losing ground in 1945 when the National Sunday School Association was begun as an expression of concern for the future. Its evangelical organizers traced the plight of the Sunday school to the incursion of liberal theology into the religious education movement. Their aim was the revitalization of the American Sunday school through a return to evangelical truth and biblical methods.

Now NSSA has celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Thousands of delegates attended its national convention in Milwaukee October 20–22. During two decades it has grown in strength and outreach. An arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, NSSA includes fifty affiliate Sunday school associations. Its uniform lessons have an estimated circulation of over three million, and ten publishers are authorized to use them. The association has a wide constituency, reaching far beyond the member denominations, and the total number it serves is said to be as high as 20 million.

The anniversary convention showed the vitality of NSSA. Aside from major meetings, 175 workshops were held covering Sunday school work from kindergarten through college. There was evident an awareness of modern methods and the problems of the Sunday school in a secular society. A further sign of the association’s strength was the dedication on October 23 of a handsome new headquarters building in the section of Wheaton, Illinois, that, already the site of headquarters of the National Association of Evangelicals, Youth for Christ, Evangelical Literature Overseas, and the Evangelical Teachers’ Training Association, with Wheaton College nearby, may become the evangelical capital of the nation. Whether this concentration of evangelical agencies spells isolationism or fellowship may be a question.

We salute NSSA on its anniversary. At a time when the American Sunday school is again showing signs of decline, this ministry is urgently needed.

Dodging The Draft

The United States has generally allowed conscientious objectors to forego military service. Last month the collegians and the Communists decided to test this policy; in a small nationwide effort they protested United States involvement in Viet Nam and expressed opposition to military service there. That the protest was stirred up, in part, by the Communist apparatus was verified by Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who found “some Communists and some persons closely associated with Communists” working for the Students for a Democratic Society. That this was only one element of the situation was also obvious.

The protests of many of the objectors seemed less than conscientious and definitely lawless. Burning Selective Service cards is certainly a far cry from “panty raids” in the springtime. What these students did is perilously close to treason; it strikes at the heart of democracy and the use of responsible methods to express dissatisfaction with national policy.

Pacifists should be recognized as sincere people and promptly assigned to non-combatant work at home and abroad where they can bind up the wounds of those who are preserving their freedom to be pacifists. And the exhibitionists who express their frustrations extra-legally and under the cloak of pacifism should be allowed to do so in the confinement reserved for lawbreakers.

A college education is supposed to produce good citizens in a democracy, the strength of which depends upon the law and its proper use. We are grateful that the protests involved only a tiny fraction of the college community and offer our congratulations to the millions of collegians who kept their heads and refused to be stampeded.

One of the most difficult of all lessons, and one that many never learn, is man’s total inadequacy in the area of eternal values. This is the result of his disorientation from God with its resulting loss of spiritual perspective.

We like to think of ourselves as self-sufficient, the masters of our destinies and the architects of our own lives. The result is disastrous for us and for our influence on others.

The scientific achievements of today are so overwhelming that we forget that they have nothing to do with spiritual ends, only with the immediate and the material.

Throughout history man has repeatedly substituted his own opinions for the clear revelations of divine truth. The serpent’s question to Eve, “Yea, hath God said?,” is as modern as today’s newspaper because we fail to realize our utter inadequacy in the most important area of human existence.

Man is afflicted with spiritual blindness. But healing is available from the One who gave sight to the blind beggar by the Jericho road. The key to restoration was that he knew he was blind and turned for healing to the right person.

When man realizes his total inadequacy, he no longer can evade the fact of sin and his inability to cope with it. More than anything a man needs to have his sin forgiven and covered, but this is not within the scope of human ability. Only as the Holy Spirit enables man to see himself as God sees him can he understand the significance of sin, that it is man’s offense against a holy God and that the fig leaves of man-devised covering cannot withstand the burning purity of God’s holiness.

When we come to realize and admit the plight of those whose sins are unforgiven and the ultimate destiny of unrepentant sinners, we are ready to seek the forgiveness so freely offered. We cannot forgive ourselves; that is God’s prerogative and desire, and therein lies the basic solution.

We are also unable to cleanse our lives; yet we need to be cleansed. We are so prone to self-deception. We try to fool others and often do. But nothing is hidden from God, and he sees the filth we try to cover up by an external piety.

Honesty with ourselves is needed. Who would submit to having his picture taken by a camera capable of showing up the human heart? Who would be willing to have his innermost thoughts revealed? Probably no one. However, none can escape the all-seeing eye of the One with whom we have to do. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that the Augean stables of our hearts need cleansing.

Not only do we need forgiveness and cleansing; we also need filling. Self-reformation may give a good impression to others for the moment, but only the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can fill us with love, joy, peace, and the rest of the Christian graces.

It is precisely at this point that so many Christians fail. By too many the anointing of the Holy Spirit is regarded with either skepticism or fear. We do not want to “go overboard” in our religion. As a result, we live with a vacuum that in time will be filled either by God himself or by the Enemy who disfigures and destroys.

Only when we have been forgiven, cleansed, and filled—all by the loving mercy of the sovereign and redeeming God—are we ready to serve God and our fellow man, all for the glory of God.

Out of such an experience there comes power. Without it there is weakness and frustration. If we are willing to admit our own inadequacy and accept God’s total ability to save, keep, and supply, we then stand on the threshold of power—not power as the world understands it, but the power of a redeemed and renewed life lived in the conscious presence of God himself.

Otherwise we may have the faith that saves but that never goes on to victory in every area of life. How often we live lives of frustration and defeat, all because we have continued to hold back something from God. Every Christian is sorely tempted to keep in reserve some area of thought, word, or deed, and this reservation acts like a cancer in his spiritual life and witness.

And how we need wisdom to live aright! No Christian escapes problems and decisions that demand a wisdom he does not have. Where then is he to find this wisdom? Is he to base his decisions on the seeming demands of the moment? Is he to depend solely on the advice of others? Is he to “play by ear” the difficult situations of life with the hope that his own experience will lead him to the right answers?

God gives guidance and wisdom in various ways. He uses his written Word, our experiences, our contacts with others, emerging developments—many isolated or combined circumstances—to give leading and wisdom to the seeking soul. Without such help we run head-on into multiplied frustrations and defeats.

How strange that we presume to go it alone. How wonderful that God offers his own divine wisdom and guidance for the asking.

In all that has been said, and we are speaking to Christians, the issue is our usefulness in God’s Kingdom.

As a new creation in Christ the Christian does not live in a vacuum. He is in the world as “salt” in the midst of a decaying society, as “light” in the midst of spiritual darkness. This new life cannot be lived apart from the fullness of what Christ has to offer. Therefore everyone should set as his goal the fulfillment of God’s will for him. “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”—this should be our daily prayer. When a realization of total inadequacy has been replaced by faith in the completeness of God’s ability, one then has started on the road to usefulness, to the place where life really counts.

The recurring attempts to reform society without redeemed men is an ever constant source of confusion. And Christians add to this confusion by not exhibiting in their lives the effects of the “great transaction” in which they realized their own inadequacy and God’s complete adequacy for everything in their lives.

One of the greatest of all benedictions is found at the conclusion of Jude’s epistle: “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever (vv. 24, 25, RSV).

Here we find reference to God’s ability to keep us now and on into the glory of his presence for all eternity. This keeping is for today and every day, and it depends on our letting go of self and taking hold of God by faith.

Self-sufficiency has been the downfall of many. A recognition of our total inadequacy is not a deterrent to highest accomplishments for God: it is rather the only route to success.

We are led up, in the consideration of the last things, to that which is for us the question of supreme concern on this subject—the question of individual destiny. To the question of the destiny of the unbeliever, several main answers have been given, and are given.

1. The first is that of dogmatic universalism. This was the view of Origen in the early Church and is the view of Schleiermacher, expressed in the words, “that through the power of Redemption there will result in the future a general restoration of all human souls”; the view expressed yet more dogmatically by Dr. Samuel Cox, “While our brethren hold the Redemption of Christ to extend only to the life that now is, and to take effect only on some men, we maintain, on the contrary, that it extends to the life to come, and must take effect on all men at the last.” It is a view which, I am sure, we would all be glad to hold, if the Scriptures gave us light enough to assure us that it was true.

2. The second answer is that of the theory of annihilation, or, as it is sometimes called, conditional immortality. This is the direct opposite of the universalistic view, inasmuch as it assumes that the wicked will be absolutely destroyed, or put out of existence. Rothe and others have held this view among Continental theologians; in this country it is best known through the writings of Mr. Edward White. A kindred view is that of Bushnell, who, reasoning “from the known effects of wicked feeling and practice in the reprobate characters,” expects “that the staple of being and capacity in such will be gradually diminished, and the possibility is thus suggested that, at some remote period, they may be quite wasted away, or extirpated.” The service which this theory has rendered is as a corrective to universalism, in laying stress on those passages in Scripture which appear to teach a final ruin of the wicked.

I proceed to offer a few remarks on these theories.

1. First, I cannot accept the view of dogmatic universalism. There is undoubtedly no clear and certain Scripture which affirms that all men will be saved; on the other hand, there are many passages which look in another direction, which seem to put the stamp of finality on the sinner’s state in eternity. Even Archdeacon Farrar, so strong an advocate of this theory, admits that some souls may ultimately be lost; and it is to be observed that, if even one sold is lost finally, the principle is admitted on which the chief difficulty turns. I am convinced that the light and airy assertions of dogmatic universalism one sometimes meets with are not characterized by a due sense of the gravity of the evil of sin, or of the awful possibilities of resistance to goodness that lie within the human will. It seems to me plain that deliberate rejection of Christ here means, at the very least, awful and irreparable loss in eternity; that to go from the judgment-seat condemned is to exclude oneself in perpetuity from the privilege and glory which belong to God’s sons. Even the texts, some of them formerly quoted, which at first sight might seem to favor universalism, are admitted by the most impartial expositors not to bear this weight of meaning. We read, for example, of “a restoration of all things”—the same that Christ calls the paliggenesia; but in the same breath we are told of those who will not hearken and will be destroyed. We read of Christ drawing all men unto him; but we are not less clearly told that at his coming, Christ will pronounce on some a tremendous condemnation. We read of all things being gathered, or summed up, in Christ, of Christ subduing all things to himself, and so forth; but representative exegetes like Meyer and Weiss show that it is far from Paul’s view to teach an ultimate conversion or annihilation of the kingdom of evil.

2. Neither can I accept the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked. In itself considered, this may be admitted to be an abstractly possible hypothesis, and as such has received the assent of Rothe and others who are not materialistically disposed. There is a certain sense in which everyone will admit that a man has not a necessary or inherent immortality, that he depends for his continued existence, therefore for his immortality, solely on the will and power of God. Man can never rise above the limits of his creaturehood. As created, he is, and must remain, a dependent being. It is, therefore, a possible supposition—one not a priori to be rejected—that though originally made and destined for immortality, man might have this destiny canceled. There is force, too, in what is said, that it is difficult to see the utility of keeping a being in existence merely to sin and suffer. Yet, when the theory is brought to the test of Scripture proof, it is found to fail in evidence.—

Evangelistic preaching is the proclamation of the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit with the aim of a clear decision for Christ in the hearers. To be sure, all Christian preaching should expect a response in both faith and action, whether the sermon be a declaration of the facts of personal redemption or the teaching of some great moral truth. But in the more specialized sense, evangelistic preaching concerns the immediate message of salvation, a message that carries with it the imperative that all men must repent and believe the Gospel. Evangelistic preaching is not necessarily any special type of sermon or homiletical method; rather, it is preaching distinguished by the call for commitment to the Son of God who died for our sin and rose triumphant from the grave.

This passion for lost men to come to God is the consuming burden of the evangelist as he prepares and delivers his sermon. Everything he says is measured by it. Yet this does not take away the necessity for responsible homiletics. The very urgency of the evangelist’s mission demands that he use every principle of effective preaching.

Certain requirements in sermon-building relate especially to the evangelist’s purpose. Seven of these may serve as a checklist by which an evangelistic sermon may be evaluated—apart, of course, from the supernatural unction of the Holy Spirit in its delivery.

1. Is the sermon Christ-exalting? A gospel message, whatever its particular doctrinal emphasis, centers in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:23; 2 Cor. 4:5; Acts 5:42). He is the Evangel—“the good news” incarnate, “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He is “the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). In him every redemptive truth begins and ends. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12b). Unless people see him, regardless of what else impresses them, they will not be drawn to God.

By the same token, since Christ is the ultimate Revelation by which all men are judged, the issue of the sermon turns on what men do with Jesus (Acts 17:31). The evangelist must be keenly aware of this fact, and he must seek to bring it into focus in the personal application of his subject. It matters little what the people think of the preacher; everything depends upon what they believe about the Son of God. That is why the first measure of a sermon’s power is the degree to which it exalts Christ and makes men aware of his claims upon their lives. With this in mind, it is very revealing to listen to the remarks of people after a preaching service. If they talk more about the preacher than about Jesus, it may be that the sermon missed the mark.

2. Is the sermon scriptural? Preaching that brings men to the Saviour is subject to the spirit and letter of God-breathed Scripture. The word written in the Book discloses Christ the Living Word (John 20:31). It is the means by which the mind is illuminated (2 Tim. 3:16), faith is kindled (Rom. 10:17), and the heart is recreated according to the purpose of God (1 Pet. 1:23; 2 Pet. 1:4: John 17:17). For this reason, the redemptive power of any sermon is in direct proportion to the way the Scriptures are proclaimed.

The Bible is the “sword of the Spirit” in the preacher’s hand (Eph. 6:17). It alone is the authority for his proclamation of the Gospel. Without its sure testimony, the sermon would be little more than a statement of human experience. It is indeed well for the preacher to support the message by his own personal witness; but the ultimate authority for what he preaches must be the written Word of God. Experience can be trusted only when it accords with Holy Scripture.

Thus the evangelist is commissioned simply to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2). He is not called to speculate or argue about the conflicting opinions of men, nor is his message open for discussion. God has spoken, and the sermon imbued with this conviction is an inexorable declaration: “Thus saith the Lord!” Such preaching needs neither defense nor explanation. The Spirit of God who gave the Word will bear witness to its truthfulness (1 John 5:6; 2 Pet. 1:21), and he will not let it return unto him void (Isa. 55:11).

3. Is the sermon soul-searching? To meet human need a sermon must strike hard at the problem of sin. Under the firm touch of the Word of God, the cloak of self-righteousness is pulled away from the rebel heart and the hypocrisy of living independently from God is seen for what it is (John 15:22). Urging at one time the greatness of man’s guilt and at another the imminence of his danger, the evangelist awakens the human conscience. The awfulness of sin becomes vivid. Although all the diverse kinds of sin cannot be treated in one sermon, at least the basic issue of disobedience and unbelief can be disclosed, with perhaps a few specific applications to the local situation.

There should never be any confusion about whom the evangelist is addressing. It is not sin but the sinner that he is talking about. Indeed, it might well seem to the sinner that the preacher has been following him around all week. Although obvious considerations of propriety and good sense must be kept in mind, still a test of an evangelistic sermon is the way it gets under a person’s skin and makes the transgressor face himself. One thing is certain: If people do not see their problem, they are unlikely to want the remedy.

4. Is the sermon logical? From introduction to conclusion the sermon must be based on a convincing course of logic. Notwithstanding the fad of irrational thinking among some existentialist ministers, consistency is still a mark of truth, and a gospel sermon should reflect this fact. Not only should the objective of the message be perfectly clear: there should also be a progression of thought leading up to the appeal for decision. When this is clone well, the invitation seems as natural as it is necessary.

Brevity is important. The rule is to include nothing in the sermon that could be excluded. Illustrations and human interest stories can be used as needed to clarify or to make more impressive an idea. Yet it is well to remember that the strength of the sermon does not rest in the illustrative material. People like to be entertained with stories, and one cannot ignore the need to sustain interest; but what is more important is the irresistible logic of the truth presented.

5. Is the sermon simple! A well-prepared sermon will be simple in its basic organization and language (2 Cor. 11:3). Anybody can make the Gospel difficult to comprehend, but the man of wisdom says it so that a child can understand. Some preachers pathetically feign intellectual superiority by sermonizing in high-sounding philosophical terms, as if the Gospel needed to be sophisticated in order to appeal to the well-educated. That some clerics labor under this illusion may be one reason why so many people, including university students, scorn the Church. Whenever a theological discourse gets so complicated that only a college man can understand it, then something is wrong either with the theology or with its presentation.

The admonition is to speak “in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God” (2 Cor. 1:12). Plain speech and familiar words will help accomplish this. Not that everything in the message can be given a simple explanation: much that is revealed by God remains a mystery, such as the nature of the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit. But when the Gospel of salvation is stated plainly as a fact, it makes sense to the honest soul seeking after God. This is what counts. The evangelist does not need to answer all the curious problems of theology, but he must have an unequivocal answer to the fundamental question of perishing man: “What must I do to be saved?” How well this is done is surely one test of great preaching.

6. Is the sermon experiential! The evangelist is not content merely to state the Gospel; he expects men to be changed by it. His sermon thus becomes a plea in the Name of Christ that men be “reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). A living, personal, certain experience of salvation is the objective of the message. Definitions of that experience are not nearly so important as its reality. Without quibbling over terms, the evangelist directs the sinner to the mercy seat, where by faith he can be redeemed in the precious blood of the Lamb.

This keeps the sermon from becoming merely a pious statement of orthodoxy. To be sure, the message must be unequivocally sound in doctrine; but its orthodoxy must be bathed in the compassion of a preacher who knows that except for the grace of God he would be as those who have not yet found the Saviour. Humbled by this knowledge, the evangelist cannot be judgmental and brazen in pronouncements against others. Rather he enters into their sorrows with a compassion wrung from his own deep experience with God, and his sermon reflects this in a tenderness that the hearer is quick to recognize. There is a vicariousness about the sermon, expressing itself supremely in the yearning that all men might come and drink freely from the same fountains of living water that have satisfied the evangelist’s own soul. This outgoing invitation for men actually to partake of the grace of God and experience for themselves a new life in Christ is what makes an evangelistic sermon consistent with its mission. The water of life cannot be self-contained without becoming stagnant; it must be kept flowing to maintain its life-giving power.

7. Is the sermon demanding of a verdict! The final test of any sermon is what men do about it. If the will of man is not moved to action, there can be no salvation (Rom. 10:13). The decision is what makes the difference. The truth of the message is saved from degenerating into mere rationalism on the one band and mere emotionalism on the other if it is linked with a personal response. To stir people to great aspirations without also giving them something that they can do about it leaves them worse off than they were before. Consequently, once the Gospel is made clear, the evangelist must call to account each person who hears the message. So far as he knows, his work for eternity may rest upon this one discourse.

With this burden, the evangelist cries out almost with a note of desperation. Tremendous issues are at stake. Men are perishing. Jesus Christ died for their sin. Judgment is certain. God offers mercy, but men must repent and believe the Gospel. Heaven and hell are in the balance. Time is running out. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2b).

Preaching that does not convey this point lacks evangelistic relevance. The Gospel does not permit men the luxury of indecision. In the presence of the crucified and living King of kings, one cannot be neutral. To deliberately ignore Christ is to blaspheme God. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord,” the evangelist seeks to persuade men (2 Cor. 5:11). He cannot make the decision for them, but as God gives him grace he is responsible for doing everything within his means to make the issues plain. Eternal destinies are at stake.

This is the task of the evangelistic preacher—to present a Christ-exalting body of authoritative facts immediately relevant to human need, logically arranged, and simply stated, to the end that men might experience salvation by turning from sin and accepting the grace of God. In such a time as this, when the world is falling apart and multitudes grope in the darkness for some ray of hope, it would be well for the minister to measure more sermons by the extent to which they fulfill this task.—

Preaching is at once a privilege and a punishing responsibility of the pastor. The task of preparing one or two sermons each week is prodigious. The echoes of “I enjoyed that” have hardly faded away before the secretary wants to know title, theme, and text for next Sunday. Yet the opportunity to proclaim God’s Word is tremendous. We have truth in abundance, we have the attention of hundreds of persons, and we have the most influential spot in the community, the Protestant pulpit.

Seldom does the minister lift the curtain that screens his preparation of sermons from public view. But The Minister’s Workshop this issue initiates a new series disclosing some hard-won secrets of effective preaching.

The writers areCHRISTIANITY TODAY’Sministerial board members, contributing editors, and correspondents. The initial one-page essay on “One Man’s Way of Working” is from the pen of Dr. C. Ralston Smith, minister of First Presbyterian Church of Oklahoma City. The next essay in the series, written by the Rev. Robert S. Lutz of Corona Presbyterian Church in Denver, will be entitled “Preach the Word.”

The preparation and delivery of effective sermons is an essential element of the Protestant heritage and has its roots in the apostolic ministry. Preachers of long experience develop their own distinctive homiletical practices, and the willingness of some leading evangelical ministers to share their methods with our many thousand ministerial readers is a significant contribution to an era of more compelling evangelical proclamation.—ED.

Preparing sermons that do some good is not easy. The sheer burden of it keeps men from the pastorate and leads them into other fields less demanding in disciplined thought. With the help of the instruction and example of two great evangelicals, Andrew W. Blackwood and Clarence Edward Macartney, twenty-five years of week-after-week preaching have fashioned a method for me. In suggesting it, let me state two convictions about preaching. First, our task is to reveal the relevance of the biblical teaching in our day. The Scriptures are already as relevant to life as our latest breath. Our task is to mine the treasure. Second, sermons are meant primarily for hearing rather than reading. Exceptions are notable, but emphasis should be placed upon live communication. The thrust of “truth through personality” characterizes good preaching.

One very practical help is to plan preaching for several weeks ahead. A good division might be: Labor Day to Thanksgiving: Advent; New Year to Lent; Lent to Easter; Easter to Pentecost; the summer months. The seasons of Advent, Easter, and Pentecost are the only ones to which I give attention in preaching. Get the messages in a framework of weeks. Choose a course or series of sermons. The pious objection is sometimes raised that this precludes our being available for the leading of the Holy Spirit. I think this is groundless. The Holy Spirit is not whimsical. He can operate “when and where he will”—as easily through order and foresight as through impromptu chaos. The “workman who needeth not to be ashamed” is a planner as well as a student.

A course of sermons can be set in a scriptural context and at the same time directed to a current need. In our nomadic times, a series on “Highways of the Bible” could take one in temptation toward Sodom, in evangelism to Gaza, and in submissive discipleship to the hill called Golgotha. When one outlines a course, he gets it on paper and in his mind. His thinking and reading will be sensitive to the needs of his people in the next few weeks. It is continually amazing how items will leap to one’s attention as being appropriate to some coming theme.

With the general direction plotted, my between-Sundays order of working goes something like this. (As I write, I recognize this as an ideal not always reached.) Usually on Tuesday I get to work. Most of my topics are biblically based, and I begin by reading several versions of the passage I am using. Usually the variations in meaning from one to another are slight, but in some of the contemporary interpretations there are particularly helpful insights. I stay away from linguistic references unless they are dear as crystal (e.g., “bios, life, as we have it in biography or biology”).

I then put headings of an outline on separate sheets. Last Sunday the topic was “The Basis for Blessed Assurance,” based on John 5:24. In addition to the introduction and conclusion there were the headings; “What are the conditions of assurance?,” “Two major contributions to assurance,” and “Assurance is a contemporary trait.” On these sheets I write everything I can think of about the scriptural topic. (I find alliteration helpful to both preacher and hearer.) Next I read everything pertinent I can find in my library. Through the years I have catalogued by text, in an interleaved Bible, every book of sermons I own. These I read, as well as commentaries new and old. I am wary of long quotations and despise the kind of preaching that feels constrained to certify itself by repeated reference to the current high priest of startling scholars. Sec the truth in the Bible as it is needed today. Get all the light from other lamps you can, but when the radiance goes from the pulpit let it be Christ through you!

Thoughts that come through reading and ruminating are placed on the appropriate sheets. They are then rearranged into some kind of sequence and reviewed again and again. It is usually Friday by this time. I do not write out any sermon in full; with two messages each Sunday—one for duplicate morning services, one for vespers—and a church school lesson for adults (a book-of-the-Bible study), I have neither the time nor the inclination to do this.

Early Sunday morning I go over my full outline at home. Upon arrival at the church I reduce this outline to a few statements under each heading, paying particular attention to whatever quotations, illustrations, and poetry there may be. This I do from memory, without my sheets of notes. Many times I hate this little résumé in my gown pocket, but I take no notes into the pulpit. This “without notes” practice is good for me, though perhaps not for others. Although I recognize there are assets in manuscript preaching, I find few preachers who can communicate well week after week while chained to their papers.

My sermon follows immediately the reading of the Scripture passage on which it is based. In the first service the Scripture is announced for the benefit of the radio audience. The bulletin urges the congregation to follow the passage in the Bibles in the pews. I believe in this close connection of Scripture and sermon in the order of worship. It gives the idea that the Bible is the basis for what I am proclaiming!

Our first service allows less time for the sermon than does the second. The two sermons therefore are somewhat different. In the second service the sermon is recorded on a Gray Audiograph. My secretary transcribes this recording, and I correct, supplement, or delete from this transcription. Then the manuscript is filed with the record and catalogued by cross reference under at least the three T’s: Text, Topic, Title. By this time I am behind in getting to work on the sermons for the next Sunday. The treatment of the vesper sermon is similar but not identical. I try to get this well along first and familiarize myself early with the objective to be sought. In this way I seek to compensate for the physical weariness I invariably bring to that meeting at the close of the Lord’s Day.—

DR. C. RALSTON SMITH, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

(Invaluable exegetical comments for those preaching on the Experience of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. This highlight of the Lincoln-Event is reputed to have been given by President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863.)

Fourscore and seven years ago

This phase is the work of E, an English professor and friend of Lincoln who had a propensity for utilizing ornate language. Lincoln, simple and uneducated man that he was, would have said “eighty-seven.”

our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty

“Fathers” is a faulty translation of the original “forefathers.”

The use of “conceived” points to redactor M, presumably Mary Todd Lincoln, who proofread his speech and added her female bias. (See on “proposition” and “birth.”)

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Proposition”—by M.

Use of “created” indicates a third author, P1, a priest accompanying Mr. Lincoln on the train to Gettysburg. Since Lincoln was only a layman, it was natural that he should seek clerical help in adding theological terminology. A second priest, P2, also added a few glosses. (See on “hallow.”)

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,

“That nation”—some scholars see here the work of one foreign-born (C?). An American would have said “this nation.”

or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

“Conceived”—M’s favorite interjection.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

“Are met” indicates the work of C, a conductor on the train, who used poor English. Lincoln would have used “are meeting.”

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

“Final resting-place” shows clearly that Lincoln rejected all belief in an after-life.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.

Redundant. A scribal gloss.

“Dedicate … consecrate … hallow”—undoubtedly the work of L (Lincoln), P1, and P2 respectively.

In the three negatives, “we cannot,” Lincoln’s basic insecurity becomes evident; he no longer feels capable of fulfilling the duties of his office.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

Further evidence of his inability to handle such pressing responsibility.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.

More negative thinking.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

The work of W, a warlike adviser who advocated more violence rather than peace talks. The “unfinished task” is undoubtedly killing the rest of the rebel soldiers.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,

Another call for bloodshed by W.

“Under God”—pious gloss by P1 or P2.

“New birth”—a redaction by M, showing fundamentalist bias.

and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“Shall not perish from the earth”—a narrowly nationalistic eschatological recension by W, who is looking for an American millennium.

Faith Community (Reformed) Church

Stickney, Illinois

Have evangelicals abandoned their role as social critics?

‘The Agony And The Ecstasy’

I see in the papers that 20th Century-Fox has brought us the screen version of Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy. By all means read the book. It will tell you a lot you ought to know about Michelangelo and a lot of other things besides. I can’t imagine how the picture could come up to the book, but I hope it does.

This word from Michelangelo is worth remembering. One time when he was doing a work that he was pressured into doing, someone warned him, “It may cost your life.” The great artist’s response was, “What else is life for?” We’re all aware that our days keep on getting used up. It takes somebody like Michelangelo to figure out what we ought to figure out for ourselves—that life, which is going to be used up anyway, can be used up purposefully and redemptively.

A long time ago I heard a story about a young man who was beginning his work with the Coast Guard. Very early in the game he suddenly was called to take part in a desperate assignment, a terrible storm and a ship in distress. As the men began to move the big boat to go to the rescue, the young man, frightened by the assignment, cried out to the captain. “We will never get back.” Above the storm the captain cried back. “We don’t have to come back, but we do have to go out.”

You might try this the next time you are faced with a hard decision. In most decisions the hard part is not knowing what one ought to do; it is being willing to pay the price. I suppose that is one more reason why the Cross is the symbol of the Christian faith.

EUTYCHUS II

Social Action And Reaction

“Evangelicals in the Social Struggle” (Oct. 8 issue) is a welcome contribution to a neglected area of discussion, but I wonder if evangelical leadership has, avoided the social struggle of the past fifty to seventy-five years for the theological reasons you advance.…

In any case, society will likely be with us for a while, and it is good to have evangelicals discussing it.

SANFORD V. SMITH

Washington, D. C.

In a publication that is uniformly excellent and timely, the October 8 number is a stand-out. To the laymen, “Evangelicals in the Social Struggle” and “Love Without Law” could hardly be improved upon.…

EUGENE YOUNGERT

Melbourne Beach, Fla.

Your editorial … is one of the best statements on the conservative Christian position that I have read. You are to be commended for a thoughtful treatment of a difficult topic.…

As much as I appreciate your effort, I must point out what I believe to be some serious weaknesses.…

I think it can be demonstrated historically that … the evangelicals in the mid-nineteenth century abandoned their tradition as social prophets and critics, after which came the social gospel. Finney was both a major evangelist and an influential critic of slavery, but evangelicals since the time of Finney have failed to produce a single important spokesman for social justice.…

The editorial assumes a role for the slate which bears an eighteenth-century label. You would limit government to the establishment of justice and then define justice so narrowly that it excludes benevolence and service which might mitigate human deprivations and unequal circumstances.…

A more important error regarding the state is the assumption that justice is the exclusive function of government, which rules out social welfare by government as a legitimate object of Christian social action.…

JOHN LEE EIGHMY

Chairman

Dept. of History

Oklahoma Baptist University

Shawnee, Okla.

What is the essential difference in positionizing the Church on behalf of social justice and positionizing the Church in defense of an oppressive status quo? Time after time evangelicals have been discovered in the role of chaplaincy to the establishment, but somehow we never see this as “social involvement”.…

What about evangelical influences, usually reactionary, relating to welfare programs, medical care for the aged, capital punishment, or legislation regulating such problems as gambling, pornography, or beverage alcohol?…

ROSS COGGINS

Director of Communications

The Christian Life Commission

The Southern Baptist Convention

Nashville, Tenn.

I was surprised when I ran across Henry Drummond’s sermons to see how deeply into the field of social ethics he went. I had always known him through The Greatest Thing in the World and for his association with Moody.…

HOWARD C. BLAKE

First Presbyterian

Weslaco, Tex.

Both my husband and I have thoroughly enjoyed … “Evangelicals in the Social Struggle.” In fact, he said that it was the social overemphasis in Protestant Christianity in part that motivated him to become a Catholic about a decade ago. From first to last we found the articles informative and heartening, too. “Psychiatry anti Religion” is certainly interesting, timely, optimistic. So did I enjoy “When Sankey Sang,” just preceding the use of my poem.…

M. WHITCOMB HESS

Athens, Ohio

I do not see how the evangelical position could have been spelled out with more clarity or brilliance.…

J. RAY SHADOWENS

First Church of the Nazarene

Norman, Okla.

Mavrodes Vs. Pitts

For his “Salaried Housekeeper” comment (Eutychus and His Kin, Oct. 8 issue) on Mr. Pitts’s article, “If I Were a Church Member” (Sept. 10 issue), I nominate Mr. Mavrodes for a Nonbright Scholarship Award.…

Mr. Mavrodes’s irrelevant, nit-picking criticism shakes my faith in the professorial eminence traditionally associated with Ann Arbor, and also makes me wonder if your selection of letters to the editor is the result of throwing them all up a flight of stairs and printing those that land on the top three steps. Surely, someone must have written words of praise and appreciation for Mr. Pitts’s article—not to mention comprehension.

HENRY M. BARTLETT

The Federated Church

Charlemont, Mass.

• We received many letters of appreciation of Dr. Pitts’s article and approved many requests to reprint it.—ED.

The letter of George I. Mavrodes (of the University of Michigan philosophy department) in your current issue puzzles me. He seems totally to have misunderstood the point of my article.…

Apparently Mr. Mavrodes does not know that a Presbyterian minister is not a member of the local congregation in the usual sense—he is a member of presbytery. But I should think that a person who has presumably wrestled with the Platonic theory of ideas and Kant’s “synthetic unity of apperception” would realize that every minister is of necessity involved intimately in the fellowship of his congregation and is always under the discipline of the church.

His analogy of the “salaried housekeeper” is stupid as well as snide. It is obvious that he needs to do his “homework” before writing to the press.…

JOHN PITTS

Calvary Presbyterian

Pompano Beach, Fla.

Readers On Ramm

It is always a joy, fraught with anticipation of being spiritually edified, to note that your magazine contains an article by Dr. Bernard Ramm. This is also true of “The Continental Divide in Contemporary Theology” (Oct. 8 issue).…

MARY LYONS

West New York, N.J.

Never have I read such an enlightening article.…

MYRTLE R. WICK

West Chester, Pa.

Which is better: An orthodox ecclesiastic who burns his opponents alive and damns them to hell, or a kindly follower of Jesus who cannot agree with all the creeds and theology of the Church?

BERNARD T. HOLDEN

First Presbyterian

Clifton, Ariz.

• A kindly orthodox follower of Jesus.—ED.

Praise For Poetry

Your magazine has done more than anything else in recent years to raise the standards of Christian verse, and to give it outlet. I myself, having written verse for many years, have learned a great deal by studying what you produce. I think that countless other writers likewise study your pages to see what they can learn about contemporary writing in verse form. I don’t always like what you use, but mostly I do, and sometimes I am lifted to cloud nine by something in your columns.… You are to be greatly commended for the contribution you are making.…

It is my suspicion that the more good contemporary verse you, and other magazines of standards, publish, the more will be written. I feel your magazine has literally pioneered a new field here.…

E. MARGARET CLARKSON

Toronto, Ont.

Sankey’S Organ

I particularly enjoyed “When Sankey Sang” (Oct. 8 issue). We have the Sankey organ here in our office. I made a contribution to [the remodeling fund of the] Carrubers Close Mission [in Edinburgh] and brought the organ back in 1954. It went some ninety-five years ago to England from Chicago. It is a Baldwin organ manufactured in Chicago. Enclosed are a couple of recordings done on the organ.

GEORGE M. WILSON

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Minneapolis, Minn.

I really appreciated your recent article by Bernard R. DeRemer. As a lover of gospel music, I am especially interested in the field of evangelistic music.…

TIM J. GOOD

Logan, Ohio

God And Science

Enclosed is my subscription for the year. This one article (“What Some Scientists Say about God and the Supernatural,” Aug. 27 issue) alone was well worth it.

JOHN M. AEBY

Grace Brethren Church

Waterloo, Iowa

Man’s capacity to know God continues to increase as he increases in knowledge and wisdom. There are more people who are aware of God today than ever before in all history.… “Faith” is getting rid of old-fashioned ideas, which you seem loath to shake.

H. LINCOLN MACKENZIE

Cardigan, Prince Edward Island

In Re: The Pope

The United Nations does not need the Pope. It needs Jesus Christ.

MEROLD E. WESTPHAL

Seattle, Wash.

On Our Ninth

Happy, happy birthday to you and yours. I am just a layman and enjoy your magazine immensely.

CARL B. IKE

Deepwater, Mo.

DIVINE COMMUNICATION

Love is—because God is—

from everlasting to everlasting.

It is in the waiting—in the brooding—in the silence—before

Let there be light was spoken.

Love is a bush burning without ash on a mountain.

Love is a voice in the night—“Samuel—Samuel”—calling.

Love is a coal of fire pressed against lips chosen for accolade.

Love is a gift wrapped in the womb of a virgin, delivered in a stable.

Love is a pattern of nails and flesh embroidered on wood with a hammer.

Love is recognition in a garden—“Mary”—“Master”—

in the breaking of bread at Emmaus.

Love is an ascension—witnessed.

Love is flame crowning the wind—descent of the Spirit.

Love is seed in the heart’s ground swelling toward harvest—

sown for the need of the world.

Love is the speech of God—for God is Love.

Excuses char before His mandate, alibis are shattered.

Neither is there flight.

Nor hiding.

PORTIA MARTIN

CHRISTIANITY TODAY helped me free myself from the shackles of membership in the Jehovah’s Witnesses.…

SOLOMON M. LANDERS

Chapel Oaks, Md.

I have subscribed for over a year to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It has been to me an anchor amidst stormy seas. It has been God’s saying again: “I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed to Baal.”

You have aired both sides to many issues, and although some of the theological terms and phrases are too deep for my background, I have continually been “rooted and grounded in the faith”.…

MRS. VIRGIL E. CHANCE

Dover, Del.

You have the outstanding evangelical publication in circulation today, with high scholarship, sane understanding, and deep dedication. I read you every fortnight with joy and delight. Also, you are on my prayer list! Keep the fires burning.

JOHN BOB RIDDLE

Central Park Baptist Church

Birmingham, Ala.

I was among the first … subscribers to CHRISTIANITY TODAY when it began publication a few years ago. It is well edited, and it is constructive and positive. I wouldn’t be without it.

MERRILL C. SKAUG

Victor Federated Church

Victor, Mont.

It is always a pleasure to receive and read your fine magazine, which is defending the old and yet always new teaching of God as written in the Bible. The articles reflect the struggle between faith—true faith—and the so-called scientific knowledge. Judging on the ground of the articles published in your magazine, I am convinced faith as created by God in human hearts will be victorious at the end.

RUDOLPH FLACHBARTH

Nativity Lutheran

Windsor, Ont.

I want to commend the breadth of your coverage of the affairs of the churches round the world. CHRISTIANITY TODAY keeps me informed.…

DANIEL L. ECKERT

Danville, Ill.

Of all the publications that come to our desk, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has come to be the one that holds first place in our reading. I am thankful for this wonderful publication; it fills a need that for many years went unmet.…

RAY M. BAKER

Evangelical United Brethren Church

Boone, Iowa

Which Dante?

Wonderful article on Dante (Sept. 24 issue), but why leave out the bibliography? What is the best edition or translation to buy?… I am anxious to start right in. CHRISTIANITY TODAY gets better every issue.

T. BUCKTON

Herrin, Ill.

• The following are recommended: Dorothy Sayers’s translation (Penguin, three volumes) and the Carlyle-Wicksteed prose translation (Modern Library).—ED.

From The Front Line

I am in Viet Nam with a combat headquarters. The very day I left Fort Hood for the Far East your edition on Asia (July 30) hit my desk. Of course I brought it with me on the jet plane, and I have reread it several times since arriving. This one copy simply illustrates the relevance of most every edition to the world situation and to those of us in the field who are trying to interpret the Gospel in our particular area of responsibility.…

Thanks again … for your contribution in the middle years of this century.

WILBER K. ANDERSON

Chaplain (Col.), United States Army

Hq. U. S. Army Task Force ALFA

Viet Nam

A young college professor who was returning home late one night decided to pick up some examination papers at his office. Noticing a light in the office window, he quietly opened the front door of the building and ran up the steps. His office door was open and his desk in confusion. Following a hunch he went up another flight, to find a student crouched sheepishly on the landing. The student admitted entering the office to search for the final examination. His pleas for leniency affected the professor sufficiently for him to decide to forgive the student. Whereupon the student thrust out his hand and said in a satisfied tone, “Then it’s a deal? You won’t tell anyone?” The gesture grated on the professor. He felt that the ease with which the student was willing to shake on the “deal” suggested something of the ease with which he would forget the incident. He therefore determined to report the student.

However, in the weeks that followed the professor found his moral enthusiasm flagging. The administration hesitated to take action, and the professor began to wonder about his decision: both the ambiguous propriety of “squealing” and the spontaneous quality of his original decision seemed to cast doubt on the reality of his moral fervor. Eventually the student was punished, but the professor never again played apprehender.

This incident and its sequel have become symbolic to me of the attitude of students, faculty, and administration toward cheating in college. Two news stories have startled me into remembrance of this scene: the account of the 105 students who left the Air Force Academy for either cheating or failing to report cheating, and a more recent article appearing in the Philadelphia Bulletin (February 7, 1965) that discusses cheating in Philadelphia colleges. In the second story, the reporter found that 80 of the 124 students interviewed admitted to cheating—over 60 per cent! There can be no doubt of the prevalence of cheating.

But other factors are equally distressing. One is the amoral attitude of the cheaters. The Bulletin found that some of the people interviewed did not consider handing in ghost-written papers to be cheating. I have found that many of my students feel no pangs of conscience over plagiarism; as a rule they see the problem as a simple punctuation error—the mere omission of quotation marks. No moral struggle appears to precede the copying of a theme from the fraternity file; remorse apparently comes only if the student is caught.

Allied to this lack of sensitivity is the sniggering admiration accorded cheaters. Even faculty members regale one another with anecdotes about students’ coming to examinations with tape recorders cleverly disguised as hearing aids, formulas written inside matchbook covers, even radio transmitters concealed in hats. It is taken for granted that students must be frisked before tests, that no books may be allowed in the examination room, and that vigilant proctors must patrol the aisles. Efforts to set up an honor system often call forth the hackneyed response, “Yes, the faculty has the honor and the students have the system.”

Striking evidence of moral laxity pervading faculty attitudes toward cheating may be seen in the Van Doren television quiz scandal, but more common examples may be readily found in our schools of education, which produce a large number of our teachers and which are just as plagued with cheating as other colleges. The frequent explanation is that the pressure for higher degrees forces teachers into questionable practices, such as paying ghost-writers to produce theses.

This too seems part of the pattern. The students complain that they are forced to cheat because of home pressures—that their families demand more of them than they are able to produce honestly. Or they blame the faculty: professors are said to be either excessive in their demands or reprehensible in their teaching and examination techniques. It seems to be an axiom that any teacher who repeats assignments or examination questions deserves to have students cheat. Furthermore, if the teacher cannot motivate the student, or if the administration requires dreary or difficult courses, then each reaps the fruits of his iniquity. The shifting of responsibility to other shoulders—the family, the faculty, the peer group, or our modern, mechanized, dehumanized civilization—shows up as a frighteningly frequent part of the pattern in any survey of cheating. And equally frightening is the fact that teachers and families accept this responsibility. The student seldom needs to face the blame alone.

ON BEARING BURDENS

I am so weary, Lord.

I hear their laughter. Young and gay.

Mocking my heaviness.

What is life to them?

What do they know of sweat and tears?

Of a lonely heart torn by grief and fears?

I am so weary, Lord.

They come to me day by day,

Shattering my serenity.

How can I be strong, Lord?

Such a frail thing is life.

Ashes and dust.

“To dust return,” he said.

What can I do, Lord?

Brush a tear.

Speak a word.

Breathe a prayer.

So futile.

So tired, Lord. I cannot go on.

The muck and the mire. Too high.

I cannot bear my burdens, Lord.

And still they come.

Help me, Lord, or I sink.

Help me, Lord.

Help me.

MURRAY ETHRIDGE

There are undoubtedly as many reasons for cheating as there are cheaters. Certainly, for many students home pressures are more influential than the ideal of academic honesty. Just as clearly, an atmosphere of moral laxity makes extenuating circumstances seem more plausible. Nor has the administrative handling of cheating called great attention to the moral issue. For one thing, administrations tend to be timid about handling cheating cases. The issue is generally reduced to a conflict between the student’s word and the faculty member’s. Even in a clear case of cheating, the professor finds it easier to fail the student than to go through the endless inquiries of administrative procedure. The administration has an understandable fear of litigation; a suit for defamation of character can do considerable damage to the reputation and finances of a university. When a student is found guilty of cheating, the university may be overly considerate of damaging his record permanently. So, in some colleges, a student is sent home but allowed to re-enroll later; or he may be dismissed with no comment placed in his file to damage his chances of entering another college. The attitude seems to be that college students are nothing more than children, not responsible for their peccadillos.

None of this is hard to understand, and we can easily make out a good case for leniency. In a day that is seeing the steady corrosion of absolute standards of morality, cheating must be one of the lesser sins, hastily committed and quickly forgiven.

Even more pertinent is the intellectual laziness of many college students. The search for snap courses offering instant education, the insistence on the professor’s being amusing, the wrath aroused by demands for high-quality performance and hard work, all point to disintegration of the ideal of a liberal education. The masses of students are at college for training, not for education. Many balk at any kind of knowledge that is not clearly utilitarian. The social and professional significance of the college degree is producing an ever-increasing army of non-intellectual—or even anti-intellectual—college attenders.

The grade received in a course is considered significant, not as it evaluates work done, but as it relates to the prospective professional value of the student’s record. Or the student may beg for a higher grade to keep his scholarship or to stay on the football team.

As an English teacher, I am more concerned with the problem of plagiarism than are teachers in most of the other disciplines. After spending my weekend grading themes, or my Christmas vacation grading term papers, I feel cheated to think that this time may have been devoted to papers written by hired hacks, girlfriends, or grandmothers. Faith in the integrity of the writer is essential to any evaluation of his composition. The suspicion of dishonesty destroys much of the value of the corrections and breaks rapport with the class. Nothing is more embarrassing to a teacher than accusing a student of cheating. No day is more unpleasant than the one of the perennial lecture on the necessity of academic honesty and the perils of apprehension for dishonesty—a lecture that is an indispensable part of a freshman English course.

I hope that there is some broad answer to this problem. Granted, there are institutions (notably Princeton and the University of Virginia) where through long tradition the honor system really works; but they are few. For the generality of our colleges and universities, the answer to cheating has yet to be found. Perhaps only the automatic bestowal of a B.A. on every student who sits in classes could relieve the colleges of the hordes of young men and young women who want education without labor. In a time that boasts a plethora of programs designed to flood the universities with unwilling scholars, a plea for smaller quantity and greater quality is quickly swallowed up with shibboleths about human rights. The chances for limiting most universities to the intellectual aristocracy are about as slim as the chances for reforming the whole moral tenor of our age. Nor is there much likelihood that college administrators will soon be converted to the belief that cheating is as perilous to the college ideal as alcoholism, homosexuality, or anarchism. The only real ground for optimism that I see is that 44 out of those 124 students in Philadelphia colleges don’t cheat. May their tribe increase!

Reflecting the Good Samaritan along life’s way

The people who sold us the old farmhouse left us a black kerosene-burning kitchen stove, but they took with them the fifty-five-gallon oil drum and the stand on which it stood. So we telephoned Austin Corbett, the oil dealer, ordering both drum and kerosene.

It was early spring, a bright, brittle New England day, and my wife was there alone when Austin’s man drove down the lane. She showed him where he should put the barrel in the barn and went back inside the house. Soon she heard his knock.

“Does your husband have a handsaw?” he asked. “And may I cut up those old two-by-fours in the corner of the barn?”

Priscilla quickly said yes to both his questions. It would have been so simple for Austin’s man to have delivered what we had ordered—a barrel full of kerosene—and then gone on his way. But if he had, he would have left me with a problem when I came home from work. I could not have drained the barrel into the portable tank that hung behind the kitchen stove unless the drum lay horizontal on a stand. And there was no stand.

Swiftly the delivery man cut the old gray two-by-fours into proper lengths, spiked them together with rusty nails he had pulled screeching from the weathered wood, and toenailed the stand against the barn wall. Then he lifted the light and empty oil drum atop it and filled it up for us.

This was almost twenty years ago, but we have never forgotten this very helpful act. I don’t know how many thousands of winter oil furnace dollars we’ve spent with Austin’s company since then, or how many customers we’ve sent his way. I do know I wouldn’t think of dealing with any other company. For Austin’s man could have done so many other things—he could have filled the barrel and left it there for me to discover how to empty it (with siphon, with pump, with curses, certainly), or how to get all 400 pounds of it up on a stand (with plank or hoist, strain or sprain). Or he could have said, “You need a stand, Missus. Call me when you get one.” But he had not. He had helped us, and we are forever grateful.

What he did, and how he did it, is basic to a successful, happy, useful life. He had simply asked himself how he could help us, and then had gone ahead—without intrusion, without fanfare, without expecting a reward.

Somehow Austin always manages to hire men—and he does not know how he does it—who are exceptionally helpful. Not talking-helpful, or asking-helpful, but thinking-helpful and doing-helpful. Here in this New England village where I live, the Bells’ house on Pike Hill Road burned out some time ago. They saved six cows, some furniture, but not much more. They needed just about everything.

A neighbor drove up to smell and see the smoking cellar-hole and kick at the scorched stone of the fire-crumbled granite. He clucked his tongue and shook his head, then told old Mr. Bell, “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.” And then he drove away, leaving only ritual words behind.

But one of Austin’s men went up there too. He didn’t ask what he could do. He looked and saw that everything was there to do. In a few hours he was back with a stake-body truck loaded with hay. Then other men and women—the do-ers, not the offerers, not the talkers—the philosophical kin to Austin’s men—came quietly up the hill with help. They brought beds and mattresses and sacks of potatoes and cooking utensils and clothes.

Why do some men offer words they never mean, and others quietly produce the help so badly needed? Once when I asked this question of a lawyer friend—one of the most truly helpful men I know—he simply snorted, “Aw, why are some people good-natured? It’s natural.”

Perhaps. But certainly the helpful man is less self-centered, much less greedy.

And perhaps he knows instinctively that genuine help is a very private, personal thing, and the phrase “How can I help?” is not a saying-phrase; it’s a thinking-phrase. You don’t say it; you think it. You ask it only of yourself. The man who asked Mr. Bell what he could do did not really want to help. His intention was to get on record as offering help. He was taking care of his conscience instead of Mr. Bell.

Yet there are those to whom helping is as natural—and perhaps as necessary—as breathing. I remember a paratroop major who shared a ward with me during the latter part of World War II. His right shoulder had been shot out by mortar fire, and his upper body was sheathed in a bulky plaster cast. But he could walk, while many of us among the 3,000 wounded in that hospital could not, and his left arm was free.

Over the months I watched him teach himself to write left-handed, and then one day he began to wander through the wards, clutching Army forms in duplicate and triplicate. In civilian life he had been an insurance salesman, and now he went from bed to bed, advising us about our National Service Life insurance, helping us apply for waiver of premium, converting our term insurance to other plans, changing beneficiaries. Some suggestions he made to me have not only saved me money over the years but also added invaluable comfort and security for my family. I am filled with gratitude for what he did for me, but I still wonder why he did it.

Perhaps boredom was the reason, for he was hospitalized for more than two years. Perhaps he was merely anticipating his discharge and practicing his trade; perhaps he hoped that some of us would become his clients. I think none of these is true, however. I suspect that, like Austin’s men, he simply had to help. For helpfulness is brother to usefulness, and I think this wounded major sensed more than most of us the meaning of Goethe’s comment that “a useless life is an early death.”

There have always been those selfish and insensitive souls who consider helping as quid pro quo—something, or some act, paid out hopefully so that at some later time it could be paid back swollen with profit. Something for something. But that’s not help; that’s dickering. A man who hopes for reward in return for his help—either now or in some later time or place—is not really helping; he’s speculating. True help is motiveless, uncontaminated; the best kind often is anonymous. It is never intruding, never unwelcome, and rarely requested. Although frequently it seems to reap rewards, these are by-products—not the purpose—of the helpful acts.

A few years ago the office manager for a large toy manufacturer, a man of forty who had worked his way through most of his company’s divisions in his twenty years of service, was suddenly informed of a company reorganization.

“It’s not that we don’t value you, Dick,” the president told him in gentle embarrassment. “But the board decided that we need a man from outside. He’ll be a vice-president. You’ll report to him.” He paused. “You know how it is.”

“No,” Dick blurted. “I don’t know how it is.” And he left the office angrily, a bypassed executive instinctively seeking ways to fight for survival.

With his knowledge Dick was well-equipped to sabotage the new vice-president, or at least to let him blunder into errors that Dick could swiftly see but never would correct in time. He couldn’t bring himself to sabotage, but he gave only the minimum. He was never curt, but he was never voluble. He never volunteered the knowledge and shortcuts and guidance and advice the new man looked to him to provide.

Then one day in the company coffee shop he sat next to an old machinist he’d known for years. “Well, Dick,” the older man asked, “earnin’ your pay?” It was a ritual greeting with the machinist, as other men say, “Fine day,” even when it is raining. The ritual answer was, “Well, not today,” and Dick said it, realizing that for the first time in his life he was answering truthfully.

And he knew then that for him to be happy—to think well of himself—he had to produce, to be useful. Thoughtfully he asked himself, “How can I help?” and he knew a multitude of answers. Because he knew the personalities of every department head in the plant, he could guide his boss away from conflict, and he did. He briefed his boss on how the company’s key men would react to innovation; and he wrote memos suggesting changes which he once had hoped to introduce himself. And he felt better; he was alive again.

A year later the new vice-president was offered an executive position with a larger company in the Mid-west. He did not want the job himself and recommended his assistant. Dick accepted, nearly doubling his salary.

Thus Dick’s success would seem to be a by-product of his helpfulness. Yet it might also be said that those qualities that make us helpful humans are also those needed for success.

A vice-president of one of the nation’s largest advertising agencies recently told me, “The magic thing you look for in the young man you’re hiring is his willingness to assume more responsibility than his job calls for. This is what makes people succeed.”

Such a man is really asking himself, “How can I help?” This is the man who becomes known first as the helpful man, then as the indispensable man, and later as the man who creates his own job. Ability is necessary for success, of course; but the special ingredient is willingness to perform beyond the merely acceptable requirements of the job—it is the desire to help.

Among other things, true help involves compassion, devotion, caring, and a willingness to give of self.

We can help others by sensing what they need, then asking ourselves the quiet question, “How can I help?” Sometimes the answer is simply to listen, or to be understanding. Sometimes a friend needs stimulation, and then pertinent questioning can be helpful. This, of course, is what a skillful teacher often does, and a teacher’s task is constantly involved with helping.

One of the most helpful acts I’ve ever seen happened in the lobby of our post office recently. A retired farmer pulled an envelope from his post office box and ripped it open. We heard his gasp as he read the letter. His news distressed him so that he seemed about to burst into tears. Then one of the mail clerks leaned out of his window and, in a voice loud enough to fill the lobby, distracted the old man with a stream of foolish chatter long enough for him to regain his self-control. Then he looked somberly at the clerk, said very precisely, “Thank you very much,” and left with dignity—to everyone’s relief. Because of the clerk’s timely distraction, the old man had been spared a painful public emotional breakdown.

It takes great strength and common sense to select the proper help sometimes. Last winter on the ski slope I watched a young mother teach her crippled daughter how to ski. The girl, a laughing, beautiful child of thirteen, fell frequently; her mother stood beside her smiling as she watched her child but did not help her as she struggled to her feet. It was difficult for both of them—perhaps much harder on the mother, and it was hard on me just to watch—but it was right. Both knew that for this child, falling down was growing up; they knew that physical help would not have strengthened the muscles that were weak: it would have made the child dependent. The easy way would have been to stay at home, but that would have been wrong; it would have been no help at all.

Parents often are tempted to be too helpful—and therefore un helpful, if not harmful—to their children because it is so much easier. Yet many parents do know how to help, despite the time and effort it requires.

My neighbor’s young son has been promised a 22 rifle. It would be easy for my neighbor to write a check for the rifle, but instead he and his son have agreed to share the cost. To earn his half, young Pete is selling bundles of white birch logs to summer residents. But Pete’s father drives Pete to the family woodlot to cut the trees; he handles the chainsaw; and he drives Pete to deliver the bundles. “It’s great,” Pete’s Dad told me recently, “but it’s sure busy.”

In the business world men often ask themselves how they can get ahead. If, instead, they asked themselves, “How can I help?” more would travel farther. Recently a highly successful lawyer told me, “It’s not always the man who graduates at the top of his class who becomes the most successful attorney. It’s the man who willingly spends a little extra time with his clients—even though he knows he’ll get no extra fee for it. He’s the man who is just naturally helpful.”

How can we learn to be more helpful? Like Austin’s helpful oilman we can ask ourselves the silent question and look about us to see what can be done. Then we should ask ourselves whether what we want to do is the right, honest, truthful way to help, or merely an expedient. Is it merely something that will make us feel good for “helping,” or is it a truly useful act?

“How can I help?” can be a silent guideline to us all—in our relationships with family and friends, in business, in civic enterprise. For everyone at some time needs some help, and help given is not expendable. It is like love; the more we give, the more we have. And the more we have, and give, the more we shall reflect the Good Samaritan in day-to-day relationships with our neighbors along life’s way.