HERALDS OF GOD
You will be doing no small service if, leading them to vantage-points above the lower levels, you show them the country spread out before them like a map, and the glory of the land of far-stretching distances.
Further, I would advise you in the choice of texts and subjects to aim at comprehensiveness. Your task is to surprise your hearers with "the many-coloured wisdom of God," not to bore them with the restricted aspect of the truth which happens to appeal most to yourself. It is a wearisome business for a congregation when the man in the pulpit incessantly thrusts his own preferences, insights and viewpoints upon them, as though these were the sum total of the evangel. Of course, the personal equation is bound to influence your work: and that message alone will ring true which a man can call "my Gospel." But that is no reason why you should jog monotonously down the well-beaten tracks, or drag your people week by week along the grooves of your own favourite ideas. Take stock of your pulpit work from time to time. Ask yourself: "Is there some aspect of the faith which I have been neglecting? Some doctrine which has been missing from my teaching? Have I been doing justice to the many-sided message of the Scriptures?" Use the diversity of the Word of God to widen your own spiritual range. Reject resolutely the tempting tyranny of the obvious and the congenial. And remember Paul's parting words to the elders of Ephesus: "I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God."
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