This is not a plea for so-called "topical" sermons. It is deplorable that God's hungry sheep, hoping for the pasture of the living Word, should be fed on disquisitions on the themes of the latest headlines. It is calamitous that men and women, coming up to the church on a Sunday—with God only knows what cares and sorrows, what hopes and shadowed memories, what heroic aspirations and moods of shame burdening their hearts—should be offered nothing better for their sustenance than one more dreary diagnosis of the crisis of the hour.
But this is not to say that the preacher must stand aloof, cultivating a spirit of detachment from the march of events. "What is history," cried Cromwell, "but God's unfolding of Himself?"—and the real work of the ministry in this generation will not be done by any man who shuts himself in with his academic interests and doctrinal theorizings, as though there were no surge and thunder of world-shattering events beating at his door. Surely in this immensely critical hour, when millions of human hearts are besieged by fierce perplexities; when so many established landmarks of the spirit are gone, old securities wrecked, familiar ways and habits, plans and preconceptions, banished never to return; when the soul is destined to meet, amid the crash of old beliefs, the ruthless challenge and assault of doubt and disillusionment; when history itself is being cleft in twain, and no man can forecast the shape of things to come—the Church needs men who, knowing the world around them, and
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