knowing the Christ above them and within, will set the trumpet of the Gospel to their lips, and proclaim His sovereignty and all-sufficiency.
The question, therefore, is this: If the Gospel, in itself unchanging, must always be set forth in the nexus of a particular historical situation, what are the characteristic moods and tendencies which must influence the presentation of the message to-day?
Attempts are sometimes made to define the spirit of the age in a single phrase—to call it, for example, "an age of doubt," "an age of rationalism," "an age of revolt," and so on. But all such generalizations are misleading. The reality cannot be thus simplified. We have to reckon with a mental and spiritual climate full of the most baffling contradictions. It would indeed be true to say that the most characteristic feature of the modern mood is precisely the unresolved tension between opposing forces. Here we touch the very nerve of the preacher's problem. There are three directions in which this element of tension, of radical paradox and spiritual conflict, of thrust and counter-thrust, is manifesting itself dramatically in the world we face to-day.
I
First, there is the tension between Disillusionment and Hope.
You are going out with the evangel into a world which has reacted strongly and even violently against the bland humanistic optimism which dominated the
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