The Homiletic Review Volume 62 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... of the revered Dr. Alexander McLaren was to the effect that the Bible had been criticized too much, and that now it was time to use it. In many intelligent quarters the feeling prevails that the The vivisection of the Scriptures is not a profitable function for a Preacher's preacher to pursue. Congregations quickly grow weary of pulpit Accent exhibitions of this process, and especially doubtful of preachers who display a doubting temperament. Religious hearers are just as pleased as are those who gather at political, scientific, or literary centers when they are addrest in a positive strain. The Roman Catholic Church depends on the dogmatic keynote. Preachers who ventilate gospels of doubt can never beget that attitude of confidence which countless minds long to assume if they can feel justified in doing so. A minister who can affirm that he believes, and therefore speaks, begets this confidence forthwith. He is not necessarily an obscurantist on this account. Cardinal Bellarmine said, "Assurance is the prime error of heretics." It was surely a paradoxical dictum on the part of the cardinal, for he well knew that Rome required assurance of a certain kind in its devotees. When the celebrated French statesman, Casimir-Perier, was addressing a conclave of French Protestant pastors, he exhorted them to cultivate above all things the "accent of conviction." The expression was felicitous, as the phraseology of Frenchmen is apt to be. It may well be repeated to-day, when, in colleges and in congregations and in private coteries alike, an atmosphere of skepticism is being created by certain leaders whose primary duty is supposed to be the suggestion of reasons for confidence, not the dissemination of the seeds of unbelief....