What is the Matter With Preaching

VOLUME 157

. "

JULY lU8

Harpersof1yaz£ne

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH PREACHING?BY HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK

ONE might think that such asubject would presuppose preach-ers as an audience and that an

article on it should appear in a magazinedevoted to their special interests. Onthe contrary, there are only about twohundred thousand preachers in theUnited States, but there are millions whomore or less regularly enjoy or enduretheir ministrations. Whatever, there-fore, is the matter with preaching isquantitatively far more a concern oflaymen than of clergymen. Moreover,if laymen had a clear idea as to thereasons for the futility, dullness, andgeneral ineptitude of so much preaching,they might do something about it.Customers usually have something tosay about the quality of goods suppliedto them.

Of course, there is no process bywhich wise and useful discourses can bedistilled from unwise and useless per-sonalities, and the ultimate necessity inthe ministry, as everywhere else, is soundand intelligent character. "You cannotcarve rotten wood," says a Chineseproverb. Every teacher of preaching

sometimes feels its truth when he triesto train his students. Whether thegrade of intelligence now represented incandidates for the ministry is lower thanit used to be cannot easily be determined.As we grow older we tend to idealize thestate of things in our youth and tosuspect the progressive deterioration ofthe human race. One theological pro-fessor, aged seventy, obviously did thiswhen he told his classes that each newgeneration of students had known lessthan their predecessors, and that hewas curiously hoping to live to see thenext one, which he was certain wouldknow nothing.

The best brains to-day are naturallydrawn into occupations other than art,literature, music, education, and religion.These spiritual interests are not thecrucial and distinctive concerns of ourera. We are magnificent in scientificand commercial exploits but mediocre inaffairs of the spirit, and one result is thedraining of most of our virile minds intoscientific invention and money-making.The ministry of religion suffers alongwith other kindred callings which serve

Copyright, 1928, by H ar per & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

134 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE

the souls of men with goodness, truth,and beauty. This relative and, I think,temporary inferiority of spiritual call-ings, however, does not necessarily meanan absolute decline in the intellectualquality of religious leadership; and thereisno reason why weshould not have muchbetter preaching than we ordinarily get.

One obvious trouble with the mediocresermon, even when harmless, is that it isuninteresting. It does not matter. Itcould as well be left unsaid. It producesthis effect of emptiness and futilitylargely because it establishes no con-nection with the real interests of thecongregation. It takes for granted inthe minds of the people ways of thinkingwhich are not there, misses the vitalconcerns which are there, and in conse-quence uses a method of approach whichdoes not function. It is pathetic toobserve the number of preachers whocommonly on Sunday speak religiouspieces in the pulpit, utterly failing toestablish real contact with the thinkingor practical interests of their auditors.

Even in the case of a preacher poorlyendowed, this state of affairs is un-necessary. No one who has any busi-ness to preach at all need preach unin-teresting sermons. The fault generallylies, not in the essential quality ofthe man's mind or character, but inhis mistaken methods. He has beenwrongly trained or he has blunderedinto a faulty technic or he never hasclearly seen what he should be trying todo in a sermon, and so, having no aim,hits the target only by accident.

No bag of tricks can make a preacher,but if I were to pick out one simplematter of method that would comenearer to making a preacher than anyother, it would be the one to which thispaper is devoted.

II

Every sermon should have for itsmain business the solving of someproblem-a vital, important problem,puzzling minds, burdening consciences,distracting lives-and any sermon which

thus does tackle a real problem, throweven a little light on it, and help someindividuals practically to find their waythrough it cannot be altogether unin-teresting.

This endeavor to help people to solvetheir spiritual problems is a sermon'sonly justifiable aim. The point ofdeparture and of constant reference, thereason for preaching the sermon in thefirst place, and the inspiration for itsmethod of approach and the organiza-tion of its material should not be some-thing outside the congregation but in-side. Within a paragraph or two after asermon has started, wide areas of anycongregation ought to begin recognizingthat the preacher is tackling somethingof vital concern to them. He is handlinga subject they are puzzled about, or away of living they have dangerouslyexperimented with, or an experience thathas bewildered them, or a sin that hascome perilously near to wrecking them,or an ideal they have been trying tomake real, or a need they have notknown how to meet. One way oranother, they should see that he isengaged in a serious and practical en-deavor to state fairly a problem whichactually exists in their lives and then tothrow what light on it he can.

Any preacher who even with moderateskill is thus helping folk to solve theirreal problems is functioning. He neverwill lack an audience. He may haveneither eloquence nor learning, but he isdoing the one thing that is a preacher'sbusiness. He is delivering the goodsthat the community has a right toexpect from the pulpit as much as it hasa right to expect shoes from a cobbler.And if any preacher is not doing this,even though he have at his disposal botherudition and oratory, he is not func-tioning at all. ,

Many preachers, for example, indulgehabitually in what they call expositorysermons. They take a passage fromScripture and, proceeding on the as-sumption that the people attendingchurch that morning are deeply con-

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH PREACHING? 135

cerned about what the passage means,they spend their half hour or more onhistorical exposition of the verse orchapter, ending with some appendedpractical application to the auditors.Could any procedure be more surelypredestined to dullness and futility?Who seriously supposes that, as a matterof fact, one in a hundred of the con-gregation cares, to start with, whatMoses, Isaiah, Paul, or John meant inthose special verses, or came to churchdeeply concerned about it? Nobodyelse who talks to the public so assumesthat the vital interests of the peopleare located in the meaning of wordsspoken two thousand years ago. Theadvertisers of any goods, from a five-footshelf of classic books to the latest lifeinsurance policy, plunge as directly aspossible after contemporary wants, feltneeds, actual interests and concerns.Even moving picture producers, if theypresent an ancient tale, like Tristan andIsolde, are likely to begin with a moderngirl reading the story. Somehow orother, every other agency dealing withthe public recognizes that contact withthe actual life of the auditor is the oneplace to begin. Only the preacherproceeds' still upon the idea that folkcome to church desperately anxious todiscover what happened to the Jebusites.The result is that folk less and less cometo church at all.

This does not mean that the Bible haseither lost or lessened its value to thepreacher. It means that preachers whopick out tcxts from the Bible and thenproceed to give their historic settings,their logical meaning in the context,their place in the theology of the writer,with a few practical reflections appended,are grossly misusing the Bible. TheScripture is an amazing compendium ofexperiments in human life under all sortsof conditions, from the desert to cosmo-oolitan Rome, and with all sorts of,heories, from the skepticism of Eccle-siastes to the faith of John. It is

calculably rich in insight and illumina-.ion. It has light to shed on all sorts of

human problems now and always; and,as for the personality of Jesus, if Rodin,the modern sculptor, could feel thatPhidias, the Greek sculptor, could neverbe equalled-"No artist will ever surpassPhidias-for progress exists in the world,but not in art. The greatest of sculp-tors . . . wilt remain forever withoutan equal" -it is surely open to even themost radical of Christians to adoreChrist as Master and Lord.

What all the great writers of Scrip-ture, however, were interested in washuman living, and the modern preacherwho honors them should start with that,should clearly visualize some real need,perplexity, sin, or desire in his auditors,and then should throw on the problemall the light he can find in the Scriptureor anywhere else. No matter what one'stheory about the Bible is, this is theeffective approach to preaching. TheBible is a searchlight, not so muchintended to be looked at as to be thrownupon a shadowed spot.

That much insight into contempo-rary human problems which almost allpreachers use in thinking about thepractical applications at the end of theirsermons might do some good if it wereused, instead, at the beginning of theirsermons. Let them not end but startwith thinking of the auditors' vitalneeds, and then let the whole sermon beorganized around their constructiveendeavor to meet those needs.

illAn increasing number of preachers,

too modern by far to use the old, au-thoritative, textual method which wehave just described, do not on thataccount light on a better one. Theyturn to what is called topical preaching.They search contemporary life in generaland the newspapers in particular forsubjects. They discover that in com-parison with dry, textual analysis thereis such attractive vividness in handlingpresent-day themes, such as divorce,Bolshevism, America's Nicaraguan pol-


icy, the new aviation, or the latest book,that they enjoy their own preachingbetter, and more people come to hear it.It is at least a matter of contemporaryand not archeological interest.

The nemesis of such a method, how-ever, is not far off. Most preacherswho try it fall ultimately into their owntrap. Watch the records of any con-siderable number of them and see howlarge a proportion peter out and leavethe ministry altogether. Instead ofstarting with a text, they start with theirown ideas on some subject of their choice,but their ideas on that subject may bemuch farther away from the vitalinterests of the people than a great textfrom the Bible. Indeed, the fact thathistory has thought it worth while topreserve the text for so many centurieswould cause a gambling man to venturelargely on the text's superior vitality.

Week after week one sees these topicalpreachers who turn their pulpits intoplatforms and their sermons into lectures,straining after some new, intriguingsubject; and one knows that in privatethey are straining after some new,intriguing ideas about it. One knowsalso that no living man can weeklyproduce first-hand, independent, andvaluable judgments on such an array ofdiverse themes, covering the wholerange of human life. And, deeper yet,one who listens to such preaching orreads it knows that the preacher isstarting at the wrong end. He isthinking first of his ideas, original oracquired, when he should think first ofhis people. He is organizing his sermonaround the elucidation of his theme,whereas he should organize it around theendeavor to meet his people's need.He is starting with a subject whereas heshould start with an object. His onebusiness is with the real problems ofthese individual people in his congrega-tion. Nothing that he says on anysubject, however wise and important,matters much unless it makes at thebeginning vital contact with the practicallife and daily thinking of the audience.

This idea that we are applying topreaching is simply the project method,which is recognized as the basis of allgood modern teaching. The old peda-gogy saw on one side the child, as apassive receptacle, and on the otherside a subject, like mathematics orgeography, waiting to be learned, and,so seeing the situation, proceeded topour the subject, willy-nilly, into thechild. If he resisted, he was punished;if he failed to assimilate it, he wasaccounted stupid. No good teacherto-day could tolerate such an idea ormethod. The question now is why thechild should wish to know geography andwhat practical interest in the child'slife can be appealed to in the endeavor tohave him desire to know geography.Modern pedagogy starts, not with thesubject, but with the child. It adaptswhat is to be learned to the learnerrather than vice versa. Even the foodwhich the child eats for breakfast,coming from the ends of the earth, isused to fascinate his interest in otherlands; and we :find our children gettingat their mathematics by measuring thecubic space of the front parlor or estimat-ing the distance per second which theyhave walked in an hour.

All this is good sense and good psy-chology. Everybody else is using itfrom :first-class teachers to :first-classadvertisers. Why should so manypreachers continue in such belatedfashion to neglect it? The people oftenblindly know that there is something thematter with the sermon although theycannot define it. The text was good andthe truth was undeniable. The subjectwas well chosen and well developed but,for all that, nothing happened. Tlieeffect was flat. So far as the sermonwas concerned, the congregation mightas well have stayed home. It may havebeen a "beautiful effort," as some kindlywoman doubtless told the preacher, butit did no business in human lives. Thereason for this can commonly be tracedto one cause: the preacher started hissermon at the wrong end. He made it


the exposition of a text or the elucidationof a subject instead of a well-plannedendeavor to help solve some concreteproblems in the individual lives beforehim. He need not have used any othertext or any different materials in hissermon, but if he had defined his objectrightly he would have arranged andmassed the material differently. Hewould have gone into his sermon via realinterest in his congregation and wouldhave found the whole procedure kindlingto himself and to them.

IVThe meaning of this method can best

be seen in some of 'its corollaries. Forone thing, it makes a sermon a co-opera-tive enterprise between the preacher andhis congregation. When a man has gothold of a real difficulty in the life andthinking of his people and is trying tomeet it he finds himself not so muchdogmatically thinking for them as co-operatively thinking with them. Hissermon is an endeavor to put himself intheir places and help them to think theirway through,

The difference in tone and qualitywhich this makes in a sermon is in-calculable. Anyone accustomed to hear-ing preaching must be aware of twodiverse effects commonly produced.One type of minister plays "Sir Oracle."He is dogmatic, assertive, uncompromis-ing. He flings out his dicta as thoughto say to all hearers, Take it or leave it.He has settled the matter concerningwhich he is speaking and is not askingour opinion; he is telling us. Thishomiletical dogmatism has its own kindof influence on credulous and impression-able minds. Such minds are numerous,so that such preaching can go on foryears ahead. As Jesus said about thePharisees, such preachers have theirreward.

Their method, however, has long sincelostits influence over intelligent people,and the future does not belong to it.The future, I think, belongs to a type of

sermon which can best be described asan adventure in co-operative thinkingbetween the preacher and his congrega-tion. The impression made by suchpreaching easily is felt by anyone whoruns into it. The preacher takes holdof a real problem in our lives and, statingit better than we could state it, goes onto deal with it fairly, frankly, helpfully.The result is inevitable: he makes usthink. We may agree with him ordisagree with him, but we must followhim. He is dealing with somethingvital to us and so he makes us thinkwith him even though we may haveplanned a far more somnolent use ofsermon time.

Here, too, we are dealing with preach-ing in terms of good pedagogy. Thelecture method of instruction is nolonger in the ascendent. To be sure,there are subjects which must be han-dled by the positive setting forth ofinformation in a lecture, but more andmore good teaching is discussional,co-operative. The instructor does notso much think for the students as thinkwith them. From the desire to usesome such method in religious instruc-tion has come the forum in modernchurches and the questionnaire groupafter the sermon, where those who wishcan put objections and inquiries to thepreacher, and discussion groups of allsorts where religious questions arethreshed out in mutual conference.The principle behind such methods ispsychologically right. We never reallyget an idea until we have thought it forourselves.

A good sermon should take this intoaccount. A wise preacher can so buildhis sermon that it will be, not a dogmaticmonologue but a co-operative dialoguein which all sorts of things in the mindsof the congregation-objections, ques-tions, doubts, and confirmations-willbe brought to the front and fairly dealtwith. This requires clairvoyance onthe preacher's part as to what the peopleare thinking, but any man who lacksthat has no business to preach anyway.


Recently, in a school chapel, so I amtold, the headmaster was only wellstarted on his sermon when a professormounted the pulpit beside him andoffered a criticism of what he was saying.Great excitement reigned. The head-master answered the objection, but theprofessor remained in the pulpit, and thesermon that day was a running discus-sion between the two on a great theme inreligion. To say that the boys wereinterested is to put it mildly. Theynever had been so worked up over any-thing religious before. It turned outafterward that the whole affair had beenprearranged. It was an experiment in anew kind of preaching, where one mandoes not produce a monologue but wherediverse and competing points of vieware frankly dealt with.

Any preacher without introducinganother personality outwardly in thepulpit can utilize the principle involvedin this method. If he is to handlehelpfully real problems in his congrega-tion, he must utilize it. He must seeclearly and state fairly what peopleother than himself are thinking on thematter in hand. He may often makethis so explicit as to begin paragraphswith such phrases as, "But some of youwill say," or "Let us consider a fewquestions that inevitably arise," or,"Face frankly with me the opposingview," or, "Some of you have hadexperiences that seem to contradict whatwe are saying." Of course, this method,like any other, can be exaggerated andbecome a mannerism. But somethinglike it is naturally involved in anypreaching which tries to help people tothink through and live through theirproblems.

Such preaching when it is well donealways possesses an important quality.It is not militant and pugnacious butirenic, kindly, and constructively help-ful. How much the churches need suchdiscourses! We have endless sermonsof sheer propaganda where preachersset out by hook or crook to put some-thing over on the congregation. We

have pugnacious sermons where preach-ers wage, campaigns, attack enemies,assail the citadels of those who disagree,and in general do anything warlike andvehement. But sermons that try toface the people's real problems withthem, meet their difficulties, answer theirquestions, interpret their experiences insympathetic, wise, and understandingco-operation-what a dearth of themthere is!

Yet not only is such preaching themost useful; it is the most interesting.This is the only way I know to achieve ex-citement without sensationalism. Con-structively to state the problem ofmeeting trouble victoriously, or of livingabove the mediocre moral level of amodern city, or of believing in God in theface of the world's evil, or of makingChrist's principles triumphant againstthe present international and interracialprejudice is surely not sensationalism,but it is vitally interesting. A breath-less auditor came up after one suchsermon saying, "I nearly passed outwith excitement, for I did not see howyou possibly could answer that objectionwhich you raised against your ownthought. I supposed you would do itsomehow but I could not see how untilyou did it." There is nothing thatpeople are so interested in as themselves,their own problems, and the way tosolve them. That fact is basic. Nopreaching that neglects it can raise aripple on a congregation. It is theprimary starting point of all successfulpublic speaking, and for once the re-quirements of practical success and idealhelpfulness coincide. He who reallyhelps folk to understand their own livesand see their way through their spiritualproblems is performing one of the mostimportant functions in the modernworld. .

vNo method of preaching is without its

dangers and, of course, this one which Iam espousing has perils in plenty. Ipresented it once to a group of experi-


enced ministers and collected a galaxyof warnings as to its possible perversions.They thought of times when they hadtried it with disappointing results.They had endeavored so precisely todeal with a real problem that Mr.Smith had vexatiously waked up to thefact that they were talking about him,or they had wanted to be so fair aboutobjections to their thought that theyhad overstated the opposing side andthen had neither time nor ability toanswer it, or they had been so practicalin thinking about some definite problemthat they had become trivial and hadforgotten to bring the wide sweep of theGospel's truth to bear in an elevatingway on the point at issue, or they hadbeen so anxious to deal with felt needsin the congregation that they forgot toarouse the consciousness of need unfeltbut real. All these dangers are presentin the method which we are suggesting.It can be offensively personal, argu-mentatively unconvincing, practicallytrivial, and narrowed to the consciousneeds of mediocre people. But theseperversions are the fault of just suchunskilled handling as would wreck anymethod whatsoever.

The best antidote to making a wronguse of the project method in the pulpit isto be discovered in the ideal of creativepreaching. The danger involved instarting a sermon with a problem is thatthe very word problem suggests some-thing to be merely debated and itssolution may suggest nothing morethan the presentation of a helpful ideato the mind. But we all want some-thing else in a sermon than a discussioneven about one of our vital problems, nomatter how wise the discussion or howsuggestive the conclusion. The bestsermons, I still maintain, are preachedon the project method but, after all, inthe preacher's hands it means somethingmore than the same method in a class-room. It is the project method plus.

What this plus is can easily be seen.When a preacher deals with joy, let ussay, he ought to start, not with joy in

the :fifth century B.C. nor with joy as asubject to be lectured on, but with theconcrete difficulties in living joyfullythat his people actually experience. Heshould have in mind from the start theirmistaken ideas of joy, their false at-tempts to get it, the causes of theirjoylessness, and their general problemof victorious and happy living in theface of life's puzzling and sometimesterrific experiences. This is a realproblem for everybody, and the sermonthat throws light on it is a real sermon.But that real sermon must do more thandiscuss joy-it must produce it. Allpowerful preaching is creative. It ac-tually brings to pass in the lives of thecongregation the thing it talks about.So to tackle the problem of joy that thewhole congregation goes out more joyfulthan it came in-that is the mark of agenuine sermon.

Here lies a basic distinction betweena sermon and an essay. The outstand-ing criticism popularly and properlylaunched against a great deal of ourmodern, liberal preaching is that thoughit consists of neat, analytical discourses,pertinent to real problems and oftenwell conceived and well phrased, it doesnothing to anybody. Such sermons arenot sermons but essays. It is lamen-tably easy to preach feebly aboutrepentance without making anybodyfeel like repenting, or to deliver anaccomplished discourse on peace withoutproducing any of that valuable article inthe auditors. On the other hand, a truepreacher is creative. He does morethan discuss a subject; he produces thething itself in the people who hear it.As an English bishop said about PhillipsBrooks, "He makes one feel so strong."

Obviously, personal quality is themajor factor in producing spiritualpower. There is a real reason for thehalos which the painters ha ve put aboutthe heads of the saints. They aresymbols of something intangible butreal-an effluence that ordinary men donot possess, a radiance that is not theless powerful because it is ineffable.


Nevertheless, even a moderately en-dowed preacher, who never would sug-gest a halo to anybody, may have someof this power to create what he discusses.Whether he does or not depends a greatdeal upon whether he sees the objectiveclearly enough to head for it with pre-cision. H he thinks of his sermonmerely as a discussion of somebody'sproblem he will play with a series ofideas, but if he thinks of his sermon as anendeavor to create something in hiscongregation he will play on motives.There is where much of our modernpreaching fails. The old preachers attheir best did know where the majormotives were. Fear, love, gratitude,self-preservation, altruism-such springsof human action the old sermons oftenused with consummate power. To besure, they sometimes outraged thepersonalities of both adults and childrenby the way they did it but, for all that,they often showed an uncanny insightinto the springs of human action. Ioften think that we modern preacherstalk about psychology a great deal morethan our predecessors did but use it agreat deal less.

One often reads modern sermons withamazement. How do the preachersexpect to get anything done in humanlife with such discourses? They do notcome within reaching distance of anypowerful motives in man's conduct.They are keyed to argumentation ratherthan creation. They produce essays,which means that they are chiefly con-cerned with the elucidation of a theme.H they were producing sermons theywould be chiefly concerned with thetransformation of personality.

This, however, brings us back to ourmajor issue. If a preacher is to use theproject method, as a preacher should,not simply to discuss the real problemsof real people but to create in the peoplethe thing that is discussed, his chiefinterest must be the individuals in hiscongregation. He must know themthrough and through, not only theirproblems but their motives, not only

what they are thinking but why they areacting as they do. Preaching becomesthrilling business when it successfullyachieves this definite direction and aim.A sermon, then, is an engineering opera-tion by which a chasm is spanned so thatspiritual goods on one side are actuallytransported into personal lives upon theother.

VI

Throughout this paper we have heldup the ideal of preaching as an interest-ing operation. That is a most importantmatter, not only to the audience but tothe man in the pulpit. The number offed-up, fatigued, bored preachers isappalling. Preaching has become tothem a chore. They have to "get up" asermon, perhaps two sermons, weekly.They struggle at it. The juice goes outof them as the years pass. They returnrepeatedly to old subjects and try towhip up enthusiasm over weather-beaten texts and themes. Their dis-courses sink into formality. They buildconventional sermon outlines, fill themin with conventional thoughts, and letit go at that. Where is the zest andthrill with which in their chivalrousyouth they started out to be ministers ofChrist to the spiritual life of theirgeneration?

Of course, nothing can make preachingeasy. At best it means drenching acongregation with one's lifeblood. Butwhile, like all high work, it involvessevere concentration, toil, and self-expenditure, it can be so exhilarating asto recreate in the preacher the strengthit takes from him, as good agriculturereplaces the soil it uses. Whenever thatphenomenon happens one is sure to finda man predominantly interested in per-sonalities and what goes on inside ofthem. He has understood people, theirproblems, troubles, motives, failures,and desires, and in his sermons he hasknown how to handle their lives sovitally that week after week he hasproduced real changes. People havehabitually come up after the sermon, not


to offer some bland compliment, but tosay, "How did you know I was facingthat problem only this week?" or "Wewere discussing that very matter atdinner last night," or, best of all, "Ithink you would understand my case-may I have a personal interview withyou?"

This, I take it, is the final test of asermon's worth: how many individualswish to see the preacher alone?

I should despair, therefore, of anyman's sustained enthusiasm and effi-ciency in the pulpit if he were not inconstant, confidential relationship withindividuals. Personal work and preach-ing are twins. As I watch some preach-ers swept off their feet by the demandsof their own various organizations,falling under the spell of bigness, andrushing from one committee to anotherto put over some new scheme to enlargethe work or save the world, I do notwonder at the futility which so oftenbesets them. They are doing every-thing except their chief business, for thatlies inside individuals.

If someoneutterly "sold" to our Amer-ican worship of size and our grandioseschemes for saving the world shouldprotest that this means individualisticpreaching, he would only reveal his ownobtuseness. In one sense, all goodpreaching and all good public speakingof any kind must be individualistic-itmust establish vital contact with indi-viduals. Even if one were speaking onthe rings of Saturn one might as well notbegin unless one could cook up somereason why the audience should wish tohear about them. The failure to recog-nize this fact explains why so much ofour so-called social preaching falls flat orrouses resentment. A man who onSunday morning starts in to solve theeconomic question or the internationalquestion as though his people must havecome that day of a purpose to hear himdo it deserves almost any unpleasantthing that can happen to him. He maybe ,a Ph.D. in psychology but I doubtwhether he knows enough about the way

men's minds do actually act to be asuccessful grocer's assistant.

His special business as a Christianpreacher with economic and interna-tional questions is profound and vital,but in so far as he sticks to his last hisinterest as a minister is distinct from any-one else's and it calls for an approach ofhis own. The world's economic andinternational situation is not alien to ourpersonal problems. It invades them,shapes them in multitudinous ways; itundoes in us and around us much thatthe Christian should wish done and itdoes much that the Christian mostshould fight against. Let a preacher,therefore, start at the end of the problemwhere he belongs. Let him begin withthe people in front of him, with whatgoes on inside of them because socialconditions are as they are, with theeconomic and international reasons formany of their unchristian moods, tem-pers, ideas, and ideals, with their re-sponsibilities and obligations in thematter, and in general with the tremen-dous stake which personal Christianityhas in those powerful social forces whichcreate the climate in which it musteither live or die, Such preaching onsocial questions starts, as it shouldstart, with the individuals immediatelyconcerned, establishes contact with theirlives, and has at least some faintchance of doing a real business onSunday.

Every problem that the preacherfaces thus leads back to one basic ques-tion: how well does he understand thethoughts and lives of his people? Thathe should know his Gospel goes withoutsaying, but he may know it ever so welland yet fail to get it within reachingdistance of anybody unless he intimatelyunderstands people and cares more thanhe cares for anything else what is hap-pening inside of them. Preaching iswrestling with individuals over questionsof life and death, and until that ideaof it commands a preacher's mind andmethod, eloquence will avail him littleand theology not at all.

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What is the Matter With Preaching