THE PREACHER'S WORLD
disillusioned. And that, for an ambassador of Christ, is tragedy.
How to maintain yourselves against the menace of this mood—that I shall speak of more specifically when we come to consider the preacher's inner life. But maintain yourselves you must: or else—don't try to speak to men in the name of God! For your task is to confront the rampant disillusionment of the day, and smash it with the Cross of Christ and shame it with the splendour of the Resurrection. What makes your calling in the Church so urgent and so critical is the fact that human hearts, bombarded with grim perplexities and damaging shadows of despair, are crying as never before, "Is there any word from the Lord?" Men who have seen war's scourge let loose twice in a generation are not going to be put off with polite trivialities and polished essays and pulpit dialectic. They don't want our views, opinions, advice or arguments. Is there any word from the Lord? Tell us that, they demand. Has Christianity failed? Must God's hopes be wrecked for ever on the rock of man's anarchic nature? Are we mad to pray "Thy kingdom come"? These demonic forces of evil in the universe, mocking all our dreams and best endeavours—are they fated to have the last word? It is all very well to stand up in church and sing:
So be it. Lord! Thy throne shall never,
Like earth's proud empires, pass away;
Thy Kingdom stands and grows for ever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.
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