fessing Christian must espouse with all his heart and soul, or else surrender his right to march beneath the banners of Christ. It is your task as preachers to summon men to share with Jesus in the great crusade which began at Calvary and Pentecost, and shall never cease until the whole earth is filled with the glory of the Lord; and where the narrower view prevails, you must at all costs disturb its contentment and bid it reflect what it will feel like for any disciple to stand before Christ at last and say, "The world mission of Your religion had no help from me!"
Therefore resist all temptations to dilute your Gospel. Your task is not to send people away from church saying, "That was a lovely sermon" or "What an eloquent appeal!" The one question is: Did they, or did they not, meet God to-day? There will always be some who have no desire for that, some who rather than be confronted with the living Christ would actually prefer what G. K. Chesterton described as "one solid and polished cataract of platitudes flowing for ever and ever." But when St. Peter finished his first great sermon in Jerusalem, reported in the Book of Acts, I do not read that "when they heard this, they were intrigued by his eloquence," or "politely interested in his literary allusions," or "critical of his logic and his accent," or "bored and impassive and contemptuous"; what I do read is: "When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart." The heart of man has a whole armour of escapist devices to hold off the danger when reality comes too near. But I would
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