self. And
Peter says that it was impossible for the Prince of Life to be
holden of death, for he was the centre and source from which not
only new thoughts and purposes, but new will and life was to stream
out into the souls of men. This power of our Lord may have been
miraculous and supernatural in degree; I feel assured that it was
not unnatural in kind and mode of action.

And here, young men, pardon a personal word about your preaching.
You will need to preach many sermons of warning against, and
denunciation of, sin; many of instruction in duty. The Bible is a
store-house of instruction and men need it, and you must make it
clear to them. All this is good and necessary, but it is not enough.
Learn from the experience of the greatest preacher, perhaps, who
ever lived.

Paul, the greatest philosopher of ancient times, came to Athens. You
can well imagine how he had waited and longed for the opportunity to
speak in this home of philosophy and intellectual life. Now he was
to speak, not to uncultured barbarians, but to men who could
understand and appreciate his best thoughts. He preached in Athens
the grandest sermon, as far as argument is concerned, ever uttered.
I doubt if ever a sermon of Paul's accomplished less. He could not
even rouse a healthy opposition. The idea of a new god, Jesus, and a
new goddess, the Resurrection, rather tickled the Athenian fancy. He
left them, and, in deep dejection, went down to Corinth. There he
determined to know only "Christ and him crucified," and thus
preaching in material, vicious Corinth he founded a church.

Some of you will go through the same experience. You will preach to
cultured and intelligent audiences, and they will listen courteously
and eagerly as long as you tell them something new, and do not ask
them to do anything. The only possible way of reaching Athenian
intellect or Corinthian materialism and vice is by preaching Christ,
"the power of God and the wisdom of God." And you will reach more
Corinthians than Athenians.

You may preach sermons full of the grandest philosophy and
theology, and of the highest, most exact, science; you may chain men
by your logic, thrill them by your rhetoric, and move them to tears
by your eloquence, and they will go home as dead and cold as they
came. What they need is power, life. But preach "Christ and him
crucified"--not merely dead two thousand years ago--but risen and
alive for evermore, and with us to the end of the world