some very
marked changes in the methods of the American pulpit since the days of
my youth. In the first place the average preacher in those days was more
doctrinal than at the present time. The masters in Israel evidently held
with Phillips Brooks that "no exhortation to a good life that does not
put behind it some great truth, as deep as eternity, can seize and hold
the conscience," Therefore they pushed to the front such deep and mighty
themes as the Attributes of God, the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the
Nature and Desert of Sin, the Atonement, Regeneration, Faith,
Resurrection, and Judgment to come, with Heaven and Hell as tremendous
realities. They emphasized the heinousness and the desert of sin as a
great argument for repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ. A lapse
from that style of preaching is to be deplored; for as Gladstone truly
remarked, the decline or decay of a sense of sin against God is one of
the most serious symptoms of these times.

Charles G. Finney, who was at the zenith of his power sixty years ago,
bombarded the consciences of sinners with a prodigious broadside of
pulpit doctrine; and many acute lawyers and eminent merchants were
converted under his discourses. No two finer examples of doctrinal
preaching--once so prevalent--could be cited than Dr. Lyman Beecher and
Dr. Horace Bushnell. The celebrated sermon by the former of these two
giants on the "Moral Government of God" was characterized by Thomas H.
Skinner as the mightiest discourse he had ever heard. Henry Ward Beecher
hardly exaggerated when he once said to me, "Put all of his children
together and we do not equal my father at his best." Dr. Bushnell's
masterly discourses with all their exquisite poetry and insight into
human hearts were largely bottomed and built on a theological basis. To
those two great doctrinal preachers I might add the names of my beloved
instructors, Dr. Archibald Alexander and Dr. Charles Hodge, of
Princeton, Albert Barnes and Professor Park, Dr. Thornwell, Dr. Bethune,
Dr. John Todd, Dr. G.T. Bedell, Bishop Simpson and President Stephen
Olin.

Has the American pulpit grown in spiritual power since those days? Have
the churches thriven whose pastors have become more invertebrate in
their theology?

Another characteristic of the average preacher sixty years ago was that
sermons were generally aimed at awakening the impenitent, and bringing
them to Jesus Christ. The evil of sin was emphasized; the way of
salva