Taking Questions During the Sermon

QUESTION: Would it not add much interest to the hearers of sermons and greatly increase their number if they were permitted to interrupt the preacher by asking questions as Christ allowed his disciples and others to do, and as our missionaries in Asia do now allow in their street preaching?

ANSWER: It would probably increase the number of hearers, but diminish the number of preachers. None but the quick-witted, like the cosmopolitan evangelist, William Taylor, could stand it. Young preachers especially would be confused when there were fired at them such stock conundrums as "Where did Cain get his wife?" "Locate the Garden of Eden." "Explain the origin of sin." Then, again, the reverence of our public worship would be greatly damaged, if not destroyed, as it is in our Sunday schools. Yet it would have some advantages. It would promote extemporaneous preaching, banish the manuscript, and stop the mouths of those who sneeringly say; "The pulpit is the coward's castle."

— Steele's Answers p. 241.

Christ No Pessimist

Jesus Exultant!

(A Sermon from the late 1800's)

"He shall not fall nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment In the earth." — Isa. xlii. 4.

 "At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said...."  Luke 10:21 (NRSV).

"Jesus exultavit Spiritu Sancto...." — Luke x. 21, Vulgate.

A PEASANT youth went forth one day from a mean and obscure country village in the East with the idea that he would conquer the whole world. The method of conquest adopted by this aspiring mechanic in the humble walks of a private citizen was as novel as his scheme appeared to be chimerical. He did not employ the printing press to laud his merits and create public opinion in his favor. This instrument of power had not been invented and enthroned over civilized society. This young artificer, who had just left the workshop with callous palms, had no intention of raising a new political party to lift him into supreme authority by its votes as a demagogue identifying himself with the "dear people" of whose rights he was, by loud profession, to be the philanthropic champion. It was not in his program to amass vast armies and direct them with Napoleonic strategy over bloody battlefields to the empire of the world. It was not his purpose to intensify race prejudice and to hurl the strongest nation against the weaker ones in accord with the wicked maxim of tyrants, "divide and conquer;" nor did he organize secret leagues sworn to compass his ambitious design. Nor did he plot to crown himself lord of all by the employment of human cunning and Jesuitical intrigue in the cabinets of kings. He relied only on that intangible abstraction which men call truth. This was his victorious sword. His bullets and bombs, his cannon bails, grape and canister shot were words which have been contemptuously defined as mouthfuls of spoken wind. His agents were to be no astute diplomatists skilled in making the worse appear the better reason; no philosophers from the Porch or the Academy, but a company of ordinary craftsmen drilled only in the rudest forms of labor.