LECTURE VIII. A MAN'S GOSPEL

I JOHN 2:14. "I have written unto you, fathers, because ye know Him which is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one."

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LECTURE VIII

A MAN'S GOSPEL

A SCOTCH elder once remarked concerning three ministers who had served his church: "The first was a minister, but not a man ; the second was a man but not a minister ; and the third was neither a minister, nor a man.” If men are to be won to Christ, it must be by a manly ministry. Professor Münsterberg of Harvard in the Atlantic (Nov., 1910) says that the strong men of the colleges are attracted to business and other callings of active leadership and achievement, and that the men of less masculine qualities, who lack the power of initiative, take up teaching and other work of a more spiritual nature.

I do not know how true his generalization, but if there is any large degree of truth in it, it accounts in part for the small proportion of men in the average American congregation. It would be a shame to disparage the worth and work of woman in the church, but a feminine church is not the New Testa

ment conception and can never be a conquering church. Women and children are easily led into faith. Their natures seem more sensitive to spiritual truth, and they are certainly less exposed to the withering blasts of scepticism, or the hardening and corrupting forces of the struggle for existence. The Gospel has special fitness to men, and makes special appeal to them, and the preachers who embody it, and present it in its fulness, are the ministers to the fathers and to the young men.

1. The preacher must represent a manly religion. He must embody its masculine qualities. John writes to the young men as the strong ones (oxvpo). It is equivalent to the Latin "vir" - the embodiment of manly excellencies - what what we mean by manliness. Mr. Hughes, writing of the power of Charles Kingsley to reach men, noble soldiers and writers and men of affairs, said that he always presented the manliness of Christ, no doubt more or less reflected in his own person.

The preacher must have these qualities to reach men. Three qualities you would say belong to a manly man, and to a manly religion, loyalty, great-heartedness, and uprightness. A manly man will be a seeker of

truth. He shrinks not from its clearest light. He wishes to bring his life and his convictions to the fullest light. He will not be easily content with conventional views, he must prove all things for himself. Once convinced of truth, he is loyal to it, he gives himself to it. The truth possesses him. No plausible sophistries will be suffered to blind his vision. No personal allurements will turn his feet from its path.

Men wish magnanimity and tolerance in their ministers, but they despise an invertebrate. They know it is a sign of mental or moral weakness. To say that a minister is on both sides of every question is the charge of incompetence, or cowardice. They honour a man who believes something and advocates it and is willing to suffer for it. They may not accept his creed, but they believe in the man. And this is the first condition of a preacher's work.

And the second element of a manly religion is great-heartedness. The Gospel brings its great truths to the heart and profoundly moves the lives of men. Let these truths get possession of the heart, and the tides of feeling pulsate to the extremities of conscious life. Who is the "Great Heart" but Jesus, whose life is radiant with Immortal