1926

After preaching at —— University this morning I stopped off at —— and dropped in at the Presbyterian church for the evening service. The service was well attended and the music was very good. The minister had a sermon which might best be described as a fulsome eulogy of Jesus Christ. I wonder whether sermons like that mean anything. He just piled up adjectives. Every hero of ancient and modern times was briefly described in order that he might be made to bow before the superior virtue of the Lord. But the whole thing left me completely cold. The superiority of Jesus was simply dogmatically asserted and never adequately analyzed. There was not a thing in the sermon that would give the people a clue to the distinctive genius of Jesus or that would help them to use the resources of his life for the solution of their own problems.

Through the whole discourse there ran the erroneous assumption that Christians are real followers of Jesus and no effort was made to describe the wide chasm which yawns between the uncompromising idealism of the Galilean and the current morality. I wonder how many sermons of that type are still being preached. If that sermon is typical it would explain much of the conventional tameness of the church.

How much easier it is to adore an ideal character than to emulate it.