“The pulpit ought to be a center of power. But is it? God said to Jonah, ‘Preach the preaching I bid thee.’ Jesus said, ‘Preach the gospel.’ Paul said, ‘Preach the Word.’ Again he said, ‘We preach Christ.’ Philip ‘preached Jesus.’ All this means the selfsame thing. Christ is the soul of the gospel as well as the substance of all doctrine. Much of the preaching, reading or talking—whatever you please to call it—is Christless and powerless. Of course, this is a refined age, and the people are away up, but the devil can appear as refined as a saint. Nothing suits him better than to get the preacher away from the gospel on to some fine topic and then get some one to tell him (the preacher) that he made a fine effort. The pulpit should proclaim the great, fundamental doctrines of the Bible. But does it? The people are often treated to a well-written essay or dissertation on some abstract question that does not contain an ounce of pure gospel. There is neither lightning nor thunder in it. One reason why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ was because it was the power of God unto salvation. But it was no more the power of God unto salvation then than it is now. It is the same eternal truth, yesterday, to-day, and forever. “In Hosea we read, ‘Like people, like priest.’ In Isaiah we read, ‘As with the people, so with the priest.’ There is a great deal of harmony between the pulpit and the pew. Everything goes along in an orderly manner. All services must be short or the people can not stand them—short prayers, short sermons, short everything. Oftentimes the service is gone through with, and nothing in it but an out-and-out performance; no life, no spirit, no power. Protestants often speak disparagingly of the ritualistic services gone through with by the Roman Catholic church, but if you come right down to it you will find about as much spirit and power in the one as the other. The result is that scores and hundreds of men, and women, and children are being gathered into the Protestant church who have not an ounce of Christian experience. If reformation was necessary in the times of Luther and Wesley in Europe, and Otterbein and Asbury in America, it is scarcely less necessary now. But some one may say this is putting it too strong. What are the facts? Is it not a fact that the church is drifting away from the more spiritual to the social and intellectual? If the religion of Jesus Christ is what the Bible represents it to be, then the church in general is far below the standard. Where is the spiritual power that was breathed into the apostolic church? Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost was not what the people of to-day would call brilliant, but the people were pricked, not in the head, but in the heart.