As I look back over the last sixty years I think I discover 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 salvation explained; the claims of Christianity were presented; and people were urged to immediate decision.  Nowadays a large portion of sermons are addressed to professing Christians; many others are addressed to nobody in particular, but there is less of faithful, fervid, loving and persuasive discourses to the unconverted.  This is one of the reasons for the lamentable decrease in the number of conversions.  If ministers are set to be watchmen of souls, how shall they escape if they neglect the salvation of souls?