That reads a good deal like the description of Savonarola’s congregations, or of Wesley’s, or of the young revivalist in Wales.  No difficulty about their audiences—­or congregations, if you insist on being technical.

Of course, everybody understands that preaching and faith and all that is not everything that the young minister must do for his fellow man.  “Faith without works is dead.”  Everybody who has read the Bible understands that.

But this paper is on “The Young Man and the Pulpit”—­an attempt to give him an idea of how the people he is going to preach to look at this matter, how they regard him, and, above all else, what the people to whom his life work is devoted really need and really want above everything else in this world.

Don’t preach woe, punishment, and all mournfulness to the people all the time.  Where you find sin, go ahead and denounce it mercilessly; but do it crisply, cuttingly, not dully and innocuously.  Speak to kill.  Do not forget that the Master told the people of His day that they “were a generation of vipers.”

But that was not the burden of His appeal.  He knew that there were other things in the world and human nature besides sin.  Mostly He spoke of “things lovely and of good report.”  Remember that His coming was announced as a bringing of “good tidings of great joy.”

The Sermon on the Mount is the perfection of thought, feeling, and expression.  Make it your example.  You will recall that it begins:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  It is full of “blessed” and blessings, of consolations and encouragements and loving promises of beautiful certainties.  “Ye are the light of the world,” He said.  The Sermon on the Mount radiates sense and kindness and prayer.

The One understood that most glorious truth of all truths—­that there is some good in each of us, and that if that good only could be recognized and encouraged it would overcome the bad in us.  You will remember the saying:  “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”

So don’t be an orator of melancholy.  There is enough sadness in the world without your adding to it by either visage, conduct, or sermon.  Besides, it is not what you are directed to do.  The people would be very glad if you could say with Isaiah that

“The Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; ... he hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord ... to comfort all that mourn ... to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”

That is the kind of talk that will cheer the people, and it is the kind of talk that will do the people good.  There is nothing “blue” about that.  And it is what the Book bids you tell the people.  The people want it, too, and need it—­they need “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”