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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1887)
PULPITS AND rULPITEERS. THERE hiiH Int'ii r great ileal said ami written, of late, on tbo sub ject of preachers and preaching. The most of it has como from the laity; and it is a good source, for, as a class, those who sit in the pews are quite ca pable of imparting not only new, but valuable, information respecting the pul pit and the pulpiteer. Almost everyone will admit that, with the marked change which has come over quite all of the dif ferent features of our social life, there has been a shifting of the pew and pul pit relations. Influences, visible enough, have told powerfully on the position which the pulpit heretofore enjoyed. It must be admitted that the minister no longer occupies the intellectual vantage ground he did a quarter of a century ago. A diffusion of education among the laity has divested the clergy of the great bulk of the former prestige, and the minister no longer enjoys an immu nity from literary criticism. Again, we have a perfect flood of cheap, and, at the same time, valuable, literature entering and becoming a part of the home, and the freest discussion of the most sacred truths is carried on in periodicals of the highest tharacter and widest circula tion. But, for years, there has Itfen an ever-widening intellectual difference be tween the minister and the pew holder. The laity are able now, as they were not in the past, not only to give a reason for the faith that is in them, but to require a reason for the faith that is taught them. Indeed, so immense has been the progress of scripture exegesis, as well as general knowledge, and so thor ough has been the scrutiny of the I'ible, that a silent revolution has Uen effect ed in the minds of the masses through out the English-speaking world. Hencu is it, that the same style of literal preach ing, common enough twenty or twenty, five years ago, is no longer possible, un less both minister and congregntiou are quite behind the age. To put tho mat ter squarely and honestly, tho day has come when it is an earnest feeling of all christian people, that the moral sense, awakened by a closer, more human ap plication of the gospel, is the interpreter of the scriptures. Hat, tasides this dif fusion of knowledge, which has given us moderns a new, and, undoubtedly, a let ter, understanding of the scriptures, loth in their historical and religious sense, there has been a transition of thought, in relation to religion itself, going on iu the minds of the people of every rank in the civilized world If the pre-scicntifio times were the ages of faith, this of to day is unquestionably the age of inqui ry. All, young aud old, are athind fur truth, and for that personal conscious ness which carries conviction. What was true when spoken grandly by the prophets, and by the evangelists of old, is not less true to-day; but the people are asking that evidence of it be given with the assertion. People do not want the mere conventional statement, M forth in Uwdry rhetoric Tbey demand that the pulpiteer shall be qualified to go back of this conventional view of these religious subjects, to where he shall be able to find, for his hearers, the real spiritual meaning. In this day, creeds amount to very little. In their place, Mople want a roramnn-k'-hi, prar-