This is not, of course, to say that every address or sermon is to be occupied with the objective facts of Christ’s life and death.  Such teaching would soon become monotonous and wearisome, and fail in the very purpose it set before it.  Nor have men only to be awakened to the truth, they must be built up in it.  And the practical question for us all is to learn how to apply and carry out in our daily lives, the truths we have received, how to make our conduct correspond to our creed.  That opens up an endless field for the evangelist’s work:  that introduces us to lectures on Home Missions and Foreign Missions, to the story of noble lives; to all, in fact, that is likely to deepen and to quicken our moral nature.  But still this remains as the fundamental object of the whole evangel, to preach Jesus, to bring those to Him who know Him not, to strengthen and to comfort those who do.

When, then, men call upon the Christian teacher to leave the objective facts of the gospel alone, and to occupy himself with the philosophic and social questions of the day, they are calling upon him to surrender his special function and duty.  He must indeed endeavour so to present the truth so as to meet the peculiar wants of his own time.  The form in which the gospel was presented in one age may not be the best form of presenting it in another.  At one time it may be necessary to emphasise one aspect of the truth, at another, another.  But underneath all its changing forms and aspects, the truth remains unchanged; and it is that which must be taught.

And after all, has not the simple gospel message ever proved itself the one message that can touch the hearts and meet the wants of men?  What was it, for example, in the preaching of Savonarola that so mightily moved Florence, the elegant, refined, wicked, pagan Florence of the fifteenth century?  He himself tells us that it was the preaching of Scripture truth.  When he discoursed in a philosophical manner, the ignorant and the learned were alike inattentive:  but “the word” mightily delighted the minds of men, and showed its divine power in the reformation of their lives.  Or, to take another instance from nearer home.  Archdeacon Wilson describes somewhere the experience of the promoters of a certain evening-class, which they had instituted for the benefit of some of the more ignorant and degraded inhabitants of Bristol.  All that they could think of they did for the benefit of the men who gathered to it.  They read to them; they sang to them:  they taught them to read and write.  Yet, in course of time, interest flagged.  Every expedient failed, and they were on the point of abandoning the work in despair, when it occurred to them to apply to the men themselves.  “What would you like us to tell you about next?” they asked.  “Could you tell us something about Jesus Christ?” answered one of the men.  That was the one thing needful, the one abiding satisfaction for their deepest needs.