Archive for August 24th, 2006

24 Aug 2006

The Indispensableness of Systematic Theology to the Preacher

August 24th 2006 Posted to Practical theology, Warfield, B.B.
By Benjamin B. Warfield
From: The Homiletic Review, Vol. 33, Feb., 1897.

Professor Flint, of Edinburgh, in closing his opening lecture to his class a few years ago,1 took occasion to warn his students of what he spoke of as an imminent danger. This was a growing tendency to “deem it of prime importance that they should enter upon their ministry accomplished preachers, and of only secondary importance that they should be scholars, thinkers, theologians.” “It is not so,” he is reported as saying, “that great or even good preachers are formed. They form themselves before they form theft style of preaching. Substance with them precedes appearance, in­stead of appearance being a substitute for substance. They learn to know truth before they think of presenting it … They acquire a solid basis for the manifestation of their love of souls through a loving, comprehensive, absorbing study of the truth which saves souls.”

In these winged words is out­lined the case for the indispensableness of Systematic Theolo­gy for the preacher. It is summed up in the propositions that it is through the truth that souls are saved, that it is accord­ingly the prime business of the preacher to present this truth to men, and that it is consequently his fundamental duty to become himself possessed of this truth, that he may present it to men and so save theft souls.

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The Responsibility of Presbyterian Men in the Church

August 24th 2006 Posted to Christian living, Alexander, Maitland
By Rev. Maitland Alexander, D.D.
From: Presbyterian Men; Addresses and Proceedings of the Fourth National Convention, Presbyterian Brotherhood of America, Held at St. Louis, MO, Feb. 21-23, 1911, p. 115–126.

Fellow Members of the Presbyterian Church. I come to speak to you here tonight in the face of all that we have heard today, and of a great deal that we have heard in the past few years, concerning some great movements which have characterized the modern advance in Christian practice; to speak to you in behalf of the underlying thing which makes what we have heard tonight of men and the Christian religion a possibility. That institution and or­ganization upon which every part of the super­structure of the conquest of the world for Jesus must rest. That organization is the Church of the living God.

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