Excerpt from 1896 and the Five Redemption Years: A Blade O' Grass Christian men, even in these more enlightened times, have been wont to hide behind the letter of the Scripture, and to declare that they are not at fault God, in his infin ite wisdom, has not seen fit to save the world; or sinners, in the hardness of their hearts, have refused to be converted. God has not even inspired his disciples to work more dili gently for the world's salvation. As the inspiration for every good work must come from God, Christian people are not to blame for the unsatisfactory moral condition of man kind. Inferentially and theologically it is God who is at fault. The Christian church goes scot free of blame! The Word of God declares that it has pleased God, through the foolishness of preaching, to save those who believe. If we ignore the less positive teaching of the Scriptures upon this point, and make this text our Bible as far as this one point is concerned, it would seem that preaching is the only duly accredited means of saving the world. At least in apparent fidelity to this idea, the church has magnified the office of the preacher of the gospel until he stands almost alone as the human instrument of salva tion in the modern church. He alone is considered the evangelist of the gospel of Christ, and in every village and hamlet in Civilized countries there has been a pulpit erected for him, and our missionaries also occupy every point of vantage in heathen lands. Surely it would seem that the divine commission had been fulfilled. We have preached the gospel continually and are still preaching, preaching. Preaching; and yet the world is not saved. People will not even come into our churches and sit in the cushioned pews we have provided for them. We have certainly fulfilled the demands of the law, since the gospel is preached every where. What more is needed? Why is the world not saved? The Bible specifically makes faith the basis of salvation, and also teaches that the prayer of faith is duly answered. The church, reading the letter of the law in this respect, also, has established prayer-meeting rooms in connection with every place of worship, and its membership is dili gently exhorted to have greater faith in God, and in his power to save mankind from its sins. We have prayed times without number that the world might be saved, and that the church might receive a greater baptism of the Holy Spirit, and thus be better able to lead men to the Savior, but our prayers have not been answered. We have prayed diligently, and we have also paid for the preaching of the gospel in our churches, but still the world is not saved. What more can be lacking? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.