I came across a great passage in Machen in preparation for yesterday’s lesson in adult education. I read most of it and so the audio that Camden Bucey is posting here at oldlife will have it. But for those who want the print version, here it is:
If you accept the Bible as the Word of God you will have one qualification of a preacher. Whatever be the limitations of your gifts, you will at least have a message. You will be, in one respect at least, unlike most person who love to talk in public at the present time; you will have one qualification of a speaker – you will at least have something to say. But what is it that you will have to say? What will be the kind of message that God has given you to proclaim?
In the first place, it will unquestionably be a message of warning: you will be called upon to tell men of evil that is to come. That will no doubt make you unpopular. Men like encouragement; they like to be told, with regard to the Ramoth-Gilead of their pet projects, to go up and prosper, for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king; they do not like to see gloomy visions of all Israel scattered upon the hills as sheep that have not a shepherd. It is not Micaiah the son of Imlah but Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah that often has the favor of the crowd.
I am going to venture, however, to say a brief word in defense of pessimism. There are times when pessimism is a very encouraging thing. Last summer I took a voyage down the New England coast one foggy afternoon and night; it was one of the thickest nights that I have ever seen even on those fog-bound waters. Now I am glad to say that the captain of each of the two boats won which I traveled was a thorough pessimist. For a time the boat would plow along at full speed; but then, for no apparent reason, she would stop and rock quietly upon the gentle swells, and then proceed at a snail’s pace. Presently the mournful sound of a buoy would be heard and then the buoy would come into sight. The buoys were usually exactly where the captain expected them to be; but unless he saw them he took a thoroughly pessimistic view as to their whereabouts. The result of such pessimism was good. The sound of the fog-horn was, indeed, lugubrious and hardly conducive to repose; but at least we got safely into Boston in the morning.
There are ship-captains who are less pessimistic than the captain of that boat. Such an one, for example was the captain of the ill-fated Titanic. He hoped that all was well, and kept the engines going at full speed. I am certainly not presuming to blame him. Perhaps every captain not gifted with superhuman vision would have been as optimistic as he. But, whether excusably or not, optimistic he certainly was; and his optimism was fatal to many hundreds of human lives. The great ship plowed onward through the night; and now she lies at the bottom of the sea. Of, that no mere weak mortal but some true prophet of God had been upon the bridge that night!
That disaster is a figure of what will come of optimism in the churches today. Superficially our ecclesiastical life seems to be progressing as it always did: the cabins are full of comfortable passengers; the orchestra is playing a lively air; the rows of lighted windows shine cheerfully out into the night. But all the time death is lurking beneath. In this time of deadly peril there are leaders who say that all is well; there are leaders who decry controversy and urge peace, declaring that the Church is all perfectly loyal and true. Bod forgive them, brethren! I say it with all my heart: may God forgive them for the evil that they are doing to Christ’s little ones; may the Holy Spirit open their eyes while yet there is time! Meanwhile, in the case of many of the churches, the great ship rushes onward to the risk, at least, of doom. (“Prophets False and True,†a sermon from 1 Kings 22:14, in God Transcendent, pp, 112-13)
Old Life 