THE church to-day wants power. She wants to bring about reforms in society and in politics, and with these in view she is seeking to get control of the machinery of the State. She confesses that she has not now the power that she wants.
But the church professes to be proclaiming to the world the gospel of God; and that itself is power. It is the very power of God, and God is all-powerful.
The gospel is power; the realization of this fact seems to have been almost lost, notwithstanding its tremendous importance. The gospel is not a discourse about power. The Jews of old, we read, were astonished at the teaching of Christ, because “his word was with power.” That was the gospel. The same was true of the preaching of the apostles. “My speech and my preaching,” wrote the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, “was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power.”
We must conclude then that where the gospel is, there is the power of God, which is certainly all the power required, and all that can be had, for any moral work. And where the power is not, on the other hand, there is no gospel.
What then is the trouble to-day? Is it with the [194] gospel? or with the church? Is it the church’s duty to go into politics? or to get politics out of her sanctuary, and the power of God into it?