Galatians 1:6-7 I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ to another gospel:… The dilettante gospel has most attractions, of course, for people of a literary and aesthetic turn of mind. What they seek in the sermons they go to hear is not religion, but (as they are fond of styling it) "the poetry and philosophy of religion." They would be the last to suspect that such a hearing of God's word is superficial; but superficial it certainly is. It is a craving for an external thing which brings them to the church at all. They give to the accidental and unessential the respect which should only be accorded to the message of God. And the hurt to the cause of Christ, in yielding to such cravings, is that it dethrones the fact that God is speaking through the gospel to human souls. Christ is not in all the thoughts of such hearers. The outward construction of the word, its literary or artistic features, its pathos, simplicity, or force — these are canvassed and accepted or refused; but God's message and meaning under all is left standing without. It is hardly possible to overstate the evil to which preaching which panders to this class must lead. For those who indulge in it, the Bible inevitably dwindles down into an uninspired book — at best, a book only more interesting than other books that could be named. The gospel which is proclaimed from its pages — the blessed gospel of the grace of God — passes utterly out of view; and hearers will listen to what is presented to them for a whole lifetime, and yet fail to receive one right-hearted impulse towards the work for which God is sustaining a Church in the world. (A. Macleod, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: |
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