PULPIT COWARDICE.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3514, 20 October 1868, Page 4

PULPIT COWARDICE.

The Rev. Lord Sydney Goriolphtn Osborne has written a letter to the Times in which he takes the ( clergymen of the Church to task for their cowardice in the pulpit. We give a few extracts from this remarkable le'ter :—": — " I assert the pulpit has failed | of much ib oui>hb to have done, and is becoming daily more weak for good, because it has deliberkte'y betrayed the caus u for which-alone it should be. as the rule, ever occupied. Preachers, to avoid what they know they ought to say but daren^t'lsAy, wander away in their discourses from ''plainly pfteiking plain truths to everything and any thin'g' -their ingenuity can extract from Scripture which bray chance to attract, but is nob likely to offend. * * * The clergy, sir, may, as the rule, be deficient in eloquence, and far below as advocates of the truth what all could dfsire. God's Courts may have a weak ' bar' — few on the parochial circuit qualified to act as ', leaders' to prosecute the wrongdoer or; defend him who doeth right ; but the brief we holdiis in our people's hands,' .and' the great majority < lib' deisjtand its met important pleas as well as ourselves. Where we fail is— from cowardice. - Wtiy wea'ro cowardly is to me quits clear — we contend under difficulties, no human power can overcome!" * j* * Does not every bishop and preacher ito the i' upper ten' know full well that if, as before God; he did his duty from Sunday to Sunday, he woujd have to tell hii congregation koine truths <a* to their Jives they would sot endure'? 1 <What.ii the result ? Sermons are tame, often stupid. ■ Toe preacher can hardly be very animated in delivering a religious essay calculated not to .offend whSh in his heart he feels what a sViam it is. Yeft, sir, there is fra-my a unre^heatt which feels itielf choked in utterance because, forsooth, the higher ordrr are not to be offended ; their vice is to be delicately bandied, tb«ir .path Heaveaward to bereft easy] lest in the attempt to show they have pome?*hi})^ yet to do they are offended. .Yonr music is jgoodi; it is a. high-bred ftudtenccy the offertory col. lection admirable'; well£ you can. let off" steam into jftiVjSP.G. , abuse Colenso, and narrate the hideous mor? h of Zulus and colonists* * * * I wll trouble you with no more for the present, onlyiadding my conyictjpa^ lfoty^f a Chwijch which has failed of ita purpose '■hould be dj«e»tabuihcd, I think my Church in danger.