The following chapters are the outcome of an attempt to set before a
large Sunday evening congregation--composed for the most part of working
men and women--the teaching of our Lord on certain great selected
themes. The reader will know, therefore, what to look for in these
pages. If he be a trained Biblical scholar he need go no further, for he
will find nothing here with which he is not already thoroughly familiar.
On the other hand, the book will not be wholly without value even to
some of my brother-ministers if it serve to convince them that a man may
preach freely on the greatest themes of the gospel, and yet be sure that
the common people will hear him gladly, if only he will state his
message at once seriously and simply, and with the glow that comes of
personal conviction. Indeed, one may well doubt if there is any other
kind of preaching that they really care for.
My indebtedness to other workers in the same field is manifold. As far
as possible detailed acknowledgement is made in the footnotes. Wendt's
_Teaching of Jesus_ and Beyschlag's _New Testament Theology_ have been
always at my elbow, though not nearly in such continual use as Stevens'
_Theology of the New Testament_, a work of which it is impossible to
speak too highly. Brace's _Kingdom of God_, Stalker's _Christology of
Jesus_, Harnack's _What is Christianity?_ Horton's _Teaching of Jesus_,
Watson's _Mind of the Master_, Selby's _Ministry of the Lord Jesus_, and
Robertson's _Our Lord's Teaching_ (a truly marvellous sixpenny worth),
have all been laid under contribution, not the less freely because I
have been compelled to dissent from some of their conclusions. Like many
another busy minister, I am a daily debtor to Dr. Hastings and his great
_Dictionary of the Bible_. And, finally, I gladly avail myself of this
opportunity of expressing once more my unceasing obligations to the Rev.
Professor James Denney, of Glasgow. Now that Dr. Dale has gone from us,
there is no one to whom we may more confidently look for a reasonable
evangelical theology which can be both verified and preached.
It only remains to add that in these pages critical questions are for
the most part ignored, not because the pressure of the problems which
they create is unfelt, but because as yet they have no place among the
certainties which are the sole business of the preacher when he passes
from his study to his pulpit.