Only one thing is needed to guide us into generally right ways and keep us from the grosser errors: the recognition that we preach to commend God's salvation to men. Any effort on our part, however brilliant or painstaking, however attractive or interesting, which does not contribute something to that end, is not preaching the Word, and is no part of our duty.

The Scriptures are not lacking in clear indications of how that preaching should be done. The earliest word of John the Baptist and of Jesus himself was " REPENT,"1 and the same word figures prominently in the speech of Peter to the Jews, 2 in the Apostle's understanding of his preaching to the Gentiles, 3-and in Paul's great speech in the Areopagus.4 Whatever the meaning of this word, it was something vital to the acceptance of the Gospel. " Repentance and remission of sins must be preached in his name among all nations."5

The earliest message of the Apostles was that Jesus was risen from the dead. They appointed their new member with a view to his authentic witness to the fact, 6 and time and again their preaching used that title witness of themselves.7 The Resurrection was the striking and demonstrable fact which gave substance to their message and hope to their converts, and therefore it came earliest in their testimony.

But beside that demonstration of the Risen Jesus, there was always from the first an insistent presentation of the fact of his death. Jesus had come, as he said, to give his life a ransom for many, 8 and when he was risen, his first message to his disciples was that thus it behoved him to suffer.9 This was-part of the doctrine he put before his disciples when he taught them to preach repentance and remission of sins.5 Very early in their preaching we find the fact brought out, not at first in the fulness which later writing revealed, but always certainly. Jesus was delivered up " by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God "10 was Peter's early word; when Philip preached Jesus to the Ethiopian he began at the scripture which spoke of his death for transgressions; 11 and Paul showed in Antioch of Pisidia that the rulers of Jerusalem had fulfilled their own Scriptures in ignorance when they delivered Jesus to the Cross.12

In the Epistles this doctrine of the death of Christ becomes clear beyond cavil. " I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures."13 " I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified "14 The insistence which was made upon this fact in public testimony is shown by Paul when he describes how " they that are perishing," Greeks and Jews, look upon it, as compared with the grateful acknowledgment on the part of" them that are being saved."15 To the former it was foolishness or a stumbling block; to the latter, it was the wisdom of God.

Coupled with these things, the call to repentance, the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, and the significance of his death, there was also continually the promise of his coming, to complete the work he had begun. Those to whom Peter preached were to repent, that their sins might be blotted out when God should send Jesus Christ at the times of the restitution of all things; 16 and those who heard Paul preach at Athens the doctrine of repentance, heard as his reason that God " hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom ... he hath raised from the dead."4 This was also the burden of Paul's demonstration to the Corinthians13; Christ died for our sins, indisputably rose again, and will therefore certainly return to raise the dead.

THE UNITY OF THE PURPOSE
These things are not new to any of us: they rank among the simplest statements (though they involve the profoundest thoughts) in our faith, and the reason for setting them out here is not to teach them. It is to guard against a very real danger. It will never be possible for any single preaching occasion (usually a lecture) to expound the whole of the Truth, and it will be only occasionally that we shall wish to summarise it. At other times we shall be obliged to choose, some section of it, and concentrate attention upon that. Something similar is done when we set our faith out in a Statement of doctrines in order to define our standing. The danger we name is that we shall come to think of our artificial sections as real divisions, our doctrines as standing in their own right and corresponding in some way to really distinct truths.

Circumstances to some extent force this upon us as a practical procedure. We must at one time preach about the Nature of Man, at another about the meaning of Baptism, at others about the fact of the Resurrection, the certainty of the Return, and the establishment of the Kingdom, and in any of these we can only lightly touch upon the others. It is just a short step from this to speak of those who " know the doctrines " or do not, and we must have commonly heard brethren and sisters say of one who is interested: " He has grasped the mortality of man, but he is not quite clear about the Devil." It is not far from here to forget that there is an intimate connection between the mortality of man and the Devil, and between both of them and the resurrection of Jesus and his return.

Once that connection is forgotten, a sense of proportion is lost with it. If once we let ourselves marshal the Truth into lines of separate truths, it is not a far cry to confuse the vital and central issues with the incidental and auxiliary ones; and this leads the way to lecturing about a doctrine, instead of preaching about Salvation.

For this is what the Gospel concerns. It is " the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."17 All the " truths " we teach must be related to that salvation, and closely related. " The things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ " are not separate things, and while it may be broadly true that " things concerning the Kingdom" are "political" in their intention (dealing with God's relation with His people in times past and the new order which He will establish in times to come), while the " things concerning the Name" are "redemptive" (dealing with the work of Jesus Christ in bringing the faithful to the hope of life, by his life and death, and through baptism) : yet the passage itself18 does not speak of two sets of " things," and elsewhere it is possible to speak of the Gospel in terms of the Kingdom only,19 or of the Name only.20

The Gospel, then, takes some such form as this for its framework:
(1) Through disobedience of God's commandment, our first parents brought sin and death upon themselves, and mortality and the propensity to sin upon us. We have no power to remedy this, and therefore, but for some act of God, we should be doomed with the rest of men to die and decay.

Moreover, because of the corruption of our lives, we cannot of ourselves approach to God.21

(2) Yet God in His love has been pleased to make possible our approach to Him, our salvation from sin, and our redemption from death. He foretold this through the words of His prophets, and anticipated it in the provisions of sacrifice and mediation among the Jews.22

(3) In fulness of time He brought about what He had prefigured. Jesus came, the Son of God by the operation, of the Spirit, of man by Mary his mother. Under the same inclinations to self-seeking as ourselves, he not only lived spotlessly, but sought the will of God unfailingly throughout his life, and fulfilled it in his death.23

(4) By this means he displayed before men both the course which the Father has taken for our salvation, and the kind of life with which God is well-pleased. He enacted before God the whole service which the first Adam had refused. For the first time since the " Fall" a man had trodden the way of life.24

(5) Righteousness having been displayed, the just condemnation of sin and flesh shown forth, Jesus was justly exalted to everlasting life and glorified at the right hand of
God.25

(6) Because of what he did and displayed (as in 3 and 4), God is pleased, upon our recognition of it, to admit us to the hope of life. This we do in repentance, which means turning away from our former self-directed lives and renouncing their allegiance to sin, and turning towards God in trust on His promise and desire to serve Him. We signify this by obeying His command to be baptized, which is therefore fittingly presented as the death of an old man (the servant of sin) and the resurrection of a new (the servant of God); or as the birth of a new being, begotten of the Word.26

(7) We must then put away our old manner of life as we put off our confidence in it: and continually recalling (in the Breaking of Bread) how we were redeemed, by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honour and immortality. God is ready at all times to be approached through Jesus for forgiveness of our unwilling sins and grace to help in time of need.27

(8) Our hope lies in the resurrection of Jesus. As God, on account of the work he did, raised him to everlasting glory, so will he at his return accomplish the resurrection of those who have known him, and cause the faithful among them to share his glory in the kingdom he will establish. But those who know must not presume upon their knowledge, to wilful rebellion, to self-righteousness or to indolence, for he will return in power to judge, and the extent to which our mortal lives have been directed faithfully toward him, or wilfully toward ourselves, will be the measure of our acceptance or our rejection at judgment.28

Let it be emphasized once again that this is not a numbered list of propositions, and the summaries are not synopses of lectures. They are not even complete, but they try to give an outline of the plan of salvation in which that salvation is kept always to the fore. Many of our well-known "first-principle " subjects or themes of course appear in them: The Mortality of Man in (1) (and The Devil by implication) ; Sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Jesus in (2) and (3) ; The Resurrection of Jesus in (5) ; Baptism in (6) ; The Return of Jesus and the Kingdom of God in (8). But they appear as part of a story, and our aim as preachers must be to tell that story, in serial perhaps, but ultimately whole. Some of the familiar topics are not there, or only dimly so: The Jews is alluded to in (2), and the particular significance to us implied in (3) to (6), and there is certainly no intention to leave it out. The King of the North, however, Archaeology and the Bible, or Is Spiritualism Scriptural? do not appear, and that for reasons to be given in the next two sections.