Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1883 — What Pulpit Popularity Means. [ARTICLE]

What Pulpit Popularity Means.

Pulpit popularity has come to have a false meaning. The popular preacher now is not the one who stirs men’s hearts, but the one who draws money. He is judged, like an actor, by the receipts at the box-office. If the pews are taken at high prices, if the church can maintain itself in style and pay expenses, the minister is a good card. He can command a liberal salary; perhaps he can figure as a star, and make lucrative lecture engagements. Whether or not his congregation show any advancement in spirituality under his exhortations, or his people learn to adorn their daily lives with simplicity and earnestness and truth, or the poor and unhappy find succor and comfort at his door, are questions which trouble the applauding public very little. They measure the popular clergyman’s success by secular standards, and he is but too apt to accept their measure as a just one.—New York Tribune.