We Want New Hymns
WE WANT NEW HYMNS
I find it wakes up a congregation tremendously to bring in now and then a new hymn, and if we cannot wake them up by preaching, let us sing the Gospel into them. I believe the secret of John Wesley's success was that he sent every man to work as soon as he was converted, and if people cannot speak, let us make them sing.
Then, again, the question is asked as to whether we ought, in holding revival services, to change the minister every evening? I frequently receive letters telling me about special meetings, how the people turned out well, but there were no results, and I found out that they had a Methodist minister one night, a Baptist minister another, an Episcopal minister another, a Congregational minister another, in order to keep all denominations in, and the result was, they preached everybody out of doors. One man gets the people all interested, and just at the point where he needs to continue his own ministrations, another steps in, he goes out, and the people frequently go out with him. Then these meetings ought to be made short. I find a great many are killed because they are too long. The minister speaks five minutes, and a minister's five minutes is generally ten, and his ten minutes quite often twenty, and the result is often long sermons drive people out of the spirit before the meeting is over. When the people leave they are glad to go home, and ought to go home. Now, you send the people away hungry and they will want to come back. There was a man in London who preached in the open air until everybody left him, and somebody said, "Why did you preach so long?" and he said, " I thought it would be a pity to stop while anybody was listening." It is a great deal better to cut right off. Then the people will want to come back.