Indeed, I am convinced that a chief reason why preaching is
temporarily obscured in power, is because most of our expertness in it
is in terms of local problems, of partial significances, rather
than in the wider tendencies that produce and carry them, or in the
ultimate laws of conduct which should govern them. We ought to be
troubled, I think, in our present ecclesiastical situation, with its
taint of an almost frantic immediacy. Not only are we not sufficiently
dealing with the Gospel as a universal code, but, as both cause and
effect of this, we are not applying it to the inclusive life of our
generation. We are tinkering here and patching there, but attempting
no grand evaluation. We have already granted that sweeping
generalizations, inclusive estimates, are as difficult as they are
audacious. Yet we have also seen that these grand evaluations are
of the very essence of religion and hence are characteristic of the
preacher's task. And, finally, it appears that ours is an age which
calls for such redefining of its values, some fresh and inclusive
moral and religious estimates. Hence we undertake the task.

There remains but one thing more to be accomplished in this chapter.
The problem of the selection and arrangement of the material for such
a summary is not an easy one. Out of several possible devices I
have taken as the framework on which to hang these discussions three
familiar divisions of thought and feeling, with their accompanying
laws of conduct, and value judgments. They are the humanistic
or classic; the naturalistic or primitive; and the religious or
transcendent interpretation of the world and life. One sets up a
social, one an individual, and one a universal standard. Under the
movements which these headings represent we can most easily and
clearly order and appraise the chief influences of the Protestant
centuries. The first two are largely preëmpting between them, at this