The narrow, intolerant old dogmas have been forced into elasticity by the later generations, and the broadening work still goes on.
It makes no difference how satisfied you may be with a prospective lake of fire for your enemies, the congregations you are to address will not listen to that style of sermon as did your grandparents.
Only the ignorant minds to-day harbour ideas of cruelty and revenge in connection with a Creator.
Thinkers find such theories inconsistent with religious belief. Individual thought is leading to individual faith.
Where once I believed in a universal church for all the world, I now believe in a separate creed for each soul, one fashioned to suit his own particular need, with the underlying basis of love for all created things as its foundation.
Let each man worship in his own way, and follow his own ideal of duty to God and humanity.
If it is the pleasure of one to give up all his worldly goods, and to go and live and labour among the poor, wish him Godspeed; but if another keeps his place among men of affairs, makes money honestly, and uses it unselfishly, let him, too, have your blessing, since he is setting a good example for the worldly-minded. If one man finds himself nearer to God on Sunday by going out and peacefully enjoying the beauties of nature and the association of his kind, do not try to convince him that he is on the highway to perdition because he does not sit in a pew and listen to depressing sermons.
The day is over for that type of clergyman to succeed.
Make a study of the needs of men to-day, and suit your sermons to those needs.
Men need to know more of the wonders of God's universe. Talk to them in a brief, concise, interesting manner of the recent discoveries of science, and their frequent remarkable corroboration of the old religious theories. Thousands of years ago, in Egypt and India, wise men said that metals and all created things possessed life, and were a part of one great immortal whole, of which man was the highest expression.