The pilgrim church and other sermons

Front matter

By Percy C. Ainsworth

Threshold Grace

16mo, boards, net 50c.

VI. .VII

~ VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

Foreword . .

The Pilgrim Church .

" Tell us Plainly " .

A Plea for the Priceless .

A New Year Sermon .

Hearing for Others .

Twilight and Trembling .

Faith and Haste .

" Now Naaman Was a Leper,

but "

PAGE

52 61

135 144

154 165

173 181

6 Contents

PAGE

XVIII. Consecration of the Commonplace 189

XIX. The Large Room 198

XX. Going in the Strength of the Lord 207

XXI. Inspiration and Outlook . . . 215

XXII. True Imperialism 224

XXIII. The Hireling Shepherd ... 232

XXIV. The Wilderness and the Sunrise . 244

AN APPRECIATION

BY SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL * a

It chanced that I took up a volume of sermons, The Pilgrim Church and Other Sermons, by the Rev. Percy C. Ains worth. I had no expectation of being surprised or thrilled by the discourses, but it is always interesting to know how preachers are conceiving and expressing the truths of religion. I had not read for five minutes before I recognized that in Percy Ainsworth the Church had a great preacher — one of a thousand. Alas, that he is no more with us! The book comes to us wrapped in the sweet and awful sadness of the valley of the shadow of death.

" The style is that of Mark Rutherford's sermons, scattered here and there in his books, and derived, as that distinguished writer tells us, from Caleb Morris. It is above all forthright, simple, and thrusting. That is the style of to-day, and it seems so easy that many preachers essay it without preparation. The result is that their sermons are slatternly drivel. In reality it is far more difficult to work without color than to work with it. In its way, Giotto's perfect circle was a greater thing than Titian's most elaborate painting.

*The correspondence of "Claudius Clear" in The British Weekly.

8 An Appreciation

" Mr. Ainsworth's sermons have an extraordinary reality. They are sagacious, and often beautiful, but they are more than that. They have each a central thought unfolding itself and blossoming out into striking and often profound reflections. He has seized, for example, the great lesson of such books as ' Wilhelm Meister,' that we often imagine we have come to the end of the book when we have really only come to the end of the first chapter.

" The sermons are saturated with the true evaifcgelical spirit, and I cannot but think that if Mr. Ainsworth had lived he would have given us something great and massive. This is a book which must

inevitably find its way into the hands of every preacher worthy of the name, and multitudes who are not preachers, will find in it the help that they need. It is truly a golden book."