The Negro's church,.

The Message of the Minister

61

power of God through the spirit of the risen Christ. If in the
human heart there is a capacity imprisoned, that human heart
through the spirit of the risen Christ can be released to a broader
life.
Who shall roll away the stones which seal the possibilities of
social progress within the sepulchre of inertia and retrogression?
There is only one answer. You and I liberated from the tomb
of fruitless decay. A spiritual earthquake in our lives, as it were,
can do the job. Liberated personality is God's most successful
force, by which whole communities may be elevated from spiritual
lethargy and transformed into resplendent life. It must be
through liberated personality, manifest in the spirit, in the will
within, and the soul of God in us as we deal with our fellow men.
EXAMPLES OF SERMONS DEALING WITH WORLD PROBLEMS
Peace and War Text found in Jeremiah the 8th chapter.
We have had war and rumors of war and this old world is
rocking with the effects of the world war of 1917 and 1918 and
it will take one hundred years or more before everything will be
back at the normal state again. Our children and great-grandchildren will pay the debt of men's folly in 1918. This cry of
peace is continually raised when there is no peace. No time was
there when more thought was given to peace than the period just
before the world war. The peace doctrine was discussed and
just at that very moment the world was preparing to enter the
great war. Jeremiah stood up before Israel and cried about peace.
You need to have your minds disillusioned as to peace actually
existing in the world today, for you have been fooled. You might
ask the question, What is going to bring about peace? We have
been going about it in the wrong way, trying to deal with the
matter slightly and this is what the prophet tried to emphasize.
The fact was that they had been trying to heal by applying ointment when what was really needed was an operation. The
daughters of my people cry peace, peace, when there is no peace.
The cry of peace was being raised when the true prophet raised
his eyes to the north, heard the rumbling and saw the people coming down to destroy Israel. Jeremiah had his ear turned to the
north and heard the rumbling and could see the crowds that were