Rude Pulpit

On Friday night, I preached at a farmhouse in Lunesdale. It was a fine Georgian building with portico and symmetrical windows, and it enjoyed a generous parlour in which a gathering of perhaps five dozen folk could assemble. The pulpit was handmade, using four lengths of timber and a metal plate. Though well-constructed and stable, few would describe it as refined or polished, such as the kind located in the old dissenting chapels or Anglican parish churches. Yet, God willing, it matched well enough the sermon preached from it that night, and other nights, too. No artifice, no flattery; little eloquence, though perfectly solid and unwobbling.

Truly, there are grandiose pulpits and lecterns from which nought but froth and bubble emanate; there are also farmhouses and rented halls from which the greatest eternal truths are shared and honoured. Let Herod lounge about in his palace: the wise must attend the stable in days of spiritual famine.