Problems... of Youth

For forty-four consecutive years, I have ministered from one pulpit – the First Baptist of Minneapolis. In that entire time, it has been my privilege to face, Sabbath after Sabbath, an audience in which youth predominates. Recently, at an evening service of about eight hundred, a count showed between two-thirds and three-fourths to be under thirty years of age. In addition to this, the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School and the Northwestern Evangelical Seminary over which I preside as President (numbering 1045 in attendance) are, with some exceptions in the night school, entirely youthful. It would be suicidal for any man so privileged to fail of a vital and continued concern in the problems of youth; and I can truthfully say that in several series of lectures to students and other youths, I have not chosen subjects of concern to that class in order to elicit their attendance but rather to express my own deep interest in their problems. Of the several series of sermons addressed to youth, this series has seemed both to make the most definite appeal and produce the most desirable results. It was this fact that leads us now to commit them to print, trusting that while the letter alone killeth, the spirit in these printed appeals will make many to live. It has long been my pulpit custom to preach in series of sermons. That practice accounts, in no small measure, for multiplied publications. Whether we reason logically that that which is given ardent audience will also excite a reader’s interest, it must be admitted that such expectation is natural. Animated, then, by the hope of reaching a still larger number of young men and women, we commit this series to book form, praying God’s blessing upon all who will be pleased to peruse its pages. W. B. R. First Baptist Church Minneapolis, Minn.