The preacher chosen to give the prestigious Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University in 1907 created quite a stir. Peter Taylor (P. T.) Forsyth (1848-1921) gained a reputation early in pastoral ministry for his unpredictable pulpit utterances and liberal theological views. He shocked traditional sensibilities by wearing plaid trousers and a flaming red tie in the pulpit. What was more intriguing to his American audience was the change that came over him after he returned to Scotland following his education steeped in German liberal theology. What provoked P.T., who had initially embraced liberal theology, to abandon it later? As he immersed himself in Scripture, it led to what he called his “miraculous entry into Christian life.” Liberalism had failed to account for the seriousness of sin in his own life, resulting in his awakening to God’s grace. In his words, “I was turned from a Christian into a believer, from a lover of love to an object of grace.”
As I read his 1907 Yale lectures, published under the title, The Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, I was struck by its relevance for our time. He observed that the church of the early twentieth century suffered from three great afflictions: from triviality (that treats faith more as a hobby than a way of life), from uncertainty (that compromises core convictions about the centrality of the cross and the authority of Scripture) and complacency (that results in smug self-satisfaction). In his book, The Soul of Prayer, he urged readers, “Pray as your actual self, not as some fancied saint. Let it be closely relevant to your real situation.” He wrote of unanswered prayer, “We shall come one day to heaven where we shall gratefully learn that God’s great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayers.”
As the First World War raged in Europe, P.T. moved from writing about prayer to praying: