Item - "Good News and Glad Tidings"

(source: NIU Libraries)

Online Full Text:	Northern Illinois University
Series:	New York Weekly — v. 31 no. 25 — page 7
Subject / Tag:	Poem
Part of:	New York Weekly, v. XXXI, no. 25, May 8, 1876 (Issue)
Author:	Kidder, M. A. (Mary Ann), 1820-1905
Date:	May 8, 1876
Edition Description:	Now the meaning of this word "Gospel" is "Good News," "Glad Tidings." Why, when it is preached in Brooklyn the people ought to rejoice; it should take away their long faces and the wrinkles out of their brows. In all my travels I never met a man or woman who did not like to hear good news. Suppose a telegraph messenger should come among this audience and go up to a man and give him a dispatch telling him that his long wandering son was coming back, and would be home to-morrow morning, how that man's face would light up. I wouldn't have to get down from this platform to know that he had been getting good news. I could see it from here, and I guess the man wouldn't wait till I was done with my sermon before he would get out and hurry home and say to his wife: "Wife! good news! our boy is coming home." Yes, we rejoice when we get good news, and that is just what the Gospel is that we preach. Yet a great many act as if we brought them their death-warrant, or as if they were listening to some stupid lecture when we tell them these glad tidings, the best news that ever fell on mortal ears, the best news that ever came to this sin-cursed earth. The angels told the shepherds at Bethlehem, that they brought tidings of great joy, that is, the Gospel. St. Paul tells the Corinthians he declared unto them the Gospel, and then again he warns those Galatians and tells them he is surprised at them for allowing themselves to be turned away from the simple Gospel. And he says, "If any man preach any other Gospel unto you than I have preached, let him be accursed." - Mr. Moody's Brooklyn Sermon