Great Sinners of the Bible

These are not gentle theological reflections. Delivered in the autumn and winter of 1898-1899 at Cleveland's First Methodist Episcopal Church, Louis Albert Banks brought fire and urgency to his evening congregation, preaching specifically to those who knew they were lost. Each sermon takes one of scripture's most notorious transgressors, a murderer, an adulterer, a persecutor of the innocent, and demands that his listeners see themselves in these ancient failures. The brilliance of Banks's approach lies in his refusal to let anyone in the pews feel too far gone: if David could be restored, if Saul could become Paul, if a woman caught in public shame could become a saint, then no sin is beyond the reach of what Banks calls 'the great physician.' The language crackles with 19th-century revivalist energy, alternating between thunderous warnings about the wages of sin and breathtaking declarations of unconditional grace. These are sermons meant to shake comfortable churchgoers awake and offer the outcasts in the back row a reason to stay.