"The Hero in Thy Soul" came in 1928 -- an attempt to face life gallantly. This book is lightened and colored by the preacher's faith and courage and his resolute grappling with the problems of life in a puzzling world.
Finally, in 1944 came "Experience Worketh Hope," consisting of thoughts for a troubled day. They were sermons for wartime but not for that only. They deal with the abiding things. They have mellowness, poise, shining courage, and Christian confidence, with the flashing phrase, the fervor and the vision of sunnier days.
Gossip's qualities as a preacher are plain. Chief among them is a sense of the reality of the Christ of the Gospels, who lives eternally. He talks with men as one who has first talked with Christ. It has been said that his extempore prayers were as moving as his sermons, and often the latter pass into conversation with the Lord.
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Never has preaching been more full of Christ -- His words, His deeds, His silences, above all His death which lays bare the heart of God. He makes doctrine vivid and experimental through Christ.
Gossip is a preacher of genius and therefore inimitable. His work would not serve as a model for a young preacher. He always starts with a text (which is often from Moffatt's translation) but does not pay much attention to its meaning.
The sermons lack structure. It is impossible to reproduce them by point-headings. The texts are sometimes short -- as in a sermon on public worship which has for a text, "Set the trumpet to thy lips"; and sometimes long -- as in the sermon preached after his wife's death based on the words of Jeremiah: "If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustest, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?"
The texts are sometimes familiar, as in a sermon "A Message for Tense Days" on the words of Isaiah, "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength," and sometimes strange, as in a sermon on "Rusting Grace" on the text, "Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still and take it not."
Gossip exercised great skill in phrasing his sermon topics, as we can judge from the titles of his books. Here are a few of his subjects, "What religion does for one who really tries it," "How to face life with steady eyes," "The spiritual danger of being unimportant," "What Christ hates most," and "God's side of things, and ours."
His sermons are chiefly pastoral. They are direct in address, seeking to bring comfort and strength, as well as hope and cheer, out of the Scriptures. His references to the contemporary scene are remarkably few. He seems to have agreed with Burke that "politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and the animosities of mankind."4
In 1925 Gossip gave the Warrack Lectures on Preaching, "In Christ's Stead." He was disappointed that the publisher did not reprint this book, for his soul was in it. It is now an eagerly sought item at secondhand booksellers. One can never read a chapter in it without searching of heart and quickening of pulse.
