need more than we do doctrinal preaching and nothing which is more
interesting. The specialization of knowledge has assigned to the
preacher of religion a definite sphere. No amount of secondary
expertness in politics or economics or social reform or even morals
can atone for the abandonment of our own province. We are set to think
about and expound religion and if we give that up we give up our place
in a learned profession. Moreover, the new conditions of the modern
world make doctrine imperative. That world is distinguished by
its free inquiry, its cultivation of the scientific method, its
abandonment of obscuranticisms and ambiguities. It demands, then,
devout and holy thinking from us. Who would deny that the revival
of intellectual authority and leadership in matters of religion
is terribly needed in our day? Sabatier is right in saying that a
religion without doctrine is a self-contradictory idea. Harnack is not
wrong in saying that a Christianity without it is inconceivable.
And now I know you are thinking in your hearts, Well, what
inconsistency this man shows! For a whole book he has been insisting
on the prime values of imagination and feeling in religion and now he
concludes with a plea for the thinker. But it is not so inconsistent
as it appears. It is just because we do believe that the discovery,
the expression and the rewards of religion lie chiefly in the
superrational and poetic realms that therefore we want this
intellectual content to accompany it, not supersede it, as a balancing
influence, a steadying force. There are grave perils in worshipful
services corresponding to their supreme values. Mystical preaching
has the defects of its virtues and too often sinks into that vague
sentimentalism which is the perversion of its excellence. How
insensibly sometimes does high and precious feeling degenerate into
a sort of religious hysteria! It needs then to be always tested and
corrected by clear thinking.
But we in no way alter our original insistence that in our realm as
preachers, unlike the scientist's realm of the theologians, thought
is the handmaid, not the mistress. Our great plea, then, for doctrinal
preaching is that by intellectual grappling with the final and
speculative problems of religion we do not supersede but feed the
emotional life and do not diminish but focus and steady it. It is
that you and I may have reserves of feeling--indispensable to great
preaching--sincerity and intensity of emotion, that disciplined
imagination which is genius, that restrained passion which is art,
and that our congregations may have the same, that we must strive for
intellectual power, must do the preaching that gives people something
to think about. These are the religious and devout reasons why
we value intellectual honesty, precision of utterance, reserve of
statement, logical and coherent thinking.
We are come, then, to the conclusion of our discussions. They have
been intended to restore a neglected emphasis upon the imaginative and
transcendent as distinguished from the ethical and humanistic aspects
of the religious life. They have tried to show that the reaching out
by worship to this "otherness" of God and to the ultimate in life is
man's deepest hunger and the one we are chiefly set to feed. I am sure
that the chief ally of the experience of the transcendence of God and
the cultivation of the worshipful faculties in man is to be found in
severe and speculative thinking. I believe our almost unmixed passion
for piety, for action, for practical efficiency, betrays us. It
indicates that we are trying to manufacture effects to conceal the
absence of causes. We may look for a religious revival when men have
so meditated upon and struggled with the fundamental ideas of religion
that they feel profoundly its eternal mysteries.
And finally, we have the best historical grounds for our position.
Sometimes great religious movements have been begun by unlearned and
uncritical men like Peter the hermit or John Bunyan or Moody. But we
must not infer from this that religious insight is naturally repressed
by clear thinking or fostered by ignorance. Dr. Francis Greenwood
Peabody has pointed out that the great religious epochs in Christian
history are also epochs in the history of theology. The Pauline
epistles, the _Confessions of Augustine_, the _Meditations_ of Anselm,
the _Simple Method of How to Pray_ of Luther, the _Regula_ of Loyola,
the _Monologen_ of Schleiermacher, these are all manuals of the
devout life, they belong in the distinctively religious world of
supersensuous and the transcendent, and one thing which accounts for
them is that the men who produced them were religious geniuses because
they were also theologians.[43]
[Footnote 43: See the "Call to Theology," _Har. Theo. Rev._, vol. I,
no. 1, pp. 1 ff.]
It is to be remembered that we are not saying that the theologian
makes the saint. I do not believe that. Devils can believe and
tremble; Abelard was no saint. But we are contending that the
great saint is extremely likely to be a theologian. Protestantism,
Methodism, Tractarianism, were chiefly religious movements, interested
in the kind of questions and moved by the sorts of motives which
we have been talking about. They all began within the precincts
of universities. Moreover, the Lord Jesus, consummate mystic,
incomparable artist, was such partly because He was a great theologian
as well. His dealings with scribe and Pharisee furnish some of
the world's best examples of acute and courageous dialectics. His
theological method differed markedly from the academicians of His
day. Nevertheless it was noted that He spoke with an extraordinary
authority. "He gave," as Dr. Peabody also points out, "new scope
and significance to the thought of God, to the nature of man, to the
destiny of the soul, to the meaning of the world. He would have been
reckoned among the world's great theologians if other endowments had
not given Him a higher title."[44]
[Footnote 44: "Call to Theology," _Har. Theo. Rev._, vol. I, no. 1, p.
8.]
It is a higher title to have been the supreme mystic, the perfect
seer. All I have been trying to say is that it is to these sorts
of excellencies that the preacher aspires. But the life of Jesus
supremely sanctions the conviction that preaching upon high and
abstract and even speculative themes and a rigorous intellectual
discipline are chief accompaniments, appropriate and indispensable
aids, to religious insight and to the cultivating of worshipful
feeling. So we close our discussions with the supreme name upon
our lips, leaving the most fragrant memory, the clearest picture,
remembering Him who struck the highest note. It is to His life and
teaching that we humbly turn to find the final sanction for the
distinctively religious values. Who else, indeed, has the words of
Eternal Life?
* * * * *
LYMAN BEECHER LECTURESHIP ON PREACHING
YALE UNIVERSITY
1871-72 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, first series.
New York, 1872.
1872-73 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, second series.
New York, 1873.
1873-74 Beecher, H.W., Yale Lectures on Preaching, third series.
New York, 1874.
1874-75 Hall, John, God's Word through Preaching. New York, 1875.
1875-76 Taylor, William M., The Ministry of the Word. New York,
1876.
1876-77 Brooks, P., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1877.
1877-78 Dale, R.W., Nine Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1878.
1878-79 Simpson, M., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1879.
1879-80 Crosby, H., The Christian Preacher. New York, 1880.
1880-81 Duryea, J.T., and others (not published).
1881-82 Robinson, E.G., Lectures on Preaching. New York, 1883.
1882-83 (No lectures.)
1883-84 Burton, N.J., Yale Lectures on Preaching, and other
writings. New York, 1888.*
1884-85 Storrs, H.M., The American Preacher (not published).
1885-86 Taylor, W.M., The Scottish Pulpit. New York, 1887.
1886-87 Gladden, W., Tools and the Man. Boston, 1893.
1887-88 Trumbull. H.C., The Sunday School. Philadelphia, 1888.
1888-89 Broadus, J.A., Preaching and the Ministerial Life (not
published).
1889-90 Behrends, A.J.F., The Philosophy of Preaching. New York,
1890.
1890-91 Stalker, J., The Preacher and His Models. New York, 1891.
1891-92 Fairbarn, A.M., The Place of Christ in Modern Theology.
New York, 1893.
1892-93 Horton, R.F., Verbum Dei. New York, 1893.*
1893-94 (No lectures.)
1894-95 Greer, D.H., The Preacher and His Place. New York, 1895.
1895-96 Van Dyke, H., The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. New York,
1896*
1896-97 Watson, J., The Cure of Souls. New York, 1896.
1897-98 Tucker, W.J., The Making and the Unmaking of the Preacher.
Boston, 1898.
1898-99 Smith, G.A., Modern Criticism and the Old Testament. New
York, 1901.
1899-00 Brown, J., Puritan Preaching in England. New York, 1900.
1900-01 (No lectures.)
1901-02 Gladden, W., Social Salvation. New York, 1902.
1902-03 Gordon, G.A., Ultimate Conceptions of Faith. New York, 1903.
1903-04 Abbott, L., The Christian Ministry. Boston, 1905.
1904-05 Peabody, F.G., Jesus Christ and the Christian Character.
New York, 1905.*
1905-06 Brown, C.R., The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit. New
York, 1906.
1906-07 Forsyth, P.T., Positive Preaching and Modern Mind. New
York, 1908.*
1907-08 Faunce, W.H.P., The Educational Ideal in the Ministry. New
York, 1908.
1908-09 Henson, H.H., The Liberty of Prophesying. New Haven, 1910.*
1909-10 Jefferson, C.E., The Building of the Church. New York, 1910.
1910-11 Gunsaulus, F.W., The Minister and the Spiritual Life. New
York, Chicago, 1911.
1911-12 Jowett, J.H., The Preacher; His Life and Work. New York,
1912.
1912-13 Parkhurst, C.H., The Pulpit and the Pew. New Haven. 1913.*
1913-14 Home, C. Silvester, The Romance of Preaching. New York,
Chicago, 1914.
1914-15 Pepper, George Wharton, A Voice from the Crowd. New Haven,
1915.*
1915-16 Hyde, William DeWitt, The Gospel of Good Will as Revealed
in Contemporary Scriptures. New York, 1916.
1916-17 McDowell, William Fraser, Good Ministers of Jesus Christ.
New York and Cincinnati, 1917.
1917-18 Coffin, Henry Sloane, In a Day of Social Rebuilding. New
Haven.*
1918-19 Kelman, John, The War and Preaching, New Haven.*
1919-20 Fitch, Albert Parker, Preaching and Paganism. New Haven.*
*Also published in London.
PRINTED BY E.L. HILDRETH & COMPANY BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT, U.S.A.
End of Project Gutenberg's Preaching and Paganism, by Albert Parker Fitch