MY WORK IN THE PULPIT
During the first eighteen months after I graduated from Princeton
College I was balancing between the law and the ministry. Many of my
relatives urged me to become a lawyer, as my father and grandfather had
been, but my godly mother had dedicated me to the ministry from infancy,
and her influence all went in the same line with her prayers. With the
exception of my venerated and beloved kinsman, Dr. Cornelius C. Cuyler,
Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, who died in
1850, no other man of my name has stood in an American pulpit. During
the winter of my return from Europe to my home on the Cayuga Lake, one
of my uncles invited me to go down and attend an afternoon prayer
service in the neighboring village of Ludlowville. There was a spiritual
awakening in the church, and the meeting was held in the parlor of a
private house. I arose and spoke for ten minutes. When the meeting was
over, more than one came to me and said: "Your talk did me good." On my
way home, as I drove along in my sleigh, the thought flashed into my
mind, "If ten minutes' talk to-day helped a few souls, why not preach
all the time?" That one thought decided the vexed question on the spot.
Our lives turn on small pivots, and if we let God lead us, the path will
open before our footsteps. I reached home that day, and informed my good
mother of my decision. She had always expected it and quietly remarked,
"Then, I have already spoken to Mr. Ford for his room for you in the
Princeton Seminary." My three years in the Seminary were full of joy and
profit. I made it a rule to go out as often as possible and address
little meetings in the neighboring school-houses, and found this a very
beneficial method of gaining practice. A young preacher must get
accustomed to the sound of his own voice; if naturally timid, he must
learn to face an audience and must first learn to speak; afterwards he
may learn to speak well. It is a wise thing for a young man to begin his
labors in a small congregation; he has more time for study, a better
chance to become intimately acquainted with individual characters, and
also a smaller audience to face. The first congregation that I was
called to take charge of, in Burlington, N.J. contained about forty
families. Three or four of these were wealthy and cultivated, the rest
were plain mechanics, with a few gardeners and coachmen. I made my
sermons to suit the comprehension of the gardeners and coachmen at the
end of the house, leaving the cultivated portion to gain what they could
from the sermon on its way. One of the wealthy attendants was Mr.
Charles Chauncey, a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer, who spent the
summer months in Burlington. Once after I had delivered a very simple
and earnest sermon on the "Worth of the Soul," I went home and said to
myself, "Lawyer Chauncey must have thought that was only a camp-meeting
exhortation." He met me during the week and to my astonishment he said
to me: "My young friend, I thank you for that sermon last Sunday; it had
the two best qualities of preaching--simplicity and down-right
earnestness. If I had a student in my law-office who was not more in
earnest to win his first ten dollar suit before a Justice of the Peace
than some men seem to be in trying to save souls I would kick such a
student out of my office." That eminent lawyer's remark did me more
service than any month's study in the Seminary. It taught me that
cultivated audiences relished plain, simple scriptural truths as much as
did the illiterate, and that down-right earnestness to save souls hides
a multitude of sins in raw young preachers.
Another instance that occurred in my early ministry did me a world of
good. I was invited to preach in the Presbyterian Church at Saratoga
Springs about two years after I was licensed. My topics were "Trusting
Jesus Christ" in the morning and "The Day of Judgment" at the evening
service. The next day, when I was buying my ticket at the railway
station to leave the town, a plain man (who was a baker in the village)
said to me: "Are you not the young man who spoke yesterday in our
meeting-house?" I told him that I was. "Well," said he, "I never felt
more sorry for any one in my life." "Why so?" I asked. His answer was:
"I said to myself, there is a youth just out of the Seminary, and he
does not know that a Saratoga audience is made up of highly educated
people from all parts of the land; but I have noticed that if a
minister, during his first ten minutes, can convince the people that he
is only trying to save their souls he _kills all the critics in the
house_." I have never ceased to thank God for the remark of that shrewd
Saratoga baker, who, I was told, had come there from New Haven,
Connecticut, and was a man of remarkable sagacity. That was one of the
profoundest bits of sound philosophy on the art of preaching that I have
ever encountered, and I have quoted it in every Theological Seminary
that I have ever addressed. If we ministers pour the living truths of
the Gospel red-hot into the ears and consciences of our audiences, they
will have enough to do to look out for themselves and will have no time
to level criticisms at us or our mode of preaching. Cowards, also, are
never more pitiable than when in the pulpit.
I will not enter here into the endless controversy about the comparative
merits of written or extemporized sermons. My own observation and
experience has been that no rule is the best rule. Every man must find
out by practice which method he can use to the best advantage and then
pursue it. No man ever fails who understands his forte, and no man
succeeds who does not. Some men cannot extemporize effectively if they
try ever so hard; there are others who, like Gladstone, can think best
when they are on their legs and are inspired by an audience. During the
first few years of my ministry I wrote out nearly all of my sermons. The
advantage of doing that is that it enables a young beginner to form his
own style at the outset by careful and systematic writing. Spurgeon,
often when a youth, read some of his sermons, although afterwards he
never premeditated a single sentence for the pulpit. Dr. Richard S.
Storrs was a most fluent extemporaneous speaker, but for twenty years he
carefully wrote all his discourses. My own habit, after a time, was to
write a portion of the sermon and turn away from my notes to interject
thoughts that came in the heat of the moment and then turn to my
manuscript. This was generally the habit of Henry Ward Beecher. After
thirty years in the ministry I discarded writing sermons entirely and
adopted the plan of preparing a few "heads" on a bit of note-paper, and
tacking it into a Bagster's Bible. Dr. John Hall wrote carefully,
leaving his manuscript at home; and so does Dr. Alexander McLaren, of
Manchester, who is to-day by far the most superb sermonizer in Great
Britain. The eloquent Guthrie, of Scotland, committed his discourses to
memory, and delivered them in a torrent of Godly emotion.
In preparing my sermons my custom was, after taking some rest on Monday,
to get into my study early on Tuesday morning. To every student the best
hours of the day are those before the sun has reached the meridian. Then
the mind is the most clear and vigorous. I have never in my life
prepared sermons a dozen times after my supper. Severe mental work in
the evening is apt to destroy sound sleep; thousands of brain workers
are wrecked by insomnia. To secure freedom from needless interruption I
pinned on my study door "_Very Busy_." This had the wholesome effect of
shutting out all time-killers, and of shortening necessary calls of
those who had some important errand. Instead of leaving the selection of
my topic to the risk of any contingency, I usually chose my text on
Tuesday morning, and laid the keel of the sermon. I kept a large
note-book in which I could enter any passage of Scripture that would
furnish a good theme for pulpit consumption. I also found it a good
practice to jot down thoughts that occurred to me on any important topic
that I could use when I came to prepare my sermons. By this method I had
a treasury of texts from which I could draw every week. Let my readers
be careful to notice that word "Text." I have known men to prepare an
elaborate essay, theological, ethical or sociological, and then to perch
a text from the Bible on top of it.
"Preach my word" does not signify the clapping of a few syllables as a
figure-head on a long treatise spun out of a preacher's brain. The best
discourses are not manufactured, they are a _growth_. God's inspired and
infallible Book must furnish the text. The connection between every good
sermon and its text is just as vital as the connection between a
peach-tree and its root. Sometimes an indolent minister tries to palm
off an old sermon for a pretended new one by changing the text, but this
shallow device ought to expose itself as if he should decapitate a dog
and undertake to clap on the head of some other animal. Intelligent
audiences see through such tricks and despise them. "Be sure your sin
will find you out." When a passage from the Holy Scripture has been
planted as a root and well watered with prayer, the sermon should spring
naturally from it. The central thought of the text being the central
thought of the sermon and all argument, all instruction and exhortation
are only the boughs branching off from the central trunk, giving unity,
vigor and spiritual beauty to the whole organic production. The unity
and spiritual power of a discourse usually depend upon the adherence to
the great divine truth contained in the inspired Book. The Bible text is
God's part of our sermon; and the more thoroughly we get the text into
our own souls, the more will we get it into the sermon, and into the
consciences of our hearers. To keep out of a rut I studied the infinite
variety of Sacred Scripture; its narratives and matchless biographies,
its jubilant Psalms, its profound doctrines, its tender pathos, its
rolling thunder of Sinai, and its sweet melodies of Calvary's redeeming
love. I laid hold of the great themes, and I found a half hour of
earnest prayer was more helpful than two or three hours of study. It
sometimes let a flash from the Throne flame over the page I was writing.
To me, when preparing my Sabbath messages, God's Holy Word was the sum
of all knowledge, and a "Thus saith the Lord" was my invariable guide. I
found that in theology the true things were not new, and most of the new
things were not true. I remember how a visitor in New Haven was looking
for a certain house, and found himself in front of the residence of
Professor Olmstead, the eminent astronomer, whose stoves were then very
popular. The visitor inquired of an Irishman, who was working in front
of the house, "Who lives here?" The very Hibernian answer was, "Shure,
sur, 'tis Profissor Olmstead, a very great man; he _invents_ comets, and
has _discovered_ a new stove." In searching the Scriptures I used the
very best spiritual telescopes in my possession, and gladly availed
myself of all discoveries of divine truths made by profounder intellects
and keener visions than my own; but I leave this self-styled "advanced
age" to invent its own comets, and follow its own meteors.
In one respect I have not followed the practice of many of my brethren,
for I never have wasted a single moment in defending God's Word in my
pulpit. I have always held that the Bible is a self-evidencing book; God
will take care of His Word if we ministers only take care to preach it.
We are no more called upon to defend the Bible than we are to defend the
law of gravitation. My beloved friend, Dr. McLaren, of Manchester, has
well said that if ministers, "instead of trying to _prop_ the Cross of
Christ, would simply _point_ men to that Cross, more souls would be
saved." The vast proportion of volumes of "Apologetics" are a waste of
ink and paper. If they could all be kindled into a huge bonfire, they
would shed more light than they ever did before. It is not our business
to answer every sceptic who shies a stone at the solid fortress of truth
in which God places His ambassadors. If Tobiah and Sanballat are
challenging us to come down into the plain, and meet them on their
level, our answer must ever be: "I am God's messenger, preaching God's
word and doing God's work. I cannot stop to go down and prove that your
swords are made of lath."
To my younger brethren I would say: "Preach the Word, preach it with all
your soul, preach it in the strength of Jehovah's Spirit, and He will
give it the victory."
I found the effectiveness of my sermons increased by the use of every
good illustration I could get hold of, but I tried to be careful that
they illustrated something. Where such are lugged into the sermon merely
for the sake of ornament, they are as much out of place as a bouquet
would be tied fast to a plough-handle. The Divine Teacher set us the
example of making vital truths intelligible by illustrations, when he
spoke so often in parables, and sometimes recalled historical incidents.
All congregations relish incidents and stories, when they are "pat" to
the purpose, and serious enough for God's house, and help to drive the
truth into the hearts of the audience During my early ministry I
delivered a discourse to young men at Saratoga Springs, and closed it
with a solemn story of a man who died of remorse at the exposure of his
crime. The Hon. John McLean, a judge of the United States Supreme Court
and a prominent man in the Methodist Church, was in the congregation,
and the next day I called at the United States Hotel to pay my respects
to him. He said to me, "My young friend I was very much interested in
that story last evening; it clinched the sermon. Our ministers in
Cincinnati used to introduce illustrative anecdotes, but it seems to
have gone out of fashion and I am sorry for it." I replied to him, "Well
Judge, I am glad to have the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
States in favor of telling a story or a personal incident in the
pulpit." There is one principle that covers all cases. It is this:
Whatever makes the Gospel or Jesus Christ more clear to the
understanding, more effective in arousing sinners, in converting souls,
in edifying believers and in promoting pure honest living is never out
of place in the pulpit. When we are preaching for souls we may use any
and every weapon of truth within our reach.
Those who have sat before my pulpit will testify that I never spared my
lungs or their ears in the delivery of my discourses. The preaching of
the Gospel is spiritual gunnery, and many a well-loaded cartridge has
failed to reach its mark from lack of powder to propel it. The prime
duty of God's ambassador is to arouse the attention of souls before his
pulpit; to stir those who are indifferent; to awaken those who are
impenitent; to cheer the sorrow-stricken; to strengthen the weak, and
edify believers An advocate in a criminal trial puts his grip on every
juryman's ear So must every herald of Gospel-truth demand and command a
hearing, cost what it may: but that hearing he never will secure while
he addresses an audience in a cold, formal, perfunctory manner.
Certainly the great apostle at Ephesus aimed at the emotions and the
conscience as well as the reason of his hearers when he "ceased not to
warn them night and day with tears." I cannot impress it too strongly on
every young minister that the delivery of his sermon is half the battle.
Why load your gun at all if you cannot send your charge to the mark?
Many a discourse containing much valuable thought has fallen dead on
drowsy ears when it might have produced great effect if the preacher had
only had _inspiration_ and _perspiration_. A sermon that is but ordinary
as a production may have an extraordinary effect by direct and fervid
delivery. The minister who never warms himself will never warm up his
congregation. I once asked Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia, "Who is the
greatest preacher you have ever heard?" Mr. Barnes, who was a very
clear-headed thinker, replied: "I cannot answer your question exactly,
but the greatest specimen of preaching I ever heard was by the Rev.
Edward N. Kirk before my congregation during a revival; it produced a
tremendous effect." Those of us that knew Kirk knew that he was not a
man of genius or profound scholarship; but he was a true orator with a
superb voice and a sweet persuasiveness, and his whole soul was on fire
with the love of Jesus and the love of souls.
It is not easy to define what that subtle something is which we call
pulpit magnetism. As near as I can come to a definition I would say it
is the quality or faculty in the speaker that arouses the attention and
strengthens the interest of his auditors and which, when aided by the
Holy Spirit, produces conviction in their minds by the truth that is in
Jesus. The heart in the speaker's voice sends that voice into the hearts
of his hearers. It is an undoubted fact that pulpit fervor has been a
characteristic of almost all the preachers of a soul-winning Gospel. The
fire was kindled in the pulpit that kindled the pews. The discourses of
Frederick W. Robertson, of Brighton, were masterpieces of fresh thought,
but the crowds were drawn to his church because they were delivered
with a fiery glow. The king of living sermon-makers is Dr. McLaren, of
Manchester. His vigorous thought is put into vigorous language and then
vigorously spoken. He commits his grand sermons to memory, and then
looks his audience in the eyes, and sends his strong voice to the
furthest gallery. Last year after I had thanked him for his powerful
"Address on Preaching" to a thousand ministers in London, he wrote to
me: "It was an effort; for I could not trust myself to do without a
manuscript, and I am so unaccustomed to reading what I have to say that
it was like dancing a hornpipe in fetters," Yet manuscripts are not
always fetters; for Dr. Chalmers read every line of his sermons with
thrilling and tremendous effect. So did Dr. Charles Wadsworth in
Philadelphia, and so did Phillips Brooks in Boston. In my own experience
I have as often found spiritual results from the discourses partly or
mainly written out as from those spoken extemporaneously. While much may
depend upon the conditions in the congregation and much aid may be drawn
from the intercessory prayers of our people, the main thing is to have a
baptism of fire in our own hearts. Sometimes a sermon may produce but
little impression, yet the same sermon at another time and place may
deeply move an audience, and yield rich spiritual results. Physical
condition may have some influence on a minister's delivery; but the
chief element in the eloquence that awakens and converts sinners and
strengthens Christians is the unction of the Holy Spirit. Our best power
is the _power from on high_.
I would say to young ministers--look at your auditors as bound to the
judgment seat and see the light of eternity flash into their faces. Then
the more fervor of soul you put into your preaching the more souls you
will win to your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
As I look back over the last sixty years I think I discover some very
marked changes in the methods of the American pulpit since the days of
my youth. In the first place the average preacher in those days was more
doctrinal than at the present time. The masters in Israel evidently held
with Phillips Brooks that "no exhortation to a good life that does not
put behind it some great truth, as deep as eternity, can seize and hold
the conscience," Therefore they pushed to the front such deep and mighty
themes as the Attributes of God, the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the
Nature and Desert of Sin, the Atonement, Regeneration, Faith,
Resurrection, and Judgment to come, with Heaven and Hell as tremendous
realities. They emphasized the heinousness and the desert of sin as a
great argument for repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ. A lapse
from that style of preaching is to be deplored; for as Gladstone truly
remarked, the decline or decay of a sense of sin against God is one of
the most serious symptoms of these times.
Charles G. Finney, who was at the zenith of his power sixty years ago,
bombarded the consciences of sinners with a prodigious broadside of
pulpit doctrine; and many acute lawyers and eminent merchants were
converted under his discourses. No two finer examples of doctrinal
preaching--once so prevalent--could be cited than Dr. Lyman Beecher and
Dr. Horace Bushnell. The celebrated sermon by the former of these two
giants on the "Moral Government of God" was characterized by Thomas H.
Skinner as the mightiest discourse he had ever heard. Henry Ward Beecher
hardly exaggerated when he once said to me, "Put all of his children
together and we do not equal my father at his best." Dr. Bushnell's
masterly discourses with all their exquisite poetry and insight into
human hearts were largely bottomed and built on a theological basis. To
those two great doctrinal preachers I might add the names of my beloved
instructors, Dr. Archibald Alexander and Dr. Charles Hodge, of
Princeton, Albert Barnes and Professor Park, Dr. Thornwell, Dr. Bethune,
Dr. John Todd, Dr. G.T. Bedell, Bishop Simpson and President Stephen
Olin.
Has the American pulpit grown in spiritual power since those days? Have
the churches thriven whose pastors have become more invertebrate in
their theology?
Another characteristic of the average preacher sixty years ago was that
sermons were generally aimed at awakening the impenitent, and bringing
them to Jesus Christ. The evil of sin was emphasized; the way of
salvation explained; the claims of Christianity were presented; and
people were urged to immediate decision. Nowadays a large portion of
sermons are addressed to professing Christians; many others are
addressed to nobody in particular, but there is less of faithful,
fervid, loving and persuasive discourses to the unconverted. This is one
of the reasons for the lamentable decrease in the number of conversions.
If ministers are set to be watchmen of souls, how shall they escape if
they neglect the salvation of souls?
I think, too, that we cannot be mistaken in saying that there has been a
decline in impassioned pulpit eloquence. There is a change in the
fashions of preaching. Students are now taught to be calm and
colloquial; to aim at producing epigrammatical essays; to discuss
sociological problems and address the intellects of their auditors
rather in the style of the lecture platform or college class room. The
great Dr. Chalmers "making the rafters roar" is as much a bygone
tradition in many quarters as faith in the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch. I have often wished that the young Edward N. Kirk, who
melted to tears the professors and students of Yale during the revival
there, could come back to us and teach candidates for the ministry how
to preach. There was no stentorian shouting or rhetorical exhortation;
but there was an intense, solemn, white-heat earnestness that made his
auditors feel not only that life was worth living, but that the soul was
worth saving and Jesus Christ was worth serving, and Heaven was worth
securing, and that for all these things "God will bring us into
judgment." If Lyman Beecher and Dr. Edward Dorr Griffin and Finney did
not possess all of Kirk's grace of delivery, they possessed his fire,
and they made the Gospel doctrines glow with a living heat that burned
into the hearts and consciences of their auditors.
May God send into our churches not only a revival of pure and undefiled
religion, but also a revival of old-fashioned soul-inspiring pulpit
eloquence!
It is rather a delicate subject to touch upon, but I am happy to say
that in my early ministry the preachers of God's Word were not hamstrung
by any doubt of the divine inspiration or infallibility of the Book that
lay before them on their pulpits. The questions, "Have we got any
Bible?" and "If any Bible, how much?" had not been hatched. When I was
in Princeton Seminary, our profoundly learned Hebrew Professor, Dr. J.
Addison Alexander no more disturbed us with the much-vaunted conjectural
Biblical criticisms than he disturbed us with Joe Smith's "golden
plates" at Nauvoo. For this fact I feel deeply thankful; and I comfort
myself with the reflection that the great British preachers of the last
dozen years--Dr. McLaren, Charles H. Spurgeon, Newman Hall, Canon Liddon,
Dr. Dale and Dr. Joseph Parker--have suffered no more from the virulent
attacks of the radical and revolutionary higher criticism than I have,
during my long and happy ministry.
Ministers had some advantages sixty or seventy years ago over their
successors of our day. They had a more uninterrupted opportunity for the
preparation of their sermons and for thorough personal visitation of
their flocks. They were not importuned so often to serve on committees
and to be participants in all sorts of social schemes of charity. Every
pastor ought to keep abreast of reformatory movements as long as they do
not trench upon the vital and imperative duties of his high calling.
"This one thing I do," said single-hearted Paul; and if Paul were a
pastor now in New York or Boston or Chicago, he would make short work of
many an intrusive rap of a time-killer at his study door.
I have noted frankly a few of the changes that I have observed in the
methods of our American pulpit during my long life, but not, I trust, in
a pessimistic or censorious spirit God forbid that I should disparage
the noble, conscientious, self-denying and Heaven-blessed labors of
thousands of Christ's ministers in our broad land! They have greater
difficulties to encounter than I had when I began my work. They are
surrounded with an atmosphere of intense materialism. The ambition for
the "seen things" increasingly blinds men to the "things that are unseen
and eternal." Wealth and worldliness unspiritualize thousands of
professed Christians. The present artificial arrangements of society
antagonize devotional meetings and special efforts to promote revivals.
On Sabbath mornings many a minister has to shovel out scores of his
congregation from under the drifts (not very clean snow either) of the
mammoth Sunday newspapers.
The zealous pastor of to-day has to contend with the lowered popular
faith in the authority of God's Word; with the lowered reverence for
God's day and a diminished habit of attending upon God's worship. Do
these increased difficulties demand a new Gospel? No; but rather a
mightier faith in the one we have. Do they demand new doctrines? No;
but more power in preaching the truths that have outlived nineteen
centuries. Do we need a new revelation of Jesus Christ? Yes, yes, in the
fuller manifestation of Him; in the more loving, courageous and
consecrated lives of His followers. Do we need a new Baptism of the Holy
Spirit? Verily we do need it; and then our pulpits will be clothed with
power, and our preachers will have tongues of fire, and every change
will be a change for the better advancement and enlargement of the
Kingdom of our adorable Lord.