_For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart, or pierces
the conscience but what comes from a living conscience._—WILLIAM PENN.
_In the morning was more engaged in preparing the head than the heart.
This has been frequently my error, and I have always felt the evil of
it, especially in prayer. Reform it, then, O Lord! Enlarge my heart,
and I shall preach._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.
_A sermon that has more head infused into it than heart will not come
home with efficacy to the hearers._—RICHARD CECIL.
Prayer, with its manifold and many-sided forces, helps the mouth to
utter the truth in its fulness and freedom. The preacher is to be prayed
for, the preacher is made by prayer. The preacher's mouth is to be
prayed for; his mouth is to be opened and filled by prayer. A holy mouth
is made by praying, by much praying; a brave mouth is made by praying,
by much praying. The Church and the world, God and heaven, owe much to
Paul's mouth; Paul's mouth owed its power to prayer.
How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the
preacher in so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great
value is, it helps his heart.
Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the preacher's
heart into the preacher's sermon; prayer puts the preacher's sermon into
the preacher's heart.
The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers.
Men of bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The
hireling and the stranger may help the sheep at some points but it is
the good shepherd with the good shepherd's heart who will bless the
sheep and answer the full measure of the shepherd's place.
We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the
important thing to be prepared—the heart. A prepared heart is much
better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared
sermon.
Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of
sermon-making, until we have become possessed with the idea that this
scaffolding is the building. The young preacher has been taught to lay
out all his strength on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a
mechanical and intellectual product. We have thereby cultivated a
vicious taste among the people and raise the clamour for talent instead
of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of revelation,
reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness. By it we have lost the
true idea of preaching, lost preaching power, lost pungent conviction
for sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian character, lost
the authority over consciences and lives which always result from
genuine preaching.
It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do
not study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the
right way to show themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack
is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but
lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect—not that we know too
much, but that we do not meditate on God and His word and watch and fast
and pray enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching.
Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts non-conductors;
arrested, they fall flat and powerless.
Can ambition, that lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of
Him who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a
servant? Can the proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of
Him who was meek and lowly? Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish,
hard, worldly man preach the system which teems with long-suffering,
self-denial, tenderness, which imperatively demands separation from
enmity and crucifixion to the world? Can the hireling official,
heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel which demands that the
Shepherd give His life for the sheep? Can the covetous man, who counts
salary and money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned his heart and
can say in the Spirit of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley: "I
count it dung and dross; I trample it under my feet; I (yet not I, but
the grace of God in me) esteem it just as the mire of the streets, I
desire it not, I seek it not?" God's revelation does not need the light
of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the
brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or
enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility,
and faith of a child's heart.
It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the
divine and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the apostles.
It was this which gave Wesley his power and radicated his labours in the
history of humanity.
Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: "He who
has prayed well has studied well." We do not say that men are not to
think and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who
cultivates his heart most. We do not say that preachers should not be
students; but we do say that their great study should be the Bible, and
he studies the Bible best who has kept his heart with diligence. We do
not say that the preacher should not know men, but he will be the
greater adept in human nature who has fathomed the depths and
intricacies of his own heart. We do say that while the channel of
preaching is the mind, its fountain is the heart; you may broaden and
deepen the channel, but if you do not look well to the purity and depth
of the fountain, you will have a dry or polluted channel. We do say that
almost any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the
gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so. We do say that he who
has struggled with his own heart and conquered it; who has taught it
humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy, courage; who can pour the
rich treasures of the heart thus trained, through a manly intellect, all
surcharged with the power of the gospel on the consciences of his
hearers—such an one will be the truest, most successful preacher in the
esteem of his Lord.