_Speak for eternity. Above all things, cultivate your own spirit. A
word spoken by you when your conscience is clear and your heart full of
God's Spirit is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin.
Remember that God, and not man, must have the glory. If the veil of the
world's machinery were lifted off, how much we would find is done in
answer to the prayers of God's children._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.
Unction is that indefinable, indescribable something which an old,
renowned Scotch preacher describes thus: "There is sometimes somewhat in
preaching that cannot be described either to matter or expression, and
cannot be described what it is, or from whence it cometh, but with a
sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections and comes
immediately from the Lord; but if there be any way to obtain such a
thing it is by the heavenly disposition of the speaker."
We call it unction. It is this unction which makes the Word of God
"quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and
marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It is
this unction which gives the words of the preacher such point,
sharpness, and power, and which creates such friction and stir in many a
dead congregation. The same truths have been told in the strictness of
the letter, smooth as human oil could make them; but no signs of life,
not a pulse throb; all as peaceful as the grave and as dead. The same
preacher in the meanwhile receives a baptism of this unction, the divine
inflatus is on him, the letter of the Word has been embellished and
fired by this mysterious power, and the throbbings of life begin—life
which receives or life which resists. The unction pervades and convicts
the conscience and breaks the heart.
This divine unction is the feature which separates and distinguishes
true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting the truth,
and which creates a wide spiritual chasm between the preacher who has it
and the one who has it not. It supports and impregnates revealed truth
with all the energy of God. Unction is simply putting God in His own
Word and on His own preacher. By mighty and great prayerfulness and by
continual prayerfulness, it is all potential and personal to the
preacher; it inspires and clarifies his intellect, gives insight and
grasp and projecting power; it gives to the preacher heart power, which
is greater than head power; and tenderness, purity, force flow from the
heart by it. Enlargement, freedom, fulness of thought, directness and
simplicity of utterance are the fruits of this unction.
Often earnestness is mistaken for this unction. He who has the divine
unction will be earnest in the very spiritual nature of things, but
there may be a vast deal of earnestness without the least mixture of
unction.
Earnestness and unction look alike from some points of view. Earnestness
may be readily and without detection substituted or mistaken for
unction. It requires a spiritual eye and a spiritual taste to
discriminate.
Earnestness may be sincere, serious, ardent, and persevering. It goes at
a thing with a good will, pursues it with perseverance, and urges it
with ardour; puts force in it. But all these forces do not rise higher
than the mere human. The _man_ is in it—the whole man, with all that he
has of will and heart, of brain and genius, of planning and working and
talking. He has set himself to some purpose which has mastered him, and
he pursues to master it. There may be none of God in it. There may be
little of God in it, because there is so much of the man in it. He may
present pleas in advocacy of his earnest purpose which please or touch
and move or overwhelm with conviction of their importance; and in all
this earnestness may move along earthly ways, being propelled by human
forces only, its altar made by earthly hands and its fire kindled by
earthly flames. It is said of a rather famous preacher of gifts, whose
construction of Scripture was to his fancy or purpose, that he "grew
very eloquent over his own exegesis." So men grow exceeding earnest over
their own plans or movements. Earnestness may be selfishness simulated.
What of unction? It is the indefinable in preaching which makes it
preaching. It is that which distinguishes and separates preaching from
all mere human addresses. It is the divine in preaching. It makes the
preaching sharp to those who need sharpness. It distils as the dew to
those who need to be refreshed. It is well described as:
"... a two-edged sword
Of heavenly temper keen,
And double were the wounds it made
Where'er it glanced between.
'Twas death to sin; 'twas life
To all who mourned for sin.
It kindled and it silenced strife,
Made war and peace within."
This unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet.
It is heaven's distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest
exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens,
percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like
salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arraigner, a revealer, a
searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a
child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently,
yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves. This unction is not the
gift of genius. It is not found in the halls of learning. No eloquence
can woo it. No industry can win it. No prelatical hands can confer it.
It is the gift of God—the signet set to His own messengers. It is
heaven's knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have
sought this anointed honour through many an hour of tearful, wrestling
prayer.
Earnestness is good and impressive; genius is gifted and great. Thought
kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful
energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin,
to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and
restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this
holy unction can do this.