_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
hearty 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 fullness 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 raised the clamor 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 results 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
nonconductors; arrested, they fall shorn 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 the shepherd to
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
labors in the history of humanity. This gave to Loyola the strength to
arrest the retreating forces of Catholicism.
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 a one will be the truest, most
successful preacher in the esteem of his Lord.