The Gospel furnishes an exhaustless supply of topics. Every minister
should, however, use great care to secure copiousness and variety of
matter and illustration. The best means are such as these: 1. The
constant, careful study of the Bible itself. Its words are the words of
God, living and powerful. "They are spirit, and they are life" (John
vi. 63); and the pastor who makes this Divine book his chief study has
a mind filled, not with the feeble, evanescent thoughts of man, but
with the quickening, eternal thoughts of God. The difference is
world-wide between a sermon filled with God's thoughts and delivered as
God's Word--a Divine message to men--and one which is a philosophical
discourse wrought out of the preacher's own mind, and resting its
authority on the mere force of human reasoning; and this difference is
not simply in the unspeakably greater power of the former to stir and
save the souls of the hearers, but also in the ever-increasing power of
the preacher in sermon preparation, arising from the absolute
inexhaustibleness of the materials for such a sermon. Some able and
laborious men early exhaust themselves and fail of richness and power
in the pulpit because their sermons are spun out of their own brain
rather than from God's Word. They draw from the finite instead of the
infinite fountain, and the waters necessarily fail. 2. A rich personal
religious experience. All hearts are essentially alike, and he will
best know other hearts who most truly knows his own. The power of a
pastor depends largely on his knowledge of the heart and its
experiences under the influences of the Gospel. This is more than a
knowledge of human nature as delineated in Shakespeare and works of
fiction, valuable as this is; it is a knowledge of the human soul under
the power of sin and of the Holy Spirit, as its experiences are
delineated in the Bible and in the religious life and are realized in
his own soul. 3. An intimate acquaintance with the religious state of
the individuals composing his own congregation in their special
tendencies, temptations, and experiences. Almost every religious
conversation will suggest new topics of living interest for sermons.
4. Habitual reading of the best religious authors, especially works on
theology, exegesis, and experimental religion. 5. A careful
preservation of texts, subjects, trains of thought, and illustrations,
by noting them down as they occur. These are continually presenting
themselves in the social meeting, in pastoral visits, in reading, and
in reflection. No man can afford to lose these. They should be
preserved to enrich and make effective the work of the pulpit, and so
preserved as to be readily utilized; for one may have large
accumulations of such materials, but if they are not grouped under
appropriate headings and made easily accessible, they may be
comparatively useless, because eluding the search at the moment of need.
The subjects of the sermon have been divided into the doctrinal, the
experimental, and the practical; but, in preaching, the end is usually
best attained by blending these, or rather by presenting each truth in
an experimental and practical manner. This division, however, is
correct, as made according to the dominant, leading idea of the sermon.
1. _Doctrinal sermons._ Much is said in regard to preaching Christ, and
not doctrine. But how is it possible to preach Christ apart from
doctrine? Christ is not an abstraction, but a living, personal Being.
If, then, we preach Him, we must preach His Divinity, His humanity, and
His mediatorship between God and man. If we preach what He has done, we
must declare His humiliation, His death, and the atonement He has
therein made for sin. If we preach Him as He is, we must proclaim His
enthronement in heaven, His intercession with the Father, and His
Headship of the church, with all the laws and ordinances He has
instituted for it. And if we preach Him as He shall be, we must affirm
the final triumph of His Gospel, His second coming, the resurrection
and the judgment, and the glory to which He will raise His people with
Himself. It is not possible to preach Christ apart from doctrine; for
His incarnation and vicarious death presuppose the Fall and depravity
and guilt of men, and the need of regeneration, justification, and
sanctification; and His resurrection and glorification equally involve
the resurrection and glorification of His church. All the doctrines of
Scripture thus center in Christ, and we preach Him only as we preach
them. Here, therefore, is the true power of the pulpit. Only as the
sermon lodges these great truths in the soul is it a living force for
the salvation of men. They constitute the sole foundation of genuine
experience and practical appeal. A merely hortatory ministry is of
necessity a failure, since it lays no basis for experience and
Christian life in the convictions of the people. In presenting the
doctrines the following cautions should be observed: (1.) Beware of
doctrinal one-sidedness. Every mind has its special theological
tendencies; there is thus danger of pushing a single truth, or a class
of truths, into too great relative prominence. A one-sided and, in its
whole impression, a false view of the Gospel may in this way be
presented. Seek rather to unfold a well-proportioned system of truth,
where every doctrine is not only true in itself, but also stands in its
just relations, alike of position and prominence, to all other truths.
For it is possible, while preaching nothing but the truth, to put a
truth in such false relations as to give it practically all the effect
of error. (2.) Avoid, ordinarily, the controversial form in presenting
subjects; its tendency is to put the mind of the hearer in an attitude
of antagonism. Indeed, a controversial sermon, however well reasoned,
will often suggest more doubts than it removes. Doubtless, controversy
is sometimes necessary, as in defense of some imperiled truth or
principle; but the controversial form, as an ordinary characteristic of
preaching, is most seriously to be deprecated. (3.) A dry, formal,
metaphysical method is also to be carefully avoided; it is entirely
unadapted to a popular assembly. The sermon is not a theological essay;
and the preacher, therefore, in dealing with hungry souls, should ever
remember, as John Newton suggests, the important distinction between
bones and meat.
2. _Experimental Sermons._ Here it is vitally important to make a clear
discrimination between the genuine and the spurious in religious
experience. The welfare and comfort of souls depend much on this, but
it is one of the most delicate and difficult parts of a pastor's work.
Experimental preaching is sometimes decried as tending to turn the
minds of the people inward upon their own hearts, rather than upward
upon Christ, and as thus creating a habit of morbid introspection and
weakening the power of Christian hope and Christian life. Undoubtedly,
there is a real danger of this where the preaching is predominantly of
this character; and a pastor, especially if his own spiritual tendency
is intensely subjective, must be on his guard lest he present this side
of truth in undue proportion, and thus hinder instead of helping the
souls of his charge. But no minister should fail to preach experimental
sermons; for nothing is more obvious than the large place experience
has in Scripture, and the urgency and frequency of its exhortations to
self-examination. Self-knowledge is of primary moment, and the pulpit
should be helpful to this. The presentation of objective truth, apart
from the subjective, tends to self-deception and ends in Antinomianism.
The Bible is wonderfully rich and full in its delineation of character;
and a careful study of these Divine pictures of life will greatly aid
in the work of skillful discrimination. The Psalms, the Prophets, the
Gospels, and the Epistles abound in statements defining true and false
experience, discriminating between "the works of the flesh" and "the
fruit of the Spirit." Such books also as Edwards on _The Affections,_
Fuller on _The Backslider,_ Doddridge's _Rise and Progress of Religion
in the Soul,_ and Hodge's _Way of Life_ are of value, often suggesting
important lines of discrimination. Added to these, the study of his own
heart and an intimate knowledge of the experience and character of his
people will prove eminently helpful to the minister in such sermons. On
this I suggest: (1.) The spiritual principles by which the true and
false experience may be distinguished should be made clear and
distinct. A common fault in such discourses is that they state and
insist on certain exercises as characteristic of Christian experience,
but do not show why they are so. The hearers are not put in possession
of the principle which makes such characteristics essential. Or there
is a denunciation of certain exercises as not Christian without
developing the principle which demonstrates their spuriousness.
(2.) Avoid any attempt to make all experiences fit into the same mold.
Religious experience has endless diversity in form, while yet in all
persons it has certain well-defined common characteristics. The
consciousness and acknowledgment of sin as the one hope of acceptance,
the trust of the soul in Christ, the submission of the will in a
complete self-surrender to God, then will appear with greater or less
distinctness in all regenerate souls. Thus also, in the experiences of
the Christian there is endless variety in form, in special doubts and
fears, special temptations, special tendencies to sin, special
manifestations of self-will, pride, self-righteousness, and
self-indulgence; and in like manner faith and love, hope and joy, and
every Christian exercise have various forms of manifestation in
different souls. Here, then, the point to be emphasized is that, in
discriminating between the true and the false in religious experience,
the thing of vital moment is the _nature_ of the exercise, and not the
form or manner of its manifestation. (3.) It seems hardly necessary to
add that frequent reference to self, as setting up one's own experience
as a standard, is not only in bad taste, but is also of bad tendency as
directing from the true standard found alone in God's Word.
3. _Practical Sermons._ The symmetry and beauty of Christian character,
and the consequent power of Christian life, much depend on the wisdom
and fidelity with which the pulpit presents the duties of religion. The
New Testament reveals a sublime system of Christian morals which,
clearly unfolded and properly pressed, will elevate and ennoble the
life of the church. Here the pulpit has one of its widest and noblest
fields of effort. The education of the Christian conscience is one of
its primary and most imperative functions; for an orthodox creed and a
regenerate heart may be very possible where, from lack of moral
instruction and culture, the life is sadly defective. The soul is
indeed regenerated, but the new life is not developed in the conscience
by the enlightening of the moral judgment and quickening of the moral
sensibilities. True ideals of Christian living have not been formed,
and the outward character, instead of being a magnet radiant with the
beauty of holiness and attracting men to Christ, is marred by moral
blemishes which reproach the Gospel and repel men from Christ. The
widespread demoralization of late in business life, manifest, too often
even among Christian men, in the absence of integrity and of fidelity
to trust, should at least suggest the question whether the pulpit has
adequately set forth and enforced the morality of the Gospel. I suggest
the following hints: (1.) In presenting a duty the grounds of its
obligation should be clearly unfolded, that the conscience, thus
enlightened, may be awakened to full power in pressing its discharge.
No permanent obedience will be secured until the conscience distinctly
perceives the ground of obligation or the moral principles on which the
duty rests; nor does the performance of the duty, apart from this clear
recognition of the moral grounds of it, serve to purify and elevate the
character. It is the enthronement of an ethical principle within the
conscience, and not the mere blind performance of an outward act, which
enlarges and ennobles the man. (2.) The motives urged should be
evangelical, not legal, drawn from the Christian's relations to Christ,
appealing not to fear only or chiefly, but to love. The moral
helplessness of a Christian soul, when acting under the impulsion only
of legal fear, is vividly portrayed by Paul in the seventh chapter of
Romans, where with graphic power he depicts his own fruitless strivings
for the good when impelled by the law, and the utter defeat and despair
to which he was reduced. Christ alone is the life, and only faith in
Him brings victory to any soul in the conflict with sin. His character
is the great ideal set before a Christian soul, and His love the
impulsive force in seeking to realize it: "The love of Christ
constraineth us" (2 Cor. v. 14). A true Christian life is the outflow
of grateful, adoring love to Him. Motives drawn from the soul's
relations to Him, therefore, alone move the Christian heart and have
permanent power to impel to God and holiness. (3.) Ministerial fidelity
doubtless requires a plain presentation of duties and a fearless
exposure of sin, but it is seldom wise to employ the style of
denunciation. A cheap reputation for boldness and fidelity is sometimes
thus obtained among the unthinking, but most men know that at this day
denunciation from the pulpit requires no moral courage and will be
likely to regard it as a sensational bid for popularity. True boldness
shows itself not so much in the manner as in the matter of the sermon.
It consists in exposing clearly and fearlessly popular forms of error
and wrong, and applying to them, in all plainness and sincerity, the
principles of the Gospel. Here, while real boldness in manner should
never be wanting, true persuasiveness in manner should always be
preserved, thus avoiding needless irritation.
In the selection of subjects, I suggest: (1.) The subject should be, as
far as possible, adapted to the existing state of the people. This
requires an intimate, vital relation between the life of the pastor and
the actual living of the people, for the isolated recluse will waste
much of his pulpit work on subjects which do not touch the real
experiences and life of his hearers. (2.) Every subject should be
selected with earnest prayer for Divine guidance. God alone knows what
are the real needs of those who will hear; and a theme thus chosen is
delivered with authority as a message from Him, for a sermon is a
growth with the preacher's soul, possessing vitality and power as the
product of the Holy Spirit; and when thus obtained from God by the
inworking of the Spirit, it becomes to the hearers a Divine message
such as should be borne by "ambassadors for Christ."