Produced by Colin Bell, Jeannie Howse and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has |
| been preserved. |
| |
| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For |
| a complete list, please see the end of this document. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
THE PREACHER AND HIS MODELS
THE PREACHER AND HIS MODELS
_THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING, 1891_
BY THE
REV. JAMES STALKER, D.D.
AUTHOR OF
"IMAGO CHRISTI," "THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST," "THE LIFE OF
ST. PAUL," ETC.
_Quis facit ut quid oportet et quemadmodum oportet dicatur
nisi in Cujus manu sunt nos et nostri sermones?_
ST. AUGUSTINE, _De Doctrina Christiana, iv. 15_
HODDER & STOUGHTON
LONDON : : MCMXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1891,
BY
A.C. ARMSTRONG & SON.
TO THE
Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D.
DIVINITY SCHOOL OF YALE UNIVERSITY, }
NEW HAVEN, CONN., APRIL 25, 1891. }
REV. JAMES STALKER, D.D., GLASGOW, SCOTLAND.
REV. AND DEAR SIR:
_At the close of your instructive and stimulating lectures in the
Lyman Beecher Course before the members of this Theological School, we
desire to express to you the satisfaction with which they have been
listened to, and we are glad to know that, by their publication in the
United States and Great Britain, the pleasure and profit which we have
all derived from their delivery will be enjoyed by a wider circle._
TIMOTHY DWIGHT,
_President_.
GEORGE E. DAY,
_Professor of Hebrew_.
SAMUEL HARRIS,
_Professor of Systematic Theology_.
GEORGE P. FISHER,
_Professor of Ecclesiastical History_.
LEWIS O. BRASTOW,
_Professor of Practical Theology_.
GEORGE B. STEVENS,
_Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation_.
FRANK C. PORTER,
_Instructor in Biblical Theology_.
PREFACE
These nine Lectures on Preaching were delivered, on the Lyman Beecher
Foundation, to the divinity students of Yale University in the spring
of this year. With the kind concurrence of the Senate of Yale, five of
them were redelivered, on the Merrick Foundation, to the students of
Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio.
In the Appendix an Ordination Address is reproduced, which I wrote
when I had been only four or five years in the ministry, and which I
have been requested to reprint. My friend, the Rev. Dr. Walker, who
was present when it was delivered, having published it in _The Family
Treasury_, another friend, noticing it there, had it printed as a
pamphlet at his own expense and distributed to all the ministers of
the Church to which he and I belong. It was a very characteristic act;
and I have ventured, as a memorial of it, to dedicate this volume to
him. I do so, however, not for this reason only, but also because
there has been no one in this generation who has done more than he has
done, by the example of his own impressive ministry and by his
generous encouragement of younger ministers, to promote the interests
of preaching in his native land.
My thanks are due to the Rev. Charles Shaw, who on this as on former
occasions has kindly assisted me in correcting the press.
GLASGOW, _October 1st, 1891_.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
LECTURE II.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN OF GOD 29
LECTURE III.
THE PREACHER AS A PATRIOT 59
LECTURE IV.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN OF THE WORD 91
LECTURE V.
THE PREACHER AS A FALSE PROPHET 125
LECTURE VI.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN 149
LECTURE VII.
THE PREACHER AS A CHRISTIAN 179
LECTURE VIII.
THE PREACHER AS AN APOSTLE 205
LECTURE IX.
THE PREACHER AS A THINKER 237
APPENDIX.
AN ORDINATION CHARGE 265
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY
Gentlemen, it would be impossible to begin this course of lectures
without expressing my acknowledgments to the Theological Faculty of
this University for the great honour they have done me by inviting me
to occupy this position. When I look over the list of my predecessors
and observe that it includes such names as Bishop Simpson, Henry Ward
Beecher, Dr. John Hall, Dr. W.M. Taylor, Dr. Phillips Brooks, Dr.
A.J.F. Behrends, and Dr. Dale--to mention only those with which it
opens--I cannot help feeling that it is perhaps a greater honour than
I was entitled to accept; and I cannot but wish that the preaching of
the old country were to be represented on this occasion by some one of
the many ministers who would have been abler than I to do it justice.
It is with no sense of having attained that I am to speak to you; for
I always seem to myself to be only beginning to learn my trade; and
the furthest I ever get in the way of confidence is to believe that I
shall preach well next time. However, there may be some advantages in
hearing one who is not too far away from the difficulties with which
you will soon be contending yourselves; and the keenness with which I
have felt these difficulties may have made me reflect, more than
others to whom the path of excellence has been easier, on the means of
overcoming them.
I warmly reciprocate the sentiments which have led the Faculty to come
across the Atlantic the second time for a lecturer, and the liberality
of mind with which they are wont to overstep the boundaries of their
own denomination and select their lecturers from all the evangelical
Churches. It is the first time I have set foot on your continent, but
I have long entertained a warm admiration for the American people and
a firm faith in their destiny; and I welcome an opportunity which may
serve, in any degree, to demonstrate the unity which underlies the
variety of our evangelical communions, and to show how great are the
things in which we agree in comparison with those on which we differ.
* * * * *
The aim of this lectureship, if I have apprehended it aright, is that
men who are out on the sea of practical life, feeling the force and
strain of the winds and currents of the time, and who therefore
occupy, to some extent, a different point of view from either students
or professors, should come and tell you, who are still standing on
the _terra firma_ of college life, but will soon also have to launch
forth on the same element, how it feels out there on the deep.
Well, there is a considerable difference.
The professorial theory of college life is, that the faculties are
being exercised and the resources collected with which the battles of
life are subsequently to be fought and its victories won. And there
is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in this theory. The acquisitions
of the class-room will all be found useful in future, and your only
regret will be that they have not been more extensive and thorough.
The gymnastic of study is suppling faculties which will be
indispensable hereafter. Yet there is room amidst your studies, and
without the slightest disparagement to them, for a message more
directly from life, to hint to you, that more may be needed in the
career to which you are looking forward than a college can give, and
that the powers on which success in practical life depends may be
somewhat different from those which avail most at your present stage.
There are two very marked types of intellect to be observed amongst
men, which we may call the receptive and the creative. Receptive
intellect has the power of taking fully in what is addressed to it by
others. It separates its acquisitions and distributes them among the
pigeon-holes of the memory. Out of these again it can reproduce them,
as occasion requires, and even make what may be called permutations
and combinations among its materials with skill and facility. The
creative intellect, on the contrary, is sometimes anything but apt to
receive that which people attempt to put into it. Instead of being an
open, roomy vessel for holding things, it may be awkwardly shaped, and
sometimes difficult to open at all. Nor do things pour out of it in a
stream, as water does from a pitcher; they rather flash out of it,
like sparks from the anvil. Instead of possessing its own knowledge,
it is possessed by it; it burns as it emits it, and its fire is
contagious.
The former is the serviceable intellect at college, but it is the
latter which makes the preacher. There may, indeed, here and there, be
miraculous professors who attach more importance, and give higher
marks, to the indications of the creative intellect than to the
achievements of the receptive intellect. But few can resist the appeal
made by the clear, correct and copious reproduction of what they have
themselves supplied. Indeed, they would not, as a rule, be justified
in doing so; for the first indications of originality are often crude
and irritating, and they may come to nothing. The creative intellect
is frequently slow in maturing; it is like those seeds which take more
than one season to blossom. But at a flower show it would not be fair
to withhold the prize from the flower which has blossomed already, and
reserve it for one which may possibly do so next year.
Of my fellow-students in the class to which I belonged at college, the
two who have since been most successful did not then seem destined for
first places. They were known to be able men, but they were not
excessively laborious, and they kept themselves irritatingly detached
from the interests of the college. But the one has since unfolded a
remarkable originality, which was, no doubt, even then organizing
itself in the inner depths; and the other, as soon as he entered the
pulpit, turned out to have the power of casting a spell over the minds
of men. Both had a spark of nature's fire; and this is the possession
which outshines all others when college is over and practical life
begun.[1]
But, if the viewpoint of practical life is different even from the
professorial, it is still more different from that of students; and
this may again justify the bringing of a message from the outside
world. The difference might be put in many ways; but perhaps it may be
best expressed by saying that, while you are among the critics, we are
among the criticized.
In the history of nearly all minds of the better sort there is an
epoch of criticism. The young soul, as it begins to observe, discovers
that things around it are not all as they ought to be, and that the
world is not so perfect a place as might naturally be expected or as
it may have been represented to be. The critical faculty awakes and,
having once tasted blood, rushes forth to judge all men and things
with cruel ability. This is the stage at which we agree with Carlyle
in thinking mankind to be mostly fools and pronounce every man over
five-and-forty who does not happen to agree with our opinions an old
fogey. It is the time when we are confident that we could, if we
chose, single-handed and with ease, accomplish tasks which generations
of men have struggled with in vain. Only in the meantime we, for our
part, are not disposed to commit ourselves to any creed or to champion
any cause, because we are engaged in contemplating all.
This period occurs, I say, in the history of all men of the abler
sort; but in students, on account of their peculiar opportunities, the
symptoms are generally exceptionally pronounced. Students are the
chartered libertines of criticism. What a life professors would lead,
if they only knew what is said about them every day of their lives! I
often think that three-fourths of every faculty in the country would
disappear some morning by a simultaneous act of self-effacement. Of
course ministers do not escape; ecclesiastics and Church courts are
quite beyond redemption; and principalities and powers in general are
in the same condemnation.
Such is the delightful prerogative of the position in which you now
stand. But, gentlemen, the moment you leave these college gates
behind, you have to pass from your place among the critics and take
your place among the criticized. That is, you will have to quit the
well-cushioned benches, where the spectators sit enjoying the
spectacle, and take your place among the gladiators in the arena. The
binoculars of the community will be turned upon you, and five hundred
or a thousand people will be entitled to say twice or thrice every
week what they think of your performances. You will have to put your
shoulder under the huge mass of your Church's policy and try to keep
step with some thousands whose shoulders are under it too; and the
reproaches cast by the public and the press at the awkwardness of the
whole squad and the unsteadiness of the ark will fall on you along
with the rest.
Seriously, this is a tremendous difference. Criticism, however
brilliant, is a comparatively easy thing. It is easier to criticize
the greatest things superbly than to do even small things fairly well.
A brief experience of practical life gives one a great respect for
some men whom one would not at one time have considered very
brilliant, and for work which one would have pronounced very
imperfect. There is a famous passage in Lucretius, in which he speaks
of the joy of the mariner who has escaped to dry land, when he sees
his shipwrecked companions still struggling in the waves. This is too
heathenish a sentiment; but I confess I have sometimes experienced a
touch of it, when I have beheld one who has distinguished himself by
his incisiveness, while still on the _terra firma_ of criticism,
suddenly dropped into the bottomless sea of actual life and learning,
amidst his first struggles in the waves, not without gulps of
salt-water, the difference between intention and performance.
* * * * *
But do not suppose that I am persuading you to give up criticism. On
the contrary, this is the natural function of the stage at which you
are; and probably those who throw themselves most vigorously into it
now may also discharge most successfully the functions of the stages
yet to come. The world reaps not a little advantage from criticism. It
is a very imperfect world; no generation of its inhabitants does its
work as well as it ought to be done, and it is the undoubted right of
the next generation to detect its defects; for in this lies the only
chance of improvement. There is something awe-inspiring in the first
glance cast by the young on the world in which they find themselves.
It is so clear and unbiassed; they distinguish so instantaneously
between the right and the wrong, the noble and the base; and they
blurt out so frankly what they see. As we grow older, we train
ourselves unawares not to see straight or, if we see, we hold our
peace. The first open look of young eyes on the condition of the world
is one of the principal regenerative forces of humanity.
To begin with, therefore, at all events I will rather come to your
standpoint than ask you to come to mine. Indeed, although I have for
some time been among the criticized, and my sympathies are with the
practical workers, my sense of how imperfectly the work is done, and
of how inadequate our efforts are to the magnitude of the task, grows
stronger instead of weaker. And it is from this point of view that I
mean to enter into our subject. I will make use of the facts of my own
country, with which I am familiar; but I do not suppose that the state
of things among you is substantially different; and you will not have
much difficulty in correcting the picture, to make it correspond with
your circumstances, whilst I speak.
* * * * *
In the present century there has certainly been an unparalleled
multiplication of the instrumentalities for doing the work. The
machine of religion, so to speak, has been perfected. The population
has been increasing fast; but churches have multiplied at least twice
as fast. Even in a great city like Glasgow we have a Protestant church
to every two thousand of the population.[2] And, inside the churches,
the multiplication of agencies has been even more surprising. Formerly
the minister did almost all the work; and it comprehended little more
than the two services on Sunday and the visitation of the
congregation; the elders helping him to a small extent in financing
the congregation and in a few other matters largely secular. But now
every congregation is a perfect hive of Christian activity. In a large
congregation the workers are counted by hundreds. Every imaginable
form of philanthropic and religious appliance is in operation.
Buildings for Sabbath Schools and Mission Work are added to the
church; and nearly every day of the week has its meeting.
The machine of religion is large and complicated, and it is manned by
so many workers that they get in each other's way; but, with all this
bustling activity, is the work done? This is the question which gives
us pause. Has the amount of practical Christianity increased in
proportion to the multiplication of agencies? Are the prospects of
religion as much brighter than they used to be as might have been
expected after all this expenditure of labour? Is Christianity
deepening as well as spreading?
In Glasgow, where the proportion of churches to population is so high,
they speak of two hundred thousand non-church-goers, that is, a third
of the inhabitants; and, if you go into one of our villages with two
or three thousand of a population, you in may find three or four
churches, belonging to different denominations; but you will usually
find even there a considerable body of non-church-goers. Not long ago
I heard a London clergyman state, that, if, any Sunday morning, you
went through the congregations belonging to the Church of England in
the district of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants in which he
labours, you would not, in all of them put together, find one man
present for every thousand of the population. One of the English
bishops recently admitted that in South London his Church is not in
possession; and certainly no other denomination is. Thus, with all our
appliances, we have failed even to bring the population within the
sound of the Gospel.
Inside the churches, what is to be said? Is the proportion large of
those who have received the Gospel in such a way that their hearts
have manifestly been changed by it and their lives brought under its
sway? We should utterly deceive ourselves if we imagined that real
Christianity is coextensive with the profession of Christianity. Many
who bear the Christian name have neither Christian experience nor
Christian character, but in their spirit and pursuits are thoroughly
worldly. Even where religion has taken real hold, is the type very
often beautiful and impressive? Who can think without shame of the
long delay of the Church even to attempt the work of converting the
heathen? And even yet the sacrifices made for this object are
ludicrously small in proportion either to the magnitude of the problem
or the wealth of the Christian community. The annual expenditure of
the United Kingdom on drink is said to be a hundred times as great as
that on foreign missions.
Religion does not permeate life. The Church is one of the great
institutions of the country, and gets its own place. But it is a thing
apart from the common life, which goes on beside it. Business,
politics, literature, amusements, are only faintly coloured by it. Yet
the mission of Christianity is not to occupy a respectable place
apart, but to leaven life through and through.
Vice flourishes side by side with religion. We build the school and
the church, and then we open beside them the public-house. The
Christian community has the power of controlling this traffic; but it
allows it to go on with all its unspeakable horrors. Thus its own work
is systematically undone, and faster than the victims can be saved new
ones are manufactured to occupy their places. Of vices which are still
more degrading I need not speak. Their prevalence is too patent
everywhere. If there is any law of Christianity which is obvious and
inexorable, it is the law of purity. But go where you will in the
Christian countries, and you will learn that by large sections of
their manhood this law is treated as if it did not exist. The truth is
that, in spite of the nations being baptized in the name of Christ,
heathenism has still the control of much of their life; and it would
hardly be too much to say that the mission of Christianity is still
only beginning.
In what direction does hope lie? It seems to me that there can be no
more important factor in the solution of the problem than the kind of
men who fill the office of the ministry. We must have men of more
power, more concentration on the aims of the ministry, more wisdom,
but, above all, more willingness to sacrifice their lives to their
vocation. We have too tame and conventional a way of thinking about
our career. Men are not even ambitious of doing more than settling in
a comfortable position and getting through its duties in a respectable
way. We need to have men penetrated with the problem as a whole, and
labouring with the new developments which the times require. The
prizes of the ministry ought to be its posts of greatest difficulty.
When a student or young minister proves to have the genuine gift, his
natural goal should not be a highly paid place in a West End church,
but a position where he would be in the forefront of the battle with
sin and misery. Nowhere else are the great lines of Chapman more
applicable than in our calling:--
Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sailyards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship runs on her side so low
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.
I am well aware that men of this stamp cannot be made to order. They
must, as I have suggested already, have a spark of nature's fire, and,
besides that, the Spirit of God must descend on them. Yet I have
thought that it might be helpful towards this end to go back to the
origins of preaching, and to study those in whom its primitive spirit
was embodied. Perhaps that which we are desiderating could not be
better expressed than by saying that we need a ministry prophetic and
apostolic. And I am going to invite you to study the prophets and
apostles as our models.
Though we may not believe in apostolic succession in the churchly
sense, we are the successors of the apostles in this sense, that the
apostles filled the office which we hold, or hope to hold, and
illustrated the manner in which its duties should be discharged in
such a way as to be an example and an inspiration to all its
subsequent occupants. The air they breathed was still charged with the
spirit poured into it by Christ; they were made great by the
influence of His teaching and companionship; the power of the Holy
Ghost, freshly descended, burned on their hearts; and they went forth
on their mission with a force of conviction and a mastery of their
task which nothing could resist.
One among them embodied in himself, above all others, the spirit of
that epoch of creative energy. St. Paul is perhaps, after our Lord
Himself, the most complete embodiment of the ministerial life on all
its sides which the world has ever seen. And, fortunately, he embodied
this spirit not only in deeds, but also in words. Circumstances made
him a writer of letters, the most autobiographical form of literature.
His friends, such as Timothy and Titus, drew out of him lengthy
expressions of the convictions wrought into his mind by the
experiences of a lifetime. His enemies, by their accusations, struck
out of him still ampler and more heartfelt statements of his feelings
and motives. St. Paul has painted his own portrait at full length, and
in every line it is the portrait of a minister. There is more in his
writings which touches the very quick of our life as ministers than in
all other writings in existence. It is my desire to reproduce this
straight from the sources. I have no intention of going over the
outward life of St. Paul. This you can find in a hundred books. But I
desire to exhibit the very soul of the man, as he himself has revealed
it to us in his writings.
If we are the successors of the apostles, the apostles were the
successors of the prophets, who did for the Church of the Old
Testament what the apostles did for that of the New. In outward aspect
and detail, indeed, the life of the prophets differed much from that
of the apostles. In force of manhood and in variety and brilliance of
genius they far excelled them. But their aim was the same. It was to
make the kingdom of God come by announcing and enforcing the mind and
will of God. And this is our aim too.
The writings of the prophets are very difficult, and their period is
less popularly known than any other period of Scripture history,
either before or after it. But it is beginning to attract more
attention, and in the near future it will do so much more, because it
is beginning to be perceived that in it lies the key to the whole Old
Testament history and literature.[3] The writings of Isaiah especially
have of late attracted attention. Commentary after commentary on them
has appeared;[4] till now the reader can see his way pretty clearly
through the tangled but enchanting mazes of his writings. With such
helps as have been available to me I have endeavoured through the
writings to get at the man; and I will take Isaiah as the
representative of the prophetic spirit in the same way as St. Paul is
to represent for us the apostles. But here again my aim is neither
that of the commentator nor that of the biographer. It is the soul of
the man I wish to depict and the spirit of his work.
It may be thought that, by taking up the subject in this way, I am
missing the opportunity of dealing with the practical work of to-day.
But I do not think so. There are, indeed, some details nearly always
discussed in lectures on preaching which I do not care to touch. There
is, for instance, the question of the delivery of sermons--whether the
preacher should read, or speak _memoriter_, or preach _extempore_.
This can be discussed endlessly, and the discussion is always
interesting; but, if it were discussed every year for a century, it
would be as far from being settled as ever. Besides, it is my duty to
remember what others have handled exhaustively here before me. Indeed,
the Senate mentioned to me that it was desirable that the subject
should be taken up from a new point of view. They have been good
enough to express their approbation of the way in which I mean to
treat it; but it is not in deference to their instructions that I take
it up in this way, but in accordance with the bent of my own mind; and
I think I see my way to bring to bear on it all the practical
experience which I may be in possession of; for I quite recognise that
the value of such a course of lectures largely depends on its being,
from beginning to end, what in literature is called a Confession, that
is, a record of experiences. Although I am to go back to the ages of
the apostles and the prophets, I do not intend to stay there. My wish
is to bring down from thence fire which will kindle your hearts, as
you face the world and the tasks of to-day.
There is another objection, which may have already occurred to some of
you, and would doubtless occur to many, as I went along, if I did not
anticipate it. It may be felt, that both apostles and prophets were so
differently situated from us, especially through the possession of the
gift of inspiration, that they can be no example for us to follow. To
this I will not reply by seeking in any way to minimise their
inspiration. It is, indeed, difficult to say exactly how their
inspiration differed from that which is accessible and indispensable
to us; for we also are entirely dependent for the power and success of
our work on the same Spirit as spoke through them. But, however
difficult it may be to define it, I am one of those who believe that
there is a difference, and that it is a great difference. The mind and
will of God expressed themselves through the prophets and apostles
with a directness and authority which we cannot claim. But the
difference is not such as to remove them beyond our imitation.
Although in some, or even many, respects they may be beyond us, this
is no reason why we may not in others imitate them with the greatest
advantage. It will be seen at a glance how little there is in this
objection, if it be considered that our Lord Himself is the great
pattern of the ministry. In some respects He is of course much farther
away from us than either prophets or apostles; yet He is near us as a
model in every detail of our duty. No mode of treating my subject
would have been so congenial to me as to set Him forth in this
character. But, having attempted to do so elsewhere, I have chosen the
method now announced under the conviction, that the nearest approach
to the study of how Christ fulfilled the duties of the ministry is to
study how prophets and apostles fulfilled them.
* * * * *
There is one thing more which I should like to say before closing this
somewhat miscellaneous introductory lecture. I would not have come to
lecture to you on this subject if I were not a firm believer in
preaching. If in what has been already said I have seemed to
depreciate its results, this is only because my ideal is so high of
what the pulpit ought to do, and might do.[5] I do not, indeed,
separate preaching from the other parts of a minister's life, such as
the conducting of the service of the sanctuary, the visitation of the
congregation, and taking part in more general public work. As I go on,
it will be seen, that, so far from undervaluing these, I hold them to
be all required even to produce a healthy pulpit power. Yet preaching
is the central thing in our work. I believe in it, because Christ
Himself set His stamp on it. Read His sayings, and you will see that
this was what He sent forth the servants of His kingdom to do.
"Christ," says St. Paul, "sent me not to baptize, but to preach the
Gospel"; not, I think, thereby ignoring baptism, but putting it and
all other ceremonies in their proper place of subordination to the
preaching of the Word.
It is often charged against the evangelical, and especially the free,
Churches at the present day, that they give preaching a position of
too great prominence in public worship; and we are counselled to yield
the central place to something else. It is put to us, for example,
whether our people should not be taught to come to church for the
purpose of speaking to God rather than in order to be spoken to by
man. This has a pious sound; but there is a fallacy in it. Preaching
is not merely the speaking of a man. If it is, then it is certainly
not worth coming to church for. Preaching, if it is of the right kind,
is the voice of God. This we venture to say while well aware of its
imperfections. In the best of preaching there is a large human element
beset with infirmity; yet in all genuine preaching there is conveyed a
message from Heaven. And, while it is good for people to go to church
that they may speak to God, it is still better to go that He may speak
to them. Nor, where God is authentically heard speaking to the heart,
will the response of the heart in the other elements of worship be
lacking. It is the reception of God's message of free grace and
redeeming love which inspires the true service of praise and prayer;
and without this the service of the Church is soulless ceremonial.[6]
From another side disparagement is frequently cast upon preaching in
our day. It is said that the printing-press has superseded the
preacher, and must more and more supersede him. Formerly, when people
could not read, and literature was written only for scholars, the
pulpit was a power, because it was the only purveyor of ideas to the
multitude; but now the common man has other resources: he has books,
magazines, the newspaper: and he can dispense with the preacher. To
this it might be answered, that the sermon is not the only thing which
brings people to church. Where two or three are met together, there
are influences generated of a spiritual and social kind which answer
to deep and permanent wants of human nature. But there is an answer
more direct and conclusive. The multiplication of the products of the
printing-press and the possession by the multitude of the power of
reading them are certainly among the most wonderful facts of modern
times, and, I will add without hesitation, among the most gratifying.
But what do they mean for the great majority? In the days before the
age of the press arrived people only knew the gossip of their own
town, and this absorbed their thoughts and conversation. Now they hear
every morning the gossip of a thousand cities from China to Peru. The
world has become for the modern man immensely larger and more
interesting than it was to his predecessors; and facts about it are
accumulated on his mind in overwhelming quantity and bewildering
variety. But does this make preaching less necessary to him? It surely
makes it far more necessary. He has more need than his fathers had of
those supersensible principles which give order and meaning to
sensible facts. The larger and more wonderful the world becomes, the
more urgent becomes the question of the cause which has produced it;
and, the more the figures multiply which the spectators have to watch
on the theatre of history, the more indispensable becomes the
knowledge of the argument of the drama. If the pulpit has an authentic
message to deliver about Him whose thought is the ground of all
existence, and whose will of love is the explanation of the pain and
mystery of life, the more cultivated and eager the mind of man
becomes, then the more indispensable will the voice of the pulpit be
felt to be; and a real decay of the power of the pulpit can only be
due either to preachers themselves, when, losing touch with the
mysteries of revelation, they let themselves down to the level of
vendors of passing opinion, or to such a shallowing of the general
mind as will render it incapable of taking an earnest interest in the
profounder problems of existence.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]
"A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes,
They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak,
An' syne they hope to speel Parnassus
By dint o' Greek.
"Gi'e me _a'e spark o' nature's fire_,
That's a' the learnin' I desire,
Then, though I trudge through dub an' mire,
At pleuch or cart,
My muse, though homely in attire,
May touch the heart."--BURNS.
[2] "In 1880 there was in the United States one Evangelical Church
organization to every 516 of the population. In Boston there is 1 church
to every 1,600 of the population; in Chicago 1 to 2,081; in New York 1
to 2,468; in St. Louis 1 to 2,800."--_Our Country_, by Rev. Josiah
Strong, D.D.
[3] See Duhm: _Die Theologie der Propheten_--preface.
[4] Cheyne, Smith, Delitzsch, von Orelli, Dillmann, etc.
[5] "After eleven years of active preaching I have spent five of hardly
less active hearing. I have listened carefully to preachers of all
degrees and denominations, and some convictions have been burned in upon
my mind. Far above all, I have learned to believe in the great
importance of preaching--the effect it has on men's lives and thoughts;
their need of it; their pain and loss when it does not help and reach
them. I used to think that, if it did men good, they would speak more of
it. But they pay no compliments to their daily bread; yet it is the
staff of their life. If ministers knew the silent appreciation of
helpful preaching, they would work, if not harder, at least more
brightly and hopefully.... Preachers should remember that the large
silent part of their flock is only reached by preaching, and, therefore,
they should give their strength to it, and not to little meetings.
Suppose an average instance: Sunday morning attendance, 250. The
minister does not preach well; but he works hard during the week, and
has, Monday, Literary Society, 15; Tuesday, Young Ladies' Bible Class,
12; Wednesday, Prayer Meeting, 30; Thursday, Class for Servants, 8;
Friday, Class for Children, 15. All told, these do not represent more
than 50, leaving 200 reached only by preaching, and more or less
dissatisfied."--_Ex sapientis manuscripto penes me._
[6] "New Testament preaching dates from the day of Pentecost. Tongues of
fire rested on the assembled Church; and they began to speak with other
tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. The word of God, the
testimony of Jesus, the gospel of our salvation, preached in tongues of
men of every race, was to be the form of power by which the kingdom of
God, in our dispensation, should spread abroad and prevail. But the
tongues were tongues of fire. This fire is, first of all, the Holy
Spirit, whose quick, pure and living presence it denotes. But then it is
intimated that the Holy Spirit was to prove Himself fire _in the speech
of men_. It is intimated that human minds, as they uttered themselves to
their fellows, and human speech in that utterance, were to prove capable
of taking fire, so as to brighten and burn with the truth and power of
God's Spirit. Such was the kind of preaching that was set a-going at
Pentecost, and by it the world was to be won. Other forms of influence
were not to be excluded, but this was to have the chief place. The word
of power, coming burning-hot out of the living mouth of a believing man,
is the leading form in which the Spirit's presence is evermore to make
head in the Church against the world, and is to carry the Church on in
her mission in the world. This gives us the fundamental view of our work
as preachers; and nothing more is needed in order to illustrate its
dignity and glory."--PRINCIPAL RAINY.
LECTURE II.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN OF GOD.
In accordance with the plan announced yesterday, I am to turn your
attention in the next four lectures to the prophets of the Old
Testament as patterns for modern preachers; and the special subject
for to-day is The Preacher as a Man of God.
To earnest minds at the stage at which you stand at present no
question could be more interesting than this: How does a right
ministry begin? what are the experiences which justify or compel a man
to turn his back on all other careers and devote himself to this one?
On the minds of some of you this question may be pressing at the
present moment with great urgency. It is a question of supreme
importance. In most things a good deal depends on beginning well; but
nowhere is the commencement more momentous than here.
This is a point on which the greatest emphasis is laid in the history
of the prophets. We are told how they became prophets. Their ministry
commenced with a spiritual experience usually denominated the
Prophetic Call.
Such experiences are narrated of the greatest prophets. The call of
Moses was the scene of the Burning Bush, which is detailed at great
length in his biography. The next outstanding prophet was Samuel, and
there is no better known story in Scripture than the touching account
of how the Lord called him to be the reformer of an evil age. Each of
the three great literary prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel--has
left an account of his own call; that of Ezekiel covering nearly three
whole chapters. If the smaller prophets do not, as a rule, commemorate
similar experiences of their own, it is not to be inferred that they
did not pass through them. The brief compass of their writings is
sufficient to account for the omission; although perhaps a subjective
element may also enter into the explanation. Among ourselves there are
men who are able to confide to the public their own most sacred
experiences, and habitually make use of them to illustrate and enforce
the truth. To others nothing would be more unnatural: they shrink from
the most distant allusion to the most sacred moments of their
spiritual history. Yet these may be worth the whole world to
themselves. Both modes of procedure have Scriptural warrant: for some
of the prophets narrate their calls, and others do not.
If these calls of distinguished men to God's service be noted one by
one, they will be found to include many of the grandest scenes of
Scripture.[7] There could be no more splendid subject--if I may give
the hint in passing--for a course of lectures in the congregation, or
even for a course, like the present, to students of divinity.
They exhibit astonishing variety. Moses, for example, was called in
the maturity of his powers, but Samuel when he was still a child.
Jeremiah's call bears a certain resemblance to that of Moses, because
both resisted the Divine will through inability to speak; but in other
respects they are totally dissimilar. Ezekiel's stands altogether by
itself, and is extremely difficult to unravel; but it is thoroughly
characteristic of his sublime and intricate genius. Nowhere else could
there be found a more telling illustration of the diversity of
operation in which the Spirit of God delights, when He is touching the
spirit of man, even if He is aiming at identical results.
For in all cases the effect was the same. The man who was called to be
a prophet was separated by this summons from all other occupations
which could interfere with the service for which God had designated
him. His whole being was taken possession of for the Divine purposes
and subjected to the sway of the Divine inspiration. One of the
commonest names of a prophet in the Old Testament is "a man of God."
Through constant use this term has lost its meaning for us. But it
meant exactly what it said: that the prophet was not his own, but
God's man; he belonged to God, who could send him wherever He wished
and do with him whatever He would. It was the same idea that St. Paul
expressed, when he called himself, as he loved to do, "the slave of
Jesus Christ."
It has sometimes been attempted to explain these scenes away, as if
they were not records of actual experience, but only poetic
representations which the prophets prefixed to their writings, to
afford their readers a dramatic prefigurement of the general scope of
their prophecies, ideas being freely put into them which the prophets
did not themselves possess at the commencement of their career, but
only acquired by degrees as their life proceeded.[8] They are compared
to such efforts of the poet as the _Vision_ of Robert Burns, in which
he tells how the muse of Caledonia appeared to him at the plough,
and, casting her mantle round him and claiming him as her own,
consecrated him the poet of his native land; or the _Zueignung_ of
Goethe, in which he feigns a similar experience which befell him on
the moonlight heights of the German forest. But, though there is a
poetic element in prophecy, the prophetic spirit was too much in
earnest for such figments of the imagination, which are alien to the
severity of the Hebrew genius. Besides, such scenes are not confined
to the Hebrew prophets: they belong to the true religion in all
generations.
* * * * *
Any of the prophetic calls would bring suggestively before us the
topic with which we are occupied to-day; and it is not without regret
that I turn away from the Burning Bush, with its dramatic dialogue
between Jehovah and Moses touching many points which are the very same
as still perplex those who are standing on the threshold of a
ministerial career; from the chamber of the tabernacle, with its
startling voice, in which God opened the heart of Samuel to take in
the purpose of life; and from the wonderfully instructive scene in
which the shrinking spirit of Jeremiah met the Divine summons with the
humble cry of deprecation, "Behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child,"
till the Divine sympathy and wisdom answered his arguments and lifted
him above his fears. But we have agreed to take Isaiah as the
representative of the prophets; and, in spite of these other
attractions, we need not repent of this; for there is nothing in Holy
Writ more unique and sublime than the call of Isaiah, and it is
pregnant in every line with instruction. It is, indeed, far away from
us, and it will require a strong effort to transport ourselves back
over so many centuries and enter sympathetically into the experience
of one who lived in such a widely different world. But it is a real
chapter of human experience. As Isaiah prophesied for fifty or perhaps
even sixty years after this, he must at the time have been in the
prime of his days. In short, he was at the very stage of life at which
you are now, and this is an account of how a young man of three
thousand years ago became a public servant of God.
* * * * *
There are two or three points worth noting before we go on to describe
the scene itself.
1. It is reported in the sixth chapter of the prophecies of Isaiah. We
should naturally have expected it to stand at the beginning of the
whole book, as do the corresponding scenes in the books of Jeremiah
and Ezekiel; and it is not easy to say why it is not found in this
position. We are perhaps too ready to think of the prophecies of a
prophet as a continuous book, written, in one prolonged effort, on a
single theme, as books are written in modern times. But this is a
misconception. They came together more like the pieces of a lyric
poet. A lyric poet composes his pieces at uncertain intervals of
inspiration; they range over a great variety of subjects; and it may
only be late in life that he thinks of collecting them in a volume. So
the prophecies of the prophet came to him at uncertain and often
lengthy intervals; they were sometimes very brief, no longer than
short lyrics; and we know that he sometimes did not think of any
literary publication of them till long after their oral delivery. A
lyric poet, when collecting his pieces, may adopt any one of several
different principles of arrangement. The simplest way is to insert
them in chronological order; but he may follow some subtle
psychological arrangement, as Wordsworth, for instance, did when his
collected works were published; or he may throw them together at
random, according to the fancy of the moment; and this is perhaps the
commonest case. There seems to be the same variety in the prophets.
The prophecies of Ezekiel, for example, are arranged on the
chronological principle, but those of Isaiah and Jeremiah are not; and
it is one of the most difficult tasks of interpretation to assign the
different pieces to their original dates. It is doubtful whether there
is any rigid principle at all in Isaiah's prophecies. It is even
doubtful whether the order in which they stand is due to him or to a
disciple or editor, who arranged them after he was dead. We need
hardly, therefore, inquire very strictly why any particular chapter
occurs in its particular place. But it is somewhat awkward that the
sixth chapter stands where it does, in the body of the book, instead
of at the head of it; because this hides its significance from the
general reader. Scholars are agreed, however, that it is an account of
Isaiah's call to be a prophet; and, when this is recognised, every
detail of the scene which it records is invested with new meaning.
2. It is worthy of note that the event is precisely dated. The chapter
begins with the words, "In the year that King Uzziah died." There are
forms of religious experience which are dateless--processes of slow
and unmarked growth, which may spread themselves over years; but there
are also crises, when experience crystallizes into events so
remarkable that they become standing dates in the lives of those who
have enjoyed them, from which they reckon, as other people do from
birth or marriage or the turning-points of their domestic and
commercial history.
Whether this was the first of such events in the history of Isaiah I
have often wondered. There is nothing unlikely in the suggestion. In
other cases the call to enter into God's work synchronized with the
first real encounter with God Himself. Samuel's call to be a prophet
coincided with his first personal introduction to acquaintance with
Jehovah, whom, it is distinctly stated, he did not previously know;
and St. Paul's call to the apostolate happened at the same time as his
conversion. As we go on, we shall come upon at least one circumstance
which points pretty strongly to the conclusion that this was Isaiah's
first conscious transaction with God.