characterized them. They forgot themselves in their message. The fire
of God in their bones would not permit them to hesitate. Whether it
was a frowning king or an infuriated mob the prophet had to brave, he
set his face like a flint. Comfort, reputation, life itself might be
at stake; but he had to speak out all that God had told him, whether
men might bear or whether they might forbear.
2. The other aspect of the prophets' word was that it was a Message to
Men. If, on the one hand, the word of the prophets was a power because
it was the word or thought of God, it depended, on the other hand, for
its effect on becoming a word which those to whom it was communicated
could repeat in their own vocabulary and thereby turn into a thought
of their own; for it was only when men's minds were so modified by the
prophets' words that they began, in their degree, to think the
thoughts of God, that the prophetic message became an influence in
their life. The prophet had, therefore, to stand in a double attitude,
and a double process had to be performed in his mind. He had, in the
first place, to turn himself wholly round to God and away from the
world, and clear his mind of everything else, that he might receive
the message in its purity; but then he had, in the second place, to
turn himself round towards men and, taking their circumstances into
account, deliver the message to them in the most effective way. He had
first to allow the Divine message to master him; but then he had to
turn upon it and master it, before he could be the medium by which it
was conveyed to others.
The prophets had to go amongst men, even if it were at the risk of
life, and deliver the Divine message. They had to use every device to
make it telling, striking in at every opportunity and giving line upon
line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. They did
not disdain the homeliest means, if it served the purpose. A prophet
would go about in public carrying a yoke on his neck, like a beast of
burden, or lie a whole year on his side, to attract attention to some
important truth. More than once we find a prophet setting up a board
in the market-place, with only a few words written on it, into which
he had condensed his message, that the passers-by might read it.
On the other hand, when it was appropriate, they did not spare
themselves the trouble of cultivating the graces of style by which
words are made attractive and impressive.[25] The prophetic books are
almost as artistic as poems. Their literary form is not exactly
poetry, though now and then it crosses its own boundary and becomes
poetical. It is a kind of rhythmical prose, governed by laws of its
own, which it carefully observes. All the prophets are not, indeed,
equally careful. Some of them appear to have been too completely
carried away with the message which they had to deliver to think much
of the way of delivering it. But these were not the strongest of the
prophets; and it is worth observing, that those who took the most
pains about the form in which what they had to say was couched have
been the most successful prophets in this sense, that they have been
most read by subsequent generations.
At the head of them all, in this respect, stands Isaiah. If the book
of an ordinary reader of the Bible were examined, it would be found, I
imagine, that Isaiah is thumbed far more than any other portion of the
prophetical writings; and this is due not only to the divinely
evangelical character of his message, but also to the nobly human
style of his language.[26] All the resources of poetry and eloquence
are at his command. Every realm of nature ministers to his stores of
imagery; and his language ranges through every mode of beauty and
sublimity, being sometimes like the pealing of silver bells, and
sometimes like the crashing of avalanches, and sometimes like the
songs of seraphim. He is generally supposed to have been a native of
Jerusalem and to have spent his life within its walls. So identified,
indeed, is he with it, that he is coming to be called Isaiah of
Jerusalem; and a recent expounder of his prophecies says that
Jerusalem was more to him than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal,
or Florence to Dante. But, at some period of his life, he must have
had ample experience also of a country life; because the aspects of
the country are mirrored in his pages with incomparable charm.
He lets us see nature, as it existed in his day, both wild in the
forest and wilderness, and cultivated around the abodes of men; and he
paints for us the figures of the country people themselves and the
labours they went forth to. We see in his pages the trees of the wood
moved by the wind; the willows by the water-courses; the fresh
branches sprouting from the stock of the pollard oak or terebinth. We
hear the doves mourning from the depths of the thicket, and see the
roe, chased by the hunter, disappearing within its shelter, and even
the schoolboy rifling the birds' nests so ruthlessly that "there was
none that moved the wing or opened the mouth or peeped." We see the
swarms of bees and flies resting on the branches in the summer heat;
the ploughshare lying in the furrow; the tow and the distaff; the ox
turning its head to be patted by the hand of its owner, and the ass
trotting off at feeding-time to its master's crib. The prophet looks
with a specially observant and sympathetic eye on the toils of
men--the woodman thinning the trees of the forest; the carpenter, with
saw and axe, turning to his own uses the sycamore and the cedar; the
builder among his bricks and stones; and the farmer, on the exposed
height of the threshing-floor, winnowing his corn with the shovel and
the fan. As is usual in the Bible, the shepherd is portrayed with
special honour, whether he calls out his neighbours to frighten away
the lion from his flock or is seen gathering the lambs in his arms and
carrying them in his bosom. But most of all does the poet-prophet love
to linger in the vineyard, marking accurately all the operations of
the vine-dresser and all the stages of the growth of the vines. We see
the tearing up of the hillside with the mattock, the accumulation of
soil, the gathering out of the stones, the construction of the
winepress and the watch-tower. Then we see the roots planted and
growing from stage to stage--from that "afore the harvest, when the
bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower," to that
when the vineyard is ringing with the songs of the vintage and the
gleaners are picking the last relics from the outermost branches.
At whatever period these pictures of nature were laid up in the memory
of Isaiah, they came back to him when he was engaged in the work of a
prophet, and supplied the imagery by means of which the Divine truths
which he heralded were made impressive and attractive to his
countrymen and acceptable to all subsequent generations; for men are
so made that they are never so won by the truth as when they see it
reflected in a physical image.
These two sides of the prophet's activity nearly correspond to what we
should call Thought and Expression. Or, to put it still more broadly,
the preacher must be a man who both has something to say and knows how
to say it. On these two apparently simple qualifications hang all the
science and art of our vocation.
In reality they are not simple. To have the right thing to say is a
great commandment, and to know the right way to say it is, though
second to it, hardly inferior. But the problem of the ministry is to
have both in perfect equipoise--to utter a word which is at the same
time both a message from God and a message to men.
It would be possible to be so taken possession of by the message from
God as to lose self-control and even reason itself. In Scripture we
meet with manifestations of prophecy which are akin to madness. Just
as the wind, catching the sail, would, if the ropes were not adjusted
to relieve the strain, overturn the boat, so the Wind of God might
sweep the mind off its balance, the human personality being overborne
by the inrushing inspiration. Thus religion may make a man a fanatic,
who has no control over his own spirit, and no wisdom to choose the
times at which to speak or the terms in which to address his
fellow-men. On the other hand, the opposite excess is still more
easy. So much stress may be laid on the form of words, and so much
mastery obtained of the art of winning attention, that the necessity
of having a Divine message to deliver or of depending on the power of
the Spirit of God is forgotten. The windy master of words, whose own
spirit is not subdued either by the impression of great thoughts or
the sense of a great responsibility, but who can draw the eyes of men
on his own performances and earn the incense of applause, has always
been too familiar a figure in religion. It is to a man like Isaiah we
must look for the absolute balance of both sides. There you have the
blowing in all its degrees of the Wind of God, from the gentlest
whisper to the force of the tempest, but, at the same time, the most
perfect self-control and the adaptation of the word to the tastes and
necessities of those to whom it was delivered.
There is a name sometimes applied by the prophets to themselves which
admirably expresses the combination and balance of these two aspects
of their activity. They call themselves Interpreters. The process of
interpretation is a most interesting one, when it is well done. I have
heard a speaker address with the greatest fervour a multitude who did
not understand a word he was saying; but, as fast as the sentences
fell from his lips, another speaker by his side caught them up and,
in tones as fervid and with gestures as dramatic as his own, rendered
them to the hearers in their own tongue with such effect that the
performance made all the impression of an original speech. An
interpreter is one who receives a message for people in a language
which they do not understand and delivers it to them in their own
tongue. Jehovah was incessantly speaking to His people in the
vicissitudes of their history, but they did not apprehend His meaning.
The prophet, however, understood; he took the Divine message into his
own soul, and then he went and communicated it to the people in terms
with which they were familiar. An interpreter requires to know at
least two languages--that in which the message comes and that in which
it has to be delivered. If he knows either imperfectly, his
interpretation will be proportionately imperfect. No interpreter of
God, perhaps, knows both languages equally well. Some know the Divine
language imperfectly, while they know thoroughly the language of men.
What they say is interesting, fresh and human; but there is not much
of a Divine message in it. Others have got far into the secret of God
and know the Divine language well; but they are not sufficiently
masters of the language of men. These are saintly men and command
reverence by their character, but what they say does not find its way
to men's business and bosoms.
I have seen the same truth put in another way. Tholuck, one of the
most gifted of modern preachers, has made the remark that a sermon
ought to have heaven for its father and the earth for its mother. Why,
he asks, do one half of our sermons miss the mark? It is because,
while they treat of the circumstances and relationships of life in an
interesting way, they do so only in the light which springs from
below, not in that which streams from above; they have the earth for
their mother, but not heaven for their father. And why do the other
half of our sermons fail to touch the heart? It is because, while they
display the heavenly things shining at a distance, they do not bring
them down to the homes and workshops, the highways and byways of
ordinary life; they have heaven for their father, but not the earth
for their mother.[27]
* * * * *
Indeed, gentlemen, the definition of the preacher as a Man of the Word
covers a very large area of our duty, and an analysis of its contents
will furnish a kind of natural history of that which is the most
important part of a minister's work from week to week.
1. To be a Man of the Word is to be a master of the Divine Word. In
the pulpit not only must a man have something to say, but it must be a
message from God. Where is this to be found? We do not now require to
seek it, as the prophets had to do, in the empty void. Their work was
not in vain. They were working for their own times, but they were also
working for all time. The prophets and apostles put into a permanent
form the principles on which the world is governed, and gave classical
expression to the most important truths which man requires to know for
salvation and for the conduct of his life. Thus they are still serving
us, and we can begin where they left off. He who receives the message
of God now finds it in the Word of God.
Hence one of the primary qualifications of the ministry is an intimate
familiarity with the Scriptures. To this end a large proportion of the
study required of you at college is directed; and the subsequent
habits of ministerial life have to be formed with the same object in
view. A large portion of our work is the searching of the Scriptures,
and a preacher of the highest order will always be a man mighty in
the Scriptures. We chance at present to be living at a time when the
questions about the Bible are the most numerous and the most difficult
in theology, and many accepted opinions are cast into solution. I dare
say it is the experience of most students of divinity that they are
more perplexed about inspiration and related questions than about any
other subjects. On the other hand, the attention directed to the Bible
was never so great as it is at present; and the methods of studying it
are daily improving. And, in spite of all the difficulties, it is
questionable if there ever was in the Church an intenser conviction
that the voice of God is heard in His Word. The experience of the
ministry deepens this conviction every year. If I may give utterance
to my own experience, I have never come to the end of a close study of
a book of Scripture in the congregation without having both a fresh
respect for its literary character and a profounder impression of its
Divine wisdom. The more the Bible is searched, the more will it be
loved; and the stronger will the conviction grow that its deep truths
are the Divine answers to the deep wants of human nature.
Yet to deliver the message of God is not merely to read what prophets
and apostles penned and to repeat it by rote. The man who is to be
God's messenger must himself draw near to God and abide in His
secret, as they did. The word must detach itself from the book and
become a living element of experience before it can profit even the
reader himself; and much more is this the case, of course, before it
can profit others.[28] It is the truth which has become a personal
conviction, and is burning in a man's heart so that he cannot be
silent, which is his message. The number of such truths which a man
has appropriated from the Bible and verified in his own experience is
the measure of his power.[29] There is all the difference in the world
between the man who thus speaks what he knows from an inner impulse
and the man whose sermon is simply a literary exercise on a Scripture
theme, and who speaks only because Sunday has come round and the bell
rung and he must do his duty.
The selection of the theme for preaching is to be determined chiefly
by the power of the Word to lay hold of the conviction of the
preacher. Or, if the subject is prescribed, as when one is lecturing
through a book of the Bible, the points to be treated are to be
determined in this way. Sometimes, as a preacher reads the Word, a
text will leap from the page, so to speak, and, fastening on the mind,
insist on being preached upon. A sermon on such a text is nearly
always successful; and a wise man will, therefore, take care to garner
such texts when they occur to him. He will underline them in his
Bible, or, better still, enter them in a note-book kept for the
purpose, adding a few words perhaps to indicate the first lines of
thought which have occurred to him. These notes may be multiplied from
time to time; and, when the minister turns to a page which has been
thus filled, he will often find his sermon nearly made to his
hand.[30] Dr. Wendell Holmes tells of Emerson that he kept such a
note-book for subjects on which he might lecture, and for suggestions
of lines of thought which he might follow out. He called it his
Savings Bank, because, though the payments into it were minute, they
gradually swelled to riches; and passages which his hearers and
readers supposed to be outbursts of sudden literary creation were
really the results of slow accumulation. If this was necessary for
even a genius like Emerson it will be far more necessary for the
ordinary man. The gold of thought has generally to be collected as
gold dust.
2. But this already brings me to the second stage of this natural
history, which is, that the preacher must be a master of Human Words.
The message from God which we carry is to become a message to men, and
therefore we must know how to introduce it successfully to their
notice. Strong as our own conviction may be, yet it may be crude and
formless; and, before it can become the conviction of others, it must
take a shape which will arouse their attention. It may belong to a
region of thought with which they are unfamiliar, and it has to be
brought near, until it enters the circle of their own ideas.
This is the problem of the composition of the sermon, whether this
means the writing of it out or the arrangement of the materials in the
memory in preparation for delivery. And many rules might be given to
help at this point.
One often recommended is to keep the audience in view to which the
composition is to be addressed. If by this is meant that the writer,
as he sits at his desk, should try to conjure up in his imagination
the benches of the church and their occupants, I do not know whether
it is a practicable rule or not. But if it means that the preacher, as
he composes his sermon, should keep in view the circumstances of his
hearers--their stage of culture, the subjects in which they are
interested, the Scriptural attainments which they have already made,
and the like--it is one of the prime secrets of the preacher's art,
and I will return to speak of it more fully in a subsequent lecture. I
once heard Mr. Spurgeon preach a characteristic sermon on an unusual
text. It was on these words in Hosea: "I was unto them as they that
take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them." To
illustrate the first clause he drew a graphic picture of a London
carter in Cornhill loosening the harness, when his horse had
surmounted the incline, taking the bit out of its mouth, and fastening
on the corn-bag; and he applied the second clause with humorous wisdom
to the behaviour of preachers. As the carter in the stable "lays" the
hay to his horse, so the preacher has to "lay" the food to the
congregation. The carter must not put the food too high, where the
horse cannot reach up to it, nor too low, where it cannot get down to
it, but just where it can seize and devour it with comfort. So the
preacher must neither pitch his message too high, where it will be
above the comprehension of the congregation, nor too low, where it
will not command their respect, but just where they can reach it
easily and comfortably. This quaint illustration has often recurred to
me in the study, and made me anxiously consider whether I was putting
the truth in such a way that the congregation could grasp it.
Many rules have been proposed for winning the attention of the
congregation. Some have laid stress on commencing the sermon with
something striking. Mr. Moody, the evangelist, whose opinion on such a
subject ought to be valuable, recommends the preacher to crowd in his
best things at the beginning, when the attention is still fresh.
Others have favoured the opposite procedure. During the first half of
the discourse nearly every audience will give the speaker a chance. At
this point, therefore, the heavier and drier things which need to be
said ought to occur. But about the middle of the discourse the
attention begins to waver. Here, therefore, the more picturesque and
interesting things should begin to come; and the very best should be
reserved for the close, so that the impression maybe strongest at the
last.[31] St. Augustine says that a discourse should instruct,
delight and convince;[32] and perhaps these three impressions should,
upon the whole, follow this order. The more instructive elements--the
facts and explanations--should come first, appealing to the intellect;
then should follow the illustrative and pathetic elements, which touch
the feelings; and then, at the close, should come those moving and
over-awing considerations which stir the conscience and determine the
will. Thus the impression would grow from the commencement to the
close.[33]
To obtain command of language it is good to hear the best speakers and
to read the best books. It has been my fortune to be acquainted with
a good many celebrated preachers; and I have observed that, almost
without exception, they have had a thorough acquaintance with the
whole range of the higher English literature. To have the music of
Shakespeare or Milton echoing in your memory, or to have lingering in
your ear the cadence and sweep of the sentences of Thackeray and De
Quincey, will almost unawares give you a good style.[34] In reading
over an old sermon of my own, I can almost tell whether or not, in the
week of its composition, I was reading good literature. In the former
case the language is apt to be full and harmonious, and sprinkled over
with gay flowers of maxim and illustration, whereas in the latter the
style of the performance is apt to be bald and jerky.[35]
Let me mention one more rule for the composition of the sermon which
appears to me to be the most important of all. It is, to take time.
Begin in time and get done in time--this, I often say to myself, is
the whole duty of a minister. The reason why so many of our sermons
are crude in thought, unbalanced in the arrangement of the materials,
destitute of literary beauty, and unimpressive in delivery, is because
they are begun too late and written too hurriedly. The process of
thinking especially should be prolonged; it is not so important that
the process of writing should be slow. It is when the subject has been
long tossed about in thought that the mind begins to glow about it;
the subject itself gets hot and begins to melt and flash, until at
last it can be poured forth in a facile but glowing stream. Style is
not something added to the thought from the outside. It is simply the
beauty of the truth itself, when you have gone deep enough to find it;
and the worst condemnation of a careless and unattractive style is
that it does the truth injustice.
3. The preacher ought to be master of the Oral Word. There is a stage
which the truth has to pass through after it has been prepared in the
study for the consumption of the hearers. This is the oral delivery;
and it is a part of the natural history of the sermon which must not
be overlooked. A sermon may be well composed in the study and yet be a
failure in the pulpit. Indeed, this is one of the most critical stages
of the entire process. There are few things more disappointing than to
have received a message to deliver and spent a laborious and happy
week in composition, and yet on Sunday, as you descend the pulpit
stair, to know that you have missed the mark. This, however, is far
from an infrequent occurrence. The same sermon may even be a success
on one occasion, and on another a partial or a total failure.
Wherein a good delivery consists it is difficult to say. It is the
rekindling of the fire of composition in the presence of the
congregation; it is the power of thinking out the subject again on
your feet. This must not be a mere repetition of a byegone process,
but a new and original action of the mind on the spot. Tholuck, to
whom I have already alluded in this lecture, says that a sermon needs
to be born twice: it must be born once in the study in the process of
composition, and it must be born again in the pulpit in the process of
delivery. Many a sermon is a genuine birth of the mind in the study
which in the pulpit is still-born.[36]