once, and every time, _en rapport_ with the audience, so that there is
from first to last, whilst they speak, a commerce between the mind in
the pulpit and the minds in the pews. To others this is the most
difficult part of preaching. The difficulty is to get down amongst the
people and to be actually dealing with them. Many a preacher has a
thought, and is putting it into good enough words, but somehow the
people are not listening, and they cannot listen.
If the Senate of this University were ever to try the experiment of
asking a layman to deliver this course of Lectures on Preaching, I am
certain he would lay more stress on this than we do, and put a clear
and effective--if possible, a graceful and eloquent--delivery among
the chief desiderata of the pulpit. I do not know how it may be among
you; but, when I was at college, we used rather to despise delivery.
We were so confident in the power of ideas that we thought nothing of
the manner of setting them forth. Only have good stuff, we thought,
and it will preach itself. We like to repeat, with _Faust_,
"True sense and reason reach their aim
With little help from art and rule;
Be earnest! then what need to seek
The words that best your meaning speak?"
So we thought; and many of us have since suffered for it. We know how
many sermons are preached in the churches of the country every Sunday;
but does anyone know how many are listened to? The newspapers supply
us now and then with statistics of how many hearers are present in our
congregations; but who will tell us what proportion of these are
listeners? If we knew the exact percentage, I suspect, it would appal
us. Yet it is not because there is not good matter in the sermons, but
because it is not properly spoken. In the manufacture of steam-engines
the problem is, I believe, to get as much work as possible out of the
coal consumed. In every engine which has ever yet been constructed
there has been a greater or less waste of heat, which is dispersed
into the surrounding air or carried away by the adjacent portions of
the machinery, without doing work. Engineering skill has been
gradually reducing the amount of this waste and getting a larger and
larger proportion of work out of the fuel; and a perfect engine would
be one in which the whole of the coal consumed had its full equivalent
in work done. One of our problems, it seems to me, is a similar one.
There is an enormous disproportion between the amount of energy
expended during the week in preparation and the amount of impression
made on the hearers on Sunday. Ministers do not get enough of result
in the attention, satisfaction and delight of their hearers for the
work they do; and the failure is in the vehicle of communication
between the study and the congregation--that is to say, in the
delivery of the sermon. What I am pleading for is, that there should
be more work to show for the coal consumed.[37]
4. Allow me, gentlemen, in closing this lecture, to emphasize another
sense in which the prophets were men of the Word, and in which they
are worthy of imitation. They were masters of the Written Word. They
not only spoke the word of God, but wrote it for publication, in a
form sometimes more diffuse and sometimes more compressed than their
oral utterances; and by this means they not only extended their
influence in their own day, but have enormously prolonged it since.
It is surprising how few of those who have spoken the word of God
have cultivated this mode of delivering it; and it is perhaps equally
astonishing how few of those who have cultivated it have done so in
earnest. In the last century, promotion in the Church of England was
won by literary achievement; but the would-be bishop did not generally
think of religious literature: he published a political pamphlet or
edited a Greek play. Among the Scottish Moderates there was a keen
ambition for literary distinction; but it was the more prized the more
remote the fields in which it was won lay from a minister's peculiar
work. This led the Evangelicals to discountenance literary
productivity, which they regarded as springing from unholy motives and
as likely to distract the mind from the true ends of the ministry. But
surely there is a juster point of view than either the Moderate or the
Evangelical. This work ought to be cultivated with precisely the same
aims as preaching and with the same earnestness. When a man is truly
called to it, it brings a vast audience within his range, and there
may rest on it a remarkable blessing. Here is a significant extract
from the history of British Christianity: Richard Baxter wrote _A Call
to the Unconverted_, and Philip Doddridge was converted by reading it;
Philip Doddridge wrote _The Rise and Progress of Religion in the
Soul_, and William Wilberforce was converted by reading it;
Wilberforce wrote the _Practical View_, and Thomas Chalmers was
converted by reading it. What a far-extending influence does each of
these names represent! The writing of books is perhaps the likeliest
of all avenues by which to carry religious influence to the most
select minds.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] The Servant of the Lord is a prophet; and in the descriptions of
him in this character we can perhaps best see what was Isaiah's
conception of a prophet. See especially ch. lxi. 1-3.
[24] See Ewald's Introduction to _The Prophets_.
[25] "Bonorum ingeniorum insignis est indoles, in verbis verum amare,
non verba. Quid enim prodest clavis aurea, si aperire quod volumus non
potest? Aut quid obest lignea, si hoc potest, quando nihil quærimus,
nisi parere quod clausum est? Sed quoniam inter se habent nonnullam
similitudinem vescentes atque discentes, propter fastidia plurimorum
etiam ipsa sine quibus vivi non potest alimenta condienda sunt."--ST.
AUGUSTINE.
[26] See the excellent chapter on Isaiah's style in Driver's _Isaiah_.
[27] The same idea has long been helpful to me in a third form--in the
following lines of Platen--
"Was stets und aller Orten
Sich ewig jung erweist
Ist, in gebundenen Worten
Ein ungebundener Geist."
[28] "Into Ezekiel's hand there was put a roll written within and
without with lamentation and mourning and woe, an objective revelation
which he himself had not written; but, before he could deliver it to
others, he had to eat it: all that was written on it had to become a
part of himself, had to be taken into his inmost experience and be
digested by him, and become his own very life's blood."--MARCUS DODS,
D.D.
[29] This is what our Lord chiefly meant by a teacher's
"treasure"--"Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of God
bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." How much the
treasures of different preachers differ in magnitude! It is worthy of
note that the Saviour calls the preachers of the New Testament
"scribes." In spite of the evil associations of the name He retained it,
because it emphasizes the fact that the Christian preacher is to be a
student and an expounder of Scripture.
[30] Some preachers keep an interleaved Bible, in which references to
passages in their reading are entered opposite the texts which they
illustrate--an excellent device.
[31] "The strongest part of all great sermons is the close. More depends
on the last two minutes than on the first ten."--From a choice little
tract on Preaching, by "Prediger."
[32] He is quoting Cicero. Dixit ergo quidam eloquens, et verum dixit,
ita dicere debere eloquentem, ut doceat, ut delectet, ut flectat. Deinde
addidit: Docere necessitatis est, delectare suavitatis, flectere
victoriae.... Oportet igitur eloquentem ecclesiasticum, quando suadet
aliquid quod agendum est, non solum docere ut instruat, et delectare ut
teneat, verum etiam flectere ut vincat.--_De Doctrina Christiana_, IV.
13.
[33] An esteemed friend, the Rev. John McMillan of Ullapool, some years
ago repeated to me the following rhyme on the method of constructing a
sermon, and, although I have never succeeded in coming up to its
standard, yet it has often floated before me with advantage in the hours
of composition--
"Begin low;
Proceed slow;
Rise higher;
Take fire;
When most impressed
Be self-possessed;
To spirit wed form;
Sit down in a storm."
[34] It will be remembered that John Bright used regularly, during the
session of Parliament, to read aloud from one of the poets the last
thing at night.
[35] Tholuck gives another weighty reason why ministers should know the
best literature: In einer Zeit wo Shakespeare eine stärkere Autorität
für Viele ist als Paulus, und ein Distichon Goethes eine kräftigere
Belegstelle als der ganze Römer-und Galaterbrief, darf der Geistliche,
welcher auf seine Gemeinde würken will, mit ihren Gewährsmänern nicht
unbekannt seyn. Wenn irgendwo, so gilt auch hier des Apostels Wort:
_Alles ist Euer_.
[36] "Aber nicht bloss die Erzeugung der Predigt geschehe im heiligen
Geist, sondern auch ihr Vortrag. Es lässt sich nicht aussprechen, welch'
ein Unterschied zwischen der Würkung einer Predigt, welche bloss aus der
Erinnerung von der Kanzel herabgesprochen wird--wie trefflich sie auch
übrigens seyn mag--und welche dort zum zweitenmal geboren wird in
lebendigem Glauben.... Die Predigt muss eine That des Predigers auf
seinem Studirzimmer, sie muss abermals eine That seyn auf der Kanzel; er
muss, wenn er herunter kommt, Mutterfreuden fühlen, Freuden der Mutter,
die unter Gottes Segen ein Kind geboren hat."
[37] Adolphe Monod, himself a distinguished master of the art of
delivery, gives some good hints on it in a paper on _The Eloquence of
the Pulpit_, translated and published as an article in _The British and
Foreign Evangelical Review_, January, 1881:--
"In general, people recite too quickly, far too quickly. When a
man speaks, the thoughts and feelings do not come to him all at
once; they take birth little by little in his mind. It is
necessary that this labour and this slowness appear in the
reciting, or it will always come short of nature. Take time to
reflect, to feel, and to allow ideas to come, and hurry your
recitation only when constrained by some particular
consideration."...
"Talk not in the pulpit. An exaggerated familiarity would be a
mistake nearly as great as declamation: it happens more seldom;
it is, nevertheless, found in certain preachers, those
especially who have not studied. The tone of good conversation,
but that tone heightened and ennobled, such appears to me the
ideal of pulpit delivery."...
"In order to rise above the tone of conversation, the majority
of preachers withdraw too far from it. They swell their
delivery, and declaim instead of speaking. Now, when bombast
comes in, nature goes out."
In regard to the first of these extracts I should say that many
Scotch speakers fail through lack of _pace_ in the delivery.
The interest is lost in the pauses between the sentences. A
slow delivery is only effective when a thought is obviously
being born, for which the audience is kept intently waiting.
But the most remarkable thing in the article is the following quotation
from Talma, the actor:--
"We were rhetoricians and not characters. What scores of
academical discourses on the theatre, how few simple words! But
by chance I found myself one evening in a drawing-room with the
leaders of the party of the Gironde. Their sombre countenance,
their anxious look, attracted my attention. There were there,
written in visible letters, strong and powerful interests. They
were men of too much heart for those interests to be tarnished
by selfishness; I saw in them the manifest proof of the danger
of my country. All come to enjoy pleasure; not one thinking of
it! They began to discuss; they touched on the most thrilling
questions of the day. It was grand! Methought I was attending
one of the secret councils of the Romans. 'The Romans must have
spoken like these,' said I. 'Let the country be called France
or Rome, it makes use of the same intonations, speaks the same
language: therefore, if there is no declamation here before me,
there was no declamation down there, in olden times; that is
evident!' These reflections rendered me more attentive. My
impressions, though produced by a conversation thoroughly free
from bombast, deepened. 'An apparent calm in men agitated stirs
the soul,' said I; 'eloquence may then have strength, without
the body yielding to disordered movements.' I even perceived
that the discourse, when delivered without efforts or cries,
renders the gesture more powerful and gives the countenance
more expression. All these deputies assembled before me by
chance appear to me much more eloquent in their simplicity than
at the tribune, where, being in spectacle, they think they must
deliver their harangue in the way of actors--and actors as we
were then--that is, declaimers, full of bombast. From that day
a new light flashed on me; I foresaw my art regenerated."
LECTURE V.
THE PREACHER AS A FALSE PROPHET.
Upon anyone who is studying the physiognomy of the age of the prophets
there is one disagreeable feature which obtrudes itself so constantly
that even in the briefest sketch it is impossible to pass it by. This
is the activity of the false prophets.[38] It culminated in the
lifetime of Jeremiah, whose whole career might almost be described as
a conflict with them. Again and again he and they came to open war;
and on at least one occasion the whole body combined to take away his
life. Ezekiel was scarcely less afflicted by them. They were perhaps
not so prominent an element in the life of Isaiah, but he also refers
to them frequently; and, indeed, their sinister figures haunt the
pages of all the prophets.
It is a kind of humiliation to speak of them at all, and I would
gladly pass them by; but the figure of the true prophet will rise
before our eyes more clearly by the contrast of the false: and it is
perhaps a duty to look also at the degradations to which our office is
liable. The higher the honour attaching to the ministerial profession,
when it is worthily filled, the deeper is the abuse of which it is
capable in comparison with other callings; and its functions are so
sacred that the man who discharges them must either be a man of God or
a hypocrite. Yet there are plenty of motives of an inferior kind which
may take the place of right ministerial aims. Though it is painful to
speak of such things, yet here again the method which we have adopted
in these lectures, of following the guidance of Scripture, may be
leading us better than we could have chosen ourselves; and it may be
wholesome to have to look at an aspect of our subject which of our own
accord we would avoid.
* * * * *
There are two things in Scripture which I have never been able to
think of without strong movements of fear and self-distrust.
One of them is that, when the Son of God came to this earth, He was
persecuted and slain by the religious classes. His deadly opponents
were the Scribes and Pharisees. But who were the Scribes and
Pharisees? The Scribes occupied almost exactly the position in the
community which is held among us by the literary, the scholastic and
the clerical classes; and the Pharisees were simply what we should now
call the leading religious laymen. Had they been adherents of a false
religion, there would have been nothing surprising in their resistance
to the final revelation of the true God. But the religion which they
professed was the true religion; the Scribes were the expounders of
the Word of God, and the Pharisees occupied the foremost places in the
house of God. Yet, when the Son of Jehovah, whose name they were
called by, appeared amongst them, they rejected Him and took away His
life. Many a time, as I have followed Jesus step by step through His
lifelong conflict with their illwill and contradiction, the question
has pressed itself painfully upon my mind: If He were to come to the
earth now and intervene in our affairs, how would the religious
classes receive Him? and on which side would I be myself? If to any
this question may seem fantastic, let them change it into this other,
which cannot appear idle, though it means exactly the same thing: What
is the attitude of the religious classes to the manifestations of the
spirit of Jesus in the life of to-day? do they welcome them and back
them up? or have the new ideas and movements in which Christ is
marching onward to the conquest of the world to reckon on opposition,
even from those who call themselves most loudly by His name?
The other circumstance which has often affected my mind in the same
way is that which comes before us to-day--that the true prophets of
the Old Testament had to face the opposition, not of heathens, and not
of the openly irreligious among their own countrymen only, but of
those who had the name of God in their mouths and were publicly
recognised as His oracles. To us these are now false prophets, because
time has found them out and the Word of God has branded them with the
title they deserve; but in their own day they were regarded as true
prophets; and doubtless many of them never dreamed that they were not
entitled to the name.
They must have been a numerous and powerful body. Jeremiah mentions
them again and again along with the king, the princes and the priests,
as if they formed a fourth estate in the realm; and Zephaniah mentions
them in the same way along with the princes, the judges and the
priests. They evidently formed a separate and conspicuous class in the
community. They cannot have been equally bad in every generation; and
there may have been many degrees of deviation among them from the
character of the true prophet; but as a body they were false, and the
true servants of God had to reckon them among the anti-religious
forces which they had to overcome.
This is an appalling fact--that the public representatives of religion
should ever have been the worst enemies of religion; but it cannot be
denied that even in Christendom, and that not once or twice, the same
condition of things has existed.
At the time these men did not suppose that this was the position they
held; but history has judged them. It is not easy for a man to admit
the thought into his own mind that in him his office is being
dishonoured and its aim frustrated; and it is far more difficult to do
so if he has the support of the prevailing sentiment and is going
forward triumphantly as a member of the majority. But there is enough
in the history of our order to warn us to watch over ourselves with a
jealous mind, lest we too, while clad in the garb of a sacred
profession and in the authority of an ecclesiastical position, should
be found fighting against God. It will not do to think that, merely
because we sit in Moses' seat and have the Word of God in our mouths,
therefore we must be right. Nor must we be too confident because we
are in the majority. If we have faith in our own views, it is quite
right, indeed, that we should try to make them prevail; and there is
a legitimate joy in seeing a good cause carrying with it the
sympathies and suffrages of men. But we are all too easily persuaded
that our cause is good simply because it can win votes. In
ecclesiastical affairs there is often as feverish a counting of heads
as in party politics. The majority have the same confidence that the
case is finally decided in their favour; and there is the same
exultation over the defeated party, as if their being in the minority
were a clear proof that they were also in the wrong. But this is no
criterion, and time may sternly reverse the victory of the moment.
Even in the Church the side of the false prophets may be the growing
and the winning side, while Jeremiah is left in a minority of one.
The false prophets were strong, not only in their own numbers, but in
their popularity with the people. This told heavily against the true
prophets; for the people could not believe that the one man, who was
standing alone, was right, and that his opponents, who were many, were
wrong. The seats and the trappings of office always affect the
multitude, who are slow to come to the conclusion that the teachers
under whom they find themselves in providence can be misleading them.
This is, to a certain extent, an honourable sentiment; but it throws
upon public teachers a weighty responsibility. If they are going
wrong, they will generally get the majority of the people to follow
them. So completely may this be the case, that by degrees the popular
taste is vitiated and will not endure any other teaching than that to
which it has been accustomed, though it be false. There is no sadder
verse in all prophecy than the complaint of Jeremiah, "The prophets
prophesy falsely, and my people love to have it so." Like prophet,
like people; the public mind may be so habituated to what is false,
and satisfied with it, that it has no taste or even tolerance for the
true.[39] Jeremiah could not gain a hearing for his stern and weighty
message from ears accustomed to the light and frivolous views of the
false prophets; and to Baruch, his young coadjutor and amanuensis, who
was starting on the prophetic career with the high hopes of youth, he
had to deliver the chilling message, "Seekest thou great things for
thyself? seek them not." The path to popularity and eminence was not
open to anyone who did not speak according to the prevailing fashion.
The false prophets won and kept their popularity by pandering to the
opinions and prejudices of the people. The times of Jeremiah were big
with coming calamities, and he had to predict that these calamities
were sure to come; for there were no signs of deep or genuine
repentance, and, indeed, the time for repentance was past. The
self-flattering, ease-loving people hated to hear these disagreeable
facts. Their frivolous minds were engrossed with the gossip and
excitement of the passing day, and it was too great an exertion to
give their attention to the majestic views of the Divine justice and
the far-reaching sweep of the Divine providence to which Jeremiah
tried to direct their attention. They wished to enjoy the present and
to believe that all would come right somehow. The false prophets
flattered these wishes. They said that the calamities which Jeremiah
was foretelling would not come to pass, or that at least they would be
much less formidable than he represented. They were, as Jeremiah says,
like an unconscientious physician, who is afraid to probe the wound to
the bottom, though the life of the patient depends on it. Ezekiel
accuses them of making nightcaps to draw over the eyes and ears of
their countrymen, lest they should see and hear the truth, and of
muffling with a glove the naked hand of God with which the sins of the
people should have been smitten. The constant refrain of their
prophecies was, "Peace, peace," though the storm-clouds of
retribution were ready to burst. The people said to them, "Prophesy to
us smooth things"; and the false prophets provided the supply
according to the demand.
We cannot flatter ourselves that this is a danger which belongs
entirely to the past. There will always be a demand for smooth things,
and an appropriate reward for him who is willing to supply them in the
name of God. Popularity is a thing which will always be coveted; and
under certain conditions it is a thing to be thankful for. If it means
that the truth is prevailing and that men are yielding their minds to
its sway, it is a precious gift of heaven. It is a good thing to see
many coming out to hear the Word of God, and to both preacher and
hearers there is a great deal of exhilaration and inspiration in a
full church. But popularity may be purchased at too dear a rate. It
may be bought by the suppression of the truth and the letting down of
the demands of Christianity. There will always be a demand for a
religion which does not agitate the mind too much or interfere with
the pursuits of a worldly life.