occupied with this subject by observing the way in which the mere
incidental mention of the name of Christ sends him off into the most
sublime statements regarding Him. For example, when he is speaking to
husbands about loving their wives, the thought strikes him that this
love is like that of Christ to His people; and he breaks forth:
"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and
gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the
washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing." In
like manner, happening to be recommending generosity, he thinks of the
generosity of Christ, and away he breaks into an incomparable
description of His descent from the throne of the Highest to the death
of the cross: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God," and so on; and, not content with following Him down, in
accordance with the thought with which he started, he pursues the
subject under the impulse of sheer love, following Him up to the
highest heaven: "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him and given
Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things
under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." When is it that the
mind thus starts off into a subject at any chance hint or suggestion,
pouring out the most astonishing ideas in the most felicitous
language? It is only when it is possessed with it, and when its ideas
are so hot and molten, that they are ready to avail themselves of any
outlet.
What may be called the inner or spiritual life of St. Paul may most of
all be said to have been all Christ. His own theory of this innermost
life is that it is a kind of living over again of the life of Christ:
we die with Him to sin; we are buried with Him in baptism; as He rose,
so we rise again to newness of life; He ascended to sit on the throne
of the Father, and we are seated with Him in heavenly places. He is
the very soil in which this life grows, and the atmosphere which it
breathes; a Christian is "a man in Christ," and all the functions of
his interior and even of his exterior life are performed in this
element: he speaks in Christ, he marries in Christ, he dies in Christ,
and in the resurrection he will rise in Christ.
This is what would be called the mysticism of St. Paul; and doctrines
resembling this have sometimes been associated in religion with
fantastic speculation and unpractical dreaming. In St. Paul, however,
mysticism had no such results. If there was any part of his life on
which the influence of Christ was more conspicuous than another, it
was the practical part. To him any pretended connection or intercourse
with Christ in secret had no meaning unless its outcome was visible in
a Christlike life--"If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is
none of His."
To his own person he applied this principle in the most rigorous
manner. Christ, he is fond of saying, lives in him; he almost speaks
as if in his flesh the Son of God had experienced a second
incarnation; but he relentlessly draws the practical conclusion. When
Christ lived in His own earthly tabernacle, what did He live for? It
was for the salvation of men; He went about continually doing good; He
lived to seek and save the lost. If so, then, living in St. Paul, He
must have the same purpose--to make use of his powers of mind and body
for the salvation of the world. In this way Christ was really still
carrying on the work which had been interrupted by His death. St. Paul
dares to say that he is filling up that which was lacking of Christ's
sufferings for the sake of His body, the Church. He says that the
heart of Christ is yearning after men in his heart; that the mind of
Christ is scheming for the kingdom of God in his brain; he even
compares the marks of persecution on his body to the wounds of Christ.
There is nowhere else on record--at least there was not till St. Paul
had taught it to the Christian world--such a merging of one life in
another. And it is all the more remarkable when it is considered how
big and strong a nature St. Paul's was. If any other man might have
coveted an original and independent life, surely he was entitled to
be something in the world; but he had utterly sunk himself into the
echo and the organ of Another.[50]
Gentlemen, I have taken up nearly the whole of the lecture with this
minute analysis of St. Paul's Christianity for two reasons.
I have done so, first, because I wish to create in your minds a genial
estimate of the man himself whom I am setting up in this course of
lectures as the model for preachers. It is not uncommon to speak as if
the earliest apostles had been formed by their association with Jesus,
and, strong only in their affection for Him, had gone forth to tell
the world the simple story of His life and death; but St. Paul, being
a man of a colder nature and of strong intellectual proclivities, drew
Christianity away from the person of Jesus and transmuted it into a
hard intellectual system. I think I have proved that this is a
totally mistaken impression, which does gross injustice to the great
Apostle. None of the apostles, not even St. John, was more filled with
the glow of personal attachment to Christ. He had a larger nature than
any of them, but it was penetrated with this passion through and
through. Being of the intellectual type, he could not help thinking
out Christianity: but Christ entered into every thought he had about
it.
The other reason why I have attempted to analyze so fully to-day the
Christian experience of St. Paul is because I believe that the great
motive of the ministry lies here--the very pulse of the machine.[51]
There are many motives which may go to constitute a powerful ministry
and enable us to rejoice in our vocation. I have dealt with some of
them already in this course of lectures. There is, for example, the
one with which I dealt in my last lecture, that the ministry gives
satisfying and exhilarating employment to all the powers of the mind.
There is, again, that which I mentioned in an earlier lecture, that
ours is a patriotic service: we are doing the very best for our
country when we are permeating its life with the spirit of true
religion. An aspect of the ministry which attracts many minds at
present is that it is a service to humanity; the heart and conscience
of the age are stirred by the misery of the poor, and this is the most
obvious and effective mode of rescue. These are inspiring motives; and
others might be mentioned. But far more important than them all is a
strong personal attachment to the Saviour. This is the motive of the
ministry which goes deepest and wears longest.
It may have many roots. It may be rooted in impressive convictions
about the person of the Saviour and enthusiastic admiration of His
character. It may spring from a profound sense of the lost condition
from which He has rescued ourselves and of the destiny to which He has
raised us. It may be due most of all to the impression made on our
mind and heart by the sacrifice at the cost of which Jesus procured
salvation for us. And here the depth or shallowness of our theology
will be sure to tell. If our views are superficial either of the
difference which salvation has made to ourselves or of what Christ did
to constitute Himself the Saviour, the likelihood is that we shall
love little. It is the man who knows that he has been forgiven much
and saved at a great cost, who loves much. And the amount of love is
the measure of sacrifice.
In all ages this has been the secret of devoted lives. It has made the
great preachers--St. Augustine and St. Bernard, Luther and Wesley,
Samuel Rutherford and McCheyne. It has made those too who have not
been great in the eyes of men, but by their self-denying lives have
made the kingdom of God to come. In one of his sonnets Matthew Arnold
tells of meeting with a minister, "ill and o'erworked," on a broiling
August day in the East End of London, and asking him how he fared in
that scene of sin and sorrow. "Bravely," was the answer, "for I of
late have been much cheered with thought of Christ." It is said to
have been an actual incident.[52] At all events, it is the explanation
of thousands of heroic lives passed in similar desperate situations.
At present the adherents of a humanitarian philanthropism are loud in
proclaiming the woes of the world, as if they had been the first to
discover them, and propounding schemes for their amelioration; but
their methods have all been anticipated by the humble followers of
Jesus; and nine-tenths of the genuine philanthropic work of the world
are being done by men and women who make no noise, but who cannot
help working for the ends of Jesus, because His love is burning in
their very bones, and because the life of Christ in them cannot help
manifesting itself after its kind. Down the Christian centuries there
has come floating a kind of hymn: the words are said to be by St.
Patrick: the sentiment may well be called the music to which the true
Church militant has always marched:--
Christ with me, Christ before be,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in the fort,
Christ in the chariot seat,
Christ in the poop,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.[53]
FOOTNOTES:
[48] The most charming chapter of Adolphe Monod's _Saint Paul_ is on the
subject of these two paragraphs. It is difficult to quote from it,
because one would like to quote it all; but I allow myself the pleasure
of borrowing these golden sentences: "C'est qu'en dépit de tant de
promesses faites à la foi, nous sommes toujours plus on moins affaiblis
par un reste de force propre, comme nous sommes toujours plus on moins
troublés par un reste de propre justice, que les plus humbles eux-mêmes
traînent partout avec eux. Cette malheureuse force propre, cette
éloquence propre, cette science propre, cette influence propre, forme en
nous comme un petit sanctuaire favori, que notre orgueil jaloux tient
fermé à la force Dieu, pour s'y réserver un dernier refuge. Mais si nous
pouvions devenir enfin faibles tout de bon et désespérer absolument de
nous-mêmes, la force de Dieu, se répandant dans tout notre homme
intérieur et s' infiltrant jusque dans ses plus secrets replis, nous
remplirait jusqu'en toute plénitude de Dieu; par où, la force de l'homme
étant échangée contre la force de Dieu, rien ne nous serait impossible,
parce que rien n'est impossible à Dieu."
[49] Stearns, _The Evidence of Christian Experience_; Dale, _The Living
Christ and the Four Gospels_.
[50] "I feel most strongly that man, in all that he does or can do which
is beautiful, great or good, is but the organ and the vehicle of
something or some one higher than himself. This feeling is religion. The
religious man takes part with a tremor of sacred joy in those phenomena
of which he is the intermediary but not the source, of which he is the
scene but not the author, or rather the poet. He lends them voice, hand,
will and help, but he is respectfully careful to efface himself, that he
may alter as little as possible the higher work of the Genius who is
making a momentary use of him. A pure emotion deprives him of
personality and annihilates the self in him. Self must perforce
disappear when it is the Holy Spirit who speaks, when it is God who
acts. This is the mood in which the prophet hears the call, the young
mother feels the movement of the child within, the preacher watches the
tears of his audience. So long as we are conscious of self, we are
limited, selfish, held in bondage."--AMIEL.
[51] As enthusiasm for Christ is the soul of preaching as far as the
preacher is concerned, so in a spiritual congregation there will always
be found a jealous desire for this element in what they hear.
[52] See an article by the Rev. John Kennedy, D.D., in _The Evangelical
Magazine_, April, 1891.
[53] Here may be introduced a few notes which are to me of inestimable
value. The happiness of my visit to the States, which was great, was
overshadowed at the close by the news of the death of the best friend I
had on earth--the Rev. Robert W. Barbour, of Bonskeid. None who knew him
will need to have it explained why I should think of him at this point;
because, while he had drunk deeply of the spirit of the time and was
possessed of a rare love for men, the deepest source of the sacred
extravagance with which he lavished himself and his many talents on
every good cause was nothing else than the passion for Christ which I am
trying in this lecture to illustrate. He took a warm interest in this
course of lectures, and sent me the following Aphorisms on Preaching, to
be used as I might think fit. I reproduce them entire, as they came from
him. Perhaps they were the very last literary work he did:--
_The Book and the Library._ The preacher must be master of many
books, and servant of one.
_Closet and Desk._ Study as though thou mightest preach for
fifty years; pray as though thou mightest preach for five.
_Divine and Human._ Speak as though the mouth were God's; but
let the voice be a man's.
_First and Second Aims._ All gifts (presence, voice, gesture,
culture, style, and so on) may be wings, if kept behind one's
back; the moment they are seen they become dead weights.
Two strings to one's bow will do with any shafts but the arrows
of the King. Letters, the press, the lyre, the porch, must
stand in the background behind "this one thing."
Think less and less of everything else, and more and more of
thy message.
_Aims and No Aims._ Aim at something, you will hit it; also
draw your bow at a venture.
"_Make full proof of thy ministry._" Try every method--writing,
reading, committing, extending, extemporising. Imitate every
man, but mimic none. Nothing makes a preacher like preaching.
Whence comes it that my nature is subdued
To that it works in, like the dyer's hand.
_Pulpit Form._ Respect your hearers. Do not gird at them; angle
for them--and agonize. Address yourself to one at a time--first
to the man in the pulpit. He who has hit himself first will not
miss others. He who trembles at the word of the Lord, men will
tremble at his word. (Borrowed) A preacher must either be
afraid of his audience or his audience of him.
_Janua Domini._ Always enter the pulpit by the Door (John x. 7).
_Contents and Omissions._ Put everything you can into every
address. Omit everything you can from every address.
"_Faith cometh by hearing._" Therefore, to begin with, be
audible. The Sermon on the Mount commences thus: "He opened His
mouth" (Matt. v. 2).
_Time and Eternity._ Speak to men's fleeting hopes and passing
interests; speak also to their grey hairs and to their midnight
hours.
_Ultimata._ Desire to prophesy (1 Cor. xiv. 1); covet to
prophesy (_ib._ 39); do not preach if thou darest be silent (1
Cor. ix. 16).
LECTURE VIII.
THE PREACHER AS AN APOSTLE.
Gentlemen, in the two last lectures we have investigated two of the
principal sources--perhaps I might say the two principal sources--of a
minister's power--his manhood and his Christianity. These may be
called the two natural springs out of which work for men and God
proceeds. Out of these it comes as a direct necessity of nature. If
anyone is much of a man--if there be in him much fire and force, much
energy of conviction--it will be impossible for him to pass through so
great an experience as the reception of Christianity without making it
known; and, if he be much of a Christian--if there be in him much of
the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of self-sacrifice and
benevolence--it will be impossible for him to refrain from approaching
men in their sin and misery and endeavouring to communicate to them
the secret of blessedness. He will make but a poor minister who would
not be an earnest worker for God and man, even if he were not a
minister.
These impulses were conspicuously strong in St. Paul. Yet there was
also another source from which he drew the motives of his ministry.
This was the fact that God had appointed him to the office of an
apostle and allotted him a specific sphere of activity as the apostle
of the Gentiles.
The other two sources of motive are, as I have said, natural; this
one, on the contrary, is official. This may raise a prejudice against
it. So many and such grave mistakes have been made through regarding
official appointment as the only warrant for Christian work, to the
prejudice of the antecedent qualifications of a genuine and
sympathetic manhood and a deep personal Christianity, without which it
is nothing, that there is a disposition to ignore this kind of motive
altogether. But St. Paul acknowledges it. Although he was always, no
doubt, far more of a man and a Christian than an official, yet, in
reply to opposition, he insists with great vehemence on his apostolic
rank; and evidently he felt that this imposed on him additional
obligations to be earnest and faithful in the work to which his manly
and Christian instincts prompted him.
* * * * *
It is, indeed, of great consequence to anyone who has become a
Christian, and who begins to feel stirring in his breast those
impulses to serve God and bless the world which are native to the
Christian spirit, to obtain a definite sphere to fill and a definite
work to do. Otherwise these God-inspired impulses, expressing
themselves in mere words and sentiments, gradually decay through want
of exercise, or they are dispersed over so many objects that nothing
is done. But, when a special task is obtained, the force of these
sentiments is concentrated upon it and transmuted into actual work.
The Christian man says: Here is my own task; if I do not accomplish
it, no one else can; this is my corner in the great labour-field,
which I, and no one else, have to make fruitful and beautiful; I shall
be answerable to the Judge of all at the last for the manner in which
the work assigned to me is done.
Such sentiments had a strong hold of the mind of St. Paul. One of his
commonest ways of thinking of his office was as a stewardship, which
he was administering, and for which by-and-by he would have to render
a reckoning. "And," says he, "it is required in stewards that a man be
found faithful."[54] Similarly, he thought of himself as a workman
with a certain portion of a temple to build; but the great Taskmaster
was coming round in the evening to inspect the work--ay, and even to
test it with fire; and, when that testing-time came, he desired to be
a workman not needing to be ashamed. All the work of his apostleship
appeared to him a curriculum which he had to cover before he could win
the prize of the Divine approval. This is his favourite figure of
speech, and he applies it in many directions.
For example, the athlete in the racecourse has to keep himself in
training and to put every muscle on the stretch. So St. Paul felt the
obligation to put every power he possessed into his work. "Give
thyself wholly to them," he says to a young fellow-labourer about his
duties; and what he preached he practised. "Stir up the grace of God
that is in thee," he says to the same friend again; and he called on
his own nature continually for the utmost exertion of its powers. He
was always growing; but the increment of his faculty and influence
went all to the same object.
An athlete in the games naturally laid aside every weight, divesting
himself of everything which might impede his running and rob him of
the prize. He dared not glance aside at any object which would take
his eye off the goal. So St. Paul sacrificed everything for the
Gospel's sake; he had but one end and no by-ends. He was often,
indeed, accused of aiming at some end of his own. With especial
persistency he was accused of avarice. It is very ludicrous now to
think of this great man having been supposed capable of so mean a
vice. But his motives were too high and pure to be intelligible to his
accusers, and they naturally attributed to him the motive which was
the strongest of which they were conscious themselves. But they only
brought out the true greatness of the man. He believed in the right of
preachers of the Gospel to live by the Gospel, and he looked forward
to the general recognition of this as soon as Christianity had
obtained a footing in the world. But he himself lived above all such
claims. He accepted support from his converts, indeed, and thanked God
for it, when he had good reason to think that his motives were
understood. But, where they were suspected or the success of the
Gospel seemed to be in any degree endangered by his acceptance of
money, he would not take a cent, but would rather sit up half the
night and work his fingers to the bone to earn his livelihood. There
is no sublimer scene in history than the great Apostle, who was
bearing the weight of Christianity on his shoulders and carrying the
future of the world beneath his robe, toiling with his hands for his
living by the side of Aquila and Priscilla, in order that he might
keep Christianity from being tarnished with the faintest suspicion of
mercenary motives.
Gentlemen, among the many attractions of our calling on which I should
like to congratulate you this is not the least, that it provides a
definite sphere for the exercise of the benevolent impulses which you
may feel as men and as Christians and, by exercising, develops them.
These impulses may be the strongest and most sacred in our nature. But
in other occupations, in the excitement and competition of life, they
are in great danger of being slowly extinguished. In our calling, on
the contrary, they receive constant opportunities of nurture and
development. Their healthy and spontaneous activity is the soul of
ministerial work; and this is stimulated by the sense of
responsibility to fill the sphere allotted to us and exhaust its
possibilities.
But, besides the sense of duty, there is a stimulus of a still more
affecting kind which comes to a man when he is set over a congregation
of his own. When I first was settled in a church, I discovered a thing
of which nobody had told me and which I had not anticipated, but which
proved a tremendous aid in doing the work of the ministry. I fell in
love with my congregation. I do not know how otherwise to express it.
It was as genuine a blossom of the heart as any which I have ever
experienced. It made it easy to do anything for my people; it made it
a perfect joy to look them in the face on Sunday morning. I do not
know if this is a universal experience; but I should think it is
common. For my part, I like to meet a man who thinks his own
congregation, however small it may be, the most important one in the
Church and is rather inclined to bore you with its details. When a man
thus falls in love with his people, the probability is that something
of the same kind happens to them likewise. Just as a wife prefers her
own husband to every other man, though surely she does not necessarily
suppose him to be the most brilliant specimen in existence, so a
congregation will generally be found to prefer their own minister, if
he is a genuine man, to every other, although surely not always
entertaining the hallucination that he is a paragon of ability. Thus
to love and to be loved is the secret of a happy and successful
ministry.
* * * * *
Taking up the responsibilities of his office in the spirit which I
have described, St. Paul would have found any sphere, however limited,
laborious. But, in point of fact, the sphere allotted to him was an
enormous one. It was nothing less than the whole Gentile world.
The known world was not, indeed, in that age, of anything like the
same dimensions as it is today. It consisted only of a narrow disc of
countries round the shores of the Mediterranean. Yet to any other man
the vocation to evangelize it all must have been bewildering and even
paralyzing. St. Paul, however, accepted it in all seriousness, and
ever afterwards, till the day of his death, he regarded the
populations of these countries as people to whom he owed the message
of the Gospel. Speaking of the two recognised divisions of the Gentile
world of that day, he says, "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the
barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise."