The Preacher and His Models
by James Stalker · English · Gutenberg #24311 · 376,342 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Preacher and His Models
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Preacher and His Models
Author: James Stalker
Release date: January 15, 2008 [eBook #24311]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24311
Credits: Produced by Colin Bell, Jeannie Howse and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PREACHER AND HIS MODELS ***
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.
3. The place where the incident occurred is also worthy of note. It
was in the temple. Ewald and other able commentators interpret this to
mean the heavenly temple, and suppose that the future prophet was
transported to some imaginary place which he called by this name. But
this is quite a gratuitous suggestion, and it very much weakens the
impressiveness of the whole scene, the very point of which lies in the
fact that it took place on familiar ground. Isaiah was a Jerusalemite,
and the temple was the most familiar of all haunts to him. He had
witnessed there a thousand times the external ritual of religion--the
worshipping multitudes, the priests, and the paraphernalia of
sacrifice. But now, on the same spot, he was to see a sight in whose
glory all these things would disappear. This is what the critical
moments of religious experience are always meant to do: they
obliterate the familiar externals of religion and reveal the reality
which is hidden behind them; they convert common spots of every-day
experience into the house of God and the gate of heaven.
* * * * *
Such were the circumstances of time and place in which the crisis of
Isaiah's history occurred. One day, in the year that King Uzziah died,
he wended his way, as he had done hundreds of times before, to the
temple; and there that took place which altered the whole course of
his life. Whether in the body or out of the body, we cannot tell, he
saw three successive visions, or rather a threefold vision--a vision
of God, a vision of sin, and a vision of grace.
1. It began with a Vision of God. The chapter opens with these sublime
words, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord." It is an
astounding statement to come from a prophet of that religion whose
fundamental principle was the spirituality of God, "No man hath seen
God at any time"; and, indeed, there is an old rabbinical tradition,
that King Manasseh, who is said to have caused Isaiah to be sawn
asunder, made the alleged impiety of these words the excuse for his
cruelty. But it was a mere excuse; for the difficulty only serves to
prove the transcendent spiritual tact and literary skill of the
prophet, who manages the scene in such a way as to preserve quite
intact the principle of the Divine spirituality. Though he says that
he saw God, he gives no description of Him; only the sights and sounds
round about Him are so described as in the most vivid way to suggest
the Presence which remains unseen. It is as if a historical scene of
ruin and conflagration were represented on canvas, without showing the
burning materials, by painting the glare of light and the emotions of
terror and dismay on the faces of the spectators.
First, the throne on which God sits is described: it is erected in the
temple, and it is high and lifted up, for He is a great King. But no
description is given of the figure seated on it; only His train--the
billowing folds of His robes--filled the temple. Above the throne, or
rather round it, like the courtiers surrounding the throne of an
Eastern monarch, stand the seraphim. These beings are mentioned only
here in Holy Writ. Their name signifies the shining or fiery ones.
They are attendants of the Divine King, bright and swift as fire in
their intelligence and activity. Each has six wings: with twain he
covers his face, and with twain he covers his feet, evidently to
protect his eyes and person from the consuming glory of the Divine
presence, which is thus indicated again without being described; and
with the remaining two he flies, or rather poises himself in his place
ready for flight at the Divine signal.
Then, amidst these sublime sights break in sounds equally sublime. By
our translation the impression is produced that they come from the
seraphim. But the original is more vague, and the meaning probably is,
that the responsive voices which are heard come from unseen choirs in
opposite quarters of the temple. Unceasingly the strain rises from one
side, unceasingly the answer comes from the other; in the centre the
voices meet and mingle in loud harmony.
Their burden is, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole
earth is full of His glory." That is, they are celebrating the two
attributes of the Divine character which always most impressed a
Jewish mind--His holiness and His omnipotence. The one is God as He is
in Himself, turned inwards, so to speak. He is absolutely holy,
unapproachable, a consuming fire scorching away impurity, falsehood,
and sin of every kind. The other is God as He is in the world, turned
outwards, so to speak; the world's fulness--suns and systems,
mountains and oceans, earthquake and storm, summer's abundance and
winter's terror--all this is His glory, the garment by which He makes
Himself visible.[9]
The voices swell till the temple rocks, or seems to rock to the
reeling senses of the prophet, and the house is filled with smoke, or
seems to be so, as a mist envelops the swooning spirit of the
spectator. But still, through the mist, there peal, falling like the
strokes of a hammer on the listening heart, the notes of the dread
song, "Holy, holy, holy."
2. Next ensued a Vision of Sin. The vision of God could not but unseal
a rushing stream of feeling of some kind in Isaiah. But of what kind
would it be? Surely of joyful adoration: the soul, inspired with the
sublimity of these sights and thrilled with these sounds, will rise to
the majesty of the occasion, and the human voice will strike in with
all its force among the angelic voices, crying, "Holy, holy, holy."
So one might have expected. But the human mind is a strange thing; and
it is difficult to know where and how to touch its delicate and
complex mechanism so as to produce any desired effect. You wish to
produce a flow of tender feeling, and you tell a pathetic tale, which
ought, you think, to move the heart. But at every sentence the
features of the listeners harden into more and more rigidity, or even
relax into mocking laughter; whereas the suggestion of a noble
thought, which seems to have nothing to do with pathos, may
instantaneously melt the soul and unseal the fountain of tears. Or is
it the conscience which is to be affected? The clumsy operator begins
to assail it straight with denunciations of sin, but, instead of
producing penitence, he only rouses the whole man into proud and angry
self-defence; whereas a single touch, no heavier than an infant's
finger, applied away up somewhere, remote from conscience, in the
region of the imagination, may send an electric shock down through the
whole being and shake the conscience from centre to circumference.
Isaiah's mind was one of the most sensitive and complicated ever
bestowed on a human being; but it was now in the hands of its Maker,
who knew how to touch it to fine issues. The Maker's design on this
occasion was to produce in it an overpowering sense of sin; and what
He did was to confront it with infinite holiness and majesty. These
were brought so near that there was no escape. The poor, finite,
sinful man was held at arm's length, so to speak, in the grasp of the
Infinite and Most Holy; and the result was a total collapse of the
human spirit. Isaiah's eye turned away from the sight of God's glory
back upon himself, and back on his past life; and, in this light, all
appeared foul and hideous. There was sin everywhere--sin in himself
and sin in his environment. He was utterly confounded and swallowed up
of shame and terror. "Woe is me," he groaned, "for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips."
Why he felt the taint specially on his lips it might not be easy to
tell. Perhaps it was because the angelic song was a challenge to join
in the praise of God, but he felt that the lips of one like him were
not worthy to join in their song. Perhaps--who can tell?--the
besetting sin of his previous life may have been profanity of speech,
as it was evidently a crying sin of his time. This suggestion gives a
shock to the ideas which we associate with Isaiah, and it is hard to
think that the lips which afterwards spoke like angels can ever have
defiled themselves with such a sin. But this is the most natural
meaning of the words, and it is not against the analogy of other
lives. Great saints, and even great preachers, are made out of great
sinners; and the memory of an odious and conspicuous sin like this may
sometimes lend a passionate force to subsequent devotion and keep
alive for a lifetime the sense of personal unworthiness.
3. The last scene in the evolution of this vision, which was surely
more than a vision, was the Vision of Grace. One of the fiery
attendants, who hovered on quivering wing ready to execute the orders
of the Divine King, receiving a command by some unexplained mode of
communication, flew to the altar, and, taking up the tongs, seized
with them a stone from the altar fire. It was neither a coal, as our
rendering gives it, nor a brand, but a heated stone, such as was used,
and is used at the present day, in the East, for conveying heat to a
distance for any purpose for which it might be required. It came from
the altar: it contained God's fire, and God sent it.
The purpose for which it was required on this occasion was cleansing.
Of cleansing there are in Scripture three symbols. The simplest is
water; and water can purify many things; but there are some things
which water cannot cleanse. A stronger agent is required, and this is
found in fire. You must fling the ore, for example, into the fire, if
you wish to extract from it the pure gold. There is a third symbol,
which appears in the New Testament as well as the Old, and it is the
most sacred of all. It is blood. Water, fire, blood--these three mean
the same in Scripture. In this case it was fire.
The seraph flew with the hot stone and laid it on the lips of the
future prophet. Why did he lay it there? Because it was there that
Isaiah felt his sin to be lying. He had said, "I am a man of unclean
lips." The fire burned the sin away. So the seraph said, speaking in
God's name, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is
taken away and thy sin purged." It was the assurance of the Divine
forgiveness, which had come swift as a seraph's flight in answer to
Isaiah's confession.[10]
Isaiah's preparation was completed in these three successive phases of
experience; and now the purpose was disclosed for which he had been
prepared. From aloft--from the throne high and lifted up--came the
question, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" The King needed
a messenger to bear a message and represent Himself. He had chosen
Isaiah to bear it; yet He did not thrust the commission on him.[11] He
did not need to do so; for Isaiah had passed through a preparation
which made him not only thoroughly able, but thoroughly willing. He
had been lifted out of time into eternity; and in this one hour of
concentrated experience he had both died and been born again. His life
had been undone and forfeited; but God had given it back to him, and
he felt that now it was not his own. He was thrilling with the power
of forgiveness, and the impulses towards God--to be near Him, to
serve Him, to do anything for Him--were now far stronger than his
shrinking from Him had been a little before. Therefore of his own free
will and choice he answered the Divine question with, "Here am I, send
me."
* * * * *
Gentlemen, I have gone minutely into the details of this scene in the
life of a representative preacher of the Old Testament, because every
line of it speaks to the deep and subtle movements of our own
experience. What is the inference to be drawn from it? Is it that at
the commencement of a preacher's career there must be a call to the
ministry distinct from the experience of personal salvation? This
inference has often been drawn; but I prefer, in the meantime at
least, to draw a wider but, I believe, a sounder and more useful
inference. It is this: that the outer must be preceded by the inner;
public life for God must be preceded by private life with God; unless
God has first spoken to a man, it is vain for a man to attempt to
speak for God.
This principle has an extensive and varied application.
It applies to the beginnings of the religious life. I should like to
be allowed to say to you, gentlemen, with all the earnestness of which
I am capable, that the prime qualification of a minister is that he be
himself a religious man--that, before he begins to make God known, he
should first himself know God. How this comes to pass, this is not the
place to explain. Only let me say, that it is more than the play upon
us of religious influences from the outside. There must be a reaction
on our own part--an opening of our nature to take in and assimilate
what is brought to bear on us by others. There must be an uprising of
our own will and a deliberate choice of God. Of course in the history
of many there are, at this stage, experiences almost as dramatic and
memorable as this scene in the life of Isaiah; and they may be
composed of nearly identical elements. In some haunt of ordinary
life--perhaps in the church of one's childhood or in the room
consecrated by the prayers of early years--there comes a sudden
revelation of God, which transfigures everything. In this great light
the man feels himself to be like an unclean thing, ready to be
condemned and annihilated by the presence of the Thrice Holy. But then
ensues the wonderful revelation of grace, when God takes up the soul
in despair and draws it to His heart, penetrating it with the sense of
forgiveness and the confidence of childhood. It is not surprising that
this new-born life should feel itself at once dedicated to the service
of God. I heard one of our most rising ministers say a short time ago,
that he knew he was to be a minister on the very day of his
conversion, though at the time he was engaged in a totally different
pursuit.
But this may come later; and it may be the burden of another great
moment of revelation. For, as I have hinted already in this lecture,
the true Christian life is not all a silent, unmarked growth; it has
its crises also, when it rises at a bound to new levels, where new
prospects unfold themselves before it and alter everything. There are
moments in life more precious than days, and there are days which we
would not exchange for years. Swept along with other materials into
the common receptacle of memory, they shine like gold, silver,
precious stones among the wood, hay, stubble of ordinary experience.
It is impossible to say how much one such experience may do to direct
and to inspire a life. I believe that many a humble minister has such
an experience hidden in his memory, which he may never have disclosed
to anyone, but which is invested for himself with unfading splendor
and authority, and binds him to the service of God till his dying
day.[12]
But this principle, which we have drawn for our own use from Isaiah's
call, applies not only to the initial act, but to every subsequent
detail of our life. It is true of every appearance which a minister
makes before a congregation. Unless he has spent the week with God and
received Divine communications, it would be better not to enter the
pulpit or open his mouth on Sunday at all. There ought to be on the
spirit, and even on the face of a minister, as he comes forth before
men, a ray of the glory which was seen on the face of Moses when he
came down among the people with God's message from the mount.
It applies, too, on a larger scale, to the ministerial life as a
whole. Valuable as an initial call may be, it will not do to trade too
long on such a memory. A ministry of growing power must be one of
growing experience. The soul must be in touch with God and enjoy
golden hours of fresh revelation. The truth must come to the minister
as the satisfaction of his own needs and the answer to his
perplexities; and he must be able to use the language of religion, not
as the nearest equivalent he can find for that which he believes
others to be passing through, but as the exact equivalent of that
which he has passed through himself. There are many rules for praying
in public, and a competent minister will not neglect them; but there
is one rule worth all the rest put together, and it is this: Be a man
of prayer yourself; and then the congregation will feel, as you open
your lips to lead their devotions, that you are entering an accustomed
presence and speaking to a well-known Friend. There are arts of study
by which the contents of the Bible can be made available for the
edification of others; but this is the best rule: Study God's Word
diligently for your own edification; and then, when it has become
more to you than your necessary food and sweeter than honey or the
honey-comb, it will be impossible for you to speak of it to others
without a glow passing into your words which will betray the delight
with which it has inspired yourself.[13]
Perhaps of all causes of ministerial failure the commonest lies here;
and of all ministerial qualifications, this, although the simplest, is
the most trying. Either we have never had a spiritual experience deep
and thorough enough to lay bare to us the mysteries of the soul; or
our experience is too old, and we have repeated it so often that it
has become stale to ourselves; or we have made reading a substitute
for thinking; or we have allowed the number and the pressure of the
duties of our office to curtail our prayers and shut us out of our
studies; or we have learned the professional tone in which things
ought to be said, and we can fall into it without present feeling.
Power for work like ours is only to be acquired in secret; it is only
the man who has a large, varied and original life with God who can go
on speaking about the things of God with fresh interest; but a
thousand things happen to interfere with such a prayerful and
meditative life. It is not because our arguments for religion are not
strong enough that we fail to convince, but because the argument is
wanting which never fails to tell; and this is religion itself. People
everywhere can appreciate this, and nothing can supply the lack of it.
The hearers may not know why their minister, with all his gifts, does
not make a religious impression on them; but it is because he is not
himself a spiritual power.[14]
There comes to my mind a reminiscence from college days, which grows
more significant to me the longer I live. One Saturday morning at our
Missionary Society there came, at our invitation, to talk to us about
our future life, the professor who was the idol of the students and
reputed the most severely scientific of the whole staff. We used to
think him keen, too, and cynical; and what we expected was perhaps a
scathing exposure of the weaknesses of ministers or a severe
exhortation to study. It turned out, on the contrary, to be a strange
piece, steeped in emotion and full of almost lyrical tenderness; and I
can still remember the kind of awe which fell on us, as, from this
reserved nature, we heard a conception of the ministry which had
scarcely occurred to any of us before; for he said, that the great
purpose for which a minister is settled in a parish is not to
cultivate scholarship, or to visit the people during the week, or even
to preach to them on Sunday, but it is to live among them as a good
man, whose mere presence is a demonstration which cannot be gainsaid
that there is a life possible on earth which is fed from no earthly
source, and that the things spoken of in church on Sabbath are
realities.
Side by side with this reminiscence there lives in my memory another,
which also grows more beautiful the more I learn of life. It was my
happiness, when I was ordained, to be settled next neighbour to an
aged and saintly minister. He was a man of competent scholarship, and
had the reputation of having been in early life a powerful and popular
preacher. But it was not to these gifts that he owned his unique
influence. He moved through the town, with his white hair and somewhat
staid and dignified demeanour, as a hallowing presence. His very
passing in the street was a kind of benediction, and the people, as
they looked after him, spoke of him to each other with affectionate
veneration. Children were proud when he laid his hand on their heads,
and they treasured the kindly words which he spoke to them. At
funerals and other seasons of domestic solemnity his presence was
sought by people of all denominations. We who laboured along with him
in the ministry felt that his mere existence in the community was an
irresistible demonstration of Christianity and a tower of strength to
every good cause. Yet he had not gained this position of influence by
brilliant talents or great achievements or the pushing of ambition;
for he was singularly modest, and would have been the last to credit
himself with half the good he did. The whole mystery lay in this, that
he had lived in the town for forty years a blameless life, and was
known by everybody to be a godly and prayerful man. He was good enough
to honour me with his friendship; and his example wrote deeply upon
my mind these two convictions--that it may sometimes be of immense
advantage to spend a whole lifetime in a single pastorate, and that
the prime qualification for the ministry is goodness.[15]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] "One great part of the history of the Bible is the history of
Calls."--DEAN CHURCH.
[8] I am sorry to observe that even Mr. G.A. Smith, whose Commentary on
Isaiah is distinguished not only by thorough scholarship but by what is
far rarer in works of the kind--a profusion of just and inspiring
ideas--at this point, following bad examples, says that there are ideas
imported into the account of Isaiah's call which belonged to a later
period of his life. Not only is this wrong psychologically, because it
minimises the divinatory power of the human spirit in the great moments
of experience; but surely it is utterly wrong artistically, because, if
the ideas are historically out of place, Isaiah himself ought to have
felt that, by placing them there, he was breaking the spell of
verisimilitude, on which the effect of such a picture depends.
[9] This is the literal translation, "The fulness of the whole world is
His glory."
[10] The lips of Jeremiah were also touched in his call by the hand of
God. But the meaning appears to have been different. He had complained
that he could not speak--that he was tongue-tied. The touch of the
Divine hand may have meant that the restraining cord was loosed, and a
free passage made for the utterance of what he had to say. The words
which accompanied the touch suggest, however, a slightly different
idea--"Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth." The difficulty of
Jeremiah was not exactly that of Moses, who, when he complained that he
could not speak, meant that, never having acquired the art of expressing
himself, he could not utter what he had to say, even though he was full
of matter. This was the natural difficulty of an elderly man; for the
art of expression has to be acquired in youth. But the difficulty of a
young man like Jeremiah is not so much to express what he has to say as
to get something worth saying. This was what Jeremiah complained of; and
the touching of his lips meant that God was putting His own words into
his mouth. It was a promise that the well of ideas in his mind should
not run dry, but that God would give him such a revelation of His mind
and will as would supply him with an ample message to his age. All three
cases are full of instruction and encouragement.
[11] "After passing through the fundamental religious experiences of
forgiveness and cleansing, which are in every case the indispensable
premises of life with God, Isaiah was left to himself. No direct summons
was addressed to him, no compulsion was laid on him; but he heard the
voice of God asking generally for messengers, and he, on his own
responsibility, answered it for himself in particular. He heard from the
Divine lips of the Divine need for messengers, and he was immediately
full of the mind that he was the man for the mission, and of the heart
to give himself to it. So great an example cannot be too closely studied
by candidates for the ministry in our own day. Sacrifice is not the
half-sleepy, half-reluctant submission to the force of circumstance or
opinion, in which shape it is so often travestied among us, but the
resolute self-surrender and willing resignation of a free and reasonable
soul. There are many in our day who look for an irresistible compulsion
into the ministry of the Church; sensitive as they are to the material
bias by which men roll off into other professions, they pray for
something of a similar kind to prevail with them in this direction also.
There are men who pass into the ministry by social pressure or the
opinion of the circles they belong to, and there are men who adopt the
profession simply because it is on the line of least resistance. From
which false beginnings rise the spent force, the premature stoppages,
the stagnancy, the aimlessness and heartlessness, which are the scandals
of the professional ministry and the weakness of the Christian Church in
our day. Men who drift into the ministry, as it is certain so many do,
become mere ecclesiastical flotsam and jetsam, incapable of giving
carriage to any soul across the waters of this life, uncertain of their
own arrival anywhere, and of all the waste of their generation, the most
patent and disgraceful. God will have no driftwood for His sacrifices,
no drift-men for His ministers. Self-consecration is the beginning of
His service, and a sense of our own freedom and our own responsibility
is an indispensable element in the act of self-consecration."--G.A.
SMITH: _Isaiah_.
[12] I do not know that I have ever seen an entirely satisfactory
statement of what constitutes a call to the ministry. Probably it is one
of those things of the Spirit which cannot be mathematically defined.
The variety of the calls in Scripture warns us against laying down any
scheme to which the experience of every one must conform. It is the same
as with the commencement of the spiritual life, where also the work of
the Spirit of God overflows our definitions. While some can remember and
describe the whole process through which they have passed, others who
exhibit as undeniably the marks of the Divine handiwork can give
comparatively little account of how it took place. The test of the
reality of the change is not its power of being made into a good story.
In the one case, however, as in the other, a conscientious man will give
all diligence to make his calling and election sure. Excellent chapters
on the subject will be found in Spurgeon's _Lectures to My Students_ and
Blaikie's _For the Work of the Ministry_.
[13] "You have to be busy men, with many distractions, with time not
your own: and yet, if you are to be anything, there is one thing you
must secure. You must have time to enter into your own heart and be
quiet, you must learn to collect yourselves, to be alone with
yourselves, alone with your own thoughts, alone with eternal realities
which are behind the rush and confusion of moral things, alone with God.
You must learn to shut your door on all your energy, on all your
interests, on your hopes and fears and cares, and in the silence of your
chamber to 'possess your souls.' You must learn to look below the
surface; to sow the seed which you will never reap; to hear loud voices
against you or seductive ones, and to find in your own heart the
assurance and the spell which makes them vain. Whatever you do, part not
with the inner sacred life of the soul whereby we live _within_ to
'things not seen,' to Christ, and truth and immortality. Your work, your
activity, belong to earth; no real human interest, nothing that stirs or
attracts or that troubles men in this scene of life, ought to be too
great or too little for you. But your thoughts belong to heaven; and it
is to that height that they must rise, it is _there_ that in solitude
and silence they must be rekindled, and enlarged, and calmed, if even
activity and public spirit are not to degenerate into a fatal
forgetfulness of the true purpose of your calling--a forgetfulness of
the infinite tenderness and delicacy, of the unspeakable sacredness, of
the mysterious issues, which belong to the ministry of souls."--DEAN
CHURCH.
[14] "Habet autem ut obedienter audiatur quantacunque granditate
dictionis majus pondus vita dicentis."--ST. AUGUSTINE.
[15] As he has been dead for several years, I need not hesitate to give
the name of my dear and honoured friend--the Rev. James Black, of
Dunnikier.
LECTURE III.
THE PREACHER AS A PATRIOT.
We have committed ourselves, in our mode of dealing with the subject
of these lectures, to the guidance of Scripture; and I have already,
in the opening lecture, alluded to the doubt, which might arise in
some minds that this method might carry us away from the living
questions of the present age. But long experience has taught me to be
very confident in this method of study. It is astonishing how
directly, when trusting to the leading hand of Scripture, one is
conducted to the heart of almost any subject, and how frequently one
is thus compelled to take up delicate aspects of present questions
which one would otherwise timidly avoid; while there is, besides, this
other great advantage, that one can always go forward with a firm
step, having at one's back a Divine warrant and authority. To-day we
shall have an illustration of this; for the method which we are
obeying will carry us straight into the midst of the burning questions
of the hour; and the example of the prophets will press on our
attention an aspect of ministerial duty which the times are urgently
clamouring for, but which it is by no means easy to face. In our last
lecture we were occupied with the call of the prophet to the service
of God; to-day we have to study wherein consisted this service itself.
* * * * *
Here we are at once confronted with a contrast between the work of Old
Testament prophets and that of modern ministers, to which it is by no
means easy to adjust the mind. Our message in modern times is
addressed to the individual; but the message of the prophets was
addressed to the nation. The unit in our minds is always the soul; we
warn every man to flee from the wrath to come; we reason and wrestle
with him in the name of Heaven; we watch over the growth of his
character; and we estimate our success by the number of individuals
brought into the kingdom. In the prophets there is a complete absence
of all this. They are no less in earnest; their aim is equally clear
before them; but the unit in their minds is different: it is the
Jewish state, or at least the city of Jerusalem, as a whole. A recent
commentator[16] on Isaiah has raised the question, whether Isaiah has
a gospel for the individual. He makes out that he has; but it is in a
somewhat round-about way; and it is not done without, to some extent,
attributing to Isaiah a point of view which was not his. It was Christ
who introduced the modern point of view. He was the discoverer of the
individual. It was He who taught the world to believe in the dignity
and destiny of the single soul; and He trained His ministers to seek
and save it.
Isaiah's position, however, is well worth studying, and has its own
lesson for us. Only we must acknowledge it to be what it really is,
and endeavour to place ourselves on his standpoint. To him the New
Testament position was no more possible than the modern view of ethics
was to the ancient philosophers; and the student of philosophy
saturated from birth with the modern ideas of freedom and
individuality, has an exactly similar difficulty to overcome, as he
reads, for example, the _Republic_ of Plato, where the state is
everything and the individual nothing.
While a message to any individual is rare in the prophetical books,
that which we come upon wherever we open them is a patriotic and
statesman-like appeal on the condition of the country. The prophets
addressed themselves by preference to the heads and representatives of
the people, such as kings, princes and priests; because the power to
effect changes in the situation of the country rested in their hands.
But they also took advantage of large popular gatherings, and in some
conspicuous place, such as the city-gate or the court of the temple,
delivered their message, which thus might reach every corner of the
land. A name which they delight to apply to themselves is Watchmen. As
the watchman, stationed on his tower over the city-gate, kept guard
over the safety of the place, giving notice when danger was
approaching and summoning the citizens to defend themselves, so the
prophets from their watch-tower--that is, the position of elevation
and observation which inspiration gave them--watched over the weal of
the state, observing narrowly its condition within, keeping their eye
on the influences to which it was exposed from without, and, when
danger threatened, giving the alarm. Their acquaintance is
extraordinary with the state of every part of the country; and still
more astonishing is their knowledge of surrounding countries. When
they have to speak of Moab or Edom, they seem as familiar with the
towns and rivers, the customs and history of these countries, as with
those of Judah; and they appear to be as well acquainted with what is
going on in the cities on the Nile or the Euphrates as with what is
happening in Jerusalem. No home secretary is as well acquainted with
the internal affairs of his own country, and no foreign secretary with
the affairs of foreign countries. It was their vocation to be
sensitively alive to all the influences, near or remote, by which
their native land could be affected.
* * * * *
The contents of the prophetic writings, notwithstanding their variety,
easily fall into a few great masses. The chief are these
three--Criticism, Denunciation and Comfort.
1. There is a great mass of what may be called Criticism. Standing on
their watch-tower and turning their observation on the internal
condition of the state, the prophets could nearly always discern
diseased symptoms in the body corporate, and it was their duty to
point them out. So Isaiah commences his prophecies: "The whole head is
sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto
the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and
putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither
mollified with ointment." And he thus gives expression to the
obligation which was laid on him to make these discoveries known: "Cry
aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show My people
their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins."
The sins which the prophets had to reprehend were pretty uniform all
through the prophetic period; and it is interesting to compare them
with those by which our own age is afflicted. There is no school in
which the conscience can be so well educated to a sense of public sin
as in the writings of the prophets.
The root evil was always Idolatry. The nation was continually falling
away from the worship of the true God to idols, or at least the
worship of other deities was incorporated with that of Jehovah. This
was always both a symptom of advanced degradation and the head and
fountain of other evils of the worst kind. All the prophets attack it
with all the weapons in their armoury--with hot indignation and close
argument and scalding tears. Isaiah is remarkable for attacking it
with raillery and sarcasm. He takes his readers into the idol workshop
and details the process of their manufacture. He shows us the workmen,
surrounded with their plates of metal and logs of wood, out of which
the god is to be fashioned, and busy with their files and planes,
their axes and hammers, putting together the helpless thing. The
idolmaker, he says, has a fine ash or oak or cedar-tree, and makes a
pretty idol with it; but with the same wood he lights his fire and
cooks his dinner--"He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part
thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast and is satisfied; yea, he
warmeth himself and saith, Aha, aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire;
and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image; he
falleth down unto it and worshippeth it and prayeth unto it, and
saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god."
Closely associated with idolatry was Luxury. So successful to our
minds is the polemic of a prophet like Isaiah against idolatry that
the wonder to us is that it was ever necessary; and, indeed, there are
few things more puzzling to the ordinary reader of Scripture than the
constant lapses of the people of God into idolatry. How could they,
knowing the true God, exchange a worship so rational and elevated for
the worship of stocks and stones? The explanation is a simple but a
humiliating one. The worship of these foreign deities was accompanied
with sensual excesses, which appealed to the strongest elementary
passions of human nature. Feasts, dances and drunken orgies formed
part of the worship of Baal and the other Canaanite divinities.
Idolatry in Israel was never due to theoretic changes of opinion; it
was only the way in which an outbreak of laxity and luxury manifested
itself. Its equivalent in our day would be an excessive development of
the passion for amusement and excitement, destroying the dignity and
seriousness of life. The wealthy and fashionable classes led the way,
as they generally do in periods of moral retrogression; and the worst
symptom of all was when the womanhood of the country surrendered
itself to the prevailing tendencies. This last feature of degradation
had developed itself in Isaiah's day; and he attacks it with a strange
combination of humour and moral indignation: "Because the daughters of
Jerusalem are haughty, and walk with outstretched neck and wanton
eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a tinkling with their
feet, therefore ... the Lord will take away the bravery of their
tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round
tires like the moon, the chains and the bracelets and the mufflers,
the bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the headbands, the
tablets and the earrings, the rings and nose jewels, the changeable
suits of apparel and the mantles and the wimples and the crisping
pins, the glasses and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils; and
it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be
stink, and instead of a girdle a rent, and instead of well-set hair
baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girdle of sackcloth, and
burning instead of beauty."
Then there was Oppression. Excessive luxury in the upper classes is
usually accompanied with misery among those at the opposite end of the
social scale; because the rich in such a state of society are
heartless, and not only neglect the poor, but oppress them. The
prophets are full of the wrongs inflicted on the weak by the powerful.
The wealthy landowners took advantage of the difficulties of their
less prosperous neighbours to rob them of their holdings and remove
the ancient landmarks; and the courts of law were so corrupt that
those who could not bribe the occupants of the chair of justice had no
chance of redress. The spirit of the constitution was so far violated
that the rich held their own fellow-countrymen in slavery, and did not
even give them the advantage of the year of jubilee. Many a page of
the writings of the prophets looks like a programme for the reform of
abuses with which we are too familiar in our own civilisation. "Woe,"
says Jeremiah, "to him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and
his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's services without
wages and giveth him not for his work."
Last of all there was Hypocrisy. In spite of these sins, crying to
Heaven, there was seldom any lack of religiosity or the outward forms
of religion. Religion was divorced from morality, and ritual was
substituted for righteousness. There is no commoner or weightier
burden in the prophets than this. It is on this subject that Isaiah
lets loose the whole force of his prophetic soul in his very first
chapter, where there is a truly appalling picture of the combination
of religious rites the most multiplied with moral abuses the most
clamant: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?
saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat
of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of rams
or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required
this at your hands, to tread My courts? Bring no more vain oblations;
incense is an abomination unto Me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the
calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the
solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul
hateth; they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them. And, when
ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when
ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
Wash you; make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before
Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve
the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow."
Thus did these watchmen search out the moral and religious condition
of the people to the very bottom and, in the most expressive language,
bring home to their fellow-countrymen how they stood in the eyes of
God.
2. A second large mass of the prophetic writings is occupied with
Denunciation, or the prediction of calamities about to come as the
punishment of sin. As sure as the prophets were that the God of the
universe was a righteous God, so certain were they that the public
sins which they exposed would bring down the wrath of Heaven; for
"though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished."
The instruments of punishment were not far to seek. Israel was
surrounded by nations which entertained towards her feelings of bitter
hostility and needed only the slightest provocation to attack her.
Such were Edom and Moab, Philistia and Syria. But, above all, she was
hemmed in on both sides by great and warlike powers--Egypt on the one
hand and Assyria or Babylonia on the other. These were incessantly
watching each other, and, in doing so, they had to look across Israel.
She lay in the way which the one had to take in order to get at the
other. The secular historian would say that she could not but fall
sooner or later into the hands of the one or the other, and that she
would probably pass frequently from hand to hand. But to the prophets
these warlike powers were the scourges in God's hand to punish the
sins of His people; and, looking outwards from their watch-tower,
after exposing the sins within the state, they announced that the
storm-cloud of calamity was rising from this quarter or that long
before any suspicion of it had dawned on the citizens themselves.
Jehovah turns the hearts of kings and peoples as the rivers of water,
and He stirred up these hostile nations when His people were in need
of chastisement; He could wield their power as the axe which assails a
tree is wielded by the woodman; He could call the mightiest conqueror
to serve His secret purposes, as a man calls a dog to his foot.[17]
They did not know that they were being thus used. They had their own
designs, and their hatred and cruelty towards God's people were real
enough. They were even, after doing God's work on His people, to be
punished in turn for the animosity and violence with which they
performed it. But in the meantime the will of Jehovah was
accomplished, and the discipline of His providence wreaked on the sins
of the nation.
3. The third great element in these books is Comfort. Not
unfrequently, in delivering these predictions of approaching calamity,
the prophets had to put themselves into opposition to popular forms of
patriotism and incur the danger of being regarded as enemies of their
country. This was especially the case with Jeremiah, who was burdened
all his life with the sad task of proclaiming that the time for
repentance was past, and the Jewish state, with its capital, must be
destroyed. When the enemy was before the walls of Jerusalem, and the
heads of the state were rallying the citizens to the last and most
sacred duty of defending their hearths and altars, he had still to
predict that resistance was useless; and he was imprisoned as a
traitor, because his words were disheartening the soldiers. When at
last the city fell into the hands of the enemy, he was set free from
imprisonment and loaded with honours by the conqueror as one who had
been a valuable ally. Never was a position more equivocal occupied by
a patriot. Yet never has there beaten in a human breast a heart more
patriotic than Jeremiah's. Patriotism, strong as a man's passion and
tender as a woman's love, is the keynote of every chapter of his
prophecies. This is characteristic of all the prophets. They loved
Israel, and especially the city of Jerusalem, with an ardour of
affection such as has rarely, if ever, been bestowed on any other
country or city on earth. There was something natural in this passion;
for Palestine was a lovely country, whose fruitful plains and
picturesque valleys and vine-clad hills easily captivated the hearts
of its inhabitants; and Jerusalem was a city beautiful for situation.
But this natural attachment was transfigured into a higher sentiment.
Jerusalem was the hearth and sanctuary of the true religion. The
country was dear to the hearts of the prophets, because it had been
specially chosen by Jehovah as a home for His people, in which they
might work out their destiny. The people who inhabited this country
were to be married to Jehovah; He was to penetrate them with His
spirit and character; and in them and their seed all nations of the
earth were to be blessed.
To this sublime conception of the nation the hearts of all the
prophets clung. However unworthy of it their own generation might be,
they believed in the inexhaustible resources of their race, which was
immortal till its destiny was accomplished. It was this faith,
inspiring Isaiah, which enabled him to rally his fellow-countrymen to
the defence of Jerusalem, when, according to all human probabilities,
extinction stared it in the face. And even Jeremiah, though he had to
predict the ruin of the city of his heart, never dreamed for a moment
that its career was at an end; but, looking beyond the calamities of
the immediate future, he predicted that God would restore the
captivity of His people and yet make Zion a praise in the earth. It
was, indeed, in times of calamity and suffering that the patriotism
of the prophets burned most ardently. It was then that, speaking in
God's name, they poured out on the stricken city the affection which
breathes in such wonderful words of Isaiah as these: "Can a mother
forget her sucking child that she should not have compassion on the
son of her womb? Yea, they may forget: yet will I not forget thee.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands; thy walls are
continually before Me." The second half of Isaiah,[18] addressed to
the exiles in Babylon, overflows with such outbursts of tenderness;
and, although there is obviously a love in them which is more than
human, yet the Divine love could not have found an outlet and a voice
for itself except through a human heart of the most exquisite
sensibility and passionate patriotism.[19] The prophets, who could
scourge the people in the height of their prosperity and wantonness
with words which smote like swords, became in the days of calamity the
assiduous ministers of comfort, pouring balm into the wounds of their
country and never allowing the daughter of Zion to despair of her
future.
It was then especially that they cultivated the most remarkable of all
the elements of prophecy--the hope of the Messiah. Tragic as was the
failure of the prophets themselves to raise the nation to the
elevation which they saw so clearly to be her destiny, they all
believed that what they had failed to do would yet be done, and that
there would yet be a Jerusalem bright and glorious as a star, and
serving as the star of hope to all the peoples of the earth. Their
confidence in this did not rest solely on the will and power of God in
general; it was guaranteed to them by the belief, which, under
different forms, they all cherished, and taught their countrymen to
cherish, that in the womb of the nation there lay One, to be born in
due time, endowed with powers far greater than their own, who would
take up the task which each of them had had in his turn to lay by
unaccomplished, and carry it forward to its fulfilment--a Child of the
nation who would unite in His character all the attributes in their
fullest perfection which the nation herself ought to have possessed,
and who, though standing high above His fellow-countrymen, would yet
be thoroughly incorporated with them, and, taking on His shoulders the
responsibility of their destiny, would never fail to be discouraged
under it, but bear it victoriously to the goal. "Unto us a Child is
born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His
shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
* * * * *
Now, gentlemen, the question is, How far the aspect of the prophetic
activity which we have considered to-day is a model to us?
It might be argued that this is a stage of preaching which has been
superseded, and that the message of ministers ought now to be
addressed entirely to individuals. This is the theory of preaching on
which many act, without perhaps considering how widely it differs from
the procedure of the prophets. And no doubt much might be said in its
defence. It was a vast step in the development of religion when Jesus
turned from the nation to the individual and taught the world the
value of the soul. Here must ever now lie the stress of Christian
preaching; the preacher is not worthy of the Christian name who does
not know what it is to hunger and thirst for the salvation of
individuals, and who does not esteem the salvation of even one soul
well worth the labour of a lifetime.
Still it may be doubted whether any stage through which preaching has
passed can ever be entirely superseded; and we may well hesitate to
believe that the work of an Isaiah or a Jeremiah is not still work for
us.
This doubt is further strengthened when we turn to the record of
Christ's own preaching. He is the final standard and incomparable
model. But, though He discovered the soul and taught the world the
value of the individual, His preaching was not exclusively directed to
individuals. It had a public and national side. He cast His protection
over publicans and sinners, not only because they were the children of
men, but also because they were the seed of Abraham; He submitted His
claims to the ecclesiastical authorities of the nation, and, when they
rejected them, He directed against the religious parties the
thunderbolts of His invective. The tears and words of indescribable
tenderness which He poured out upon the city where He was about to be
martyred proved that the patriotism of Isaiah and Jeremiah still
burned in His heart; and He charged His apostles, when sending them
forth to evangelize the world, to begin at Jerusalem.[20]
If this did not settle the question, the nature of the case would
demonstrate that the preacher's vocation includes a message to the
community as well as to the individual. It will be conceded by all
that the preacher exists for the promotion of righteousness and the
diminution of sin in the world. But sin is not only lodged in the
heart of the individual: it is embodied also in evil customs and
unjust laws, for which the community is responsible. The individual is
largely moulded by his environment; but this may either be so
favourable to goodness that his evil tendencies are restrained and
everything encourages him to do well, or so evil that the worst vices
are easily contracted, while every step in the right direction meets
with a storm of opposition. No one would contend that the chances of a
soul are the same whether it lives among those who watch carefully
over its development and guide its footsteps in the paths of peace, or
among those whose word and example are encouragements to every kind of
sin. Society ought to be a kindly matrix in which incipient life is
nurtured into health and beauty; but it may be a malignant nurse, by
whom the stream of life is poisoned at its very source. If this be so,
then it is as reprehensible in those whose vocation is to watch over
the moral and spiritual development of their fellow-men to be
indifferent to the conditions by which life is surrounded as it would
be discreditable to the physicians of a city swept year after year by
pestilence, if they took no interest in the insanitary conditions to
which the epidemic was due, but lazily contented themselves with
curing their own patients.
We seem to have arrived at precisely the point in the Church's history
when her mind and conscience are to awake to this aspect of her duty.
One of the most eminent members of the English bench of bishops said
recently, that the social question is the question which the
Christianity of the present day has to solve; and this sentiment is
being echoed in every quarter. Strange it is how age after age one
word of the message of Christianity after another lays hold of the
Christian mind and becomes for a time the watchword of progress. There
can be little doubt that this is the word for our age. The
extraordinary response given throughout the civilised world to General
Booth's _In Darkest England_ proves how deeply the conscience of the
world is being stirred by the misery and degradation of the outcasts
of society.
General Booth's book, and other books and pamphlets like it, have
brought home to us the fact, that at the base of our civilisation
there is sweltering a mass of sin and misery, which is not less a
reproach to Christianity than were the publicans and sinners to the
religion of the contemporaries of Christ; because, though the Church
may not, like the Scribes and Pharisees, despise and hate these
outcasts, it has not yet coped effectually with the problem of their
condition; and perhaps their numbers are increasing rather than
diminishing. There are sections of the community in which the
conditions of existence are so evil that childhood is plunged, almost
as soon as it is born, into an element of vice and crime, the bloom of
modesty is rudely rubbed off the soul of womanhood, and manhood is so
beset with temptation that escape is well-nigh impossible. Can anyone
doubt that an Isaiah or a Jeremiah would, in such a state of society,
have lifted up his voice like a trumpet and cast the condition of
these lost children of our people in the face of the luxurious rich,
and especially of the professors of religion? And is it less obvious
that this is still the duty of the modern pulpit?
It cannot, indeed, be said with truth, that the Church has not faced
the problem. There is one of the causes of social misery, and that the
very chief, against which the Church, especially in your country, has
nobly asserted herself. Drink is the cause to which magistrates and
judges, and all who are brought directly into contact with the fallen
and criminal classes, attribute three-fourths of the evils of
society. Drink is the despair of every Christian worker who has
ventured down among the pariahs of our civilisation. Against this the
Churches have not been inactive. But we are just beginning to
acknowledge that, though drunkenness is the great cause of misery,
there are other causes behind it which must likewise be coped with.
Why do the people drink? This question, when it is impartially
considered, will bring many abuses of our social system into view,
which must be put out of the way before the evils of drunkenness can
be stopped. Excessively prolonged labour exhausts the system and makes
it crave for artificial stimulus. Excessively low wages, with no
prospect of rising in the world, beget a spirit of recklessness, which
makes men ready to turn to anything that promises to bring a gleam of
sunshine into their monotonous lot. Ill-furnished and insanitary
abodes drive forth their inmates to seek the brightness and comfort of
the saloon. These are specimens of the new questions which demand the
attention of those who feel the reproach of our defective
civilisation.
There is one type of remedy which the Church has liberally supplied.
To those already fallen she has extended a helping hand. The
Evangelical Revival produced a spirit of philanthropy which has
invented schemes for the relief of every form of human woe; and these
have multiplied to almost unmanageable numbers. But we are beginning
to see that, multiply them as we may, they must be totally
insufficient as long as the causes of misery are undealt with. If the
causes remain as strong as ever, new victims will be manufactured as
fast as philanthropy can rescue those already made. The time has come
to ascend higher up the stream than has hitherto been done, and cut it
off at its source. In other words, we must direct the whole force of
Christian philanthropy to the stopping of the causes of social misery.
For this work new weapons will be required; and perhaps the principal
of these will be legislation. The prophets appealed, as I have said,
to kings and princes, because in their hands lay at that time the
force of government. But this power has now passed, and is daily more
completely passing, into the hands of the people, on whom lies the
responsibility which formerly lay elsewhere. And, if we are to follow
in the footsteps of Isaiah and Jeremiah, we must teach the people to
rise to their responsibility and make use of the weapon which time has
put into their hands for altering the conditions of life. They must
send to the seats of authority, both in the municipality and in the
state, men of public spirit, who will act not for their own interest
or for the interest of factions, but for the good of the whole
community; and they must see to it, that the laws and their
administration are such as will make evil-doing difficult and
well-doing easy.
Of course this will involve conflict with those interests which are
vested in abuses; for there are trades which flourish in the poverty
of the poor and even the vices of the vicious. These enjoy, in many
cases, the advantage of high social standing; and many of the organs
of public opinion will rally to their support. But the Church must
appeal to the Christian conscience and summon forth the resources of
Christian virtue, to meet this new phase of the task which has been
appointed her. Christianity has always, and especially during the last
hundred years, had the open hand of charity; but she will need, during
the next hundred years, to have also a hand which can close itself
firmly over the instrument of government, and make use of it as a
lever for lifting out of the way many great obstacles which are
keeping back the Kingdom of God.
* * * * *
I am quite aware of the dangers of this new departure which I am
advocating. There is the great danger of undervaluing the work of
saving individual souls. There is the danger of forsaking the Word of
God and converting the pulpit into an organ of secular discussion;
although, on the other hand, there are numerous portions of the Bible
which directly raise the discussion of social problems and, when
otherwise applied, can only be interpreted in a more or less unnatural
sense. There is the danger of making the minister the mouthpiece of a
party. Christian tact and discretion will be necessary at every step.
But surely this is no reason for declining our duty, but only a reason
for bringing out all our resources.
One consideration which simplifies the problem is, that it is not so
much the place of the minister to intervene in special questions as to
beget in his people a public and patriotic spirit, and to teach them
to look upon the discharge of the duties of citizenship as a part of
Christianity. When our people have been brought to recognise that the
public weal is their concern, and that they are responsible for the
state of society and the conditions of life, they can be left to
themselves to choose the right men to support the right measures.[21]
Here we can build on a natural foundation. It is natural for a man to
be attached to the place of his birth or the town in which he lives.
The roots of his life are in its soil; his interests bind him to it;
and, if he be at all divinely-souled, its traditions and notable names
cannot fail to lay hold upon his heart. The chances which a city has
of getting its affairs well attended to are measured by the number of
its inhabitants who are animated with such sentiments. In the same
way, it is natural for a man to love his country. Some countries
especially have the power of casting such a spell over the hearts of
their children as binds them to their service. Of my country this
might be said. Small as it is, its beauty, its history and its
romantic associations wield over the hearts of its inhabitants an
extraordinary attraction. Perhaps part of the secret may lie in its
very smallness; for feeling contracts a passionate force within narrow
limits, as our Highland rivers become torrents within their rocky
beds. Of your country also it might be said for different reasons.
America stirs patriotic sentiment, not by its smallness, but by its
largeness and wonderful variety; not by the memories of the past, but
by the boundless possibilities of the future.
These sentiments exist in the minds of our people already; and we only
need to foster them and impregnate them with a Christian element, in
order to produce convictions about public duty which would have the
most blessed results. We might train our people to feel keenly the woe
of mankind and especially the moral blots on the fair fame of their
own city or country. We might get them to cherish a high ideal of what
the place of their abode should be, morally and spiritually, and of
what their country might do in the world. In Scotland there was such
an ideal once: the eye of the dying Covenanter saw, painted on the
mist of the moorland, the vision of a consecrated land ruled by a
covenanted king.[22] In England it existed once, in the Puritan days,
when, as Richard Baxter says, England was like to become a land of
saints, a pattern of holiness to the world, and the unmatchable
paradise of the earth. You had it in America once: when your fathers
landed in the _Mayflower_, they were seeking not merely meat and
drink, or even wealth and plenty, but a home in which their
descendants might grow up in freedom, virtue and religion. We must get
that ideal back again, if, in spite of railroads and industrial armies
and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, we are not to become corrupt
and ready to be swept away with the besom of destruction. We might
train every man on whom our message lays hold to live with the
conviction that it is his duty, before he dies, to do something to
make his own town more beautiful, his country happier, and the world
better.
As I am addressing some who may before long be wielding a great
influence, let me add one suggestion. In matters such as I have been
speaking of to-day success comes to the man who has a programme. Now
is the time, when you are looking out on the world with the keen eyes
of youth, to note the abuses which need correction and to picture with
the eye of the imagination the improvements which are required to wipe
out the reproach or to elevate the reputation of your country. Fix the
vision in the centre of your mind; keep it ever before you; and your
dream may change to a reality which will modify the conditions of life
for whole generations of your fellow-men. What could be worthier of
your manhood at its present stage than to be revolving some plan for
the benefit and honour of your country? Even if it should never come
to anything, it will be good that it has been in your heart. But there
is nothing else which is more likely to come to something. "What,"
says Alfred de Vigny, "is a great life? It is a thought conceived in
the fervent mind of youth and executed with the solid force of
manhood."
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Rev. G.A. Smith.
[17] These are Isaiah's images.
[18] For our purpose in these lectures it is of no consequence whether
there were two Isaiahs or only one. We are seeking to ascertain the
leading features of the prophets; and, if we attribute to one person
qualities which were distributed among two, this will matter little, as
long as they are typical qualities of the prophet.
[19] "The tale of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that
were not felt to be moved by human pity."--GEORGE ELIOT.
[20] Not to mention the social element in His preaching comprehended in
the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. The comparative absence of the
patriotic element from apostolic preaching is chiefly due to the fact
that the apostles were missionaries in cities and countries where they
were strangers. In some respects modern ministers in settled charges are
liker the prophets than the apostles.
[21] For example, there will rarely be any delicacy at the time of an
election in urging on the people that it is their duty to go to the
poll, but it will nearly always be an indiscretion to indicate from the
pulpit for whom they should vote. Very often good causes are lost or
long delayed, not because the sentiment of the electorate is opposed to
them, but because large numbers are too apathetic to vote at all.
[22] "When I would cast my mind back to what we have earned and reaped
from these men, it strikes me perhaps more than anything which I have
yet named, that we should thank them for the passionate quest of a
glorious ideal. It is such ideals, even when they are unattainable,
which lift up the character of men and nations. I think that no worthy
historian has yet been found to tell, as it ought to be told, how much
Scotland owes to this splendid vision which these men sought, the vision
of a consecrated land of saints ruled by a covenanted king, loyal to
Christ. It hovered before the rapt eyes of these saints of Scotland
until it well-nigh turned them into seers, it elevated them until it
made them heroes, and though the picture seemed to fade before the eyes
of their children, as though it had been painted by the morning light on
the mist of their own moorland, still, it has done its work, for it has
contributed mightily to educate the hearts of Scotchmen. But has it so
faded? Or is it not simply thrown forward, as the old Jew learned to
throw his Messianic hopes forward, from one anticipated Christ to
another, better and greater yet to come?"--J. OSWALD DYKES, D.D.
LECTURE IV.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN OF THE WORD.
Gentlemen, in the lecture before last I spoke of the prophet's call to
the service of God, and in the last lecture of the work itself which
he had to do. To-day I am to speak of the instrument with which he did
it.
This was the Word; the prophet was a Man of the Word. In accomplishing
his great and difficult work he wielded no other weapon. It seems the
frailest of all weapons; for what is a word? It is only a puff of air,
a vibration trembling in the atmosphere for a moment and then
disappearing. But so might one speak of the cloud whose rolling coils
of vapour, changing every moment, seem the least substantial of all
things; yet out of it breaks the forked lightning, which rives the
giant of the forest, and overturns the tower which has defied ten
thousand assailants, and, loosening the crag, sends it thundering down
the mountain-side. Though it be only a weapon of air, the word is
stronger than the sword of the warrior. Words have overturned
dynasties and revolutionised kingdoms. When the right virtue is in
them, they outlast every other work of man. Where are the cities which
were flourishing when David sang? where are the empires whose armies
were making the world tremble when Isaiah wrote? Nineveh and Babylon,
Tyre and Memphis--where are they? But the Psalms of David still
delight, and the wisdom of Isaiah still instructs, the world.
The prophets were well aware of the temper and force of this weapon
which they wielded. Jeremiah refers with especial frequency to the
power of the word. "Is not My word," he asks, "like a fire, saith the
Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" When
putting this weapon into his hand, the Lord said to him, "See, I have
set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and pull
down, and to destroy and throw down, and to build and to plant." How
was one man to be able to throw down and build up kingdoms? He speaks
as if he were at the head of irresistible legions and equipped with
all the enginery of war. But so he was; for all these and more are in
the word. Such military notions seem to have occurred naturally to the
wielders of it. Another of them says, "The weapons of our warfare are
not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,
casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself
against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ." Yet another of them says, "The
word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged
sword." And Isaiah says, in the name of the Servant of the Lord, "He
hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath
He hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He hid
me."[23]
* * * * *
The word of the prophets has two aspects: it is, on the one side, a
Message from God, and, on the other, a Message to Men.
1. The word which the prophets wielded was the word of God. Herein lay
the secret of its power. For the word of God is the thought of God;
and this is more ancient than the stars and lies more deeply embedded
in the constitution of things than the roots of the mountains; it is
the prop by which the universe is sustained. God's word is before all
things, for it created them; and his thoughts are the rails on which
the course of the world runs.
It was the privilege of the prophets to approach so near to God, to
enter so completely into sympathy and fellowship with Him, and to
know so clearly what were His purposes, that their own thoughts became
identical with His; and, therefore, when they spoke, their words were
God's words. Not only do they preface many of their utterances with
"Thus saith the Lord," but--what is far more strange--they often
begin, without any preface, and go on speaking in the first person
singular, when not the prophet but Jehovah is the speaker; as if their
personality were so enveloped in His as to disappear altogether.[24]
But this remarkable knowledge of the thoughts of God was not given to
the prophets for themselves. The philosopher may shut himself up in
secret to study the laws of the universe and keep his conclusions to
himself; and even the poet perhaps may be so happy in his own vision
of beauty that he does not care to utter his song to the world; but
not so the prophet. He, indeed, was also, in the strictest sense, an
original thinker, and the new conceptions of God which he was
privileged to convey to the world dawned upon his own mind with that
secret delight which makes the creative thinker feel himself to be
"Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
One of the prophets gives expression to this secret joy when he says,
"Thy words were found and I did eat them, and Thy words were unto me
the joy and the rejoicing of my heart;" and, after a night spent in
receiving revelations, he says, "On this I awaked and beheld, and my
sleep was sweet unto me." But the knowledge of God's mind and will
which the prophets obtained was not for themselves, but for others. It
was not abstract knowledge, but a knowledge of God's will about the
course of history--about "what Israel ought to do." It was, in short,
not only a revelation, but a message.
Hence, one of the most outstanding characteristics of the prophets was
the sense of being ambassadors charged with a communication which they
were bound to deliver. If those to whom they were sent with it
welcomed them, good and well; but, if not, they were not absolved from
their duty. The man who speaks to men for his own ends--to obtain
influence in the management of their affairs or to display his talents
and win a name--will go on speaking as long as they are inclined to
listen; but, if they do not appreciate his efforts or if he wearies of
the employment, he can betake himself to retirement and be heard no
more. But a prophet could not act thus. His message might arouse
bitter opposition, and often did so: "Woe is me, my mother," exclaims
Jeremiah, "that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of
contention to the whole earth." Gladly would he have withdrawn from
the contest, if he could, and sought a lodge in some vast wilderness.
But the sense of being a messenger drove him on: "Then I said, I will
not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His name; but His word
was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I was
weary of forbearing, and I could not stay."
This was what lent the prophets the wonderful courage which
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]
Some preachers have an extraordinary facility of putting themselves at
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.
I have seen a very trenchant article from an American pen on the power
of the moneyed members of a church to dictate the tone of the pulpit;
and it is a common accusation against ministers, that they flatter the
prevailing classes in their congregations. If their congregations are
wealthy, they are afraid, it is said, to speak up for the poor, even
when justice is calling out on their side; and, if their congregations
are poor, they take the side of the working-man, right or wrong. I
should question whether temptations so gross as these are much felt.
Far more dangerous are the subtler temptations--to truckle to the
spirit of the age, to keep at all hazards on the side of the
cultivated and clever, and to shun those truths the utterance of which
might expose the teacher to the charge of being antiquated and
bigoted. Let a preacher dwell always on the sunny side of the truth
and conceal the shadows, let him enlarge continually on what is simple
and human in Christianity and pass lightly over what is mysterious and
Divine: let him, for example, dwell on the human side of Christ but
say nothing of His deity, let him enforce Christ's example but say
nothing of His atonement, let him extol the better elements of human
nature but say nothing of its depravity, let him preach frequently on
the glories of the next world but never mention its terrors: and very
probably he may be popular and see his Church crowded; but he will be
a false prophet.[40]
Who were these false prophets, and how did there come to be such
numbers of them? These are questions which an attentive reader of the
Bible cannot help asking; but it is not by any means easy to answer
them.
The prophets whose names have come down to us are not by any means
numerous; but, besides them, there must have been many other true
prophets. There were times when the spirit of religion was breathing
through the community, and then men were not wanting who felt called
to be its organs. The spirit of inspiration might fall on anyone at
any time; no prescribed training was necessary to make a man a
prophet. It might come, as it did to Amos, on the husbandman in his
fields or the shepherd among his flock. It might alight on the young
noble amidst the opening pleasures of life, as it did on Isaiah and
Zephaniah; or it might come, as it did on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the
young priest preparing for his sacred functions.
But some of the more noted prophets endeavoured in a more systematic
way to diffuse the spirit which rested upon themselves, and thus to
multiply the number of the prophets. They founded schools in which
promising young men were gathered and plied with the means of
education available in that age, cultivating music, reading the
writings of the older prophets, and coming under the influence of the
holy man who was at their head. These were the Schools of the
Prophets, and their students were the Sons of the Prophets. Samuel
seems to have been the first founder of these schools. They were
flourishing in the times of Elijah and Elisha, and they probably
continued to exist with varying fortunes in subsequent centuries.
Perhaps all who went through these schools claimed, or could claim,
the prophetic name. Those who took up the profession wore the hairy
mantle and leathern girdle made familiar to us by the figure of John
the Baptist; and they probably subsisted on the gifts of those who
benefited from their oracles. Their numbers may have been very large;
we hear of hundreds of prophets even during an idolatrous reign, when
they were exposed to persecution.
In times when the spirit of inspiration was abroad or when the schools
enjoyed the presence of a master spirit, it is easy to understand how
valuable such institutions may have been, and how they may have been
centres from which religious light and warmth were diffused through
the whole country. But they were liable to deterioration. If the
general tone of religion in the country declined, they partook in the
general decay; an inspiring leader might be taken away and no
like-minded successor arise to fill his place; or men who had received
no real call beforehand might join the school and pass through the
curriculum without receiving it. Only they had learned the trick of
speech and got by rote the language of religion. They had no personal
knowledge of God or message obtained directly from Him; but it was not
difficult to put on the prophet's mantle and talk in the traditional
prophetic tones. The fundamental charge against the false prophets is
always this: "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not
spoken unto them, yet they prophesy."
If I am right in tracing the origin of false prophecy to the schools
of the prophets, this gives a suggestive hint as to the point at which
the same danger may beset ourselves. It is obviously the duty of the
authorities of the Church to make provision for the training of those
who are to be the future ministers of the Gospel; and it is natural
for those who have the honour of the Church at heart to covet for her
service the talents of the gifted. Parents, too, will often be found
cherishing an intense desire that the choicest of their sons should
become ministers. These wishes of superiors have a legitimate
influence in determining the choice of our life-work. The wishes and
prayers of pious parents are especially entitled to have very great
weight. Yet there is a danger of an outward influence of this kind
being substituted for genuine personal experience and an inward call.
When, a generation ago, in the rural parts of England, the church in
many a parish was looked upon as "a living," to be allocated to a
junior member of the family, who was educated for the position as a
matter of course, the custom, whatever happy results it might produce
in exceptional cases, was not fitted to fill the pulpits of the land
with men of prophetic character. The pious wishes of parents, however
beautiful they may be, require to be made absolutely conditional on a
vocation of a higher kind; otherwise we get a manufactured ministry,
without a message, in place of men in whom the spirit of inspiration
is stirring and who speak because they believe.
* * * * *
Having no message of their own, what were the false prophets to do?
The best they could do was to repeat and imitate what had been said by
their predecessors. It is with this Jeremiah reproaches them when he
says, "Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal
My words everyone from his neighbour." The older prophets used to
begin their utterances with the phrase, "the burden of the Lord;" and
Jeremiah complains that this had become an odious cant term in the
mouths of his contemporaries; and in the same way Zechariah complains
that in his day the great word "comfort," which from the lips of
Isaiah had descended like dew from heaven on the parched hearts of the
people of God, had become a dry and hackneyed phrase in the mouths of
false prophets. How dangerous this habit of stealing the words of
others might become, when practical issues were involved, may be
illustrated by a striking example. The inviolability of Jerusalem had
been a principle of the older prophets, which was quite true for their
times; and Isaiah had made use of it for rousing his fellow-citizens
from despair, when the army of Sennacherib stood before the gates. But
in Jeremiah's time the change of circumstances had made it to be no
longer true; and yet the false prophets kept on repeating it; and no
doubt they seemed both to themselves and others to be occupying a
strong position when, in opposing him, they could allege that they
were standing on the same ground as Isaiah. All the time, however,
they were betraying those who listened to them.
There is a sense in which the truth of God is unchangeable; it is like
Himself--the same yesterday and to-day and forever. But there is
another sense in which it is continually changing. Like the manna, it
descends fresh every morning, and, if it is kept till to-morrow, it
breeds loathsome worms. Isaiah describes the true prophet as one who
has the tongue of the learner--not of the learned, as the Authorised
Version gives it--and whose ear is opened every morning to hear the
message of the new day. What was truth for yesterday may be falsehood
for to-day; and only he is a trustworthy interpreter of God who is
sensitive to the indications of present providence.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the only form which
false prophecy can take is a dried-up orthodoxy, mumbling over the
shibboleths of yesterday. If he who stands forward as a speaker for
God is out of touch with God and has really no Divine message, he may
make good the lack of a true Divine word in many ways. The easiest way
is, no doubt, to fall back on some accepted word of yesterday; but he
may also strike out on the path of originality, announcing a gospel
for to-morrow, constructed by his own fancy, which has no Divine
sanction. Neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy is a guarantee: the only
guarantee is a humble mind living in the secret of the Lord.
* * * * *
I have mentioned that the prophets subsisted on the contributions of
those to whom their oracles were supposed to be valuable. There is,
indeed, very little information on this head; but they are accused of
prophesying for bread, and avarice and a greedy appetite for the good
things of this life are reproaches frequently cast at them. It is not
likely that prophecy can ever have been a paying profession, but it
would appear to have been at least a means of livelihood; and there
are indications that those who enjoyed an exceptional popularity may
have occupied a high social standing. Ezekiel, whose characterizations
of the false prophets are remarkably striking, uses about them a
significant figure of speech. He says that, while a true prophet was
like a wall of fire to his country, standing in the breach when danger
threatened and defending it with his life, the false prophets were
like the foxes that burrow among the ruins of fallen cities. What
mattered it to them that their country was degraded, if only they had
found comfortable places for themselves?
This also is a painful side of the subject. It is inevitable that the
ministry should become a means of livelihood, and yet it is fatal to
pursue it with this in view. It is the least lucrative of the
professions, and yet, in the pressure of modern life, it may tempt men
to join it merely as a profession. Even if it has been entered upon
from higher motives, the attrition of domestic necessities may dry up
the nobler motives and convert the minister into a hireling who thinks
chiefly of his wages.[41] The commercial spirit is nearly omnipotent
in our day; and men who can buy everything for money think that
ministers are procurable in the same way. Thus they tempt men away
with bribes of money from work to which God has called them. I am far
from questioning the importance of the mission of the pulpit to the
wealthier classes; and we must have men of culture to preach to the
cultivated. I would no more think of setting up the poor against the
rich, as the exclusive objects of the Church's attention, than the
rich against the poor. But perhaps the most essential work of the
Church at the present time is to win and to hold the working classes.
I should like to see ministers coveting work among them; and let him
who has learned to wield such an audience, where he can speak with the
freedom and force of nature, beware of being bribed away to a position
where he will be tamed and domesticated, and have his teeth drawn and
his claws cut.
* * * * *
So monotonous is the evil side of the false prophets that one longs
for a gleam of something good in them. Can they not at least be
pitied? May they not have been weak men, who were elevated to a
position which proved too much for them? The times were full of change
and difficulty, and it required a clear eye to see the indications of
Providence. It is not everyone who has the genius of an Isaiah or the
magnificent moral courage of a Jeremiah. Was it not possible to take
a milder view of the world than Jeremiah did and yet be a true man?
May they not at least have been mistaken, when they ventured to emit
prophecies which history falsified?
Such sentiments easily arise in us; but they are driven back by what
we read of the personal character of these men. "Both prophet and
priest," says Jeremiah, "are profane; yea, in My house have I found
their wickedness, saith the Lord." "I have seen," he says in God's
name, "in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit
adultery and walk in lies." Jeremiah's view of them might be thought
to be coloured by his own melancholy temperament; but Isaiah's is not
less severe: "The priest and the prophet," he says, "have erred
through wine, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way
through strong drink." And he gives this terrible picture of them:
"His watchmen are blind, they are ignorant; they are all dumb dogs,
they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they
are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds
that cannot understand; they all look to their own way, everyone to
his gain from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and
we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to-morrow shall be as
this day and still more abundant." The representations in the other
prophets are to the same effect. Zephaniah passes on the whole class
the sweeping judgment, that they are light and treacherous persons.
But the lowest deep is reached in Zechariah, who foresees a time,
close at hand, when the very name of prophet will be a byword, and the
father and mother of anyone who pretends to prophesy will thrust him
through, to deliver themselves from the reproach of having any
connection with him.[42]
The influence of such a travesty of the sacred office as these
passages describe must have been deplorable; and without doubt it was
one of the principal causes of the overthrow of the Jewish State.
Jeremiah says expressly, that from the prophets profaneness had gone
out over the whole land. They who, from their position and profession,
ought to have been an example to their fellow-countrymen were the very
reverse. They were the companions of the profane and licentious in
their revels, and they joined with scorners in scoffing at those who
led a strict and holy life. So God charges them by the lips of
Ezekiel: "Ye have made the hearts of the righteous sad, whom I have
not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
should not return from his wicked way."
This is a terrible picture. Yet there have been epochs in the history
of the Christian, and even of the Protestant Church, when its features
have been reproduced with too faithful literality. Let us be thankful
that we live in a happier time; but let us also remember the maxim,
"Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." If a
Church lose the Spirit of God, there is no depth of corruption to
which it may not rapidly descend; and a degraded Church is the most
potent factor of national decay.
* * * * *
Allow me, gentlemen, to say, in closing, that I believe the question,
what is to be the type and the tone of the ministry in any generation,
is decided in the theological seminaries. What the students are there,
the ministers of the country will be by-and-by. And, while the
discipline of the authorities and the exhortations and example of
professors may do something, the tone of the college is determined by
the students themselves. The state of feeling in a theological
seminary ought to be such, that any man living a life inconsistent
with his future profession should feel thoroughly uncomfortable, and
have the conviction driven in upon his conscience every day, that the
ministry is no place for him.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] As this subject is somewhat novel, the following collection of
texts may be acceptable; but it is not given as exhaustive:--
Isa. ii. 6; xxviii. 7; xxx. 10, 11; xlvii. 13; lvi. 10-12.
Jer. ii. 8, 26; iv. 9; v. 31; vi. 14; xiv. 13-16; xviii. 18; xxiii. 9-40
(_locus classicus_); xxvi. 8; xxvii. 9, 16; xxviii. xxix. 8.
Ezek. xii. 24; xiii. (_locus classicus_); xiv. 9; xx. 25; xxi. 23; xxii.
25, 28.
Micah ii. 11; iii. 5, 11.
Zeph. iii. 4.
Zech. x. 2; xiii. 2-4.
[39] "Sicut autem cuius pulchrum corpus et deformis est animus, magis
dolendus est, quam si deforme haberet et corpus, ita qui eloquenter ea
quæ falsa sunt dicunt, magis miserandi sunt, quam si talia deformiter
dicerent."--ST. AUGUSTINE.
[40] Even popularity honestly won may be a great snare. Vanity, it must
be allowed, is probably the commonest clerical weakness; and, when it is
yielded to, it deforms the whole character. There are few things more
touching or instructive than the entries in Dr. Chalmers' journal, which
show with what earnestness he was praying against this, in the height of
his popularity, as a besetting sin. If this were common, there would not
be the slight accent of contempt attached to the name of the popular
preacher which now belongs to it in the mouths of men. The publicity
which beats on the pulpit makes veracity, down to the bottom of the
soul, more necessary in the clerical than in any other calling. "A prime
virtue in the pulpit is mental integrity. The absence of it is a subtle
source of moral impotence. It concerns other things than the blunt
antipodes represented by a truth and a lie. Argument which does not
satisfy a preacher's logical instinct; illustration which does not
commend itself to his æsthetic taste; a perspective of doctrine which is
not true to the eye of his deepest insight; the use of borrowed
materials which offend his sense of literary equity; an emotive
intensity which exaggerates his conscious sensibility; an impetuosity of
delivery which overworks his thought; gestures and looks put on for
scenic effect; an eccentric elocution, which no _human_ nature ever
fashioned; even a shrug of the shoulder, thought of and planned for
beforehand--these are causes of enervation in sermons which may be
otherwise well framed and sound in stock. They sap a preacher's
personality and neutralise his magnetism. They are not true, and he
knows it. Hearers may know nothing of them theoretically, yet may feel
the full brunt of their negative force practically."--AUSTIN PHELPS,
D.D., _My Note Book_.
[41] "That which in its idea is the divinest of earthy employments has
necessarily come to be also a profession, a line of life, with its
routine, its commonplace, its poverty and deterioration of motive, its
coarseness of feeling. It cannot but be so. It is part of the conditions
of our mortality. Even earnest purpose, even zealous and laborious
service, cannot alone save from the lowered tone and dulness of spirit
which are our insensible but universal and inveterate enemies in all the
business of real life. And that torpor and insensibility and deadness to
what is high and great is, more than any other evil, the natural foe of
all that is characteristic and essential in the Christian ministry; for
that ministry is one of life and reality, or it is nothing."--DEAN
CHURCH.
[42] This may perhaps help to determine the age of the portion of
Zechariah to which this passage belongs. Is there any proof elsewhere
that a degradation of the prophetic office as deep as this had taken
place, or was imminent, at the period to which it is usually assigned?
LECTURE VI.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN.
Gentlemen, in the foregoing lectures I have finished, as far as time
permitted, what I had to say on the work of our office, as it is
illustrated by the example of the prophets; and to-day we turn to the
other branch of the subject--to study the modern work of the ministry
in the light cast upon it by the example of the apostles.
* * * * *
When we quit the Old Testament and open the New, we come upon another
great line of preachers to whom we must look up as patterns. The voice
of prophecy, after centuries of silence, was heard again in John the
Baptist, and his ministry of repentance will always have its value as
indicating a discipline by which the human spirit is prepared for
comprehending and appreciating Christ. I have already given the reason
why I am not at present to touch on the preaching of Christ Himself,
although the subject draws one's mind like a magnet. After Christ, the
first great Christian preacher was St. Peter; and between him and St.
Paul there are many subordinate figures, such as Stephen, Philip the
Evangelist and Apollos, beside whom it would be both pleasant and
profitable to linger. But we have agreed to take St. Paul as the
representative of apostolic preaching, and I will do so more
exclusively than I took Isaiah as the representative of the prophets.
It is, I must confess, with regret that I pass St. Peter by. There is
a peculiar interest attaching to him as the first great Christian
preacher; and there is something wonderfully attractive in his rude,
but vigorous and lovable personality. Besides, a study of the
influences by which he was transmuted from the unstable and
untrustworthy precipitancy of his earlier career into the rocklike
firmness which made him fit to be a foundation-stone on which the
Church was built would have taught us some of the most important
truths which we require to learn; because these influences were,
first, his long and close intimacy with Christ and, secondly, the
outpouring on him, at Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit; and there are no
influences more essential than these to the formation of the
ministerial character.
But I have no hesitation in devoting to St. Paul the remainder of this
course; because, as I indicated in the opening lecture, there is no
other figure in any age which so deserves to be set up as the model of
Christian ministers. In him all the sides of the ministerial
character were developed in almost supernatural maturity and harmony;
and, besides, the materials for a full delineation are available. It
is my intention to speak of St. Paul, first, as a Man; secondly, as a
Christian; thirdly, as an Apostle; and fourthly, as a Thinker.
* * * * *
To-day, then, we begin with St. Paul as a Man. If I had had time to
set before you what St. Peter's life has to teach us, its great lesson
would have been what Christianity can make of a nature without special
gifts and culture, and how the two influences which formed
him--intimacy with Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit--can supply
the place of talents and educational advantages; for it is evident
that, but for Christ, Peter would never have been anything more than
an unknown fisherman. But St. Paul's case teaches rather the opposite
lesson--how Christianity can consecrate and use the gifts of nature,
and how talent and genius find their noblest exercise in the ministry
of Christ. Paul would, in all probability, have made a notable figure
in history, even if he had never become a Christian; and, although he
himself delighted to refer all that he became and did to Christ, it is
evident that the big nature of the man entered also as a factor into
his Christian history.
Once at least St. Paul recognises this point of view himself, when he
says, that God separated him to His service from his mother's womb. In
Jeremiah's mind the same idea was awakened still more distinctly at
the time of his call, when Jehovah said to him, "Before I formed thee
in the belly I knew thee, and, before thou camest forth out of the
womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the
nations." This implies that, in the original formation of his body and
mind, God conferred on him those gifts which made him capable of a
great career. Here we touch on one of the deepest mysteries of
existence. There is nothing more mysterious than the behaviour of
nature, when in her secret laboratories she presides over the shaping
of the rudiments of life and distributes those gifts, which, according
as they are bestowed with an affluent or a niggardly hand, go so far
to determine the station and degree which each shall occupy in the
subsequent competitions of the world. It is especially mysterious how
into a soul here and there, as it passes forth, she breathes an extra
whiff of the breath of life, and so confers on it the power of being
and doing what others attempt to be and do in vain.
Undoubtedly St. Paul was one of these favourites of fortune. Nature
designed him in her largest and noblest mould, and hid in his
composition a spark of celestial fire. This showed itself in a
certain tension of purpose and flame of energy which marked his whole
career. He was never one of those pulpy, shapeless beings who are
always waiting on circumstances to determine their form; he was rather
the stamp itself, which impressed its image and superscription on
circumstances.
1. He was a supremely ethical nature. This perhaps was his fundamental
peculiarity. Life could under no circumstances have seemed to him a
trifle. The sense of responsibility was strong in him from the
beginning. He was trained in a strict school; for the law of life
prescribed to the race of which he was a member was a severe one; but
he responded to it, and there never was a time when the deepest
passion of his nature was not to receive the approval of God. Touching
the righteousness which was in the law, he was blameless. After his
conversion he laid bare unreservedly the sins of his past; but there
were none of those dalliances with the flesh to confess into which
soft and self-indulgent natures easily fall. He could never have
allowed himself that which would have robbed him of his self-respect.
His sense of honour was keen. When, in his subsequent life, he was
accused of base things--lying, hypocrisy, avarice and darker sins--he
felt intense pain, crying out like one wounded, and he hurled the
accusations from him with the energy of a self-respecting nature. It
was always his endeavour to keep a conscience void of offence not only
towards God, but also towards men; and one of his most frequently
reiterated injunctions to those who were in any way witnesses for
Christ was to seek to approve themselves as honest men even to those
who were without. He was speaking out of his own heart when he said to
all, "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/24311