Chapter III: Part 3

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?"