Chapter IV: Part 4

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 any praise, think on these things."

I cannot help pausing here to say, that he will never be a preacher who does not know how to get at the conscience; but how should he know who has not himself a keen sense of honour and an awful reverence for moral purity? We are making a great mistake about this. We are preaching to the fancy, to the imagination, to intellect, to feeling, to will; and, no doubt, all these must be preached to; but it is in the conscience that the battle is to be won or lost.[43] The great difficulty of missionary work is that in the heathen there is, as a rule, hardly any conscience: it has almost to be created before they can be Christianized. In many parts of Christendom it is dying out; and, where it is extinct, the whole work of Christianity has to be done over again.

2. St. Paul's intellectual gifts are so universally recognised that it is hardly worth while to refer to them. They are most conspicuously displayed in his exposition of Christianity, on which I shall speak in the closing lecture. But in the meantime I remark, that his intellectual make was not at all that usually associated in our minds with the system-builder.