The ideal ministry

Front matter

Johnson, Herrick, 1832-1912

HERRICK JOHNSON, D.D.

Professor of Homiktics and Pastoral Theology y Auburn Theological Seminary , 18^4-80 ; McCormick Theological Seminary, i88CHigo6

Foreword

IDEALS are inspirations, incentives to effort, calls to come up higher. They fill us with a blessed discontent of the past, and stir us with an eager longing to do better things. They make a dead level impossible in any calling. Of all men, the man in the ministry is the one who should have ideals. The ideal " consecration," the ideal "life," the ideal "stewardship," the ideal "Church," the ideal "kingdom," — he can tolerate nothing less than these. They are set before him by his Lord.

For the attainment of these God-appointed ideals, one of the God-appointed means, and the chief, is the ministry of the Word of God by the man of God. And in the prosecution of this ministry, the ideals of it we hang up in our sky, if worthy, though they may shame our past, will nevertheless prove incentives to higher things. So that idealizing in the ministry is not theorizing, nor ballooning, nor getting lost in the clouds. It is lifting a standard. In the reverent use of apostolic words, it is " forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things w^hich are before, and pressing on towards the goal unto the prize " of an ideal ministry in Christ Jesus.

That this book may be helpful to such a ministry and stimulative to homiletic effectiveness, is the hope and prayer of the author.

Part One The Ideal Ministry

I. Its Permanent Function : Preaching

II. Its Supreme Aim : Perfect Manhood in Christ

III. Its Ruling Spirit : Love

IV. Its Subject- Matter : The Word of God

V. Its Preeminent Business : Preaching Christ

VI. Its Central Theme : Christ Crucified .

VII. Its Eternal Sanctions : Everlasting Life and

VIII. Its Cooperating Agent : The Holy Spirit

1 1

35 43 53 65

81 89

Part Two Related Ideals

IX. The " Call '* to the Ministry

X. The Student in the Ministry

XI. The Minister's Study

XII. The Law of Adaptation

XIII. Preaching Old Doctrines in New Times

XIV. The Method of Answering Questions

XV. Methods of Preaching

XVI. Kinds of Discussion

XVII. Sermon Plans Illustrative of Different Kinds

OF Discussion ......

lOI

135 157

175 185 199 241

Contents

PART THREE THE SERMON xvm. Its Ideal Definition

XIX.

Its Ideal ** Constants " ...

XX.

Its Ideal ** Immediates " . . . .

XXI.

Its Ideal ** Cardinals " ...

XXII.

Its Ideal Topics .....

xxin.

Its Ideal Qualities of Style .

XXIV.

Its Ideal Delivery ....

XXV.

The Ideal Sermon .....

. 441

XXVI. The Crucial Question in Applied Theology : Why are not More Souls Brought to Christ BY THE Sermon? ..... 463

Part One The Ideal Ministry— Its Permanent Function : Preaching

Introductory. — Certain great ideas have given the gospel ministry its peculiar glory. The great winners and builders of souls have been dominated by these ideas. One of these determining ideas is preaching as the permanent function of the ministry.

1. The dictum of a certain school of art as to whether it shall

' ' preach. ' '

2. "What Christ intended for His Gospel.

(a) He meant it should be preached. (&) He meant the living preacher.

3. "What preaching really is.

4. Other agencies help tell the story, but preaching is the norm in

gospel evangelization.

5. Some signs that seem to forecast the decadence of preaching.

6. Over against these is the living Christ saying to the living

Church, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."

7. From this high premise these things follow :

(a) "When preaching is out of date, Christianity will be out of date ; for the word preached and the living Christ are tied together for all time.

(&) No modern device of human wisdom, no social settlement or sociological movement can supplant the preaching of the "Word.

(c) By this sign we conquer. The order is the King's, and is backed by all of heaven's authority and power.

id) If the sermon has become a "back number," the fact of preaching is not what's the matter, but the kind of preaching. The divine command is, "Go ye into all the world and preach." Let the answer be, in Rome or Athens, in town or country, in the seats of high culture or in the heart of pagan continents, "'As much as in me is,' always and everywhere, I am ready to preach."

THE IDEAL MINISTKY— ITS PERMANENT FUNC- TION : PREACHING

IN every calling there must be belief in its great value before there can be intense ardour in its prosecution. It is not in the nature of mind to be stirred deeply by what it deems a trifle. Patriots are not born of low ideals. The things for which a man is willing to die are great things to him. The poet thinks no other art like his ; he calls it divine. So, too, the painter and the sculptor ; they have exalted conceptions of their work. Hence they come to their canvas or marble all aglow, with an enthusiasm that burns within them. And the canvas and the marble catch their spirit, and glow and breathe and speak under their touch. If an artist thinks meanly of his art, it will be mean art that is born in his studio. So, a conception of the gospel ministry as merely a respectable means of livelihood — a kind of bread and butter conception — will beget a tame ministry. If it is thought to be godlike, the godlike will appear in the heavenly doing.

It behooves us, therefore, at the very outset of our discussion, to inquire what those vital features of the gospel ministry are that set it apart from every other ministry, and that stamp it as superior to every other ministry. And if we find there are such features, then to grasp these several ideas, to weigh them, and to come under the spell of their charm and power so that they shall cease to be mere intellectual beliefs, and become vitalized spiritual forces, is to be on the sure road to an ideal gospel ministry.

What, then, are those ideas, unique and matchless, transcendent in their worth and of eternal consequence, that give the gospel ministry its peculiar glory and sanctity ? They are :

Its permanent function ; its supreme aim ; its ruling spirit ; its subject matter ; its preeminent business ; its central theme ; its eternal sanctions ; and its cooperating agent.

The ambassadors for Christ who have hitherto come nearest to an ideal gospel ministry have been stirred the most mightily by these ideas. This has been the characteristic mark of their stewardship. They have widely differed in many respects — physically, intellectually, temperamentally, emotionally. The giants in Israel that have done great things for God — that have had wide hearing and multiplied victories — have not all been intellectual giants. Some have been distinguished for wide scholarly research ; some have had a soaring imagination ; some have been logic on fire ; some have been signally endowed with sanctified common sense. What strong contrasts between Paul and Peter, Augustine and Chrysostom, Calvin and Melanchthon, John Knox and John Bunyan, Spurgeon and Beecher, Brooks and Moody, Finney and Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and Gypsy Smith ! But these all, and a multitude more of winners and builders of souls, were alike in this — they intensely believed in, and were supremely dominated by, the several ideas that are here named as stamping and distinguishing the ideal gospel ministry. Let us consider them in the order named :

The Ideal Ministry — Its Permanent Function : Preaching.

1. " Thou shalt not preach" is the first and great commandment of that school of art which believes in "art for art's sake." " Go ye into all the world and preach " is the last command of Him who came to seek and save that which is lost. The dictum of the art school is open to challenge. The order of the King admits of no debate. And it makes preaching the permanent function of the gospel ministry.

If the exclusive business of art is to " hold the mirror up to nature," if art is to " exhibit alike the vices and virtues of the age," " but must not take sides " ; if " the moment a moral or an immoral intention obtrudes itself, that moment the artist begins to fall from grace as an artist " ; and if in art " all things are permissible in their place and proportion," ^ then art, of course, must not and cannot preach. It is merely imagination's drag-net for the good and the bad, the clean and the filthy, the pure and the vile, the angelic and the devilish. All the weird witchery of evil and subtle seduction of lust that appears in nature and society may be put upon canvas, provided the canvas is true to its mission as " a mirror," and provided the vicious and the virtuous are given their due proportion.

But that this would play havoc with morals, we all know. There is a great deal in nature and life that should not be seen in a mirror. Why should not art

i6 The Ideal Ministry

preach, if it will ? It has glorified, to many a soul, a truth of God. But let it beware how it preaches, lest it change the truth of God into a lie. If, as the author already quoted says, " Dante makes hell fascinating by his treatment," then Dante not only preaches, but puts a false tone in his colouring ; for he and the divine Artist do not agree. Christ makes hell dreadful and damning by His treatment.

2. Whether, however, this dictum of art, "Thou shalt not preach," is accepted or rejected, there can be no shadow of doubt as to what Christ intended for His Gospel, {a) He meant it should he preached. He commanded its preaching. He bade His disciples to " go into all the world and preach." " Make disciples of all nations " is His final and perpetual charge. By " the foolishness of preaching " salvation coraeth. " Preach the word " is the apostolic injunction. Along this road the Church has pushed to her world-wide conquests. She has gone everywhere, preaching the Gospel. And through all the ages since Christ first called men to Christian ambassadorship the preaching of the cross has been to " them that are being saved," " the power of God."

As it was in the beginning, it is now, and ever shall be. The Founder of Christianity made no mistake when He staked its triumphal progress down through time and its victorious consummation at " the end of the world " on " the foolishness of preaching." He chose the agency in full view of the puissant forces and changed conditions of these later centuries.

(b) And He meant the living preacher. " Go ye into all the world." He knew, as no one else knew, the might of truth in personality. The consummate flower and power of revelation was He Himself — God^ manifest in the flesh. Prophecy ! teaching ! vision ! type ! earlier theophanies ! — whai were these compared with Him ! How they faded away in the presence of the glory and power of truth embodied in His divine person ; and that person " in the flesh," face to face with men, sympathetic to their need, sorrowing with them, touched with the feeling of their infirmities, the Spirit of the Lord upon Him, anointed to preach the Gospel ! Here is the perpetual warrant for God's great ordinance of gospel proclamation.

3. To he like Christ, to stand in His stead and sjyeah in His hehalf sensible of a divine commission, jpersuaded that we are His ambassadors, not hy infallible sacerdotal selection, not hy the marlcet law of demand and supply, hut hy immediate, internal, and effectual call of God / and thus persuaded, to tahe the

truths of Holy Scripture and unfold, illustrate, amplify them for enlightenment and persuasion, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to have them intensified hy profound personal conviction, fused in the fires of one^s own soul, poured upon waiting ears and hearts from lips touched with God^s altar-fire, and accompanied hy every possible adjunct of effective posture and gesture and voice — this is preaching.

4. Other agencies that help tell the story. Symbol and sacrament do indeed preach for God. Music and architecture, by their rhythmic song and silence, make proclamation of the everlasting word. The wheels of organized Christian activities help spread the Gospel. The ubiquitous press with its prodigious enterprise, scattering its leaves as the drops of the morning, wings the divine message to millions. Cross-signed lives and l8 The Ideal Ministry

transformed characters tell the story of redemption. And surely the Bible, without note or comment, brings Christ to many a soul. But no one of these, nor all of them, is " preaching " in the official sense of Christian ambassadorship, and in complete obedience to the great commission. The full-orbed glory of the meaning of the Master, in bidding us preach His word, we do not see until we see a living man before living men with the nameless and potent charm of intense personality so crowding into his speech, as he preaches Christ crucified, that it becomes the power of God. The total of human personality cannot be represented by white paper and black ink. The total of truth cannot be preached save in and through personality. The man behind the word ; the word in the man ; truth in and through the person — this is the norm in gospel evangelization.

It would seem, therefore, as if the business of preaching were to be the conspicuous and absorbing business of the Church of God until the end of the gospel age.

5. Yet we cannot shut our eyes to some signs in the sky, seeming to forecast the decadence of preaching. Dr. Storrs, not long before his death, in two notable articles,^ discussed " The Future of the Protestant Pulpit in American Society," and noted impressively the facts that looked like prophecies of waning power. He named as some of these : the preacher no longer regarded as speaking oracularly ; the doubtful or critical attitude of mind towards the preacher and his words ; the prodigious multiplication of objects of absorbing interest; the ever-hastening

1 The Independent, April 20 and 27, 1899.

rush of our modern life ; the dense massing of population in our cities ; the break in the continuity of city church life through increasing exodus into the country each year for a period of weeks and months ; the lessened power of copious and sonorous public speech — this decline in eloquence being marked at the bar and in parliament and assembly as well as in the pulpit ; the Sunday newspaper, as attractive to multitudes as a novel of society or a drama on the stage ; and the recent criticism of Scripture, conveying the impression of its uncertain authority, and making pulpit teaching less commanding than it was.

Now some of these points might well be challenged, some might be shown to be ephemeral, some might be given an opposite significance, some might demand, not abstention from preaching, but change of method and a study of adaptation.

6. But concede their validity, give them all their full weight, and over against them we place the old yet ever-present need of man, the cry of the soul, the sense of sin, the ineradicable responsibility of personality, the human conscience, the unchanging conviction of the truth of immortality, the unbridged gulfs in any evolution without God, the history of Christianity, the historic Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and the present immanent living Christ ! And to meet this need and answer this cry, and take sin's burden off, and restore the divine image to personality, and make the bird in the bosom sing sweetly, and prove that it is blessed to die, here is this living Christ saying to His living Church, " Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.''^

7. From this high premise these things follow :

ia) It follows, that whatever the signs of the times, whatever the adverse conditions, whatever the dark problems of city life, whatever the results of modern criticism, if it should ever come to pass that preaching is out of date, then it will have also come to pass that Christianity and Christ are out of date ; for in this last command of the Master the word preached and the living Christ are tied together for all time. The divine order is, " Go preach My Gospel," and the divine promise is, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

(])) It follows, secondly, that no modern device of human wisdom, no possible agency of any sort can supplant the preaching of the Word or subordinate the preaching to any other means of gospel conquest. , And by preaching is meant not simply, nor chiefly, printing Bibles, or holy living, or the use of chant and ritual, but the public, authoritative, personal proclamation of the truth of God to men by a living man. Such preaching as Paul meant when, facing corrupt Corinth, he said to the Christians there, " I am determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ " ; or when facing imperial Rome, he said, " As much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also " ; or when itinerating the pagan provinces, he went everywhere triumphing in Christ Jesus. Such preaching as Peter's — not so much when he wrote his two epistles of consolation for the world's bruised and broken hearts, but rather when under the power of God at Pentecost he poured his ardent spirit down the channel of public speech and won three thousand souls to Christ. Such preaching as Timothy was charged with when he was apostolically enjoined to ^''preach the Word / he instant in season^ out of season y reprove, rehuhe, exhort with all long suffering and teaching^ This is New Testament preaching. It is no hazy thing, as if it were a misty and mystic conglomerate of all influence for Christ. We know what it is. It has a boundary. It can be defined. It is God's chief instrument of conquest. And history shows us that fidelity to it marks the rising Church ; that infidelity to it marks the falling Church. Nay, more : it is the test and sifter of all modern panaceas that are offered to heal the world's bleeding hurts. You may know the nostrums by this unfailing sign : Do they make conspicuous and luminous the preaching of the Word ? Do they set forth Christ crucified as the only power of God unto salvation? If they do, they are of God.

But look at the so-called " social settlement," that is silent in all its public speech as to the gospel settlement for sin. Look at the sociological movements that swell with reform and shrink to the last degree of littleness at any thought of spiritual regeneration, so that there is no room for the new birth in their remedial agency. Look at Christian Science, that preaches more often the word of a woman than the word of the Master. There is danger even in some of our best-meant devices of gospel propagandism that they subordinate, and so dishonour, God's ordained method of reaching and saving men, by retiring the preaching of the Word and bringing to the front with bustling activity and iterated emphasis the loaves and fishes of a mere material and social life. We want clean streets, and fine parks, and good drainage, and municipal reform. But Paris has all these. Is Paris any nearer clean hearts ?

Mark this, O ye heralds of God! You cannot hasten the millennial glory by making the Church of Christ a vast soup-kitchen, or club-house, or lectureship platform, with a gospel attachment. The New Testament is a message. First of all, and of tenest of all, it must be delivered. Go, preach.

{c) It follows thirdly, that by this sign we conquer. How could it be otherwise ? The order is the King's. And it is the one distinctive order that He distinctly, backs by a limitless amplitude of power. " All authority is given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye, therefore, into all the world and preach. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations." How can preaching fail with such backing ? Shame on the Church that will fly to other measures in despair of this ! There ought to be no standing-room on earth for a preaching coward.

Men of the ministry, do we really believe Christ is behind this thing ? Do we believe His hand is on all heaven's forces, and earth's, too, as He bids us go and preach ? Then never shall we be lured or driven to anything that will make it seem as if we were trembling for our pulpit throne. Let us plan for and welcome organized activity, helpful adjunct, Christian endeavour, men's clubs, social pact, help for God's poor, the enthusiasm of comradeship. But in the midst of all these let us set preaching, chief, supreme, regnant, and give it our utmost toil, our consuming zeal, our heart's blood, as the heaven-ordained instrument and agency by which salvation cometh. If we find we cannot "raise the dead in thirty minutes"; if the dense population of a great city confronts us with its awful problems and its dark despair and its seething mass of pollution, making the case look desperate for truth and righteousness ; if a hostile criticism looks up at us with conscious authority, threatening to lessen the authority of God's Word and to make the pulpit seem " a piece of antiquated lumber" that has had its day and should cease to be, God forbid that we should run to the wish-wash and tow of some modern reformatory device of man to get our case. Let us preach on ; that's our business ; that's the King's business. We are not going to raise these dead souls, thrice dead and buried in the godless worldliness of our modern life ; Ave are not going to pierce this blackness of darkness of city pollution with the radiant beams of transforming day ; we are not going to answer the critics and make defense of the truth — by abandoning preaching and running to " settlements," and soup-kitchens, and carpenter shops, and sanitariums, and bath-houses, and sacred concerts.

{d) It follows, fourthly, that, if the sermon has become a back number, ih^fact of preaching is not what's the matter, but the kind of preaching. And we may have to tear our kind to shreds and trample it under our feet, and cry to God for another kind, before the dead come forth, or the city's stench grows sweet, or the critics join both in intelligent and believing acceptance of the Word of God as the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

When the preacher, charged to feed the flock of God and to rescue the perishing, gets a chief reputation for scholarship, and no reputation whatever for spiritual power — when the consuming joy of such a preacher is to go on long and eager microscopic research in matters of speculative interest, but of no practical value — then look out for a theological mummy. We shall have him — plenty of him — dead and dry.

But do we not want scholarship in the ministry ? O yes, we want the finest scholarship. An empty mind has only one gift — what Spurgeon once called " a hideous gift " — the gift of saying nothing at great length.

But does not this advocacy of " preaching " as the permanent, conspicuous function of the ministry tend to narrowness ? By no means. We are running no tilt against breadth of scholarship in the ministry. We want broadness ; but we want it of a particular kind. Surely not the blanket and barn-door variety that keeps forever broad and flat ; but the kind that can be focussed and concentrated and made to bear mightily on the brains and hearts and wills that wait upon the preacher Sabbath by Sabbath to hear what message he has from God. Let special fondness for this or that study be tested by the help the study renders in achieving the supreme aim of preaching, or in mastering and making effective its subject-matter, or in doing its preeminent business. And let the curb and bit be put resolutely on any linguistic bias, or delight in philosophic speculation or passion for antiquarian research, from which the preacher returns with reluctance to his God-ordained work of ministry, as if it were a monotonous drudgery, which he would fain get through with as soon as possible, that he may go back again to his favourite fields of study. " Go ye into all the world and preach,'''^ is the divine order. Let the answer be : In Rome or Athens, in town or country, in the seats of high culture or in the heart of pagan continents, in the palaces or in the slums, *' as much as in me is," always and everywhere, I am ready to preach.

II The Ideal Ministry— Its Supeeme Aim Perfect Manhood In Christ Jesus

1. It is in aim that secular aud sacred public speech radically

differ. Secular public speech aims to move the will. Sacred public speech aims to move the will Godward.

2. Scriptural confirmation :

(a) This is what Christ gave Himself to the Church for (Eph. 4 : 11, 12).

(6) This is the exact meaning of the "Great Commission " (Matt. 28 : 19, 20), Go ye and make and teach disciples. Rescue men from spiritual death, and build them up in spiritual life.

3. While this is being done, many other things will be done :

Social conditions will be revolutionized ; governments will be made pure ; clean homes and streets and politics will be the universal order ; the kingdom of heaven on earth will at last witness, in its completeness, to the manifold wisdom of God.

4. The God-appointed means for all this is the Preaching of the

Word, constituting the ministry of Reconciliation and the ministry of Sanctijication. No other ministry for a man of God or a church of God.

5. Two things made impossible by the presence of this supreme

aim —

(a) That the sermon should be prepared with only the

sermon in view. (6) That one should think lightly of homiletic toil.

II

THE IDEAL MIMSTRY— ITS SUPREME AIM : PERFECT MANHOOD IN CHRIST JESUS

THE supreme aim is perfect manhood in Christ Jesus. The preacher's finished work is not a finished sermon, but a Christlike soul. He constructs a sermon that he may reconstruct a man. Salvation is his weekly purpose ; not reformation, not social improvement, not intellectual uplift, not aesthetic delight, but salvation in its broad Scriptural sense.

1. It is just here that sacred public speech differs radically and fundamentally from secular public speech. Secular public speech aims to move the" will. Sacred public speech aims to move the will God ward. This is its vital function and distinguishing characteristic — persuasion to a divine life and to growth in that life, " unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4: 13).

True preaching is thus the truly divine art ; for it ties to art this supreme exalted aim of transforming men into the divine image.

The speech of the pujpit that does not have this in view is not preaching. It may be learned in exegesis, critical in commentary, profound in philosophy, and richly historical, and so be instructive. It may have wealth of illustration and imagery and beauty of rhetorical form, and so be pleasing. But this is only to be at the level of any other art or authorship, — contributive of instruction or pleasure. It is not a true gospel ministry, unless the vital function of persuasion to divine life is in it as an end distinctly aimed at.

This is not disparaging instruction nor ignoring emotion. It is only insisting on a certain use of instruction and emotion.

Preaching is teaching — it must give instruction, of course. Truth must be unfolded. Mere hortatory address is beating the air. Of Christ who claimed to be divinely anointed to preach the Gospel it is said in Scripture, " He opened His mouth and taught." Alas, some of His professed representatives in the pulpit never get beyond the open mouth. But to teach is vital. The point of emphasis now is the Mnd. It must be oratorical teaching, looking beyond mere instruction. The will ! The will ! To be f orevermore reaching and moving the will, so that it shall be more and more like the will of God — this is the end of all true gospel ministry ; the function of every sermon.

Preaching must also give pleasure. It is an art — the divinest of arts. It must be exhibitive of rhetorical and moral beauty. But the differentiating feature of sermonic art is that it does not stop with pleasing the aesthetic sense and kindling emotion. It looks on beyond the emotion and, through that, strikes at character. Not art for art's sake — to give pleasure ; but art for the souPs sake — to give more likeness to Christ. Not the mere art to win by, but to win to godlike things.