Lamps, pitchers and trumpets : lectures on the vocation of the preacher: Illustrated by anecdotes, biographical, historical, and elucidatory, of every order of pulpit eloquence, from the great preachers of all ages

Front matter

u?

PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY

President 'Psxtjt^^-^ BV 4211 .H54 1869a Hood, Edwin Paxton, 1820-

Contents

LECTURE I.

Page

LECTURE II.

I. Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets

HAVE taken a text from the wonderful story of that great ancient judge and warrior, Gideon. Do you not remember, when Gideon divided his three hundred men into three companies, '. le put a trumpet in every man's right hand and a pitcher in the other, and a lamp within the pitcher ?

And lie said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise : and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do. When I blow with a trumpet, blow ye with your trumpets and exclaim. The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon. So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch ; and they had but newly set the watch : and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers that were in their hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal : and they cried. The sword of the Lord and of Gideon. And they stood every man in his place round about the camp : and all the host ran, and cried, and fled. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host.

The history seems to me to be a parable of the " foolishness of preaching ;" an illustration of the genius and the success of the pulpit — its method and its power. Therefore, said the Apostle, " We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." I have given to this lecture this title, because words are lamps, are pitchers, and are trumpets. Preachmg to the intellect — to the intelhgence — is as a lamp — it sheds light over truths, over processes of argument, over means of conviction ; preaching to the conscience is as a trumpet — it calls up the soul from slumber, it makes it restless and unquiet ; preaching to the experience is as a pitcher — it bears refreshment, it cools and it calms the fever of the spirit, and it consoles and comforts the heart. Ordinarily, the preacher should combuie all these quahties ; but there are those whose faculties express themselves ia one or the other of them ; and therefore the image justifies a generalisation of the life of the preacher beneath its distinctive sign.

Words, with a soul behind or within them, are the most blessed and delightful means of intercourse. The age in which we live beholds a most singular and perverse return to symbols and symbohsm ; but these can never be to the mind what speech is, for there can be no reason without speech ; even as also it is true there can be no speech without reason ; * and symbols themselves are only vague and pale conceptions of reasons within the mind, which must be put into articulate words to become thoughts, and even subjective truths. Language itself partakes of the infinite nature of the human mind, for " it transcends in depth the most conscious productions of it. li; is with language, as with all organised beings, we imagine they spring iato beiag blindly, and yet we cannot deny the intentional wisdom ia the formation of every one of them." f

Now, this being the case, he whose profession it is to use language for holy and sacramental purposes, should sui'ely

* Max Mliller, Lectures on Language, pp. 69-73. f Schilliug, quoted by Muller.

The Artist Faculty in PreacMng, g

attempt to use it with all due consideration of these, its awful depths and powers ; and while we find, in our age, so large an apostasy of mind — we might suppose to be cultured, informed, and even educated — to the pictorial resemblances of the childhood of men, and societies, and nations, we should attempt to hail spirits back, and to obtain dominion over them, by an earnest dealing with the rights, and obligations, and privileges, and hopes involved in human speech. We shall see more distinctly, in the course of the following remarks, that the master of speech in the pulpit may be an artist ; nay, that very much of his success, under God's influence, will depend upon his being one. All preparation, all pulpit method, in fact, supposes this. A preacher may be a born preacher, and have a possession of all the faculties necessary for his work, and he stiU will need the care, the knowledge, the study, and the reverence of the artist to give to hun the human vehicle through which he may speak. Some will object to this statement. Is Tennyson less a poet because he is a subtle artist also ? Is the Christian less a Christian, the preacher less a preacher, because, before he dehvers his words to the thousand people who may hear him, he sits down to arrange his arguments — in some instances, even his words — to furnish his mind with illustrations, to reject some which present themselves as unfit to the subject, or unsuitable to time or place ? And all this belongs to the exercise of the artist faculty ; the prudence and wisdom which genius, informed by hoHness, exercises upon its own works ; and, surely, if the highest powers need this exercise, it savors only of the conceit usually associated with inferior powers, to disdain it.

But my object in this lecture is rather to be anecdotal ; to present some illustrations of the variety of pulpit earnestness and excellence, some which may fui*nish examples of heroism which can scarcely be regarded as models of 1* lo LampSj Pitchers^ and Trumpets.

method ; and some giving motive from spii'ituality of character, where we would scarcely permit much homage or approbation to the intellect.

Amazing is the power of sound ; it searches the soul more than vision ; it vibrates and reverberates — sound more immediately and more deeply penetrates. Nothing presented to the eye tingles, along the blood like tilings presented to the ear. Sound thrills in a wood at night, in loneliness, and darkness ; the fall of leaves, the stir of creatures in the grass, and a thousand nameless sounds, stir the feeling of mystic awe. Sight is finite ; the imagination plays more freely among sounds — the forms are un: shaped — the powers are more abiding. Memory — attention— seems to take a deeper hold upon the things presented in sound than in sight. And hence, the preacher is a trumpet ; the birth of the Society of Friends was in this wise : George Fox was one of the most stirring trumpets of the Church ; in the power he possessed by his holy earnestness to rouse men he shows in an eminent manner what " the voice of one crjdng in the wilderness " may be. And Whitefield was such a trumpet. Men heard and trembled. A mysterious fearfulness shook the souls of listeners ; it must have been as when the prophet stood on the mount, and the Lord passed by in the wind, and the earthquake, and the fii-e, and broke in pieces the rocks ; they were the announcements of danger, and wreck, and death. Such men, deep as their own peace was, had httlo to do with the still small voice ; to set on fii'e the forests and to shake the mountains seemed their task ; Httle had they to do with the clear, calm hght of the lamp, or the refreshment of the pitcher. This was not altogether so new as it may seem, I shall have many instances to cite from the friars of the Middle Ages and preachers of other times illustrating this ; and is it useless ? Has it been useless— this power of sound — to storm, and startle, and take

Tlie Surprise Power in Preaching. \ i

captive tlie soul ? Useless, indeed, unless results are noted, and the soul awakened is met afterwards, and brought into the order and the health of the Christian life ; and, perhaps, the Church of Rome and the Methodist Chui'ches have alone known how to use and make useful seasons of great religious excitement.

There is great danger, in the work of preachuig, of yielding to the demand for sensation and astonishment ; and one good man, whose field of labor has very natui'- ally led him to adopt this method, has v»Titten a book, in which what he calls " the surprise power," seems to be the most important of all his ways and means of ]pulpit success.* It cannot be doubted that ]Mr. Taylor has been successful, and his work, The 3Iodel Preacher, '\ does contain hints which may be read, and even followed with advantage : but there are preachers who never enter the pulpit TNdthout the determination to produce a sensation ; they must arrest attention, and they are careless how, so long as the attention is arrested ; still the work of the preacher involves more than the mere forcible arrest of the mind of the hearer ; it must be held, and legitimately held ; and it must be not only aroused, it must be enlightened, and it must be informed. There are trumpets — they startle and surprise, indeed ; but even the trumpet has another purpose ; it marshals into order, it becomes motive, beneath its inspiring strains men fall into ranks and march, and it becomes not merely a blast — a breath — its tones fall into the harmonies and melodies of other in> struments, or we cannot long endure its shrill screams. And if men could but believe that we are awakened as surely by the gleam of a light upon our eyes, as by a

* Seven Tears Street Preaching in California. By Rev. William Taylor.

f The Model Preacher ; a Series of Letters on tlie Best Mode of Preaching the Gospel. Ibid.

12 Lamps J PitcIierSj and Trumpets.

storm of noises in our ears — if the bright, mild radiance of the lamp could but do its work, I would rather this than the loud uproar ; but most prefer to receive even their light as heat, though we know that these are but different modes of the same natural fact ; and vibration and radiation are one — radiation is silent vibration. There is a different speed of vibration ; in the lower form of heat — the rush of the red flame — the radiation is palpable ; but, as the heat vanishes, the red brightens — ^passes to orange — higher still to green, to blue, to violet, to the azui'e sky, to the deep gi'een of the sea. It is in the quiet radiation we pass to the more beautiful and essential life of things. It is well remarked, that it is because the sky is blue that our earth is not a barren, homeless wilderness, where heat consumes the day and cold congeals the night. This gives to us the atmosphere, absorbing and modifying the solar rays ; therefore, plants grow and bloom, and men in happiness breathe. All that radiation is silent vibration ; and, if I were you, I would aim rather to radiate than to vibrate — rather to enhghten and to refresh, than to astonish. Aim not to be — what you see may be literally true — a noisy, a glaring color, but a chaste, beautiful, and effective one. I know, as I have said, that often the most sonorous and stirrmg preacher sheds forth a beautiful illustrative gleam. It was so with that extraordinary Yorkshire orator, William Dawson. It has been well said, his eloquence, on any other thought than his own, would have seemed fantastic ; but he often made his illustrations resplendently beautiful. Thus, one says of hun, who heard him preach from the text, " Thou hast crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies," "his imagination took fire at the metaphor, and presented before him a regal coronet, studded with numerous gems, having a centre-stone of siu'passing magnitude, brilliancy, and value ; consentaneously this became the crown of *loving-kmd-

William Dawson and Richard Watson. 1 3

ness and tender mercies ;' the conntless brilliants represented the blessings of Providence and grace ; and the centre-stone the priceless blessings of salvation. To ex- X^ress this as he wished was more diiHculfc than to conceive it, and several feeble sentences were uttered before the crown was shown to the people ; but when, at length, it was exhibited in aU its radiant glory, with its centre gem of pui-est lustre, the deep crimson hue of which was caught up and reflected in a thousand hghts by the precious stones which clustered around it, the saints shouted aloud for joy."* But Dawson was a trumpet ; the effects he produced when he spoke were amazing ; men could not contain themselves ; feehngs were wrought upon and excited. He was a plain farmer, and had received only the most ordinary education ; but there was a bold, strong, adventurous imagination in all he said, which, while it enabled his mind to walk steadily in the most difficult paths, and saved him usually from coarseness, vulgarity, and profanity, bore his audiences along with him upward, and compelled them intensely to reahze his conceptions and his descri^^tions.

On the contrar}% the great Kichaed Watson, a minister of the same denomination, and incomparably the greatest man that denomination has produced, was a lamj). Robert Hall said of him : " He soars into regions of thought, where no genius but his own can penetrate." Tall, calm, graceful, timid, yet erect, his eloquence contradicted, it has been said truly, the maxim attributed to Demosthenes. He had no action, and all his utterances seemed simply an emanation of soul ; and vast thought, severe taste, and solemn dignity characterized aU his sermons.

Or, reverting to other tunes, I think of Lancelot Andrewes, the good old bishop, as a pitcher. His strange Latin conundi-ums and quiddities, ever and anon occurring, * West, SJcetcJies of Wesley an Preachers.

y\

1 4 Lam/ps^ Pitcliers^ and Trumpets,

like tlie mystic lozenge-sliapecl qiiincuncial garden of Cyrus, cannot prevent my love and admiration (on this I may remark again) ; and liis sermons haye a sententious pith — a fulness of Gospel meaning in them, which I am well content to travel through the conceits peculiar to his age to find and to feed upon. He did not hke the Puritans. It is our happiaess that we can receive and love men who thought they were far apart when hving ; we make them tabernacle very lo\dngly in the same house, on the same shelf of the library, in the same heart, and memory, and experience. Andrewes did not exercise himself so much in thought as in adoration. A devout narrowness characterizes all he writes ; perhax^s, we think sometimes, there l^ is an artificiality in the setting, but the gem is beautiful ; sometimes, lustrous and brilhant. The school to which he belonged, and belongs, is intense rather than ardent ; the narrow-minded view will seldom be an ardent one. I should not call Herbert ardent, nor Keble ; but the devotion is pure — perhaps the purity of iQcense and thuiibles rather than the smell of Lebanon ; theirs are comfortable words ; " Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,*' was the commission given to this order of mind. There is an order of ministration which does httle or nothiag to attract or to persuade. You must be within the church to be able to translate even a meaning from the voice or the word ; but if you are within, full of comfort, full of refreshment are the rich sentences. The works of Andrewes are a perfect " aurea serdentia" of this Idnd. Let me select for you a few. Thus he speaks of Jonah in the whale, Hkening it to the saint's security in the state, and houi', and article of death :

There he was, but, look ! no hurt there. As safe, nay, more safe there, than in the best ship of Tharsis : no flaw of weather, no foul sea coukl trouble him there. As safe, and as safely carried to land ; the ship could have done no more. So that

Lancelot Andrewes.

upon tlie matter he did but change his vehiculum (carriage), shifted but from one vessel to another ; went on his way still. On he went, as well — nay, better— than the ship would have carried him ; went into the ship, the ship carried him wrong, out of his way clean to Tharsisward ; went into the whale, and the whale carried him right, landed him on the next shore to Nineveh whither in truth he was bound, and where his errand lay. And all the while at ease, as in a cell or study, for there he indited a psalm. So as, in effect, where he seemed to be in most danger he was in the greatest safety. Thus can God work ; and the evening and the morning were Jonah's second day.

So his sermon on the kings of the East — the wise men coming to Christ. " Here," he said, " are three stars : the star in the firmanent, the star of faith in their hearts, and Christ himself, the bright and morning star." He continues in the same sermon :

The Queen of the South, who was a figure of these kings of the East, she came as great a journey as these ; but when she came she found a king indeed — King Solomon, in all his royalty ; saw a glorious king and a glorious court about him ; saw him and heard him ; tried him with many hard questions ; received satisfaction of them all. This was worth her coming. Weigh what she found, and what these here ; as poor and unlikely a birth as could be ever to prove a king, or any great matter. No sight to comfort them, nor a word for which they were any whit the wiser ; nothing worth their travel. Weigh these together, and great odds will be found between her faith and theirs. Theirs the greater far.

Surely this is very sweet and dehghtful speech. There is a simple pathos in his words — a simplicity which makes them most effective. Thus :

Good hope we now have, that He being now flesh, all flesh

may come to Him to present Him with their requests. Time

was, when they fled from Him, but ad factum carnum jam veniet

omnis caro. For since He dwelt amongst us, all may resort

1 6 Larnps^ JPitcliers^ and Trumpets.

unto Him, yea, even sinners ; and of them it is said, Ilic recipit peccatores et comedit cum eis, — He receiveth tliem even to His table.

Like refreshing springs are such words, and men want to hear them. I could mingle many figures, all to describe the same thing, when I speak of Andrewes and his order of preaching. It is true that sometimes the strange allegories, in which he and Herbert were wont to speak, are like a quaint spiritual confection ; but we soon feel a sensation of refreshment, as of home-baked bread, or of pure water-springs. These pages hold comfortable and solacing words ; good bread and home-baked, though in a strangely-shaped mould — good water, though in a pitcher of strange device.

And if this is not always " the one thing needful," yet is it not the needful thing for tlie minister "thoroughly furnished"? How well has Eobert Browning expressed this :

Is God mocked ? Shall I dare To change His tasks ?

Dispatched to a river head For a simple draught of the element Neglect the thing for which He sent, And return with another thing instead ?

Saying, " Because the water found, Welling up from under ground.

Is mingled with the taints of earth, While Thou I know dost laugh at dearth, And could'st at a word convulse The world with a leap of its river-pulse ; — Therefore, I turn from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found instead : See the brave veins in its breccia ruddy ! One would suppose that the water bled.

What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed. That the w£iterless cup will quench my thirst."

Hohert Browning : The Vase, etc. 17

Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift. For the less or more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam, And here, is there water or not to drink ^ I then in ignorance and weakness, Taking God's help, have attained to think . My heart does best to receive in meekness This mode of worship as most to his mind, Where earthly aids being left behind, His All in All appears serene, With the thinnest human veil between, Letting the mystic lamps — the seven.

The many motions of His Spirit Pass as they list from earth to heaven, For the preacher's merit or demerit — It were to be wish'd the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel holding treasure, Which lies as safe in a golden ewer, But the main thing is, does it hold good measure ? Heaven soon sets right all other matters." *

But I intended in this lecture rather to draw attention to some of those more striking characters and incidents, which illustrate, w^hat I hope I may be forgiven for calling, the Romance of the Pulj^it ; for it has its romance, it has

* Christmas Eve and Easter Day, pp. 76-77. And it may not be out of place to remark, that these verses, thoroughly in earnest, would be read with profit, it is to be hoped, by all able to read them. " The words are quick and powerful," sometimes they are " sharper than a two edged sword ; " with nervousness and force they sometimes cleave right through some of the modern difficulties in connection with modern believing and preaching. Modes of thought, and forms of worship, are touched by a pen which is wondrously hard-nibbed ; a very strong and devout mind expresses apparently its own convictions, in such a tone as to give new intellectual and emotional views to the convictions or no convictions of others.

its noble and wonderful men, v^lio, in all ages, have been wilHng to use its power and its privileges for highest and holiest purposes — sliining as lamps, sounding as trumpets, refreshing as streams of water. The books, over which the records of their achievements are spread, are many ; but they have started forth prepared for witness and mart}Tdom, in every sthring age of the Ohurch.

The time of the Reformation in Europe was an age when these trumpets pealed forth. What a story is that of Alexais^der de la Croix ! * He had been a ftiar, but he abandoned Paris, his convent, his cov/1, and his monkish title. He reached Geneva under the name of Alexander ; welcomed and instructed by Farel, his transformation became complete ; Christ had become to him the Sun of Bighteousness, and bold hi confessing Him, the Genevan magistracy, under the influence of the priests, condemned him to death as a heretic ; but the sentence was commuted for fear of the king of France, and he was simply turned out of the city. On the high road, beyond the gates, he stopped and preached to the people who followed him. He inspired respect as deeply as he commanded homage by his eloquence. Nobody could stop hun, so strongly did his zeal for truth inspire him to win people to the Lord. He did not deceive himself, he knew what awaited him — persecution, bonds, imprisonment, death ; — no matter, he would preach to his countrymen ; settmg out, therefore, from Berne he crossed the frontier of Switzerland, and entered France. Few reformers stiike us as being so absorbed by what may be called the i)assion of the Cross. " Oh, my Saviour," he exclaimed, " Thou hast given Thy life for me, I deshe to give mine for Thee." Wandering

* I have condensed the account of this remarkable hero of the pulpit from Tlie History of the Reformation in Eurojye in the Time of Calvin, Vol. II. The four volumes, all as yet published, are full of these stories of the martyrs and heroes of the pulpit.

The Preacliing^ etc.^ of De la Croix, 1 9

along tlie banks of tlie Bienne, the Aier, the Seille, and the Saone, he entered the cottages of poor peasants, scattering the seeds of the Gospel, and proclaimmg the forgiveness of the Gospel. At Lyons, numbers heard him preach ; he went from house to house ; persecution raged fiercely in Lyons ; the priests sought for him but could not find him ; fi-iends hid him away ; they sought for him in one part of the city, he was preaching in an upper chamber in another ; they looked for him in some suburb in the north, he was preaching in the south. LnpeUed by a magnanimity, which would be fanaticism if it were not holy devotion and consecration, the mysterious evangehst entered the prison to console two who had been laid there ; had he been discovered, the gates would have finally closed upon him ; but he left the dungeon, and no man laid hands on him. It was said he possessed Satanic powers, and passed invisibly through the police. At last, he was seized ; he had moved long about — a mysterious presence — gifted with those mighty powers, eloquence and holiness. After a wondrously effective unfolding of the Gospel at Lyons, principally through the imprudence of some followers it would seem, he was taken ; he was brought into Paris loaded with chains, but the surrounding guards and archers in the course of the journey had learned to treat him with respect. The captain of the archers v/as a worthy man, and as he rode beside Alexander, he questioned him as to the cause of his arrest. It is an amazing circumstance — the captain was converted while they were journeying to Paris ! As they journeyed on from village, in that age of slow journeys, resting for the night in inns, he used all his skill of speech ; in many places the priest of the village was sent for to dispute with him, it was unavailing. " Wonderful things ! " says the old chronicler, " he was more useful at the inns and on the road, than ever he had been before." Entering Paris, he must have

20 Lam^Js^ Pitchers^ and Trumpets.

known what awaited him — worse than death ; the monks of his order, the cruel Dominicans, outraged by his heresy from the most orthodox of orders, were only too anxious that the last resoui'ces of the torture should be tried upon him. As he refused to name accomphces, and would give the names of none who, like himself, had separated from the Church of Rome, he w^as tortured by the wedges of the boot ; his left leg was crushed. The judge was amazed at his patience : " It is enough," he said, " he has been tortured too much." The executioners lifted up the martyr and carried him to his dungeon, a cripple ; they brought him forth again shortly after, conderoned to be burned alive. It seemed as though a flash of joy lit up his features. " Truly," said the spectators," he is more joyful than he was before ! " The priests gathered round him to perform the sacerdotal degradation. " If you utter a word," said they, " you wiU have your tongue cut out." He uttered not a word, only as the absurdities and mysteries went on, some severe smiles escaped liim ; then they dressed him in the robe de fol, a coarse garment worn by the poorer peasantry. " Oh God ! " he exclaimed, " is there any greater honor than to receive the livery which Thy Son received in the house of Herod ? " and then he mounted a cart, used to carry mud or dust, and with the Dominican monks proceeded to the place of execution. As the cart moved slowly along, he threw out his words uj)on the crowd by the side of the cart. " Thinking nothing of his own death," says a writer, " he scattered the seeds of the Gospel." " Either recant or hold your tongue," said the priest. Alexander turned roimd and said with firmness, " I wiU not renounce Jesus Christ ; depart fi'om me, ye deceivers of the people." He obtained permission, at the place of execution, to address some words to the people ; but the words amounted to fervid and glowing confessions of love to the Redeemer, and when he had

A Bold French Preaclier. 2 1

done, he said to tlie executioner, "Proceed." The officers of justice then bound him to the stake, and set it on fire, and amidst the cracMing of the wood, and the ascending flames, arose his voice, " Oh my Redeemer ! oh my Redeemer ! " At last his voice was silent. Even the executioners turned to each other and said, " What a strange criminal this is ; " and the monks turned to each other and said, " If that man be not saved, who will be ? " and the spectators beat upon their breasts, and said, "A great wrong has been done to that man." Such a death as this is a triumph, and it tolls the knell of the executioners, while it prepares the crown for the victim.