The preacher; his person, message, and method; a book for the class-room and study

Front matter

THE PREACHER

•71

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

Preface

No apology is needed in publishing a new book on preaching. As long as the pulpit shall stand as the chief teacher of the religious life, young men will need to be taught how to receive and give the Word of God, and older men will welcome whatever promises to brighten their ideal and to renew their creative impulse. The only question is the worth of the book: does it meet the need of the present-day pulpit ? Will it help men to a message, divine in its experience and in its fitness to living issues ?

In the changed atmosphere of modern life, it is not enough for the preacher to say the things that are expected; he must speak the truth that has found him and so will find other men; and therefore the lectures place emphasis upon the personal element in preaching. They attempt to portray the preacher as he ought to be in character and habit, and to uncover the sources of his real authority.

Over against a sensational pulpit, with its worldly standards of immediate and tabulated results, is placed a spiritual service tested by spiritual measures and motives. Above the viii Preface

superficial sway of eloquence is exalted an instructive pulpit that comes from the growing knowledge of the Gospel and of life, and results in a stable, balanced, and comprehensive Christianity.

If the social consciousness of the age is to develop a finer sense of individuality and so a nobler responsibility, the preacher must present a Gospel that shall arouse and train the conscience, and inspire and direct the new social forces that are trying to realize the Kingdom of God on earth.

To help the preacher speak with authority, touch the conscience and form the moral habits of the age, and make his work educative of the abundant life is the purpose of the book. It is sent forth with the earnest desire that something of this large measure may be attained.

ARTHUR S. HOYT.

November 26. 1908.

Contents

PAET I THE PERSON

CHAPTEB PAGB

I. The Personality of the Preacher . 1

Part I The Person

" The Christian ministry is the largest, field for the growth of a hnman soul that this world offers. In it he who is faithful must go on learning more and more forever.

" It is a continual climbing which opens continually wider prospects. It repeats the experience of Christ's disciples, of whom their Lord was always making larger men and then giving them the larger truth of which their enlarged natures had become capable."

— Phillips Brooks.

I

Personality in all work.

Personality has special value in Preaching.

The personal quality of thought, style, and speech. Here a reason for the perpetuity of preaching. The power of example in speech. Personality has a peculiar importance in Preaching from the Nature of the Gospel.

Truth is incarnate. Personality is used by Christ in

extending His Kingdom.

The New Testament words for ministry are messenger and

witness.

The secret of the Preacher is the secret of life. The truth emphasized by Christ's training of the disciples. The History of Preaching shows the importance of the Personality of the Preacher.

The Personal Qualities that make the Preacher.

The moral and spiritual qualities first : sincere faith, moral earnestness, human sympathy, courage, and hopefulness. Intellectual and physical gifts. The Sense of Vocation and its effect upon the Life of the Preacher.

Phillips Brooks. "Lectures on Preaching."

Lect. 1, 2.

Behrends. "Philosophy of Preaching." Lect.

3. Chadwick. "The Pastoral Teaching of St

Paul." Chap. 2, 3.

Charles Cuthbert Hall. "The Ideal Minister." The Atlantic. Oct., 1907.

The person of the preacher is the life of the sermon. " A true sermon is a real deed. It puts the preacher's personality into an act." True preaching is not only the expression of life, but in the final analysis can be no better than the life. The man can never be separated from his speech.

In this respect the preacher, though he is preeminent, does not stand alone. The person counts in every work. Work is life, and the value of the work depends upon the amount of life put into it. The chief value in any effort is the effect upon the worker. All our efforts are a few things in God's sight, and His approval depends upon the quality of the work, the thought and conscience and purpose put into it. God always has more regard for the worker than the work.

The true outcome of the work, then, is life, because it is life that goes into it. The personal quality of the work gives it distinction and power, whether it be the building of a house, the writing of a book, or the teaching of a child.

While the worker counts chiefly in all work, it is easy to see that in preaching the personality has special value.

The secret and charm of all public speech is in the speaker. It lies beyond analysis, in the mystery of personality. Both what he says and how he says it have his peculiar flavor. All genuine speech is personal. It cannot be an imitation — the echo of a voice ; it must be the man himself who speaks. The thought is his thought, truth that has flashed upon his soul, that has sounded the depths of his nature, that has been inspiring or subduing vision, a conviction, bending his whole nature to allegiance, a passion constraining all the forces of life to its advocacy. Every message has the personal quality that Paul puts into "My Gospel.' ' The personal must be the channel of the spiritual and the moral. It is so in Christ ; it must be so in every teacher of Christ.

It is a long-accepted axiom of rhetoric that the " style is the man." Something goes into it that cannot be included or defined by the laws of writing: the subtle infusion of life, some word or image that mirrors the soul; some relation of ideas that reveals the simple, inevitable truth, as in the case of John Henry Newman; or conveys the sense of the mystery and infinitude of life, as in some of the writing of Frederick W. Robertson ; the sharp definition or suggestive image of a Parkhurst ; the simple yet exhaustless flow of a Brooks ; the great vista, beyond the accurate knowledge, of a Bushnell.

And still more evidently the speaking conveys the personality. The form, the face, the voice, the manner, — even without marked peculiarities, — convey the qualities of the man. They are not the mask, but the channels for the impart ation of life. There is more than the physical quality to the voice. Its sounds are pulses of the soul. The word must be spoken to give its utmost meaning and reach its largest power. The spoken word has more of life than the written word, — and when the voice ceases, something of the charm and power are gone. Great orators that have swayed multitudes by the " Golden Mouth" or "Silver Tongue' ' do not justify their name in the printed page. "That voice would strangely stir my heart, though I could not understand a word he said," was the remark of a keen critic upon a speaker of magnetic personality.

Here is a reason for the perpetuity of preaching. Public speech may change its form and at times lose something of its proportion, but it can never change its mission or lose its power.

The printed page may be a larger educator, but it can never displace the pulpit. While men in assemblies are peculiarly receptive and responsive to influence, while the personal element is necessary to make truth clear and persuasive, and while the person finds its completest expression through the living voice, the pulpit will remain, what it has always been, the chief spiritual instructor and inspirer of men.

There is a still deeper truth in the relation of personality to speech. In speaking there is the subtle influence of example. Paul constantly appealed to the witness of his life. The example of singleness and sacrifice wings the message of truth. The man must be back of his truth. He must live the truth, or give the impression that he lives it, if his speech is to have any worth. The finest speech — men will have none of it at last if the life does not ring true to the word. "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say," is the oft-quoted wisdom of Emerson.

The nature of the Gospel gives to personality a peculiar importance in preaching. The Gospel is an Incarnation. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld Sis glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." Truth is not an abstraction, it is concrete and personal. There is no moral and spiritual truth apart from a person. Christ is the truth. Redemption is "not a truth, nor an ideal, not an institution, with their external and aesthetic effect, but it is a personal act, the external act of an external person, with all the moral effect due to that." 1

The study of truth in the Gospel of John brings out the vital, inseparable relation of truth and personality. The word truth is peculiar to John, and is the form by which he conveys the strongest impression of the life of Christ. Nicodemus talks with Christ about truth. But Christ at once turns the thought to life, — the life from above that has vision and approval. Truth then is not a mere fact of knowledge, a conclusion of reason, but something that must be done, a principle and practice of the life. Again Christ speaks of the freedom of the truth that comes from loving fellowship with Him. Truth is but idle words unless it becomes a conviction and a practice, unless it is a living, renewing, freeing power.

And the idea of truth gets its final and fullest statement in the prayer with which Christ lays bare his life and work to the Father. He prays for his disciples, " Sanctify them in the truth : Thy word is truth. As Thou didst send Me

1 Forsyth, " Positive Preaching and Modern Mind;" p. 65.

into the world, even so send I them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth." The word of God is a life, and the life is to make men to live as the Sons of God. " We know," says Bishop Brooks, "that truth cannot mean in Him merely objective verity, it must have in it the elements of character, since the leading of man into it by the Divine Son is to be the perfection of man's life. It is His own character through which alone truth can come to make character in His disciples."

Christ's method of extending the Kingdom is the personal method. The two words in the New Testament for the ministry are witness and messenger. The preacher is a sent man, with a message to give which none but he can give. Nothing is clearer in the teaching of Christ and the testimony of the Early Church. "As ye go, preach, saying, 'the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' " 1 The solemn and emphatic charge as Christ leaves the little company — His last words are "to preach the Gospel" and "make disciples of all nations."

The men whom Christ chose and sent recognized that preaching was their chief work and that they had a distinct message which had been given them by their Master. They use for the

1 Matt. x. 7.

most part echoes and reminiscences of Christ's own words. The Acts and the Epistles are unmistakable as to their view of their work. Soon after Pentecost they asked for the appointment of deacons in order to be free to devote themselves to what they considered their proper work, — "the ministry of the word and prayer." 1

To the elders of Ephesus, Paul describes his work as declaring, teaching, testifying: "I hold not my life of any account, as dear unto myself, so that I may accomplish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus to testify the Gospel of the grace of God." 2

The Epistles are full of the same thought. In Romans, Paul speaks of himself "as separated unto the Gospel of God." 3 In First Corinthians ministers are " stewards of the mysteries of God." 4 In Second Corinthians, Paul speaks of himself as "an ambassador of Christ, intrusted with the ministry of reconciliation, and beseeching men in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God." 5 In Timothy and Titus, he is a preacher and a herald. And Paul's impression of his chief work seems no more distinct and binding than that of the other apostles. Evangelist, prophet, teacher, are the great words of calling in the New Testament. All the leaders of the early church had this sense of calling, this conviction of message, and handed it down unimpaired to their successors.

But the other word — witness — is even of prior importance. The message of the Apostles was what they had seen and heard, — what they had experienced of the grace of God. They were to be witnesses, speaking of their knowledge gained by personal association with Christ, and by the light thrown on that knowledge by the Holy Spirit. "When the Comforter is come, He shall bear witness of me, and ye also bear witness." * The disciple is sent as Christ was sent. " In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." " Ye are the light of the world." Life is always first. Light is simply the outcome of life. Until men know the truth, experience its power; until truth becomes assimilated, transmuted into life, men cannot become the effective messengers of truth. "He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father." "Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." 2 Witness and messenger are one and inseparable in the work of the preacher. Truth spreads as life

1 John xv. 26. 2 Acts i. 8.

The Personality of the Preaeher 11

spreads. The law for the increase of the Kingdom is the personal touch of a vitalized person.

The secret of the preacher is the secret of life, — the abundant life. There are natural gifts of social contact and public teaching that are serviceable to the ministry, and these are to be trained to the highest efficiency; but these are the channels, the means, not the source or elements of power. The real problem of preaching is the problem of the spiritual life. The great question for us is to be and not to do ; to be and keep ourselves and grow in vital personal relation to Jesus Christ. We cannot doubt this as we consider our Lord's training of the disciples. His personal discourses, the profounder ones, are about the inner life. Think how He dwells upon it at the last supper ! They must abide in Him, if they are to do anything for Him ; the fruit that glorifies the Father is of the Spirit — the graces of character. God's plan of establishing His Kingdom is by inspired men, — the same now as in the age of the apostles; "God possessed men," as was said of Maurice.

The history of preoxhing shows the importance of the personality of the preacher.

The progress of Christianity is traced by the names of notable men who have proclaimed its truths, prophetic personalities who dominated the thought and life of their age. They spoke so that men were roused from a low, conventional religion and heard the voice of God as at first. It was the great mind and heart, — the sensitive, fearless soul that caught and expressed the larger vision of God and His Christ. It was the man that spoke and the man that made the truth effective. The message has passed into the heritage of the church, but the name is still a watchword and inspiration to men.

"They are the dead but sceptred kings That rule as from their urns."

The average pulpit has been quickened by these inspiring personalities, enriched by even the unconscious influence of noble lives. There has been an unfailing supply of spiritual leadership and instruction. Whatever wrongs the church as an organization may have committed, whatever admixture of selfish and worldly elements has entered into the life of the ministry, we can say that God has spoken through the pulpit more than anywhere else in the world. And though all the teachings of the ministry have not been the mind of Christ, in every age the essential truth has been spoken and followed. In spite of the failures of mistaken men, or the sins of hirelings, the world has been nobly served. It could be wished that the choicest sons would ever choose this hardest and highest work, that all the servants of the church were more richly endowed with natural and spiritual gifts. But the line of noble men from Christ to our own day has never been broken. "It is an unbroken succession, not by the ordinations of men, nor by the will of men, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a holy fellowship, a glorious association. It has had its spots. All have been men of like passions with us. Some entered the ministry without a divine call ; others have been overborne by passion. Some concerning the faith have made shipwreck. Peter denied his Master and Judas betrayed Him. Men have disgraced themselves and brought reproach upon the office; but it still lives and strengthens, because Christ lives with it, and has determined that it shall stand. 'He walks among the candlesticks and holds the stars in his right hand.' " ' It may be truly said that the preacher's life is the life of his preaching.

Such being the vital relation of personality to preaching, the question is inevitable as to the kind of personality for the preacher. What are the personal elements that go to make the preacher ?

The moral and spiritual qualities of the man are first. With these great gifts men of humble minds and insignificant presence have been

1 Bishop Simpson, "Lectures on Preaching," p. 36.

greatly blessed, and without them the most splendid natural endowment has been but a broken reed.

The preacher to-day must have a sincere faith. " I believe, therefore I speak" has always been the law of preaching. It has never been more needful than in our age, — the questioning, groping, stumbling age, that says with so many pathetic voices: "We have lost the way. Show us the Father and it sufficeth us."

The preacher has no reason to speak unless he has found some truth precious and is willing to stake his life upon it. Guesses at truth are powerless, and so is an absolute, transcendent creed that has no humanity in it. It is not a question of how much a man believes but how completely. The preacher needs a personal trust that means the absolute committal of his life. This is the moral element of faith inseparable from sincerity. Mr. Gilder has expressed it in strong verse :

" If Jesus Christ is a man — And only a man — I say That of all mankind I cleave to Him, And to Him will I cleave alway.

"If Jesus Christ is a God — And the only God — I swear I will follow Him thro' heaven and hell, The earth, the sea, and the air."

The preacher needs a fine ethical sense, a moral earnestness that applies the truth to his own life and makes the man a missionary of truth.

There is an inseparable relation between a sensitive conscience and a clear vision. Paul's open vision and masterful conviction were connected with his moral nature. He ever strove to have a conscience void of offence towards God and man, and so there was no moral blindness that obscured and perverted the conclusions of the intellect. He looked upon the Christ with " unveiled face." In spiritual things the knowing is subtly connected with willing. "Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge." We must grow into many things. We know as we do and we know that we may enter into larger life.

Moral earnestness is not only the condition of knowledge, but the basis of purpose and sustained enthusiasm to reach men. Possessed and controlled by the truth, the earnest soul cannot keep it in silence. To be right oneself is not enough. The heart is stirred at sight of the world given over to the worship of error. Truth is expansive and conquering. It must be expressed in service for men. It makes men witnesses, living epistles, advocates, missionaries.

"The noble hart, that harbours vertuous thought, And is with child of glorious great intent, Can never rest, untill it forth have brought The eternall brood of glorie excellent."

— "Faerie Queene."

A sympathetic nature should be the gift of the preacher; a power to feel with men and touch the cords of the human heart. He should count life the most interesting thing in the world and be able to love the individual man and not be governed by the vague sentiment of humanity. To enter into the experiences of another life, to read noble possibilities behind rough faces and hard conditions, gives to preaching that humanity which is its most attractive and persuasive quality. "The divinity of a sermon is in proportion to its humanity." Such a preacher interprets life and opens the heart and presents the Gospel as the divine complement to human need. "The more perfectly the knowing faculty and the loving faculty meet in any man, the more that man's life will become a transmitter and interpreter of truth to other men."

The preacher needs to be a brave man who can face men and danger unflinchingly; whose faculties are quickened by the critical nature of opportunity; who loves men too truly ever to be afraid of them. Such a man is bent on mastery. He faces men with sublime indifference to their opinion, and yet never so sensitive to it. The very difficulties of public speech compel the discipline that conquers and call forth the qualities of leadership. He speaks the truth in love, but he speaks the truth at any cost. He is able to espouse an unpopular but righteous cause. Courage is the superb asset of the preacher. Without it men will not long respect his word.

And hopefulness must cast its light over the preacher's word. It must be something more than a bright and happy spirit that refuses to see the shadows. It must be born of a faith that fully faces the disturbing facts of life and holds fast to the eternal wisdom and goodness — who believes that "the all-great is the all-loving too." An unconquerable optimism is the spirit that wins and helps men; a spirit that never complains or despairs, — that lives in the light of the coming victory. The preacher is to put heart into men; into men baffled and beaten by evil circumstances and the evil self, the hope of renewed and triumphant manhood. The man who never doubts that clouds will break has the power of inspiration and leadership.

There are intellectual and physical gifts that go to make the preacher. The best powers of mind are required to perceive and express spiritual truth. Especially is there the call for the power of clear reasoning and the gift of imagination ; the power that is able to sift the true from the false, and present the evidence in convincing form; the faculty that perceives beyond the common horizon and is fired by the vision, and is able to portray to other minds, set forth in something like tangible form, the creative and pictorial power of imagination.

Not unimportant are the physical gifts of strong and sound body, and the speaking voice able to express the most subtle shades of thought and feeling and lay hold of the inmost self.

Natural gifts are great helps, but they do not make the preacher. The spiritual and intellectual have often triumphed over the physical. A great message and a great purpose have often made common men instruments of power.

It is a mistake to convey the impression that only peculiar natures are called to the prophetic office. There has been too much of the signseeking spirit in considering the call to the pulpit. It may be said of some men as it was said of Pascal, " There are decisive hours in which a man feels the germ of a new vocation bursting forth in him: a world all at once opens to his mind; and seized with a passion imperious as the very voice of God, he takes upon his conscience the engagement to pursue the work, which is henceforth to be the end of his life."

A man may feel grateful if he have such an imperious passion moving him into the ministry. But let him not be distrustful and wavering, only the more humble and faithful, if his feelings be less masterful and his conviction less sure.

The pulpit of our time needs a lofty ideal and heart-searching. Men need sooner or later a profound assurance that they are God's chosen servants and that God is speaking through them. Nothing less than this will keep a man in spring and joy and hope amid the trying necessities, the strenuous labors, and the deferred hopes of the years. And the man who has the capacity for the pulpit, and by his devotion to the highest things makes full proof of his ministry, will not be long without the inspirations, the heavenly sanctions, of his calling.

"The times need strong, earnest men who believe. Such men can win a hearing: multitudes are waiting to hear them speak. But the times are critical times, and mere pretension or incapacity stands out confessed and condemned as never before." — Rainsford.

II The Individuality of Men

The blessing to the pulpit of diversity of gifts. The difference in effectiveness is in personality. The Limitation of the Individual Life.

The lesson of experience. Men called to differing service in the pulpit. The true judgment of such service. Each man must be true to himself. The false conception of spiritual power.

The Nature of Personality.

The deepest and fullest self. Not fixed and unchanging. The resultant of what we have received and done. So personality can be enriched. Implied in Christian faith.

Personality should be enriched in Spiritual Wisdom.

Religious truth the sphere of the preacher. Not academic, but truth in life. Spiritual wisdom. Personality should be enriched in Human Sympathy. Lack of humanity the vice of professionalism. Natural barriers to be overcome.

Increased sympathy and increased power of mmistry. The highest influence connected with breadth of interests. The Conditions of Growth.

Hunger for a larger life. Openness of mind. Fidelity to the daily task. Fellowship with Christ.

King. "Rational Living." Chap. 1.

Tucker. "The Making and the Unmaking of

the Preacher." Lect. 2, 3.

Horton. "Verbum Dei." Lect. 8.

II

The art of living is the greatest of all arts. And because living is not large and noble, with wide interests and high thoughts, the influence of the pulpit, however devoted, may be narrow and feeble. A young preacher, sensitive and aspiring, shrinking from nothing that would make his ministry more effective, in comparing two classes of men in the ministry, — one impressive, the other tiresome, one dealing in vital realities, the other lacking the human touch, — asks the question: "Does all this come back to the idea of personality? And if it does, and if we stop there with the answer, is it not rather discouraging to the average man? especially if we assume — as is so often done — that personality is something that a man is born with and cannot help, and must get along with the best he can. Is there no road by which we can go a little farther back and discover, that though all may not be equally effective or impressive as speakers, still there is possibility for almost limitless growth?"

The first thing to notice is the individuality of men. There are various gifts in the church. The diversity of gifts is one of the distinctions and blessings of the modern pulpit, as of the Apostolic church.

Men are not run through the same mould, but have freedom to develop and express their peculiar natures. Modern individualism has its sins against the historic unity of the faith, against the social body of the church, but it has contributed much to the moral life of men and to the variety and comprehensiveness of the pulpit. The difference between men, in their attractiveness and effectiveness, is in personality.

In personality is the limitation of the individual life. A man cannot know all things and he cannot do all things. The first impression of life is its boundlessness. But physical weariness and mental and spiritual struggle bring the wiser mind. The strongest impression of the years is that they bring to each life certain definite limits. The young Melanchthon needs but tell the story of salvation to win men, but the soberer Melanchthon knows that the old Adam is too much for the young Melanchthon. The pathos of life is the disproportion between the promise and the reality. The vision of the brain so far outruns the path of the feet ! To accept the fact of limited powers, to have a wise estimate of self, — and yet never to brook the continuance of weak-mindedness, still to be striving for the bright reward, though the world be adverse to desert, — this is to have the triumph of the Spirit.