II. preacher's work is to bring the Heavenly into the earthly-to bring the divine near to the human. He thus can bring back what is better than romance to human life. The world may be too much with us, but on the Sunday at least the preacher will remind us of the light which never was yet always is on sea and land. The path we tread may be dark and our prospects gloomy and cloudy, but the preacher will point out the bow in the cloud-the token of changeless and faithful love-eternal in the heavens. The complications of modern questions may be perplexing and bewildering, the changes around too rapid and alarming, but the quiet hours of the Sunday will bring to us the remembrance of how God fulfils Himself in many ways, and how all things may be working around for good toward that one divine far-off event to which the whole creation moves. To fail to put this divine touch upon the wearied and wandering lives of men is to fail in preaching. To send people home amused and interested is not a "I have heard many speak, but this one man- We passed and stumbled over mounds of If Ir is with considerable hesitation that I sit down to write on the subject of preaching. I am very far indeed from regarding myself as an authority on the subject. To preach aright has always seemed to me a serious problem, and to preach at all involves an immense responsibility. there are any who can contemplate the duty with a light heart, I am not one of them. To see before you the faces of hundreds, sometimes even of thousands, of men and women; to know that some of them at least are hungering and thirsting after righteousness; to know that the multitude is composed of men, women, and the youth of both sexes, and that the word spoken may prove to be for some of them a message from God and the turningpoint of a life; to know something of the struggles, the doubts, the difficulties, the temptations, the deadly perils, by lest we should incur the reproach due to which they are variously beset; to fear those whose The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But, swoll'n with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread"— all this is, to a serious man, a very serious matter. "When I walk up the aisle of Westminster Abey," said Canon Kingsley to a friend, and see those gathered thousands, I wish myself dead; and when I walk back again after the sermon I wish myself more dead." Sermons are, and for the last two centuries have been, a common butt for the scorn of wits and men of the world. I attribute this in part to the depth of inanity, dulness, and artificiality to which, with a few brilliant exceptions, they fell at the Restoration, and throughout the eighteenth century. I do not think it would be fair to say that the general run of average preaching in these days is at all contemptible. I hear many sermons, preached by curates and by clergymen en tirely unknown, and am constantly struck with the fact that if there be in one's self the least trace of "meek heart and due reverence," the sermons are few indeed which may not produce at least their passing and infinitesimal effect for good. It is true that many sermons-one's own and others' are trite, feeble, commonplace; it cannot possibly be otherwise. There are twenty thousand clergy in the English Church, and many of us are very ordinary and every-day persons, who have not the faintest pretence to profoundness or eloquence. But then we share these limitations of faculty with our lay critics. We find the tedious and the platitudinous quite as much in books, newspapers, law courts, Parliamentary debates, and magazines as in sermons. Sermons would be just as bad if you turned out all the clergy to-morrow and put twenty thousand of their most disdainful and self-satisfied critics in their place. The clergy possess no monopoly of dulness or patent of unprofitableness. If very few of us arc great, or wise, or clever, we at least stand intellectually on a level with the mass of our hearers. To most men God does not give ten talents, but only one; and that only in an earthen vessel. It is impossible to expect an endless succession of thoughts that breathe and words that burn' from a preacher whose powers at the best are but ordinary; who may be suffering at any moment from sickness of body or depression of spirits; who is, in very many instances, involved in endless work and unceasing worry; whose heart may be aching with anxiety, and whose life may be burdened by poverty and all the sordid cares which it inevitably brings. And when we remember that most clergymen, in the midst of heavy parochial burdens, have to produce-not rare and splendid conferences at Advent or Easter like some of the great French preachersbut two sermons, or more, regularly every week, besides various addresses, we shall, I think, be struck with the general excellence of sermons; at any rate we shall be less impatient of their many defects. "The worst speak something good; if all want sense, God takes a text, and preacheth patience." There are, I frankly admit, some sermons which are simply detestable. When the preacher is conceited, affected, and manifestly unreal; when he betrays his ignorance while he is pretending to a knowledge and authority which he does not possess; when he is insinuating some disputed and paltry party dogma, instead of pressing home the great, broad, simple truths of the Gospel; when he is indulg ing in "loud-lunged anti-Babylonianisins" instead of "preaching simple Christ to simple men ;" when he is abusing the coward's castle of his pulpit to slander his betters, and to teach the sham science of castes and the sham theology of cliques, or to air the cut and dried snippings of the formula with which he has been assiduously crammed at his party training place; when he is doing anything but "Preach as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men". all hearers are free to turn their thoughts to something else with such charity for the preacher as they may. But so long as he is evidently and transparently sincere; so long as he confines himself to preaching the plain eternal truths of the Gospel of Christ; so long as he insists on the fundamental and primary truth that "what that supreme and sacred Majesty requires of us is Innocence alone," I think that the most critical of hearers ought to bear with his limitations of power, or his ineradicable defects of manner and style. After all, the lowest claim which any sermon could put forward would be a claim to rhetorical skill, or literary finish. If a sermon attempts to charm the ear or the mind, it should only be as a means of moving the heart. Moral and spiritual edification is the humble yet lofty aim of every true Christian pulpit. It is as St. Augustine said, docere, flectere, movere,to arrest the careless, to strengthen the weak, to lift up the fallen, to bring the wanderer home. This is the deeper aspect of preaching, and a clergyman must indeed have been indifferent or unfortunate if, during his ministry, abundant proofs have not come to him that even the ministrations which he himself, as well as many of his hearers, regarded as so feeble and imperfect have yet fallen as with dews of blessing on many souls. But I must turn to questions of voice and gesture. 1. Most Englishmen have a just horror of the word "elocution," because they think that it means something histrionic and artificial, which in the pulpit is more offensive than any other fault. For if a preacher gives himself any airs and graces, or indulges in theatrical tones or studied gesticulations, if he thinks of himself at all, and so ceases to be his own natural and manly self, he at once becomes as insufferable as Cowper's Sir Smug or Thackeray's Mr. Honeyman. But confining the word "elocution" to the right management of the voice and the correction of awkward mannerisms, it has been a great misfortune to the majority of living clergymen that they have entered, as I did, upon the important task of addressing their fellow men without one hour of training. In this respect the Americans are much more wise than we are. At all their schools and colleges they have rhetoric and elocution classes. The teachers study the mechanism of the vocal organs, and teach their pupils how to articulate clearly, and how to bring out their voices so as to make themselves heard. Boys and youths, by going through five or six years of this training, are effectually cured of distressing nervous peculiarities, and are taught to express themselves in public with force and case. Good speaking, so far as these qualities are concerned, is far more common in America than in England. 2. As for" action," it comes naturally to the Greek, the Italian, and the Irishman, but to very few men of our cold English temperament. It is, indeed, said of Whitefield that when he slowly uplifted his arms in pronouncing the words, If I take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, a lady who was present declared that nothing would have surprised her less than to see him soar bodily to Heaven. Demosthenes said that the three requisites of the orator were "Action, Action, Action ;" but there is scarcely one of our own great orators or preachers who has used much action. I do not think that action can be taught, though we might be taught to avoid actions which are ungraceful and distressing. 3. What shall we say of humor? Is it admissible in the pulpit? I should say very rarely, and only if it be a natural gift. Some eminent modern preachers, among whom I may mention Mr. Spurgeon and Mr. Ward Beecher, and, in the English Church, Archbishop Magee and the Bishop of Derry, have made humor the instrument of the most searching insight, and (in the latter instances) of the most refined beauty. The medieval preachers made free use of humor in their sermons, and sometimes abused the privilege. But we know from the sermons of the great and saintly Chrysoston that he, too, frequently made his vast audience laugh. To quote but one instance, when he was preaching against the extravagant Byzantine fashion of bejewelled and gorgeously embroidered boots, he described the dandies who wore them delicately picking their way to church. "If you don't want to soil your boots," he said, "I recommend you to take them off your feet and wear them on your heads. You laugh, he cried, but I rather weep for your follies." 4. It seems to me to be altogether a mistake to be too stereotyped in our notions of "the dignity of the pulpit." The illustrations of the Hebrew prophets, of the great Apostles, of Christ Himself, were incessantly drawn from the commonest objects and the most familiar incidents of daily life. Room should be left for the greatest variety of topic and abundance of illustration. An illustration in a modern sermon may take the place of those parables, the Divine secret of which was absolutely unique. An illustration, and the lesson which it carries with it, may often be remembered for years, when the very same thing expressed conventionally and in the abstract might be forgotten almost as soon as uttered. The preacher might say, like the poet "From Art, from Nature, from the schools, Let random influences glance, Like light in many a shiver'd lance That breaks about the dappled pools : The lightest wave of thought shall lisp The fancy's tenderest eddy wreathe The slightest air of song shall breathe To make the sullen surface crisp.' 66 5. But what is needed in the pulpit most of all is simplicity and sincerity. What American writers call personal magnetism" is that impressiveness of the individuality of which Aristotle describes the most commanding element under the head of os. It is this which makes some men take an audience by storm before they have spoken a single sentence. If a speaker be manly, straightforward, earnest, sincere he cannot possibly fail. This simplicity and sincerity are compatible with styles and methods which, if they were not part of the writer's whole self, and the result of all the influences which have been brought to bear upon him, might not be so described. Sincerity and simplicity of heart may wear the gorgeous rhetoric of Milton's prose, and yet give us no sense of unreality; and, church. He gave the secret of his success in these words : "I am convinced that one of the things which makes my ordinary sermons tell from the pulpit is this very circumstance that I write precisely as I would talk, and that my sermons are as nearly as possible extemporaneous effusions." on the other hand, unreality may clothe tudes who thronged the great parish itself in a style of ostentatious commonplace and monosyllabic baldness. The passionate earnestness of Burke burns through the periods so stiff with golden embroidery. South alluded with scathing contempt to the imagery of Jeremy Taylor. Nevertheless, Jeremy Taylor's style came to him as naturally as Milton's, or Carlyle's, or Wordsworth's, or Ruskin's, or that of any other great writer who has been received at first by all the professional critics with shouts of ignorant disdain. I speaketh." should recommend every preacher to amend such faults in his style as he sees, and as he can amend, but otherwise never to think of his style at all, and simply to say what he has to say as naturally as he can; to say nothing that he does not mean, and to mean nothing which he does not say. If he does this he will be thoroughly well understood by all, for heart will speak to heart, and whether his style be as plainly Saxon as John Bunyan's, or as full of long Latin words as some passages of Shakespeare, will make no difference. "Preach so that the very servant-maids will understand you," was the advice given by a prelate to a young deacon; and the maid-servants, yes, and even street Arabs, will understand any man who speaks to them with real feeling on human subjects and in a human way. Let a man but speak that of which he is heart and soul convinced, and the poorest sermon will do some good. Posturing assumption, artificial sainthood will avail no one long, and even eloquence and learning without sincerity will produce no real effect. "Why to thee? why to thee?" said the burly and handsome Fra Masseo to poor ragged, emaciated Francis of Assisi. I say why should all the word come after thee, and every one desire to see and hear and obey thee? Thou art not handsome, thou art not learned, thou art not noble; therefore why to thee? why does all the world run after thee?" But even as he spoke the words the good-humored brother knew that the answer was not far to seek. It Jay in the personality, the intensity of devotion, the depth of self-sacrifice which were the secrets of the age-long influence of the sweet saint who took forsaken Poverty to be his bride. Dean Hook was always regarded as an effective preacher at Leeds by the multi The reason why the plain extemporaneous effusions" told was because "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth F. W. FARRAR. III. THERE could be no greater delusion than to imagine that the influence and attractiveness of the Christian pulpit have gone. There never was in all Christian history a preacher who enjoyed a greater or more lasting popularity than Mr. Spurgeon enjoys to-day. The crowds that used to throng St. Paul's Cathedral when Canon Liddon preached there have never been surpassed. The Pulpit, instead of being weaker, is really growing stronger and stronger. The impression to the contrary is probably due to the fact that, for reasons into which I need not enter now, the average newspaper reporter has not hitherto been friendly to the pulpit, and has not been in the habit of regarding sermons as good copy." No class of public speakers in this country have been so persistently boycotted or disparaged by the Press as preachers. But there are signs that this state of affairs is passing away, and that the Press and the Pulpit are beginning to realize the advantage of an honorable alliance in the interests of justice and humanity. The Press, consciously or unconsciously, has exerted a very beneficent influence over the Pulpit. It has influenced preachers, for one thing, to talk English and to make themselves intelligible. It has been even more beneficial in dragging them down from the clouds where they had been too apt to sail in metaphysical balloons. It has mightily influenced them to deal with the plain practical interests of actual men and women. Many readers will recall the language in which Sir James Stephen referred to preachers whose abstractions had no reference whatever to the living men and women upon whom they were poured. That kind of preaching has to a great extent passed away. All sorts of subjects, at which our grandfathers would not have dared to hint in the pulpit, are now discussed there. Preachers do not hesitate now to use illustrations drawn from real life. I need scarcely add that this is exactly what their Master did two thousand years ago. His illustrations were taken from the men and women of His own time, and from the phenomena of nature with which His hearers were familiar. But a sort of pulpit style had grown up which was exceedingly artificial, stilted, and unreal. One small but significant symptom of the change in the direction of simplicity and genuineness which has come over the pulpit is the fact that the preacher of our own day does not speak of himself as we" and us, " but simply as "I" and I can well remember the horror of some members of my own congregations when I first substituted the singular pronoun for the royal "we" in which I had been trained. Another remarkable symptom of the age is the fact that the old, artificial, elaborate, and exceedingly florid rhetorical style is at a great discount. At one time ministers of religion used to prepare elaborate and brilliant sentences worked up into climaxes which produced a great impression upon half-educated audiences. But the age has become so much more earnest that it will not stand that sort of thing except occasionally. 66 66 66 me." 66 Perhaps the most striking feature of the new method of preaching is its intensely ethical character. George Eliot would no longer be able to accuse Christian preachers of other-worldliness. They trouble themselves less and less about the other world, and they take more and more to heart the sufferings and the needs of this. It is one of the most curious phenomena of history that what I may call the intensely secular character of Christ's teaching should have been so long overlooked. The idea arose very early in our era that Christianity was too good for this world; and men consequently thought they could attain its ideals only by living artificial lives apart from their fellows in monasteries or even by going to the further extreme of taking up their abode in some solitary cave in an African desert or elsewhere. At the era of the Reformation the whole civilized world was well aware that neither the monastic nor the solitary life was morally one bit better than the ordinary life of society, that in some respects it was very much worse. But the idea that Christianity was too good for this world still clung even to the Reformers, so they transplanted the fulfilment of the Christian idea to another world altogether. I need scarcely say that this notion is flatly contradicted in every part of the New Testament. The angels who saluted the Nativity of our Lord sang of peace on earth and goodwill among men. In the same way our Lord Himself taught us to pray that the will of God might be done by men on earth as angels do it in Heaven. In fact the whole of the Lord's Prayer refers to this world and to this life. When St. John closed the volume of Revelation with a glowing picture of the ideal city of God he was not referring, as is so strangely imagined, to Heaven but to earth. tells us expressly he saw "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God." He All this is becoming more evident to the preacher of to-day, and is giving his teaching an ethical flavor which has never been so conspicuous before. We hear a great deal in the pulpit now about the evils of drunkenness, sexual vice, gambling, and war. The sweating system is denounced, and the overcrowding of the poor is deplored. We have entered, in fact, upon the Johannine period, and all the most characteristic religious teachers of our day are disciples of St. John. They realize with him that the very essence of real Christianity is brotherliness, and that we are to prove our love to God by our love to one another. The result is that the modern pulpit deals very much less with metaphysical questions and protests loudly against the purely artificial distinctions that have too long been made between what is called " religious" and what is called "secular." This new development of teaching is what has given rise to the present strange dislocation of political parties, and to the much discussed Nonconformist conscience." Mr. Herbert Spencer has said, with only too much truth, that at present we have two religions in this country one which we derive from the Greek and Latin authors and the other from the Old and New Testaments; one which we profess on Sunday and the other which we practise during the remaining days of the week. Mr. Spencer imagines that both of these re 66 |