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 ITNESSES FOR ChRIST;!| 
 
 OB, 
 
 A gKETCH OF THE HISTOBY OF PREACHING. 
 
 LECTURES DELIVBBED TTNUEU THE AUSPICES OF THE 
 
 lOLOGICAL UNION OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, f 
 
 ■ I 
 
 COBOURG, MARCH, 1885. 
 
 Xii 
 
 • 1 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS HUSTON WALLACE. B.D. 
 
 TORONTO: 
 WILLIAM BRIGGS, 78 & 80 KING ST. EAST. 
 |C0ATE8. MoifTRSAL, QuK. S. F. HUESTIS, HAhlthX, N.S. 
 
 1885. 
 
 :-im- .... 
 

 ■'^■fP^PWIIiPPI^PPWIfl 
 
 Witnesses for Christ ; 
 
 l^ V 
 
 OB, 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF PREACHING. 
 
 LBOTDKKS DKUVBBKD UNDKB THB AUSPICES OF THS 
 
 THEOLOGICAL UNION OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, 
 
 GOBOURG, MARCH, 1885. 
 
 I 
 
 BT 
 
 FRANCIS HUSTON WALLACE, B.D. 
 
 m 
 
 TORONTO: 
 WILLIAM BRIOOS, 78 & 80 KINO ST. EAST. 
 O.W. COATES, HoRTBBAi., QOB. 8. F. HUESTIS, Haupaz, N.8. 
 
 1886. 
 
 . \/oJ 
 
 V-v 
 
u 
 
 « 
 
 110676 
 
!■ . /' ' 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 I DESIRE to acknowledge special indebtedness, in 
 the preparation of these Lectures, to Hoppin's '' Ho- 
 miletics;" the article "Homiletik" in Herzog's Real- 
 Encyklop&die ; Milman's "History of Christianity" 
 and "History of Latin Christianity;" E. P. Hood's 
 " Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets ; " Fish's " Master- 
 pieces of Pulpit Eloquence ; " and above all Bromel's 
 " Homiletische Charakterbilder." - , v 
 
 F. H. W. 
 
fmmi 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Thk Dawn 
 
 Thk Dat 
 
 
 » 
 
 • ■ 
 
 US 
 
 LECTURJ5 I, 
 
 - 
 
 • . •' ■ » 
 
 
 \* 
 
 
 LECTURE n. 
 
 PAOB 
 9 
 
 00 
 
 Dakknub Again 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 89 
 
 Th« N«w Day 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 123 
 
■:j* 
 
 
 fl8li*ne««e« Ux tf ftrtst 
 
 \\ 
 
 LECTURE I.-THE DAWN. 
 
WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 LECTURE I.-THE DAWN. 
 
 One day, as the eloquent young Catholic orator, 
 Lacordaire, stood before a Parisian court for the 
 defence of the liberties of his Church, a Crown lawyer 
 said : " Roman Catholic priests are the ministers of a 
 foreign power." With a manner which electrified the 
 audience and called forth loud applause even from his 
 enemies, Lacordaire replied : " We are the ministers of 
 One who is a foreigner nowhere — of God." * And here 
 the young priest expressed the true office and dignity of 
 the preacher of the Gospel. He is God's messenger ; he 
 is the servant of Jesus Christ ; his word is not merely 
 his own, but, so far as he is true to his calling and his 
 commission, it is also the word of God ; his right to 
 reverent and obedient attention depends not merely 
 upon his own personal ability and worth, but upon tho 
 
 E. Paxton Hood, *' Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets," p. 670. 
 2 
 
10 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 eternal importance of his message and the infinite 
 majesty of Him whom he represents. Not too strong 
 are C^wper's words descriptive of the preacher's work 
 anu nonor — 
 
 *' I say the pulpit (in the sober use 
 Of its legitimate peculiar powers) 
 Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand, 
 The most important and effectual guard, 
 Support and ornament of virtue's cause. • >■ \* . 
 There stands the messenger of truth. 
 
 ':,..: There stands " v 
 
 The legate of the skies ; his theme Divine, 
 His office sacred, his credentials clear. . ' 
 
 By him, the violated law speaks out i 
 
 Its thunder, and, by him, in strains as sweet V 
 
 As angels use^ the Gospel whispers peace." 
 
 Now, while throughout all ages the needs of the 
 human heart, its ignorance, its tendency ^o evil, its 
 weakness under temptation, its senje of guilt, remain 
 essentially the same ; while the Divine message of sal- 
 vation also remains essentially unchanged, ever fitted 
 to illuminate men in their blind longings after light, 
 to satisfy their heart-hunger, to quench their spiritual 
 thirrt, to strengthen them in their struggles with the 
 powers of evil — in one word, to save them ; and while 
 the power of the preacher comes ever from the power 
 of the Divine truth which he proclaims, and of the 
 Divine Spirit by whom he has been called to his work 
 and by whom he is inspired with a living faith in the 
 Gospel and a tender sympathy with the men to whom 
 he preaches ; while thus the permanent, invariable 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 11 
 
 elements in preaching vastly preponderate, yet there 
 are variable elements, and preaching is a progressive 
 art, influenced in its form and to some extent in its 
 subject matter, by the spirit of the age, and adapted 
 to the peculiar necessities of time and place and people. 
 Hence the interest and importance of the history of 
 preaching. It is interesting to watch the subtle inter- 
 action of sacred and secular life and thought, the 
 varying phases of preaching corresponding to the 
 various intellectual and social developments of 
 Christianity, the wondrous facility of adaptation which 
 adjusts the one everlasting and unchangeable Gospel 
 to all sorts and conditions of men, and to all ages and 
 stages of civilization. It is important that from the 
 wisdom and the folly, the failures and the successes of 
 the past we should gather instruction, encouragement, 
 warning for the present. . 
 
 The history of the pulpit from the first until now, 
 carefully and fully tracing the development of all the 
 elements of preaching, and the onward flow of all 
 the streams of tendency, narrating the life-story and 
 sketching the manner of preaching of the great men 
 who from the pulpit have wielded that spiritual 
 power which has revolutionized the world — this in 
 its intimate connection with popular life, scholarly 
 thought, the struggle for freedom, the slow growth 
 and triumph of our modern conceptions of man and 
 nature, would be a theme for a master, and would 
 fascinate every thoughtful reader. Such a full and 
 masterly history of preaching has never yet been 
 
12 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 written. My raodent aim in these lectures will be 
 merely to present an ou';line of the history of preach- 
 ing, and to ask special attention to such points as are 
 of direct practical interest to us as preachers in the 
 nineteenth century, the followers and heirs of the 
 preachers of the Christian ages, unto whom as unto 
 them "a dispensation of the Gospel is committed." 
 
 Preaching is a distinctively Christian institution. 
 Not that there were no preachers before Christ. Noah 
 was a "preacher of righteousness " in the midst of a 
 dissolute and doomed generation ; Socrates was a 
 "preacher of righteousness" to quick-witted Athen- 
 ians, teaching them to know themselves, and above all 
 things to prize virtue ; the stern old Hebrew prophets 
 were "preachers of righteousness," now in tones of 
 thunder denouncing God's judgments upon "all un- 
 godliness and unrighteousness of men," and then, in 
 language all aglow with the love of their race and the 
 hope of better fortunes for its future, painting their 
 sublime pictures of Messianic restoration, victory and 
 peace ; those "monks of Stoicism," the Roman Cynics, 
 were in some measure "preachers of righteousness," 
 devoting their energies to the instruction of mankind, 
 enforcing their advice by reference to ancient ex- 
 amples, and to the teachings of the philosophers. But 
 that which was but incidental in other systems of 
 religion is a regular and essential institute of Christi- 
 anity ; it is not an isolated figure here and there, 
 standing in lonely grandeur, which meets our gaze as 
 we turn to Christian history, but rather an uninter- 
 
 1- 
 
THE 1>AWN. 
 
 13 
 
 rupted and bright succession of preachers Divinely 
 raised up to be the interpreters of God to men, to 
 regularly instruct the Christian community in the 
 facts and principles of the Christian religion, and to 
 be the leaders of the people in noble thought and holy 
 life. Says Milman : " Christianity first imposed it as 
 a duty on one class of men to be constantly enforcing 
 moral and religious truths on all mankind." * 
 
 The main preparation for this Christian institute of 
 preaching is to be found in the Jewish synagogue and 
 its service. It was a triumph of the rational and 
 moral elements of worship over the sensuous and 
 ceremonial, when, after the Captivity, there sprang 
 up, wherever the Jewish people lived, within the Holy 
 Land and far beyond it, synagogues or "meeting- 
 houses," with their simple spiritual service, and 
 not\bly their brief exposition, by any competent per- 
 son who might be present, of the Scripture lesson of 
 the day. Here was the place prepared for any new 
 teaching. Go where a teacher might, throughout the 
 world, he would find a Jewish synagogue and be 
 accorded the privilege of speaking to his brethren. 
 So would the force of the new teaching be felt from 
 synagogue to synagogue, and rapidfy spread through 
 the whole Jewrh w^orld. Thus, in fact, did the 
 Christian doctrmes spread. Jesus preached in the 
 synagogues ; His apostles imitated His example ; and 
 when they were no longer welcome in the Jewish 
 
 • MUman, " History of Chrtetianity," III., 374. 
 
14 
 
 WITNESSES FOR cMRtsf. 
 
 synagogues they founded synagogues (Jas. 2:2) or 
 churches of their own, whose forms of government and 
 service were closely copied from those of their Jewish 
 precursors, and whose sermons were but a develop- 
 ment of the expositions of the Rabbis. 
 
 Jesus made preaching the main instrument of His 
 work. In city and village, in temple and synagogue, 
 on the hillside and by the sea, He "preached the Gospel 
 of the kingdom," confirming His teaching by " healing 
 all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among 
 the people," and so gave the key-note to that unpar- 
 alleled and marvellous spiritual propaganda, which, 
 appealing to reason, sympathy, and love, and depend- 
 ing for efficiency on the inherent power of the truth 
 and the concurrent operation of the Holy Spirit of 
 God upon the minds of hearers, has gone out from 
 Galilee, has spread its quickening message to all nations, 
 has awakened in multitudes the slumbering conscious- 
 ness of a higher nature and the longing after God, and 
 has then revealed that Gospel which is the power of 
 God unto salvation, and by it led man back from 
 the " far country " of sinful alienation to be once more 
 at peace and so at home with God; and has thus 
 throughout all our weary world, by its benign and 
 Divine influence, healed the broken-hearted, delivered 
 the captives, given the recovering of sight to the blind, 
 set at liberty them that were bruised, and by preach- 
 ing the acceptable year of the Lord has produced a 
 new form of life and a new type of character. 
 ' For the great work of preaching, which He had 
 
 rf 
 
tHE DAWN. 
 
 16 
 
 ordained and in which He had led tne way, Jesua 
 chose and prepared men who should snatch up the 
 torch of truth and rush with it into the world's dark- 
 ness, and hand it on in turn to those who in bright 
 succession display it still, until all mankind shall have 
 seen the heavenly light. The training of the apostolic 
 preachers was one of the spirit and not of the letter. 
 They were not trammelled with rules and methods, 
 but left free to the Divinely aided and guided move- 
 ments of their own minds, according to the circum- 
 stances amid which they should be called to appear. 
 The main aim of their training was that their natures 
 should be assimilated to that of Christ, that the spirit 
 should be in them which was in Him, that they should 
 be lifted by intercourse and fellowship with Him out 
 of narrowness, littleness, selfishness of life into sym- 
 pathy with human needs, and firm, unwavering confi- 
 dence in the power of Christ to meet and satisfy those 
 needs, that they should come to fully understand and 
 ardently love that Gospel of Christ's death for our 
 sin and resurrection, for our justification, which it 
 was to be their one work with a consuming zeal to 
 herald unto all the world. And to this day Christ's 
 training of His apostles is essentially the model of "all 
 true education for the ministry. That man is not 
 prepared for the sublime work of preaching, no matter 
 how thoroughly his intellectual powers have been 
 developed and trained to strong, keen thought, no 
 matter how carefully his rhetorical style has been 
 polished and his pulpit manners finished, who lacks the 
 
■ I . 
 
 ii 
 
 16 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 inspiration of a clear, personal knowledge of the Lord 
 Jesus, the might of an unwavering conviction of the 
 truth of the message he is commissioned to proclaim, 
 and of its power by the Holy Spirit to convict men of 
 sin and to convert men from sin, and the Pentecostal 
 fire within his soul of a paramount love to his Divine 
 Master and Lord. 
 
 It was in this spirit that the apostles preached after 
 they had been " endued with power from op high " on 
 that birth-day of the Christian Church, the day of 
 Pentecost — fiery Peter, practical James, loving John, 
 and, above all, that prince of preachers and of mission- 
 aries, Paul, his learning set on fire by love, his 
 thinking bold, his oratory vehement, his consecration 
 sublime. 
 
 After the great success won at Pentecost, the Chris- 
 tian community woke gradually to full self-conscious- 
 ness, to the consciousness of its distinct and separate 
 natjire, independent of Judaism, its own special and 
 world-wide miss; on. When the brethren gathered 
 quietly for prayer and breaking of bread, it was but 
 natural that they should enjoy friendly conversation 
 concerning their risen Lord, and should by calling to 
 mind the incidents of His life and the promises of His 
 love, seek to encourage each other in every good word 
 and work. When Jewish Christians came to be 
 excluded from the Jewish synagogues, and so became 
 the more entirely devoted to their own assemblies ; 
 when Christian communities were formed in the 
 heathen world, with their own gatherings for worship, 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 17 
 
 gradually the form of Christian public service, center- 
 ing around the Lord's Supper as its nucleus, became 
 fixed, and in it the reading of the Scriptures and a 
 free familiar exposition of them was always a promi- 
 nent feature, just as in the ancient synagogue. 
 
 The informal service of the early Church is gra- 
 phically described by Paul in his first epistle to the 
 Corinthians (ch. xiv.) We see the gathering of the 
 believers ; we hear now the frenzied accents of those 
 who speak with tongues, then the earnest words of 
 those who prophesy, i.e., " speak unto men to edifica- 
 tion and exhortation and comfort;" we listen while 
 others give forth a psalm, a doctrine, a revela bion, or an 
 interpretation; we notice how, amid this luxuriance of 
 spiritual gifts {xapianara) and freedom in their exercise, 
 the apostle clearly prefers and specially commends 
 those which not merely gratify the desire for signs and 
 wonders and mysteries, but which inform the under- 
 standing and appeal to a healthy Christian conscious- 
 ness. The power to teach, to explain truth and to 
 enforce it, this was the most valuable of all the gifts. 
 " In the church I had rather speak five words with my 
 understanding, that by my voice I might teach others 
 also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue," 
 declared the apostle. " Let all things be done unto 
 edifying," is his terse injunction. 
 
 The process by which, out of this almost unrestricted 
 liberty of speech in Christian assemblies, there gradu- 
 ally arose a more formal service and a class of men 
 specially devoted to the one work of preaching was 
 
'( 
 
 18 
 
 Witnesses i^oW cHri.st. 
 
 very natural. When the apostles or evangelists W^rd 
 present, they would of course take the lead, but in 
 their absence, while all might be free to take part, 
 yet those would be most in request and would be 
 listened to with greatest satisfaction who were most 
 evidently called of God to such work, and qualified for 
 it by nature and grace. It was long before a wide line 
 of demarcation was drawn between clergy and laity. 
 We read how, even as late as the third century, 
 " Severus, a clothier, and Alexander, a charcoal-burner, 
 whose blackened face excited laughter among the 
 young, were appointed preachers." The early Chris- 
 tians were mostly humble people of the lower classes, 
 and their preachers were from their own midst. 
 Gradually the preaching office developed, implied 
 higher education, and involved separation from the 
 ranks of the laity. It was long, however, before lay- 
 men were hindered from addressing the people in the 
 absence of the clergy. The tendency which finally 
 silenced them for centuries in the Church is to be traced 
 in Jerome's indignant complaint that ignorant men 
 assumed to give instruction out of the Scriptures, to 
 which they had devoted no special study.* 
 
 The occasions for preaching, in the early Church, 
 were numerous. At first the Lord's Supper seems to 
 have been celebrated, where posL'ble, every day, and 
 later at least every Lord's Day ; and at every such 
 service there was opportunity for that familiar ^xposi- 
 
 r . . * Milman, •• History of Christianity," III., 372. 
 
tBE t)AWN. 
 
 Id 
 
 tion and brotherly exhortation in which the earliest 
 preachinjy consisted. Fast days and feast days multi- 
 plied, the anniversaries of the death of saints and 
 martyrs were kept with much enthusiasm, and at all 
 such special services preaching tended early toward a 
 more set, dignitied, and oratorical form. 
 
 Christian worship began in private houses, with no 
 semblance of that im^^osin^; ritual and those gorgeous 
 accessories which in later times captivated the senses 
 of vast congregations assembled in great churches and 
 cathedrals, and, unfortunately, obscured the simplicity 
 of the original Gospel. The heathen were amazed that 
 the primitive Christians had no temples, no altars, no 
 images of the Deity, and that their worship was so 
 domestic. With the spread of Christianity, however, 
 its services outgrew the narrow limits of private 
 dwellings, und toward the end of the second century 
 the Christians began to build churches — humble 
 edifices at first, with a plain wooden table for the 
 bread and wine, and a stand (ambo) for the reading of 
 the Scriptures and preaching. During the next cen- 
 tury many churches of greater size and more beautiful 
 appearance were erected. When, at last, Christianity 
 had got beyond both persecution and toleration, and 
 secured dominion, it took up its home not in the 
 deserted temples of the dethroned gods of Olympus, 
 which were too close and confined for the Christian 
 worship, but in the basilicas, those numerous halls of 
 justice attached to every imperial residence, whose 
 ample space oifered room for great assemblies, whose 
 
io 
 
 WITNESSES EOR CHUlSt. 
 
 ► 
 
 1 I 
 
 li 
 
 transept, apne, anu inagisteria) throne afforded a place 
 for the clergy, and whose oblong form, rows of 
 columns, central avenue, or nave, as it came to be 
 called by the Christians, and side aisles, have formed 
 the model for almost all Christian churches from those 
 days until now. From the time of Constantino 
 spacious and magnificent buildings for Christian wor- 
 ship were to be found everywhere throughout the 
 empire, either baailicaa adapted to new and higher 
 uses or edifices erected on their architectural type. 
 
 The form of service in these early sanctuaries was, 
 while in general the same, yet in many of its details 
 different from our own. Pliny, in his celebrated letter 
 from Bithynia, to the Emperor Trajan, informs him 
 how the Christians met on a stated day before sunrise, 
 sang a hymn to Christ as a god, bound themselves by 
 an oath to a life of virtue, and ate in common a harm- 
 less meal. Justin Martyr, somewhat later, describes 
 this worship more fully : ' On Sunday, all who live in 
 cities or in the country gather together to one place, 
 and the memoirs of the apostles or the books of the 
 prophets are read, as long as time permits. Then, when 
 the reader has end^-i, the president in a discourse 
 instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these glorious 
 examples. Then we all rise together and send upwards 
 our prayers. And when we have ceased from prayer, 
 bread and wine and water are brought, and the presi- 
 dent offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his 
 ability. The congregation assent, saying Amen ; and 
 there is a distribution to each one present of the con- 
 
 i 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 «t 
 
 Ajcrated things, and to those who are absent a portion 
 is sent by the deacons.* 
 
 When the congregations grew larger and wealthier, 
 and occupied handsome churches, and the distinction 
 between laity and clergy became marked, the service 
 took on a more ceremonial and elaborate form. Let 
 us enter one of those early churches and take our part 
 in the service, such as it was, say, in the time of Chry- 
 sostom. We stand first in the outer court, with its 
 porticoes on each side, and we see the worshippers 
 washing their hands in the fountain before they pass 
 the sacred threshold. In this court linger those who 
 have fallen from the fellowship of the Church by 
 notorious sin, and who humbly do penance for re- 
 admission. We pass the scrutiny of the doorkeeper, 
 and enter the church, and gaze with admiration upon 
 its marble walls, mosaic ceiling, and lofty columns. 
 In the midst of the nave rises the reading-desk or 
 pulpit. Round it stand the choir, who open the ser- 
 vice by chanting the inspiring or melting strains of 
 Christian psalmody. Then follows prayer for the 
 Divine aid and blessing. One of the clergy greets the 
 congregation with the salutation: " Peace be unto you," 
 or " The Lord be with you," and the people respond : 
 " Peace be with thy spirit." Sometimes the benedic- 
 tion takes the place of this salutation. After the read- 
 ing of the Scriptures by one of the inferior clergy, the 
 preacher, usually a presbyter or bishop, either stand- 
 
 * Quoted in Uhlhorn's "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," 
 p. 162. 
 
■< ' 
 
 22 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 ill I 
 
 11! 
 
 I t 
 
 ing on the steps of the chancel or ascending to the 
 more comraandinor position of the pulpit, addresses the 
 congregation with the authority of an expounder of 
 the Divine will and an ambassador from heaven. All 
 about us the people are moved by the earnest address, 
 and manifest their emotions by the applause of hands 
 and voices, by waving handkerchiefs, or by uncon- 
 trolled sobs and groans and tears. After the sermon 
 there is prayer. Finally, when all but the full mem- 
 bers of the Church are dismissed, the solemn rite of 
 the Lord's Supper, too early, alas ! looked upon with a 
 reverence which had degenerated into superstition, 
 and called the bloodless sacrifice, is celebrated.* 
 
 Mingling with the crowd in many of these early 
 churches were short-hand reporters, and many of the 
 sermons of the popular preachers were circulated in 
 manuscript and have thus come down to us. These 
 sermons have become a most important part of Chris- 
 tian literature, and furnish us with a mirror of their 
 age, in which we may see reflected the prevailing type 
 of Christian doctrine, the temper of the times, the 
 vices and virtues of the people, as well as the charac- 
 ter and ability of the preachers. 
 
 None can compute the marvellous effect of this 
 early Christian preaching. Whether the assembled 
 Church listened with one ear to the Gospel and with 
 the other ear for the coming of the raging mob, or sat 
 in peace and luxury within a magnificent edifice and 
 
 Milman, " History of Christianity," III., 314. 
 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 23 
 
 saw friendly magistrates or the emperor himself in 
 their midst ; whether the preacher was a humble 
 mechanic or a sumptuously arrayed ecclesiastic; 
 whether the worship was plain, simple, unadorned, or 
 enriched with the spoils of the displaced heathenism ; 
 all through those early centuries the power was felt of 
 an institution which constantly reminded men of duty, 
 urged upon them the doctrines of redemption, rebuked 
 vice, encouraged virtue, converted sinners, and built 
 up believers. The voice which once had cried in the 
 wilderness of sin and sorrow echoed over all the world, 
 the little band of followers of the Nazarene swelled- 
 into a mighty host, and the cross round which the 
 gloom c ignominious defeat had gathered now shone 
 forth in mystic glow, the symbol and assurance of 
 universal triumph. Would we as Christian preachers 
 continue the victories of the Gospel, we must wield 
 the original power, and in order to wield the original 
 power we must employ essentially the original methods. 
 Let us, therefore, further investigate this early 
 preaching with reference to its subject, its object, its 
 form, and its spirit. 
 
 I. ITS SUBJECT. 
 
 Those early preachers were men of a definite and 
 firm conviction that the world is fallen and sinful, 
 that only God's grace can raise and cleanse it, that in 
 Christ Jesus God has made bare His arm for salvation, 
 that the light of the world and the hope of the world 
 is Jesus ; and therefore their theme, especially in the 
 
t 
 
 ■iipm 
 
 ! i 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 24 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 earliest and purest period of the Church, was Jesus 
 Christ, "crucified, dead and buried," risen from the 
 dead, ascended to the seat of kingly honor, coming 
 again in power and glory 
 
 ** To terminate the evil, 
 To diadem the right." 
 
 The highest type of the Christian preacher in the 
 early &Qes, and for all ages, is the apostle Paul, and 
 Paul declares that Christ sent him "to preach the 
 Gospel," and he defines that Gospel to be the story of 
 " Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, 
 and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which 
 are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of 
 God, and the wisdom of God." * Paul did not preach 
 about the Gospel, but he preached the Gospel, and the 
 Gospel to him was a Person, and that Person was Christ. 
 He knew that men were perishing, he knew that Christ 
 was their Saviour, he therefore held up Christ to them, 
 with supreme and consuming desire and zeal to lead 
 men to look to Him and live. And he preached Christ, 
 not merely as a " teacher come from God," not merely 
 as a character which we should emulate, but first and 
 foremost and fundamentally as a sacrifice atoning for 
 human sin. Here is the Gospel which men need to- 
 day. 
 
 Announce it in the church ; proclaim it on the 
 streets ; testify to it in the Salvation Army ; preach it 
 anywhere, to all men, with the zeal of a Paul ; do not 
 
 ♦ I Cor. L 17, 23. 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 25 
 
 lere^y declare your confidence in it, but actually and 
 ibsc lutely and all through believe it and live it, and 
 ;reat fear falls upon the people, as in the olden times, 
 md the cry is heard, "What shall we do to be saved?" 
 'he old Gospel is not outworn. If we do not see 
 jonversions it must be either that we do not believe 
 the Gospel, or do not preach it, or do not live it. 
 A dyinjif man said to a friend of mine, not long ago, 
 rith reference to certain preaching to which he had 
 for some time listened, " there wasn't much Gospel in 
 It." How poor the pretentious rhetoric or the careful 
 rrace, or the immaculate orthodoxy of preaching 
 rhich does not make Christ a great reality to the soul 
 )f its hearers, must appear in a retrospect from the 
 leath-bed ! What a contrast between the bold, enthu- 
 siastic proclamation of Christ, which won the early 
 [world to Christianity, and that toying with literature, 
 that coquetting with the refinements of philosophy, 
 Ithat ingenious trifling with great and momentous 
 themes which sometimes has pleased the taste and 
 lulled the conscience of unsaved and unawakened men. 
 [Such was the preaching of a candidate for a lecture- 
 [ship in- one of the old city churches in London, who, to 
 [display his ingenuity, took for his text the word 
 "but." From this short text he deduced the great 
 lesson that there is a crook in every lot. " Naaman 
 [was a mighty and honorable man of valor, but he 
 ■was a leper ; the five wicked cities were as fruitful as 
 [the garden of God, hut the men of Sodom were wicked 
 and sinners before the Lord exceedingly ; the inhabi- 
 3 
 
' 
 
 .IV 
 
 I *; 
 
 26 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 tants of Ai thought they had put the Israelites to 
 flight, but they knew not that there were Hers in wait] 
 behind the city." So proceeded the ingenious preacher. | 
 In the vestry the chief trustee of the lectureship met] 
 him, with thanks : " Sir, it was a most ingenious dis- 
 course, and we are exceedingly obliged to you for it,] 
 hut you are not the preacher that will do for us."*' 
 And such are not the preachers that will do for any 
 men who know the solemnity of human life and thej 
 sacred importance of the Gospel which preachers are^ 
 supposed to proclaim. 
 
 In those early days preachers do not seem to have 
 been hired to preach big sermons, gather great congre- 
 gations, secure large collections, and so pay off sinful i 
 church debts incurred to gratify the vanity of dead! 
 and-alive Christians. It is true that Paul became j 
 " all things to all men ; " but that was not to win 
 their applause but to save them, and that did not 
 imply that he ever degraded the Gospel by sensation- 1 
 alism, or himself by pulpit buffoonery. 
 
 When I say that the subject of the primiti^^e 
 preaching was distinctively and emphatically Christ, 
 I do |iot imply that either Paul or his successors con- 1 
 fined themselves merely U> the exposition of the 
 ^toi^ement and salvation by faith in Christ. That was 
 the centre. But they radiated out from that centre to 
 every point in the circle of Christian thought, and 
 enforced the manifold practical applications of the 
 Gospel to all life, private and public. 
 
 * Hoodj " Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets," p. 203, 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 27 
 
 Their teaching was far removed from that weak, 
 )ietistic " other-worldliness " which ignores Christian 
 luty in and toward this world, which so rings the 
 changes upon salvation by faith as to lead men almost 
 
 look upon good works as a superfluity, and to for- 
 
 ret that true faith "works by love and purifies the 
 
 leart;" which so cants about saving souls and so 
 
 leglects the work of building up Christian character 
 
 md leading out men into the generous enterprises of 
 
 yhristian work, bhat it presents you with souls which 
 
 lieem hardly worth the saving. No; the primitive 
 
 )reaching was of a Christ who died but who lives, a 
 
 [oving, helping, ever faithful Friend, wRose gentleness 
 
 jncourages the timid, whose purity shames the erring, 
 
 rhose succor rescues the weak, whose presence sancti- 
 
 ies and ennobles every occupation — a Christ for the 
 
 lome, a Christ for the shop, a Christ for the farm, a 
 
 Jhrist for the sick-room, a Christ for the palace, a 
 
 /hrist for the cottage — this was the robust, inspired, 
 
 )ivine Gospel which the early preachers proclaimed. 
 
 'his is the soul-stirring, far-reaching, all-ponquering 
 
 lospel which it is our privilege to proclaim to-day. 
 
 [ow grand the theme, how glorious the work ! To 
 )e an ambassador of Christ, to beseech men in Christ's 
 ^tead to be reconciled to God, to point them to the 
 Javiour, and cry, " Behold, behold the Lamb ; " to 
 
 istruct in the truth, to comfort in sorrow, to guide in 
 
 luty, to lead in all holy life, making known what is 
 
 bhe riches of the glory of this Gospel,* " which is Christ 
 
 In you, the hope of glory : whom we preach, warning 
 
»l 
 
 28 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 every man and teaching every man in all wisdom ; I 
 that we may present every man perfect in Christ 
 Jesus."— (Col. i. 27, 28.) - ' 
 
 II. THE OBJECT 
 
 of the early preaching was generally edification of the\ 
 Church. When Paul and others went forth as mission- 
 aries among Jews and Gentiles, the direct object of | 
 their preaching, as of all their work, was certainly the 
 conversion of their hearers. But when once the I 
 Church was planted in a community, and preaching 
 became not part of a mission but part of a Church ser- 
 vice, and was addressed not to the unsaved but to 
 believers, the aim of the preaching became not con- 
 version but edification. There was little mingling of 
 the world with the Church in those early times of 
 obscurity, poverty, and persecution ; those who gathered j 
 into the upper room or the humble sanctuary and I 
 joined in the simple worship were, with very rare ex- 
 ception, true Christians ; there was little motive to 
 bring others there ; preaching, under such circum- 
 stances, would be directed exclusively to believers, and 
 its object would be their encouragement, instruction, | 
 and edification. 
 
 That this was the case, the very words which we I 
 employ to designate the art of preaching still witness ! 
 to us. Homiletics comes from the word homily \ 
 (buikia), which signifies properly a gathering together 
 in one place, intercourse among friends, familiar con- 
 versation, and so came to be applied most appropriately I 
 
THE 1>AWN. 
 
 29 
 
 to those brotherly conversational addresses in which 
 
 the early Christians in their private church meetings 
 
 sought to help and edify each other, especially to the 
 
 Pamiliar and informal exposition or exhort '.ion which 
 
 [followed the reading of the Scriptures. So the homily. 
 
 Iwhich gradually became longer and more formal, was 
 
 [distinctively an address to believers during the course of 
 
 church service, with the object of the edification of the 
 
 saints, and so stood in contrast with the Kt/pvy/xa, the 
 
 public heralding of the Gospel to unbelievers with the 
 
 object of their conversion. Preaching retained this 
 
 character even when, after the triumph of Christianity, 
 
 attendance at church became not unusual among men 
 
 of the world, attracted by various motives vastly dif- 
 
 I f erent from those which summoned hearers in the old 
 
 I heroic ages. 
 
 This conception of Homiletics, which regards the 
 [edification of the Church as the sole proper object of 
 regular preaching, and relegates the conversion of 
 I sinners to special missions and evangelists, however 
 thoroughly justified by etymology, contains for the 
 Church, as it has been since the days of Constantlne 
 and as it is still, a dangerous practical error. It was 
 one thing to address all the people gathered in a 
 church in the early days, when none but believers had 
 any motive to be present, as "dearly beloved brethren," 
 and, carrying this assumption through the whole ser- 
 vice, to aim not at awakening and conversion, but ex- 
 clusively at edification ; it is another thing to make 
 such an assumption in dealing with congregations such 
 
i 
 
 30 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 as crowded Christian churches as soon as it became 
 popular so to do, and as crowd Christian churches now, 
 a mixture, as Christlieb characterizes theraf,of "believers, 
 half-believers, unbelievers " ;* and whoever practically 
 models his preaching upon this conception of Homiletics 
 makes a fatal mistake. The result is that nothing is 
 said to alarm men, to rouse them from their sinful 
 slumbers, to lead them to the Saviour, that unregen- 
 erate members fill and control the Church, that assur- 
 ance of salvation is regarded as presumption and true 
 piety is nick-named fanaticism, that churchmanship is 
 counted for Christianity, and that religion languishes 
 in temples devoted to its prosperity and amid the 
 beautiful and devout forms which still recall its pristine 
 glory. Such was the Church life and preaching of 
 England when Wesley blew once more the long- 
 silent trumpet of a vital Gospel and dared to cry to 
 unregenerate members of the Church, as well as to out- 
 casts and profligates, " Ye must be born again." Such 
 has been too generally the Church life and preaching 
 of Germany for many a long year, and now the Ger- 
 man churches are emptied, and the aggressive evangel- 
 istic work of saving souls threatens to pass from the 
 grand old Church of Luther into the hands of 
 Methodists and Baptists — foreign agencies imported 
 but recently from America into the land of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Recent German writers on Homiletics, seeking to 
 
 , * Herzog'a " Real-Encyklopadie," VI., 272. 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 31 
 
 broaden out the idea of the science and art of preach' 
 ing as not simply for the upbuilding of believers, but 
 in general for the propagation of the Kingdom of God, 
 I both by bringing men into it and by building men up 
 in it, have devised such terms as Halieutics (the 
 I science and art of being "fishers of men"); Keryktics 
 (the science and art of heralding God's message); 
 Evangelistics (the science and art of proclaiming the 
 good news). But all these terms seem almost exclus- 
 ively to emphasize the side of preaching which looks 
 toward a world to be converted, and to ignore that 
 side which looks toward a Church to be edified. Both 
 in theory and in practice these two must be united. 
 Dr. Christlieb, in his interesting and valuable article 
 on Homiletics, in the new edition of Herzog's Real- 
 Encyklopadie, endeavors to combine them in the one 
 fundamental Biblical idea conveyed in the word 
 fiaprvpeiv, the idea of witTiessing for Christ ; for it is 
 testimony concerning Christ, concerning His life and 
 example, His atonement, His love. His power, which 
 both leads men to trust in Him and also establishes 
 them in Christian character. To suit this conception, 
 the word Martyretics is coined (the science and art of 
 bearing witness). But call the department of Practical 
 Theology which treats of preaching what you will, 
 it certainly is true that the great central idea of 
 preaching is to bear witness to Christ ; that the 
 supreme object of preaching, never to be lost sight of, 
 is the salvation of those who listen to it ; that the' 
 delightful task of the preacher, therefore, is to announce 
 
w 
 
 32 
 
 WITNESHES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 \ 
 
 to the unsaved the way of salvation in Christ, and to 
 persuade them to enter into that way ; and also to 
 encourage and to lead on those who are already 
 walking in it. 
 
 In some Churches, the great historical Churches 
 especially, the aggressive, awakening, converting as- 
 pect of preaching needs to be more strongly emphasized. 
 In our own eagerly and triumphantly aggressive 
 revival Church, whose preachers have gone forth with 
 strong desire and fervent zeal 
 
 '* To save poor souls out of the fire, ^ 
 
 To snatch them from the verge of hell, 
 And turn them to a pardoning God, 
 And quench the brands in Jesus' blood," 
 
 and have such ample reason to thank Qod for theii? 
 success, it may be specially wise to remember the early 
 conception of preaching as an address to believers, and 
 to emphasize that aspect of it which has regard to the 
 instruction of the Church and the development of 
 Ch istian character. 
 
 That is not the highest type of piety which depends 
 upon the "storm and stress" of special excitement, 
 which burns only as the fire is kindled about it, and 
 which dies down in the calm of common life, to be 
 fanned again into a fiame only by some fresh furore. 
 Far higher is that type of piety which is constantly 
 fed with the oil of God's Spirit, and therefore bums 
 brightly even though all around be dark and dead; a 
 piety which thinks, and reads, and studies, and has 
 
 il 
 
 IIH 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 33 
 
 an intelligent conception of Christian truth ; which 
 I delights itself in the law of the Lord, and medi- 
 tates in that law day and night ; which lies down in 
 the green pastures and wanders beside the still waters 
 of God's grace ; which grows holy in the reverent con- 
 templation of God and strong in the hallowed exercise 
 of a useful life ; which is ready for all duties, great 
 and small, and prepares for the great by doing the 
 small ; which feels and exemplifies the truth that 
 
 " The trivial round, the common task, 
 Will furnish all we ought to ask ; 
 Room to deny ourselves ; a road 
 To bring us daily nearer God." 
 
 To produce such a robust, steadfast, and beautiful 
 type of piety, more is wanted than milk for babes ; 
 the Church must have the strong meat of thoughtful 
 and Scriptural preaching, preaching which, while full 
 of Christ, touches human nature on all sides, stimu- 
 lates thought and guides it, leads men into the depths 
 of the masteries of the faith and up to the heights of 
 a mature Christian experience, and so trains and. 
 educates believers up to the perfect stature of men in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 Simplicity in the preaching of Christ is always to be 
 commended; but simplicity is not superficiality. Much 
 of the superficiality of preaching is due to the effort to 
 cover too much ground in a single sermon. It is better 
 to cover less ground and to plough deep in that patch 
 which you do attempt to cultivate. Savages roam 
 
 11 
 
 '! 
 
 .i 
 
 ft. 
 
! 
 
 'mw 
 
 'PI 
 
 i! 
 
 il! |]l 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 m 
 
 34 
 
 WITNESSES PoR CHRIST. 
 
 over a whole country, chase a squirrel here and a deer 
 there, and half starve after all. Civilized men get a 
 better living off a few acres. One thought well 
 expressed and illustrated, one principle thoroughly de- 
 veloped and applied, one duty strongly enforced — this 
 is generally enough for a single sermon. 
 
 The main cause of superficial preaching is careless 
 preparation. Sermons made off-hand, failing to deal 
 seriously with underlying principles of life and to shed 
 fresh light on the Bible, will not command the respect 
 and hold the attention of thoughtful hearers, and will 
 not build men up in a robust and intelligent piety. 
 Many a man is preaching dreary and unedifying com- 
 monplace, unworthy of the Gospel which he represents, 
 who, if he would but resolutely give himself to read- 
 ing, to study, to meditation on the great themes of the 
 Bible, would find his own nature enriched, would gain 
 deeper insight into truth, and would so preach as to 
 delight, instruct, and save his hearers. " Contemplate 
 your subject long," says Buffon. " It will gradually 
 unfold itself, till a sort of electric spark convulses the 
 brain for a moment, and sends a glow of irritation to 
 the heart. Then comes the luxury of genius." The 
 lack of strong vitalized thought in sermons, such 
 thought as will strike fire in the minds of hearers, 
 springs from a lack of intellectual life in preachers. 
 Ex nihUo nihil Jit. He need not hope to kindle the 
 minds of others who does not keep the flame bright in 
 his own mental nature by heaping on the fuel of 
 stimulating thought,gathered from reading great books, 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 35 
 
 conversing with original minds, or mingling in stirring 
 events. They have some odd local names in Scotland. 
 It was remarked of a certain Scotch minister, " that 
 he was born in the parish of Dull, brought up in the 
 school of Dunae, and finally settled as minister in the 
 parish of Drone ! " Many ministers seem to have 
 finally settled in that parish, who were certainly not 
 born in the parish of Dull, nor brought up in the school 
 of Dunse, but who, having once been all alive with 
 great thoughts and enthusiastic for great enterprises, 
 have allowed th«^ petty ten thousand duties of the 
 pastorate to stifle their intellectual if not their spiri- 
 tual life, and have sunk into mere machines for the 
 making of two sermons a Sunday and a certain number 
 of pastoral calls during the week. The minister must 
 keep up his general culture, if h& would maintain his 
 pulpit power. He must not forget the methods of col- 
 lege when he leaves it. He must grapple with great 
 subjects and master them ; he must nourish his soul 
 with the great thoughts of great thinkers ; he must 
 keep his mind alive, quick, alert, sympathetic with the 
 thought and life of the world, and, above all, kind- 
 ling ever with the burning thoughts of the Bible. 
 
 This ideal is not an easy one to reach. The popular 
 conception of the case of the minister's life is derived 
 from the fatal folly of the men who fail in their minis- 
 terial work, and is ludicrously inapplicable to those 
 who succeed. Moody says : " I was settled at one 
 period of my life for two years in one place, and I 
 worked harder when I was then preaching two ser- 
 
36 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 I i ij 
 
 Ml 
 
 mons in the week than I have done since all the time 
 I have been going up and down through the country." 
 The preaching which builds up the Church of God is 
 that which enlists all a man's energies and sets his 
 whole soul on fire. 
 
 Archbishop Trench, in his " English Past and Pre- 
 sent," in illustrating the misapprehension which is 
 sometimes occasioned by a change in the meaning of 
 wonU, gives the following instance: "Fuller, our 
 Church historian, praising some famous divine that 
 was lately dead, exclaims, ' Oh, the painfulness of his 
 preaching I ' How easily we might take this for an 
 exclamation wrung out at the recollection of the 
 tediousness which he inflicted on his hearers. It is 
 nothing of the kind ; the words are a record, not of the 
 pain which he caused tp others, but of the pains which 
 he bestowed himself ; and I cannot doubt, if we had 
 more .* painful ' preachers in the old sense of the word, 
 that is, who took pains themselves, we should have 
 fewer ' painful ' ones in the modern sense, who cause 
 pain to their hearers." * 
 
 The object of primitive preaching in the Church was 
 the edification of believers, and this remains, if not, 
 under somewhat different circumatances, the exclusive 
 object of modem preaching, yet still one of its main 
 objects. Let no preacher slacken his efforts for the 
 conversion of men, but let him double his efforts, by 
 unwearied study, by careful thought, by profound 
 
 • (( 
 
 English Past and Present," p. 261. 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 37 
 
 consecration, so to preach that he may instruct and 
 build up Christians in Christ Jesus and for His service. 
 
 III. THE FORM 
 
 of the primitive preaching was that of an artless, 
 spontaneous, unstudied exposition or exhortation, 
 based upon the Scripture lesson read. So had the 
 scribes preached in the synagogue ; so did Jesus and 
 His apostles. Their teaching rooted itself in the Scrip- 
 tures ; and even when the homily became longer and 
 more artificial, yet it retained its original character of 
 an exposition of a passage of Scripture, generally 
 verse by verse, without a rhetorical formulation of a 
 theme, a distinct announcement of divisions, or a 
 skilful arrangement of parts. It was not the discus- 
 sion of s topic. It was not an oration. It was 
 exposition and exhortation, and that generally with 
 little show of learning and little skill of argument. 
 Even in the later use of the word " homily," to denote 
 a short sermon prepared by authority f'^r reading in 
 the churches in degenerate times, when priests were 
 ignorant and the Church was dead — the idea is still 
 that of a brief, expository sermon. The primitive 
 preachers seem to have had no other thought of 
 preaching than that of explaining the Word of God to 
 the people, and of applying it to their hearts and 
 lives. At first diffuse, irregular, unmethodical, the 
 exposition became more careful, more consecutive, of 
 finer literary form, in the hands of such great preach- 
 ers as Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Athanasius, 
 
ii i i ; 
 
 38 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Phi 
 
 ih 
 
 and the rest of the Fathers. In the homilies of many 
 of these, we have the wealth of their meditation and 
 study in the Scriptures, and their collected homilies 
 constitute valuable commentaries on large parts of 
 the Bible. The sermons of the whole early period of 
 preaching are pre-eminently Scriptural; their thoughts, 
 illustrations, allusions are Scriptural, their inspiration 
 is Scriptural, they are saturated with Scripture. In 
 later times more philosophical habits of thought have 
 demanded the deduction of a definite theme from the 
 text or passage of Scripture, the distinct statement 
 of the theme in the form of a proposition, and then 
 the development of the sermon, not from the text or 
 passage, but from the proposition. 
 
 The modern form of preaching is not usually that 
 of the homily, but that of the oration. With all its 
 advantages for argument, instruction, and appeal, this 
 method of preaching, if exclusively or generally 
 followed, tends to divorce preaching from the study 
 of the Bible, and to substitute man's words for God's 
 Word. In most of our present preaching, compared 
 with that of the early ages, there is an alarming 
 poverty of Biblical modes of thought and expression. 
 A text is read, and a topic is announced, supposed to 
 be evolved from the text, though sometimes the criti- 
 cism is in place which a candid friend passed upon a 
 certain pulpit performance: "If your text had had 
 the smallpox, your sermon would never have caught 
 it;" and not seldom the method is seriously adopted 
 of Rowland Hill's ironical announcement ; " First, we 
 
 Mill 
 
 L 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 89 
 
 shall go through the text ; second, we shall go round 
 about the text; and third, we shall go away from the 
 text altogether." Too often, when the text is read 
 and the topic is announced, we say, for the rest of 
 the sermon, good-bye to the text and to the Bible, 
 [and we launch out upon a sea of human philosophy, 
 I science, literature, morality ; or, even though the ser- 
 mon be evangelical and earnest and saving, yet the 
 discussion is apart from the Bible, however thoroughly 
 in accord with it, a certain Biblical flavor, influ- 
 ence, authority is wanting, and the people are not 
 taught to delight in the Word of the Lord. It is not 
 man's words but God's Word that is "quick and 
 powerful." Many a comparatively ignorant minister 
 or evangelist, by earnest preaching of God's Word, 
 succeeds, where more learned and quite as pious men 
 have failed to win souls with their apparently more 
 philosophical, and certainly more literary perform- 
 ances. 
 
 In an excellent article under the heading, " Preach 
 THE Word," in a recent issue of The Independent, the 
 following striking paragraph occurs: — "* A mere string- 
 ing together of Scripture without any evidence of 
 original thought,' said a critical preacher in our 
 hearing once, with something very like a sneer, as he 
 turned away from one of Mr. Moody's Bible Readings. 
 And he was rather disgusted, and we fear a little 
 angry, because, at the close of the reading and short, 
 pointed appeal based upon the Word preached, some 
 t'ortv or fifty men and wo»nen followed the unjearuecl 
 
 M 
 
 I 
 ■si 
 
 n 
 
 
 If- 
 
 n 
 
40 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 I ! 
 
 Mi 
 
 I i 
 
 i I 
 
 preacher to the enquiry-room, to be instructed in the 
 way of life more fully. He could not see w^here th( 
 homely evangelist's power was. Let cur readers, botl 
 ministerial and lay, ponder this inspired exhortation 
 
 * Preach the Word ; ' and, perhaps, if the former class! 
 will adopt it and follow it a little more closely, and the! 
 latter class insist that more of the Word be given inj 
 the sermons they go to hear, we will soon see a different 
 state of things in our churches. Professor Park is saic 
 once to have given as a reason why he omitted thel 
 reading of the Word during a hot afternoon serviceJ 
 that his sermon was rather long, and he felt that, inl 
 order to bring the whole service within the usual hour,! 
 he had to leave out something ; and so he omitted thel 
 Scriptural reading. * Humph ! ' said the old deacon! 
 who had noted the omission of the Scripture lesson, 
 
 * Suppose you leave out some of your own stuff the! 
 next time.' Perhaps we might do well to take the] 
 deacon's advice, too." 
 
 Originality has its place in the pulpit, not, however, 
 in the invention of truth, but in the explanation ofl 
 truth given, in the discdvery of relations between 
 truths, in the countless applications of the divinely 
 revealed truth to the changing phases of human thoughtl 
 and life. The claim of Christianity is that God has 
 spoken in the prophets and in His Son ; the business of 
 the Christian preacher, therefore, is to announce God's 
 Word to men, to expound it, to enforce it, to make it a 
 vivid and living reality in the minds of the people, and 
 then to trust its inherent energy and the influence of | 
 the Holy Spirit to move, persuade, and save men, 
 
 liiiii 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 41 
 
 The jreat principle of variety must have play in 
 )reaching as in all things else. The topical method 
 leed not be discarded. But it ought not to be left 
 In exclusive possession of the pulpit. The expository 
 lethod has Christian antiquity on its side, and possesses 
 lany weighty advantages. This method may mean 
 simply a running commentary, verse by verse, on pas- 
 sages or whole books of Scripture, as in the homilies 
 )f the early preachers. The danger in this case is that 
 bhe sermon or lecture may lack unity, and be superficial 
 bn its treatment, fail to trace connections of thought and 
 Ito grasp underlying principles, and so become not so 
 [much an exposition as a dilution of the Scriptures. 
 
 A better form of exposition, probably, is that which 
 Icombines the topical method, and while it follows out 
 the run of thought in the passage or book, grasps the 
 great principles, gathers up ideas into unity, and 
 develops them in practical observations, deductions, 
 and lessons, as in Robertson's lectures on Corinthxans, 
 Dale's lectures on Hebrews, and Chalmers' lectures on 
 ! Romans. 
 
 Such preaching is inestimably valuable, both to 
 preacher and to people. So long as the preacher 
 ' wields merel]^ those weapons of genius, learning, logic, 
 or rhetoric, which are common to him with all public 
 speakers, he speaks with no special authority. But so 
 soon as he stands upon the Word of God and succeeds 
 in impressing his hearers with the thought that he 
 has fairly and honestly declared to them the real 
 meaning of the passage and so has uttered the mind 
 4 
 
 n 
 
 % 
 
 * 1 
 
 1*1 
 
 I! 
 
 ■ft 
 
 
 
nrr 
 
 Ml 
 
 I, I Ji.jjiii.li 
 
 II 
 
 ii ^ i \i 
 
 
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 ! 
 
 1 
 
 iiiiH ; I 
 
 I 
 
 M 
 'iiiij I 
 
 hli! i 
 
 I ! 
 
 42 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 of God ; then he stands above all other speakers, isl 
 clothed with a unique authority, and appeals to meni 
 as the ambassador of God. As that distinguished 
 alumnus of Victoria, Dr. Ormiston, once put it to me, 
 when I called upon him in his hospitable New York 
 home, on my way to Drew Seminary, and asked him 
 what he considered the most important department in | 
 a theological course : "Certainly the exegetical, for 
 the Pulpit stands upon the Book." 
 
 Expository preaching forces the preacher to that 
 close, accurate, and constant study of the Scriptures 
 from which he is too apt to shrink unless the demands 
 of his pulpit preparation compel him to it, and in 
 which alone he will gain wide, fresh views of Divine 
 truth, familiarity with Scriptural trains of thought, 
 comprehension of their subtle argument, and that ac- 
 quaintance with Law, Prophets, and Psalms, with 
 Gospels, Epistles, and Apocalypse,with the whole course 
 of sacred history, with the whole round of Christian 
 doctrine, which will broaden his outlook far beyond the 
 limits of systems of theology, fill his memory with 
 facts, arguments, images and illustrations ever ready 
 for use, enrich his intellectual and spiritual nature 
 and make him "perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all 
 good works." Such familiarity with Scripture has its 
 influence upon the pulpit style. "Intense study of the 
 Bible,' said Coleridge, "will keep any writer from 
 being vulgar in point of style." 
 
 Such preaching makes the Bible a more familiar 
 book to the people. Books, magazines, and papers 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 48 
 
 are covering Gods own Word out of sight. The 
 preacher who rescues the Bible from this neglect, who 
 makes the old stories live again, who leads his con- 
 gregati »n over the rugged paths of apostolic argument 
 into the flowery fields of apostolic promise and encour- 
 agement, who makes the Bible a book of real living 
 interest to his people, is doing vastly more for their 
 permanent pleasure, as well as profit, than he who 
 merely establishes them in a correct system of belief, or 
 ministers to their momentary gratification by the arts 
 of the orator, or stimulates a temporary emotion by 
 the enthusiasm /of the exhorter. 
 
 Expository preaching has both for the preacher and 
 people the charm of constant variety, lifts the chariot- 
 wheels out of the ruts of a few time-honored hack- 
 neyed themes, and enables the thoughtful preacher to 
 present the great central truths of redemption in a 
 thousand new lights, as he views them from the ever- 
 shifting stand point of the histories and the discus- 
 sions of the Bible. A creed or system is a herbarium 
 full of dried specimens. The Bible is a world bloom- 
 ing with beautiful life, f.nd they who wander 
 through its woods and fields and valleys will find at 
 every turn some new form of life to engage them and 
 delight them. 
 
 The exposition of passages and books will afford 
 opportunity to briefly discuss topics to which one 
 would not care to devote whole sermons, and will 
 enable one to handle delicate subjects from which one 
 might otherwise shrink lest their introduction appear 
 
 r 
 J 
 
 
H ifl 
 
 IIP' 
 
 III 
 
 44 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 to be an invidious preaching at individuals. In the 
 course of exposition, as in no other form of preaching, I 
 will the preacher find occasion and be constrained to 
 '* declare the whole counsel of God," to warn, to invite, 
 to encourage, and to instruct, "rightly dividing the 
 word of truth." 
 
 Such preaching will be not only profitable, but, on 
 certain simple conditions, popular. The preacher need 
 never take to exposition on the supposition that this 
 will save him labor, that this is an easy method of 
 preaching. Dr. W. M. Taylor refers to a preacher who 
 said : " I like to take a whole chapter for a text, because 
 when I am persecuted ill one verse I can flee to 
 another !" In truth, this method of preaching involves 
 the most painstaking labor, and he only will ever 
 succeed in it who delves deep and toils hard in the 
 mines of Divine truth for the hidden riches lying there. 
 An expository sermon is not the same thing as a 
 critical lecture to a class of theological students in 
 Exegesis. Processes are for the study, results are for 
 the pulpit. Do not bewilder and disgust your hearers 
 with a pedantic array of rival authorities. Leave your 
 commentators and critics at home. Clearly state your 
 conclusions, briefly defend them, earnestly apply them 
 to the circumstances of your hearers and your times. 
 Flash upon God's word all the light which all history 
 and all literature afford you. This sympathy with 
 human life, this familiarity with general literature, 
 this aptitude in using the spoils of all literature and 
 all life for the illustration of Scripture is the secret of 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 45 
 
 lihe charm and popularity of Archdeacon Farrar's 
 I works. 
 
 How glorious a prospect this for the young minister 
 I — to live in the study of the Scriptures, to let his own 
 I mind freely work upon the material therein contained, 
 to arrange, combine, interpret sacred truths ; to read 
 out from the Bible, as a centre, into all realms of human 
 thought and history which will help in the under- 
 standing and exposition of the Holy Book ; to nourish 
 his own mind upon the life-giving thoughts revealed 
 to close scholarship, combined with devout, expectant 
 meditation; and so to make his ministry Biblical in its 
 methods, perennial in it?, interest, profound in its 
 influence, and permanent in its results. 
 
 IV. ON THE SPIRIT 
 
 of the early preaching it remains that I say a few 
 words. Ancient oratory had long been silent, expiring 
 with the death of liberty; and a paltry rhetoric, 
 dazzling with meretricious adornments, had taken its 
 place. True oratory, that which pulsates with strong 
 emotions and great purposes, and communicates them 
 to others, revived in the Christian Church. There stood 
 good men, who believed with all their heart the great 
 and stirring truths which they fearlessly proclaimed, 
 and to whose burning words listened breathless audi- 
 ences, trembling for their eternal destinies, or stirred 
 to frenzy by the passionate appeal, or melted by the 
 pathos, or breaking into acclamations at the eloquence. 
 The spirit of the early preaching, especially of the 
 
I * 1 
 
 *■ " , 
 
 11 •'■■ 
 
 ^il 
 
 !!i 
 
 
 46 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRlSt. 
 
 earliest, was that of inspired and inspiring eameatneasM ^ 
 "Not with enticing words of man's wisdoni"did thechief Brhic 
 of the apostles preach, but in 'the demonstration of theBevo 
 Spirit and of power." The topics were above human 
 wisdom, the issues were life 'and death ; there was no| 
 place for trifling, there was no room for pedants, cox- 
 combs, or pulpit dolls. True, important thoughts I 
 demand decent and dignified form, and the wise' 
 preacher will strive to secure mastery of apt words, 
 of pure, strong style, of pleasing delivery, that the 
 Gospel be not hindered in its transmission through 
 him ; but he will think more of the truth than of the 
 rhetoric, he will seek to produce godliness of life 
 rather than glitter of composition, and he will con- 
 stantly and devoutly aim at power rather than polish. 
 Whitefield was an orator, but all arts of rhetoric were 
 out of sight as he cried in the spirit and power of St. 
 Paul : " Oh, my friends ! — the wrath of God ! the 
 wrath of God ! " Paul felt the greatness of his work. 
 Its pathetic aspects touched him. He knew that 
 destinies hung upon his words. Though bold and 
 fearless, yet he went to his work, not jauntily and 
 confidently, but trembling and weeping. "I was with 
 you," he declares to the Corinthians, " in we^ikness, 
 and in fear, and in much trembling." Luther never 
 ascended the pulpit without trembling. He who 
 never trembles before preaching will not make his 
 hearers tremble by his preaching. " Weep yourself if 
 you would see others weep." Logic, melted in the 
 fire of love, conquers with a strange compulsion. 
 
THE DAWN. 
 
 47 
 
 
 eameatTieasl 
 I'did thechiefl 
 [ration of the 
 'ove human 
 'here was no 
 pedants, cox- 
 ht thoughts 
 Id the wise 
 apt words, 
 |ry, that the 
 lion through 
 than of the 
 ness of life 
 le will eon- 
 than polish, 
 •hetoric were 
 power of St. 
 f God 1 the 
 )f his work, 
 knew that 
 1 bold and 
 luntily and 
 'I was with 
 ^ weakness, 
 ither never 
 He who 
 make his 
 yourself if 
 ted in the 
 sion. 
 
 What a work this work of preaching is — a work to 
 hich it is the glory of man's highest powers to be 
 evoted, the work of expounding the doctrines of the 
 ross, the work of winning men to the obedience of 
 hrist, the work of lifting men to lofty character and 
 oble life, the work of casting on the human pathway 
 he light and glory of the higher world, the work of 
 boring together with God ! Oh ! the pulpit is a 
 hrone, and the true preacher is a king ! Every man 
 ho has felt his soul thrilled with the magnitude and 
 agnificence of this noblest of human undertakings 
 ill echo and re-echo the words with which Henry 
 ard Beeeher addressed the Evangelical Alliance in 
 ew York in 1873 :— 
 
 " Men say that the pulpit has run its career, and 
 hat it is but a little time before it will come to an 
 nd. Not so long as men continue to be weak and 
 inful, and tearful and expectant, without any help 
 near; not so long as the world lieth in wickedness; 
 not until men are transformed and the earth empty, 
 not until then will the work of the Christian ministry 
 cease ; and there never was an epoch, from the time of 
 the apostles to our day, when the Christian ministry 
 had such a field, and there was such need of them, 
 and such hope and cheer in the work, and when it 
 was so certain that a real man in a spirit of God 
 would reap abundantly as to-day; and if I were to 
 choose again, having before me the possibilities of 
 profits and emoluments of merchant life, and the 
 honors to be gained through law, the science and 
 
 r 
 
 I' 
 
 
48 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 love that come from the medical profession, a'^.d thtl 
 honored ranks of teachers, I still again would chooscj 
 the Christian ministry. It is the sweetest in its sub- 
 stance, the most enduring in its choice, the mostl 
 content in its poverty and limits, if your lot is cast! 
 in places of scarcity; more full of crowned hopes, more 
 full of whispering messages from those gone before, 
 nearer to the threshold, nearer to the throne, nearer 
 to the brain, to the heart that was pierced, but that | 
 lives for ever, and says, ' Because I live, ye shall live 
 also.' " 
 
 \ 
 
 u 
 
 i ■ r ■- 
 
mon, A^.d thcj 
 would chooKcl 
 iat in itfi nub- 
 ice, the most 
 ur lot is cast 
 d hopes, more 
 gone before, 
 ihrone, nearer 
 ced, but that 
 , ye shall live 
 
 WMntBSts Uv €1xx\Bt. 
 
 
 M 
 
 M 
 
 LECTURE II.-THE DAY, 
 
 
 \ 
 
K' 
 
 ^riTT 
 
 |\] 
 
LECTURE IT.-THE DAY. 
 
 Having considered in the first lecture the origin and 
 fowth of preaching in the Christian Church, and the 
 ^neral methods of the early preachers, let us now turn 
 some of the great men whose names adorn the 
 rimitive period. 
 
 Of all the heroic early preachers but few have trans- 
 mitted name and fame to posterity, and of those whose 
 
 imes remain very few sermons are extant. Those 
 irly addresses, which inspired martyr courage and 
 [uilt up the Church of God, were too artless and un- 
 budied to be preserved. The men are gone forever 
 rom human memory, their names are recorded only 
 God's Book, their sermons are unreported, their 
 rords are dissipated into thin air. Yet neither their 
 rork nor their words are dead. 
 
 ** Words are mighty, words are living : 
 
 Serpents with their venomous stings, 
 Or bright angels crowding round us 
 
 With heaven's light upon their wings ; 
 Every word has its own spirit, 
 
 True or false, that never dies ; 
 Every word man's lips have uttered 
 
 Echoes in God's skies. " 
 
02 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 ! 
 
 ! i 
 
 li'! I 
 
 The wf<rds of those early preachers live and echo ii 
 the life and work of that world-wide community who.4 
 present existence would have been impossible withou| 
 their faithful toil. 
 
 Out of the first two centuries some names havj 
 escaped oblivion — such as those of Clement of Rome 
 Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexan] 
 dria, Irenssus, and Tertullian. Clement of Rom\ 
 is supposed to have been intimately acquainted witli 
 some of the apostles, and consequently stands forth 
 a representative of the earliest post-apostolic age. His| 
 epistle to the Corinthians is more of a homily than 
 letter, and in it we may recognize the earliest form ofl 
 the sermon. The stvle is somewhat diffuse and declam-l 
 atory, and yet at times eloquent and powerful, and! 
 through all breathes the warm piety of the man, thel 
 practical earnestness of the simple Gospel, a spirit noti 
 so much of system as of life. It is, in common with] 
 most of the remains of the primitive Church, an exposi- 
 tion of the ethics rather than the doctrines of Chris-I 
 tianity, in the vein rather of the Sermon on the Mount 
 and of the concluding portions of Paul's various epistles, 
 than of the profound views of truth which Paul pre-| 
 sents in the earlier portions of his epistles. 
 
 The best preaching will combine these two elements. 
 It will not undermine ethics by neglecting doctrine, I 
 nor will it fail to build a valuable structure of ethics j 
 upon the foundation of doctrine. Doctrinal preaching I 
 which has no practical application to the hearers is 
 deservedly as unpopular as it is useless. 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 53 
 
 One Sunday night a minister asked his wife her 
 )inion of his sermon. " Was it good ?" " Yes, very." 
 '^as it not a complete chain of thought with no link 
 litted ?" " Yes, it was certainly that ; but it seemed 
 me, husband, that at the hearers' end you forgot to 
 it on the hook!" It is a mistake to be so absorbed 
 your subject as to forget its relation to your hearers. 
 Glenient of Alexandria, who flourished in the last 
 luarter of the second century and the first quarter 
 (f the third, was in the thick of the fight with 
 rnosticism, and the fragments of his works now 
 [xtant are mainly apologetic. His style is generally 
 liacursive, sometimes declamatory, but occasionally 
 l>f great vigoi. In him we see the growth of that 
 yhilosophical element in Christian preaching, which, 
 lecessitated by the open assaults of the heathen or the 
 [nsidious influences of heresy, threw up fortifications 
 igainst the enemy ; successfully defended the citadel 
 )f the faith ; developed, broadened, and deepened the 
 Christian system of doctrines to satisfy the intellectual 
 rants of men ; but too often obscured the simplicity 
 lof the Gospel which it defended, and substituted human 
 [reasoning foi* Divine revelation. 
 
 This tendency went on in Clement's great disciple, 
 
 I Origen. Christianity came to be treated as a system 
 
 |of philosophy, and as such was pitted against the 
 
 I heathen philosophies. Sometimes the eflect was not 
 
 so much to overthrow the false in the old systems as 
 
 to assimilate the true. Altogether, there arose the 
 
 danger of forgetting the pure Gospel of Divine grace, 
 
 
54 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 sh( 
 heJ 
 
 fol 
 
 of corrupiinsf it by the introduction of heterogeneou 
 speculations, of preaching a Gospel whi'?h might inter 
 est philosophers, but would not warm the heart o 
 amend the life of the common people. 
 
 This danger has continued, and must continue sol 
 long as men stand in the pulpit acquainted with thelph 
 thought of their time, and anxious to defend theirlforl 
 faith and so to present it as to commend it to intelli-lph 
 gent and educated hearers. Men will and must think,|coi 
 and their general philosophical system will influence 
 their mode of presenting the Gospel ; and it is only wise 
 that we should seek, knowing currents of thought, to 
 express the truth in such form as will attract and con- 
 vince men accustomed to philosophic phraseology and 
 discussion. But our philosophy we must subordinate 
 to our Christian facts of redemption, not the facts to 
 the philosophy. Facts are fundamental. All theory 
 must be conformed to them. I^o man has any right in 
 the Christian pulpit to whom the facts of redemption 
 are not solid and fundamental in his thinking and 
 preaching. 
 
 Moreover, it is well to remember that we have not 
 many philosophers in our churches ; that the attempt 
 to attract them may repel the mass of the people ; that 
 abstruse sermons full of the language of the schools 
 will bewilder, if they do not disgust, the most of hear- 
 ers ; that too much and too high thought will consti- 
 tute a. mental diet unsuited to the intellectual powers 
 of digestion possessed by ordinary congregations ; that 
 the good of a philosophic culture will be very largely 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 55 
 
 legative rather t^an positive, saving us from errors of 
 thought and lenguage rather than furnishing us with 
 latter or foim for our preaching ; that while there 
 lay he special occasions and special audiences, gener- 
 lally the " obiter dicta " which reveal familiarity with 
 Iphilosophic truth will be of greater service than much 
 formal and pretentious philosophizing; that while 
 philosophy may be the handmaid, she must never be- 
 come mistress. The Gospel is supreme, and the Gospel 
 should be so preached that the common people may 
 I hear it gladly. 
 
 There is no little true homiletic instruction in the 
 following simple verses from the Christian Union : — 
 
 I 
 
 %: 
 
 I 
 
 iA- 
 
 *' The preacher stood in the pulpit, 
 And spoke with large discourse 
 Of reason and revelation, 
 Nature and cosmic force. 
 
 I 
 
 He talked of the reign of order, 
 
 Of scientific skill, 
 And knowledge as the only key 
 
 To fiind the heavenly will. 
 
 And I wonder'd at the doctrine, 
 It seemed so strange and cold. 
 
 And thought of saints that I had known 
 Weary, aad poor and old. 
 
 For they knew nothing of science. 
 
 Praying on bended knee, 
 And from ancient superstitions 
 
 Were not altogether free. ^, 
 
 ' • I 
 
« 
 
 ji! 
 
 il 
 
 n 
 
 $6 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Whilst lost in the maze of wisdom, 
 
 About the false and true, 
 There came to my eyes a vision, 
 
 Near as the nearest pew. 
 
 'Twas a vision dear and tender, , > 
 
 The sweet face of a child. 
 As weary with all the talking 
 
 He lay asleep and smiled. v 
 
 Nothing he cared for the preacher 
 
 Who spoke of law above. 
 But in his face was innocence, 
 
 And worlds of trustful love. t 
 
 I thought of a certain Teacher — 
 
 The wise, the undefiled — 
 Who saw the kingdom of heaven 
 
 Within the heart of a child. 
 
 'Tis good to be strong and learned. 
 
 Good to be wise and bold, 
 But the best of everything that is. 
 
 The preacher left untold," 
 
 In the latter part of the second century the fieryl 
 and impetuous eloquence of the converted rhetorician! 
 Tertullian of Carthage dominated and moulded very 
 largely the life and discipline of the Western Church, 
 developing it in the ascetic direction. Of this illus- 
 trious man no sermons are extant, but in some of his I 
 works, as for instance his beautiful treatise on 
 " Patience," we may discover the charm of his style 
 and the secret of his power. There is no very| 
 
THE DAT. 
 
 57 
 
 lethodical and formal development of thought, some- 
 Ihing still of the primitive artlessness which simply 
 ^ates one point after another ; there is an abundance 
 )f Scriptural quotations and allusions, and the passages 
 referred to are briefly expounded by the way ; here 
 md there the* preacher breaks off the thread of argu- 
 ient and exposition and rushes into lofty description 
 )r impassioned application; the style is somewhat 
 intricate and obscure, but not lacking beauty, and 
 mder all there glows and throbs the suppressed vol- 
 canic fire of a tremendous earnestness. He has vivid 
 jonceptions of truth ; Christian life is not merely a 
 )eautiful ideal to be painted, but a great reality which 
 lis to be pressed upon men with all the resources of 
 [wit, irony, and fervid, resistless eloquence which his 
 ■rugged and intense nature has at command. Listen 
 I to one short passage on " Patience " — 
 
 " Here would I now say a word of the pleasure of 
 I patience. For every wrong, whether inflicted by the 
 tongue or the hand, when it hath encountered patience, 
 I will be finally disposed of in the same manner as any 
 weapon launched and blunted against a rock of 
 most enduring hardness. For it will fall upon the 
 spot, its labor rendered vain and unprofitable, and 
 sometimes recoiling backward will wreak its fury, by 
 a violent reaction, upon him who sent it forth. For a 
 man injureth thee on purpose that thou mayst be 
 pained ; for the gain of the injurer lieth in the pain of 
 the injured. When, therefore, thou hast overthrown 
 his gain by not being pained, he must himself needs.be 
 pained in missing his gain : and then wilt thou come 
 off not only unhurt, which even itself is sufficient for 
 
 6 
 
 
 ii , 
 
 I 
 
 •H. 
 
 
 \t 
 
08 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 thee, but beside this both pleased by the disappoint] 
 ment of thine adversary and avenged by his pain."* 
 
 So acutely and persuasively does Tertullian go oi 
 to discourse on "the profit and the pleasure o| 
 patience." 
 
 Coming to the great preachers of the third century! 
 we first notice Origen, that profound scholar anc 
 original genius, who from the early age of eighteei 
 presided over the Catechetical School of Alexandria! 
 who trir^mphantly defended the faith against CelsusI 
 who laid broad and deep foundations for Biblical 
 scholarship, and who has influenced, partly for the! 
 better and partly for the worse, so many Christianl 
 teacheru and preachers ever since. Though he was] 
 himself more teacher than preacher^ — a sort of theo- 
 logical professor, — and though his sermons are to be! 
 found worked into his voluminous and invaluable! 
 commentaries, nevertheless he was a preacher. The 
 greater part of his commentaries were, undoubtedly, 
 originally delivered in the form of homilies, and we 
 gain, therefore, in the commentaries a true insight] 
 into the method of his preaching. 
 
 He was the first great scholar in the pulpit. He I 
 held that the power of Christian prophecy, that 
 power of speaking unto edification which Paul con- 
 sidered the best of gifts, could be acquired by diligent 
 study, rightly pursued, from pure motives, and 
 crowned with the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He I 
 
 ^ish, "Masterpieces of Pulpit Eloquence," I., 31. 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 59 
 
 )oked for no Divine help in preaching apart from 
 mman preparation. He was not of the fanatical 
 Ichool who, in the words of Samuel Butler, " disclaim 
 |tudy, pretend to take things in motion, and to shoot 
 lying, which appears to be v^ry true by tlieir often 
 lissing their mark." Hio ^/^ecept and his example 
 iternly rebuke those who forget that a theme so 
 lacred as that of redemption, a work so exalted as 
 that of influencing, persuading, saving immortal 
 Kouls, demands the highest training and the most 
 thorough culture possible. His own methods of study 
 rere arduous in the extreme. His investigations of 
 the Bible occupied almost all his time, hardly suffering 
 lim to either eat or sleep. To him preaching was* 
 interpretation of the Scriptures, and his great service 
 bo the Church of all ages lies in the encouragement 
 ^hich his example aflbrds to expository preaching. 
 [is very illustrations are almost exclusively Biblical. 
 His allegorical method of interpretation and his 
 )hilosophical speculations have marred the worth of 
 lis influence. He sees throughout the Bible a three- 
 fold sense, — literal, moral, spiritual ; he declares that 
 f'in every tittle of Holy Scripture there must be a 
 ligher sense ; " and he turns history, biography, and 
 ill the* sober acts and facts of the Bible, not merely 
 pnto illustrations of great principles, but into direct 
 md intended types of spiritual truths. The Bible 
 thus becomes a riddle, and he the wisest interpreter 
 |who is readiest in guessing. Historical perspective is 
 forgotten, exegesis gives place to eisegesis, spiritual 
 
 l! 
 
 Hi 
 ^; ■ 
 
 
 r. 
 
60 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 tea 
 ect 
 
 meanings are read into Scripture, the true lessons o 
 plain history are lost, and a premium is put on even- 
 form of extravagance. 
 
 The middle ages saw astonishing developments of| 
 this allegorical system of interpretation, and Puritan 
 preaching ran riot in this field. The four streams o 
 Paradise have on this principle reappeared as the four! 
 Gospels, the two pence given by the Good SamaritanB"^* 
 have been transmuted into the two sacraments; andall^^*'* 
 things in heaven above, and in the earth beneath, and 
 in the waters under the earth have been at the mercy of 
 fanciful preachers and ignorant evangelists, who have 
 too often blindly guided Christian people into the 
 *ditch of mysticism and error. 
 
 Cyprian began lifeasateacher of rhetoric,and ended it 
 asBishopof Carthage; devoted astrong and well-trained 
 mind to the work of the Church, eagerly espoused and 
 earnestly promoted the incipient sacerdotalism which 
 culminated long afterward ill the Papacy, obtained a 
 high place as a preacher, and finally won the martyr's 
 crown in the persecution under Valerian, A.D. 258. 
 His interpretion of Scripture was loose and allegorical, 
 his teaching ethical rather than spiritual. But his 
 oratorical abilities were great. His intellect was vigor- 
 ous, his imagination was luxuriant, his temperament 
 was warm, his style was natural, correct, persuasive ; 
 his noble eloquence compelled the admiration even of 
 the heathen. Take a specimen from his exposition of 
 the Lord's Prayer : " The will of God is what Christ 
 has done and taught ; it is humility in conduct, it is 
 
 n ( 
 
 ati 
 
 ovi 
 
 Vat 
 
 (^hi 
 
 wh 
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 Wl 
 
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THE DAT. 
 
 61 
 
 steadfastness in faith, scrupulousness in our words, 
 
 rectitude in our deeds, mercy in our works, jjovemance 
 
 In our habits; it is innocence of injuriousness, and 
 
 )atience under it, preserving peace with the brethren, 
 
 loving God with all our heart, loving Him as our 
 
 iFather, and fearing Him as our God ; accounting 
 
 (Jhri«t before all things, because He accounteth nothing 
 
 [before us; clinging inseparably to His love, being 
 
 stationed with fortitude and faith at His cross ; and 
 
 when the battle comes for His name and honor, main- 
 
 I taining in words that constancy which makes confes- 
 
 I sion, in torture that confidence which joins battle, and 
 
 in death that patience which receives the crown." * 
 
 With the notable name of Athanaaius we enter 
 the theological period of early preaching. The 
 ages of fierce persecution and of heroic struggle 
 were past ; with prosperity and comparative rest the 
 hunger after the simple Word of God, which had con- 
 soled and inspired and sustained the sufiering Church, 
 was less keen ; speculations concerning the mysteries 
 of the faith became rife; controversies raged; and 
 theology often became more prominent than religion. 
 Among all the conservative theologians of those 
 troubled times who " nobly for their Master stood," 
 Athanasius was the prince, the man whose clear con- 
 ceptions, fearless zeal, indomitable perseverance, com- 
 manding personal influence, led the early orthodoxy to 
 battle and to victory. Fighting for fundamental truth, 
 
 ^ . Fish, "Masterpieces/' L, 41. 
 
 
 ■it. 
 
 ' ; 
 ' i 
 
62 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 he had little opportunity for ordinary preaching. His 
 style was neither magnificent nor tender, but plain 
 and strong. " Athanasius contra mundum" stands' 
 yet to teach us the unconquerable power of that un- 
 doubting faith in God which casts out the fear of 
 man. 
 
 In Basil the Great (329-379) we have another type, 
 that of the polished classical orator. Trained in phil- 
 osophy and rhetoric at Antioch by the eminent heathen 
 professor Libanius, and in classical literature at Athens, 
 he first devoted his talents to the reform of Eastern 
 monasticism, and finally, nine years before his early 
 death, became successor of the illustrious Eusebius as 
 Bishop of Csesarea, and for the rest of his days com- 
 bated, with mingled zeal, moderation, and discretion, 
 the Arian heresy. To the threats of the tyrannical 
 Emperor Valens he replied, " that he had nothing to 
 fear ; possessions he had none, except a few books and 
 his cloak; an exile was no exile for him, since the whole 
 earth was the Lord's ; and if tortured, his feeble body 
 would yield to the first blows and death would bring 
 him nearer to his God, for whom he longed." 
 
 His noble and persuasive eloquence was backed by 
 such a life of devotion as to give him a far wider in- 
 fluence than eloquence alone can ever secure, for, as 
 Cecil said : " The world looks at ministers out of the 
 pulpit to know what they mean in it." His homilies 
 were usually from a text in the Scripture lesson of the 
 day, a^ was the case with most of the early preachers, 
 but he sometimes abandoned this simpler exposition 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 63 
 
 ind discoursed on topics, such for example as Anger 
 md Drunkenness. It was thus that gradually the 
 whole method of preaching was changed, unity in dis- 
 course was sought, a definite theme was evolved from 
 text or passage, artless exposition gave place to logical 
 ■discussion, and the modern topical preaching came into 
 vogue. But that end was not reached in Basil nor 
 long afterward, and preaching remained generally a 
 running exposition of Scripture, with digressions and 
 exhortations, with more or less of warmth, colour, life, 
 I according to the ability and education of the preacher. 
 
 Basil, like most of the great early preachers, was an 
 \ extempore speaker, free to break the thread of dis- 
 course as the inspiration of fresh thought moved him ; 
 while methodical in arrangement and careful in 
 style, he was no reader of theological essays to a som- 
 nolent congregation, no declaimer of dead paragraphs 
 which had ceased to move his own heart, but a full, 
 free, loving man of God, who having much sympathy 
 with the dangers and sins and sorrows of his hearers, 
 and having faith in the Gospel as their remedy, spoke 
 straight out from his heart, not without premedita- 
 tion, but without any fettering dependence upon 
 manuscript or memory. 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa was a younger brother of Basil. 
 His preaching was eminently Biblical, though moulded 
 by the fanciful allegorical method of interpretation ; 
 he treated with much power the practical aspects of 
 Christian life, and exercised great influence in the 
 councils of the Church ; he displayed in his cultivated 
 
 hi 
 
 ? - 
 
 ;'\ 
 
 if 
 
' 'a; 
 aifl'.tl' ' 
 
 jliil 
 
 ill 
 
 I 
 
 i:;i 
 
 hi! 
 
 i 
 ii;! 
 
 i 
 
 /- 
 
 6^ 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 and popular eloquence the results of a Greek education, 
 both for good and evil. 
 
 Gregory Nazittnzen was an intimate friend and fel-l 
 low-student of Basil, and was by him appointed to the 
 bishopric of the disappointingly small diocese of Sosima. 
 His vigorous defence, in five celebrated discourses, of 
 the doctrine of the Trinity gained for him the title of 
 " the Theologian ; " his views made a deep impression 
 upon the creed of the Church, and his oratorical power 
 WRS not the least of the influences which secured the 
 triumph of orthoaoxy over Arianism. In his earlier life 
 his ambition soared no higher than the success of the 
 rhetorician and sophist. When consecrated to nobler 
 service, he yet showed in his type of eloquence the 
 marks of the early training. His oratory was 
 modeled on the style of Isocrates and the later Greek 
 orators, and the real nobility of the man's spirit and 
 the profundity of his thought were obscured by the 
 artificial flowers of a glittering and ambitious rhetoric. 
 
 In Basil and the two Gregories, we have the first- 
 pronounced rhetoricians, the first polished classical 
 orators of the Church. Basil was the most solid, the 
 least extravagant i'^ style of the three. But in all 
 three there is too evident an effort to be eloquent ; the 
 art shows itself, and sermons become " flowery sacred 
 orations." In the earlier period, among the less culti- 
 vated preachers, no such tendency is possible ; and in 
 the great preachers who come after, and in whom 
 ancient preaching reaches its culminating point — 
 Augustine and Chrysostom — it is controlled by loftier 
 genius and subordinated to the highest aims. 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 U> 
 
 'Hd and felJ 
 ted to the 
 of Sosiiria. 
 "Courses, of 
 '^G title of I 
 
 Jimpression | 
 ical power | 
 5cured the 
 earlier life 
 less of the 
 to nobler 
 
 uence the 
 
 tory was 
 
 ter Greek 
 
 spirit and 
 
 3d by the 
 
 I rhetoric. 
 
 the first- 
 classical 
 
 solid, the 
 
 »t in all 
 
 ient;the 
 
 y sacred 
 
 ss culti- 
 
 ' and in 
 whom 
 
 point — 
 loftier 
 
 The history of the relation of Christian preaching 
 with Greek rhetoric is interesting. At first preaching 
 was artless, free and unconventional, a familiar friendly 
 address to the bre^ren, founded on the Scriptures, im- 
 prisoned in no straight-jacket of homiletical system, 
 too intent upon the great object of edification to be 
 careful of form and manner, and eloquent because., 
 entirely unconscious of any attempt to be or to become 
 so. The early preachers scorned the " enticing words 
 of man's wisdom," and repudiated all connection with 
 those sophistical rhetoricians in whom the classical art 
 of rhetoric had degenerated into a juggling dexterity 
 with fine and glittering words. But as the Church 
 grew prosperous) and her preachers were drawn from 
 wealthier and more cultivated classes, the influence of 
 the old systems of rhetoric was bound to make itself 
 felt, the more so as many of the most distinguished 
 preachers had been not only trained in the rules of 
 Greek rhetoric, but themselves teachers of rhetoric, as 
 Basil, the Gregories, Augustine, and Chrysostom. The 
 fine literary culture of such men had this beneficial 
 effect, that it broadened their outlook, gave them the 
 wider influence over their contemporaries, and made 
 them the more philosophical theologians ; but it had 
 the evil eflect of introducing into the sermons of many 
 of them a vain display of rhetoric, which debased their 
 style while it won them temporary applause, In place 
 of the solemn and direct appeal of the earlier period 
 came, too often, sensational and theatrical declamation, 
 which sought and found its reward in the noisy 
 
 -; -j: 
 
 -i. 
 
66 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 acclamation of a pleased audience. Multitudes thronged ' 
 to hang upon the lips of an eloquent preacher, and 
 then, when his performance ended, left the church for 
 the rest of the service to the few devout who came to 
 worship and not merely to enjoy an oratorical display 
 Such vain declamation, such theatrical applause, dis- 
 ^sted and alarmed the wiser men, such as Chrysoatom, 
 who saw in them dangerous rocks on which the Chris- 
 tian cause might split, and who felt in their true hearts 
 that, in the words of a modern writer, " This whole 
 business of preaching and hearing for entertainment 
 may be told in these two words, 'deceiving and being 
 deceived.* "* 
 
 Ever since the days of the rhetorical Gregories and 
 Basil, the connection of homiletics and rhetoric has 
 been close, the rules of classical rhetoric have been 
 transferred to homiletics, the latter has been indepen- 
 dent only in its matter, and so far as form is concerned 
 preaching has been ranked as but the ecclesiastical 
 species of the genus oratory. Herein has lain a great 
 danger. It is true that the same laws of thought and 
 rules of taste must in general govern all public speak- 
 ing. But while preaching has thus much in common 
 with oratory, the points of difference are of such vast 
 importance as to mark it off by a broad line of separa- 
 tion. It differs in its material, in its object, and in its 
 means. The material, the content of preaching is 
 divinely given, " the glorious Gospel of the blessed 
 
 * Quoted in Hoppin's "Homiletics," p. 269. 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 67 
 
 iGod;" and the substitution of anything else, the 
 [substitution of those general ideas of duty, virtue, and 
 [happiness, which formed the material of oratory 
 iTecogiiized in the ancient systems of rhetoric, has 
 always been absolutely fatal to its power. The object 
 of preach iiig is to win men to Christ or establish them 
 in Him ; those whose preaching has been unduly under 
 |- the influence of rhetorical system have too frequently 
 lowered the aim of their preaching to merely human, 
 moral, social ends, and so Samson has been shorn of 
 his locks and become weak as other men. 
 
 In order to make the Divine message an energizing 
 power in the hearts and lives of his hearers, in order 
 to bring thexxi to that radical revolution which we call 
 conversion, the preacher cannot depend upon those 
 means and methods which rhetoric affords him. He 
 must not be content to please his hearers, or even to 
 excite them to a superficial emotion ; he must not seek 
 out artifices to produce a speedy eff*ect ; he must look 
 far beyond the present ; he must keep eternal issues in 
 view ; he must treat sacred things in a sacred manner; 
 he must aim at profound and abiding impressions ; he 
 must be content with nothing short of winning men to 
 the obedience of Christ ; and for this Divine work he 
 must have Divine power, and this persuasive and 
 transforming power lies not in the cogency of irrefu- 
 table argument, not in the skill of graceful composition, 
 not in the energy of human eloquence, but rather in 
 the inherent, living, life-giving might of the truth 
 which it is his high prerogative to proclaim— that Gospel 
 
 .4ft, 
 
 
68 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 which is " the power of God unto salvation to every 
 one that believeth." Unaided human eloquence may 
 excite the sensibilities, convince the judgment, and 
 move the will in merely human afiairs. But nothing 
 short of the truth of God which is in the Gospel, 
 applied by that Holy Spirit who speaks through the 
 consecrated preacher, can convert and sanctify. It is 
 a fact long and widely evident that he is not the most 
 successful in the grand work of saving souls who is 
 most powerful in argument and most winning in 
 address, but he in whom the Divine message burns 
 as a fire, and the Divine Spirit dwells as the control- 
 ling power. 
 
 Eloquence, then, is not the aim of the preacher, nor 
 yet is it the great means to produce the effect which 
 he designs. Let a man be conscious that he is trying 
 to be eloquent, and the Divine inspiration is that 
 moment lost. Excessive attention to form is condemned 
 by sound Greek rhetoric. Demosthenes was a simpler 
 and a greater orator than Isocrates. The knowledge 
 of rhetorical rules and the power to put thought per- 
 suasively, the preacher will certainly seek, not in order 
 that men may praise his skill, but that through the 
 processes of his well-trained mind the truth may pass 
 unhindered to do its work upon others. But his use of 
 rhetorical forms and obedience to rhetorical rules will 
 be mainly unconscious. A man full of his Divine 
 message and assured of his Divine commission to de- 
 liver it, conscious only of the paramount and consuming 
 desire to communicate the fire of that saving truth to 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 69 
 
 I. 
 
 ^ every 
 lence may 
 pent, and 
 [fc nothing 
 Gospel, 
 •ough the 
 ty It is 
 
 Jfche most 
 3 who is 
 ning in 
 re burns 
 control- 
 ler, nor 
 
 fc which 
 
 3 trying 
 
 is that 
 
 iemned 
 
 "mpJer 
 
 wiedge 
 
 it per- 
 order 
 
 rh the 
 
 rpsLaa 
 
 use of 
 
 J wiJl 
 
 ivine 
 
 3de- 
 
 ning 
 
 hto 
 
 the hearts of others, will by an inner and unconscious 
 necessity bend all the energy of his nature, all the 
 gifts of his culture, his rhetorial accomplishments 
 with the rest, to serve his one grand purpose of per- 
 suasion and instruction, will be elevated by a Divine 
 inspiration into the lofty position of a fellow-laborer 
 with God, and will see men pricked to the hearti 
 believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, and walking in the 
 light^ — not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit 
 of the Lord. 
 
 From the standpoint of a true conception of the 
 work of preaching, how pitiful the evident and con- 
 scious aim at eloquence, grandiloquence, or show ! 
 Nothing is more contemptible than the effort to use a 
 style too lofty for one's ability. A pulpit orator once 
 cried in his sermon : " Could I place one foot upon the 
 sea, and the other upon the Georgiumsidus, dip my 
 tongue into the livid lightnings, and throw my voice 
 into the bellowing thunder, I would wake the world 
 with the command, ' Repent, turn to God, and seek sal- 
 vation.' " A young preacher attempted to follow him 
 in this flight, and said : " Could I place one foot on the 
 sea, and the other on — ahem — on the Georgiumsidus — 
 ahem, ahem — I'd howl round this little world !" 
 
 This is the style which Wesley characterized as 
 " grasping at the stars and sticking in the mud." 
 
 Every man with any individuality will make his 
 own style, such a style as is most suitable to his nature 
 and his education; but even where high ilights of 
 oratory are not above one's capacity, he is net doing 
 
 ! ■ ' ; 
 
 
 tv..;WM 
 
 I- !' 
 
 • ; 1i 
 
.- 
 
 70 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 the most valuable work of the pulpit who in any way 
 makes himself and his own rhetoric more prominent 
 than the truth of God. The pulpit often loses much of 
 its true heart power with the people by a too formal, 
 lofty, and declamatory style. The preacher announces 
 his text, and then mounts into the empyrean of high 
 swelling words and unnatural tones, and is lost to the 
 sympathy of his congregation, who must feel concern- 
 ing him and his performance much as the puzzled 
 Israelites did when they scanned the mountain side in 
 vain for trace of their vanished leader, and finally ex- 
 claimed, " As for this Moses, we wot not what is become 
 of him." Tlie homily was originally not an oration 
 but a conversation. And the tone and style of elevated 
 and animated conversation should be its basis still, 
 from which it may rise on proper occasion and to 
 which it may return, so securing variety, and above 
 all maintaining the current of sympathy between 
 speaker and hearers unbroken. A man who speaks 
 thus simply and directly to his people, not over them, 
 nor merely at them, but directly to them, may not win 
 the reputation of a great preacher, but he will reach 
 the hearts of the people, and the Divine truth thus 
 lodged there will do its own work. 
 
 It was the verdict of President Finney that " noth- 
 ing is more calculated to make a sinner feel that reli- 
 gion is some mysterious thing that he cannot 
 understand, than the mouthing, formal, lofty style of 
 speaking so general in the pulpit." It is the advice of 
 Henry Ward Beecher: " Never be grandiloquent when 
 
THE DAT. 
 
 71 
 
 you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't 
 whip with a switch tliat ha« the leaves on, if you want 
 to tingle." It was dear old George Herbert who once 
 preached a very learned sermon to gratify the taste of 
 certain persons in his congregation, but remarked at 
 the close : " I shall not often preach so learnedly, but 
 shall henceforth strive to save your souls." It was the 
 prayer of a bishop of olden times: "Lord send me 
 learning enough, that I may preach plain enough." 
 Obscurity is not profundity, and pretentious frippery 
 of rhetoric is no proof of learning. Emerson says that 
 the plain statement of a truth is the hardest thing in 
 oratory. The greatest preachers, such as Augustine, 
 Chrysostom, Luther, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Beecher, 
 have spoken the language not of the schools but of the 
 people, and have so won the people's hearts. Many a 
 good man whose early sermons were stilted and rhetori- 
 cal, as he has grown older in the work and has felt the 
 woes of human life and the solemnity of his sacred 
 work of ministering the great remedy to those woes, 
 has grown simpler, and more natural, and more direct. 
 He who speaks to the dying will try to make his 
 message understood. 
 
 I must pass, with but bare mention, the distin- 
 guished names of Hilary, Ambrose, and the learned 
 Jerome, and hasten to notice the two greatest names 
 of the Western and Eastern Church respectively — 
 Augustine and Chrysostom. 
 
 Augustine (354-430),occupies a more prominent posi- 
 tion and has exerted a wider influence in the Christian 
 
 Hi- 
 
 1 
 
 UiU 
 
72 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Church than any other man since the Apostle Paul. He 
 laid foundations on which other men have built. The 
 teachings of the Reformation were but a renewal and 
 development of his doctrines of grace. And while our 
 theology repudiates many of the details of his system, 
 yet it is thoroughly in sympathy with his profound 
 views of sin and grace. 
 
 Augustine's enormous influence on the Christian 
 thought of all subsequent times is due partly to his 
 natural powers of clear reasoning and of lively 
 imagination, but very largely to his remarkable 
 experimental knowledge both of sin and grace. 
 Educated a Christian by his mother, plunging for a 
 time into sensual excesses, seeking in heresy and 
 philosophy for rest of soul, and at last, under the 
 influence of Ambrose and St. Paul, brought after a 
 desperate struggle to full and final abandonment of 
 sin and acceptance of Christ, he had lived through, as 
 few others ever have, all phases of the conflict between 
 the flesh and the spirit, and had come to know the 
 Gospel in all its depths and heights. 
 
 One of the greatest books in all Christian literature 
 is the *• Confessions "of Augustine, with its full, frank, 
 startling record of his passage from death unto life. 
 
 There has been no great leader of the Christian 
 Church, whose influence has been deep, pervasive, 
 permanent, without wide and generous culture. This 
 is true from Paul to Wesley. This is notably true of 
 Augustine. His education was of the best; in classical 
 literature he was thoroughly versed ; classical beauty 
 
 of f 01 
 philosoj 
 
 though 
 sought I 
 all the 
 active 
 This 
 his sul 
 to his 
 while ; 
 the re 
 that 1 
 charac 
 his W8 
 honesi^ 
 has al 
 highef 
 sermo 
 duced 
 heU\ 
 was \ 
 Th 
 educ 
 conv 
 Reg] 
 and 
 the 
 mus 
 him 
 
! f 
 
 THE DAY. 
 
 73 
 
 of form had moulded his methods of expression ; the 
 philosophy of Plato and of Cicero had guided his 
 thought ; in Neoplatonism and in Manichaeism he had 
 sought light ; he had been a teacher of rhetoric ; with 
 all the currents and tendencies of the intellectual and 
 active life of the world he was thoroughly familiar. 
 This worldly culture gave him perfect confidence in 
 his subsequent contact with the world. He could say 
 to his opponents, "your search for peace is in vain 
 while you seek it away from God," for he had sounded 
 the resources of the world to their depths, and knew 
 that no peace lay there. His spotless Christian 
 character gave edge to his arguments and weight to 
 his warnings. " Cato's saying that * an orator is an 
 honest man who understands how to speak,' Augustine 
 has always before his eye, and he fulfils it in the 
 highest degree. His manner of life supported his 
 sermons, and was a main reason why the latter pro- 
 duced so deep an impression. What he taught, that 
 he lived, and what he lived, that he taught, and herein 
 was the pow6r of his preaching."* 
 
 The story of Augustine's life — boyhood in Tagaste, 
 education in Carthage, teaching in Rome and Milan, 
 conversion in Milan, long episcopal life at Hippo 
 Regius, controversies with Manichaeism, Donatism, 
 and Pelagianism, peaceful death at last in Hippo while 
 the Vandal army thundered at the gates — all this I 
 must assume as familiar, and in hurried lines sketch 
 him as a preacher. 
 
 *Br6inel, *<Homiletische Charakter bilder, I., 41. 
 
 ;r 
 
 
74 
 
 WITNESSES rOR CHRIST. 
 
 He was n, thoroughly Biblicalt that is to say, exposi- 
 tory preacher. He commented upon the Scripture 
 lesson for the day. He expounded large portions of 
 Scripture, viz., the Gospels, the Pauline and Johannine 
 Epistles, James, the Psalms. Sometimes he preached 
 on a single verse. Sometimes he preached with no 
 text at all. Generally he grasps the thought strongly 
 and expounds it well. But sometimes his slight know- 
 ledge of Hellenistic Greek and his ignorance of Hebrew 
 betray him into error. His preaching must have made 
 the Bible a very familiar book to his congregation. 
 
 He was an extempore preacher. Preaching often 
 twice a day and sometimes five times a day, and that 
 for days in succession, he had no time to compose, 
 memorize, recite. He was ever busy with the Bible, 
 drinking of the Divine truth, full of thought. His 
 training in rhetoric left him at no loss in the expres- 
 sion of thought. And so, having a message to deliver, 
 in the name and fear of God he spoke out from a full 
 mind and heart what constant study and prayer and 
 premeditation had supplied. Such a man' as Augustine 
 was above the vain self-consciousness which shivers 
 before an audience lest every word be not in place and 
 every sentence neatly turned, which seems "more 
 anxious to save sermons than to save souls," and which 
 therefore sadly lessens the preacher's time for wide 
 and deep study by tying him down to a constant 
 drudgery of pen and ink and memory. 
 
 The profound theologian was the siw^ple preacher. 
 His sermons are not rigid logical treatises, nor yet are 
 
,<f.> 
 
 THE DAY. 
 
 75 
 
 they rhetorical orations. He adopted a simple conver- 
 sational style of address as that to which people will 
 most readily listen, and declared, " I would rather that 
 the grammarians found fault than that the people 
 should misunderstand me." He would probably have 
 been out of sympathy with the homiletical principles 
 and practices of that college of which the eloquent 
 Arthur Mursell gives the following reminiscence : — 
 
 " I remember when at college hearing a simple- 
 minded student deliver a sermon from the lecture-desk, 
 just as he would have declaimed it in a village chapel. 
 He called the senior student his fellow-sinner, and 
 exhorted the classical tutor to flee from the wrath to 
 come. But he never did it again. The whole college 
 sat upon him with the weight of its theology, philo- 
 sophy, geometry, and all the rest of it. They flattened 
 him out under blackboards, and squeezed him into 
 respectable deathliness between the leaves of concord- 
 ances. The outraged * feliow-sinner ' was up in arms, 
 and after reminding him that he was not in a ranter's 
 Bethel, explained to him the exact difference between 
 the aoristic perfect and the paulo pout futurum. The 
 poor fellow's sermon was henceforth correct enough. 
 He bore in mind that he had an audience of critics, 
 and said no more about sin and sinners. He crushed 
 the Chrjst out of it. He shut up all the lights and 
 windows. He built a lighthouse with no lantern. 
 Instead of talking about regeneration and being born 
 again, he broke his jaws about the ' recuperative forces 
 of our latent moral manhood ' — and the critics covered 
 him with the kudos of their praise." 
 
 Augustine's illustrations were mainly historical. 
 Figures of speech are in him not frequent and are not 
 
 •I 
 
 i^ 
 
76 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHllIST. 
 
 brilliant. The principles which guided him and which 
 he recointnendH to others we find in his treatise, " De 
 Doctrina Christiana" H<} places truth first; form is 
 valuable as it helps to the triumph of the truth. There 
 is neither in his precept nor in his example any ot ^hat 
 slavish sameness in methods of preaching, that stiflfness 
 and formality of introduction, division, peroration 
 which fetter too n\^i\y modern preachers and rob them 
 of the power of naturalness and variety. , Above all 
 he warns against the use of words for their own sake, 
 that elaborate finery of style which teaches nothing. 
 " What is the use," he says, " of a golden key which 
 can open nothing ? " He would have applauded Faust's 
 question to Wagner : " If you are in earr t what to 
 say, why need j'^ou hunt after words ? " lie approves 
 of Cicero's rule that a good speaker must keep these 
 three things in view — to instruct, to please, to persuade. 
 " To instruct," Augustine says, " is necessary ; to please 
 is sweet ; to persuade, that is victory." And Augustine 
 was not indifferent to anything which would contribute 
 to that victory. He has left some remarks on the 
 management of the voice in public speech. 
 
 While his sermons are plain, and sometimes even 
 suffer for lack of a more careful and graceful form, yet 
 they have a life and fascination of their own ; the pas- 
 sionate nature, which in youth plunged him into some 
 excesses, lends tire and force to his earnest preaching ; 
 he often turns his address into a dialogue, sets before 
 him, by force of his imagination, apostles, heretics, or 
 heathen, and carries on a lively conversation with 
 
THE DAWN, 
 
 77 
 
 them. His impressible hearers often interrupted him, 
 beat upon their breasts in token of penitence, cried 
 out in response to his appeals. Augustine replied to 
 their applause: " My words please you, but I seek for 
 works ; it is your improvement that I desire, not your 
 praise." By such scenes the connection was main- 
 tained between speaker and hearer. Preaching was 
 not an oration so much as a conversation. 
 
 Above all else Augustine is an evangelical preacher 
 He thunders against sin, lays bare ther secret of men's 
 lives and hearts, controverts false doctrine, magnifies 
 the grace of God, glories in the power which saved 
 him, and can save the worst, proclaims conversion, 
 faith, and love to God, encourages in the conflict be- 
 tween flesh and spirit, and inculcates reverence for* 
 the Word of God. The great message of Augustine is 
 that man is not suflUcient unto himself ; that help 
 must come from without and from above ; that help 
 has come ; and that in Christ is our life. This good 
 seed lived to bear good fruit through all the ages, and 
 especially to produce Protestantism. Undue reverence 
 for Church authority, the doctrines of unconditional 
 predestination and irresistible grace — these have borne 
 fruit not so valuable. But, separating tares from 
 wheat, we may well devoutly thank God for the 
 holy life and mighty work of Augustine. 
 
 If Augustine was the great theologian, Chrysostom 
 was the great popular preacher of the early ages. 
 Chrysostom had not passed through such a spiritual 
 struggle as Augustine ; he had more calmly accepted 
 
 ■'As . 
 
 i.u 
 

 
 H% 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 the Christian life as the true and higher life ; he has 
 no doubt as to the Divine authority of the Holy 
 Scriptures and the Gospel, but he does not come to 
 these sources of consjlation with such absolute des- 
 pair of all other comfort as Augustine ; consequently 
 there is not in Chrysostom that profound view of sin 
 and grace, of the terrible struggle of flesh and spirit, 
 of the complete change of the whole man by Divine 
 power in conversion, which is the characteristic of 
 Augustine. Rls teaching on the doctrines of grace 
 is indefinite and confused. Sometimes he eloquently 
 extols that free mercy of God through which men 
 become righteous without good works, and sometimes 
 he seems to regard good works as the ground of our 
 "acceptance ; in short he has no clear-cut system of 
 truths, and he is not the consecutive, or profound 
 thinker, but the man of practical life and activity. 
 We love him none the less that we do not feel in his 
 preaching the iron grip of a system upon us, but the 
 tender contact with us of a warm, broad, many-sided 
 soul. He is pre-eminently a preacher. Dowered with 
 the highest oratorical powers, intellect, imagination, 
 wit, and fiery energy, accomplished in all rhetorical 
 arts, influenced in his style by classical models, wide 
 in the range of his thought and preaching, gloriously 
 bold in his denunciation of rampant sin in cottage and 
 at court, unrivalled as an expositor of Scripture, sway- 
 ing the populace of Constentinople as the summer 
 wind ripples the fields of grain, all his splendid 
 powers kindled by the intensity of his loving desire to 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 79 
 
 win souls to the love and life of God — John of the 
 Golden Mouth stands forth to-day as still the noblest 
 of Christian preachers and the best of models for us 
 all. 
 
 Born of wealthy parents, he received a distinguished 
 education. From his earliest years he was made extra- 
 ordinarily familiar with the Bible ; its thoughts and 
 its very words became incorporated into his mental 
 life, and re-appeared richly in his sermons. Not alone 
 in Biblical but in all secular knowledge too he was 
 carefully instructed. The illustrious pagan, Libanius, 
 was his professor in rhetoric, and fondly hoped that 
 this scholar would become his successor, and owed the 
 Christians a grudge for stealing him away. . 
 
 Chrysostom became a lawyer ; but the profession of 
 the law, whatever it may be now, in those days offered 
 few attractions to the ingenuous and truth-loving 
 spirit of Chrysostom ; and when he gave up this pro- 
 fession in his twenty-fourth year, and was baptized, 
 he carried with him into his monastic retirement a 
 burning hate of the deceit and insincerity of his work 
 as a lawyer. From the obscurity of a monastery he 
 was called to preach in Antioch, and finally to preside 
 as bishop over the destinies of the Church in Constan- 
 tinople. Into the episcopal palace, he carried the 
 austerities of the monastery ; he made enemies of the 
 clergy by his rebuke and exposure of their sins ; he 
 did not condescend to conciliate the court ; banished 
 by the concurrent verdict of chafed and jealous clergy 
 and the incensed court, he was immediately recalled to 
 
 • 1 ?»JC« 
 
80 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 'I! 
 I? 
 
 appease the populace, who raged over the loss of their 
 idolized preacher, once more to be exiled, and to die at 
 last in a distant monastery of Pontus. Let those who 
 love heroic scenes and exciting incidents read the life 
 of Chrysostom. 
 
 He lived in his preaching. Preaching was no by- 
 play with him, but the highest expression of his intense 
 individuality, the bursting of his life into flower. The 
 whole energies of a mighty soul were on fire with one 
 great work and one great theme. He lived for his 
 people, he lived in his preaching. It is not wide range 
 of knowledge and of interest so much as the absorption 
 of one's whole nature in one supreme work which 
 makes a man a power. He preached a very practical 
 Gospel for the heart and for society. He was not con- 
 tent to rule the Church and suffer the Devil to rule the 
 court. He aimed at the highest welfare of the whole 
 community. Like another John the Baptist, he thun- 
 dered against wickedness in high places as well as low, 
 even though it was too evident that the Empress 
 Eudoxia, against whom he inveighed, might, like 
 another Herodias, seek the head of this second John- 
 He is one of the noblest examples of the patriotic or 
 political preacher. 
 
 His conception of the preacher's (priest's) office, as 
 we find it in his six books Uepi 'Upuavvr]^, was very ex- 
 alted, demanding almost angelic devotion and perfec- 
 tion in him who fills it. And after such an ideal he 
 most faithfully struggled, loving his people, and 
 earnestly endeavoring to win them to Christ and 
 develop them in Christian character. 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 ai 
 
 Like Augustine, he was eminently Biblical in his 
 preaching. He had an unwavering confidence in God's 
 Word, and in every storm sought to lead his troubled 
 people to rest their hopes calmly upon that rock which 
 could not be removed. Exegesis, homiletically applied, 
 was the staple of his preaching. During the course of 
 his ministry he is said to have commented on all the 
 books of the Bible. 
 
 He exhorts his people to read the Bible. He occa- 
 sio)ially announces his text the week before, and urges 
 his people to study it beforehand. He sometimes 
 postpones the conclusion of his sermon until the next 
 service, in order to arouse curiosity and interest. He 
 uses every expedient to excite his people to personal 
 Bible study. 
 
 The immensely wide biblical range of his exposi- 
 tions, the intelligent and prudent method of his 
 interpretation, the grammatico-historical method of 
 Antioch rather than the allegorical method of Alexan- 
 dria, and the rich vein of good sense, moderation, sound 
 judgment, and Christian experience running through 
 all, render the numerous homilies of Chrysostom 
 which remain the rfiost valuable of the patristic 
 sermons. 
 
 He often preached a series of sermons on the same 
 subject, as, for instance, eight against the Jews, four 
 on Dives and Lazarus, and seven on the Apostle Paul. 
 He kept up the interest in these successive sermons, 
 inasmuch as he was entirely unfettered by logical 
 connections, wandering at his own will from topic to 
 
 ■ \ 
 
 t'KV. ' 
 
8^ 
 
 WITNESSES POtl CHRIST. 
 
 topic, stopping frequently to work up a scriptural 
 story by the way. In the course of his expositions he 
 paints innumerable pictures of scenes from the Bible, 
 with a realistic power of which we are reminded by 
 the biblical illustrations of D. L. Moody. His intro- 
 ductions are somewhat lengthy. He generally begins 
 with some subject of common life, which arrests the 
 attention of his congregation, and leads up to the 
 spiritual truth which he wishes to develop and enforce. 
 There is no definite theme deduced from a text, there 
 are no logical divisions. He gives free familiar exposi- 
 tion of passages. He takes his people into his confi* 
 dence. He talks to them as to his children. He 
 sometimes breaks off in the midst with some personal 
 remark. There is none of the stiff and formal sermon- 
 izing which has come to be considered alone worthy of 
 the dignity of the pulpit. His connection with his 
 audience is close and sympathetic. With all his 
 solemn earnestness he cannot restrain the applause 
 which will break forth. There is a many-colored 
 variety in his preaching. He is not only familiar, 
 kind, and tender as a father with his people, but he is 
 bold and outspoken in his scathing rebuke of all sin, 
 especially of the too prevalent sin of unchastity. He 
 preaches not merely against sin in general but against 
 sins in particular. He preaches to his own people 
 and to his own times. 
 
 His 8tyle is somewhat ornate and luxuriant, and 
 yet vigorous, direct, and vehement. With Demos- 
 thenic force, there is pathetic tenderness. He con- 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 ! ,' 
 
 vinces, subdues, and wins. Take as a specimen this 
 passage from one of the sermons on Lazarus, in which 
 Chrysostom .strives to correct excessive grief at the 
 death of friends : " If a man has a statue decayed by 
 rust and age, and mutilated in many of its parts, he 
 breaks it up and casts it into a furnace, and after the 
 melting he receives it again in a more beautiful form- 
 As then, the dissolving in the furnace was not a 
 destruction but a renewing of the statue, so the death 
 of our bodies is not a destrwction but a renovation. 
 When, therefore, you see as in a furnace our flesh 
 flowing away to corruption, dwell not on that sight, 
 but wait for the re-caoting.. And be not satisfied with 
 the extent of this illustration, but advance in your 
 thoughts to a still higher point ; for the statuary, 
 casting into the furnace a brazen image, does not 
 furnish in its place a golden and undecaying statue, 
 but again makes a brazen one. God does not thus ; 
 but casting in a mortal body formed of clay, He 
 returns to you a golden and immortal statue ; for the 
 earth, receiving a corruptible and decaying body, gives 
 back the same, incorruptible and undecaying. Look 
 not, therefore, on the corpse lying with closed eyes 
 and speechless lips, but on the man that is risen, that 
 has received glory unspeakable and amazing, and 
 direct your thoughts from the present sight to the 
 future hope."* 
 
 There is an unequalled amalgamation in Chrysos- 
 
 Fish, " Masterpieces," I., 85. 
 
84 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 tom's work of the rhetorical and the homiletical, of 
 the classic form with the Christian spirit. He 
 preaches Christ, and his aim is always thoroughly 
 Christian; yet through all his preaching there streams 
 the mellow-light of his fine classical training. In 
 common with all the fathers of the Christian pulpit, 
 he displays a freedom of method which is in startling 
 contrast with the rigid system by which too otten 
 now the Word of God is bound, and he reads to us the 
 lesson that every preacher must master principles of 
 homiletics and rules of rhetoric, and not suffer them 
 to master him, and must let all rules and methods go 
 rather than fail to lay hold of his people, instruct them 
 in Divine truth, and save their souls from death. I 
 am reminded here of a masterl}" address by Dr. Rigg, 
 of England, to the students of Drew Theological 
 Seminary, twelve years ago. Among other valuable 
 suggestions there was this : How shall our young 
 men be so trained in all scholarship as not to lose, 
 what is of primary importance, the old Methodist 
 power in preaching ? The question is practical, for in 
 the transition from happy instinct to well-trained 
 consciousness there comes a period of bad self-con- 
 sciousness. The answer to the question is this : Keep 
 up the power of speaking by speaking. And when 
 speaking, forget college and its proprieties, and think 
 only of the present effort. Study will have an 
 unconscious effect on your speaking. People don't 
 think so much after all about the dressing up. If 
 you are critical upon yourself, then people will be 
 
 r , 
 
THE DAY. 
 
 85 
 
 critical upon you, too. Get them to remember what 
 and not how you spoke ! 
 
 Chrysostoin's freedom of method is to be seen also 
 in his preparation foV the pulpit. He recommends 
 great diligence in the preparation of sermons. He 
 uses the same introductions, and even the same ser- 
 mons, more than once. All this indicates careful 
 preparation, and probably, at least, occasional and 
 partial writing of his sermons. At the same time 
 the frequency of his preaching would render full 
 writing usually impossible, while the fire and force 
 and familiarity of his addresses indicate that he did 
 not recite from memory, but actually composed in the 
 pulpit. He sometimes tells his congregation that he 
 will not speak upon the subject on which he had 
 proposed, but upon something else. It is evident that 
 while a most careful student he was not a bookworm ; 
 and that while he prepared diligently for public 
 speech, he was not bound to manuscript or memory, 
 but stood as a great brother-man before his people, to 
 speak to them what the influences of the occasion 
 and the promptings of his own loving heart and those 
 wondrous gleams of inspiration which come from 
 God's good Spirit, as well as what his previous medi- 
 tations gave him. His style is that of a higher con- 
 versation, in which his audience respond, if not with 
 voice, at least with attentive manner and with kind- 
 ling eye, and so support and stimulate the speaker, 
 and help to give to his address the incomparable 
 charm of reality and directness. All this is lost in 
 
 
86 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 < 
 
 reading from a manuscript, and most of it in reciting 
 from memory. 
 
 Reading sermons is, according to Sydney Smith, " a 
 practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of 
 eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the 
 heart that mankind can be profitably affected. What 
 can be more ludicrous than an orator delivering stale 
 indignation and fervor of a week old ; turning over 
 whole pages of violent passion, written out in fair 
 text ; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which 
 he is hurried by the ardor of his mind ; and so 
 affected at a preconcerted line and page, that he is^ 
 unable to proceed any further ? The great object 
 of modern sermons is to hazard nothing ; their char- 
 acteristic is decent debility ; which alike guards their 
 authors from hideous errors, and precludes them from 
 striking beauties." * 
 
 Let a man who is trained to think quickly and 
 correctly, and to express himself in nervous and 
 idiomatic language, in whom the fuel of Biblical 
 thought, fact, illustration is set on fire by the flame of 
 love, stand forth boldly in his Master's name and 
 speak right on, as he has utterance given him, and his 
 power will be as that of an inspired prophet of the 
 Lord. 
 
 Hoppin, " HomileticB," p. 483. 
 
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WLitntsiits tot: Cbrist 
 
 
 
 LECTURE III.-DARKNESS AGAIN 
 
LECTURE TII.-DAIIKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 We have seen the origin of Christian preaching in 
 the artless warm-hearted exhortation following upon 
 the reading of the Scriptures in the synagogue, the 
 upper room, the humble Christian sanctuary. We 
 have watched its growth under the influence of phil- 
 osophic attack, defence, and exposition, under the 
 influence of theological controversy, under the influ- 
 ence of classical rhetoric. We have witnessed the har- 
 monious blending of all elements of strength and 
 beauty, thorough Biblical interpretation, philosophic 
 insight into human nature, graceful classical fqrm, 
 Christian sincerity, simplicity, and directness of aim, 
 all sanctified by the " the blessed unction from al:)ove," 
 in the magnificent sermons of Chrysostom. Having 
 reached the summit of the hill in his preaching, we now 
 descend into the arid plains and dark valleys of the 
 Middle Ages. Day fades into twilight and twilight 
 darkens into a second night. 
 
 The simplicity and power of the early preaching were 
 lost under the combined influences of rhetoric and 
 ritualism. The subtle influence of the old Greek 
 
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 rhetoric gradually extinguished the living fire of 
 preaching, and left it a spiritually dead display of 
 oratory. Preaching ceased to be the voice of God 
 through His prophets, and became more and more a 
 popular performance. But as a pleasing performance 
 preaching could not hold its own with the more gorge- 
 ous performance of an elaborate, and symbolic, and 
 sacrificial ritual. Too early the tendency was mani- 
 fested to revert to the old Judaism and the old 
 Paganism, to regard Christ's ministers as priests in a 
 sense not common to all believers, to consider the 
 Lord's Supper as a sacrifice, to call the table on which 
 the sacred emblems stood an altar, and so to make the 
 whole public service more and" more approximate that 
 of a heathen temple. Grasping at the shadows of 
 symbolism the Church lost the substance of the truth* 
 This whole tendency was fatal to preaching. Interest 
 centered in the beautiful ceremonial, the robes, the 
 incense, the genuflections, the hocus poena of the mass- 
 
 The most of the clergy became too much occupied in 
 attendance upon the altar to give attention to the 
 study and exposition of the Word. Throughout the 
 Middle Ages the liturgical, symbolical, sacerdotal 
 elements preponderated over the homiletical in the 
 service of the Church. The preacher was pushed out 
 by the priest. . . 
 
 We have before noticed how preaching, originally 
 free to all members of the Church, came to be confined 
 to the clergy. Now it came to be confined to the 
 bishops. This consummation was not reaqhed withoiit 
 
^ 
 
 DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 91 
 
 a straggle between the presbyters and the bishops. 
 But the bishops succeeded in usurping this prerogative. 
 The bishops, however, in their turn were so burdened 
 with the government of the Chui 3h and the manage- 
 ment of general affairs, that they but rarely had leisure 
 for study. Milman tells the story of this sad change 
 in these words : " Sacerdotal Christianity, by ascend- 
 ing a throne higher than all throiies of earthly 
 sovereigns, by the power, the wealth, the magnificence 
 of the higher ecclesiastics, had withdrawn the influence 
 of the clergy from its natural and peculiar office — even 
 with the lower orders of the priesthood, that which in 
 a certain degree separated them from the people, set 
 them apart from the sympathies of the people. The 
 Church might still seem to preax^h to all, but it 
 preached in a tone of lofty condescension ; it dictated 
 rather than persuaded ; but in general actual preaching 
 had fallen into disuse ; it was in theory the special 
 privileg3 of the bishops, and the bishops were but few 
 who had either the gift, the inclination, or the leisure 
 from their secular, judicial, or warlike occupations to 
 preach even in their cathedral cities ; in the rest of 
 their dioceses their presence was but occasional ; a 
 progress or visitation of pomp and form, rather than 
 of popular instrustion. The only general teaching of 
 the people was the ritual."* 
 
 A religion of the altar is not the pure religion of 
 Him who "once (for all) in the end of the world hath 
 
 *MUman, "Latin ChriBtianity." V., 230. 
 
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92 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
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 appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself," 
 who "by one offering hath perfected forever them that 
 are sanctified," who gave to His apostle the commission, 
 '•feed my sheep," who prayed for His disciples to His 
 Father, "sanctify them through Thy truth," and who 
 established a kingdom within men of "righteousness, 
 and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Let the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual elements of religion be displaced 
 by the superstitious veneration of the host and the 
 sensuous enjoyment of a solemn and magnificent 
 pageant, let learned and earnest preachers give way to 
 ignorant and indolent priests, let the best talent and 
 the truest piety of the Church be buried to no purpose 
 in the gloomy asceticism of the monastery, and you 
 have then the conditions which produce the Dark 
 Ages. A Church which cannot preach cannot pre- 
 vail. Preaching of the Gospel is the main instru- 
 mentality by which God has ordained the salvation 
 of men. 
 
 From the sixth century to the sixteenth the voice of 
 the preacher was rarely heard in the Church, and when 
 it was heard it was rarely " understanded of the peo- 
 ple," for it very generally spoke in Latin. What 
 preaching there was during these centuries was seldom 
 preaching of the Gospel, but commonly panegyrics of 
 the saints and of the Virgin on the great feast and fast 
 days, whose object was to excite love of the Virgin 
 and reverence for pictures and images of the saints. 
 Sometimes the voice of the preacher rang out to sum- 
 mon the people to war and bloodshed, to crusades 
 
DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 93 
 
 against erring brethren, such as the Albigenses, or 
 against warring infidels such as the Saracens. 
 
 A characteristic product of the Middle Ages were the 
 " po8til8 " (post ilia,, 8cil. verba scripturae sanctae), 
 brief discourses prepared by authority, and read as a 
 sort of postscript to the ceremonies of the mass, which 
 relieved preachers of all study of the Bible and com- 
 position of sermons. Thus the dead externalism of 
 Church service was recognized and fixed. 
 
 Yet some stars shone in the darkness of that long 
 night, and from the twelfth century onward gleams of 
 dawning day began to brighten the horizon. 
 
 Charlemagne endeavored to revive preaching ; 
 occasionally a Church Council decreed that the Scrip- 
 tures should be expounded to the people in their own 
 tongue ; good and great men, such as the venerable 
 Bede, the missionary Boniface, the mild Peter Damiani, 
 the theologian Anselm, kept alive the memory of the 
 almost lost art of preaching. In the eleventh century 
 the fiery zeal, the direct force, the passionate eloquence 
 of Peter the Hermit, stirred all Europe to the frenzy 
 of the first crusade, and demonstrated once more the 
 marvellous powers of that enthusiasm which is conse- 
 crated to a great puipose, and of that public speaking 
 which is directed to the popular heart. 
 
 The great preacher of the Middle Ages was the 
 saintly Bernard of Clairvaux(1091-1153). Through- 
 out his life he was of weak and sickly frame, but his 
 energy and influence were enormous, and made them- 
 selves felt all the way out from his monastery chapel 
 
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 94 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 through every class of society up to Pope and Emperor ; 
 he stood easily foremost among all the great figure.? of 
 his time as mediator and arbiter between the rival 
 claimants and clashing interests of a tumultuous age ; 
 and he has left us a life-story throbbing with the 
 pulsations of a great and* noble heart full of the 
 Gospel of God's grace. Not without reason has he 
 been called "the last of the Fathers," or "the thirteenth 
 Apostle." 
 
 Bernard's father was a pious, brave, and warlike 
 baron of Burgundy ; his mother, devout, charitable, 
 loving. His boyhood passed in the stirring times of 
 the first Crusade, when enthusiasm for the Holy 
 Sepulchre had set fire to the hearts of all ranks, when 
 barons and serfs in their martial panoply, and poor, 
 foolish fanatics in their rude waggons alike started in 
 the "way of God" to recover Jerusalem; an age when 
 the choice was between the horrid din of arms, the 
 license of the camp, the madness of the fatal field, on 
 the one hand, and on the other the quiet seclusion of 
 the monastery, hidden deep in the woods, with its 
 pealing bells, its constant services, its hospitable 
 welcome to the traveller, its simple, humble, monoto- 
 nous, though calm and peaceful life. While we do 
 not forget the gross abuses of the monastic system, yet 
 we cannot wonder that such a life had m such times 
 a wondrous fascination for the noblest spirits. 
 
 Too weak for knighthood and its gallant toils, 
 Bernard was by his mother consecrated and led to a 
 life of prayer. The attractions of philosophy, as 
 
DARKNESS AQAIK. 
 
 95 
 
 taught by William of Champeaux and the brilliant 
 Abelard, well nigh seduced him from the chosen path; 
 but after an agony of doubt he knelt one day in a 
 wayside church, and wept and prayed, and once for 
 all yielded himself to God and to what he believed the 
 highest Christian life. Not content to enter alone 
 upon his new career he exerted his marvellous and 
 almost irresistible personal influence over relatives and 
 friends, and with such success tliat he cast the spell 
 over about thirty, who entered with him the sternest 
 and most forbidding of monasteries, that of Citeaux. 
 So remarkable was his personal influence that mothers 
 hid their sons, wives their husbands, and friends their 
 friends, lest they should forsake all and follow him to 
 the monastery. 
 
 One meal a day ; never meat, flsh, or eggs, rarely 
 milk ; hard work in the ^elds ; austere services in the 
 chapel — such was the rule of Stephen Harding, the 
 Abbott of Citeaux, worthy of St. Benedict himself. 
 But this severity was not severe enough for Ber- 
 nard, who laid many an extra burden upon his frail 
 flesh. When still but a youth of four and twenty, 
 Bernard headed a fresh community of monks, who, 
 departing from Citeaux, went north and founded a new 
 jaonastery in a deep, wild, and darkly wooded valley. 
 This valley was called the Valley of Wormwood, and 
 the monastt,ry was the never to be forgotten Abbey 
 of Clairvaux. 
 
 The original abbey was the rudest and plainest of 
 wooden buildings. The monks' beds were wooden 
 
 '•■ ' K ' 
 
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 dC) 
 
 WITNESSES fOR CHRIST. 
 
 bins, strewn with chaff and leaves. The food in sum> 
 mer was leaves and grain, in winter beech-nuts and 
 roots. Such bitter austerities raised the monks tc> 
 mutiny, which it required all Bernard's authority to 
 quell, and reduced Bernard himself to such a critical 
 state of health that nothing but the interference of 
 William of Champeaux and Stephen Harding saved 
 his life. The fame of the pious abbot spread ; illus- 
 triou i men flocked to his side ; the valley rang with 
 the axe and hammer- loftier and more beautiful 
 buildings were reared ; and Bernard having gradually 
 recovered his health and come somewhat to his senses, 
 was content to give himself sufficient food and sleep to 
 prolong his days, and entered upon those literary 
 labors, that course of preaching and correspondence, 
 those journeys, and all that illustrious career, in the 
 course of which he visited many parts of Europe, 
 strove to reform the rough and unrighteous life both 
 of marauding barons and simoniacal prelates, com- 
 mended to all the virtues of the monastic life, and 
 made himself by the purity of his character, the magic 
 of his personal magnetism, and the sweep of his elo- 
 quence, the moral arbiter of Europe. , 
 
 At the council oi Etampes the claim of the rival 
 Popes, Innocent and Anacletus, are referred to his 
 decision. Henry I. of England yields his preference 
 for Anacletus to the appeal of Bernard : " Are you 
 afraid of incurring sin if you acknowledge Innocent ; 
 think how to answer your other sins before God, and 
 I will answer and take account of this one." He 
 
DARKNESS AGAIK. 
 
 97 
 
 bends the Emperor Lotharius into humble submission 
 to Innocent. He welcomes Innocent and all the papal 
 train to the somewhat scanty hospitalities of Clair- 
 vaux, and while the rest of the illustrious visitors 
 must be content with the frugal monastic fare, a single 
 fish is procured for his Holiness. The company did 
 not stay long ! Later on comes Bernard's great con- 
 troversy with Abelard, who, said Bernard, knew eveiy- 
 thing in heaven and on earth, himself alone excepted. 
 Near the close of his life he preached the second 
 crusade. At Yezelay, a great assemblage gathered, the 
 King and Que^n of France were there, barons, knights, 
 and peasants. On a platform stood Bernard and the 
 King. The matchless eloquence of the monk lashed 
 the multitude into frenzy. The cry for crosses rose 
 from every quarter. The supply was exhausted and 
 he tore up some of his garments to make more. 
 Throughout Germany he met with the same success. 
 So many men enlisted for the holy war that Bernard 
 declared that scarcely one man was left to seven 
 women ! The disastrous issue of the crusade was one 
 of the many troubles that clouded the declining years 
 of the great mci>ik. 
 
 The immense activity of Bernard is not more remark- 
 able than the quietness of spirit which he maintained 
 through all. He returned from courts and councils to 
 his beloved abbey as to his rest, and there calmed, 
 elevated, inspired his brethren by his earnest and lov- 
 ing exposition of Scripture. After a noble and most 
 fruitful life he felt himself a humble pensioner on 
 
 »* 
 
 
 1: I 
 
 Mi 
 
98 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 God's mercy and ascribed everything to God's grace, 
 " Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name 
 give glory, for Thy mercy and for Thy truth's sake," 
 this was his spirit. He said : " So far from being able 
 to answer for my sins, I cannot answer even for my 
 righteousness." In his last hours his prayer was : 
 " Dear Lord JesMs, I know that even if I have lived the 
 best of lives, yet I have so lived to deserve damnation ; 
 but my comfort is that Thou hast died for me and hast 
 sprinkled me with Thy blood from Thy sacred wounds. 
 For I have been baptized into Thee, and have heard 
 the Word, through which Thou hast called me and 
 promised me grace ^ and life and commanded me to 
 believe. Therefore will I depart not in uncertainty 
 and anxious doubt concerning God s judgment of me." 
 He died as those die who live like him in the spirit of 
 his own exhortation : " Well may we ask, with the wise 
 man, ' what profit hath a man for all his labor under 
 the sun ? ' Let us then rise higher than the sun ; let 
 us mount up to heaven, and have our thoughts and 
 affections there before our bodies are transported 
 thither. Earth is nothing but a battlefield. We must 
 fight here for Him who liveth in the heaven of hea- 
 vens ; then with Him shall we rest from our labors, 
 to receive our crown." 
 
 How conld such a man preach otherwise than nobly 
 and persuasively ? His whole heart was in his work. 
 His sermons were but the literary expression of those 
 convictions, purposes, and hopes which found consis- 
 tent and even louder expression in his life. An 
 
 \v 
 
DARKNESS AOAIK. 
 
 99 
 
 enemy one day sarcastically praised the good condition 
 of his well-fed horse. Bernard immediately bared to 
 him his own emaciated neck as the best answer to his 
 insinuation of luxury. The earnestness of his pulpit 
 was the earnestness of his life. 
 
 Himself thoroughly acquainted both with classical 
 and patriotic literature, he exhorted his brethren to be 
 diligent in acquiring all possible learning for Qod's 
 service. " There are those," he says, " who strive for 
 knowledge only in order that they may sell it for gold 
 and honor ; but there are those who strive for know- 
 ledge in order that they may edify with it, iind that is 
 love and wisdom." That knowledge which ends in 
 itself is to him but a burden, an idle curiosity, and the 
 effort to gain it is but a shameful vanity. No know- 
 ledge is worthy of eflfort which does not edify ourselves 
 or our neighbors. The principal knowledge is know- 
 ledge of self and knowledge of God. Compared with 
 this, all other knowledge is vain. In this spirit he 
 preached and in this spirit he lived. 
 
 As with Chrysostom and all the other great preach- 
 ers of the ancient Church, the personality of the 
 preacher is prominent in his sermons. The preacher 
 impresses upon the consciousness of his hearers not 
 only the Gospel, but himself as one whom the Gospel 
 has saved. He speaks of his own experience, of the 
 time before his conversion, of his conflicts and triumphs, 
 of the Saviour as his Saviour ; and so he bears witness 
 
 Gospel, and makes them a living 
 
 ill 
 
 
 i- 
 
 to Christ and the 
 
 I 
 
100 
 
 WITNESSES roR CHRIST. 
 
 reality to his hearers. He preaches in the spirit of 
 Charles Wesley — - 
 
 
 r 
 
 " O that the world might taste and see 
 The riches of His grace ! 
 The arms of love that compass dm, 
 Would all mankind embrace." 
 
 ^. 
 
 Bernard did not escape the influence of his age. He 
 was indeed one of the noblest embodiments of its 
 spirit. The universal mediaeval conception of the 
 higher Christian life was that of the unnatural monas- 
 tic life. Bernard was a monk of the severest type. 
 He preached to monks. But he never lowered his 
 ideal of the monastic life in compliance with the 
 actual condition of'aflTairs which too often prevailed in 
 monastic establishments. He preached against monas- 
 tic pride, ostentation, and hypocrisy. He declared to 
 the monks that humility in fine clothing was better 
 than pride in the cell, and that the kingdom of God 
 was within them and not an outward thing of clothes 
 and food. His doctrine of fasting was that it was a 
 discipline to free us from the world and fit us for 
 heaven. He prayed to the saints and he preached on 
 the saints. But the saints of whom he spoke were of 
 the highest type, and he so spoke of them as to incite 
 his hearers to imitate their Christian virtues, to be- 
 come "followers of those who through faith and 
 patience inherit the promises." Bernard was more 
 deeply in error in his mariolatry than in any other 
 respect. He protested against the doctrine of the 
 
DARKNE8H AGAIN. 
 
 101 
 
 immaculate conception of Mary.but in all other respects 
 he paid her all the honor which the Roman Catholic 
 Church in general has paid her. She was to him the 
 womanly, more accessible, more sympathetic Saviour, 
 and to her he prayed with as much confidence and com- 
 fort as to the Lord Jesus Christ. Mary would be our 
 advocate with the Son, the Son with the Father. Such 
 is the false teaching of Bernard's sermons in honor of 
 the Virgin. Such teaching, however, does not often 
 obtrude itself in the rest of his sermons, which are to 
 every Christian heart a very jarden of spices breath- 
 ing out sweet and precious teaching concerning' the 
 love of Qod, the person of Jesus, and the merits and 
 issues of His sacred, saving work. 
 
 He recognized the great truth that our salvation 
 depends upon Qod's grace. This grace he saw in 
 Jesus. To know and love Jesus, to be in Jesus, this 
 then is the summit of Christian life and experience. 
 In this living fellowship with Jesus he saw the means 
 of our sanctification. "Love Jesus," said he, "and 
 with His sweetness drive out the sweetness of the 
 world, as one key pushes out another." A will out of 
 harmony with God, that, in his view, was sin. A will 
 brought back into harmony with Qod, that was 
 salvation. 
 
 He insisted that to love Jesus implied to do His 
 works. " Listen," he said, " ye earth-born, ye sons of 
 men, listen ye who live in the dust, awake and praise 
 Him who has come as Physician to the sick, as 
 Redeemer to the captive, as Way to the erring, as Life 
 
 
 Wi 
 
 
 ^M 
 
 i! 
 
102 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 to the dead. He has come who casts all our sins into 
 the depths of the sea." Christ to him was all ; as 
 Bromel beautifully expresses it, "Jesus is to Him the 
 star of all Scripture, and of his whole theology.* He 
 said : " Jesus — all the food of the soul is dry if it be 
 not mingled with this oil ; is insipid if it be not pre- 
 served with this salt ; if you write, I have no relish 
 unless I there read of Jesus ; if you dispute or confer, 
 I have no relish unless in them I hear the name of 
 Jesus." His love to Jasus is enbalmed in that hymn 
 of his which we still delight to sing : 
 
 " Jesus, the very thought of Thee 
 With sweetness fills my breast ; 
 But sweeter far Thy face to see, 
 And in Thy presence rest." 
 
 He had no clear and definite theory of Justification. 
 That was reserved for Luther to develop. But he had 
 all the elements of it and the power of it. He declared 
 that Christ asks for us only to confess our sins, and 
 that He will then freely justify us in order that His 
 grace may be praised. But faith is the important 
 point. "For," said he, " Christ dwells not in that heart 
 which lacks the courage of faith : the just shall live 
 by his faith." Berngird recognized the agency of the 
 Holy Spirit, and described his operations in the con- 
 version of men, especially insisting that the Holy 
 Spirit made use of the Word of God in his gracious 
 work. From these centre truths he preached out to 
 
 * •• Charakter-bildpr," L, 62. 
 
DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 103 
 
 the circumference, teaching that he who loves God 
 love his brother also, be quiet and humble, and hope 
 for eternal joy. So sweet and rich and evangelical 
 was the preaching of St. Bernard. 
 
 As his sermons were all delivered in the monastery 
 either to his brother monks or to visitors who tarried 
 for a night, there is lacking in them the spice of 
 variety; they do not touch human life in many 
 points ; they contain little but what is common to all 
 Christians. Yet they are not lifeless or void of energy 
 and warmth. He dashes boldly into his subject. He 
 abounds in apostrophes. He is absolutely free from 
 the modem homiletical tyranny of form. He announces 
 no definite theme, no logical divisions. Among his 
 monks and visitors are bishops and earls and many 
 men of the highest culture of the times. Yet there is 
 an utter absence of rhetorical ornament, and the most 
 simple directness of expression. His preparation 
 seems to have been meditation; his preaching was 
 extempore. His only effort and thought was to make 
 God's truth understood and felt by his hearers. His 
 discourses were more like Bible-readings than our 
 formal modern sermons. Yet oratorical power will 
 show itself, and many of his sermons are among the 
 most eloquent extant. His most famous sermons are 
 those on the Song of Solomon, discourses delivered in 
 the quiet abbey chapel during the midst of that 
 great career in 'which Bernard mingled with King, 
 Emperor, and Pope, and was friend and counsellor of 
 all. Thei^e breathes through them the sweet air of 
 
 ■'f''« M 
 
 ill 
 
 
 
 I'.l; 
 
 ,: !■■.., 
 
 H- 
 
 ' m 
 
104 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 ;/ 
 
 peace with God - id mac, and they exhibit mediaevai 
 piety at its best and purest. " 
 
 His brother Gerard died at the Abbey during' the 
 course of Bernard's discourses on the Song of Solomon. 
 On the day of Gerard's death Bernard proceeded with 
 his exposition, in the midst of it suddenly stopping 
 and exclaiming : "How long shall I dissemble ; the fire 
 which I conceal within me is consuming my sad heart. 
 Hitherto I have done violence to myself, that my 
 passion should not seem t.o overcome my faith." Then 
 comes the announcement that his brother Gerard is 
 dead, and he preacher one of the most pathetic and 
 beautiful funeral sermons ever heard, recounting the 
 simple, helpful life of his brother, their love, his own 
 sorrow, and closing with the broken, touching cry : 
 " And now my tears put an end to my words, I pray 
 Thee teach me how to put an end to my tears." 
 
 There was not in Bernard the profound originality 
 and striking power of Augustine or of Luther. The 
 thoughts which appear in his sermons were the com- 
 mon property of the Church ; but they had gone 
 through his own heart and life so thoroughly that 
 they came forth in his sermons fresh and forceful. 
 Our hearts warm to him as he preaches Jesus and lives 
 a life of faith ; he is a worthy link between the great 
 fathers of the purer and primitive time and the heroes 
 of the Reformation ; and we gladly repeat Luther's 
 words : " If there ever lived on this earth a God-fear- 
 ing and holy monk, it was St. Bernard of Clairvaux." 
 
 The popular preachers of the Middle Ages were not 
 
DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 105 
 
 m 
 
 
 the regular clergy, nor the monks of the ancitnt 
 orders, but from the twelfth century on, tee friar 
 PREACHERS of the new mendicant orders of St Dominic 
 and St. Francis. The priesthood, by their ignorance 
 and immorality, had lost their influence and all im- 
 portance save of performers in a solemn and popular 
 pageant. They were too ignorant to make any at- 
 tempt at instruction, and had they not bee a so ignor- 
 ant their flagitious lives would have closed the ears of 
 the populace to their words. The early monastic 
 orders did not produce popular preachers. Bernard 
 preached to monks, not to the common people. The 
 ideal of the early orders was isolation from the world, 
 their object not the good of others, but only their own 
 salvation and perfection. Meanwhile, the Church 
 being struck dumb with age, the monastic orders 
 rolling in wealth, cultivating at the best the dry, schol- 
 astic theology, and cherishing no sympathy with the 
 people's needs, there came a great restlessness of 
 thought and awakening of enquiry, not only in the 
 Universities, buii even in a measure among the masses. 
 The people became hungry for teaching. Heresy 
 came with its supply, and heresy was welcomed. All 
 boded ill for the Church. But the coming of the 
 bold Dominic and the saintly Francis, their work for 
 their own age, and their influence on succeeding ages, 
 saved the papal power for centuries. They conceived 
 the true missionary idea of seeking the salvation, not 
 only of their own souls, but of the souls of the multi. 
 tude about them, and by their strong personal ascend- 
 8 
 
 
 i, »■ 
 
 ':MI 
 
106 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 ency over men they enlisted hosts of fiery emissaries, 
 who, assuming the vows of their respective orders, went 
 into all countries, lived upon the charity of the people, 
 and preached the old faith everywhere in the verna- 
 cular. These orders thus became, as Milman charac- 
 terizes them, the "standing armies" of the papacy. 
 
 These men preached to " the Tnasftes," and with such 
 remarkable success that it is worth while for modern 
 preachers to seek the secret of their power. Berthold, 
 the Franciscan, is said to have commanded audiences 
 of sixty or a hundred thousand people, who flocked to 
 see him even if they could not come near enough to 
 hear him. Shops were closed in the cities that the 
 people might rush to the preaching of Anthony of 
 Padua. After the preaching of some of these men, 
 great bonfires were kindled in the public squares, and 
 dice boxes, impure pictures, extravagant dresses, and 
 other insignia of a worldly life were cast to the flames. 
 Such audiences, such popular interest, such direct 
 results occur nowhere else, perhaps, in the whole his- 
 tory of the Christian pulpit. What was the secret of 
 their power ? 
 
 First of all, these men were in earnest — superstitious 
 and fanatical, but in earnest — and the zeal of many of 
 them, at least, was more than mere devotion to the 
 interests of their order and their Church. When 
 Thomas Aquinas asked Bonaventura whence he 
 derived the force and unction of his work, he pointed 
 to a crucifix in his cell, and exclaimed : " It is that 
 image which dictates all my words to me." .V/hat is 
 
DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 107 
 
 ,;.,;. 
 
 that but another expression of Wesley's feeling, when 
 
 he cries — 
 
 " The love of Christ doth mo constrain 
 To seek the wandering souls of men ; 
 With cries, entreaties, tears, to save, 
 To snatch them from- the gaping grave." 
 
 What power there is in earnestness ! " I like to go 
 and hear Rowland Hill," said Sheridan, " because his 
 ideas come red-hot from his heart." 
 
 Then these men were powerful with the people, 
 because they were of the people, sympathized with the 
 people, and spoke the language of the people. Too 
 often our preaching is far away from the plane of the 
 popular life, upon the mountain top of abstract thought 
 or in the cloudland of pompous rhetoric, and, while the 
 people may wonjder, their hearts are not won. At the 
 door of one of our churches a few years ago two ladies 
 were overheard talking about the sermon. " Wasn't 
 that wonderful !" " Yes ; but I couldn't quite under- 
 stand it." "Oh! I don't pretend to understand it. But 
 I think it was a wonderful sermon." Or perhaps there 
 is an evident effort to condescend to the people, which 
 only makes the gulf wider. The friar preachers lived 
 among the people, knew oheir lives, their struggles, 
 their sins, their sorrows, felt with them, appreciated 
 them, and thus spoke not from a pedestal of superior 
 knowledge and virtue, but as one may speak to his 
 brother, understanding him,, loving him, and anxious 
 to help him. So *>hese men won their way to the 
 popular heart. So must we. Kindly and intimate 
 
 i'i,t 
 
 til 
 
 ''■'>\i 
 
 ft- 
 
 i,; 
 
108 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 acquaintance with the every day life of our hearers ; 
 inte»*course with them in their houses, their shops, 
 thdr fields; the cultivation of a cordial and loving 
 sympathy between them and us ; and then preaching 
 not to imaginary audiences, but to the very men and 
 women with whom we have mingled all the week, and 
 to the very needs which we have discovered among 
 them — this will lend to our work something of that 
 popular quality which is essential to popular success. 
 
 The friars cultivated not a fine literary style which 
 might please the learned, but a strong, plain, simple 
 style, which was not always f.bove the reproach of 
 coarseness and vulgarity, but which moved the people. 
 Anything in the pulpit is better than a tame propriety 
 and feebleness which never offends anybody and never 
 saves a soul. - • \ : 
 
 " By our preacher perplexed, 
 How shall we determine ? 
 * Watch and pray,' says the text ; 
 
 * Go to sleep,' says the sermon." ' 
 
 By quaint and curious anecdotes, by vivid dramatic 
 presentation of- Scripture stories, by impassioned ap- 
 peals, by touching and loving exhortation, those old 
 friars kept people awake to the preaching, and 
 awakened them to the knowledge of their sins. A 
 great French actor had listened to Henry Irving. An 
 English critic pointed out to him many defects in 
 Irving's " Hamlet." "It may be as you say," was the 
 rejoinder, " but what does it matter ? I can only tell 
 
Darkness again. 
 
 109 
 
 you that Mr. Irving moved me as no other actor has 
 moved me — and that is all I care about." " That is the 
 best kay" said an old preacher, " which fits the lock 
 and opens the door, though it be not a silver or a gold 
 one."* The coarseness of style which was an element 
 of power in addressing the rude populace of the Middle 
 Ages would but disgust the more refined and thought- 
 ful congregations of to-day. Yet simplicity and direct- 
 neas of style are never out of date. The preachers of 
 our own time whose success most resembles that of the 
 friar preachers are Spurgeon and Moody. And their 
 language is that of the people — short words, clear sen- 
 tences, illustrations from common life, a spice of 
 humor, a wondrous power of pathos, blows against sin 
 which come right from the shoulder, and a power 
 with the people which makes them a blessing to their 
 age. 
 
 No truer and no more valuable words were ever 
 written with reference to pulpit diction than the fol- 
 lowing, which I quote from the remarkable article on 
 Preaching, contributed to the Canadian Methodist 
 Magazine, for January, 1885, by that prince among 
 our preachers and that Nestor among our College 
 Presidents, Dr. Nelles : " It is not easy, indeed, to draw 
 the line between homeliness and offensive coarseness, 
 nor will what is effective with one congregation be 
 always suitable for another ; but he who has the tact 
 to keep just within the safe limit will find his power 
 
 J 
 
 ':i 
 
 W 
 
 :||li 
 
 * Hood, " Lamps, Pitchera, and Trumpets," p. 204. 
 
110 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRlSt. 
 
 augmented by the nearest allowable approach to the 
 speech of the common people." 
 
 Unfortunately the friars did not keep within that 
 limit, but too often became pulpit buflfoons and Merry 
 Andrews. Many of the Puritan preachers mistook 
 coarseness for unction, vulgarity for faithfulness ; and 
 in cercain evangelistic quarters to-day deliberate 
 offences against all canons of good taste and reverence 
 seem to be taken as the best evidence of a man's sin- 
 cerity. If Mark Twain is in place anywhere he 
 certainly is not in the pulpit. Before the Reformation 
 what preaching there was had descended into the 
 depths of a degrading vulgarity, and sought to tickle 
 a depraved taste by absurd legends, even blasphemous 
 stories, and the coarsest kind of drollery. The wise 
 man will follow the via media of clear, racy, honest 
 Saxon, not above the comprehen-ion of the humblest, 
 not offensive to the taste of the most refined, in the 
 spirit of Dr. Edwards, who declared that he would 
 rather be fully understood by ten, than admired by 
 ten thousand. 
 
 There was a decidedly Biblical tone in the sermons 
 of the friars. They adapted the Scriptures to the 
 needs and lives of their hearers. They abounded in 
 Biblical references and allusions. All Scripture was 
 made to bear upon the subject in hand. Unfortunately 
 the allegorical was the favorite method of interpreta- 
 tion, and the fancy of the preacher ran riot in the 
 types and symbols of the Bible. Tt is a significant 
 fact, however, that these pre-eminent preachers to the 
 
I)ARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 Ill 
 
 i 
 
 ■ I tj 
 
 masses were biblical in their preaching. There is 
 nothing that the people love better than the stories 
 of the Bible. 
 
 As we come down two centuries from the founding 
 of these new orders, the force of their revival seems to 
 have spent itself, the fire has died down, the preaching 
 is but a blind leading of the blind, and in prevalent 
 darkness and superstition true men are longing for 
 the light. 
 
 Among the " Beformera he/ore the Reformation," 
 were many noble preachers who revived the almost 
 lost art. 
 
 Wiclif was a bold and fearless preacher, appealing 
 in homely but vehement and powerful language to 
 the heart and conscience of the people of England, 
 bidding defiance to the ancient superstilions, and 
 creating that popular love for the unadulterated Word 
 of God which has been the strength and safety of the 
 English people ever since. His itinerant preachers, 
 fore-ruimers of the early Methodists, penetrated 
 every village of the kingdom, were welcomed by the 
 people everywhere, and diffused his reforming doc- 
 trines in all quarters — a precious seed which germin- 
 ated in the English Reformation. 
 
 On the continent a school arose very different from 
 that of the bluff, outspoken Englishman, a school 
 represented by such men as Master Eckhart and John 
 Tauler, a school of true German "inwardness," pro- 
 found^ philosophical, mystical, but in the main evan- 
 gelical, teachers of Luther, avant-coureurs of the 
 German Reformation. 
 
 m 
 
 n 
 
 I 
 
 J 
 
 m 
 
 14: 
 
 
112 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Tauler (1290- 136 1) belonged to Strasburg in the age 
 when the deadly t'eud between Pope and Emperor 
 culminated in the pitiless and infamous interdict 
 which silenced the church bells, closed the church 
 doors, dismantled the altars, refused the offices of 
 religion to the living, the dying, and the dead, and all 
 merely to force the rulers and people of Germany into 
 rebellion against their Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, and 
 into absolute submission to his Holiness the Pope. 
 The " holiness " of such proceedings did not appeal to 
 the popular heart, and became especially questionable 
 when, during the awful visitation of the "Black 
 Death," the poor people fell in multitudes, 16,000 in 
 Strasburg alone, and died unattended and uncomforted 
 by their clergy. Wandering bands of Flagellants 
 added to the horror and confusion of the time ; men 
 and women of the sect of the Beghards spread every 
 where the most atrocious doctrines ; men of a higher 
 doctrine and a purer life became secretly banded to- 
 gether as the " Friends of God," holding that not alone 
 in Church and with the help of priests and ritual and 
 sacrament, but everywhere is God to be worshipped, 
 whose shrine is the loving heart. 
 
 To this secret brotherhood, the Waldenses of Ger- 
 many, Tauler belonged. He, and with him noi a few 
 priests, refused to obey the papal interdict, ministered 
 to the stricken people, assured them that no such 
 human ordinance could shut the Kingdom of Heaven 
 against the penitent, comforted them with the Gospel 
 of Christ's death for sin, and bravely denounced the 
 
 wickedi 
 Tauler 
 He exi 
 it was 
 preach< 
 life of 
 illustri 
 One 
 of the 
 Strasb 
 an int 
 and st 
 have 
 accorc 
 ingai 
 me ; 
 helpe 
 come 
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 Taul 
 enco 
 are,* 
 and 
 am 
 «\V 
 "Ti 
 thi 
 are 
 
 K 
 
h^ 
 
 DARKNESS AGAIN, 
 
 113 
 
 wickedness of the interdict. The connection between 
 Tauler and the " Friends of Ood " was very intimate. 
 He exerted an enormous influence over them. But 
 it was through them that he, after having already 
 preached for years, was converted, and led into that 
 life of union with Qod, of which he was afterwards so 
 illustrious an expoxient. 
 
 One day an old layman, Nicholas of Basle, the head 
 of the " Friends of God," came to Tauler's preaching in 
 Strasburg, and after hearing him several times, sought 
 an interview with him, and addressed him with bold 
 and stem authority. " You are a great preacher, and 
 have preached good doctrine, but you do not live 
 according to it yourself. Know that all your preach- 
 ing and all outward words can accomplish nothing in 
 me; they have generally hindered me rather than 
 helped me. When the highest Teacher of all truth 
 comes to me. He teaches me more in one hour than 
 you and all other teachers from now till doomsday." 
 Tauler was not repelled by these bold words, but 
 encouraged his strange reprover to proceed. "You 
 are," continued Nicholas, " still in slavery to the letter 
 and are a Pharisee." " What," cried Tauler, " old as I 
 am never were such words spoken to me before !" 
 "Where is your humility?" replied the layman. 
 " Trust not in your own power and learning. You 
 think that you are seeking God's honor, and yet you 
 are but seeking your own. Are you not then in the 
 eyes of God a P^ "risee ?" Tauler eribraced him, and 
 told him he was the first who had ever shown him his 
 
 ii 
 
 < 
 
 m 
 
114 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHniSt. 
 
 fault, and promised that by Qod's grace and hin 
 friend's help he would seek to change his life. Nicholas 
 became master and Tauler disciple, and after two years' 
 silence and retirement, a course of spiritual discipline, 
 and especially of meditation on the life and death of 
 Christ, he heard the voice of God saying to him, "Stand 
 fast now in thy peace and trust in God." On the as- 
 surance of Nicholas that now he had found God's 
 grace, and was regenerate, and that God would be hi.s 
 master and teach him further, Tauler had the 
 announcement given that on the third day he would 
 preach. The people gathered in multitudes, but 
 Tauler could not check his tears and preach, and was 
 compelled to dismiss the people with the request that 
 they would pray for him and the promise that at some 
 later date he would preach to them. On his next at- 
 tempt, such marvellous power accompanied his preach- 
 ing of the joy of salvation, that twelve persons were 
 smitten to the ground and lay as dead. Henceforth 
 multitudes flocked to hear him, extraordinary influences 
 fell upon his hearers ; he comforted the poor people 
 lying under the cruel interdict and dying of the plague; 
 even priests became obedient to the faith which he 
 proclaimed ; and he so faithfully and fully proclaimed 
 the Gospel so far as he knew it that the Reformers 
 drank gladly from the stream of his preaching. His 
 power is the power of the closest union with Ood. His 
 life is hid with Christ in God. He speaks out what 
 he has experienced within. 
 
 And he speaks out his message in becoming tones. 
 
DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 116 
 
 All his preaching, though so powerful, is simple and 
 artless. He announces neither theme nor divisions^ 
 though he marches on with orderly arrangement of 
 his thoughts. He uses simple, natural illustrations. 
 But the great characteristic of his style is its calmness. 
 Bromel says that " his speech flows like a brook. The 
 brook is deep, but it is never agitated ; his style has 
 absolutely no waves." His style is the image of that 
 peace of soul which was his ideal and his experience 
 of the Christian life. His spirit knows no passion, no 
 commotion, no excitement ; perfect harmony with Qod, 
 indifference to ought else, this is his aim, and in a 
 wonderful measure he attains it ; and the whole man 
 is consistent with himself; his manner of life and 
 manner of speech alike are even, calm, monotonous- 
 Herder says : " He who has read two of Tauler's ser- 
 mons has read all."* Yet so directly do his words 
 come from the inner life aglow with Divine love that 
 the repetition of thoughts and phrases docs not rob his 
 sermons of their spiritual fascination. 
 
 In Tauler's teaching two streams flow together, — 
 that of the simple Gospel, and that of a dangerous 
 Pantheistic Mysticism. After a deep and long 
 struggle, he has found perfect peace with God ; he has 
 learned the weakness of the natural man, and in the 
 depths of an earnest nature he has experienced the 
 regenerating power of God. He teaches with all 
 intensity the great work of God in the soul, and the 
 
 
 
 1 ';; 
 
 *Milman, « Latin Christianity," VIII. , 404. 
 
 : i'hl 
 
 m 
 
116 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 consequent love of the soul to God and to our 
 neighbor. Purity of heart, communion with God, 
 that is the great, invaluable, and enduring teaching of 
 John Tauler. The Christian life to him is not a mere 
 round of externality, but a will in harmony with God. 
 All the superstitions of the Church he sweeps aside. 
 He preaches a Kingdom of God which is within men. 
 He considers the means of grace useful but not indis- 
 pensable. " The churches do- not make the people 
 holy," says he, " but the people the churches." 
 
 However, he is too subjective. He thoroughly maps 
 out the whole inner process of conversion, and every 
 converted man will recognize in his preaching many 
 waymarks of his own progress from darkness into 
 light. But he throws men too much upon the 
 Christian consciousness, too little upon the Holy 
 Scriptures and the great objective facts of redemption, 
 and cultivates an excessive introspection. He makes 
 little use of the Bible in his preaching. He has no 
 clear conception of the method by which we become 
 one with God, of that justification by faith whereby 
 we enter into peace. The sum of his theology is God 
 and the mystic union of the soul with God. This most 
 precious truth he so pantheistically emphasizes and 
 exaggerates that he holds it Christian perfection to be 
 able to say that for me nothing exists but God. All 
 created things are so corrupted that the effort of the 
 Chrii^tian is to get free from them, to close his eyes to 
 them, to become dead to them. God is the only good, 
 and to the enjoyment of God man can come only by 
 
 an^ 
 of 
 
DABKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 117 
 
 crucifixion of the old man and dying to the world. 
 And this process he conceives as literally as possible. 
 The Christian must not enjoy God's glorious creation^ 
 but blind himself to it all, not thank God for his good 
 creatures, but become indifferent to them, and aim at 
 an ideal of brutal apathy. 
 
 And all this is in order to a pantheistic sinking of 
 self in the absolute godhead, a rest of God in which 
 the personality of the creature disappears, which 
 smacks more of Spinoza than of St. Paul or Jesus 
 Christ. Tauler does not rejoice or exult as Psalmists 
 and Apostles, but lies still^and quiet in the bosom of God. 
 Herein is the perversi^v and danger of Tauler's teach- 
 ing. Whatever obscures man's consciousness of his 
 own personality and weakens his sense of personal 
 responsibility, leads eventually to the breaking down 
 of morality, and overwhelms the Christian faith in the 
 common ruin. A tinge of pantheistic mysticism runs 
 through much of the best and most devotional litera- 
 ture of Germany. Nothing but a careful and reverent 
 use of Holy Scripture as the rule of faith will save 
 many of the noblest spirits from its fascination. 
 
 Tauler's great work was to preach an inner experi- 
 ence of grace without which outward ordinances are 
 vain. " His own works," cries Tauler, " make not a 
 man holy ; how can those of others ? Will God re- 
 gard the rich man who buys for a pitiful sum the 
 prayers of the poor ? Not the intercession of the 
 Virgin, nor of all the saints, can profit the unrepent- 
 ant sinner." In such bold teaching we catch a glimmer 
 of the dawning light of a new and better day. 
 
 mi 
 
 
 '^4 
 
 
118 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Of all the reformers before the Reformation Jerome 
 Savonarola (1452-1498) was doubtless the most pow- 
 erf'il preacher. Living in the midst of the " New 
 Learning," and dying on the eve of the Reformation, 
 for years he swayed the people of Florence from his 
 pulpit as from a throne, he expounded the old Scrip- 
 tures as they had not been expounded to the people 
 for centuries, he inveighed against wickedness in high 
 and low, and he made preaching once more the greatest 
 popular power. Mortifying failure due to the harsh- 
 ness of his voice and uncouthness of his gestures drove 
 him to the most careful culture of voice and manner, 
 which finally secured him ability to fill the vast 
 Cathedral of San Marco with his ringing tones. His 
 study of the Scriptures was intense ; his Bible, which 
 still remains, is v/ell thumbed and full of marginal 
 notes ; he expounded especially the book of Revela- 
 tion and many books of the Old Testament. 
 
 He was a genius in the pulpit, and as he pro- 
 ceeded in his address there came moments of in- 
 spiration when vast images appeared before him, and 
 in noble words he painted them, and with flashing eye 
 and ringing voice he wielded the people according to 
 his will. His grandest moments were when he left 
 the track of his theology and spoke with the power 
 and authority of a Hebrew prophet on the events, the 
 duties, the dangers of his own times, and summoned 
 the people to repentance. His recklessness brought 
 him to the stake. But he stands forth still as one of 
 the noblest of political preachers, of preachers to the 
 
 times, of 
 
 an office 
 
 life, or w 
 
 human 1 
 
 virtue i 
 
 denounc 
 
 and wh 
 
 can but 
 
 for its 
 resistai 
 
 still. 
 ; be for 
 nounc< 
 tbee," 
 the 01 
 from 
 thee." 
 dofo 
 

 DARKNESS AGAIN. 
 
 119 
 
 an office which ^^"^ '^\[^ '„°u£e. but broadly to all 
 Ufe.o. what we -;^^;° X; duty to inculcate 
 human life, who consider ii ^^^^^ to 
 
 virtue in all ^P^^^' *°:Hop Ld parliament. . 
 denounce --ng-domg - ^.o^^^^^ «^ J ^ ,,,„ „ they 
 and who count not t"*'"^ ^ influence a nation 
 
 ean but serve their g-^-^"" 7,,ong that needs 
 for its good. There IS ma^ ^^^^^ ^i,tance 
 
 resistance, there is many a ca^se ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ 
 
 still. I^t«»«'"»°° fit* When the Bishop pro- 
 , te foremost in f>^Jf^ gavonarola. "I separate 
 nounced the sentence «P°"^„„i, Militant." "From 
 thee," said he. trom the Chur^ .. ^^^ 
 
 the Church Militant, replied ^^^ to 
 
 r.-- " ^"^he ;r£^is labors and his wor.s 
 
 do follow him. 
 
 \ *' O happy retribution ; 
 
 Short toil, eternal rest , 
 For mortels and for sinners 
 A mansion with the blest. 
 
 -!>■ 
 
)-. 
 
 1 
 
mmt"" <« **'*"• 
 
 .I^^EEIV.-THESBW"*^- 
 
 ' Y 
 
 I t 
 
 \ 
 
 -^^ M 
 
 9 
 
it 
 
 LE( 
 
 men to 
 
 I gave '^ 
 
 into tVi 
 
 front. 
 
 errors 
 
 forth t 
 
 of Jea 
 
 whicb 
 B-efot 
 
 ing, 
 
 life-j 
 
 Eurc 
 
 r 
 
 was 
 seal 
 am< 
 wa 
 
 it! 
 
 to 
 
t 
 
 
 m 
 
 f, • < 
 
 LECTURE 
 
 iv-theVewd^tt- 
 
 11 \' 
 
 the tra<5ition8 o£ 
 
 ; ga«e «x«3/ ^ ^ , preaching came once m 
 
 front. ^'^®^" ciWer trumpets ot ^n« J^ ,^^ 
 
 «'-'''"*"wXl«-™<'»- ^'^rrS^ a truth 
 forth their cheerful « ^j^^^_ ^Tv.. iTps of the 
 
 * Tpmis received oy ^niicbed the Ups "^ 
 
 V TfiUed the hearts and ^^^''^^duced that search- . 
 which Wiea ^^^ P^^^'T , ^gad the 
 
 amended their i- ' ^Vi rather than «y 
 
 ^as chara^ten^d hy^ 8 ^^^ ^,, '"tllSairily 
 
 it sought to '"o'^J^^yie did not '^^^^'"^^^J.g doVn 
 to ple.«e them. Their ^y ,,e Been commg 
 
 beantiful waterfall w" 
 
 111 
 
 ; 1 
 
 
 If 
 
124 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 from the mountain-side near the road from Geneva 
 to Ghamounix, lacking sufficient body of water 
 to come unbroken to the ground, and dissipated by 
 the breeze into feathery spray, like the foam which 
 flies from the crested wave, glittering with the colors 
 of the rainbow. Their style was rather that of a 
 Niagara of sublime power, crashing in unbroken 
 column, in resistless force upon the heart and con- 
 science. . 
 
 Luther was at once the greatest of the Reformers, and 
 the greatest of the Reformation preachers, one of the 
 greatest preachers of all the Christian ages. Luther's 
 was a great soul, a richly endowed nature. His 
 judgment was sound, his love of truth was ardent, his 
 insight into things was profound, his sympathies were 
 warm, his passions were strong, his imagination was 
 brilliant, his earnestness was intense, his religious 
 nature was deep and true. Pretences he abhorred. 
 Shams he hated. For the truth he longed and for the 
 truth he lived. And in the Gospel he found the reali- 
 ties which his soul desired. 
 
 To understand Luther's influence, we must take his 
 culture into account. Never was man more fully pre- 
 pared for his work. His learning was universal, em- 
 bracing all the elements of culture known to his time. 
 Virgil, Cicero, Livy, and the other great Latin writers 
 were familiar to him, and he read them not as exercises 
 in grammar or sources of philology, but as literature, 
 in which the life of mankind is reflected. The ancients 
 lived before him in the classical pages ; his retentive 
 
 I 
 
^.f 
 
 •jbE new DAt. 
 
 ns 
 
 r . , .^ Y^ad read a 
 
 itscHm^isP^^.'^ Z' mastery of the ^\ „ ^^e 
 
 ficance of nature. ^.^^^ ^i '* ^ *,„ What- 
 
 W««,ry, and loud «^« \„„, i„ aU^«*°'y-/i, ot 
 pulpit influence^ He J^ ^^ "^^'''7^0 the 
 
 '-' r. \1 In"^ ^'^^^^■'* 'LTiuteJeig 
 -^'tf coSon people -*^f J Je and nothing 
 n t pre acWng of law ""J.^JgU's gra^e and 
 
 CtSries and example, at one 
 
 
 1? ' 
 
 J' 
 
126 
 
 WITNESSRS FOR CHRtSt. 
 
 open, and the people are quiet, and listen attentively." 
 His own sermons are full of illustrations from all his- 
 tory, ancient and modern, but especially from the 
 Bible, Old Testament and New. Above all he lives in 
 the history of Redemption — the fall, sin, atonement ; 
 the life and words of Jesus dwell in his memory and 
 fire his imagination ; his arguments and illustrations 
 are mainly from the New Testament. Ho was well 
 read in the Church Fathers. Augustine's intiueucc 
 over him was enormous. Bernard he called a " golden 
 preacher." Of Tauler he was especially fond and to 
 him he was deeply indebted. In one word, there was 
 nothing in the learning of his time with which he was 
 not well acquainted and which he had not assimilated 
 and made thoroughly his own. 
 
 Such a man, grand in his intellectual and moral 
 nature, trained, fitted, furnished with all the resources 
 of the widest scholarship, regenerated by the power of 
 God and drawing constantly fresh inspiration from the 
 fountains of the Divine life, such a man would stand 
 forth in any age a power. 
 
 Luther not only towered above his fellows and 
 influenced his generation, but so dominated the thought 
 and action of his own age as fairly to turn the stream 
 of Christian teaching and Christian living into new 
 channels for all subsequent ages. His enormous influ- 
 ence is to be accounted for partly by the circumstances 
 of his career. God had prepared the world for the 
 man as well as the man for the world. Erasmus would 
 never have produced the Reformation under the very 
 
V' 
 
 i; !;i 
 
 tttfe N«W *'^*- 
 
 \vt 
 
 vKlnther succeeded. But under 
 conditions under whxchLurt.er^^^^^^^.,^^ Tl,„, 
 
 other conditions even Luther WW 
 
 is a God in hUtory. j,^ oogpel, and for 
 
 The times were P'°P'* ""^j ° jt There were few . 
 Luther's manner of P'f -" "f^^aiately preceding 
 sermons preached « *« ^J\,^ „ere mainly con^ 
 the Reformation, and those ^^^ ^^^^ a 
 
 luu The hunery people »» „ ^j^ „ 
 
 temptible. ine "is ' .tg^ stones. tLO" ' ' 
 the wretched preachers gave the „^^^^ they 
 
 gesticulate." said *« ^''^^'^row them^lves hither 
 change their voice, how they tn ^ ^^,^. 
 
 i thither, how they make t«^j^ ,„ff„ons 
 
 thing with their cry. 9^^^ ^nd shouting and 
 beg^ his sermon ^>* "^y^f a cuckoo ; another 
 
 screaming ; ■">»* Vatoose , T" a P«"P'« ^^°'" ^t 
 «Uh the cackling of a goose . r ^^^^ ij„t 
 
 Cail pre-hers had sougj mer^^^^ ^^ ^^^ „ ^ . 
 
 who were W^^^S *° f.'' truth, the manly, earnest. 
 Laming" ""^ *° *;^£ S his friends came as a 
 
 Gospel preachmg 0^1^"^;-,^,^^^^ ^d the Word of 
 
 new prophetic voi^ " .^^^^_ 
 
 God had free course and was J ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^ 
 Tl.e preaching of Luther n^^^ God's truth 
 novelty, but *« Ce? Tterootsof Luther'shexng 
 WES as a fire iu his bones. ^ ^ through his 
 
 Zck down into the f «*^;^„^^°,„ts of the Gospel 
 whole life ran tV'^r^CfiedhL. charmed him with 
 
 ^e Gospel savedb-. -^-^^ its ^,,,. ,nd rf 
 rXil'i^St-vlne fire. He staked a. 
 
 in 
 
 t 
 
128 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRtSt. 
 
 on the Qospel, and he preached it with all his might, 
 without reserve, hesitation, or faltering. " Luther's 
 words," said Melanchthon, " were born, not on his 
 lips, but in his soul." 
 
 Added to the inborn genius and universal culture 
 and glorious earnestness of the man, there is also this 
 circumstance to be remembered, that Luther and the 
 rest of the Reformers preached " not under the green 
 trees of heathenism but in the temple of Qod ; " that 
 they were not missionaries who had to create a Chris- 
 tian sentiment and a Christian community, but revived 
 the ancient preaching of a simple vital Gospel among 
 people who were already nominal Christians, and many 
 of whom were longing for spiritual light and prepared 
 for better things than the dead externalism with which 
 the Church had so long cheated them. With such 
 materials for conflagration, the Reformation preaching 
 swept over whole lands with almost the rapidity of 
 the prairie fire which sweeps through the dry and 
 crackling grass. 
 
 Luther and his friends preached the Word of God, 
 and so preached it that the art of preaching sinks out 
 of sight, and the Word which they proclaimed and 
 expounded alone becomes prominent. The form counts 
 for nothing. They do not so preach that men shall 
 cry, " what an admirable sermon, how well thought 
 out, how logically divided, how gracefully expressed ;" 
 they so preach that the preacher shall be forgotten, 
 the Word only remembered, and the people cry, "men 
 and brethren what shall we do?" Had they been 
 
 \* 
 
: ) 
 
 tHE ^^^ ^^'^' 
 
 Uft 
 
 ^uU through "O^'^K .^"rt\oUtude, no torn.ula of 
 "oister, no W^X^hu-lThLi gWen them peace of 
 the world or of the Ohurc .^^ Thew 
 
 Boul. God'" Word had led "> When Luther .peaks. 
 
 He restored the free, ««*''' P-i „{ the Spirit, threw 
 
 "^^Tirtr^-^"^^"^ 
 
 ftwav the scabbara, v ^^^^t he woi 
 
 have done this. »« P"^ , apparency no thougi 
 riU directness, abandon, ''^^/P^\,,„iy of his sty e, 
 "^I'the correctness, p~F2i,aoinating desire 
 ..h^eonepa..^^^ 
 
 ...Cbarakterbilder,"p.9«- 
 
 m 
 
 
 w 
 
 ' i 
 
130 
 
 WITNESSES FOfe CHftIS*. 
 
 same regenerating power in his hearers which he 
 felt it to be in himself. To such a spirit, elaborate 
 
 ^ rhetorical preparation, the careful composition of ser- 
 mons with an eye to the perfection of form, and al] 
 the petty tricks and arts of oratory, were as unneces- 
 
 ^ sary as they were impossible. His great soul must 
 
 I burst all fetters and be free. 
 
 Not that Luther preached without preparation. He 
 had a general preparation of such wonderful sort that 
 he was always ready. He fairly lived in the Scrip- 
 tures ; in his busiest seasons he spent hours in prayer 
 and meditation and reading of the Bible every day ; 
 the never ending conflicts of his career and the care of 
 all the churches, drove him ever deeper down into the 
 Divine life in which alone he found peace ; his mind 
 was stored with all human learning and familiar with 
 the expositions of the Fathers ; he knew the Bible 
 and human life, open the volume of either where you 
 will, so that going at a moment's warning to the pulpit, 
 he would not be going imprepared. He needed only 
 to give expression to what was already in his head and 
 on his heart, and his well trained mind found no 
 difficulty in this extempore expression of his thoughts. 
 But there was often special preparation as well, and 
 some of his sermons he carefully wrote out. In this, 
 as in all other things, he was a free man and did 
 whatever the circumstances demanded and his own 
 judgment approved, holding himself always open to 
 Divine influence. He says that often when he came 
 down from the pulpit he found that he had preached 
 
i; ''■ 
 
 tae NEW DA*. 
 
 131 
 
 ^ v«f Vie had ibou;^t 
 
 Llbefore hand, tor God bad „i pandered far 
 
 '^he service. S""^ ^'ile book. So""*^^^^^^^ 
 ,ot)e,s and expounded a wn ^^ i,e preached wiw 
 
 •^ r nf form, he escaped com ^^^^ty ot 
 
 Cribs oTscientific e-g- ^^:^r ,,„tbs o£ faitb 
 • -V ae saw everywhere tM | • t^ral argumont, 
 Slve^e always ^^^J^^^Z of W^ bear^»J 
 
 ^WMelanchthon-d^He^^^. ^^^ \C ^^^ 
 I should make a ff^ea ^^^^^^^ ^nd that pleas 
 
 a 
 
 ■1? ■ 
 
 r 
 
 II' H 
 
 I 
 
132 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 all." Again he says: " Christ could have taught in the 
 loftiest style, but He has given His sermons in the 
 simplest. There come into the church maidens of 
 sixteen and women of thirty, and old people, burghers 
 and peasants, and they understand nothing of your 
 clever, lofty sermons." His desire, he declared, was 
 not to please the forty magistrates who sat in his con- 
 gregation, but to be understood by Johnny and Maggie 
 near the door! He was not always, however, in this 
 simple and artless vein. When he speaks of the 
 mysteries of the Trinity or of the person of Christ, he 
 soars on the wings of his philosophic insight, his logical 
 skill, his Biblical learning, into regions of thought 
 where the common people must have found it hard to 
 follow him. 
 
 His powers of description were masterly. By the 
 magic of his eloquence he made Scripture characters 
 live and move again for his hearers; he painted Scrip- 
 ture scenes until men could gaze upon them as they 
 passed in panoramic vividness before them ; he touched 
 various phenomena of nature and events of human life 
 into color and into reality ; and he used all to press 
 home the Gospel, not to immortalize Martin Luther. 
 The Gospel remained always the centre, from which 
 he went out, to which h« came back. 
 
 The great saving truths he constantly repeats, holds 
 them up in fresh light, illustrates every aspect of them, 
 and so flashes them in upon the heart and fixes them 
 in the memory of his hearers. r.'v 
 
 A free, fresh, unconver^tional, sanctified individuality 
 
i '"1 
 
 Ml' q 
 
 ^-j 
 
 THE NEW DAT. 
 
 133 
 
 THIS' x^«' 
 
 V He docs not preach by 
 
 . *V.p, through his work, ti® ^^^^^^^ ^he . 
 
 breathes inruu^ ;rre<'u\arities wuu 
 
 TfU homiletical irre^ ^ ^l^is iree, 
 
 LdquaUties: ^^^ ^^ ^.ouW have a g^ ^e^;^ ^„„, 
 
 ^ wCtoP 6^ He sho^d B*»^y f Suld V- ready 
 rSia^:^SUve.ed.a...c.edy ^^ 
 
 Wi 
 
134 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 / 
 
 w 
 
 •* That word above all earthly powers — 
 No thanks to them — abideth ; 
 The Spirit and the gifts are ours 
 
 Through Him who with us sideth. 
 Let goods and kindred go, 
 This mortal life also ; 
 The body they may kill ; 
 God's truth abideth still, 
 His kingdom is forever." 
 
 The Protestant Reformation gave rise to a Catholic 
 Reformation. Protestant preaching stimulated Catholic 
 preaching. And so preaching has become common in 
 the Sunday services of the Catholic as well as of the 
 Protestant Churches, bishops, presbyters, deacons, and 
 monks preaching. 
 
 In on aspect of it, the Reformation was a revolt of 
 the spirit of nationality against the unity of Chris- 
 tendom imposed by the papacy, and the history of the 
 various Protestant lands is a history of the independent 
 growth of special national types. This is true of 
 preaching, and in the short time which remains at my 
 disposal I shall endeavor to trace briefly the develop- 
 ment of the Oei'man, French, British and American 
 schools of preaching. 
 
 1. Luther had broken the path for the new German 
 PREACHING and for a long time it went forward in this 
 way of a free and lively exposition of Scripture, deep 
 sympathies, strong emotions, simplicity of plan, and a 
 robust, energetic, manly naturalness of style. Melanch- 
 thon's influence was not so good. In his work " De 
 OfUciis Concionatoris," he led the way from Luther's 
 
tiV^j 
 
 ■■<^-. 
 
 f ■ 
 
 1PHE NEW :OAY. 
 
 135 
 
 •linles of classical rhetoric, i Christian 
 
 principles oi. «nHonal calamity anu 
 
 Uury. that age of naUona overcame *« 
 
 decadence in Gemwy. Wis preaching 
 
 ion into *- ^^Jt^ olV- — '^""'^^ 
 abounded. Strait J"^'^'^' ^ „£ expression. The 
 enough to -PP'^;^:,^' the^essagelittleornothing^ 
 
 l^ became «-«^*;°|;*„eipation of preaching^ « 
 
 Pietism began t^« *"*„/.£ form and system , it 
 
 Jolted against the ^y'-^^ ^ity, and ostentation. 
 
 ^aed from t**""*^ t Biblical simplicity. ^ 
 to the realities of the f«tt^^ ^^ ^^^ ^nf^r^^_^ 
 plain and earnest exposrt^ ^.^otional spirit. But 
 Lcited once more ^J^^., emphasis of the 
 Pietism in its earnest and J y y„g, became 
 
 !;Ulogieal -d ethi^ -^^° l^,, „, loven^y 
 unduly careless of A^ -^^ ^^^ ^^y ^d his 
 
 preaching does "«* T"^ j„ France the great Catho 
 U at the veor time when 'n ^^^^ the Pohshed 
 
 lie divines of I^«« f T^ Rhetoricians of the Gi^k 
 MMsical oratory of the ru ^.ecame the pat- 
 
 iiH 
 
 k 
 
 it 
 
 ir 
 
 i 
 
 I! 
 
 Hi.; 
 
 
 I 
 
 : 1 1 
 
136 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 while the new Wolfian philosophy reacted at home 
 against t^e Pietistic indifference as to form, and 
 demanded a more logical and formal method. Under 
 this influence preaching became an attempted demon- 
 stration rather than an evangelical proclamation. 
 Rationalism took the very heart out of preaching. 
 The idea of converting people was entirely obsolete, 
 and the only aim was to enlighten ; the exposition of 
 Scripture ceased to be the reading out from it of the 
 Divine and saving truth, and became the reading into 
 it of current philosophical conceptions ; the preachers 
 sought to influence men merely for this life and ignored, 
 if they did not deny, any other ; and the lowest depths 
 were reached by what Christlieb calls the " health- 
 and-potatoes-preachers " who sought to instruct their 
 congregations in the rational principles of hygiene 
 and agriculture. Kant's deeper philosophy dealt a 
 death-blow to this superficial Rationalism, but did 
 little to regenerate preaching, for preachers of his 
 school bent their energies more to the popularizing of 
 his philosophy than to the proclamation of the saving 
 Gospel. Preaching was thus at the close of last cen- 
 tury a thing of logic, rhetoric, and philosophy, a dead 
 thing which neither moved men nor saved them. 
 
 Pietism had emphasized the evangelical matter of 
 preaching, but disaatiously neglected the form. As 
 the power of Pietism waned, the evangelical matter of 
 preaching was displaced by deistic Rationalism and 
 Kantian morality. No longer were there treatises on 
 Hoiuiietics, but on pulpit oratory, as a mere depart- 
 
 itl 
 
 Go( 
 
 sou 
 
 iut 
 
 in< 
 
 o 
 
/'^ 
 
 THE NEW DAY. 
 
 137 
 
 degraded. I"'?'''^*'":^' rlraUty but the BibUcal 
 
 «,ving truths as *« »"^^* ^^ J^ ot Church semce 
 iBg its form according to tn ,^„ ^„d the 
 
 -'- ^^"^ 1 ti^ef^s improvement has come. ; 
 
 edification of believers. 
 
 It came first in practice ^^^J^H^^^, '(1768-1834) . 
 
 The pivotal man '">«^;^'^j*':^,i 3piritual religion 
 whose vast influence mav<»r J J^^ ^^^ , 
 
 logical. rV>«torical =^W ^^^^ j,,,l.„ess. sym- 
 replaced by ong'^f ^y-?"^ profound consciousness of 
 pathy with real ^e.;»^;X^G„a touches the human 
 
 God. I" Wspre^;"^"* spiritual ^„d not merely 
 «,„!. His P>r>^*"gX be reasoning faculty and 
 intellectual. He got be^^/ He had that deep 
 
 moved the inmost spt>ng» °' * , sympathy with its 
 "^Iwledge of *e bu-nj.e^;^^;y J ^^^ „, ,^ 
 needs which counte fo^ v^t^y ^^^^.^„^ „£ ^^eir 
 
 or arts of rhetoric. He ma^ character, and of 
 
 Instinctive l-ging f PJ ^e^ct and satisfy it^W. 
 the incapacity of *« ?"' *°,^,d Jesxis as the perfect 
 
 have done much to Dring 
 10 
 
 \\.' 
 
 mx 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 11 
 
 
 Hi) 
 
138 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Lutheran faith, and to renew the spiritual life of the 
 Church. Harms, Knimmachor, Stier, Beck, Tholuck, 
 Dorner, Kahnis, Luthardt — these and very many such 
 are men who unite wide scholarship with great simpli- 
 city, freshness of thought, freedom and naturalness of 
 form, admirable exposition of Scripture, and a popular 
 sympathy which has made them a power. There is a 
 spiritual life, a heart-glow, a free course to emotion, a 
 fervor which spurns the restraints of conventional 
 rules, a general robustness, manliness, and homely 
 directness in the German pulpit which smacks of 
 Martin Luther, and which is worthy of our study and 
 imitation. 
 
 2. Of another type is the French PULPIT. It has not 
 the energy and robustness of thought or the hearty 
 naturalness of style which characterize the German 
 pulpit. But it possesses a much finer and more classi- 
 cal polish. This is notably the case with the great 
 Catholic preachers of that Augustan age of France, the 
 time of Louis XIY. As a literary art, preaching was 
 then at its best. The rhetorical finish was perfect. 
 But the Gospel did not breathe through those beautiful 
 forms. And the glor}f of that brilliant age went out 
 in a night of weakness and disorder. " Versailles, in 
 those days," says £. Paxton Hood, " had a theatre and a 
 chapel, and the spirit of the one presided over the 
 other ; alike, in either places it was the acting of 
 things which did not for a moment affect the auditors'* 
 life. ♦ ♦ ♦ What, then, is preaching ? Manner, 
 
 
THE NEW DAY. 
 
 139 
 
 matter. The French » aim 
 
 v\!»l90 called the French Demos a„v,i„g de- 
 
 S^Si orator, ^-^yl^^t, hut at other 
 
 times, notably m n ^^^^^^.^ ^"^^ ^^ ^^ 
 
 "tuts tertt :UmLed to hU ^eM thj^^ 
 :^rUd enough to^U;^^ J^, ::: moderate -d 
 XaitKm was less br J^^« ^^^ somet«^e« 
 
 , . CO. kinff among pr«»^ proved, tne 
 
 tw^ved - lew other men have «jer p.^^ ^^ 
 
 the midst of the ^^'fl ^cetnl style. ^^ . 
 ^P^*^ Clyt t ntJ;d^ith these -Ch^- 
 
 "tTe'^-cf /rotitant ^S O^-*^,,*"- 
 
 1/ 
 
 
 t::!;;;::';;^^':^^^^ 
 
140 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 much of the theological and too little of the ethical 
 element in their sermons, but devoted to the simple 
 exposition of Scripture, elevated in thought, close in 
 reasoning, and with the usual French orderliness of 
 arrangement and clearness of expression. In Claude 
 and Saurin this school has its most distinguished repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 Jean Claude (1619-1686Xwa8 eminent as preacher, 
 theological professor, controversialist, and leader of the 
 French Protestants. In him there occurs a transition 
 from the more artless analytical exposition of Scrip- 
 ture verse by verse, which prevailed among the early 
 Protestant preachers, to the more formal synthetic 
 method which grasps the thought of a text or passage 
 in the unity of a topic and develops it according to a 
 plan. His expositions are clear and sensible. His 
 style exhibits the classic taste of his polished age, shuns 
 all ostentatious ornaments, is neat, rapid and correct. 
 
 In Jacques Saurin (1677-1730) there is more of the 
 conscious orator, of ornament, and of declamation ; his 
 style is too abstract and literary ; his method of treat- 
 ment is thoroughly topical; his eloquence attracted 
 great congregations ; his spirit was earnest ; his fame 
 as a true Gospel preacher will endure. 
 
 In more recent times France has not lacked great 
 preachers either in the Roman Catholic or the Protest- 
 ant communlpn. Coquarel, Monod, Lacordaire, Vinet, 
 Hyacinthe, Bersier, DePressens^ — these are great 
 names in the history of preaching. - ^ " ; 
 
 The polished orators of the modern pulpit are to be 
 
THE NEW DAY. 
 
 u\ 
 
 • 1 • /» i«4 character- 
 
 „V.l in F-nce •, and French preach.ng ' ^„, 
 
 gonght in rr clearness, gra** »" . y,eart- 
 
 ized not only by ^^ ' ,,^4 solemn pa*et.o 
 
 I John Wesley. ^J°(|,'^trsando£ Spurgeon. 
 onward to the f y^^-fllp^eaeWng window " jdress^ 
 
 Cathedral, that x. w Latimer, with his raw 
 
 A levins at last at tne bv». , ^^^ 
 
 ■^lltn^ese are names never to 1^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 ^t:lthe Augustan f^^iS ^o^most representa- 
 seventeenth century, to w^ichj^ ^^^^^^ ^^1 
 
 ! „f the Anglican and FuriTOn ^j 
 
 *''f Vllen tendencies coming trom ^^^^^ 
 
 Sf^h^S^^oped tV'-f X^en re e-ted and 
 ^^aae in which the minds ot m ^^^^^ ^^^^ 
 
 !^iXted to ^^^^^^^\Z^%e ageoUhe trans- 
 
 U varying -^-'^'^IgTof the ship— y ^d *e 
 lation of the Bible, theag ^^^^^^ ^j Charles 
 
 eivilwar.thea«eot W ^^^ ^, ^^,,n age of 
 
 . and Hampden a.^ ^ r 
 
 great events and of gwa , .. 
 
 Is 
 
 111 
 
142 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 There were illustrious preachers in the English 
 Church in those stirring times. Richard Hooker (1553- 
 1600), dying on the threshold of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, may head the list. Hooker's fame depends not 
 so much on his preaching as on his writing, and his 
 great work, " The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity/' is 
 marked by such soundness of judgment and such stately 
 and rhythmical dignity of style, that it remains for- 
 ever one of the classics of English literature. 
 
 Bishop Hall, author of the yet popular "Contem- 
 plations ; " Bishop Usher, the chronologer ; Thomas 
 Fuller, the Church historian ; Ralph Cudworth, the 
 learned, candid, and philosophical author of that great 
 work, " The Intellectual System of the Uiiiverse ; " all 
 these are to be named as ornaments of the Anglican 
 pulpit. But the chief names are those of Taylor, 
 South, and Barrow. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) fell on troublous times, 
 and was tossed about with the varying fortunes of the 
 royalist cause; but whether at court or in prison, 
 whether as school-teacher or as bishop, he preserved 
 the cheerful serenity of soul which marks him out as 
 a thoroughly good and holy man ; whether he wrote 
 sermons, or those incomparable works on "Holy 
 Living," "Holy Dying," and the "Liberty of Prophesy- 
 ing," he is ever " the Spenser of theological literature," 
 affluent in treasures of rich and ample thought, gorge- 
 ous in the oriental luxuriance of his similes, meta- 
 phors, and allegories, lacking the energy and direct- 
 ness of the greatest orators, a great religious poet 
 
 ■^: •, ■: ■^'■•'. "-*--, z- H .'■■ ■-■■ ;. 
 
 at 
 
 tl 
 
 1 
 
THE NEW I>aV. 
 
 148 
 
 V , TBI!' ^^ . ^ 
 
 " . f the Gospel, coming 
 
 "* " i'TS pi*--^ **°'°''!.d tuni in««in- 
 libetftl and V^ yj^e and '^""" ,„ to be 
 
 r'?a;telud;oiV>Uwc.U..«y„, ,U 
 tion. iVift*- ^" preacherB fot ^" a themes. 
 
 :s::X-Te:;:rof^^"^^^^^ 
 
 Wa magnificence of exp ^^ ^ ,,,^ ^.bjeet. 
 
 Isaac Barron \ ^pbysiw l, o^ ^ 
 
 whether -»»*«^'*^^ri to every task. T^^fjj,^, 
 I mind that seemed equa^^^,. «»«*' ^ 
 
 ^'^TeTSatrld VO-^-^r^a^sses 
 
 are ~**': **^\„d learned M^d*" "?': j^ .• an unfair 
 ihemes,d.»>se an ^^^^ ^H^d him ^^^^ 
 
 noroomiora^y ...^ Br South," 
 
 sense in t^^^,^ .^ , -^ his plan, solid m n . ^ ^^ 
 
 ■I:-! 
 
 I«i 
 
 I 
 
 ■1 
 
144 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 His fairness towards the Puritans may be estimated 
 from his declaration that " God will not accept their 
 barn-worship, nor their hog-sty worship," that they are 
 all " sly, sanctified cheats ; that they are all a company 
 of cobblers, tailors, draymen, drunkards, whore- 
 mongers, and broken tradesmen ; though since, I 
 confess, dignified with the title of the sober part of 
 the nation." 
 
 These same Puritans (using that word in its 
 broadest sense) furnish us with a notable school of 
 preachers, a company of mtu who so loved the Gospel 
 and Gospel liberty that they staked all upon it, suf- 
 fered the loss of all things for it, leavened the whole 
 nation with their faithful preaching of it, and deserve 
 grateful commemoration by us all who have entered 
 into their labors. Howe, Baxter, Owen, Bunyan, 
 Flavel, Calamy, Charnock and Matthew Henry, are 
 names, which, execrated once, are universally acknow- 
 ledged now as ornaments of our common British 
 Christianity, Time will not permit any but a passing 
 reference to the lofty theological thought and pro- 
 found spirituality of John Howe; to the successful 
 pastoral work, the faithful, searching, loving preaching, 
 the enormous literary labors, and the broad catholicity 
 of Richard Baxter; the learned exposition and the 
 profound theology of John Owen ; the homely, popular 
 style, the earnest solicitude, the inspired power of the 
 preaching of that wonderful man of whom Macaulay 
 says : " Though there were many clever men in Eng- 
 land during the latter half of the seventeenth century 
 
I 
 
 THE NEW DAY. 
 
 145 
 
 minds One of 
 
 students oiScriptwe, but en«^ J i„t„ every verse _ 
 
 pi;ective in their --^^ ^^^^^ ,.ve been re^ 
 
 Lritu»lme»«"g«'"*'iranY sonnd principles o£ 
 S of many of *«;?°^'^ery part o£ Scripture. 
 
 ^egesis. They saw C^l^^^j'"^^;; Vail their exposi- 
 SeL a delightM «P-t«.a «^,„a fancifu^^^^^ 
 dons ; bence, too, many a H , ^^^ tediously 
 
 ^TuritansermonswereeUb^atejP^^^ ^ 
 
 . ^hmte in divisions "^^ J* ^ ,w«ully marshals . . 
 • Thould have its pla^. ^* t^!° marshal his thoughts. 
 ■ to troops, so *o«W;.nS"trdo most execution 
 ' placing each where it ^h^^y^ ^ ^ ^"T^'T^l ' 
 Bourdalouesaid: ^ o*"/" V ■•» But the plan « 
 tl I ca^ W- a )^^ '^f "The thoughts are the 
 not the main thing after all. ^^^ ^„ang.ng of 
 Lin thing. a.dtheJE^^^y,^„der^ . 
 those thoughts m the nato.^ ^^^^ t,,, "'^8'^^ 
 is inherent in them. The Me ^^^ ^^^ „f t^^ose 
 Telond. Kothing » °>°'«' '^;;1 can be bought ready ^ 
 ;T.^ and outlines of sermon tha^c ^ 
 made by the hundred W*'". y^ get facts, truths. \jy 
 ^Sl to God. to nature. a»^^*°J';v,|p, them all into 
 r^ments. i^-'-'f ^^ y ^^^^^^^ them into a 
 s4 a plan as -<>«' "f ^"^^s. TJniform^w^ 
 great power overyourj»__ __ 
 
 I 
 
 111 
 
 
146 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 & 
 
 formal plans, these fetter tha natural expression of 
 thought and offend good taste. No preachers have 
 more systematically sinned in this respect than the 
 good men of Puritanism. One of them explained a 
 text from 1 Corinthians in thirty particulars, and then 
 added fifty-six supplementary topics, and all in one 
 sermon ! Another published a discourse of one hun- 
 dred and seventy-six divisions, and then regretted the 
 necessity of " passing by sundry useful points, pitching 
 only on that which comprehended the marrow and the 
 substance."* Of such preaching the criticism of the 
 juvenile hearer might be in place, who, when asked 
 how he liked the sermon, replied : " Pretty well. The 
 beginning was very good, and so was the end. but it 
 had too much middle." The Puritan preachers were 
 not the only preachers who had a remarkable gift of 
 continuity. It was the fashion of the age to be diffiise> 
 prolix, and fine-spun. Was it not in those days that a 
 certain Professor Hasselbach, of Vienna, took twenty- 
 one years to the public exposition of Isaiah, and never 
 finished the first chapter ? - -. 
 
 The demand of our age is for intensity, conciseness, 
 and brevity. I do not doubt that some hearers advo- 
 cate short sermons from motives similar to that of the 
 man who complimented an eminent professor of a cer- 
 tain college iu Toronto on a sermon which he had just 
 heard the professor preach. He said it was the best 
 sermon he had ever heard. '* The fact is," continued 
 he, " I care for no preaching at all, and yours came the 
 
 * Hood, "Lamps, Pitchera, and Trumpeta," p. 500. 
 
THE NEW DAY* 
 
 147 
 
 v..rt" But even those «h^ doc*;^ 
 nearest. H wa3 sosV^^. B ^ ^^ ,^,„,„„gWy oi tV.e 
 tor preaching nowadays 8 
 
 inion of the poet, that 
 
 .. Man want, but Uttleho^^'""' 
 ^ ^wanUihatUttlelong- ^^,,- 
 
 When, dnring his stude^-^' after F««^«8 ^ r 
 
 tbree-quarters of 'f.J'""' ;. ^d was greeted by a 
 Srt sennon for ^^.^'Iff: "You were too long, 
 
 brother pre^^her ^'* *Xottification, asked: D'^ 
 A uBPkine to conceal Ms m" crushed by the 
 
 and, seefc"** ^ ^s completely c 
 
 I say too »«*; J^didn'tsay too much.but you 
 
 ' was, v" Tillotson, buuiuo ^^„nded the^ 
 
 divines such «f " defended or «^I?^"*V,wl 
 
 Butter; but ^^'^%*^ Io£onnd learning, with mastery , 
 Ohristiansysto«w>tbprofo ^^^^^_ ^^^^ ^^^^ , vxtal 
 
 argument, ana J^ ^ ^er. , ^^ the 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 '^^ 
 
 \ '>,'■ 
 
 w 
 
148 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 English pulpits and in the English Churches, when 
 Wesley and Whitefield and their compeers were sent 
 of God to revive it. I need not recount the familiar 
 story of the Methodist movement and its issues in all 
 the English-speaking world. The pentecostal fire came 
 down once more, and the successes of the primitive 
 Church have been repeated. 
 
 I must not pause to speak of the great preachers of 
 more recent times, of the splendid oratory of Robert 
 Hall; of the grand, impassioned fervor of Thomas 
 Chalmers ; of the noble manhood, intense earnestness, 
 penetrating power, and cultured beauty of F. W. 
 Robertson; of Irving, McLeod, McCheyne, Guthrie, 
 Binney, Newman, Manning, Parker, Punshon, Spurgeon. 
 It is a long, illustrious succession, apostolic in the 
 truest sense, and, by the grace of God, it is not ended 
 yet. 
 
 4. The early American preaching was of the 
 thorough Puritan type. The preachers were learned 
 men, and spoke to an intelligent and educated people, 
 for graduates of the English Universities were quite 
 as numerous in proportion to population in New 
 England as in Old. The preaching was very theo- 
 logical, scholastic, and elaborate. About the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, under Jonathan Edwards, 
 there sprang up a remarkable school of preachers, pro- 
 foundly metaphysical, and tremendously earnest. John 
 Edwards was not only the prince of American meta- 
 physicians, but also a preacher who with such stem 
 and rugged force drove home the most awful truths of 
 
 ai 
 ti 
 ( 
 
 1 
 
 \\ 
 
THB NEW DAY. 
 
 149 
 
 ^-^ 
 
 strength of ^'^.^soning, i^ Bt'fong ^•"P i ^ ^y^e 
 i„g and careiul r^ .^ '^o"^*"''' K religious 
 
 as against a ^o^ ^ P''«^"'^.rl exclusively 
 
 eonscience, and ite « j^i„ i„ its too exc ^^ 
 
 decision. It« ^'"'^CopWcaV character, « '^ "^^ ^ 
 totellectual and pl^°P^ christlj «y»P»*-^i ^ the 
 ^ptural ^'"P^'tSing^'d living Sav.ourreal^^ ^^ 
 tailure to make aloving^ ^ ^^ ^^^ too muc 
 
 argument ior -^^j^^^ ^^^y,er than e ,_- 
 
 I among ■^^*'^\ I xi^^ principles » «^v^to exhi- 
 
 *^-^H • SeTtai?°^''^™^"'S£ Sy -eeds. 
 Christ into V,e d ^^ ^^^ ^11 thei ^^ ^^ 
 
 bit Jesus as the t .^ y,,,e *t \,ithout the 
 
 in all ^««fr"^ll leave '"^^'^^'^^ C^k down 
 extreme, which ^^^^.tian doctrine and brea 
 
 ^Wch. while ••' «»» 
 
 ' A1 
 
 e>- 
 
160 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 haps gives its "experience," sneers at Puritanic strict- 
 ness, and proves too weak to stand temptation, and 
 la<;ks a fine sense of honor and a sterling integrity. 
 The problem of the future is how to so intermingle 
 i the doctrinal and the ethical, the Scriptural and the 
 1/1 practical, or rather how to so develop the truths of 
 Christ in their relations to real life and apply them to 
 all the wants of the toiling, sinning, suffering hearts 
 which need their comforting and regenerating power, 
 that we may at once conserve essential Christian 
 doctrine, and also adapt our preaching to the spirit of 
 the age. 
 
 This is a general lesson to be gathered from the his- 
 tory of the pulpit, that, while 'the great task of the 
 preacher has remained always the same, to make the 
 truths of the Bible live in the hearts of the people, yet 
 method and n\^iiner must vary with the times, and 
 each age will produce its own type of preaching. 
 
 He who would do his best service to his generation, 
 must avoid both the Scylla of slavery to old forms of 
 thought 
 
 ** Through which the spirit breathes no more,** 
 
 and outworn habits of speech on the one side, and on 
 the other the Charybdis of sensational novelty. It is 
 a sad thing to see a minister devoting his best energies 
 to the discussion of the most taking topics of current 
 ~^ social and political life, and neglecting the preaching 
 of the Gospel ; it is almost equally sad to see a minister 
 ignorant of the life and thought of his own time, 
 
 s 
 ( 
 
 w 
 
"• 
 
 THB NE^ ^^^' 
 
 151 
 
 r THB NK^ i'^-- 
 
 Our oae « »^^^t „ot ignore ^^^^^^yon of *» 
 Congregation jg to be fom rudent 
 
 cutreat terms o . ^ les ""^.'^-..^y^ topic as it 
 
 to discuss 8«?7'rw to debate o"^^/^!,; to ««^er 
 
 glands of ^^^^^r^agazine. to -'*«^f Jion bave 
 ^mesupinbool^^o^ '""fie currency 
 
 • skeptical «R«r"^\dvertise books and pve 
 
 to doubts ""^'"^ J,,..a *at some ^''^2 g„ ate end- 
 It has been rer«»JJ tion point "jy bearers 
 , »,;V>Bd by an interius ^^^ ot tneir 
 
 ':^ :'. 
 
 ^ 
 
152 
 
 WITNESSES FOR CHRIST. 
 
 but give no restful or satisfactory answers." If we 
 can but teach our people to understand and love the 
 Bible, it will be its own best defender and defence. 
 
 Our age craves freshness and variety. It will not 
 tolerate . 
 
 j' '* * # # Sabbath drawlers of old saws, 
 
 Distilled from some worm-cankered homily." y 
 
 Freshn^^sa and variety are to be gained by such a 
 painstaking study of the Bible as shall enable the 
 preacher to bring forth out of the treasury things new 
 as well as old, and such a use of the illustrations 
 furnished by science, literature, and daily life as shall 
 set even the old truths in a new light. Above all 
 things our age demands practical preaching. Men are 
 busy, hurried, weary. They want a preaching which 
 will help them amid the temptations of their eager, 
 rushing life, calm their troubled spirits, quicken their 
 consciences, and make the blessed Saviour a constant 
 presence by their side. There is a danger that in try- 
 ing to satisfy the vast and complicated demands of our 
 times, intellectual, social, spiritual, the preacher dissi- 
 pate his energies, and fail to give unity to the impres- 
 sion which he produces. With all variety of method, 
 his aim must be still the same, to preach Christ, to 
 make Christ the centre of all thought, the source of 
 all life, the object of all desire, the goal of all endeavor. 
 The paramount demand of this age, the lesson of all 
 the ages, is earnestness in the preaching of Christ 
 My conception of true earnestness is very far from 
 
 that 
 
 like( 
 
 fully] 
 
 ness 
 
 wind! 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 in 
 
 THE NEW DAT, 
 
 153 
 
 $-..x\ 
 
 that of the man who replied to the question how he 
 liked the new preacher: " Oh, he is improving wonder, 
 fully ; he preaches louder and louder." True earnest- 
 ness thrills hearts even though it may not shake the 
 windows. True earnestness is a thing not so much of 
 perspiration as of inspiration. Azd inspiration is a 
 thing that one can gain not by direct effort but by 
 fulfilling the conditions. You cannot become earnest 
 by trying to be earnest. You can become earnest only 
 by coming into thorough sympathy with Jesus and 
 with your people, and by trying to serve Him and 
 i save them. Follow the Lord through all His earthly 
 I life, let its scenes live in your memory and its lessons 
 in your heart, stand at the cross where your Redeemer 
 tasted death for every man, and beside the tomb from 
 which He rose for your justification, make it your 
 constant experience that in Christ you are dead to sin 
 and alive to God, and that your life is hid with Christ 
 in God, and then you cannot but be earnest in preach- 
 ing that Saviour who is everything to you. Cranmer 
 said of a cerbain minister: "He seeks nothing, he 
 longs for nothing, he dreams about nothing but Jesus 
 Christ." Be in sympathy with your people, know 
 them, regard them not merely as so many heads in a ' 
 congregation, but as so many lives, each with its own 
 burdens and its own sorrows, which imthing but the 
 love of Jesus can relieve, and then you will be earnest 
 in seeking their salvation. It is love and only love 
 that to the highest can attain, for love to God and 
 man is the sure condition of inspiration in preaching. 
 11 "' ~ ' 
 
 
 
 |:| 
 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 r " 
 
 v^ 
 
 .( 
 
 fei 
 
 y 
 
154 
 
 WITNESSES FOK CHRIST. 
 
 \ 
 
 / 
 
 There was the fire of Divine inspiration in early 
 Methodist preaching. Let us beware, ]est, in the 
 transition to higher culture among preachers and peo- 
 ple, the ancient fire die out ; for nothing can take its 
 place. Without it, philosophic thought, elegance of 
 diction, force of oratory will be unavailing, and great 
 sermons will be great failures. Let our culture appear 
 rather in our freshness of thought and clearness of 
 expression than in any elaborate refinements of style ; 
 let our dependence for success be rather on the demon- 
 stration of the Spirit than on the wisdom of words ; 
 whether our natural powers be great or small, whether 
 our education be excellent or but indifferent, whether 
 our opportunities be wide or narrow, let us consecrate 
 our all without reserve to Him, to them, whom we 
 love and whom we serve ; let us " follow the instinct 
 for saving souls ;" then we shall not lack the power 
 from on high, and the Divine fire shall come and 
 kindle a conflagration of holy thought and feeling 
 wherever we shall preach. " Even so come, Lord 
 Jesus." 
 
 Dean Stanley has a celebrated and graphic account 
 of the scene on Easter day in the church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre — the dense mass of pilgrims wedged around 
 the chapel in which the sepulchre is supposed to be — 
 the Turkish soldiers keeping order — the frenzied cries, 
 races, gambols of wild and half-clad men — the proces- 
 sion with embroidered banners defiling round the 
 sepulchre, the exit of the troops, the entrance of a 
 bishop within the chapel — a moment of awful suspense 
 
 ««i 
 
 \\ 
 
 Spii 
 
 on 
 
 froi 
 
 are^ 
 
 anc 
 
 \( ' ': 
 
TOB HE" "*'■ 
 
 155 
 
 •**l,ede8cenlot the Holy 
 
 „ the »»Pe»««r AtrUthin the chapel, sj^ed- 
 Snirit-ftt Iwt ft bright ttaine . to tapers ready 
 
 •r^^municated through an ftpeju^^ ^^^ 
 
 Z the outeide-ft XHrrLlptead. until the ^hole 
 t.om taper to *»?- ^^^f.^^nd'the niuUitude rush out 
 
 r ;rtheru^;;- *:Ste .^postn.-; on the 
 
 rtih^^-z-irc^tKe/p-s: 
 
 • n fnie " Holy Fire. iJ^om Augustine, 
 
 Ce"u Wndled their ^^«^f 1 John We«ley. 
 
 (Csostom and Benu^rd LnA^ ^ ^^.^^ By 
 
 * T t^ken communion ^ith our uo , ^^^^.^ 
 
 and unbroken w tireless labor n" f 
 
 our torches, and then ^^^^ 
 
 blazing light to gv^d* "'"V 
 
 ..O Light of liRW,-*"*^' 
 
1 
 
i^jh^i' 
 
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