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SEP 13 1949 
 
 YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING 
 
 The Romance of 
 Preaching 
 
 By .,/ 
 
 CHARLES SILVESTER HORNE 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 CHARLES R. BROWN, D. D. 
 
 And a Biographical Sketch by 
 HOWARD A. BRIDGMAN. D. D. 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1914, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: i^iS Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
Introduction 
 
 By Charles R. Brown , D. D., Dean of the 
 
 Tale Divinity School 
 
 FROM the days when Henry Ward 
 Beecher gave the first series of lec- 
 tures on the " Lyman Beecher Foun- 
 dation " in Yale University, on through those 
 years when this service has been performed 
 by such eminent men as Phillips Brooks 
 and R. W. Dale, Henry van Dyke and John 
 Watson, Lyman Abbott and George A. 
 Gordon, Washington Gladden and Francis 
 G. Peabody, the task of inspiring young 
 ministers to nobler effort in their high call- 
 ing has been well performed. But among 
 them all, few lecturers have ever so gripped 
 the divinity students, the larger audience of 
 pastors in active service and the thought- 
 ful people of New Haven as did Silvester 
 Home when he spoke to us on " The Ro- 
 mance of Preaching." 
 
 He was himself a shining example of those 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 high and chivalrous quaHties which he would 
 covet for the true prophet, and the younger 
 Knights of the Cross responded to his spir- 
 itual appeal as to the bugle-call of a genuine 
 leader. 
 
 The intellectual distinction which marked 
 his utterances, the fine literary form in which 
 they were phrased, the moral passion which 
 gave to their delivery that energy which be- 
 longs to words which are '* spirit and life," 
 together with the rare spiritual insight dis- 
 played, all combined to make notable the 
 service rendered by Mr. Home to Yale Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 It seemed tragic that just three days after 
 he had finished this course of lectures, he 
 should suddenly be caught away like the 
 prophet of old, from the deck of a steamer as 
 he neared the city of Toronto where he was 
 to preach next day at the University. Here, 
 indeed, are his last words, spoken in an upper 
 room to his brother ministers, younger and 
 older, upon whom he had breathed his own 
 spirit of intense devotion to the high task of 
 proclaiming the Gospel of Christ 1 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 The sense of loss to England and to Amer- 
 ica, and to the whole Christian world, made 
 all hearts heavy. But " he being dead yet 
 speaketh," in these inspiring words and in 
 that genius for friendship which has left its 
 benediction upon so many thousands of 
 hearts, and in that distinguished service 
 which it was his privilege to render to 
 Church and to State on that side the water 
 and on this. 
 
 Yale University. 
 
A Biographical Sketch 
 
 By Howard A. Bridgman, D. D., Editor of 
 " The Congregationalist " 
 
 INTO the forty-nine years of his earthly 
 life Charles Silvester Home poured a 
 measure of service in behalf of his na- 
 tion, his church and the world at large, such 
 as can be credited to few of his contempora- 
 ries on either side of the Atlantic. He was 
 fortunate in his ancestry, his training, his 
 environment, his family, his friends, and in 
 the opportunities that, from time to time, 
 crossed his path, but the greatest of God's 
 many gifts to him was a sense of the glory 
 and seriousness of life and an eagerness, 
 with God's help, to do his own part in the 
 work of the world. A son of the manse he 
 was born in Cuckfield, Sussex, England, 
 April 15, 1865, took his arts course at Glas- 
 gow University, entering upon graduation 
 the newly established theological school at 
 Oxford known as Mansfield College, whose 
 9 
 
lO A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 principal, the late Dr. Andrew M. Fairbairn, 
 was renowned for his learning and his per- 
 sonal influence over his pupils. Before the 
 young theologue, who at once evinced his 
 unusual qualifications for the ministry, com- 
 pleted his course, a church in London claimed 
 him as its leader and there at Kensington 
 for ten years in a fashionable section of 
 the world's metropolis Mr. Home preached 
 and laboured, building up a compact and 
 vigorous organization and gaining distinc- 
 tion even in his earliest years as a pulpit and 
 platform orator. Then came the pull on his 
 sensitive, daring nature of London's poverty 
 and need. Leaving his attractive pastorate, 
 where he had won popularity among all 
 classes, he assumed the leadership at White- 
 field's Tabernacle in the heart of the city, 
 close to the homes of the poor and to haunts 
 of shame. Into this new enterprise he en- 
 tered with characteristic zeal and soon de- 
 veloped a great church of the institutional 
 type, pervaded with a homelike atmosphere 
 and ministering Sundays and week days 
 alike to clerks, artisans and other types of 
 
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH II 
 
 working people, and exercising a beneficent 
 influence over the neighbourhood, which 
 sadly needed something to counteract the in- 
 fluence of the gin-house and brothel. 
 
 Meanwhile the Congregational Churches 
 of England, and the Free Churches generally, 
 had been claiming Mr. Home's efficient as- 
 sistance in the support of important enter- 
 prises. Invitations to speak here and there 
 were showered upon him. He was hon- 
 oured with the chairmanship of the Congre- 
 gational Union of England and Wales. 
 Pressing public issues like the controversy 
 over the Education Bill drew him into the 
 arena of politics, and he became known as 
 one of the most gallant and earnest fighters 
 for freedom in Church and State. His rare 
 oratorical gifts made him one of the favour- 
 ite spokesmen of the Non-conformist con- 
 science on many public occasions. It was 
 natural, in view of the reliance placed upon 
 him, that he should at last yield to the strong 
 demand that he stand for Parliament, and in 
 1910 he was returned as junior Member for 
 Ipswich. For a time he undertook to carry 
 
12 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 the burden of his great church along with his 
 Parliamentary duties, but at the end of ten 
 years of the hardest kind of work at White- 
 field's he relinquished his leadership, only, 
 however, to give himself more untiringly to 
 clamorous calls for his services. He felt 
 especially the appeal of the Brotherhood 
 Movement, and was planning as National 
 President to give much time to its advocacy 
 and to details of administration. 
 
 All through the years of active ministry he 
 wielded a facile pen and many articles in 
 newspapers and magazines bear witness to 
 his literary fertility, while even more sub- 
 stantial and enduring in their influence are 
 his valuable volumes, " A Popular History of 
 the Free Churches," " A Modern Heretic," 
 " A Story of the London Missionary Society," 
 " The Ministry of the Modern Church," and 
 " David Livingstone." His last and in 
 many respects his noblest literary production 
 was the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale, to 
 the preparation of which he devoted much 
 time during the last year of his life, and 
 which are embodied in this volume. 
 
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 1 3 
 
 As preacher, organizer, publicist, author, 
 pastor and friend, Silvester Home did a work 
 in his short life that in volume and quality 
 made him one of the remarkable religious 
 leaders of his age. And over and around 
 everything that he did, touching it with en- 
 during beauty, was the radiance of a pure, 
 joyous and unselfish life. 
 
 Boston. 
 

 Contents 
 
 
 I. 
 
 The Servant of the Spirit . 
 
 17 
 
 II. 
 
 The First of the Prophets . 
 
 39 
 
 III. 
 
 The Apostolic Age 
 
 83 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Royalty OF the Pulpit: Ath- 
 
 ANASIUS AND ChRYSOSTOM . 
 
 115 
 
 V. 
 
 The Rulers of Peoples : Savo- 
 narola, Calvin and John Knox 
 
 153 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Founders of Freedom : John 
 Robinson and the Pilgrim 
 Fathers 
 
 191 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Passion of Evangelism : Wes- 
 
 
 
 ley and Whitefield 
 
 225 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Romance of Modern Preach- 
 ing 
 
 263 
 
LECTURE I 
 THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
LECTURE I 
 THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 I MUST begin the honourable task which 
 your kind confidence has assigned to 
 me by a simple and heartfelt acknowl- 
 edgment of this high privilege. You have 
 asked me to attempt an undertaking which 
 can never have been an easy one, and which 
 becomes measurably more difficult as the 
 long sequence of volumes occupies shelf 
 after shelf of our libraries. There were as 
 you know humane laws under the old 
 Hebrew dispensation in favour of those 
 who had to toil for small reward as gleaners 
 of the meagre residuum of the harvest-field 
 after the more favoured harvesters had filled 
 their barns to overflowing with grain of the 
 earlier reaping. So far as I can see my 
 predecessors have had little compassion on 
 posterity. They never beheld my pathetic 
 figure laboriously garnering the slender ears 
 19 
 
20 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 they had overlooked, and submitting them 
 for acceptance to a highly-critical market. 
 
 Nevertheless, if I cherish for my distin- 
 guished predecessors just a faint sentiment 
 of envy, I trust I am able at the same 
 time to perceive that they did not have all 
 the good fortune. We are gleaning on a 
 field where history is being made every year. 
 The passage of the generations enhances the 
 splendour of the retrospect, and, in propor- 
 tion, the magnificence of the prospect. You 
 have not invited me here to lecture on an 
 obsolete art. This is not a funeral oration. 
 The prophet is not on the point of being 
 bowed out of the modern world. The 
 progress of civilization may make some pro- 
 fessions unnecessary. With the world-wide 
 triumph of the Prince of Peace I take it the 
 soldier will make his final salute to the 
 nations ; and I suppose even the lawyer may 
 find existence somewhat precarious. Some 
 of us look to see the enterprise at present 
 associated with the manufacture and sale of 
 injurious liquors and implements of war 
 diverted to more wholesome channels. 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 21 
 
 Some trades and professions, it is clear, 
 will die out as the kingdom of God comes to 
 its own. But for every voice that carries 
 inspiration to its fellows ; for every soul that 
 has some authentic word from the Eternal 
 wherewith to guide and bless mankind, there 
 will always be a welcome. No changes of 
 the future can cancel the commission of the 
 preacher. He does not hold that com- 
 mission from any human society. He is the 
 servant of the Spirit. He is not the creation 
 of a state, or a municipality. Societies may 
 organize and reorganize themselves as they 
 will. They may make and unmake their 
 officials. Some commonwealths have chosen 
 to break with the tradition of kingship. 
 Some have tried every form of military 
 dictatorship and civil despotism ; they have 
 experimented with oligarchies, autocracies, 
 and aristocracies. At times they have tried 
 every form of government in swift succession. 
 Possibly it is a wise thing that we should not 
 cast our forms of national life in so rigid a 
 mould. But in any case nobody would be 
 bold enough to predict that this or that office 
 
22 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 in the commonwealth is final and permanent ; 
 and may not be modified if society so de- 
 cides. You remember Mr. William Watson's 
 fine lines : 
 
 " The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer ; 
 The grass of yesteryear 
 Is dead ; the birds depart, the groves decay ; 
 Empires dissolve, and peoples disappear : 
 Song passes not away. 
 Captains and conquerors leave a litde dust 
 And Kings a dubious legend of their reign ; 
 The swords of Caesar they are less than rust ; 
 The Poet doth remain." 
 
 Suppose Watson had said, the prophet 
 rather than the poet ? For the prophet is of 
 older and nobler lineage, and his order in- 
 cludes all the children of inspiration whether 
 they have kindled the soul of the world by 
 speech or song. And I repeat, as society can- 
 not commission a man to be a poet, even so it 
 is beyond the authority of any state however 
 powerful to create the prophet ; aye, or to 
 make his message false or barren, no matter 
 how governors may growl, and throned in- 
 iquities fulminate. No human authority can 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 23 
 
 credit or discredit his words. His credentials 
 are of superior authenticity. Let me state 
 the position I propose to occupy in these 
 lectures once for all, and at its highest. The 
 preacher, who is the messenger of God, is the 
 real master of society ; not elected by society 
 to be its ruler, but elect of God to form its 
 ideals and through them to guide and rule 
 its life. Show me the man who, in the 
 midst of a community however secularized 
 in manners, can compel it to think with him, 
 can kindle its enthusiasm, revive its faith, 
 cleanse its passions, purify its ambitions, and 
 give steadfastness to its will, and I will show 
 you the real master of society, no matter 
 what party may nominally hold the reins of 
 government, no matter what figurehead 
 may occupy the ostensible place of au- 
 thority. 
 
 Nor is the office of the preacher in the 
 smallest danger of lapsing for lack of 
 candidates. Our embarrassment arises from 
 riches not from poverty. To-day everybody 
 will preach to us and at us, whatever quali- 
 fications for the function they may have or 
 
24 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 lack. Never was this old world sown so 
 thick with pulpits. Never was heard in it 
 such superabundance of gospels. Who 
 that has ever read a modern newspaper 
 will affirm again that the dogmatist is 
 dead I Creeds jostle one another in the 
 market-place and in the drawing-room ; jind 
 their often harsh and hoarse prophets and 
 prophetesses announce salvation and de- 
 nounce judgment quite in the orthodox 
 style. Hot-gospellers to-day are a prolific 
 race ; and some of the beliefs for which they 
 woo and win converts speak volumes for the 
 credulity of mankind. 
 
 It is astonishing what eagerness there is 
 in our time to enter into competition with 
 the conventional and orthodox pulpit, and to 
 usurp its functions in dealing with the big 
 human problems. Now it is the dramatist 
 who is not content until he has converted the 
 stage into a pulpit ; now it is the journalist 
 seeking to charm the public ear with some 
 message that he believes to be vital to the 
 common well-being ; now it is the Socialist 
 agitator, on his soap-box rostrum at the 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 25 
 
 Street-corner, making capital out of the in- 
 consistencies and hypocrisies of society, quite 
 in the old prophet strain ; now it is the 
 novelist marshalling the forces of experience 
 and imagination, and training all his guns 
 on some citadel of real or fancied wrong; 
 now it is the statesman converting the plat- 
 form of political expediency into the pulpit 
 of eternal principle ; now it is the poet, or 
 the prose essayist, setting our highest and 
 wisest dreams of good to music and lifting 
 up the eyes of fallible human nature to the 
 hills whence cometh its strength. It must 
 sometimes appear to us that humanity is a 
 long-suffering, much-lectured creature, and 
 that not we of the churches only but journal- 
 ists, artists, politicians, novelists, playwrights 
 conceive their fellow-men and women as sit- 
 ting in pews, patient and defenseless, at the 
 mercy of every would-be exhorter who has 
 discovered that they are not so good as they 
 should be. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle in his day expressed pity 
 for humanity whose ears were thus besieged 
 by armies o^ strident voices, in consequence 
 
26 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 of which he, Thomas, Hfted up his voice and" 
 shouted louder than all the rest. I confess 
 to you I enjoy a quiet smile whenever the 
 pessimists suggest that the vocation of the 
 preacher is in danger of becoming obsolete. 
 But I agree that God's order of preaching 
 friars is a far wealthier society than some of 
 us have recognized. America to-day will 
 not forget to blazon upon the roll of her great 
 nineteenth century preachers of righteousness 
 the name of Abraham Lincoln as w-ell as of 
 Henry Ward Beecher ; and Englishmen who 
 are justly proud of Robert Hall and Thomas 
 Binney, Dale and Spurgeon, cannot forget to 
 number also among her national prophets 
 Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and John Bright. 
 And why not ? It is no business of ours to 
 belittle our calling. We hold no brief for any 
 narrow and exclusive theory of preaching. In- 
 spiration is not conditioned by a white tie or 
 a Geneva gown. I am glad to have listened 
 to truths as noble and as Christian on the 
 floor of parliarnent as have ever been uttered 
 under the dome of St. Paul's. The Gettys- 
 burg speech was the message of a prophet of 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT l"] 
 
 God, even if it was not divided into three 
 heads and an application. No, we who call 
 ourselves preachers enjoy no monopoly of 
 the greatest of all arts, nor are we interested 
 in establishing one. The spirit breatheth 
 where it listeth. Nobody doubts that Amos 
 was of us, though so far as I know he did 
 not, as we say, preach regularly twice a Sun- 
 day, Ploughmen and herdsmen, carpenters, 
 fishermen, tax-collectors and tent-makers, sons 
 of German miners, Huntingdonshire farmers, 
 and Kentucky backwoodsmen, each in his 
 time and order, have received the divine affla- 
 tus, and therewith, the spiritual and moral 
 leadership of mankind. 
 
 History it is true gives little space to this 
 aspect of the progress of the race. Its can- 
 vas is crowded with uniforms, of kings 
 and warriors and courtiers. The romance 
 which the historian sees and describes to us 
 is the romance symbolized by the banners, 
 the martial music, and all the seductive pag- 
 eantry of war. But the real romance of his- 
 tory is this romance of the preacher ; the 
 sublime miracle of the God-intoxicated soul 
 
28 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 with vision of an eternal Will, and sense of 
 an empire to which all continents, tongues, 
 races belong. This man stands serene amid 
 the clash of arms, and the foolish braggadocio 
 of Force, asking only for the sword named 
 Truth, for the harness of righteousness, and 
 the spirit of peace. This is the world's un- 
 conquerable and irresistible Hero. All its 
 most enduring victories are his. It is he 
 who year after year, and generation after 
 generation, in spite of rebuffs, defeats and 
 disappointments, has planted the banner of 
 the kingdom of justice, freedom and human- 
 ity on the conquered and dismantled fortresses 
 of oppression, selfishness and wrong. 
 
 Do not think I am in danger of departing 
 from the special object of these lectures if I 
 strike this note at the outset. It will do us 
 all good to realize the catholicity and mag- 
 nificence of our order. It is well to realize 
 that for justification of our existence we can 
 make appeal to an universal instinct. We 
 may well cherish our affinities. Our kith 
 and kin is the mightiest family under God's 
 heavens. 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 29 
 
 " Shakespeare was of us ; Milton was for us ; 
 Burns, Shelley were with us ; they watch from their 
 graves." 
 
 Certainly, no man was ever elect of God's 
 spirit to be the mouthpiece of Christian 
 righteousness who did not thereby confess 
 himself one of us. The word " Sermon " has 
 sometimes had an uninviting sound. It has 
 not always been associated with the melting 
 of the mists, and the vision of the infinite 
 blue. Sometimes it is to be feared that it has 
 made the mists more dense, impenetrable and 
 chill. We are not so prejudiced as to deny 
 the fact. But rightly understood mankind 
 lives and grows on great sermons ; and in no 
 other way. Sublime thoughts, high and holy 
 conceptions of life and death and duty, lofty 
 interpretations of nature and experience, the 
 light that reveals God upon the scene, and 
 that dignifies and glorifies human nature 
 — here is the substance of those great 
 sermons that enter into men's souls and 
 make them sons of God, and brothers of 
 humanity. 
 
 Have any of us fathomed the depth of that 
 
30 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 supreme saying of our Lord's that the real 
 life of man is by " every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God"? Every word 1 
 The science of biogenesis is as compre- 
 hensive as that. The vital ingredients in 
 our spiritual nurture are as manifold as that. 
 Every word of God, in whatever language 
 or dialect of the mother tongue of Deity, is 
 endowed with this creative power. No single 
 syllable of the Divine speech but has in it 
 life-bearing, life-bestowing qualities. Even 
 the inorganic creation is a mute evangelist. 
 The God who uttered Himself in nature has 
 decreed that its dumb lips should have their 
 own peculiar eloquence. There are sermons 
 in stones. In the rocks beneath our feet lie 
 the hoarded histories of past millenniums. 
 They are like ancient cinematograph films 
 by means of which the marvellous procession 
 of extinct existences passes before our won- 
 dering eyes, and stirs our sluggish imagina- 
 tion. Of course it is possible to watch the 
 drama but to miss the meaning. But even 
 Charles Darwin tracing the amazing progress 
 of the universe, and linking up as he be- 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 3 1 
 
 lieved all sentient existences to their flower 
 and consummation in the life of man, con- 
 fessed that " at times there came over him 
 with irresistible force the conviction that he 
 had seen the Father." Then again, as he 
 sadly confessed, he lost the vision. 
 
 But alas ! there is nothing extraordinary 
 in that experience. Because we make every 
 use of Nature except to hearken to her sub- 
 limest message, it does not follow that she 
 has lost her soul, and discarded her prophet's 
 mantle. Only we are, as our fathers used to 
 say, gospel-hardened to her words of truth 
 and grace, and especially to their more secret 
 and subtle meanings. Some day she will 
 surprise us in a more sensitive and respon- 
 sive mood, and show us in her mirror the 
 very countenance of Deity, and we shall 
 know that the place we stand on is holy 
 ground. After all, Wordsworth's Peter Bell, 
 sordid and vulgar, is not altogether false to 
 the possibilities of life when he is represented 
 as overwhelmed by a sudden revelation of 
 Nature's inner glory ; and the man to whom 
 before 
 
32 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 " A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him 
 And it was nothing more," 
 
 looks into the heart of Nature's handiwork, 
 hears a Voice commanding him to worship 
 and believe, and becomes from that hour a 
 changed man, awakened from moral and 
 spiritual torpor. 
 
 A primrose in God's hands is text enough 
 to shatter all our shallow agnosticisms, and 
 reward our honest quest for the Eternal. 
 "Whither can I go from Thy presence?" 
 cries the psalmist with his poignant sense of 
 the unescapable Preacher, who has freighted 
 every atom of an infinite universe with 
 Divine lessons, warnings, appeals and in- 
 spirations. " If I ascend into the heavens 
 Thou art there; if I descend into hell be- 
 hold Thou art there." Above the earth, the 
 glittering heavens declare the glory of God ; 
 and beneath it the dark secrets of the under- 
 world cannot be explored without Him. 
 Somehow, you and I have been staged in an 
 infinite theatre, every fragment of which rep- 
 resents some letter in the Divine caligraphy. 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 33 
 
 some note or tone in the ineffable oratorio 
 music, in which the spheres sing the arias; 
 and yet not an electron, infinitely minute, but 
 has its part in the chorus. That is how we 
 conceive it. The Universe is itself a great 
 Bible, with the sublimest of all intelligible 
 themes to set forth and illustrate, and with 
 its myriads of worlds so many chapters ex- 
 panding the one central and vital revelation, 
 until by endless iteration, recapitulation and 
 accumulation of evidence, the argument is 
 established on which immortal souls can 
 build an unconquerable faith, 
 
 I do not forget that there are many to 
 whom the whole creation is inarticulate, and 
 the universe eloquent of Nothing. To them 
 the final achievement of our humanity is un- 
 consciousness of God. The progress of the 
 race is marked by the gradual unlearning of 
 the spiritual lore of its childhood. Slowly 
 but surely, one by one, every prophet voice 
 is to be silenced, without and within. The 
 solemn call to the human soul to recognize 
 its origin and its destiny in God is to be 
 heard no more. The worlds resolve them- 
 
34 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 selves into masses of matter, many of them 
 mere useless derelicts on the ocean of space. 
 They cease to be the flaming manuscripts of 
 the Eternal Wisdom, with their address to the 
 conscience and reason of mankind. From this 
 green earth the dews of inspiration are with- 
 ered ; the bloom of its higher mystic beauty 
 is fled. It becomes merely a ball of ponder- 
 able matter revolving aimlessly in unfathom- 
 able space ; the chance grave of innumerable 
 generations of existence that once cherished 
 the pathetic illusion that underneath them 
 were Everlasting Arms. 
 
 The evolutionist, tracing the history of 
 man, finds this astonishing phenomenon, — 
 that once there dawned on man the con- 
 sciousness of God, that the dawn ripened 
 into the perfect day, and then that the light 
 faded from the sky, and the human soul 
 passed through the twilight of dubiety into 
 the night of dark and sterile negation. The 
 Universe will then become like some ruined 
 and dismantled abbey or cathedral, once aglow 
 with light and beauty, and, as it were, quiver- 
 ing with music, attesting its high heroic 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 35 
 
 human faith in God and man ; but now 
 with altar desolate and prostrate pulpit, and 
 mouldering fabric, no longer a witness to the 
 world of spirit, no longer a trysting-place be- 
 tween the human and the divine, no longer 
 the sanctuary where the oracles of heaven 
 are heard and tested and believed. That is 
 what we are sometimes threatened with. 
 Men may conceive the universe as a vast 
 warehouse ; but it will cease to be a church. 
 Over against such a possibility there is 
 the undeniable fact that every fragment of 
 creation is endowed with the preaching 
 ofBce, and man with a soul that cannot be 
 insensitive to the universal appeal. Nor has 
 he proved himself to be so. From a thou- 
 sand immortal canvases he has uttered and 
 still utters the truths with which Nature has 
 indoctrinated him. He has made himself 
 her expositor, her interpreter. Through him 
 she has expressed her inner meaning. And 
 not only by the artist's canvas but by the 
 language of the poet we are admitted to the 
 shrine where the arcana of Nature are com- 
 municated to us. The materialists who 
 
36 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 flatter themselves that they are about to im- 
 poverish the universe of its ideahsm forget 
 that they have not only to fight down the 
 instinct of worship in every human breast, 
 but to make war against all the supreme 
 interpreters of Nature, — musicians, artists, 
 poets and the rest — who saw into the heart 
 of things with illuminated Vision, and dedi- 
 cated their genius to proclaim what they 
 saw. The significant fact is that every man 
 is surrounded by the Voices that call to life ; 
 and that no one can ever be quite sure that 
 he has closed every avenue through which 
 divine appeals may reach his highest nature 
 and start new processes of faith which may 
 wholly change his character and his destiny. 
 
 " Just when we're safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
 A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
 A chorus-ending from Euripides, 
 And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears." 
 
 At any moment, in any place, we may find 
 ourselves in church, at worship. The heart, 
 so securely garrisoned, may be suddenly 
 stormed. Before we know it we have made 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 37 
 
 the fateful concession, and thereby signed 
 our capitulation. God has taken a text, 
 and preached. We can say with the young 
 prophet of long ago, " The angel came 
 and waked me, as a man is waked out of 
 sleep." 
 
 In all of this there is no suggestion that the 
 office and function of the preacher can ever 
 be superseded. Rather he has his roots in 
 the nature of things, and can never cease to 
 fulfill his mission until all the works of 
 God cease to be eloquent of the love and 
 wisdom of their Creator. It may be true that 
 of late years mankind generally has been 
 tempted to lay the accent on other instrumen- 
 talities. The State bulks more largely in the 
 thought of the average man to-day than the 
 Church does. The statesman and politician 
 are, in the thought of our democracies, 
 clothed with almost limitless powers for the 
 betterment of human conditions. They have 
 a very attractive and absorbing gospel to 
 preach. Their sermons are of higher wages, 
 better houses, the fairer distribution of wealth, 
 and the shortening of the hours of labour. 
 
38 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Their sphere of action is this present life, 
 with its urgent immediate needs ; and just 
 because tlieir aim is avowedly to make this 
 present world a better place to live in, they 
 will never fail to find an audience. 
 
 You remember the sort of popular appeal 
 that George Eliot put into the mouth of 
 " Felix Holt, the Radical," when he took up 
 his parable at the street corner against the 
 churches and the parsons : " The aristocrats 
 supply us with our religion like anything else 
 and get a profit on it. They'll give us plenty 
 of heaven. We may have land there. But 
 we'll offer to change with them. We'll give 
 them back some of their heaven, and take it 
 out in something for us and for our children 
 in this world." When things have gone 
 wrong with us socially and industrially, 
 preaching such as that makes many strings to 
 vibrate in the average human breast. It is 
 natural that the multitude should begin to fix 
 their hopes on what governments can do for 
 them, and should have but little patience 
 with the evangelist who would hand to 
 Lazarus, greedy for crumbs, a tract on the 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 39 
 
 bliss he will enjoy when he gets to Abra- 
 ham's bosom. God forbid that I should deny 
 that there is a suggestion of irony in talking 
 of the bread of life to the physically starving, 
 the raiment of righteousness to those in 
 threadbare rags, and the mansions of the 
 blessed to those living in garrets or cellars. 
 Most of us do not believe, any more than 
 Felix Holt did, that the purpose of religion is 
 to reconcile us to the postponement of all 
 comfort and all luxury until we pass into an- 
 other world. No sane critic will ever accuse 
 the Lord Christ of being indifferent to the 
 physical well-being of the people. 
 
 But readers of George Eliot's famous story 
 will remember that Felix Holt's social minis- 
 try was the result of a moral and spiritual 
 crisis to which he confessed ; and it had not 
 occurred to him to enquire whence the im- 
 pulse came prompting him to social service 
 and political propagandism on behalf of the 
 disinherited. " The angel came and waked 
 me," said the young prophet Zechariah, and 
 could give no clearer account. All he knew 
 was that for years he had been in a state of 
 
40 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 somnambulism — as one walking in his sleep. 
 He had lived for the superficial, for the things 
 of sense. The things of the spirit had been 
 outside his consciousness. Then came the 
 visitation — the influence of the higher minis- 
 try — and his soul awoke. You are familiar 
 with Sant's popular picture of " The Soul's 
 Awakening." The young girl has been read- 
 ing in some book of vision ; and now she is 
 looking up with the aspect of one to whom 
 Revelation has come, and who has found 
 God and Life and Duty. When Zechariah 
 was awaked, shaken out of sleep, and forced 
 to open his eyes upon reality, we are told 
 what it was that he saw. A new civilization ! 
 A city with streets in which the children 
 played, and where the inhabitants grew old ; 
 where there was work for all and leisure for 
 all. A city, too, built without walls, un- 
 armed, unfortified, with open gates hospitable 
 to all mankind, the symbol of peace and 
 brotherhood. 
 
 This is the vision of an awakened youth. 
 It is not unreal though it is as yet unrealized. 
 On the contrary, it is the kind of vision 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 4I 
 
 which ought to be a permanent endowment 
 of every preacher's imagination. The one 
 thing needful to make us prophets is 
 an experience akin to that of Zechariah 
 — the soul's awakening. Some angel of 
 the Lord, some messenger from His Pres- 
 ence, some ministry of His Hands must 
 wake us out of our sleep. Of this I am 
 very sure — no preacher will thrill and move 
 his generation who has not himself known 
 this kindling of the soul. For it is " soul " 
 the world needs. Everywhere to-day I hear 
 the same complaint — that we are suffering 
 from lack of soul. Art, they tell us, shows 
 no falling off in skill of technique, but 
 there is so little soul in modern pictures. 
 Music is the same ; the great composers have 
 left no successors. Poetry died out in the 
 nineteenth century. It is the same in other 
 spheres. The employer complains that his 
 workmen put no soul into their work. The 
 workman retorts that industries to-day are 
 managed for the most part by companies ; 
 and companies are well enough called 
 " bodies " of men, but they are bodies with- 
 
42 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 out souls. Even the pulpits of the world, I 
 , hear it said, are occupied by those who 
 
 unite to a chaste style a well-furnished 
 I mind, and a genius for criticism and analysis ; 
 I but somehow there is little soul, and the 
 
 i' winds of heaven do not sweep over the 
 spirits of their audience as in days gone by. 
 
 All this may be exaggerated. I suspect it 
 is. But nobody can question that there is a 
 measure of truth in it. And here, remember, 
 is something that no parliaments or con- 
 gresses can do. Here governments are 
 y^ impotent. If they could put money in every 
 one's pocket, a good roof over every one's 
 head, and the best clothes on every one's 
 back ; still they could not put a soul of faith 
 and love in every one's breast. Here the 
 preacher has really no competitor. There 
 is something in the living voice of the true 
 prophet that thrills us as nothing else can. 
 We may be rich and increased with goods 
 and yet have need of everything. Poverty 
 is not the most fatal enemy of empires. 
 The great empires of yesterday did not go 
 to their ruin because of any lack of wealth. 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 43 
 
 They were on the contrary enervated by lux- 
 ury. They perished, like Hamlet's father, 
 "full of bread." They declined and fell for 
 lack of " soul." Where there is no " vision " 
 the people perish. The appearance of a true 
 preacher is the greatest gift that any nation 
 can have. By his presence, and his spirit, 
 he multiplies the fighting forces for righteous- 
 ness indefinitely. John Knox's voice was 
 as the sound of a trumpet. When Luther 
 rode to Worms, every timid believer in the 
 Reformation plucked up heart to speak and 
 act more boldly. When Cromwell arrived 
 on Marston Moor, the historian tells us that a 
 great shout went up in the Puritan camp 
 which was the presage of victory. It was 
 more. It was victory. What Washington 
 and Lincoln were to your own heroic fathers 
 in their day of trial, men of faith, men of 
 soul, men of God, are to all hard-pressed 
 Christian causes and all humane enterprises. 
 It is this force that we call " soul " that is 
 the motive-power of all progress ; that turns 
 all the wheels that ever do turn to any 
 noble purpose. "The words that I speak 
 
 %^ 
 
44 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 unto you," said Jesus, " they are soul." As 
 a mere matter of fact He has kept the soul 
 of the world alive. As John Morley wrote 
 many years ago, " The spiritual life of the 
 West has burned during all these centuries 
 with the pure flame first kindled by the 
 sublime Mystic of the Galilaean Hills." 
 
 This is our business — the business which 
 all the parliaments of the world are powerless 
 to transact. I might have called the subject 
 of these lectures, in which I hope to review 
 some of the more notable preaching exploits 
 of history, " Keeping the soul of the world 
 alive." I have preferred to call it "The 
 Romance of Preaching." Frankly, I fear 
 that in these modern days we have been 
 losing our sense of the splendid possibilities 
 of our vocation. The thought of it does not 
 thrill us. We do not go down to our work 
 as we should, with our hearts beating high 
 for the wonder and the hope of the adven- 
 tures. We tend to become slaves to the 
 routine of it. Once we were alive in the age 
 of miracles. By " the vision splendid " we 
 were " on our way attended." But the beauty 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 45 
 
 is off the morning sky, the glow of the dawn 
 is past. We have 
 
 " seen it die away 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 There is no tragedy in all the world like 
 the disillusioned minister. He has to keep 
 on preaching. His congregation is often 
 weary ; but no one is so heavy of heart as he 
 is. " What a genius I was," cried Swift, 
 " when I wrote that book ! " referring to a 
 work of his early prime. Millais, in the 
 presence of a collection of the pictures repre- 
 sentative of the splendid idealism of his 
 youth, burst into tears and rushed out of the 
 building. Somehow, so many of us are 
 strangers to the truth of Paul's affirmation 
 that " experience worketh Hope." So many 
 have gathered doubt and even despondency 
 as the fruit of that tree. So we begin to 
 envy other men their tasks. The physician 
 who with reverent hands and spirit repairs 
 the temple of the body ; the lawyer who 
 serves the ideals of justice ; the statesman 
 who helps to rear the fabric of a nation's 
 
46 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 prosperity or a world's peace ; the explorer 
 and the engineer who between them prospect 
 and build the roads for a higher civilization 
 — all these we begin to believe are following 
 the gleam with nobler ambitions and to a 
 more glorious goal. 
 
 That, in part, is why youth does not rally 
 to the call of the ministry to-day, and why 
 the preacher's face is all too often in the 
 shadow. The time has surely come to sound 
 another note. Who should be proud of their 
 calling if not we ? What other history has 
 ever equalled ours? Think of the procession 
 of the preachers ! No range of mountains 
 has been high enough to stay their progress ; 
 no rivers deep and broad enough to daunt 
 them ; no forests dark and dense enough to 
 withstand their advance. No poet has ever 
 sung the epic of their sacrifices. Was ever 
 such a romance ? Was ever love exalted to 
 so pure a passion ? Was ever in the human 
 soul so unquenchable a fire ? Silver and gold 
 they had none. They did not seek to win 
 mankind by materialistic gifts. Such as they 
 had they gave. The alms they distributed 
 
THE SERVANT OF THE SPIRIT 47 
 
 were faith, hope, love. Wherever they went 
 they trod a pilgrim road, and flung- forth 
 their faith, often to a sceptical and scornful 
 generation. But what heeded they? They 
 passed onward from frontier to frontier, *' the 
 legion that never was counted," and, let us 
 add, that never knew defeat. 
 
 Gradually before their message, ancient 
 pagan empires tottered, heathen despots 
 bowed the head, in the lands of Goth and 
 Vandal stately cathedrals reared their splen- 
 did towers and spires, and the battle music 
 of the Christian crusade rang triumphantly 
 in chiming bells and pealing organs over 
 conquered races. In the recesses of Indian 
 forests, up the dark rivers of Africa and 
 South America that often flowed red, along 
 the frozen coast of Greenland and Labrador, 
 the pioneer preachers made their pilgrimage. 
 Let every village preacher who climbs into a 
 rude rostrum, to give out a text and preach 
 a sermon to a meagre handful of somewhat 
 stolid hearers, remember to what majestic 
 Fraternity he belongs, and what romantic 
 traditions he inherits. He, too, is the servant 
 
48 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 of the spirit. He, too, does his work in the 
 land of Romance. Many modern influences 
 have tried to kill the consciousness of this 
 truth. Even the churches do not always 
 allow us to realize it. Materialism and ra- 
 tionalism would fain lay sacrilegious hands 
 upon our task, and secularize it. But the 
 true Prophet has that within his soul which 
 no external adversaries can destroy. 
 
 " I see my call ! It gleams ahead 
 
 Like sunshine through a loophole shed ! 
 I know my Task ; these demons slain 
 The sick earth shall grow sound again ; — 
 Once let them to the grave be given. 
 The fever-fumes of Earth shall fly ! 
 Up, Soul, array thee ! Sword from thigh ! 
 To battle for the heirs of Heaven ! " 
 
LECTURE II 
 THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 
 
LECTURE II 
 THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 
 
 THE Prophet stood in the old world 
 as a mysterious and romantic fig- 
 ure, played upon by strange and sub- 
 lime lights, his speech charged with subtle 
 meanings, his life commissioned out of the 
 supernatural for surprising and perilous er- 
 rands. His is by far the most arresting fig- 
 ure in the Old Testament. When he takes 
 the stage all other actors are dwarfed. If he 
 is not there, time itself seems to wait for his 
 appearance. Prince and priest alike are in- 
 significant in his majestic presence. In his 
 highest exemplars both his words and his 
 deeds are memorable. His interventions, his 
 appearances mark the crises of history. His 
 words set the standard of thought for genera- 
 tions. With the people he is by no means 
 always popular. He has no genius for 
 smooth speech. He flatters neither monarch 
 nor mob ; and nations have seldom loved the 
 51 
 
52 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 uncompromising truth. He appears on the 
 canvas of Holy Writ as the clear-sighted 
 enemy of powerful, selfish, vested interests ; 
 and the passages are yet to be discovered in 
 which he pronounces blessing on the rich. 
 The language he holds is scathing and pas- 
 sionate ; and in many cases the denunciations 
 are more frequent than the consolations. Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold would perhaps have called 
 the prophet a Philistine ; but imagination 
 fails to conceive what the prophet would have 
 called Mr. Matthew Arnold. 
 
 But whatever be the type of mission and 
 of personality, the prophet dominates the life 
 of his time. Wherever and whenever he ap- 
 pears men's souls are stirred, and there is a 
 shaking of the dry bones. We realize that 
 he awes even the worldly-minded. He fixes 
 men's thoughts on serious issues. He rebukes 
 their triviality and flippancy. He brings a 
 breath of reality into ordinary conversation. 
 He confronts the careless and frivolous with 
 the claims of the Eternal. We realize, too, 
 that the great prophets had a genius for the 
 unexpected and the unconventional. They 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 53 
 
 ignored tradition. They were fiery icono- 
 clasts, intolerant of illusions however fashion- 
 able. They had no excessive respect for the 
 orthodoxy so-called of the rigid schools of the 
 Rabbis. Of ceremonies and ordinances as 
 you know they were apt to speak with very 
 slight respect. The tendency of religion in 
 all ages to stereotype its forms and formulas 
 was viewed by the prophets as an insidious 
 evil. Thus it was never long before they had 
 arrayed against them all those who were 
 keenly interested in the preservation of the 
 old order of things. For the prophet was al- 
 ways and everywhere a reformer, zealous to 
 reconstruct life as it is so that it might more 
 perfectly express the will of God. 
 
 You will bear this in mind also, that even 
 when the people believed but little in their 
 prophet, the true prophet never faltered in his 
 behef in the people. He knew their souls 
 were soil adapted to the seed. He knew 
 that they were capable of all the aspirations 
 and all the heroisms which they habitually 
 professed to despise. He knew that their ag- 
 nosticism was superficial, and their contempt 
 
54 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 of idealism a pose. Let any genuine voice 
 reach tliem and thrill them, or let some great 
 crisis shatter their slumbers, and their affecta- 
 tions, and all the inferior creeds would go 
 down before the resistless tide of spiritual 
 feeling. Unless there is in men and women 
 this capacity of re-birth the preacher's work 
 everywhere is vain ; we may as well dismantle 
 our pulpits, and recognize that human prog- 
 ress is a delusive hope. So Thomas Carlyle 
 exclaims concerning the European Reforma- 
 tion : " Nations are benefited, I believe, for 
 ages by being thrown into divine white heat 
 in this manner, and no nation that has not 
 had such divine paroxysms at any time is apt 
 to come to much." The preacher, it is true, 
 may feel himself to be, in the beginning, only 
 a voice crying in the wilderness, but he also 
 believes that the desert can rejoice and blos- 
 som as the rose. That is to say, he believes 
 that actual desert is potential Eden ; and that 
 all that is needed to effect the miracle is the 
 cooperant forces of what we describe as the 
 Sun of Righteousness and the Water of 
 Life. 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 55 
 
 This inspired visionary, with his radiant be- 
 lief in transfigured deserts, — in sandy and bar- 
 ren wastes gay with lilies and roses — is surely 
 the very insuppressible hero of Romance. 
 He walks the mean streets and dreary paths 
 of modern industrial districts, with the same 
 high confidence that lighted the face of Isaiah 
 amid the desert of commercialized Judaism, 
 in the unspiritual environment of ancient 
 Babylon. For he believes in his people ; he is 
 sure of his audience. It is nothing to him that 
 they do not believe in themselves. It is noth- 
 ing to him that the soil to be cultivated is so 
 heavy and obstinate a clay, orso barren awaste. 
 The more unpromising the material, the more 
 smiling is his prevision of success. This, 
 surely, is the element of futurity about the 
 prophet's message which has often been 
 fiercely debated. He is more than a forth- 
 teller. He is a fore-teller. He does "dip 
 into the future." It is given to him to see the 
 end from the beginning. More certainly 
 than the scientist with boasted precision can 
 dogmatize on the ultimate product in the total 
 process of cause and effect, the prophet fore- 
 
56 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 sees and foretells the inevitable transforma- 
 tions that will be produced upon the desert 
 of unbelief and unrighteousness, by the opera- 
 tion of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 But let us leave these generalizations and 
 make a more close and detailed study of 
 the first great master of the art of the prophet 
 as he is portrayed for us in the Book of Ex- 
 odus. To those who frankly disbelieve that 
 the message of God to man is even more than 
 the call to personal regeneration, and who 
 are aghast at the idea of the preacher being 
 made the instrument of popular liberty and 
 social reconstruction, the mission and message 
 of Moses must be the source of endless diffi- 
 culty. On what theory they rely for explain- 
 ing away this man and his work I have no 
 notion. But to the candid student who holds 
 no brief for, or against, any particular theory, 
 the story of Moses is surely one of the most 
 luminous and thrilling in human history. 
 
 I need not dwell here on the romantic cir- 
 cumstances of his preservation from death, 
 and his transfer from the hovel of the slave 
 to the palace of the Pharaoh. His education 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 57 
 
 is more to the point. Do not fail to note 
 that the Scripture assumes that it belonged 
 to the will and purpose of Providence that 
 this first great Hebrew prophet should be in- 
 structed in all the lore of the Egyptians. 
 There was no prejudice against what is 
 sometimes derided as pagan or classical cul- 
 ture. Familiarity with the thoughts and 
 imaginations of great men is taken as an in- 
 valuable preparation for the preacher's work, 
 even when these thinkers belong to a very 
 different school of religious philosophy. 
 Like the apostle Paul, his mental powers are 
 trained and disciplined in the wisdom of the 
 ancients, but his personality and his expe- 
 rience are his own ; and so far as we can see, 
 he is never in any danger of surrendering his 
 personality or depreciating his experience. 
 
 His nearest successor in modern times was 
 John Wesley whose whole preaching was 
 coloured by his classical learning, who 
 abounded in illustrations drawn from the 
 ancients, and yet the originality of whose 
 spiritual experience was the secret of his 
 unique influence over his generation. It can 
 
58 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 never be necessary in this atmosphere to pro- 
 test against any and every theory that makes 
 light of an educated ministry, and that as- 
 sumes that Providence prefers to let loose 
 upon an unsophisticated generation the man 
 of undisciplined mind. I shall have more to 
 say on this subject when I come to deal with 
 the Romance of Evangelism. But for the 
 present let me lay it down that there is noth- 
 ing in Holy Writ to warrant the assumption 
 that a man is likely to be more spiritual if he 
 is an ignoramus ; or that prophetic power in 
 the pulpit especially attaches to the preacher 
 whose heart is full and whose head is empty. 
 Knowledge is really not a disqualification for 
 the ministry ; neither is there any incompati- 
 bility between the seer and the scholar. Be- 
 cause Festus chose to assume that much 
 learning had made Paul mad, we need not be 
 seriously afraid that a similar cause will be 
 likely to produce that effect in us. That 
 Moses brought to his great democratic task 
 a finely trained, balanced and disciplined in- 
 tellect was of immeasurable value to him, and 
 gave him at once a portion of personal as- 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 59 
 
 cendency when he came to deal with those 
 whose misfortune it was, that they had been 
 deprived of his advantages. 
 
 But on the most vital point of all, the Scrip- 
 ture narrative is emphatic. No weight of 
 learning, no insight into alien creeds, and no 
 increase of social prestige injured his human- 
 ity. In the court atmosphere that he 
 breathed, and under the tuition of the Egyp- 
 tian scholars, he did not lose his capacity for 
 indignation, his passionate hatred of oppres- 
 sion and love of liberty. Neither did his own 
 prosperity make him forgetful of those who 
 were the victims of cruelty, and apparently 
 in the grip of an inexorable fate. His eulo- 
 gists were wont to celebrate the meekness 
 and patience of his later days. But I do not 
 think I am wrong in saying that in every 
 true prophet there is something volcanic. 
 Well is it for all of us when our primal in- 
 stincts remain intact, however thoroughly we 
 may master the lessons of self-control. 
 Moses in his young manhood betrays the 
 depths of his humanity — his elemental hatred 
 of oppression ; but I ask you to observe that 
 
6o THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 when he fled from the consequences of his 
 own rough blow struck for justice and free- 
 dom, he is guided to a solitude where he 
 might think out his problem. For the prob- 
 lem was not only to avenge one wrong but 
 to destroy the system that authorized the 
 wrong. After all it was a poor thing merely 
 to strike down the agent of Pharaoh's tyr- 
 anny. The war Moses had to wage was 
 against the throned iniquity, the entrenched 
 and panoplied injustice that had behind it all 
 the force of organized authority, and all the 
 glamour of a throne. In other words, the 
 problem for this Man of destiny was how to 
 end an iron despotism and substitute an 
 brder of justice, freedom and humanity. No 
 preacher into whose soul God's light has 
 penetrated will ever content himself with 
 seeking the deliverance of the individual, so 
 long as systems of wrong are allowed to 
 stand which have issue, generation after gen- 
 eration, in the demoralization of human na- 
 ture, and the consequent perpetuation of in- 
 justice. 
 
 The next stage in the ordeal of Moses may 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 6l 
 
 be described as his fight against his destiny. 
 For it has always been true that God's best 
 ministers tal<:e up their commission under a 
 sense of compulsion. They cannot easily 
 believe that this awful and sublime call is to 
 them. They are conscious of no capacity in 
 their nature equal to so tremendous a voca- 
 tion. They are driven out on to these great 
 waters, where the Divine business is to be 
 done, under stress of storm. It needs the 
 utter maximum of revelation to convince us 
 that we are actually the elect of God for tasks 
 so mighty. Like Moses, we plead nature's 
 bar, and cry " Impossible 1 " " O Lord, I am 
 not eloquent. . . . And the Lord said. 
 Who hath made man's mouth, is it not I the 
 Lord ? " Science has laboured in our time to 
 make a Gospel out of natural selection. But 
 this Gospel of supernatural election is a 
 greater one. God's miracles are wrought by 
 those who, in spite of themselves, do the hu- 
 manly impossible. 
 
 You remember a passage in one of Mr. 
 Augustine Birrell's essays in which he re- 
 minds us that the poet Gray longed to be a 
 
62 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 soldier ; he wrote the immortal elegy but he 
 took no Quebec ; General Wolfe took Quebec, 
 and with his latest breath declared he would 
 rather have written Gray's elegy. Not 
 natural selection, but divine election ! Fred- 
 erick William Robertson broke his heart be- 
 cause he might not be a soldier ; and was 
 constrained into the office of prophet by in- 
 fluences he could not comprehend. Yet, so 
 coerced in spirit, he preached ; and did more 
 than any other of his time to create a new 
 birth of faith. Not natural selection but 
 supernatural election. Strange as it seems, 
 and paradoxical, God's noblest warriors have 
 felt like pressed men. Said a young fellow 
 once before a college committee when asked 
 why he wanted to enter the ministry, '* Be- 
 cause all other ambitions went down before 
 the revelation of life in Christ." The other 
 ambitions have to go down. The one and 
 only ambition that is big enough to over- 
 whelm all others has to master and possess 
 the preacher. I know nothing in history 
 more impressive than the resistless way in 
 wliich God urges His claims ; how He seems 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 63 
 
 to shut in the man to the task, and sweep 
 away his objections and hesitations hke chaff 
 before the wind. 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to the dust, 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' 
 The soul replies, ' I can.' " 
 
 It is that determinative " thou must " 
 that Hes behind the consecrated audacity of 
 the prophet, and lends strange fire to his 
 words. 
 
 Surely there is no prayer more appropriate 
 to any one who feels the inner urging of the 
 spirit towards the office of the preacher than 
 the famous one of Augustine — " O God, give 
 what Thou commandest and then command 
 what Thou wilt." When we are ready to 
 cry out with Moses, " I cannot go, I have not 
 the gift, I should only bring dishonour upon 
 the cause," the answer is, " The gift is in the 
 good pleasure of the Giver." Certain it is 
 He will send no man on any errand of His, 
 without the ability to discharge it. 
 
 Yet this diffidence on the threshold is surely 
 
64 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 a sign of grace. We notice it not only in 
 Moses but in Jeremiah, in Zechariah and in 
 Paul. They require to be convinced that 
 they are not being tempted to build the most 
 responsible and difficult of all lives on mere 
 raw impulse. They are resolved to hold no 
 illusions as to their own character and ca- 
 pacity. They weigh, and measure up, their 
 powers and talents with scrupulous exacti- 
 tude. They .disguise none of their deficien- 
 cies. They do full justice to the magnitude 
 of the work required of them. Then with 
 genuine humiHty they object their insuffi- 
 ciency for the task. Only men who have ap- 
 proached the ministry in this spirit have had 
 their souls and wills purged from the alloy of 
 false and base ambitions. But at the last, 
 Moses is made to see that his mistrust of self 
 and his fear of failure, alike spring from an 
 imperfect knowledge of God and partial sur- 
 render to His will. The one thing lacking 
 in the special education of Moses for the 
 crisis in history which he has to handle is 
 Revelation. The solution of Israel's social 
 problem lies precisely where the solutions of 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 65 
 
 all social troubles lie, — in the knowledge of 
 God and of His will. 
 
 It is this experience to which the next 
 chapter in his education is sacred. The 
 special gift that is to fit him for his ambas- 
 sadorship is God's revealed secret to him — a 
 new knowledge of God which former genera- 
 tions had not known, nor needed to know, but 
 which was revealed to him, Moses, because 
 without it he could not accompHsh his task. 
 It is well to take note of the actual words as 
 they are given us in the Book of the Exodus. 
 The passages are gathered from two chapters. 
 To the petition of Moses for new light on the 
 nature of God the answer is, " I AM hath sent 
 thee " ; and it dawns on this young Liberator 
 that this mystic message contains a new truth 
 of pregnant meaning — " I am the Lord ; I 
 appeared unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by 
 the name of God Almighty but by my name 
 Jehovah was I not known to them." This 
 spiritual crisis in the personal preparation of 
 the prophet for his work is worthy of your 
 attention. By some flash of inner light he is 
 conscious of out distancing the greatest of 
 
66 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 his predecessors. Some new conviction is 
 burned into liis brain. He is literally on fire 
 with a new ideal. 
 
 " O glory of the lighted mind," 
 
 exclaims Mr. Masefield's converted hero in 
 " The Everlasting Mercy." There is no glory 
 equal to it. In that hour Moses became a 
 seer, and stands illuminated with the glory of 
 the lighted mind. 
 
 In the first place it is a great thing to 
 know by actual verification that Revelation is 
 progressive. 
 
 " Each generation learned 
 Some new word of that great Credo which in 
 
 prophet hearts has burned 
 Since the first man stood God-conquered with his 
 
 face to Heaven upturned." 
 
 It is one thing to believe that as a theological 
 proposition ; it is quite another thing to know 
 its truth in some hour of exalted vision. This 
 is the very soul of religion. It thrills us in 
 those majestic words which form the stately 
 exordium of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 67 
 
 ** God who at sundry times and in divers 
 manners spake in time past unto the fathers 
 by the prophets hath in these latter days 
 spoken unto us by His Son." " God hath 
 spoken." This is the Hfe of truth. God hath 
 spoken to us. The Divine word has become 
 cogent and pertinent to our hfe and our need. 
 Something of the infinite reserve of truth 
 has been specially disclosed for our enlighten- 
 ment. We are not the disciples of a closed 
 canon. Do not the astronomers tell us 
 that we live in so splendid and spacious a 
 physical universe that not a year passes but 
 the light from some new star, some effluence 
 out of the Infinite, reaches our world and 
 adds to our perception of the wealth of the 
 Eternal ? And are we to suppose that the 
 spiritual universe is less august? and that 
 those rays that speak of realities old as the 
 worlds yet new to our ken, may not reach our 
 souls to-day, and continue to illumine with 
 fresh radiance the spirits of the generations 
 yet unborn ? We are the heirs of progressive 
 revelation. We are admitted to know 
 secrets withheld from the knowledge of our 
 
68 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 sainted sires. We are always knowing God. 
 To know Him is the life which is life indeed. 
 The special revelation that lighted the 
 mind of Moses and made him a prophet lay in 
 the name of God — the I AM, the Eternal Pres- 
 ence ; or as Dr. Fairbairn more truly phrases 
 it, " He who causes to be." This is the 
 Vision of the Immanent Deity without whom 
 there is no existence and no progress ; and 
 who has not made either the world or human- 
 ity but is ever making them. This is the 
 Vision of the Will that rolls through all 
 things, moulding and making all that is. 
 The soul that is one with that Will is lifted 
 above fear and failure. For him the Present 
 is alive with God ; and the Future is forever 
 with Him. That is the faith with which to 
 conquer the hell of slavery ; that is the vision 
 to give hope and patience to the Reformer 
 whose business it is not only to deliver the 
 people's bodies from bondage but their souls 
 from the curse of captivity. *' I Am hath 
 sent thee." It is not very far from that 
 revelation to the central Christian faith — 
 Emmanuel, God with us. 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 69 
 
 Here then is our man, the first in the 
 august line of the prophetical succession, one 
 who of his own choice espouses the cause of 
 a suffering people, who for the sake of the 
 enslaved and oppressed eats the bread of 
 exile and servitude, who by Divine constraint 
 takes up the sacred but thankless task of 
 liberator, and becomes the mouthpiece of the 
 will of God alike to tyrant monarch and de- 
 praved multitude. He is the servant and 
 spokesman of " Him who causes to be." On 
 that revelation of the Divine purpose and co- 
 operation he relies, and under the inspiration 
 of it he rises to a sublime height. He sees that 
 the social revolution without which national 
 emancipation cannot be achieved lies within 
 the will and power of Him who causes to be. 
 Henceforth Moses is a " God-intoxicated " 
 man. But so far from being a visionary, his 
 spiritual illumination confers practical insight 
 and the wisdom of statesmanship. He has 
 not only to persuade a dark, degraded and 
 discouraged people that their social misery 
 is not irremediable nor their spiritual despair 
 indestructible if only faith in God revives in 
 
70 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 their breasts; but he has somehow to lead 
 them up from the depths of servitude and 
 fashion for them a religious and social 
 system which shall incorporate and express 
 the new revelation of God and His will. 
 
 I need not tell you that our inspired 
 prophet was no infallible pope. As we have 
 seen he was the disciple of progressive rev- 
 elation, and just as he saw truths about 
 God that had been concealed from his fa- 
 thers, so the generations to come would out- 
 grow the Mosaic system in the light of a 
 still purer and humaner revelation. Some- 
 thing of the harshness and inhumanity of the 
 heathenism from which his race had emerged 
 betrays itself in many of his statutes. But it 
 is not the man's limitations that astonish us, 
 but his almost incredible height of wisdom 
 and humanity, standing where he did. And 
 one supreme conviction masters him. God 
 X I must rule the whole life of man. Nothing 
 jthat is human must ever lie outside the 
 Idivine governance. That is why he brings 
 the will of God to bear on the minutest de- 
 tails not only of worship, but of conduct. 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 7 1 
 
 The wonder of the Mosaic legislation is 
 not in the provision of the tabernacle and 
 the elaborate system of symbol by means of 
 which he designed to teach a people of very 
 rudimentary religious education the spiritual 
 and moral truths he himself had grasped ; the 
 wonder of the Mosaic legislation is in the 
 new social and economic order that it 
 created, and the moral code that was to hold 
 therein. First, in the Decalogue, he not only 
 sweeps away by solemn enactment all 
 polytheism and idolatry, but all external 
 temptations thereto. Then he provides by 
 law for one day's rest in seven for everybody. 
 Then he lends the sanction of rehgion to 
 that respect due to parents which is the key 
 to a wholesome family life. Then he legis- 
 lates against murder, adultery, theft and 
 scandal, and even ventures to lay the divine 
 law upon the thoughts and imaginations of 
 the heart by a statute against those envious 
 desires which are the source of so many 
 deeds of unjust aggrandizement. 
 
 So much for the Decalogue. But there 
 follows, as you know, the most elaborate and 
 
72 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 interesting series of statutes, dealing with 
 various classes of labour, menservants and 
 maidservants, for whom a whole charter of 
 rights, exemptions and privileges is devised. 
 He faces problems as to the responsibility of 
 those who are the unwitting cause of in jury- 
 to others. He is rigorous against usury. 
 He safeguards the position of the " foreigner," 
 and enjoins hospitality. He deals with the 
 appointment of judges and decrees the 
 punishment for perjury. He sketches the 
 system of land tenure and asserts the original 
 and inalienable proprietorship of God. He 
 has a good deal to say as to the conduct of 
 war, and while his words are in places dark 
 and fearful, we have nevertheless in his 
 statute the first attempt ever made to hu- 
 manize war and moderate some of its con- 
 sequences. His agrarian legislation includes 
 details as to the cultivation of vineyards, and 
 methods of ploughing. He even conde- 
 scends to the character and quality of cloth- 
 ing that is appropriate to the life of the 
 people ; and again and again he throws the 
 shelter of Divine authority about the life and 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 73 
 
 fortune of the poor, the infirm and the 
 "stranger"; as well as around the dumb 
 beasts that are the servants of mankind. 
 
 Perhaps I may be allowed to interpolate 
 here that my argument is scarcely, if at all, 
 affected by the most advanced criticism, 
 assigning much that has been included in 
 the code of Moses to a later date. It is really 
 a question of the foundation tradition of a 
 great people. The prophet comes upon the 
 scene as the herald of a theocracy. His soul 
 is alive with faith in the kingdom of God. 
 He sees that government by God's will means 
 not only the acceptance of certain beliefs, and 
 the performance of certain acts of worship, 
 but the observance of certain ethical obliga- 
 tions, and the organization of a certain social 
 order. The tradition of the Hebrew nation 
 was, from henceforth, that its state was 
 founded by its first prophet ; that its first 
 statesman and legislator was one who re- 
 ceived his ideals in communion with God 
 upon the Mount of Vision. No one can won- 
 der that the successors of Moses in the great 
 prophetical line were similarly endowed by 
 
74 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 the spirit for momentous political errands. 
 Hence Samuel crowns and discrowns kings. 
 Elijah, flying from life and duty to Horeb, 
 hears commanding words bidding him re- 
 turn to the thick of the human fray " and 
 anoint Hazael to be king over Syria and 
 Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over 
 Israel." So he, too, becomes the instrument 
 of political revolution, and the mouthpiece 
 of the creed that the Lord God cares how the 
 people are governed, and that His sover- 
 eignty remains unaffected ' by the particular 
 mode of government that may obtain at any 
 time and in any land. This then is the con- 
 ception alike of the work of the preacher, 
 and of the ideal constitution of a people that 
 we derive from the Old Testament ; and as I 
 hope to be able to show you in later lectures, 
 it is not modified by any teaching or prac- 
 tice that we owe to the New Testament. 
 The whole problem of good government is 
 how to give efTect to the ideal of the king- 
 dom of God. The problem of bad govern- 
 ment lies in the men who have lost sight of 
 that ideal. 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 75 
 
 I think we may spare a few more thoughts 
 for the problem of how God made His first 
 great prophet — the leader of that hero race 
 whose deeds and words belong to the unper- 
 ishable glories of the world. You and I 
 come to our consideration of this man with 
 questions in our minds which we shall have 
 to answer, and in regard to which people will 
 look to us for guidance. Yet these questions 
 only differ in degree from those that tortured 
 the soul of Moses and inspired his sacrifice 
 and devotion. He became the man he was 
 because he saw the two extremes of life, its 
 luxury and its misery, its cruel indefensible 
 inequalities. I sometimes think no man is 
 qualified to be a preacher at all into whose 
 soul that iron has not entered. We may 
 state our economic beliefs to-day in more 
 scientific terms than Moses could. But do 
 we feel as much as he did what the actual 
 facts mean ? Do we realize the poignancy of 
 the contrast ? It was the great advantage of 
 this embryo prophet that he lived in both 
 worlds ; he knew the want at one end of the 
 social scale and the ivaste at the other. He 
 
76 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 saw that the pomp and splendour of the 
 court of the Pharaohs was all sweated out of 
 the unpaid labour of the toilers. He saw the 
 inside organization of a vast tyranny which 
 kept multitudes in poverty that a few might 
 revel in luxury and idleness. He saw the 
 scorn and contempt of the exploiters of in- 
 dustrialism for those on whose labour they 
 lived. He saw all these things ; and accord- 
 ing to a modern pietistic school, he would 
 have done his duty if he had simply preached 
 the existence of God, and had taken no step 
 to break up this iniquitous order and give 
 freedom and justice to the people. Fortu- 
 nately for the Israelites he did not read his 
 destiny and duty so. 
 
 It is no business of mine to suggest what 
 subjects should be included in the curriculum 
 of a college where men are in training to be 
 preachers. The day will come, I suspect, 
 when a course of instruction on social condi- 
 tions will be a part of the normal education 
 of every minister of religion. But desirable 
 and important as that is, you cannot nourish 
 the spirit and passion of a Moses simply on a 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 77 
 
 diet of political economy and social statistics. 
 What counts is actual experience of the 
 cruelties and miseries of an organized society 
 where unbridled prodigality at the top, is 
 balanced by indescribable poverty at the 
 bottom. The course of study I would 
 fain include in the curriculum of every 
 modern school of the prophets would be con- 
 ducted in a tenement district, or some area 
 where men and women live — or exist — doing 
 unending tasks for starvation wages. If to 
 that could be added a brief course of study 
 of the actual lives of the wealthy dilettantists 
 and neurotics who make up so large a portion 
 of what is called Society, we should breed a 
 race of prophets who would be our leaders in 
 a new exodus towards a new land of promise. 
 When the great masses of our peoples are 
 made to understand that our preachers are 
 those who know the inwardness of their life 
 and lot, and have entered into close brother- 
 hood with them to champion their right to 
 fullness of life and opportunity, then faith will 
 revive in our lands even as we read in the 
 time of Moses, " And the people believed, for 
 
78 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 when they saw that the Lord had visited His 
 children, and had seen their afflictions, then 
 they bowed their heads and worshipped." 
 Somewhere in your literature I have read 
 the story of a scene after one of the battles of 
 your Civil War. The rude hospital was 
 crowded and the surgeons were busy with 
 their instruments of pain. And in the midst 
 of all the anguish and agony there stood a 
 fair young girl who had devoted herself to 
 the task of nursing. The turn of one of the 
 wounded men had come, and his operation 
 had to be faced. He said he thought he 
 could bear it if the lady would come and 
 hold his hand. And she went where he lay, 
 and held his hand ; watched the cold beads 
 stand out on his brow ; and gathered up into 
 her heart all his sufifering and pain. If the 
 world bears its sorrow and miseries to-day 
 with some measure of faith and fortitude it is 
 because the Lord Christ has stood, during 
 these centuries, by the bedside of a suffering 
 Humanity and held its hand, and gathered 
 into His Divine heart its pain, its grief, and 
 its sin. 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 79 
 
 Remember, there is no cheaper way than 
 this to bring about a revival of faith. Faith 
 is often crushed out of the hearts of people by- 
 harsh and unjust social conditions. It is not 
 unnatural that the victims of these conditions 
 should argue from man's inhumanity to man 
 either that the God who permits it is indif- 
 ferent, or that there is no God since He does 
 not intervene. It is little use to go to such as 
 these and preach the theory of religion. 
 Theology is a fascinating subject, but the 
 formula has yet to be invented that will 
 satisfy the souls of those who are suffering 
 under the cruel lash of injustice, and who are 
 the prisoners of circumstance. Some one 
 must go to them who by his own life of 
 brotherhood and practical sympathy will in- 
 terpret to them God's redeeming purposes. 
 Some one must do what Moses did for 
 the Israelites — consecrate his sympathy, his 
 sagacity, and his energy to the task of de- 
 liverance, and the substitution of the right for 
 the wrong, which is the eternal world-task at 
 which all must labour. 
 
 The Old Testament introduces us broadly 
 
8o THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 to two orders of preachers. Of the one 
 Elijah is the type — the uncompromising 
 individualist, remote, inaccessible, ascetic. 
 Ever and anon he descends from his soli- 
 tudes to thunder his denunciations against an 
 apostate age. But he knows little of the 
 people, or of the time. He is apt to exag- 
 gerate his loneliness in righteousness. He 
 thinks the whole land has gone after Baal 
 while all the time there are seven thousand 
 non-conformists. But his courage, and his 
 austerity make him a power. The people 
 gaze with awe upon his face, even though 
 they look with relief upon his back. This is 
 a great type of preacher ; but I question 
 whether it is the type that is most welcome, 
 or most potent. Elijah was succeeded by 
 Elisha ; and the young disciple who received 
 for endowment a double portion of the old 
 preacher's spirit dedicated himself to a 
 totally different type of ministry. He was a 
 homely, friendly man, whose place was in the 
 hearts and homes of the people. 
 
 Think of the facts about him as we know 
 them. The Shunammite woman knew him 
 
THE FIRST OF THE PROPHETS 8 1 
 
 as the one man in the land who would under- 
 stand what the loss of her lad meant to her. 
 The young prophets, eager to erect their 
 new house, put their arms around him, and 
 said, " Be content, and go with us." If they 
 had acted like that to Elijah, I do not know 
 which would have been the more uncomfort- 
 able party, the old prophet or the young 
 probationers. When the widow of a young 
 preacher comes to Elisha, he reads her 
 tragedy in shrewd human fashion. " What 
 hast thou in the house?" he asks, and she 
 answers pathetically, " Thine handmaid hath 
 not anything in the house, save a pot of oil." 
 When the Shunammite woman returned after 
 the famine to find her lands alienated, he 
 made himself at once her champion, and 
 faced the king with the demand, " Restore to 
 her her lands, and the fruits since the day she 
 left." This is the new order of ministry. 
 It is human, social, sympathetic. Elisha 
 knows how people live, enters into their 
 joys, shares their ambitions, instinctively dis- 
 cerns their privations, and will not see them 
 defrauded of their rights. Both orders of 
 
82 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ministry may have their place ; but I believe 
 that the future will largely be the inheritance 
 of the latter. We are returning in thought 
 and feeling in these latter days to the ideal 
 which lies behind the Book of the Exodus, 
 and which is reflected in the renunciation, 
 the practical sympathy, the strenuous and 
 sagacious leadership, and the code of moral 
 and social legislation, of the first of the 
 Prophets. 
 
LECTURE III 
 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 
 
nr 
 
 LECTURE III 
 THE APOSTOLIC AGE 
 
 HE great succession of the Hebrew 
 _ prophets came to its conclusion 
 and consummation in John the 
 Baptist. He was of the school of Elijah. He 
 practiced rigorous austerities. By his mode 
 of life he evidenced the contempt in which 
 he held the fashionable habits and ambitions 
 of the day. The simplicities and severities 
 of his existence harmonized well with the 
 type of ministry to which he knew himself 
 elect. It might appear from the substance 
 of his preaching that he knew more of the 
 necessity for repentance and reform than of 
 the secret of regeneration. But however that 
 may be he had no new vision of God ; and 
 his greatness lay in the sublime humility with 
 which he pointed the people away from him- 
 self to One who had the new Gospel that was 
 to regenerate humanity and change the world. 
 Yet John's preaching when he descended 
 85 
 
86 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 from the mountain solitudes to the fords of 
 Jordan is worthy of your study. He was 
 one of those fearless and clear-sighted souls 
 who by his own utter sincerity, spiritual dis- 
 cipline and sacrificial life, had earned the 
 right to strip society of its shams, expose 
 and denounce its sins, and generally become 
 its conscience in a way that only the most 
 absolutely disinterested and single-minded 
 men can ever dare to do. 
 
 I have said there was nothing exactly new 
 in his ministry. His call to repentance was 
 as old as the race. The spirit and forms of 
 asceticism were not rare among his prede- 
 cessors. His indifTerence to the materialistic 
 aims on which most men's hearts were set 
 was a genuine note of prophethood, but by 
 no means unique. John's significance lies 
 first of all in his sense of the nearness of the 
 Messianic kingdom for which the ages had 
 been in travail ; and secondly, I think, in a 
 very deep and true view of the social evils 
 which had sprung from the corruption of re- 
 ligion. His first movement is to fling down 
 a challenge to the ecclesiastical leaders be- 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 87 
 
 cause they had imbibed the worst vices of a 
 self-constituted aristocracy. The senseless 
 pride in blood and lineage, the perilous 
 illusion, ** We have Abraham for our father," 
 had blinded them to reality and wrought 
 their spiritual ruin. John's sane soul recog- 
 nized the fatal error and folly which have so 
 often been used to buttress up vast and illu- 
 sive claims whether of ancestral descent or 
 spiritual succession ; and with the courage 
 and frankness of the true preacher he smote 
 his sword through this web of lies. " God is 
 able of these stones to raise up children unto 
 Abraham," he cried ; and with that sharp 
 final epigram, the whole baseless fabric of an 
 artificial spiritual aristocracy crumbled to the 
 dust. 
 
 Then he turned to the mixed multitude, 
 who were asking to be shown their way of 
 life, with a command which proved him as 
 resolute to teach equality to them as to 
 the religious magnates whom he had just 
 humbled. " He that hath two coats let him 
 impart to him that hath none," he cried, and 
 left them to digest that unwelcome counsel of 
 
88 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 socialism as best they could. The revenue- 
 raisers came next, and the Word of God in 
 the person of John was heard for the first 
 time in the New Testament in denunciation 
 of " graft." This thunderbolt was followed 
 swiftly by another when he flamed out 
 against the military oppression and coercion 
 which in Palestine was only typical of the 
 age-long crucifixion of Right at the hands of 
 Might. With a final affirmation that to end 
 this reign of Wrong, and establish the King- 
 dom of Righteousness, One mightier than he 
 was needed, and was on the way, John ended 
 one of the shortest and most scathing ser- 
 mons of which there is any record. On that 
 mighty canvas of history where the figure of 
 the Preacher is incomparably the most ro- 
 mantic of all, is there any more heroic and 
 pathetic personality than this son of the 
 desert with his ascetic frame and soul of fire, 
 bringing his ministry to a consummation in a 
 sublime act of self-effacement, and with cour- 
 age unquenched turning his back on all 
 scenes of popularity, and setting his face like 
 a flint to a dungeon and a scaffold ? 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 89 
 
 I am now to invite you to concentrate your 
 thought on the amazing era of apostolic 
 preaching which followed the death and res- 
 urrection of our Lord, and of which the new 
 vision of God that broke over the souls of the 
 first disciples was the creative cause. It is 
 common ground among the historians that 
 this which we call the apostolic age is the 
 Romance of all history. The story is of a 
 dozen inspired workmen, who were lifted by 
 an ineffable experience out of the deepest 
 depths of humiliation and shame to serene 
 heights of faith, whence they went forth to 
 write the incomparable epic of world-conquest. 
 There are no words in any language that can 
 express how dear they held their faith and 
 how cheap they held their lives. In all the 
 instrumentalities on which we too often rely 
 to win our victories they took no stock. 
 They knew nothing of art, architecture, or 
 music, nor for the most part did they reck 
 much of education. They met the mailed 
 hand of Rome unarmed and defenseless. 
 With no material weapon, no organized 
 army, no display of force, they shook the 
 
90 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 mightiest of world empires till it trembled and 
 tottered. From the handful of recreant 
 apostles who in the crisis of His fate had 
 failed their Leader, sprang the invincible 
 legion that did not know the meaning of 
 fear, and that, to use the words of one of our 
 own Puritan fathers in exile, " triumphed 
 over cruelty with courage, over persecution 
 with patience and over death itself by dying." 
 Rome had conquered every race, and tram- 
 pled upon every creed only to be baffled by 
 men whose bodies she could burn but whose 
 hate she could not provoke ; nay, whose love 
 she could not alienate. When the sand of the 
 Colosseum was red with their blood ; when 
 in Nero's gardens, converted into torches, they 
 passed through smoke and flame to their rest, 
 their message swept in triumph from convert 
 to convert; while in the subterranean seclu- 
 sion of the catacombs the martyr missionaries 
 preached and prayed and signed the galleries 
 of Death with the symbols of eternal Hope. 
 
 But before I come to some illustrations of 
 this heroic age, there is a preliminary ques- 
 tion to which I must attempt an answer. 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 9I- 
 
 Let me ask what was the new Revelation 
 that fired men's souls with such sublime faith 
 and fortitude? What was the new music 
 that was to enchant its disciples and render 
 them insensitive to torture and death ? What 
 was it that came to them through the Cross 
 of Christ, and possessed them with a spir- 
 itual passion to which all history provides no 
 parallel ? For at Pentecost not only was 
 faith born in the hearts of doubters, and cour- 
 age in the hearts of cowards, but the passion 
 for preaching was born in them all. •* They 
 all spake with tongues, and prophesied." 
 Every one had a vision to describe, an 
 experience to relate, a secret to tell. " All 
 the Lord's servants were prophets." Some- 
 thing had been kindled within them that the 
 terrors of Jerusalem could not chill. What 
 was the new consciousness, the new convic- 
 tion, that exalted them and made men and 
 women of crudest speech eloquent? What 
 was it that woke the slumbering poet in these 
 simple natures, and charged their homely 
 utterance with a power that the rhetoricians 
 might well have envied ? No doubt it is 
 
92 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 difficult, it may even seem presumptuous, to 
 analyze their emotions. But we have the 
 records to help us. We can trace the lead- 
 ing ideas that found expression in the first 
 Christian sermons and the earliest Christian 
 literature. We know what Peter taught, 
 what Stephen testified, what Paul elaborated. 
 We can read the challenge flung down to 
 ancient creeds and civilizations. May I sub- 
 mit to you that the great new doctrines that 
 received their inspiration and confirmation 
 from Christ, and that became the very sub- 
 stance of the new Evangel, and the secret of 
 its spiritual and social power, were two — 
 Immoi'tality and Equality ? There, if you 
 come to think of it, are the two supreme gifts 
 of our religion — Life and Love. 
 
 (i) That Christ's gift of life was more 
 than the assurance of immortality we are all 
 agreed. To do the Christians of that first 
 century justice it was Christ they valued ; 
 and they would rather have been mortal with 
 Christ than immortal without Him. But the 
 fact remains that the theme of the first Chris- 
 tian preachers was the Resurrection and all its 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 93 
 
 consequences. Life suddenly revealed itself 
 to them in a glory that took their breath 
 away and smote them to their knees in awe 
 and rapture. For they knew themselves now 
 as "immortals," and the splendour of the 
 destiny humbled and exalted them. You re- 
 member the famous king who appointed a 
 man to say ever to him, " Philip, thou art 
 mortal " lest an unworthy pride should be his 
 undoing. But henceforth the pilgrim church 
 was to whisper in the ear of Humanity, 
 " Man, thou art immortal ; live as one of the 
 immortals, and may a noble pride in thy 
 origin and thy destiny save thee from base- 
 ness and dishonour." 
 
 It has become a favourite criticism of the 
 Christian fathers that, overwhelmed by the 
 vision of eternal life in Christ, they became 
 other-worldly and counted life here of little 
 moment if only they could make sure of bliss 
 hereafter. For my part I could wish that 
 every modern Christian had passed even an 
 hour under the stress of the emotion which 
 a realization of immortality ought to bring 
 to each human soul. You have to conceive, 
 
94 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 not a solitary prophet like Paul, but a very 
 host of triumphant evangelists chanting the 
 ecstatic challenge, " O Death, where is thy 
 sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?" 
 What Egyptian and Jew had timidly and 
 darkly received, and to which Greek Philos- 
 ophy had occasionally uttered a pale and 
 bloodless "perhaps," became to these wit- 
 nesses the certainty of certainties, the truth 
 of truths. History has to recognize that 
 whatever did, or did not, happen on that first 
 Easter morning, at that " lone Syrian grave," 
 the effect was to shatter the incredulity and 
 uncertainty of centuries, and out of dark 
 abysses of speculation drag life and immor- 
 tality to light, and set man henceforth to ful- 
 fill his earthly destiny conscious of an uncon- 
 querable and indestructible soul. Whether 
 it is conceivable that that result was produced 
 by an illusion, and was the fruit of falsehood, 
 every one of us must judge for himself. 
 When I see similar far-reaching effects of 
 greatness spring from fallacy I shall myself 
 believe the illusion theory, and not till then. 
 The picture that we owe to St. Luke of the 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 95 
 
 early Church is of men and women living in 
 the rapture of a great beatitude. They are 
 illuminated with "the glory of the lighted 
 mind." If you come to think of it, the Resur- 
 rection of Christ meant everything to them. 
 It was the vindication of that Fatherhood of 
 God which must have suffered eclipse in the 
 seeming tragedy of Calvary ; it was equally 
 the Divine vindication of Jesus, and the seal 
 set upon His teaching and His life ; it was 
 moreover the vindication of the greatness of 
 the human soul and its amazing destiny. 
 When you add to these the conscious leader- 
 ship of the living Christ, and the creative 
 power of the sublime faith Ubi Christus ibi 
 Ecclesia, you begin to understand the light 
 that transfigured the Christian people of 
 Jerusalem, and transformed one obscure up- 
 per room into the very Gate of Heaven. If 
 we were not so slow and hard of heart to-day 
 we should still feel the uplift of this magnifi- 
 cent revelation ; we should still look upwards 
 with the transports of the first Christians, and 
 outwards with their reverence for humanity 
 and faith in its future. 
 
96 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 I confess to you I sometimes wonder 
 whether our hearts are big enough and brave 
 enough to attempt the Christian enterprise ; 
 whether something of the world's morbid 
 and sceptic spirit has not darlcened our sanc- 
 tuary and paralyzed our very souls. Is it 
 not true that our ark lies prostrate in the 
 temple of Dagon instead of humbling to the 
 dust the pagan and heathen conceptions 
 against which we are professedly at war? 
 We have the most exquisite instrument 
 wherewith to discourse the most melting and 
 ravishing of music ; but we play our Stradi- 
 varius with a mute. We are afraid of its full 
 tones. We fall back on the language of 
 Tennyson and count it a great thing if we 
 can say 
 
 " We stretch lame hands of faith," 
 or 
 
 "Wq faintly trust the larger hope." 
 
 Lame hands and faint trust ! With these we 
 think to win the victories that are only possi- 
 ble to the heroes of religion. Litde wonder 
 that as the perplexed people listen on the one 
 hand to the arrogant dogmatism of material- 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 97 
 
 istic science and on the other to the halting and 
 hesitating and semi-apologetic discourse of 
 the modern prophet of religion, we make but 
 a poor appearance in the competition. 
 
 I do not want you to misunderstand me. 
 It may be that the preacher of open and sin- 
 cere mind has been wrestling by the ford 
 Jabbok with the Angel of Truth and has 
 halted on his thigh. He is conscious that 
 somehow he walks lame in the paths his 
 fathers trod with sure steps and upright car- 
 riage. It may be that if we knew all, we 
 should take it for distinction ; but the 
 preacher himself is only conscious that the 
 world has observed that he is lame, and is 
 asking if not where is thy God, at least where 
 is thy theology ? And, believe me, we can 
 do nothing without the sublime simplicities 
 of Christianity. If a man does not know of 
 a surety that personal God whom even the 
 Prodigal at his husks can still speak of as 
 '' Aly Father," if he cannot kneel by the sin- 
 stricken and announce to him with unclouded 
 faith the certainty of forgiveness in Christ, if 
 he cannot stand by the bedside of the dying 
 
98 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 and encourage him in the sure and certain 
 hope of the resurrection to eternal Hfe, he 
 may still do for the study, or the store, or the 
 country house, but the Christian pulpit should 
 know him no more. 
 
 I make even that last admission with some 
 hesitation. For if we are in earnest in this 
 matter we are bound to believe that this great 
 creed is so determinative of character and 
 life that no man — whatsoever his calling in 
 life — can do his best work without it, and 
 that apart from it every man's attitude to his 
 fellows must be defective. Let me call to 
 my aid a very brilliant leader of the medical 
 profession in my own country. Addressing 
 a meeting of medical students in the city of 
 Sheffield, Sir James Crichton Browne advised 
 them to beware of the materialistic school 
 which regards a man's brain as no more than 
 so much phosphorus and so much glue ; 
 and suggested that if a man is good and 
 wise it is because his brain has a maximum 
 of phosphorus and a minimum of glue, 
 while if he is evil and foolish it is because his 
 brain has a maximum of glue and a mini- 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 99 
 
 mum of phosphorus. Sir James went on 
 to say that if the students adopted this ma- 
 terialistic conception of man's nature they 
 would be disqualified from treating any one 
 successfully as a patient even on the physical 
 side. To be a true physician a doctor must 
 understand the spiritual nature of his patients. 
 The merely materialistic theory spells failure 
 here and everywhere. 
 
 The best type of labour leader in my own 
 land knows perfectly well how much is at 
 stake in this great issue as to whether man 
 is merely an animal of a higher order, and 
 no more ; or whether he is, as Christ taught, 
 an immortal being. If our workmen listen 
 to the materialism that is preached to them 
 from a thousand platforms and in a thousand 
 journals, they lose the most powerful of all 
 motives for social betterment. If they think 
 and talk of one another as no more than 
 animals they only have themselves to thank 
 if employers treat them as if they were no 
 more than animals. We, on the other hand, 
 who believe with Christ in the nobility and 
 dignity of human nature, must press upon 
 
lOO THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 the conscience of the community such ques- 
 tions as these. If the children of poverty 
 and vice in the slums and alleys of our 
 crowded cities, in cellars and garrets of 
 tenement houses and elsewhere, are indeed 
 immortal spirits destined to eternal existence, 
 what is our duty to them ? How can we sit 
 with folded hands while men and women are 
 wallowing in filth and slime who are sons 
 and daughters of the Eternal ? What new 
 ideals of society are forced upon us when we 
 dare to look at human life in the light of the 
 Resurrection? In other words — what must 
 our practice be, if we are still resolved to 
 preach this magnificent Gospel ? 
 
 (2) To the effect which the Evangelists 
 of the Resurrection produced by their Gospel 
 justice has been done by many historians. 
 The violent antipathy of the Sadducaic 
 school, which is always with us, manifested 
 itself in an astonishing desire to exterminate 
 all teachers who affirmed man's immortality. 
 The heroic constancy of the Christian con- 
 fessors in treating Death as no more than an 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE lOI 
 
 incident in Life, while it impressed the be- 
 holders, made the last dread weapon of the 
 persecuter of none effect ; and so paralyzed 
 his arm. Of all this much has been written 
 again and again. But I think less justice 
 has been done to the effect of that new doc- 
 trine of Equality which found expression in 
 the organized life of the first Christian com- 
 munities, and was a definite challenge to 
 every other social structure of the then 
 world. The principle running through these 
 primitive Christian societies was so simple 
 that it is difficult to realize how profoundly 
 revolutionary it was, and how subversive of 
 the existing order of things. But any one 
 can see that a church that offered equal 
 privileges to, and conferred equal rights 
 upon, the slave and the freeman; and ac- 
 knowledged no authority of rank or station 
 within its borders, but reverenced faith and 
 character alone, threw down the gauntlet of 
 defiance to the most deep-seated prejudices 
 of our human nature. 
 
 Many a proud heart must have been the 
 theatre of a life-and-death struggle between 
 
I02 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 hereditary scorn of the " canaille " and a 
 consciousness of the truth of the new Re- 
 ligion — such a struggle as Bulwer Lytton 
 portrayed in the patrician breast of Glaucus 
 in '* The Last Days of Pompeii." One real- 
 izes that it was far less a matter of embracing 
 the Christian doctrine than of accepting the 
 Christian society that antagonized the aristo- 
 crats of Greece and Rome. When the waves 
 of an invading and resistless Christianity 
 flowed inward to the Imperial Throne itself, 
 the terror it inspired was due, not so much to 
 any of its distinctive dogmas, as to this amaz- 
 ing fraternity, the unity of which no ex- 
 tremity of coercion could injure or destroy. 
 You are to imagine men and women, with a 
 new and evident inspiration upon them, 
 preaching this uncompromising truth that 
 God holds all human souls at equal value, 
 and thinks no more of a Constantine than 
 of the humblest day-labourer whom he has 
 treated as dirt beneath his feet. 
 
 No doubt it was strong meat, difficult of 
 digestion at any time and in any place, but 
 most of all in a civilization founded upon 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE I03 
 
 slavery. But what are we to say when Paul 
 gives this social teaching its widest applica- 
 tion, and abolishes in one sublime phrase all 
 the distinctions that lay behind the national 
 antagonisms of that ancient world ? ** There 
 is neither Jew nor Greek, . . . Barbarian, 
 Scythian, bond nor free." What idols with 
 feet of clay this new Hammer in the hands of 
 this new Iconoclast was to shatter to pieces ! 
 What painstaking genius has been conse- 
 crated in subsequent centuries to the task of 
 patching up these idols again ! " Neither 
 Jew nor Greek." Was all that cultivation of 
 the spirit of exclusiveness, which is commonly 
 called patriotism, to go for nothing? Was 
 the Roman to have no pride of preeminence 
 over the Barbarian ? Was the fair child of 
 classic Greece to be regarded as on an exact 
 equality with the swarthy and uncivilized 
 Scythian? Will these wild apostles of equal- 
 ity lay their disrespectful hands on the altars 
 of hereditary aristocracy, social and racial, 
 and suggest that the Roman is not to count 
 for more than the "Angles" who are bought 
 and sold in his slave-market ? I am speak- 
 
J 
 
 104 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ing now of the great days when the faith was 
 free and uncorrupt, the days before its un- 
 holy compromises with the world, the days 
 before, in one splendid and fatal hour, it con- 
 quered the Roman Empire and was conquered 
 by it. I am speaking of the time of its ro- 
 mance, when it surrendered nothing, and 
 never dreamed of becoming safe and tame 
 and respectable and even fashionable ; the time 
 when it feared no one and flattered no one ; 
 the time when its confessors were the men 
 and women whom the world could not bully 
 and could not buy. Then it was demon- 
 strated that the Christian love, which is the 
 creation of Christ, welded those who received 
 it into a Brotherhood where external differ- 
 ences melted away and became non-existent, 
 and the only realities in the world were the 
 faith, the hope, and the love which were the 
 enduring property of every believer. 
 
 If I seem to labour this point, it is because 
 I touch here upon the real secret of the power 
 which the first Christian preachers and con- 
 fessors exercised, and which won their victory 
 against such formidable odds. They were 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 105 
 
 sincerely indifferent to all that made up the 
 ambitions of the world amid which they \ 
 lived ; and this indifference to the mere ex- 
 ternals of life gave the powers and principal- 
 ities no weapon with which to assail them. 
 Nothing in all the marvellous records stands 
 out clearer than the sense of hopelessness 
 and failure that gradually overwhelmed their 
 enemies. Nothing could be done against 
 such men as these first Christian ancestors 
 of ours which they either feared or felt. The 
 dignities and emoluments on which princes 
 and governments rely, not in vain, for deal- 
 ing with awkward critics, or persons of in- 
 convenient knowledge, had no attraction for 
 these idealists. They were supremely dis- 
 interested. You and I are so accustomed to 
 hearing the sneer of the cynics who assume 
 that we are no more indifferent than the rest 
 of mankind to the luxuries and resources of 
 civilization that we have gradually consented 
 to their theory ; and in doing so have unin- 
 tentionally impoverished our office of its 
 kingliest power. 
 
 No cynic ever whispered such depreciation 
 
Io6 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 of the men and women who held all their 
 possessions cheap, and passed even from 
 the mansion to the mine with serene tran- 
 quillity, turning every loss and deprivation 
 into a sacrament. Open your Church His- 
 tory in its early chapters and read at 
 random the thrilling letter of Cyprian to 
 those ministers and members who had 
 been condemned to labour in the mines. 
 Some of them had been delicately nurtured. 
 They had as much, one would suppose, to 
 line their brows with care as the modern 
 pastor who writes pathetically of the diffi- 
 culty of " making good " in congested city 
 or deserted village. But they certainly never 
 pitied themselves, nor did their brethren ofTer 
 i them sympathy, but congratulation. Here 
 
 ! is how Cyprian writes to them. " In the 
 
 ! mines the body is refreshed, not by beds 
 
 I and pillows, but by the comforts and joys 
 
 j of Christ. Your limbs, wearied with labour, 
 
 1 recline upon the earth, but it is no punish- 
 
 I ment to lie there with Christ. Your bread 
 
 i is scanty, but man lives not by bread alone 
 
 \ but by the word of God. You are in want 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 107 
 
 of clothing to defend you from the cold, but 
 he who has put on Christ has clothing and 
 ornament enough. Even though, my dearest 
 brethren, you cannot celebrate the commun- 
 ion of the Lord's Supper, your faith need feel 
 no want. You do celebrate the most glorious 
 communion ; you do bring God the most 
 costly oblation, since the Holy Scriptures de- 
 clare that God will not despise a broken and a 
 contrite spirit. Your example has been fol- 
 lowed by a large portion of the Church who 
 have confessed with you and been crowned. 
 United to you by ties of the strongest love, 
 they could not be separated from their pas- 
 tors by dungeons and mines. Even young 
 maidens and boys are with you. What 
 power have you now in a victorious con- 
 science — what triumph in your hearts, when 
 you can walk through the mines with en- 
 slaved bodies but with souls conscious of 
 mastery ; when you know that Christ is with 
 you, rejoicing in the patience of His serv- 
 ants, who in His footsteps and by His ways 
 are entering into the Kingdom of eternity." 
 That is how Cyprian offers these disciples 
 
I08 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 and witnesses who had lost everything the 
 world values, not his compassion but his 
 congratulation. I am pressing upon you 
 that the preachers of the first Christian cen- 
 turies felt themselves the representatives of a 
 new society, or as Dr. Harnack says, a new 
 people, with unique standards. It is of im- 
 mense importance that you should realize 
 that Jews, Romans, Greeks, Barbarians, were 
 offered citizenship in this new nation on 
 equal terms ; and that no differences of rank, 
 education or wealth were allowed any con- 
 sideration whatsoever. Not immediately 
 perhaps, but gradually, they came to the 
 consciousness that they were a new world- 
 state, destined eventually to conquer and 
 subdue all political nations, and supply the 
 basis of a universal civilization. You will 
 never understand the thoughts and passions 
 that burned and blazed in these men's souls 
 if you do not realize something of what this 
 conception meant to them, and how attract- 
 ive it was to those who listened. Dr. Hatch 
 of Oxford in writing upon the early Chris- 
 tian centuries defined the eternal mission of 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE 109 
 
 the Church as this — "to substitute for the 
 sociahsm that is based upon the assumption 
 of clashing interests, the sociahsm that is 
 based on the sense of spiritual union." 
 
 The preachers of the apostolic age and the 
 great centuries that followed were the heralds 
 of that higher socialism. What their Gospel 
 meant you can all estimate when you reflect 
 that the members of the Roman nobility or 
 the proudest family among the Jewish Phari- 
 sees had to confess the slave who had be- 
 come a Christian as a social equal. But 
 when you realize that, you will realize also 
 why the ideals of the Christian society swept 
 over the Roman Empire like a conflagration. 
 For it is not the case in this much-maHgned 
 world, that a great human response awaits 
 the carefully-calculated and shrewdly-bal- 
 anced compromises, that aim at softening the 
 susceptibilities of the rich without violently 
 antagonizing the poor. The truths that 
 conquer the world are not compromises at all, 
 but certain splendid simplicities, not only 
 courageously and unambiguously stated but, 
 equally without qualification, accepted and 
 
no THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 applied. Within the borders of this new 
 people the social contrast was unchallenged ; 
 and the preacher could without the shadow 
 of hypocrisy or insincerity proclaim its reality 
 to all the world. Do you ever wonder why 
 it is that to-day, in our championship of our 
 faith and order, our witness sometimes falters ; 
 that we fall back upon apologies where we 
 need to use unconditional affirmations ? Can 
 any preacher of to-day say from his pulpit, 
 with the same fervour and sincerity as the 
 first Christian preachers, that the Christian 
 Church is a unique society of people where 
 social distinctions do not exist, and where 
 men and women of every race and condition 
 may meet on the basis of absolute equality ? 
 Yet for that we were created. Not to ac- 
 cept the old standards and have imposed upon 
 us the old distinctions of an ancient pagan 
 civilization, but to present a society which is 
 a new creation in Christ Jesus, and which 
 will kindle the enthusiasm and revive the 
 hope of those who have found neither hope 
 nor help in any other society in the world. 
 Much of this that I am saying may apply 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE III 
 
 less to you than to my own land. These old 
 caste feelings are only slowly dissolving be- 
 fore the nobler democratic influences that are 
 now coming into play ; and many genera- 
 tions, and even centuries will pass before the 
 Christian ideal will be realized. Any preacher 
 who talked of the Church as the home where 
 social distinctions were unknown would not 
 only be laughed to scorn, he would laugh 
 his own statement to scorn. And the fact of 
 the matter is we do not realize how large a 
 section of Christian apologetic we have sac- 
 rificed ; nor how invaluable and irreplaceable 
 is the strategical position we have evacuated. 
 
 It is perhaps enough that I should say as 
 I close that this that has been called Chris- 
 tian Socialism springs, as every worthy so- 
 cialism does, out of a high individualism — a 
 sense of the incalculable and imperishable 
 worth of the human soul. This may seem 
 to some of you the most old-fashioned truth 
 to have thrust upon you in these modern 
 days, but I am certain that no preacher is go- 
 ing to count for much who has not seen every 
 
112 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 soul in the world in the light of the Christ 
 who died for it. It seems sometimes as 
 if modern civilization holds some souls very- 
 cheap. That may be. But it is the business 
 of the Christian preacher to stand by his 
 Gospel. What is that Gospel ? It is con- 
 tained in a verse of one of the greatest Chris- 
 tian hymns : 
 
 <* Were the whole realm of Nature mine, 
 That were a present far too small I 
 Love so amazing, so Divine, 
 Demands my Soul " 
 
 That is to say that my soul is a greater 
 and bigger thing than " the whole realm of 
 nature." Do you believe it? I agree it is 
 the most romantic of all beliefs. It affirms 
 that the soul of every forced labourer on the 
 Amazon is of more value than all the mines 
 of Johannesburg, all the diamonds of Kim- 
 berly, all the millions of all the magnates of 
 America. It affirms that in God's sight all 
 the suns and stars that people infinite space, 
 are of inferior worth to one human spirit 
 dwelling, it may be, in the degraded body of 
 some victim of drink or lust, some member 
 
THE APOSTOLIC AGE II3 
 
 of the gutter population of a great city who 
 has descended to his doom by means of the 
 multipHed temptations with which our so- 
 called society environs him. It is a romantic 
 creed. But if it is not true Christianity itself 
 is false ; and certain it is that there has never 
 been any triumphant Christian movement in 
 the history of the Church save as that high 
 doctrine of the human soul has been preached. 
 For Christianity lives by the majesty of its 
 beliefs. It lives by its uncompromising truths. 
 It lives by demanding of its disciples, not the 
 minimum, but the maximum of faith and 
 service. 
 
 To-day we are witnessing many audacious 
 and inspiring endeavours to construct in this 
 world new and more Christian civilizations. 
 This principle that we hear so often on both 
 sides of the Atlantic, that every man, woman 
 and child shall have a fair chance — what 
 does it mean ? Who will be the prophets 
 of that ideal if not ourselves ? What argu- 
 ment can sustain so high and sacred a con- 
 ception of duty except the argument as to 
 the supreme worth of each individual soul ? 
 
114 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 It is from that that the real rights of man 
 must spring. And for the overthrow of 
 every system of government, or organiza- 
 tion of society that is injurious to, or op- 
 pressive of, the individual life, this is the 
 revolutionary doctrine that can be relied on. 
 I charge you, as the inheritors of the peerless 
 traditions and golden ideals of the primitive 
 Christian society, as the modern prophets of 
 the " new People," as the interpreters to this 
 marvellous century of the eternal principles 
 for which the Christian churches stand, that 
 you steep yourselves in the thoughts and be- 
 liefs of the apostolic age, face bravely and 
 unflinchingly their doctrines, and the social 
 consequences of their doctrines, and that at 
 all costs you hold back nothing of the truth 
 for any fear or favour of man. For only 
 thus shall we see in our time a growing 
 reverence and enthusiasm for the Church of 
 Christ, and the fulfillment of that hope which 
 Dr. Hatch confessed in the most eloquent of 
 his Bampton lectures, "a Church that shall 
 outshine even the golden glory of its dawn 
 by the splendour of its eternal noon." 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT: 
 ATHANASIUS AND CHRYSOSTOM 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT : 
 ATHANASIUS AND CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 THE Christian Church has been the 
 nursing-home of great orators. This 
 is not wonderful. For oratory to 
 become great, it needs the inspiration of a 
 great cause, of great ideals. This the Chris- 
 tian Church supplied, with its doctrines of 
 the All-Father, of man triumphant by faith 
 over sin and death, and of humanity destined 
 to become one universal family in Christ. 
 It made an overpowering appeal to the 
 imagination in the mystery of the Word 
 made flesh, in Paul's doctrine of solidarity, 
 and in the revelation of eternal life. We 
 know that as a matter of fact, so mighty 
 was the new inspiration beneath which the 
 souls of men were revived, that Art, Litera- 
 ture, Architecture, Music were born again. 
 
 When we speak of Christian Art or Christian 
 117 
 
Il8 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Literature we do so because we are sensible 
 of a new quality in tliem distinguishing them 
 from art or literature under pagan forms. 
 
 The same is true of architecture and music. 
 The Christian cathedral is different in kind 
 from the noblest form of classical temple. 
 We are conscious that the soul of the archi- 
 tect is seeking to express higher ideals of 
 reverence and mystical experience. The 
 student of poetry proposes to himself as a 
 problem what it is in Dante that touches us 
 so much more nearly and powerfully than 
 Vergil, why all the poetry of the ancients 
 is pale before the disciplined emotion and 
 passion of Milton. Music can hardly be 
 said to have found itself, and given per- 
 manent expression to human aspiration 
 until it became the handmaid of Christianity, 
 and gave utterance to the depths of human 
 grief and heights of human rapture in the 
 Oratorio and the Mass. To-day I ask you 
 to believe, that this new inspiration of which 
 Christ Jesus was the author, created also a 
 new order of speakers, a new type of oratory. 
 If I speak of Christian eloquence, it is be- 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT II9 
 
 cause I believe that the highest type of 
 eloquence the world has ever known is in- 
 separable from the most exalted inspiration 
 and can only flow from that source. 
 
 This is not said to depreciate the glorious 
 philippics of Demosthenes, or the orations 
 of Cicero, the two outstanding orators of 
 the classic ages. But splendid as Cicero's 
 speeches are, and worthy of your study as 
 masterpieces of forensic eloquence with their 
 invective, their argument, their satire, their 
 wit, their occasional high ethical appeal, 
 they do not stir the deepest emotions of our 
 souls, or inspire in us the loftiest vision. The 
 orations of Demosthenes are the utterances 
 not only of a supreme rhetorician, but of a 
 true prophet and a great patriot. In his 
 passionate devotion to the liberties of his 
 people he is one of the immortals. The 
 glow of his heroic spirit is in his words still, 
 and will keep them alive forever. But all 
 local patriotism however deep and fervent 
 must be inferior in real greatness to that 
 patriotism to the kingdom of God which 
 is the creation, I say it reverently, of the 
 
I20 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 genius of our Lord, and possessed by 
 which men transcend their local racial dis- 
 tinctions, and realize their brotherhood with 
 all humanity. When a soul speaks to us 
 great enough to be illuminated by that ideal, 
 and noble enough to be fired by that en- 
 thusiasm, he becomes the standing demon- 
 stration of the superiority of the power of 
 Christianity, the universal religion, over 
 every localized or nationalized form of 
 religion whatsoever. 
 
 I ask your attention at this lecture to two 
 great masters of rhetoric, admirable illustra- 
 tions of the romance of preaching, whose 
 astonishing careers provide innumerable 
 lessons for the modern preacher. The two I 
 refer to are Athanasius and Chrysostom. I 
 associate them not so much because they 
 were almost contemporaries in that critical 
 fourth century, but because they were so 
 dissimilar in the externals of their ministry 
 while exemplifying so vividly the same su- 
 preme power of inspired personality. We 
 shall see that so far as outward advantages 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 121 
 
 are concerned, Chrysostom had everything 
 that Athanasius lacked. Nature had fash- 
 ioned him to be an orator. He was tall and 
 commanding in figure, handsome in features, 
 with a magnificent organ-voice, and a flow 
 of words which no other orator could rival. 
 So far as education was concerned he had 
 passed through the discipline of a legal 
 training, and had won distinction at the bar 
 before he was carried by irresistible sym- 
 pathies into the service of the Church. We 
 see the result of his legal practice in that 
 lucid and cogent forensic style which made 
 his expositions of Scripture so fascinating, 
 and left the hearers without an answer. 
 
 But there is a vast difference between 
 Chrysostom the legal pleader and Chrysos- 
 tom the Christian pleader. Chrysostom's 
 homilies are an exalted form of argumenta- 
 tive discourse ; and it is the sacred passion 
 that throbs through his periods that, even 
 more than his rhetorical felicities, captures 
 our interest still. Over against the royal 
 figure of the golden-mouthed prince of 
 preachers stands the one whose name and 
 
122 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 fame overtopped that of emperors and mili- 
 tary conquerors, but whose unparallelled as- 
 cendancy over his fellows was due v/holly to 
 spiritual, and in no degree to physical, prop- 
 erties. Ernest Renan described St. Paul, in 
 one of those fierce phrases that live, as an 
 " ugly little Jew." Athanasius was appar- 
 ently a dwarf, shortening by a stoop even the 
 squat figure. His nose was hooked, and he 
 wore a stubby, bristling beard. His hair was 
 apparently straw-coloured. It is surely not 
 in such a guise that Mr. Bernard Shaw would 
 have us recognize the super-man ; and I sus- 
 pect that many college committees might 
 have hesitated long before accepting for the 
 ministry one who would have required some 
 mechanical means to add a cubit to his stature, 
 before he could even have been seen over the 
 side of any ordinary pulpit. 
 
 Yet super-man he was. I like to read how 
 that strange countenance was illuminated to 
 seraphic beauty by light of inward holiness 
 and zeal for truth. Such was the mighty 
 soul in the attenuated body of him who dared 
 emperors and defied ecclesiastics, who was 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 1 23 
 
 exiled again and again and again and yet 
 again, who was as much at home in the caves 
 of the Egyptian deserts as in the council- 
 chamber of Nicaea or the palace of Alexan- 
 dria. No man was less depressed by defeat, 
 or exalted by success. Yet the gorgeous an- 
 nals of Constantine afford no parallel to the 
 splendour of popular triumph, when Alexan- 
 dria swept out beyond its walls to welcome 
 back its banished preacher and bishop, the 
 multitude of its people suggesting to an eye- 
 witness the Nile overflowing its banks. 
 Then came stepping along the sandy road 
 out of the wilderness of his exile, the strange 
 dwarf figure, with the beard whitened with 
 toil and care, but the face still radiant, and 
 the light in the eyes that told of the uncon- 
 querable soul. No modern preacher, with 
 any pride in his sublime calling, can ever 
 omit to do reverence at that niche in the great 
 temple of prophets where the statue stands of 
 
 " Royal-hearted Athanase 
 By Paul's own mantle blest." 
 
 If only we could extract from the pages of 
 history or extort by some scientific process 
 
124 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 the secret of that magical fact we call person- 
 ality! But in default of that, we may surely 
 be pardoned for doubting whether any man 
 is going to make more of the ministry than a 
 very commonplace and even humdrum affair 
 who has never been set on fire. It may be 
 doubted whether all the modern athletic ex- 
 perts can add a cubit to our stature, and in 
 any case, the conquest of the world does not 
 depend upon it. Less and less will mere 
 physical qualities, or mere brute force, stand 
 for empire in the affairs of men ; and this I 
 venture to say who am nevertheless keenly 
 alive to all the joys of bodily existence, and 
 . advantages of a trained physique. But the 
 K one supreme qualification for the ministry is 
 \| a soul of flame. Helen Keller may be blind 
 and deaf and dumb, but she has preached 
 faith and courage and love all round the 
 world ; while millions of men and women of 
 no physical defect whatsoever have never had 
 any message to which it was worth while for 
 any one to listen. The power to kindle 
 the spirits of our fellows is the endowment 
 
 for which we pray and plead. I am well 
 
 \ 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 1 25 
 
 aware that no class-room can give it. 
 Even amid the intellectual interests of uni- 
 versity life, and the vivid enthusiasms of 
 youth, it may be lost and not found. The 
 minister who has it, carries with him every- 
 where the argument from which there is 
 no appeal. The minister who has it not may 
 labour pathetically with the tools of logic and 
 rhetoric but at the end he will be desolate of 
 spirit because of the little that his hands have 
 built. 
 
 It is an old story this, yet we cannot get 
 away from it, that the world bows before soul. 
 What it wants to know about our religion is 
 not so much that it is reasonable as that it is 
 real. One of Athanasius' enemies wrote 
 about him that he was " a dwarf and no 
 man " ; but once Athanasius rose to defend 
 the faith that was dearer than his life and he 
 was a man of giant stature and no dwarf. 
 Vast audiences that were tempted to laugh at 
 his puny figure and mean appearance, drew 
 faith and hope and love and zeal from the 
 Christ-illuminated soul of this apostolic 
 preacher. 
 
126 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 I would commend the study of Athanasius 
 to any one who has not formed the true idea 
 in his mind of the royalty of the pulpit, and 
 that it is to be maintained in this world as the 
 one place where the truth of God is to be 
 proclaimed without fear or favour. Woe to 
 that preacher who does not keep within his 
 breast an incorruptible conscience, whose 
 vision of God is clouded by unworthy fear of 
 his audience, and whose self-respect is under- 
 mined by unmanly compromises and sur- 
 renders to placate wealthy or influential 
 patrons ! Everybody knows the temptation 
 to substitute for the high and difficult voca- 
 tion of a prophet of Truth, the amiable am- 
 bition to please a congregation. Many well- 
 meaning ministers have spent weary years 
 cajoling and flattering their people, softening 
 down the rebukes of the Gospel, and lining 
 Christ's hard sayings with velvet till the most 
 touchy consciences in the pews of Christen- 
 dom can come in contact with them without 
 a shock. It might seem as if some preachers 
 had laid down as a law for themselves to 
 make nobody uncomfortable whose income 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 1 27 
 
 was more than ^200 ($1000) a year. Quite 
 recently I heard a sermon on luxury in a fash- 
 ionable West-End church in London ; and as 
 the preacher took pains to explain that Christ's 
 life was so different from ours that we could 
 not imitate its externals, I was conscious of 
 that pleasant rustle of silk and satin which 
 gently indicated the relief of the hearers. I 
 doubt whether anything has done so much 
 harm to the pulpit as the impression which 
 has gone abroad, that we preachers do not 
 face the tremendous sayings of Christ with 
 real faith and courage, but rather that we fall 
 back on critical theories, and explain to our 
 amenable congregations that the more diffi- 
 cult commands of Christ are probably textual 
 corruptions due to a later and ascetic age, 
 and in any case need not vex the peace or 
 alter the conduct of the twentieth century. 
 Yet these sayings of Jesus blaze and burn. 
 What use is our New Testament if it is not a 
 very furnace of Truth into which men's souls 
 are plunged and purified, and saved so as by 
 fire? 
 
 I have no belief whatever in ascetic and 
 
128 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 monastic systems, which seem to me to re- 
 quire an unchristian, and even anti-Chris- 
 tian theory of life. But I confess to you I am 
 impressed by the fact that both Athanasius 
 and Chrysostom had a monastic preparation 
 for their public ministry. Youth needs to be 
 austere with itself. Self-discipline can be 
 learned in better places than the cell of the 
 anchorite, but it must be learned if the minis- 
 try is not to make shipwreck. These men 
 learned how to do without things ; they 
 learned to be content with simplicity ; they 
 learned that life " consisteth not in the abun- 
 dance of the things a man possesseth." They 
 definitely crucified some of the subordinate 
 ambitions. They got fairly through the 
 crust of civilization and made contact with 
 the realities that lie at its heart. Such men 
 when they come to deal with shams and illu- 
 sions are apt to be severe iconoclasts, like 
 Elijah and John the Baptist, but they know 
 how to sear men's souls and shake their 
 consciences. 
 
 Sometimes I am tempted to think that the 
 defect of our modern ministerial preparation 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 1 29 
 
 for the ministry is that we have too much to 
 enjoy and too little to endure. When we go 
 out into the arena our thews and sinews are 
 too soft ; and in the first shock we go down 
 in the dust, and sometimes it takes bitter 
 years to find our feet. When we are depend- 
 ent on the superfluities of Hfe we are not so 
 Hkely to be able to speak out our truth, if by 
 so doing we may be in danger of losing them. 
 Do not let me be misunderstood. I am the 
 last man to underrate to you the virtues 
 of tact and discretion. It was Athanasius' 
 distinction that his own people loved him and 
 trusted him without reserve. He had the two 
 endowments with which any minister can go 
 far — common sense and the gift of humour. 
 Besides, I think too highly of mankind to be- 
 lieve that as a rule they resent the ministry 
 that deals faithfully and affectionately with 
 them. Dr. Dale used to say that people 
 talked of saying faithful things when they 
 meant saying disagreeable things ; and the 
 communicated love of Christ to our hearts 
 ought ever to forbid us to be censorious, 
 offensive and truculent where our duty is to 
 
I30 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Speak the truth with love. I have not in- 
 tended to leave that side of things out of 
 sight. But if Athanasius and his heroic min- 
 istry has one message more than another for 
 us, it is as to the sovereignty of the Truth we 
 hold over all human souls, and the royalty 
 of the preacher's office when he knows that 
 God has given to him a message which all 
 without distinction must hear and heed. 
 
 The second aspect of Athanasius' ministry 
 which I would ask you to consider is the 
 preacher as controversialist. When we take 
 down our histories and read the extraordinary 
 story of how an abstract theological proposi- 
 tion, framed in the curiously flabby mind of 
 Arius, set the world on fire, we are oppressed 
 by a sense of despair of ever being able to 
 understand an age in which such things could 
 be. Neither do the facts become more intel- 
 ligible as we see how secular policies were 
 affected by it, and the fortunes of an empire 
 fluctuated as the Arian tide flowed or ebbed. 
 But after all, human destinies are settled in the 
 world of thought and ideas. The doctrine of 
 Homoousianism in the mouth of Athanasius 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I3I 
 
 meant the unity of empire even as the word 
 Justification on the Hps of Luther meant the 
 Reformation of Europe and a free Western 
 civilization. Faber threw into the verse of a 
 hymn a great truth when he wrote : 
 
 " Workman of God ! oh lose not heart, 
 Buf learn what God is like ; 
 And in the darkest battle-field 
 Thou shalt know where to strike." 
 
 That is why I take it the first content of 
 the Church's consciousness must be to know 
 •' what God is like " ; otherwise its very fight- 
 ing power is paralyzed, and its blows are 
 aimed uncertainly. It does not surprise me, 
 therefore, that the first great controversy in 
 the Christian Church should be in regard to 
 the nature of God ; and we shall generally be 
 agreed that as against the crude and fatuous 
 theory of Arius, Athanasius' protest for the 
 unity of the Godhead was infinitely more no- 
 ble and dignified ; even as the orations of 
 Athanasius are a monument of massive 
 thought and argument in comparison with 
 the dervish-like jingles in which Arius en- 
 deavoured to popularize his pet heresy. But 
 
132 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 it is quite true that from the far shore on 
 which we stand we look across " the dark 
 backward and abysm of time," and see those 
 ages of theological cyclone and volcanic ac- 
 tion with wondering gaze. That is very 
 largely because we have ourselves fallen upon 
 the inglorious days of Quietism. It is a 
 strange irony if you come to think of it that 
 sluggishness and apathy mark our religious 
 life to-day in what we speak of as the stren- 
 uous West, and that this great Arian contro- 
 versy was fought out with frenzied fervour in 
 what we speak of as the still and tranquil 
 Orient. Certainly the Orient was not sluggish 
 and stagnant when Athanasius was fighting 
 the world for his faith. 
 
 You remember the cynic historian's de- 
 scription of how the great problems laid 
 their grip of every huckster in the market- 
 place, who, before he served you with mer- 
 chandise, or counted out your small change, 
 would demand your opinion as to the rela- 
 tions of the Persons of the Godhead. Very 
 likely, I grant, to produce a plague of theo- 
 logical prigs I But would it do us any harm 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 1 33 
 
 to-day, in your land or in mine, if some great 
 question of eternal things were once again to 
 be supreme, and to awaken in the chattering 
 chaffering crowds of the market-places a 
 higher curiosity? Is it after all so noble 
 and superior an attitude of mind, this modern 
 one of ours, that nothing matters ; that high 
 thoughts about Deity are wasted time ; that 
 sublime speculations and doctrinal contro- 
 versies are the signs of an inferior and de- 
 generate age ? I am not here to apologize 
 for the controversial language of Athanasius. 
 Dean Stanley made a careful but not ex- 
 haustive collection of his favourite epithets 
 for his theological opponents — " devils, anti- 
 christs, maniacs, Jews, polytheists, atheists, 
 dogs, wolves, lions, hares, chameleons, hy- 
 dras, eels, cuttlefish, gnats, beetles, leeches." 
 His vocabulary, it is plain, might have won 
 for him distinction in a polidcal career. 
 
 But in theology to-day we have reached 
 serene heights of unruffled calm. The chaste 
 soul of the most definite of our modern dog- 
 matists would never be conscious of sufficient 
 provocation to depart from the language of 
 
134 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 self-possession and politeness even if he in- 
 dubitably believed that the errors of some 
 other teacher were poisoning men's souls. 
 But do we not suggest a contrast? The- 
 ology to-day is for the most part a product 
 of the academic life. In the days of Atha- 
 nasius it was hammered out in the wilderness 
 and the cell. Men forged their beliefs, like 
 thunderbolts, at the centre of the storm. The 
 faiths that clothed their souls were tested in 
 the furnace heated sevenfold. You can still 
 tell the difference between the article of a 
 creed cunningly worded to evade a diffi- 
 culty, conciliate a doubter or confound an 
 enemy, and an affirmation which is the cry 
 of a great soul for some truth which is a 
 fixed star in its firmament and without which 
 it will blunder along its way. It is this pas- 
 sionate sincerity that lends dignity to con- 
 troversy. As we read the story, all Atha- 
 nasius' extravagances and personalities drop 
 away from him, and we only see the prophet 
 who cared so supremely for the glory of his 
 God and the honour of his Saviour, that he 
 was prepared to stand alone against the 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I35 
 
 world, until the truth he saw was recognized 
 and acknowledged by all. 
 
 My brethren, it is an open question with 
 me whether either the evils of controversy 
 or the gains of compromise are as great as 
 we often think them. Controversy is noble 
 or ignoble according to the spirit in which 
 it is conducted. What is referred to, ad 
 nauseam, as the virtue of compromise and 
 accommodation usually means the painful 
 discovery of some colourless and almost 
 meaningless formula in which two antago- 
 nistic ideas, whittled down to their minimum, 
 are supposed to be peaceably interred. I 
 am always comforted to know that you can- 
 not really bury any belief alive. You cannot 
 bury it until you can truly say, " peace to its 
 ashesr It belongs to the glory of Athanasius 
 that, even living when he did, he had no be- 
 lief in the coercion of conscience by force. 
 He was, rather, like the dear old priest in 
 Praed's poem, who 
 
 '' Held, in spite of all his learning, 
 That if a man's belief is bad 
 It will not be improved by burning." 
 
136 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 This zealot for truth, and even for dogma, 
 believed in fighting his battle out with the 
 weapon of argument, reason and persuasion, 
 and winning the only victory that is honour- 
 able to a Christian combatant. Nobody ex- 
 pects that our battles of to-day or to-morrow 
 will prove a reproduction of the old Arian 
 strife ; though there are more unlikely things 
 than a keen revival one of these days of a 
 controversy as to the being of God and the 
 nature of the relations between the Father 
 and the Son. But if it should not be your 
 lot to live through an age of theological dis- 
 pute, there are other controversies upon us 
 in which the knights of the Church of Jesus 
 may not refuse to quit them like men. 
 There has never been a generation yet in 
 which the Lord has not had a controversy 
 with His people ; and it is a test of our right 
 to be where we are, whether we hear the 
 Lord's controversy or not. We cannot rank 
 ourselves under the Christian flag without 
 conceding certain human rights, which no 
 existing social system that I know of, ade- 
 quately and practically interprets. 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I37 
 
 The contrast between the Sermon on the 
 Mount and a civilization like that of Europe, 
 based on force and fear, does not grow less 
 violent as our people become more intelli- 
 gent. Nor can a civilization that includes 
 the extremes of pampered luxury and grind- 
 ing poverty live in the light of a renascent 
 Christian ethics. Controversy there must 
 be on behalf of the unity of humanity as 
 strong and uncompromising as Athanasius 
 ever waged for the unity of Deity. When 
 many of you go forth to the field where in 
 Milton's words " immortal garlands are to be 
 won not ivithout dust and heat'\- when in the 
 war for Christian Righteousness as well as for 
 the Christian Faith you flash your maiden 
 swords, I can only beseech you that the spirit 
 of your warfare may be the spirit which our 
 Captain made unique — a love that no bitter- 
 ness can alienate, a peace that no strife can 
 disturb, and a gaiety of soul which can take 
 the rubs and knocks without melancholy, 
 acrimony, or self-pity. 
 
 I turn now to a brief consideration of the 
 life and work of Chrysostom, who has al- 
 
138 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ways enjoyed a place of preeminence among 
 Christian preachers and the world's famous 
 orators, and who may suggest many lessons 
 to the more ambitious among us who are 
 resolved to achieve and to practice the craft 
 of a master of assemblies. So far as I know, 
 Chrysostom was the first preacher to bring to 
 the service of the Gospel all the arts of 
 oratory which are relied upon in the law- 
 courts and the forum. Nobody knew better 
 than he how to take captive the intellects of 
 his hearers in the toils of a closely-knit argu- 
 ment ; and, indeed, it would be true to say 
 that he observed the golden rule that rhetoric 
 should always be the servant of logic, even 
 as in a great picture the absence of accuracy 
 of drawing and perspective can never be 
 wholly atoned for by the most resplendent 
 colouring. First of all, he knew clearly 
 where he was going, and saw to it that his 
 hearers could not fail to know. Afterwards 
 he devoted all the resources of his knowl- 
 edge and imagination to add to the interest 
 and profit of the journey. He must indeed 
 have been a formidable critic and antagonist, 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 1 39 
 
 for his powers of irony and satire were un- 
 rivalled, and no person in high place who 
 came under his scathing censures was ever 
 likely to forget it. Satire is a dangerous 
 weapon to handle ; and only a kindly and 
 genial form of it is ever likely to produce a 
 Christian end in repentance or conversion ; 
 and perhaps in his last years of exile and 
 persecution, Chrysostom himself may have 
 wondered whether other weapons than the 
 lash of fiery and sarcastic speech might not 
 have profited the kingdom of God more. 
 Moreover, if satire is always a questionable 
 instrument for achieving the real ends of 
 preaching, rhetoric is equally an indulgence 
 that needs to be carefully guarded. Chrys- 
 ostom's courage in rebuking the Empress 
 Eudocia was admirable, but his task would 
 have been many times easier if he had not 
 allowed himself to be carried away at first on 
 the tide of rhetoric, to inflated and fulsome 
 panegyric and adulation. 
 
 Having uttered those two warnings, I go 
 on to say that Chrysostom's style is a model 
 of what Christian eloquence at its highest 
 
I40 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 can be. You and I live in a time when, as I 
 shall often have occasion to insist, the preacher 
 has lost the sense of the splendour and 
 romance of his calling. This loss has afifected 
 us in many ways. The colours have faded 
 out of our sky. The universe has turned 
 gray around us. The glory and radiance of 
 the dawn have suffered some eclipse. Our 
 range of vision, and our confidence of victory 
 are alike attenuated. In consequence, that 
 highest form of rhetoric which is the glow 
 and poetry of faith and enthusiasm becomes 
 almost impossible to us. For rhetoric is the 
 natural language of emotion and imagina- 
 tion. Where there is no real depth of feeling 
 it is artificial and stilted and tiresome. But 
 when the passion of the heart is strong and 
 deep it will express itself with some splendour 
 of Pre-Raphaelite colouring. The preacher 
 has never really been thrilled by the ideal of 
 his vocation who has not wanted to set it to 
 music, as Robert Burns set Nature to song, 
 or as Turner transferred her glories to canvas. 
 It is hardly necessary to say that the rhet- 
 oric of Chrysostom has little or nothing in 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I4I 
 
 common with that disease of the pulpit egoist 
 which manifests itself in pretentiousness and 
 polysyllables. If you want the model of 
 peerless eloquence it is to be found in the 
 most familiar passage of the New Testament, 
 and it may interest you to count the words 
 which are of more than one syllable, *' Come 
 unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. Take My 
 yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am 
 meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find 
 rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy 
 and My burden is light." There are great 
 passages in Lincoln and in Bright — our two 
 supreme modern masters of Saxon speech — 
 which are as simple as this, and yet similarly 
 charged with emotion that leaves none of us 
 unaffected. No, rhetoric is a nobler thing 
 than the turgid recital of redundant epithets 
 and high-sounding substantives. To how 
 small a modicum of thought can some rhe- 
 torical efforts be reduced when you have 
 shaken the sawdust out 1 But as against the 
 modern taste for Christianity in capsules, and 
 for the tersest, most prosaic and least emo- 
 
142 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 tional statement of fact and argument, I do 
 venture to break a lance for Chrysostom. 
 
 The supreme merit of Chrysostom is that 
 he never for one moment forgets that he is 
 deaUng with human beings and human life. 
 He is not solely concerned with making good 
 certain logical or theological propositions. 
 While his legal training is invaluable to him, 
 his is no narrow canonistical intellect, nor is 
 his outlook upon mankind less human be- 
 cause of the careful development of his rea- 
 soning powers. Before his eyes the great 
 pageantry of the people's life always moves ; 
 and in his sermons you will find a vivid pic- 
 ture of his times. On his canvas are brilliant 
 splashes of colour ; for it was his object to 
 hold up the mirror to the multitude and com- 
 pel them to see what their existence was like. 
 It has been truly said that the pages of 
 Chrysostom present us with a " cosmical 
 panorama." The pomp and pride of the Im- 
 perial court, and the luxurious mode of life 
 of an Oriental aristocracy are so powerfully 
 portrayed, that after fifteen hundred years you 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I43 
 
 can almost hear the strains of music at some 
 princely banquet or be conscious of the per- 
 fumes that scented the raiment of the feasters. 
 Equally lifelike are his descriptions of the 
 hippodrome, with its wild scenes of racing 
 and gaming ; while, if I may quote again, 
 "Even the rope-dancers, jugglers, con- 
 jurers, fortune-tellers, buffoons, mountebanks 
 mingled with grave philosophers with long 
 beards, staff and cloak, were grouped to- 
 gether in his homiletical sketches." 
 
 Here lies his charm and his power. This 
 man of giant brain, and legal and monastic 
 training, is nevertheless himself a human be- 
 ing, with a warm heart and wide knowledge 
 of his brothers and sisters in the life of his 
 city. He has mingled with them in their 
 pleasures, has pitied their follies, sympathized 
 with their temptations, trembled for their sins, 
 wept with them for their griefs, and laughed 
 with them in their frolics and diversions. 
 The people flocked to him and hung upon 
 his lips, not only because of his oratory, but 
 because he knew them so well, loved them so 
 much, and talked to them about those actual 
 
144 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 homely facts of daily life which make up the 
 greater part of every one's existence. 
 
 Here then we have two qualities in 
 Chrysostom which in their combination make 
 him unique — he is a Man of the Word 
 and a Man of the World. The Homilies of 
 Chrysostom are to me a phenomenal pro- 
 duction. In their close and minute analysis 
 of Scripture, and courage of exposition they 
 are an anticipation of the best modern 
 criticism. Chrysostom himself is saturated 
 with the Scripture, and is determined that his 
 audiences shall be taught to base their lives 
 upon the principle of Holy Writ. In those 
 days when the writings of the New Testa- 
 ment were comparatively so recent, and 
 were so little known to the masses, this great 
 preacher felt that their best hope of progress 
 lay in their systematic education in the letter 
 and spirit of the Scriptures of our faith. He 
 thus made himself the popular interpreter of 
 the Christian documents, always endeavour- 
 ing to get at the exact sense, and to preach the 
 truth honesdy and fearlessly. At the same 
 time by virtue of his catholic experience he 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 145 
 
 is, in the best sense of a much-abused term, 
 a man of the world ; and he is resolute to 
 apply the Gospel ethics over the whole wide 
 area of human life and affairs. That is why 
 he must know at first hand, life at the court, 
 life in the bazaars, life at the games, and life 
 in the streets, the school, the homes of the 
 people. Again and again we find him, with 
 all his admiration for the devout monk, pro- 
 testing that Christ's laws and privileges are 
 for all men and women without exception 
 and " not for solitaries only." If it be not 
 possible, he argues, in the secular life, and in 
 wedded life, to attain the Beatitudes, then 
 Christ has destroyed, and not saved, all men. 
 No preacher in all the Christian ages had a 
 clearer conception of the great truth that the 
 Evangel of Life in Christ is for all people, 
 at all times and in all places, and that no 
 exigencies of business, politics or pleasure 
 can relieve any of us of the duty of obedience 
 to the laws of the kingdom of God. 
 
 I notice further for our own instruction that 
 the Homilies of Chrysostom are not the ex- 
 positions of a lectni'-er, but, what is very differ- 
 
146 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ent, the expositions of a preacher. There is 
 a very wide contrast between one who is only 
 a teacher, an expositor, a lecturer, an essayist, 
 and one who is a preacher and a prophet. 
 It has always seemed to me that there is 
 much force in the modern appeal for more 
 expository preaching. I only submit that it 
 must be preaching. The class-room is one 
 place, the pulpit is another. The closest 
 possible application is needful in the study 
 if we are to be sound interpreters of the 
 Gospel; and the new Renaissance which 
 some of us will live to see, when the interest 
 of the people will be rekindled in the best 
 and greatest of all books, may very likely 
 come along the line of systematic and scien- 
 tific exposition. But we have got to preach 
 our exposition. I mean, that the same pas- 
 sion for souls, the same constraining love of 
 humanity, must burn and glow in our ex- 
 pository discourses that make it possible to 
 warm our hearts at Chrysostom's Homilies 
 to the present day. Men must be brought 
 to see that in the Bible one end is sought by 
 divers means and in divers portions, and that 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I47 
 
 end is the salvation and happiness of all 
 mankind. In other words if the world is 
 to be interested in the Bible, it must be con- 
 vinced that the Bible is interested in the 
 world ; and that the modern world is made 
 up of just the same great root problems of 
 life and death, joy and sorrow, vice and 
 virtue that Isaiah wrestled with, and on 
 which the Lord Christ shed His ineffable 
 and unfading light. 
 
 The advent of Chrysostom is, I think, the 
 dawn of a new epoch in preaching. True, 
 there is nothing new in the authority which 
 he asserted for his message. In his courage 
 and freedom in dealing with the wealthy and 
 highly-placed he was the worthy contempo- 
 rary of Athanasius. There was nothing new 
 in the risks he ran, or the afflictions he suf- 
 fered. He was one of those who well knew 
 that the preacher's lot is a desperate war 
 with organized evil and throned iniquity. 
 The length of his public ministry is a tribute 
 to his moral ascendancy. But we are not as- 
 tonished, though we may stand aghast, when 
 at last the forces of hell are let loose upon 
 
148 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 him, and once more in history Jezebel drives 
 EHjah to exile and the desert, though in this 
 case the prophet was to return no more. 
 The long-drawn-out agony of his last exile it 
 is not for me to describe. He died in that 
 same far lone spot among the mountains of 
 Asia Minor, where many centuries afterwards 
 another martyr-evangelist, Henry Martyn, 
 burned out for God. His dust rested there 
 until the day when with pontifical splendour 
 amid the tears and reverence of a subsequent 
 generation and solemn prayers and penances 
 of princes and people, it was translated to 
 the City of Constantine where the better part 
 of his life-work had been done. 
 
 It has been my aim that the significant 
 facts about these two great pulpit orators 
 should emphasize themselves for us without 
 my italicizing them. But perhaps by way of 
 summary I may gather together two or three 
 suggestions that are well worth your consid- 
 eration. I think we want a new pulpit ora- 
 tory that will be free from the vice of turgid 
 rhetoric, but that will be the rich fruit of a new 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT I49 
 
 vision of our world-conquering Faith. Some- 
 thing has got to happen to us ; some magic 
 change must pass over our spirits ; and be- 
 neath the inspiration of the new revelation of 
 Deity and Humanity our speech will clothe 
 itself with colour and beauty as naturally and 
 inevitably as the spring adorns and decorates 
 the earth. I am one of those who believe 
 that the churches have never been so rich in 
 scholarship, and so competent in criticism. 
 But I am not sure that any human being has 
 been inspired to attempt the heights of love 
 and life because he has been thrilled with the 
 realization of the composite character of the 
 Book of Genesis. Science is the one author- 
 ity left, I know, to which we all do obeisance, 
 and in the presence of which we take off our 
 shoes from our feet. But I sometimes 
 imagine the mere scientist standing in the 
 presence of the wonder and glory of Niagara, 
 with its flashing, flying waters, and iridescent 
 waves, and summing it all up in the terse and 
 eloquent formula H2 O. I am all for scien- 
 tific accuracy and precision ; but I confess 
 that the Bible is more to me than is summed 
 
I50 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 up in the formulas of critical analysis. Its 
 magic, its mystery, its poetry, its glory es- 
 cape the skill of those patient investigators 
 who track its secret in the dissecting room. 
 Athanasius' theology may have been wrong ; 
 but nothing can destroy the fact that he trod 
 the desert as he trod the marble halls of 
 princes bathed in the light that never was on 
 sea or land. Let us be quite certain that in 
 our honest ambition to understand all mys- 
 teries and all knowledge we are not strangers 
 to that experience of the Love Divine of 
 which there is no scientific explanation pos- 
 sible except that it is shed abroad in our 
 hearts by the Holy Spirit that is given unto 
 us. 
 
 Once more, let us think of these two great 
 apostles together. If I may make the rough 
 distinction, Athanasius preached more about 
 Deity and Chrysostom more about humanity. 
 Chrysostom I think knew men better, and 
 Athanasius I think knew God better. I have 
 spoken to little purpose if I have failed to 
 bring home to my hearers, that I believe we 
 need men in the ministry who know and 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE PULPIT 151 
 
 sympathize with human life in all its phases. 
 But to-day I close upon the other note. It is 
 much easier to talk about men than to talk 
 about God. It is a rarer thing to find in the 
 pulpit a man whose mind moves naturally 
 and easily in the sublimest of all themes and 
 experiences, than to find a man in the pulpit 
 who can talk wisely and helpfully about 
 human life. But it is the condemnation of 
 the Christian preacher when his audience 
 comes to feel that though he knows them 
 very well, he cannot teach them to know 
 God, whom to know is life eternal. Words- 
 worth's lark, as you remember, with nest 
 upon the earth, was nevertheless born to the 
 freedom of the upper air, and knew the 
 secret of the infinite blue, and the Christian 
 prophet and orator of to-morrow, I doubt not, 
 must equally be master of the two worlds 
 
 " True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE RULERS OF PEOPLES : 
 SAVONAROLA, CALVIN AND 
 JOHN KNOX 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE RULERS OF PEOPLES: SAVO- 
 NAROLA, CALVIN AND JOHN KNOX 
 
 IT should never be forgotten that the 
 preacher's message has a timeless and 
 a timely element in it. Clearly, the his- 
 torical facts on which our faith is built can- 
 not be one thing in one generation and an- 
 other in another ; though our interpretations 
 of the facts may and will change, and our ap- 
 plications of the teachings they convey will 
 change also. It is written in the book of 
 Psalms, in what I have often felt was an in- 
 spired mistranslation, " Because they have no 
 changes, therefore they fear not God." The 
 meaning of that seemingly cryptic saying 
 would appear to be that we cannot really be 
 reverent of God's law of life and progress, the 
 law of growth, unless we are prepared for 
 new formulas and new forms under which the 
 Truth may find expression. Whenever a 
 Christian preacher and the church to which 
 155 
 
156 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 he ministers are unprogressive, tlie interest 
 taken by tiie outside public in their existence 
 becomes mainly an antiquarian one. They 
 are no longer reckoned among those living 
 forces that mould our thought, shape our in- 
 stitutions, and inspire our ideals. We hear a 
 great deal about our historic faith, and much 
 stress is laid upon the fact that we have 
 nearly two thousand years of eventful history 
 behind us. 
 
 But that is an argument that clearly has no 
 weight against the devotees of religions which 
 are indefinitely more ancient. I hope it is 
 not straining a point to say, that the charm of 
 Christianity is not in its antiquity but in 
 its novelty ; not in the fact that it is aged 
 and reverend, but in the fact that it is 
 eternally young. I say nothing of those 
 strange souls, who are so profoundly uneasy 
 in the life of to-day, and who ever turn their 
 wistful eyes backwards to the paradise of the 
 Middle Ages. They are not of their century, 
 and the century does not belong to them. 
 But the real Church of God ever walks the 
 world with the tireless step, the eyes for- 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 57 
 
 ward — gazing eyes, and the mobile receptive 
 spirit of youth. If ever the disciples of Christ 
 were to become a society in which the ennuis 
 and dubieties of the world were to eat like 
 acid into its enthusiasms and its faiths, it is 
 quite clear that Christianity would be at the 
 end of its conquests. What all other religions, 
 societies and institutions envy us, is the magic 
 of rejuvenation. So far from transformations 
 and renaissances having any terror for us we 
 know that with us they belong to the nature 
 of things. History has in this respect a 
 heartening tale to tell. Christendom has 
 again and again, if I may use the apostolic 
 language, been " transformed by the renewal 
 of the mind." 
 
 Great and beneficent changes of doctrine 
 have swept over Europe. New truths have 
 arisen whose evangelists have forsaken every- 
 thing, yea life itself, to make them the per- 
 manent heritage of Christ's people. And 
 with these renewals of the faith and thought 
 of Christendom there has gone equally rad- 
 ical reconstruction of her institutions. All 
 this means that Christianity has possessed to 
 
158 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 a supreme degree that power of adaptation to 
 changing needs and conditions which is the 
 accepted scientific law of life and growth. 
 Wiicn the great apostle declared, "I am be- 
 come all things to all men if by any means I 
 may save some," he laid down the principle 
 of Christian opportunism. He was not leav- 
 ing out of account the unchangeable and 
 timeless element in his ministry, but he was 
 taking count of the timely element. He 
 boasted, as you remember, of his own versa- 
 tility. He could become as a Greek to the 
 Greek, as a Roman to the Roman, as a Jew to 
 the Jew. He made it his business to under- 
 stand his audiences, to meet them on their 
 own ground, and to appreciate different 
 points of view. Especially in dealing with 
 his avowed antagonists, he was resolved to 
 know their beliefs, their prejudices, their 
 passions, so that in the science of " parry 
 antl thrust" he should not find himself 
 "beating the air." That was why Paul 
 tlid not hesitate to withstand Peter to his 
 face, in defense of freedom, and over against 
 the theory that it is the business of Chris- 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 159 
 
 tianity to impose uniformity of custom and 
 ceremony upon men and women of diverse 
 races and manners of life. It was the com- 
 mon sense of the apostle Paul, and the tenacity 
 with which he clung- to the principle of op- 
 portunism that saved Christendom, and made 
 a world-wide evangelism possible. Again 
 and again, the largest interests of the kingdom 
 have been safeguarded by those heroic 
 preachers who had the soul of romance in 
 them, and who would not be bound hand and 
 foot by ecclesiastical red-tape. 
 
 The great merit of Paul's audacious policy 
 was, that he was a strategist who thought out 
 his strategy on the actual field of war, and 
 not in some remote Jerusalem war-office 
 where parchment and sealing-wax were more 
 plentiful than experience and foresight. The 
 most fatal of all the Church's dreams has been 
 the dream of uniformity. Even Paul's splen- 
 did courage and example were not equal to 
 ridding the Church of this dangerous delusion. 
 But this we can say : all those spiritual lead- 
 ers, in whom the fires of the Gospel have 
 manifestly burned, even when they have been 
 
l6o THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 most reverent of authority, have found some 
 way out of the fetters and manacles that 
 chafed their limbs and limited their activity. 
 Thus Xavier and St. Francis could not be re- 
 strained from transgressing the strict order 
 of the Church of Rome ; nor Wesley and 
 Whitefield abandon their inspired errand be- 
 cause its fulfillment meant the violation of 
 those supposed decencies and proprieties 
 which had made the Anglicanism of their day 
 so prim and safe, so dull and dead. To the 
 apostles of uniformity everything is regulated 
 by unchangeable routine. There is no room 
 for surprises. All departures from precedent 
 are extravagances. The spirit of God is care- 
 fully restricted to well-defined functions, and 
 within a limited area. Hence the spiritual 
 life of the people of God must not overflow 
 the appointed channels. 
 
 Such is the theory of ecclesiasticism. But 
 the prophet is the one man who upsets the 
 calculations of the prelate. He is the man of 
 soul with a genius for the unexpected and the 
 unprecedented. He is a spiritual Samson 
 who is never happier in mind than when he 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES l6l 
 
 is bound with the futile withes of the Philis- 
 tines. And I make bold to say that the great- ', 
 est fact in Christian history is not the author- 
 ity of the priest but the authority of the 
 prophet. I do not underrate the prodigious 
 power of ecclesiasticism. It has often been 
 cruelly and mercilessly exercised, and the 
 measure of external conformity that it has en- 
 forced has been very great. But the prophet . 
 has wielded a mightier power ; for he has j 
 swayed the inner world of men's consciences, j 
 intellects and souls. He has governed and i 
 guided motives. He has inspired ideals ; 
 of life and service. And in that way, with- 
 out the mailed arm of material force, he has 
 set in motion beneficent reformations and 
 even revolutions, and has more profoundly 
 influenced and affected the world-movements 
 which make human history what it is, than all 
 the power of the ecclesiastical machine. 
 
 It is my intention in this lecture, to invite 
 your consideration to three outstanding 
 examples of Christian preachers who veri- 
 tably became the conscience of the com- 
 munities where they laboured, and the 
 
l62 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 people for whose souls they watched as those 
 that must give account. Each of these 
 preachers dominated the life of a common- 
 wealth. Each of them in his day of power 
 reduced all other figures in the land to in- 
 significance, and ruled the life of the people 
 from the pulpit as from a throne. The three 
 of whom 1 propose to speak are Savonarola 
 of Florence, John Calvin of Geneva, and 
 John Knox of Scotland. 
 
 And first, of the martyr of Florence. I 
 have litde to do with Savonarola's wonderful 
 life-story save as it concerns the man as 
 preacher. But it may be said that three 
 great facts determined the form of his 
 ministry — the shameless corruption in the 
 Church, the open profligacy and sinful 
 luxury of the ruling classes, and the renais- 
 sance of art and learning. Savonarola's 
 sensitive temperament was profoundly af- 
 fected by all these signs of the times. It 
 was his cross to live and bear witness in 
 days when the princes of the Church out- 
 vied, in greed and lust and passion, the 
 princes of the State, He was one of many 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 63 
 
 who fled to the cloister as to a sanctuary 
 to escape the contagion of the plague of 
 immorality. He was driven across the 
 Apennines to Florence by the scourge of 
 war wielded by the merciless hand of an 
 arrogant and ambitious "Vicar of Christ," 
 who actually died of grief and rage because 
 of the conclusion of peace. 
 
 From Sixtus IV to the dissolute Inno- 
 cent VIII and the infamous Alexander VI, 
 it was Savonarola's melancholy fate to live 
 through the period when the apostle's lurid 
 description of the adversaries of the true 
 faith was most perfectly fulfilled — "world- 
 rulers of this darkness, and spiritual hosts of 
 wickedness in heavenly places." Litde 
 wonder that the monasteries were filled by 
 those who were driven there by despair, or 
 that Savonarola was one of them. Neither 
 did the new culture at first affect the pulpit 
 for good. It bred affectation of learning. 
 It had its fruit in the scholastic temper and 
 speech. It enriched the artificial orations of 
 windy rhetoricians with obscure and some- 
 times even obscene illustrations from the 
 
1 64 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 classics. The pulpiteer with a thin veneer 
 of scholarship became the plague of the 
 Church ; and when you have a whole gen- 
 eration of preachers who care more for 
 prettinesses of composition than for the cure 
 of souls, religion ceases to be a spiritual 
 force, and is regarded only with pity and 
 contempt. Students of the dark age through 
 which Savonarola prophesied, are moved to 
 wonder that seemingly there were no real 
 tears in the soul of any priest in the land, 
 save in Savonarola's alone. 
 
 The realization of the sin and shame of 
 Church and State alike affected him with 
 horror and anguish. But it is worth our 
 while to remember, that the one man who 
 really cared for the well-being of Florence 
 and of Italy, was the man there was least 
 eagerness to hear. Savonarola had the 
 bitter and humiliating experience of seeing 
 his congregation diminish almost to vanish- 
 ing point, and to hear the complaint under 
 which many a thoughtful earnest preacher 
 has suffered, that he did not cultivate the 
 necessary arts and graces that can alone 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 65 
 
 commend him to a congregation. He saw 
 the masters of a histrionic style who tickled 
 the ears of their hearers with their shallow 
 artifices, addressing crowds of hearers who 
 were well pleased with an entertainment that 
 made no demand upon intellect or conscience. 
 But he who sought to bring the light of Holy 
 Writ to bear on the burdens and miseries of 
 humanity, to plead for purity and freedom, 
 and to reason of judgment to come was 
 advised to practice more graces of speech. 
 To Savonarola it was as if a land was being 
 devastated by man-devouring dragons, while 
 the anointed St. Georges rained polished 
 epigrams, and clever jests at the monsters, 
 instead of girding on a sword of stout steel, 
 and making at them in the name of God. Not 
 that Savonarola was unaffected by the new 
 learning. It helped him to see to the heart of 
 the Scriptures. It loosened his obstinate at- 
 tachment to the traditions of the Church. It 
 compelled him to face many problems of 
 thought which he would otherwise have 
 evaded. If he never reached a very con- 
 sistent position as a theologian, it was be- 
 
l66 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 cause his powers were mortgaged to other 
 purposes ; and in his desperate fight for 
 moral and social righteousness he had little 
 leisure to examine whither his intellectual 
 independence was leading him. 
 
 But one thing is certain. Savonarola's 
 ultimate triumph as a preacher is the tri- 
 umph of naturalism in the pulpit. He 
 scorned the tricks and sophisms of those 
 who won a cheap and fleeting popularity, 
 but who exercised no lasting influence. He 
 set himself to reach and stimulate the with- 
 ered, wizened conscience of the multitude ; 
 and to do it he relied on the instrument 
 of plain, searching, passionate speech. To 
 quote his own words which are worthy of 
 your attention, " These verbal elegancies and 
 ornaments will have to give way to sound 
 doctrine simply preached." Do not misun- 
 derstand him. The idolatry of simplicity 
 may be carried too far. The great moving 
 discourses which swept all Florence subse- 
 quently into the cathedral to sit at Savo- 
 narola's feet, were surprisingly simple and 
 direct and scriptural, but the passion of the 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 167 
 
 preacher expressed itself in the irresistible 
 rush of his flaming sentences which no soul 
 could face and remain unscathed. 
 
 Savonarola is an easily vulnerable per- 
 son to the armchair critic. His philosophy- 
 is unconvincing, his visions often took the 
 place of argument, his ecclesiastical position 
 was to the end ambiguous. The censor of 
 the pulpit finds many of his most powerful 
 and famous sermons turgid, and complains 
 that there is too little light and shade. I am 
 not attempting an apology for Savonarola ; 
 but I may be allowed to point out that the 
 test of a good sermon is not that it satisfies 
 certain canons of style, but that it achieves 
 certain moral and spiritual ends ; and I may 
 also be allowed to doubt whether his latter 
 day critics would have done better than he 
 in rousing Florence from her turpitude and 
 stagnancy, and recreating the ancient civic 
 spirit. His power lay in the realization of 
 the magnitude of the struggle, and that only 
 by the uttermost devotion could Christ's vic- 
 tory be won. He urged every believer to 
 seek "that Christ's doctrine might be a living 
 
 -\ 
 
h 
 
 1 68 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 thing in him," and that he might " desire to 
 suffer His martyrdom, and mystically hang 
 with Him on the same cross." If ever any 
 man knew the meaning of "resisting unto 
 blood, striving against sin," it was Savo- 
 narola. 
 
 Judged by the test that a great sermon is 
 to make its hearers ready to fight and die 
 for the faith, Savonarola was a supreme 
 ] preacher. Moreover he is an illustration of 
 my opening remarks in that he was a 
 "timely" preacher, "a Christian opportunist" 
 in the Pauline sense. His was an adaptable 
 message, in the sense that he was not so 
 inflexible in his views as not to modify his 
 position under the stress of a consciousness 
 of Divine coercion. This is, of course, most 
 strikingly exemplified in his reluctant descent 
 into the arena of politics ; and his gradual 
 perception, against all his prejudices, that a 
 free Florence could only be won, and a Chris- 
 tian Florence could only be created, as the 
 authority of the Word was acknowledged in 
 the government of the city as well as in the 
 administration of the Church. It is worth 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 169 
 
 your while to notice for how long a time 
 Savonarola's one ideal for the Church was 
 that she should excel in charity. It was re- 
 luctantly forced upon him, as it were, that 
 she must show herself the appointed guard- 
 ian of freedom and justice ; and that to 
 quote his words, " It is the Lord's will that ye 
 should renew all things, that ye should wipe 
 away the past ; so that nought may be left 
 of the old evil customs, evil laws, evil gov- 
 ernment." It was then that he cried out in 
 St. Mark's that he would not enter on affairs ' 
 of state " did I not deem it necessary for the ■ 
 salvation of souls." " That by all ineans I 
 may save some," as Paul had expressed it. 
 He had come to see that any mundane ref- 
 ormation needs a higher inspiration than 
 motives of expediency. He challenged the 
 contemptuous dictum " that states cannot be 
 governed by Paternosters " ; for the Lord's 
 Prayer is a fountain of all wisdom, social and 
 spiritual, and the men who have that prayer 
 in their hearts, are most likely to reform the 
 commonwealth to good purpose. 
 
 With his spirit newly-enkindled for the 
 
lyo THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 great task, and his horizon of service wid- 
 ened, he laid down, and enforced it out of 
 the Christian documents, that all power is 
 derivative from the people ; to use his own 
 words, " that no man may receive any benefit 
 save by the will of the whole people, who 
 must have the sole right of creating magis- 
 trates and enacting laws." It was the new 
 conviction in his soul that Divine sanction 
 can be claimed for this political proposition, 
 and that here lay the final safeguard against 
 arbitrary power, and the ultimate guarantee 
 of good citizenship, that changed the course 
 of Savonarola's ministry, and clothed him 
 for a while with the authority of social as well 
 as moral leadership in Florence. I cannot 
 take you through the details of what is, in 
 the main, a glorious record of constitution- 
 building, the abolition of unjust and arbitrary 
 taxation, the levying of taxes only on real 
 property, the establishment of courts of ap- 
 peal, and above all the creation through the 
 new order of government of a citizen unity, 
 which, but for the revival of the base spirit of 
 faction, would have saved Florence, and 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 171 
 
 might have saved Italy, from many a dis- 
 astrous chapter of history. Let any one 
 whose artistic soul is wounded by the puri- 
 tanical fanaticism that had vent in " the burn- 
 ing of the vanities," or any one whose calm 
 modern mind shrinks from the recognition of 
 weird visions as inspired leadership, or any 
 one who reads something of cowardice into 
 the awful decisions of the last fateful months, 
 recognize if they can the astonishing practical 
 sagacity of Savonarola's statesmanship, and 
 his ultimate devotion to his ideals even 
 through the bitterness of the stake and the 
 cord, and the unspeakable moral anguish of 
 being betrayed by the people of his love. 
 
 Let them remember, as I prefer to do, for 
 final memory, the triumphant day when first 
 the children of Florence were led from the 
 folly and indecency of the Carnival into the 
 great Church that they too might acknowl- 
 edge and magnify the Theocracy which he 
 believed was established as the government 
 of the city. " Florence ! Behold ! " he cried 
 to the vast multitude, as he lifted up the 
 crucifix. " This is the lord of the universe. 
 
\ 
 
 172 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 and would fain be thine. Wilt thou have him 
 for thy King ? " Thereupon all asserted in 
 /a loud voice, and many with tears, crying, 
 " Long live Christ our King." No man has 
 ever failed in the Christian ministry who has 
 inspired a whole people, even for an hour, to 
 aspire to be subject to the sovereignty of 
 Christ. 
 
 From Savonarola to Calvin is only a few 
 years as we count time, but in the course of 
 a single generation Luther had arisen, and 
 with one great phrase — Justification by Faith 
 — had changed the politics of the greater 
 part of Europe. Luther is a fascinating per- 
 sonality and belongs, if ever man did, to the 
 romance of preaching. One may cherish un- 
 limited admiration for his war against a soul- 
 less and corrupt ecclesiasticism, while la- 
 menting the fact that in the terrible period 
 of the Peasants' Revolt he did not see his 
 way clearly, and apply his Gospel principles 
 with equal consistency to secure freedom and 
 justice for those from whose ranks he him- 
 self had sprung. It is the more to be won- 
 dered at because Martin Luther was the most 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 73 
 
 human of beings, full of the milk of human 
 kindness, devoted to wife and children, over- 
 flowing with laughter and humour, genial, 
 quick-tempered, shrewd and passionately fond 
 of music. On many sides of his character he 
 was far more attractive and humane than the 
 preacher of Geneva whose intense intellectual 
 ministry I shall invite you to consider now. 
 John Calvin is usually spoken of as the typ- 
 ical dogmatist ; yet it was he who was re- 
 sponsible for the trenchant saying, " He is a 
 fool who never has a doubt." Walter Bagehot 
 objected to Voltaire's writings because, he 
 said, nothing could possibly be quite so clear 
 as Voltaire makes it. The man who does 
 not realize the mystery of life and the uni- 
 verse explains nothing, and cannot really be 
 an intellectual leader. We live in a queer 
 world, but logic is not the key that unlocks 
 the mystery of it. Calvin would have gov- 
 erned the world of the spirit by rule of logic, 
 and the world of affairs by rule of thumb. 
 
 Neither experiment was a complete suc- 
 cess. That he did such extraordinary things 
 in the course of a life broken by ill-health and 
 
174 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 environed with every kind of danger and 
 trial, is due to the fact that he himself was so 
 much greater than his system. Let it be re- 
 membered that he completed the " Insti- 
 tutes " when he was twenty-four or twenty- 
 five years of age, and probably began the 
 task when he was not more than twenty-three. 
 We are very wise at twenty-three, and see 
 things much more clearly and definitely then 
 than we do when we are twice the age. But 
 I am one of Calvin's warmest admirers who 
 believe with Mark Pattison that "his great 
 merit lies in his comparative neglect of 
 dogma," though I confess I sometimes gaze 
 at the fifty-three octavo volumes of the Edin- 
 burgh edition of his collected theological 
 works and vaguely wonder, if these represent 
 a " comparative neglect of dogma," what 
 would have happened to us if he had not 
 neglected it. Let me, however, strike the 
 key-note of Calvin's life and ministry by 
 quoting Pattison's pregnant words : " Cal- 
 vin seized the idea of reformation as a real 
 renovation of character." While the German 
 reformers were scholastically engaged in re- 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 75 
 
 modelling abstract metaphysical statements, 
 Calvin had embraced the lofty idea of the 
 Church of Christ as a society of regenerate 
 men. The moral purification of humanity asJ 
 the original idea of Christianity is the guid- N 
 ing idea of his system. The Communion of 
 Saints is held together by a moral, not by a 
 metaphysical, still less by a sacramental 
 bond 1 That statement, I think, cannot be 
 overthrown ; and it explains why John Calvin 
 appears in Europe as a new apostle with a 
 new message. 
 
 To pass from Savonarola to Calvin is to 
 pass from a volcano sending forth torrents of 
 molten lava to a well-contained and well- 
 controlled furnace, whose fires are more effect- 
 ive because they are more disciplined. The 
 volcanic eruptions on the other hand are far 
 more picturesque, sensational and awe-in- 
 spiring. Calvin knew none of the paroxysms 
 of the monk of Florence ; and in saying that 
 I must not be understood to mean that the 
 one type of ministry discredits the other ; but 
 only that once again inspiration is following 
 a law of adaptation. From Savonarola to 
 
176 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Calvin is from rhetoric to logic ; and nobody- 
 can read with intelligence this epoch of 
 world history without realizing that Prot- 
 estantism needed at the moment not rhet- 
 oric but reason. Moreover Protestantism 
 had yet to show the world that it stood, not 
 only for a more rational theology, and a 
 simpler worship, but for a purer ethics and a 
 sounder morality. 
 
 John Calvin went to Geneva to make 
 a great experiment. He beheved that a 
 preacher of the Evangel might create and 
 inspire a church, which should in turn become 
 the instrument of freedom and righteousness 
 in the civic life of the city. He had it in 
 view throughout, to make Geneva central to 
 the whole Protestant movement; and its 
 citizenship so compact, united and resolved 
 that the city would stand secure against all 
 enemies. I would that every preacher set- 
 ting out upon his life-work could have within 
 him John Calvin's sense of destiny. Every- 
 body knows how he resisted the call to 
 Geneva, believing that his own work was in 
 the study rather than in the market-place, 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES l^^ 
 
 and how Farel stood over him and with 
 prophetic vehemence denounced a curse upon 
 his studies if he came not to the help of the 
 Lord in Geneva. Calvin yielded to a resist- 
 less conviction of destiny and always felt that 
 the Almighty had shut him into Geneva and 
 locked the gates behind him. Even when at 
 first the Genevans, alarmed at his moral 
 strictness, drove him forth from their midst, 
 with violence of hatred which shook Calvin's 
 sensitive soul to its centre, the Will and the 
 Sovereignty which were to become the foun- 
 dation of his creed appointed his return, and 
 elected him to be the mouthpiece of God to the 
 city where, in the main, he ruled and taught 
 until his death at the age of fifty-four, and 
 lies buried in a grave which by his own wish 
 is marked by no stone, and is as unknown 
 to-day as the grave of Moses upon Nebo. 
 
 I am often compelled to contrast the sense 
 of destiny, or what we speak of as our " call," 
 as it affected these fathers of ours and as it 
 affects ourselves. We speak almost invari- 
 ably of a call to a church ; they spoke of a 
 call to a city. We are told all the circum- 
 
1 78 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Stances that make a particular church a 
 /;| desirable sphere of settlement ; its income, its 
 || position, its social amenities, its agreeable 
 I office-bearers and pewholders. Our re- 
 sponsibilty is to a special flock, whose sheep 
 are known by name, and duly enrolled as 
 such on the church books. But the destiny 
 of our forefathers was to the population of a 
 whole community. Their message was for a 
 city. Their responsibility was for the souls of 
 all people within the city gates, or the borders 
 of the township. They were conscious of 
 a pastoral relation between themselves and 
 the most obscure citizen of the poorest court 
 in the city. It Was this fact that interested 
 them so keenly in the city problems — how 
 their community, litde or large, was governed ; 
 the conditions of life that prevailed ; the 
 temptations to vice, luxury and crime that 
 lowered the standard of morals. They, the 
 preachers, were to take the field for public 
 righteousness as well as for religious truth. 
 1 I ask you to reflect what must be the effect 
 on preaching of this wider and deeper sense 
 of responsibility to one's fellows. I would 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 79 
 
 
 give anything in my power to get it back 
 again for the modern ministry. A sense ofj 
 responsibility to a church may be a ver 
 noble feeling ; but a sense of destiny to a city 
 a town or a village is a far greater thing. 
 Remember we are not Christ's ministers be- 
 cause we are called by a church ; we are 
 ministers of the people because we are called 
 by Christ. It is the call of God we need to 
 be conscious of in our hearts and in our ears. 
 A minister in England or in America will talk 
 about his call to the First Congregational 
 Church, or to such and such a meeting- 
 house ; while the missionary more wisely in- 
 spired, or more greatly daring, will speak 
 about his call to China or to Africa. It is the 
 greatest thing in life when you can hear not 
 only Christian voices calling you, but voices of 
 those whose souls are dark or dead within them 
 but who need all the more the message and 
 the ministry that by God's grace you are able 
 to give. John Calvin will achieve his great- 
 est modern triumph, when he thus deepens 
 and greatens the preacher's sense of destiny. 
 Students of Calvin's sermons and writings 
 
I So THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 will see for themselves how admirably the 
 instrument he employed was adapted to the 
 kind of constructive work he set out to do. 
 Members of congregations will note with re- 
 lief that he evidently believed in short ser- 
 mons ; indeed he had no patience, as he said, 
 with a prolix style. Men have called him by 
 almost every depreciatory epithet, but, those 
 fifty-three octavo volumes notwithstanding, 
 nobody will truthfully call him " wordy." 
 Seldom will you read anywhere, discourses 
 with less of illustration or ornamentation 
 which are yet more penetrating and pertinent. 
 There are no chasings on the blade of his 
 sword. It is plain, keen steel, and with what 
 an edge I Calvin's style of address was, we are 
 told, somewhat slow and measured. For one 
 thing he was a martyr to asthma, and often 
 breathless in the pulpit and before the council. 
 It can be said of him, as it can be said of 
 very few, that he spoke literature. Strong, 
 stately, lucid, nervous, his sentences carry 
 you forward from point to point of his argu- 
 ment Little wonder that the French school 
 books of to-day should point to Calvin as one 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES l8l 
 
 of the supreme masters and even makers of the 
 French language, and should describe his 
 style as an " admirable instrument of discourse 
 and of affairs." 
 
 It is remarkable that one who was so 
 scholarly in all his tastes should be the de- 
 termined champion of extempore preaching. 
 Indeed he went so far as to declare that the 
 power of God could only pour itself forth in 
 extempore speech. His criticism of the 
 Anglican Church, in his letter to Somerset, 
 was, " There is too little of living preaching in 
 your kingdom. . . . You fear that levity 
 and foolish imaginations might be the conse- 
 quence of the introduction of a new system. 
 But all this must yield to the command of 
 Christ which orders the preaching of the 
 Gospel." He never ceased to insist that out 
 of the fullness of the heart the mouth must 
 speak ; and in one fine passage, with which 
 I may perhaps conclude this part of my lec- 
 ture, he uses these memorable words, " It is 
 not said without reason that Jesus Christ 
 ' shall smite the earth with the rod of His 
 mouth, and slay the wicked with the breath 
 
l82 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 of His lips.' This is the means by which the 
 Lord will bind and destroy all His enemies, 
 and hence the Gospel is called the Kingdom 
 of God. Although the edicts and laws there- 
 fore of princes are good auxiliaries for the 
 support of Christianity, God will make His 
 dominion known by the spiritual sword of 
 His Word, proclaimed by His ministers and 
 preachers." Whatever their faults may have 
 been these Reformation fathers believed ab- 
 solutely in the power of the preached word. 
 
 Before I say a word of summary, let me 
 detain you very briefly before the portrait of 
 John Knox, who united to the statesmanship 
 of Calvin the fiery eloquence of Savonarola. 
 Perhaps I cannot introduce the man and his 
 mission better than in the words of the great- 
 est of Scottish historians. " The whole fab- 
 ric," writes Robertson, " which ignorance and 
 superstition had erected in times of darkness 
 began to totter ; and nothing was wanting to 
 complete its ruin but a daring and active 
 leader to direct the attack. Such was the 
 famous John Knox, who with better qualifi- 
 cations of learning, and more extensive views 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 183 
 
 than any of his predecessors in Scotland, 
 possessed a natural intrepidity of mind which 
 set him above fear." I agree with every 
 word of that last sentence unless it be the 
 word " natural." Knox insists that he was 
 by nature a coward ; and personally I have 
 no difficulty in believing that " supernatural 
 intrepidity " would be the more truthful 
 phrase. It will interest you to observe that 
 he too was driven into his eventful work 
 against his own will and inclination. He, 
 like Calvin, was an example of a man worsted 
 in the fight against the Divine decree ; 
 wrestling against the good angel of his des- 
 tiny and being prevailed over to the endless 
 advantage of all subsequent generations. 
 
 After the martyrdom of the saintly Wish- 
 art, the Protestants in St. Andrews were re- 
 solved that Knox should take up the office of 
 preacher. He refused again and again. 
 Then John Rough, who afterwards perished 
 at the stake at Smithfield, dealt as faithfully 
 with Knox as Farel had done with Calvin, 
 charging him " to refuse not this holy voca- 
 tion ... as you look to avoid God's 
 
1 84 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 heavy displeasure." Knox went out from the 
 presence of John Rough to fight the battle 
 out with his own soul, and " his countenance 
 did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of 
 his heart." Finally he bowed to the declared 
 Will, as a mighty tree bends before a mightier 
 storm. Four months later the preacher of St. 
 Andrews, the hope of the Reform move- 
 ment in Scotland, was chained to a French 
 galley, and for nineteen weary and desper- 
 ate months tasted the French lash, labouring 
 at the oar on the stormy north seas. But he 
 had received his " call " ; he had realized his 
 " election," and no mutations of fortune 
 could ever affect his sense of predestination 
 to the task of delivering Scotland from super- 
 stition. It is just as well to meditate while 
 we can, on the strength and stability which 
 that old Calvinistic conception of God's sov- 
 ereign purpose gave to the preachers who 
 saw their own destiny in the light of it. 
 
 Sometimes, when I realize what trifling in- 
 firmities we allow to interrupt our appointed 
 work for the Master, I reflect on such men as 
 Knox with wholesome shame. With what 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 85 
 
 ardour and zeal he wore himself out in the 
 arduous campaign 1 Listen to this, of a cer- 
 tain James Melville, who had the eye and ear 
 of a born reporter. " Of all the benefits I had 
 that year [1571] was the coming of that most 
 notable prophet and apostle of our nation. 
 Mister John Knox, to St. Andrews. I heard 
 him teach there the prophecies of Daniel, that 
 summer and winter following. I had my pen 
 and little book and took away sic things as I 
 could comprehend. In the opening of his 
 text he was moderate the space of half an 
 hour ; but when he entered to application he 
 made me so to grue and tremble that I could 
 not hold the pen to write." Mr. Melville goes 
 on to tell us that at the time Knox was so ill and 
 weak that he had to be assisted to the church 
 and actually lifted into the pulpit, " where he 
 behoved to lean at his first entrie," " but ere 
 he was done with his sermon he was so active 
 and vigorous that he was like to ding [beat] 
 the pulpit into blads [pieces], and fly out of 
 it." Such was the victory of the spirit over the 
 flesh. If only young preachers knew to-day 
 the power of a " mighty application " of their 
 
1 86 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 sermons, and the supreme art of training all 
 their guns upon actual temptations and tend- 
 encies, upon actual sins and selfishnesses of 
 their hearers, we should not have as much 
 cause as we have, to lament the decline of 
 pulpit influence and authority. 
 
 I have no time to dwell on the prowess of 
 this heroic soul in holding out for God against 
 a crafty hierarchy, a turbulent nobility, and 
 the most dangerous Royalty in the world. 
 The destiny of Scotland was in the scales ; 
 and under God, its freedom depended upon 
 the fact that John Knox was no sentimental 
 and effeminate champion of the new doc- 
 trine. Preachers have many temptations to be 
 unfaithful to the truth ; but John Knox had 
 that to resist which had sapped the integrity, 
 and compromised the virtue of some whom 
 Scotland esteemed most loyal to the Evangel- 
 ical faith. You remember Swinburne's lines 
 on Mary Queen of Scots : 
 
 " O diamond heart, unflawed and clear, 
 The whole world's gleaming jewel, 
 Was ever heart so deadly dear, 
 So cruel ! " 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 187 
 
 Mary was the cleverest, as well as the most 
 beautiful of Rome's apologists. To the task 
 of outmanoeuvring and routing Knox and his 
 army of peasant Protestants, she dedicated all 
 her wit and all her graces. She flattered, she 
 threatened, she cajoled ; she tried laughter, 
 she tried tears. She could not believe that 
 one man's conscience — and he of simple 
 stock — could be proof against the wiles and 
 the charms of the fairest queen in Christen- 
 dom. But the one man she could not with 
 all her craft hoodwink or bamboozle, was the 
 Edinburgh preacher who never mistook her 
 character, or was deceived by her artifice. 
 Well might Mary exclaim in that famous in- 
 terview, " I perceive that my subjects shall 
 obey you and not me." History has it on 
 record, that as John Knox passed out from the 
 royal presence, the whisper went round, "He 
 is not afraid," whereupon he replied, " with a 
 reasonably merry countenance," " Wherefore 
 should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman af- 
 fray me ? I have looked upon the faces of 
 many angry men and yet have not been af- 
 frayed beyond measure." 
 
1 88 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 It is certain that the Christian minister who 
 would be faithful to his trust, must yield 
 neither to stern looks nor to soft speeches. 
 Most of us can muster enough manhood, when 
 we are put to it, to stand up against unworthy- 
 frowns. We have not always the courage 
 that is proof against the seducing smiles of 
 fashion, or wealth, or rank. Especially, we 
 have not the insight of Knox, to whom ex- 
 ternal position was nothing, and the only 
 reality that of the mind and soul. Good 
 women are the most precious of all Heaven's 
 gifts to the Church. We may v/ell thank 
 God for all there are, who devote the unique 
 genius of their womanliness to the interests of 
 faith and virtue. But there is need of just 
 such a story as the one Scotland cherishes, to 
 teach us all, betimes, that everything is not 
 necessarily angelic that looks like it ; and that 
 the most difficult, delicate and dangerous of 
 all controversies is, when Truth finds itself 
 in opposition to Error, Superstition and 
 Vice arrayed in the most attractive and 
 alluring guise, and when the whisper of 
 siren voices may seduce even the best- 
 
THE RULERS OF PEOPLES 1 89 
 
 intentioned voyager, from the integrity of his 
 course. 
 
 I have put these three preaching ministries 
 together, because they are supreme examples 
 of the power which the man of the Gospel 
 can exercise in shaping the civic and na- 
 tional life of free peoples. They were all 
 preachers of a puritan spirit. It is probable 
 they made mistakes, and ever since have 
 been the objects of the slighting criticisms 
 of those, who have made few mistakes be- 
 cause they have attempted few enterprises. 
 What the world owes to the example of 
 Savonarola, to the constructive thinking of 
 Calvin, and to the statesmanship of Knox, 
 can never be told. Thanks to them, and to 
 others whom I cannot stay to commemorate, 
 we have come to hold that the ideal State is 
 as much a fruit of the Gospel as the ideal 
 Church. Any errors they may have com- 
 mitted, are far more than compensated for, 
 by the priceless witness which they bore to 
 the sovereignty of Christ over all mundane 
 affairs. Of course they were buffeted and 
 bruised, as all must be who descend into the 
 
I90 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 arena. Of course they tasted to the full the 
 reproaches, calumnies, and cruelties of those 
 who repudiate the authority of the Christian 
 preacher, save in matters of abstract faith 
 alone. But I do not imagine that if they 
 had their lives to live over again, and knew 
 quite well the sufferings and disappoint- 
 ments that awaited them, they would choose 
 differently. For there is, as Carlyle said, no 
 victory but by battle. There is no crown 
 but by the cross. There is no triumph for 
 the preacher save as he pledges himself to 
 the kingdom of God, and makes himself the 
 willing instrument of that resisdess Will which 
 shall yet, in obedience to our Master's prayer, 
 be done on earth as it is done in heaven. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM : 
 JOHN ROBINSON AND THE PIL- 
 GRIM FATHERS 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM : 
 
 JOHN ROBINSON AND THE 
 
 PILGRIM FATHERS 
 
 THE Gospel is more than a great 
 faith ; it is a great adventure. Its 
 news is so good that it must be 
 carried everywhere at all hazards. The most 
 thrilling pages in Christian history describe 
 the enterprise of the Evangel. 
 
 When a leading English Review, that has a 
 reputation for cynicism, some time ago de- 
 scribed the missionary movement, its cynicism 
 gave way to genuine enthusiasm. •' They 
 have kept alive at the heart of a selfish and 
 materialized culture," it declared of our mis- 
 sionaries, "a genuine heroic tradition" ; and 
 went on to say that there were few families 
 of note in England that had not made some 
 contribution to the army of missionary mar- 
 tyrs, and that " all the ends of the earth are 
 hallowed by their graves." No man can 
 193 
 
194 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 read such records without emotion and 
 pride. There is no history to compare with 
 it, nor ever can be. It is something to 
 realize in these days that unselfishness can 
 devise and achieve greater things than self- 
 ishness ever can. We all know that science 
 and commerce have inspired expeditions 
 which have filled the world with admiration ; 
 but the simple truth is, that the adventures 
 inspired by the disinterestedness of Christian 
 evangelists, have thrown all other enterprises 
 into the shade. 
 
 There have been many types of missionary 
 preachers and missionary adventures. Much 
 that is best in America to-day, derives from a 
 pilgrim race. In the words of Mr. Lowell, 
 they crossed the Atlantic " to plant their idea 
 in virgin soil." They may not have looked 
 romantic. Shovel hats and long black 
 cloaks do not compare in picturesqueness 
 with the embroidered raiment of the cavalier 
 heroes of Vandyck. Yet these men and 
 women, so prim and demure of outward 
 aspect, set forth on the most astonishing 
 of adventures, reading their destiny west- 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 1 95 
 
 ward in the heaven of their ideals, and by 
 the good hand of God prospering them, sow- 
 ing the world with free commonwealths. A 
 clever modern novelist has invented for us 
 the title, " The Beloved Vagabond." It 
 might have stood for a description of the 
 Mayflower. You may read on a tomb in 
 that spellbound burial-place at Plymouth, 
 part of an address delivered by a preacher 
 whose body rests beneath. He describes his 
 associates as " my beloved adventurers." 
 That great writer, Professor Seeley, says, 
 " Religion alone can turn emigration into 
 exodus." Who shall define or describe the 
 mystic determining impulse that drove the 
 Pilgrims into the wild, to make a home for 
 faith and freedom ? Had they any pre- 
 science of the greatness of the goal ? Did 
 they, too, see an Abrahamic vision of a seed 
 as the stars innumerable, for those who would 
 go forth not knowing whither, but content 
 to follow the gleam ? Did they say, when 
 the winds of heaven filled their sails and 
 bare them far from friends and fatherland, 
 " the spirit driveth us into the wilderness " ? 
 
196 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Were they all equally clear that the Will of 
 God was with them, and that in the Book of 
 Destiny their names were written as the 
 humble pioneers of a new world and a new 
 order? Were all hearts westward and for- 
 ward, and all minds constant in their re- 
 solve ? Did none nourish a treacherous 
 appetite for the flesh-pots of Europe, murmur 
 at the discouragements of the journey, 
 
 " Nor cast one longing lingering look behind ? " 
 
 How gladly would we know more than we 
 do, or ever can, of the details of that golden 
 romance, which surely, outside the pages of 
 the New Testament, is the greatest story in 
 the world 1 
 
 Savonarola ruled Florence, Calvin ruled 
 Geneva, John Knox ruled the realm of Scot- 
 land. Each in measure asserted the author- 
 ity of Christ over a turbulent and sometimes 
 rebellious population. Their difficulty was 
 that they were compelled to put new wine 
 into old bottles, until new bottles could be 
 wrought and shaped for the new wine. The 
 Pilgrim Fathers would have a new bottle for 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 197 
 
 their new wine. They demanded a free com- 
 monwealth suited to their free ideals of wor- 
 ship, and of citizenship. They could not be 
 content to graft their new branch on the old 
 decayed stock, where it must be overshad- 
 owed by all the other branches that bare 
 fruit of so doubtful a flavour. For the most 
 part they were business people who found 
 Leyden a tolerable town to thrive in. But 
 their religion made them restless. The Prom- 
 ised Land was in their hearts. The more 
 John Robinson preached to them of the 
 primitive church, and the destiny of the 
 kingdom, the less they were satisfied with 
 the compromise-society which alone was 
 possible to them where they were. We may 
 perhaps be thankful that the result of faithful 
 and real preaching is not always, as in the 
 case of John Robinson, that the congregation 
 arise and flee. But I confess I always sus- 
 pect my own preaching of weakness if it 
 does not make many young people uncom- 
 fortable, and compel them to become mis- 
 sionaries of the ideal, even at some consider- 
 able sacrifice. " Will you be content," argued 
 
198 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 John Robinson in effect, " to go down to your 
 graves with your witness undelivered, and 
 your bravest hopes unattempted ? Or will 
 you risk something, nay everything, to trans- 
 late your theories of Christian freedom into 
 a veritable free society ? " The problem of 
 Savonarola, Calvin, Knox, was whether the 
 preached word was powerful enough to 
 transform and convert an old order. The 
 problem of John Robinson and the Pilgrims, 
 was whether the preached word was power- 
 ful enough to create and establish a new one. 
 Before I come to a somewhat closer study 
 of the man and his ideals who inspired one 
 of the world's most momentous enterprises 
 by his preaching, I shall ask you to spare a 
 thought for that revival of preaching which 
 marked the heroic age, in which the mind of 
 England was turned permanently Protestant. 
 I say the mhid of England, for no serious 
 student believes that we were made Protes- 
 tant by the domestic vagaries of Henry VIII. 
 We were made Protestant by an open Bible, 
 and its prophets. One lesson had been 
 taught by the ballads of Chaucer, and the 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 199 
 
 visions of Piers Plowman, and was reenforced 
 afterwards by the tracts of Martin Marprelate, 
 that to ivin the ear of the people you viust talk 
 their language. To popularize the Reforma- 
 tion and its new religious ideals, it was neces- 
 sary that preachers should arise who thought 
 in the vernacular, and who seasoned their 
 speech with the salt of such homely words 
 and phrases, as made Tyndale's Bible under- 
 standed not only by the college-bred, but by 
 the smith at the anvil, and the labourer be- 
 hind the plough. 
 
 When Hugh Latimer began to teach the 
 new doctrine from St. Paul's Cross, every 
 London apprentice knew and re-hashed his 
 message. After all, is not this one of the 
 signs of a new Pentecost, " We did hear tell 
 in our own tongtie the wonderful works of 
 God " ? There is a saying of Jesus that we 
 shall all do well to lay to heart : " What I 
 tell you in secret, that publish ye on the 
 housetop." Christianity is every man's re- 
 ligion ; and therefore can be translated with- 
 out loss into the language of the street. It 
 is a religion for the open air. It is a religion 
 
200 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 that does not suffer by being brought home 
 to the conscience and reason of simple folk. 
 It is susceptible of learned philosophical 
 statement, I doubt not, satisfying to the 
 greatest and profoundest thinkers, but John 
 Ruskin once said, with the touch of exaggera- 
 tion characteristic of him, " What a little child 
 cannot understand of Christianity, nobody 
 else need try to." The essential Protestant 
 faith captured the ear and the heart of six- 
 teenth-century London, through the pithy 
 pregnant Saxon speech of Latimer, with his 
 command of laughter and tears. 
 
 He presented the citizen in the street with 
 a plain man's religion. He spoke it as 
 simply, I say it with reverence, as the Saviour 
 spoke to the peasants in the fields of Judea, 
 or the fishermen by the Galilean lakes. He 
 did not so much appeal to the theologically- 
 trained mind ; and he certainly did not ap- 
 peal to any sense of ecclesiastical authority. 
 He appealed to common sense ; he appealed 
 to the instincts of the multitude. He ap- 
 pealed to their love of justice and of hu- 
 manity. There never was a more human 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 20I 
 
 being than Hugh Latimer. The people well 
 know the men who love them, believe in 
 them, and understand them. The sheep 
 hear the voice of the true shepherd. Lon- 
 don has always been a city with much that 
 is artificial and materialistic in its complicated 
 cosmopolitan life ; and no one ever held the 
 key of its affections who was not a true man. 
 Latimer's preaching is oratory stripped of all 
 that is meretricious, and oratory that is 
 not sterilized by conventionality. No timid, 
 stilted pulpiteer, who has never learned that 
 grace is more than grammar, and that to 
 win your hearers, you may break every pulpit 
 convention that was ever designed by a sleek 
 respectability to keep our volcanic Gospel 
 within the bonds of decency and order, will 
 ever capture the soul of a great city, or 
 speak with a voice that will ring in the 
 hearts of a free people. And if Latimer 
 knew the secret, another knew it who is 
 worthy to be named with him — that passion- 
 ate pilgrim of the Puritanism which was only 
 Latimer's Protestantism become logical and 
 thorough — I mean John Penry. They burned 
 
202 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Latimer at Oxford, and hanged Penry on a 
 gibbet in the Old Kent Road; but not till 
 these men and others like-minded had set 
 England on fire. For one thing, they had 
 shed their blood for freedom of thought and 
 freedom of speech, and no martyr has ever 
 died for those sacred principles in vain. The 
 preacher's very existence was at stake in the 
 controversy, whether religion was to consist 
 of prayers and offices rendered in a foreign 
 tongue, or the truths which free men were to 
 think and speak in their own free speech. 
 In the former system the prophet has no 
 place ; in the latter system he is the most 
 precious possession of his age. 
 
 I hope I shall not weary you by insistence 
 on this point ; but the tendency of theology 
 to become an esoteric philosophy, full of 
 technical terms understanded only by the ex- 
 perts, has the inevitable effect that its profess- 
 ors and teachers lose touch with life. Al- 
 ways the preacher must be a man of his 
 time. His business is to restate the eternal 
 message of salvation in the terms of to-day. 
 Chaste and cultured archaisms are pleasant 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 203 
 
 to the palate of the scholar ; but the Gospel 
 is for the people, and we need more than 
 anything else, men of the people who know 
 their needs and their thoughts, and can make 
 the Evangel, what it eternally is, the property 
 and heritage of the simple and the poor. 
 Some of you will recall, by way of illustra- 
 tion, the scathing satires of Erasmus on the 
 scholastic theologians and preachers who, in 
 his time, made it their business to cultivate a 
 reputation for erudition and profundity, by 
 talking in words that the vulgar could not 
 understand. This is a specimen which Eras- 
 mus gives of the teaching of these inflated 
 doctrinaires. " They say that ' person ' does 
 not signify relation of origin, but duplex ne- 
 gation of communicability in genere, that is, 
 it connotes something positive, and is a noun 
 of the first instance, not the second. They 
 say the persons of the Divine Nature exist 
 reciprocally by circumcision, and circum- 
 cision is when a thing subsists really in 
 something else which is really distinct, by 
 the mutual assistance of presentiality in the 
 same essence." After reading two or three 
 
204 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 lines of that kind of thing, you feel as if you 
 were in a lunatic asylum. Do you wonder 
 that men and women sickened and wearied 
 of it ? And do you wonder that the Refor- 
 mation preachers brought a veritable new 
 revelation to the world when they read out 
 to the common people such great simple 
 words as these, " I am the Way and the 
 Truth and the Life ; no man cometh unto the 
 Father but by Me " ? If Tyndale had done 
 nothing else by his translation of the Bible 
 he had taught us for all time that there is no 
 more dignified and majestic diction than the 
 simple speech of the common people. 
 
 I cannot explain to you just why it is, that 
 the true prophet is always a master of simple 
 speech, but it is certain that no man can 
 speak home to the hearts of his fellow-men 
 without it. Inasmuch as the Reformation 
 was a return to the natural and to the human 
 from the artificial and the scholastic, it did 
 more than change the world's history, it re- 
 vived the order of prophets, and it created a 
 literature. From Hugh Latimer and John 
 Penry, to Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan, you 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 205 
 
 can read the influence of the Reformation in 
 bringing religion back to life, and making it 
 the inspiration of the common people. 
 
 After all, it was but natural that the Puritan 
 preacher with his love of reality, should be 
 impatient of the mere tricks and artifices bor- 
 rowed from the demagogue. The Richard 
 Bernard who was only " almost persuaded " 
 to become a pilgrim, and just missed immor- 
 tality thereby, dealt out wholesome warnings 
 to young preachers in his book entitled " The 
 Faithful Shepherd." How he satirizes those 
 brethren who, as Mr. Spurgeon used to say, 
 "mistake perspiration for inspiration," and 
 try to produce an impression by violence 
 which could not be produced by the weight 
 of their argument ! Some forward ones, he 
 declares, are " moved to violent motions as 
 casting abroad of their arms, smiting on the 
 pulpit, lifting themselves up, and again sud- 
 denly stamping down." Others "through 
 too great feare and bashfulness which causeth 
 hemmings, spittings, rubbing the browes, 
 lifting up of the shoulders, nodding of the 
 head, taking often hold of the cloake or gown, 
 
206 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 fiddling with the fingers upon the breast but- 
 tons, streaking of the beard and such-like 
 toies." There is sound sense as well as 
 humour, in this attempt to put us on our 
 guard against ridiculous and meaningless 
 nervous gestures which distract and annoy 
 the most indulgent of our hearers, and add 
 nothing to our power. It is always easier in 
 this matter to enforce the truth by precept 
 than by practice ; but nothing is more cer- 
 tain than that the man who has learned early 
 the right modulation of the voice, and to be 
 content with those simple gestures which are 
 natural and dignified, has mastered what is 
 fundamental to the art of pulpit oratory. 
 
 That this was no chance judgment of 
 some isolated Puritan divine, but one com- 
 mon to all in that generation, may be further 
 gathered from an excellent passage in one of 
 John Robinson's forceful writings. " As a 
 \ woman, over-curiously trimmed, is to be sus- 
 pected, so is a speech. And indeed he 
 that goes about by eloquence, without firm 
 ground of reason to persuade, goes about to 
 deceive. As some are large in speech out of 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 207 
 
 abundance of matter and upon due consider- 
 ation, so the most multiply words either from 
 weakness or vanity. Some excuse their 
 tediousness, saying that they cannot speak 
 shorter, which is all one as if they said that 
 they have unbridled tongues and inordinate 
 passions setting them a-work. I have been 
 many times drawn so dry, that I could not 
 well speak any longer for want of matter ; 
 but I could ever speak as short as I would." 
 I ask you, could the thing be better put? 
 Could there be a better comparison than this 
 of a highly-rhetorical speech or sermon to " a 
 woman, over-curiously trimmed " ? Have we 
 not had to listen to many discourses where 
 you could not see the dress for the trimmings? 
 It may be impossible to lay down any canons 
 of good taste in this matter, but I shall ven- 
 ture to submit to you, that the Puritan frugal- 
 ity of illustration and adornment, is far more 
 effective than the prodigality and even prof- 
 ligacy of quotation and ornament which is 
 sometimes popular among us to-day, and 
 which may dazzle, but does not really subdue 
 and persuade an audience. 
 
208 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Nevertheless, you are not to suppose that 
 John Robinson could not estimate the worth 
 and value of apposite and pointed illustra- 
 tion. Dr. John Brown has borne testimony 
 to the wealth of his reading, the catholicity of 
 his range of knowledge. He has discovered 
 quotations from Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, 
 Thales, Cicero, Terence, Pliny, Plutarch, 
 Seneca, Epictetus and Suetonius among the 
 classics ; among the Fathers, from Ignatius, 
 Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, 
 Gregory Nazienzen, Lactantius, Jerome, 
 Basil and Eusebius ; among later writers, from 
 Bernard, Anselm, Scaliger, Beza, Erasmus 
 and Melancthon, as well as his own contem- 
 poraries. This renowned preacher and 
 scholar, who was to inspire men and women 
 to attempt and achieve one of the most heroic 
 tasks in history, was a man steeped in litera- 
 ture, who had wrestled in his study with 
 great themes, who had sat at the feet of men 
 of mind of all schools and generations, whose 
 culture was as catholic as his sympathies were 
 wide, and who yet, as Tennyson says, "wore 
 his weight of learning lightly as a flower," 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 209 
 
 and never lost touch with his fellows, or gave 
 up to academic ambition what was meant for 
 mankind. Had it been otherwise, he might 
 have become a walking encyclopaedia, but 
 never the mainspring of that gallant adven- 
 ture which planted a free church on a free 
 soil. 
 
 The more I study the personality and the 
 preaching of John Robinson, the less I 
 wonder at the spirit and exploits of the com- 
 munity whose members owed everything to 
 his inspiration. Under the strongest tempta- 
 tions to intolerance, he maintained a generous 
 temper and a broad Christian outlook. He 
 was immovably firm in the maintenance of 
 principles, but even his controversial utter- 
 ances are distinguished by a large charity 
 that lifts him above his time. And I cannot 
 be wrong in arguing, that his ministry bears 
 the marks upon it of the influence of his 
 church, which was almost alone among the 
 separatist communities of the time in its 
 freedom from unworthy partisanship, and the 
 frictions and bickerings which are the fruits 
 of jealousy and pedantry. I imagine John 
 
2IO THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Robinson would have found it difficult to de- 
 cide whether his people owed most to his 
 preaching", or his preaching owed most to his 
 people. One has the feeling that such a 
 church would have made almost any preacher 
 eloquent ; yet again, one is driven to conclude 
 that such a preacher would have created a 
 true church out of almost any material. The 
 fact of the matter is, of course, that the 
 atmosphere of faith and prayer does make 
 good preaching inevitable, whereas the atti- 
 tude of suspicion and criticism will " freeze 
 the genial current of the soul," and give to 
 any earnest and spiritual minister a sense of 
 labouring at the oar to no purpose. 
 
 It is not possible to leave out of account 
 that many preachers are called to preach to 
 the worldly, the unbelieving, the indifferent 
 and the hostile ; and we should be contradict- 
 ing some of the most glorious facts in Chris- 
 tian history, if we did not recognize that God 
 does not leave His witnesses alone when they 
 go forth on His errands, no matter how diffi- 
 cult the journey. But it is almost impossible 
 to separate John Robinson from the church 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 211 
 
 he loved so deeply, and which loved him with 
 equal intensity and constancy. He was just 
 one of the members of the body, deriving 
 health and power from his vital relation to all 
 the rest, and communicating his own life and 
 strength to them. When he spoke to this 
 outside world, when he put pen to paper, 
 when he became a champion in controversy, 
 and a defender of his faith and people, it was 
 not he alone who spoke. The whole church 
 seemed to become eloquent in and through 
 him. Equally impressive is it, that the church 
 members to whom he gave his blessing, and 
 a double portion of his spirit, seemed to re- 
 produce his faith, courage and charity when 
 far from his presence. 
 
 Leagues of tempestuous Atlantic waters 
 never separated people and pastor in ideal or 
 in fellowship. Still the mystic spiritual tie 
 held. Still they thought together, and prayed 
 together, and aspired together, and wrought 
 together. It was as if he, their pastor, were 
 present at every council meeting, was a guest 
 in every cabin, prayed at the bedside of the 
 dying, joined the hands of the newly-wed. 
 
212 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 and committed those who died in Christ to 
 their last resting place in the forest. Of all 
 the blows that fell one by one upon that 
 struggling Pilgrim community in the bitter 
 heroic days, when death and famine seemed 
 their most familiar acquaintances, the most 
 crushing and heart-breaking was the news of 
 the death of their beloved pastor ; and every 
 soul in Plymouth colony felt as if his father 
 had fallen, and sorrowed most of all, that they 
 should see his face no more. 
 
 We have got to believe more than we do, 
 in this sacred cooperation of preacher and 
 people. We shall have no ideal preachers in 
 the pulpit, unless and until we have ideal 
 hearers in the pew. For conquests that will 
 startle and awaken the world, the need will 
 always be for prophet spirits who are sus- 
 tained and illuminated by their contact with 
 a society of consecrated souls. It is all very 
 well to lecture students for the ministry on 
 the vocation and equipment of the preacher, 
 or on the ideal of his calling, but in sober 
 truth, such lectures ought from time to time 
 to be delivered to the officers and members 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 213 
 
 of churches and congregations. They make 
 or mar the ministry. They encourage or 
 discourage the preacher. They make it pos- 
 sible for him to be at his best, and impossi- 
 ble for his arrows to miss the mark. They 
 create the atmosphere in which faith can live, 
 and doubt cannot. They arm him for unseen 
 conflicts, and protect him by their prayers 
 from insidious attacks on his moral integrity. 
 Moreover, it is they who multiply his message, 
 translate it into living fact and deed, and so 
 give power and effect to his ministry. Let 
 it never be forgotten that modern America 
 sprang out of the ideal relation between a 
 pastor and a church ; a man of God and a 
 people of God. 
 
 Let it never be forgotten that the problem 
 was thought out in church meeting, and the 
 enterprise planned and adopted within the 
 atmosphere of a Christian assembly. It was 
 there, while men and women pleaded for 
 light, and for faith to walk in it, that the 
 spirit of illumination was vouchsafed, under 
 whose gracious guidance the yoke became 
 easy and the burden light. Together, while 
 
214 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 the prophet-leader saw his vision, and the 
 people kindled to it, they became equal to 
 the sacrifice, and confident of the Will and 
 the Way. I cannot analyze how much of 
 those faithful discourses that will stir men's 
 souls to the end of time, was due to the rapt 
 and resolute faces of simple heroes and hero- 
 ines that were upturned to meet his gaze, and 
 how much of their exaltation and enthusiasm 
 was due to their contact with a soul in which 
 indubitably dwelt Divine insight and fire ; 
 I only know that their sublime cooperation 
 made the westward track of the Mayflower 
 plain, and wrote the new Book of Genesis in 
 the Bible of human destiny. 
 
 Forgive me if I linger lovingly on these 
 familiar scenes, so big with fate, and so 
 weighty with instruction. The preacher who 
 has not pondered over these origins of New 
 England's history, must blame himself if he 
 has missed much inspiration for his own 
 work. The part played by Moses in the days 
 of the Jewish exodus towards the Land of 
 Promise is not one wit more notable or sig- 
 nificant than the part played by John Robin- 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 215 
 
 son in the exodus that ended in this land of 
 promise. I might spare a moment or two 
 for examples of his genius in the employment 
 of rare and suggestive texts of Scripture, and 
 his skill in turning out-of-the-way incidents 
 in Bible narratives to profitable account. 
 There are many seemingly desert places in 
 Scripture, that a preacher who knows his 
 Bible, can make to blossom like the rose. 
 Not that there was any strained ingenuity 
 about John Robinson's way with texts. But 
 who would forget that text out of the Book 
 of Samuel from which he preached on the 
 special day set apart for inquiring the mind 
 of the spirit as to this enterprise, "And 
 David's men said unto him, Behold we be 
 afraid here in Judah ; how much more then 
 if we come to Keilah against the armies of 
 the Philistines ? Then David inquired of the 
 Lord yet again. And the Lord answered 
 him and said, Arise, go down to Keilah ; for 
 I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand." 
 Among all your New England towns to-day, 
 I wonder if there is one named Keilah ; and 
 if not, whether it is too late to supply the 
 
2l6 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 omission ? Unless all reports lie, there are 
 still enough Philistines left to justify the ex- 
 periment. 
 
 Then on the ever-memorable day when he 
 preached to the Pilgrims for the last time, the 
 sermon that has become an imperishable 
 legacy for all forward souls, he found his text 
 in the Book of Ezra, " I proclaimed a fast 
 there at the river Ahava that we might afflict 
 ourselves before our God, to seek of Him a 
 right way for us, and for our little ones, and 
 for all our substance." Think how these 
 felicitous words must have accomplished 
 their purpose, which was to provoke to new 
 fervour of prayer and faith those who at the 
 crisis of their fate still needed to be assured 
 that theirs was a God-prompted and God- 
 guided enterprise. Often, when I study the 
 preaching of our fathers, I am impressed by 
 the fact that they knew their Bibles better 
 than we do. They had less of the light of 
 criticism, but they had, I think, notwith- 
 standing, a more exact knowledge of Holy 
 Writ. To-day this great territory of Scrip- 
 ture is like a modern continent ; extreme and 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 217 
 
 unhealthy congestion at certain well-known 
 centres, and vast tracts of country unculti- 
 vated and unknown. How many of those 
 listening to me have been led against the 
 " Philistines at Keilah," or have heard " a fast 
 proclaimed at the river Ahava " ? 
 
 Perhaps we flatter ourselves that if we had 
 part and lot in so wonderful a movement we, 
 too, should be moved to search the Scriptures, 
 and to uncover some of their hidden gems of 
 price. But that is to harbour an undeveloped 
 imagination. Every hour of assembly is a 
 time big with destiny. Every Sunday men 
 and women go forth from the tryst with God 
 to face measureless possibilities. Suppose 
 that you and I, who have the unspeakable 
 privilege of interpreting the book of life, 
 realized that the men and women we are ad- 
 dressing are as capable of disinterested 
 sacrifices and noble exploits as their pro- 
 genitors at Leyden ; and that before a week 
 is out some of them may have launched their 
 Mayflower, and embraced a God-given adven- 
 ture, with what emotion would our speech to 
 them be charged ? If we fail, it is because 
 
2l8 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 we do not see the possibilities latent in what 
 we call an " ordinary congregation." No as- 
 sembling of ourselves together to meet with 
 Christ can ever be " ordinary." That is only 
 a fashion of speech. We say sometimes, " It 
 was just an ordinary service." If we have 
 ceased to expect extraordinary manifestations 
 of God's power, and revelations of His will — 
 that our young men should see visions and 
 our old men dream dreams — why is it ? It 
 was just as possible that your fathers at Leyden 
 should say " Yes " or " No " to the beckoning 
 hand of their divine destiny, as that we should 
 accept or reject the higher Will for our own. 
 There was no single element present at their 
 fateful assembly in their Leyden meeting- 
 house, that may not be present at any hour 
 of worship in these days, and in the land of 
 their adoption. All that is necessary for us 
 to repeat their enterprises and achievements, 
 is soul enough to believe in God's will and to 
 surrender to His leadership, 
 
 I am impressed by the fact, that the last 
 picture of their beloved minister which the 
 Pilgrims carried with them to their promised 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 219 
 
 land, was the one so simply and vividly 
 described by the historian of their enterprise. 
 " The tide — which stays for no man — calling 
 them away, that were thus loth to depart, 
 their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his 
 knees, and they all with him, with watery 
 cheeks, commended them with most fervent 
 prayers unto the Lord and His blessing." 
 I suspect that we have all at times felt what 
 we call the burden of extempore prayer. 
 But I am certain that the soul of the prophet 
 is most surely and powerfully revealed in his 
 prayers. To speak to men of God is a high 
 privilege. There is perhaps one higher : it 
 is to speak to God for men. I do not doubt 
 that many a great saying of John Robinson 
 lingered in the memories of his pilgrim flock, 
 and was recalled under the pine-trees and 
 behind the stockades in their new settlement. 
 But assuredly the most sacred recollection 
 of all, was of his tender and loving interces- 
 sions on their behalf ; and they came to feel 
 that the greatest moments in their lives, were 
 those ever-memorable ones when that proph- 
 et-spirit talked with God, and they saw 
 
220 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 heaven open, and heard things scarce law- 
 ful for man to hear. God forgive us that 
 our pulpit prayers tend to become so formal, 
 and even unreal! For this is the sublimest 
 office the minister of the Kingdom is called 
 to fulfill. It is out of such spirit of com- 
 munion and sacred intercourse with Deity 
 that the pilgrim ambition is born, and the 
 pilgrim vow sealed and ratified. Nay, I go 
 further. It is in our prayers that our real 
 ideals and hopes for our people are revealed. 
 If we have great aspirations for them ; if in 
 our personal desire we destine them to sacri- 
 ficial service ; if we so love them as to cher- 
 ish for them the glory and honour of the 
 God-dedicated and forward-moving life, they 
 ( will make the discovery in our prayers. For 
 
 )lit is in our prayers that the deeps of the soul 
 f are uncovered, and the passionate yearnings 
 ; of the true minister for his people make them- 
 i selves known. That is a great adjective 
 which Scripture applies to the fervent prayers 
 of a good man. They are "energizing." 
 They charge receptive souls with new and 
 sublime forces. They reestablish broken or 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 221 
 
 imperfect connections witii the source of 
 Divine power. They baptize the waiting, 
 willing, listening heart with new vitality. 
 They " energize " — dare I say " electrify " ? — 
 the mind. Who can doubt that those who 
 knelt around their spiritual father at Delft- 
 haven, with the rickety ship Speedwell 
 lying near as if to remind them of the perils 
 and discomforts of their adventure, were 
 braced and strengthened and " energized " 
 for their deathless task by the fervent appli- 
 cations of that man of God? Let no preacher 
 among us fail to realize the power of in- 
 spiration that may communicate itself through 
 his sermons to his congregation ; but least 
 of all let him forget that the final stimulus to 
 deeds of faith and devotion will be felt and, 
 known by his people in the supreme hour of 
 fervent and energizing prayer. 
 
 I must ask you to spare one thought for 
 a feature of the famous expedition on which 
 perhaps we do not often dwell. No minister 
 went with them ; that is, no ordained preacher 
 and pastor. Apart from the fragrant memory 
 of their former leader's ministry, they were 
 
222 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 dependent on what we sometimes speak of 
 as a " layman's " service. I would like to 
 press Elder Brewster's example upon you, as 
 another and unanswerable argument why 
 we should not deprive ourselves, as we do, 
 of the spiritual wealth of men and women in 
 our churches who have not devoted them- 
 selves to the formal ministry, but whose 
 thought and experience would enrich our 
 corporate life. Would to God that all the 
 Lord's servants were prophets ! When shall 
 we get away from the paralyzing miscon- 
 ception that a man of affairs is thereby in- 
 capacitated from being a spiritual leader? 
 I make no doubt that the meditations of 
 Elder Brewster were all the wiser and nobler 
 that he had many public anxieties to bear, 
 and responsibilities to carry. It ought to be 
 forever symbolical of New England, that the 
 religious spirit was united to the spirit of 
 practical citizenship in him who, unordained 
 of man, assumed spiritual leadership within 
 the pilgrim theocracy. 
 
 So the preaching of the Word, and the 
 higher Idealism, resulted in the founding of 
 
THE FOUNDERS OF FREEDOM 223 
 
 a new world " dedicated to the proposition," 
 as Lincoln would say, that Christ's will is 
 the only worthy and wholesome law for a 
 state. To recover that ideal we need a new 
 race of prophets — seers of inspired vision like 
 John Robinson, statesmen of spiritual ex- 
 perience and moral stature like Brewster. 
 How the Pilgrim church created the Pilgrim 
 state ; how it drew up as Mr. Bancroft says, 
 "the first instrument conferring equal civil 
 and religious rights on every member of the 
 commonwealth " ; how it sought to do the 
 will of God on earth is matter of history. 
 Imperishable as that history is, it is of little 
 worth for the world of to-morrow in com- 
 parison with the necessity that her new 
 preachers and spiritual leaders should 
 "highly resolve," that they will bring to 
 the stupendous task of creating yet another 
 " new world " a double portion of the spirit 
 of their sires — the same faith, fortitude and 
 sacred adventure, a like endurance in the 
 teeth of danger, suffering and death, and 
 " an equal temper of heroic hearts." 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM : 
 WESLEY AND WHITEFIELD 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM : 
 WESLEY AND WHITEFIELD 
 
 THE problem of the Preacher as 
 evangelist is one of which we are 
 all bound to think, and on which 
 history has much to teach. I shall begin by 
 agreeing that we make far too sharp a divi- 
 sion between a ministry that is educational, 
 and a ministry that is evangelistic ; and too 
 marked a distinction between a morning 
 service for edifying the saints, and an even- 
 ing service for evangelizing the sinners. 
 There seems to be no adequate reason why 
 people should take their minds to church in 
 the forenoon, and their souls in the evening. 
 If occasionally more soul were put into the 
 morning sermon, and more mind into the 
 evening sermon, we might improve the qual- 
 ity of the saints and make the conversion of 
 the sinners more permanent. But when that 
 227 
 
2 28 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 is said, I shall proceed to state my main 
 proposition with all the force I can command — 
 that it is time all Christian preachers equipped 
 themselves more definitely for evangelistic 
 work, and refused to allow the most vital 
 part of their aggressive policy to be under- 
 taken for them by an order of preachers how- 
 ever able and devoted who have to be called 
 in for the purpose like consulting physicians 
 at a crisis. The ministry that is not an evan- 
 gelistic ministry is not in the full sense a 
 Christian ministry, for we cannot obey our 
 Lord's command and leave His Divine ap- 
 peal unuttered to those who are heedless and 
 unresponsive. 
 
 But it is equally certain that evangelism, 
 rightly understood, is not as simple a matter 
 as it seems. It is the greatest mistake in the 
 world to imagine that defects in education 
 are a qualification for evangelism ; or that, to 
 put it in another way, such an absence of real 
 culture as would disqualify a man for the full 
 work of the ministry might rank as an en- 
 dowment for his work as an evangelist. I 
 rate the work of evangelism far higher than 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 229 
 
 that. It is work that demands the best 
 brains we possess ; and no training can be 
 too thorough, and no reading too wide for the 
 minister whose aim it is to be to bring the ir- 
 religious and the indifferent on to the side of 
 Christ and the Kingdom. We can never 
 forget that it was Paul, the most accomplished 
 and erudite of the apostles, whose soul was 
 fired most with a passion for evangelism be- 
 fore which all the old racial barriers went 
 down like a bowing wall and a tottering 
 fence. 
 
 Does anybody suppose that he would have 
 been better fitted for his apostolic work if he 
 had never sat at the feet of Gamaliel ? So 
 far from lamenting the catholicity of his cul- 
 ture, we know how much depended upon his 
 ability to become as a Greek to win the 
 Greeks, and as a Roman to win the Romans. 
 I am not prepared to argue that the result of 
 learning is always to widen the sympathies ; 
 and that learned men are invariably the most 
 human and versatile of beings. Experience 
 hardly warrants so satisfactory a generaliza- 
 tion, and Carlyle's old friend " Dry-as-dust," 
 
230 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 • " with loads of learned lumber in his head," 
 does exist even outside novels like " Middle- 
 march." Indeed, the notorious fact that many 
 profound scholars have been men of narrow 
 sympathies and pedantic opinions, has been re- 
 sponsible for the fear, that one may still hear 
 expressed, lest promising young preachers 
 should be ruined at college by being made 
 too bookish and scholastic. But Paul's ex- 
 ample is decisive as to the value, for the work 
 of evangelism, of that generous culture which 
 frankly confesses the debt it owes to Jew and 
 Roman, Greek and Barbarian, — a confession 
 which, in itself, is more than half the victory 
 over those disabling prejudices which prevent 
 a missionary from getting on terms with his 
 audience. It is surely not too much to say 
 that, humanly speaking, no untrained and 
 uncultured man could have done Paul's work 
 among conditions so diverse. The Church 
 of to-day needs to ponder deeply on this 
 Ifact, that it was the man of most massive in- 
 ' tellect and most varied scholarship, who was 
 the first great Christian evangelist. 
 
 No one will claim for St. Francis of Assisi 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 23 1 
 
 the rank of a scholar ; but his education was 
 good as the standard of the time was, and 
 there are no evidences of weakness in that 
 charming intellect which he carried with him 
 through his spiritual pilgrimage to the 
 Italian peasantry. But as to his namesake, 
 Francis de Xavier, there are no deductions to 
 be made. He who was to wear his life out 
 in romantic evangelistic journeying through 
 lands that were at that time the Ultima Thiile 
 of travel, was educated in the University of 
 Paris, became a lecturer in the Aristotelian 
 philosophy, and might have successfully 
 aspired to almost any position in that 
 academic world, so brilliant were his intel- 
 lectual talents. One cannot have all the 
 gifts ; and even Xavier confesses in his let- 
 ters that he had no skill in languages, which 
 was the reason why his work had to be done 
 through the difficult medium of an interpre- 
 ter, and why the legend arose that his defi- 
 ciencies in this respect were conveniently 
 made good by the gift of tongues. No gram- 
 mars and dictionaries were available in the 
 strange lands of his voluntary exile ; and, had 
 
232 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 they been, he had no time for their study. 
 But to a hero of his spirit there was less em- 
 barrassment in this deficiency than most men 
 would have suffered. For he had within him 
 the universal language of sympathy and faith, 
 which was the secret of his amazing con- 
 quests. 
 
 Even in these modern days there is some- 
 thing staggering in the bare record of his 
 phenomenal travels. Fever and peril, by land 
 and sea, had no terrors for him. From 
 Portugal to Mozambique and on to Goa ; 
 from Goa to Travancore ; from Travancore to 
 Ceylon ; from Ceylon to Malacca ; from 
 Malacca to Japan ; from Japan back again to 
 India, and through that last desperate fight 
 for a foothold in China ; we watch this fiery 
 and intrepid evangelist, whose powerful mind 
 was undaunted by the social, moral and 
 religious difficulties which the life of the 
 Orient presented. There are always some 
 people who argue that men of the first rank 
 in intellectual power are thrown away on 
 evangelistic missions, either to the depraved 
 of their own land, or to the habitations of 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 233 
 
 heathenism. As they watch the academic 
 career of a Henry Martyn till he fulfills the 
 highest ambition of a mathematical scholar 
 at Cambridge University, wins the University 
 prize for Latin composition, is appointed a 
 fellow of his college, and then dedicates his 
 talents to the mission field, they cry in 
 protest, "To what purpose is this waste?" 
 But they do not tell us by what means, or in 
 what career, those brilliant parts of Henry 
 Martyn might better have been unified and 
 concentrated and employed, for the welfare 
 of humanity. 
 
 Think of him as Sir James Stephen 
 describes him in his Cambridge days, and 
 before his life decision had been taken. The 
 passage is a famous one : " a man born to 
 love with ardour and to hate with vehemence ; 
 amorous, irascible, ambitious and vain ; with- 
 out one torpid nerve about him ; aiming at 
 universal excellence in science, in literature, 
 in conversation, in horsemanship and even in 
 dress ; not without some gay fancies, but more 
 prone to austere and melancholy thoughts ; 
 patient of the most toilsome inquiries, though 
 
234 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 not wooing philosophy for her own sake ; 
 animated by the poetical temperament, though 
 unvisited by any poetical inspiration ; eager 
 for enterprise, though thinking meanly of 
 the reward to which the adventurous aspire ; 
 uniting in himself, though as yet unable to 
 concentrate and to harmonize them, many 
 keen desires, many high powers, and much 
 constitutional dejection — the chaotic materials 
 of a great character." Chaotic materials in- 
 deed 1 How the vision came to Henry 
 Martyn, in the light of which this chaos was 
 resolved into order and harmony, and how 
 henceforth he saw his way, and could say 
 with the apostle, " This one thing I do," is the 
 story of his conversion, and his self-dedica- 
 tion to the work of an evangelist. To those 
 whose thoughts are engrossed with secular 
 ambitions, his was a lost life, and he himself 
 the mere victim of a fanaticism that laid waste 
 his powers. But to all who understand what 
 are the real honours to be won on this earth, 
 and the permanent foundations of fame, Henry 
 Martyn's disinterested devotion, and sacrifi- 
 cial labours, belong to those records which 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 235 
 
 make us proud of our humanity. The 
 beautiful tribute might be paid to him which 
 is engraved on the cenotaph of John Howard 
 the prison reformer, in St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 that " he followed an open but unfrequented 
 pathway to immortality." There were, doubt- 
 less, many easier and pleasanter pathways 
 open to him ; but his feet followed where his 
 heart and his reason led the way. He had 
 reached what, I often think, is the most pro- 
 found conviction possible to us, and one which 
 can only be entertained by an intellect that is 
 powerful enough to penetrate to that reality 
 which lies beneath the outward shows of 
 things — the conviction expressed in a passage 
 in his journal written about the natives on his 
 first landing in India, " I feel that they are my 
 brethren in the flesh, precisely on a level 
 with myself." You may put that saying of 
 his side by side with David Livingstone's 
 confession that, after living among and for 
 the native Africans, he forgot that they were 
 black and remembered only that they were 
 fellow-mortals. I repeat, that it does not re- 
 quire a powerful mind to perceive the external 
 
236 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 differences between one race and another, 
 but it does require an absolutely just and 
 strong reason to discern the fundamental 
 unity of humanity, and to live in the con- 
 sciousness of that, rather than of any outward 
 distinctions, whether of colour, class or creed. 
 This, indeed, I should be disposed to regard 
 as the most indispensable endowment of the 
 evangelist. The converted prize-fighter, in 
 John Masefield's vivid poem, cries out : 
 
 " I thought that Christ had given me birth 
 To brother all the sons of earth," 
 
 And surely we may with confidence contend, 
 that this is the purpose and effect of the new 
 birth. The new spirit that is created thereby 
 is one of brotherhood to all the sons of earth 
 without distinction. This is not the language 
 of sentimentalism. It is, once again, a 
 " glory of the lighted mind." It is the fruit 
 of the spirit of justice and equity new-born 
 within the God-surrendered soul. If I were 
 alone in the opinion I should still maintain 
 that the supreme proof of Henry Marty n's 
 intellectual greatness is not to be found in his 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 237 
 
 New Testament translated into Hindustani, 
 or the Book of Psalms translated into Persian, 
 but rather in the absolute fraternity of spirit 
 which inspired his labours among the beggars 
 of Cawnpore, and the unshaken constancy of 
 purpose which held him faithful through his 
 final painful wanderings, until fever-wasted 
 and shattered by disease, he sank, at the age 
 of thirty-two, into his lonely grave at Tokat. 
 Such was the passion of evangelism which 
 exalted and mastered Henry Martyn, so that 
 the young brow of a famous Cambridge 
 scholar wears, to-day, the aureole of a modern 
 saint ; and so that Lord Macaulay was moved 
 to write the well-known lines of him : 
 
 " In manhood's early bloom 
 The Christian hero found a pagan tomb ; 
 Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son, 
 Points to the glorious trophies which he won. 
 Eternal trophies, not with slaughter red, 
 Not stained with tears by hopeless captives shed ; 
 But trophies of the Cross." 
 
 But surely we may say that outside the 
 apostolic era, the greatest evangelistic move- 
 
 I 
 
238 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ment was the one that changed the face of 
 England, and gave birth to the new era of 
 missionary expansion and adventure. The 
 breath that filled the sails of the good ship 
 Duff- — the first distinctively missionary ship 
 that ever sailed the ocean — was in reality 
 that mystic rushing mighty wind which 
 swept over the lifeless soul of England at the 
 great Pentecostal season of the evangelical 
 Revival. The new missionary enterprise was 
 the witness to the reality of this rebirth of 
 the Church. The satisfying proof that the 
 Lord was visiting His people was, that the 
 unknown heathen of Tahiti were seen to be 
 not only as needy, but as worthy of sacrificial 
 service, as their brethren in the neglected vil- 
 lages and city-slums of England. The re- 
 generate churches of Christ, in my own coun- 
 try, could not close their eyes to the vision of 
 a perishing humanity, but fervently believed 
 that Christ had, indeed, given them birth 
 
 " To brother all the sons of earth." 
 
 Yet if ever evangelism had plausible ex- 
 cuse to offer for concentration, and a narrow- 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 239 
 
 ing of the area of service, it was at that 
 memorable time. Something that sounded 
 perilously like common-sense took up its 
 parable, and pleaded that, until the work of 
 Christianization was complete at home, it 
 was mere waste of good money and valuable 
 lives to evangelize the far islands of the 
 Pacific. Could Henry Nott find no sphere 
 of work as a city missionary in the East end 
 of London, that he must hazard every- 
 thing for the Tahitian cannibals ? It was, at 
 bottom, the old heresy that would have 
 chained Paul to Jerusalem, and imprisoned 
 Christianity within the narrow limits of 
 Palestine. The old patriotism of Xh^ Jewish 
 prophet might have persisted, but the new 
 patriotism of the Christian prophet must as- 
 suredly have perished. What I have called 
 the epic of world-conquest, would have been 
 no more than a poor attenuated apology for 
 a great poem. The plain fact is, that Chris- 
 tianity cannot fly either a national or a racial 
 flag. It is world-empire or nothing. This 
 is its Romance. The Cross must claim its 
 sway over all continents, islands and oceans, 
 
240 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 or its glory is departed. That is why evan- 
 gelism is so essential in any true interpreta- 
 tion of our religion. It sounds the universal 
 note. It levels, in faith, all barriers. It has 
 a regenerate imagination. It is fired by the 
 patriotism of Humanity. The passion for 
 souls is its mainspring. Material space is as 
 nothing. The soil of England or America is 
 of no more consequence in the sight of the 
 Son of Man than the soil of Tahiti, Central 
 Africa or Labrador. Evangelism means the 
 love of man as man. That is why its results 
 are so mighty. That is why the most obsti- 
 nate prejudices melt away before it. That is 
 why, when churches grow cold and self- 
 centered, and lose the evangelistic spirit, 
 straightway those bigotries reappear, and the 
 cruel divisive walls that sever man from his 
 fellow-man are rebuilt. Evangelism, and 
 the spirit it represents, is the secret of the 
 unity of humanity. Within its breast lie the 
 spiritual forces that are to conquer the proud 
 and bitter antagonisms of great empires and 
 nations, safeguard the rights and liberties of 
 the weak, and create the just and equitable 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 24I 
 
 Spirit which is the best guarantee of world- 
 peace and world-progress. 
 
 I am still insistent that, for the noblest form 
 of evangelism, God wills the dedication of the 
 finest intellectual powers, because I am ar- 
 guing that the policy of evangelism is de- 
 manded and justified by the highest reason. 
 We all remember that the evangelical Re- 
 vival which saved England morally, spiri- 
 tually and politically was born at Oxford, 
 which has not only been as Matthew Arnold 
 said, " The home of lost causes and forsaken 
 beliefs," but the birthplace of many a refor- 
 mation to which mankind owes much. Wise 
 men are always watchful of those centres of 
 thought where the representatives of the 
 coming generation are facing the issues of 
 life. But I do not know that the wisest ob- 
 servers of that day indulged in any radiant 
 prophecies as to the future influence of the 
 much-ridiculed members of the Holy Club, 
 or spared more than a passing thought for 
 two ardent young men, John Wesley and 
 George Whitefield, who were associates in 
 the society stigmatized by that name. 
 
242 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 To be quite frank, John Wesley, as a youth, 
 was not a very lovable person ; and White- 
 field's perfervid and dramatic nature had 
 vent in extravagances calculated, rather to 
 alienate than to attract, the average Univer- 
 sity undergraduate. But all the same, 
 through the petty persecutions and even 
 violent controversies in which they were in- 
 volved, the honours of war were all with 
 those who could not be satisfied by the arid 
 and ambitionless faith, which did duty for 
 Christianity over well-nigh the whole area of 
 so-called Christian England. They knew 
 that if God was a fact, and Christ's Gospel a 
 reality, then the existing church in England 
 was a caricature and a farce. They felt, 
 moreover, that to be the ministers of Chris- 
 tianity meant to be in the grip of a resistless 
 Power, servants of an inerrant Will, whose 
 Sovereignty could not be satisfied with any- 
 thing less than the surrender of the whole 
 being. They faced the claims of Christ, 
 even as they appropriated His promises, 
 with unshrinking trust ; and the result was, 
 that when the time came, they were found to 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 243 
 
 be endowed with a vision of the Kingdom 
 such as had not been conferred by apostolic 
 hands on any of their clerical contemporaries. 
 The name and tradition of George White- 
 field are perhaps especially dear to me ; but 
 I should not be true to my own convictions 
 if I did not confess that John Wesley, as his 
 was the finer intellect, was the more powerful 
 evangelist so far as permanent results were 
 concerned. There are tests by which this 
 may be judged, apart altogether from the 
 obvious statistical ones. George Whitefield, 
 to the end of his life, never realized what 
 human slavery meant, nor saw any incon- 
 sistency in offering spiritual redemption to 
 those whose physical servitude he was un- 
 willing to end. Wesley's keener and stronger 
 mind searched the slave system to its foun- 
 dations, and unhesitatingly and passionately 
 condemned it. Yet Whitefield's tempera- 
 ment was far more naturally sympathetic 
 and tender than Wesley's. Where he fell 
 short was in intellectual power ; and that 
 shortcoming was responsible for the lack, of 
 real human statesmanship, which spelled fail- 
 
244 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ure to secure the full results of his unparal- 
 lelled labours. 
 
 I know all that can fairly be alleged 
 against John Wesley's strength on the in- 
 tellectual side, by reason of the vein of super- 
 stition from which he was by no means free, 
 and his lamentable misjudgment of the Amer- 
 ican case, at the time of the War of Independ- 
 ence. It is well to know that our heroes are 
 so vulnerable, as there is the less temptation 
 to dehumanize them by a doctrine of infalli- 
 bility. But one thing there is about John 
 Wesley which every careful student of his 
 career, and especially of his preaching career, 
 must observe — that he was never satisfied to 
 persevere in any course which he could not 
 justify to his own reason; and that again 
 land again he changed his views against all 
 his traditions and prejudices because he 
 could not defend an attitude of obscurantism 
 or conservatism. It is characteristic of him 
 that when he first meditated taking orders 
 in the Church of England, he was involved 
 in serious difficulties because of the Calvin- 
 ism of the articles, and the " excluding 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 245 
 
 clauses" of the Athanasian Creed. As 
 everybody knows, his objection to White- 
 field's programme of field-preaching sprang 
 out of his intimated stiff prejudice in favour 
 of the existing conventions that governed 
 public worship and the preaching of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 But he could not resist the argument of 
 the Sermon on the Mount ; and he saw that 
 apostolic practice was of far more importance 
 and authority than ecclesiastical conventions, 
 which could neither be defended by Scripture 
 nor by common-sense. Let us remember not 
 only his limitations, but all from which he 
 emancipated himself. Let us remember that 
 by temperament he was an aristocrat ; and 
 that his affinities were rather academic than 
 democratic. Remember his scholarly endow- 
 ments ; that he and his brother Charles were 
 accustomed to converse in Latin to the end 
 of their lifetime. Remember his passionate 
 and pathetic devotion to the church in which 
 he was ordained, and his concern to be her 
 faithful son, subject to all reasonable author- 
 ity. Then recall how, in spite of the past. 
 
246 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 and in spite of himself, he was taught by- 
 slow experience that for the work of Evangel- 
 ism he must sound the universal note. " I 
 am a priest of the Church Universal," he 
 claims ; and again utters the memorable 
 words, "The world is my parish." The fasci- 
 nation of John Wesley's life is in the gradual 
 achievement of full spiritual liberty, and 
 emancipation from the trammels of ecclesi- 
 astical convention, as his spirit is by degrees 
 illuminated in actual contact with his fellows, 
 and through a deep experience of the laws 
 and methods of salvation. 
 
 If that argument is not conceded, I should 
 have to make appeal to his sermons ; and I 
 should do it with all confidence. As evangel- 
 istic discourses they are most significant and 
 most surprising. The evidences of a mind 
 steeped in classical culture and keenly alive 
 to the thought of his time, abound on almost 
 every page. Every perusal of them leaves 
 me wondering, what it was in them, that 
 pierced the consciences of the most hard- 
 ened sinners to the quick. There is nothing 
 sensational in this evangelism. There is 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 247 
 
 plain dealing. There is much practical, sen- 
 sible and serious exhortation as to the sins 
 that corrupt men's lives and harden their 
 hearts. Of rhetorical fireworks there is not 
 a trace. We are less impressed by the vehe- 
 mence than by the calm strength of them. 
 Yet certain it is, that when this man preached, 
 the world knew that the hour of battle had 
 sounded. Those scenes of fury, which be- 
 long now to English history, and in which 
 Wesley's life was again and again in peril, 
 are the tribute to the power of his message. 
 If he had been arguing for a verdict before a 
 society of learned men, he could hardly have 
 reasoned more closely, or employed more 
 classical illustrations. From which fact surely 
 one lesson of supreme value may be drawn. 
 The evangelist, on whom all Hell is let loose, 
 has yet no need to let his mission down, or 
 condescend to base and unworthy methods 
 of attack or of appeal. Such means do not 
 really and permanently tell. Even as Wesley 
 was singularly fine and pure in controversy 
 when he was being assailed by a multitude 
 of scurrilous pens, and pelted with gutter- 
 
248 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 epithets, so, also, in the warfare which he 
 waged with error and evil in almost every 
 market-place in the land, he was content to 
 use the Gospel weapons of Truth and Love, 
 and as the smoke cleared from the battle-field 
 it was seen that he and his forces were in 
 possession of the best strategical positions. 
 
 I grant you that, often enough, in the face 
 of the granite indifference and apathy with 
 which the preacher is confronted, the temp- 
 tation to try the earthquake, the hurricane 
 and the explosion, and to mistrust the still 
 small voice, is very natural and very great. 
 But sensationalism does not win Wesley's 
 victories, nor ever can. At the long last, the 
 conquests of the Cross are seen to have been 
 won by the old-fashioned weapons of persua- 
 sion, patience, sacrifice, courage and over- 
 whelming sympathy, joined to that sagacity 
 or common-sense which in Wesley amounted 
 to genius, and that was the secret of the ex- 
 jtraordinary organization which, more than a 
 century after his death, holds together for 
 worship and service millions upon millions of 
 Christian people. 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 249 
 
 If I do not attempt any description of tfie 
 complementary but contrasted work of George 
 Whitefield, it is because the characteristics of 
 his famous oratory have been described by so 
 many writers. We may accept the almost 
 universal verdict that for dramatic and de- 
 clamatory power he had no rival in his own 
 age, and no superior in any age. Doubtless 
 it was true, as Mr. Lecky observes, that he 
 had a narrow range of ideas ; but it is also 
 true, as the same historian reminds us, that 
 his genius and disposition suited him to " the 
 position of a roving evangelist," that he was 
 "adapted for the boisterous vicissitudes of 
 the itinerant life," that he excelled in impas- 
 sioned religious appeals — which seem never 
 to have lost their force or their fresh- 
 ness though repeated hundreds of times 
 — that his preaching " combined almost the 
 highest perfection of acting with the most 
 burning fervour of conviction," that " his 
 gestures were faultless in their beauty and 
 propriety," that he had "a large command 
 of vivid, homely and picturesque English, 
 and an extraordinary measure of the tact 
 
250 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 which enables a practiced orator to adapt him- 
 self to the character and disposition of his 
 audience," and finally that he possessed " a 
 contagious fervour of enthusiasm which like 
 a resistless torrent bore down every obstacle." 
 All this is very true, if very trite. His art 
 was so perfect that he could invest " tawdry 
 and even ludicrous strokes " of rhetoric with 
 extraordinary power ; and it should be re- 
 membered that he set it before him, on his 
 own admission, to rouse the passions to the 
 highest point, especially the passions of love, 
 hope and fear. 
 
 All these characteristics belong to the 
 externals of his ministry, and it may well be 
 urged that without them his open-air 
 campaign must have failed in its effect. Let 
 us remember how Whitefield viewed the op- 
 portunity. To him, England was the theatre 
 of a great struggle, a fierce and terrible war, 
 which must be fought out with every perfec- 
 tion of armament by the Christian host if the 
 day was not to be lost, and the soul of a peo- 
 ple destroyed forever. He did not fit him- 
 self out with rhetoric and dramatic skill 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 25 1 
 
 merely to entertain the populace. " By all 
 means he must save men." If the arts of 
 oratory were necessary that he might storm 
 the consciences of the democracy, then in 
 what better cause could he practice them ? 
 We may choose to recall that men and 
 women of the finest taste and highest conse- 
 quence were avowedly his admirers ; that 
 Garrick, David Hume, Benjamin Franklin, 
 Lord Chesterfield and the Countess of Hunt- 
 ingdon came under the spell of his marvellous 
 eloquence ; but it is no more than justice to 
 remember, at the same time, that it was not for 
 these that he equipped himself with so much 
 labour, and pursued his methods with so much 
 courage. It was for the miners and the pud- 
 dlers and the weavers ; the masses of 
 neglected and ignorant artisans and field 
 labourers, to whom clergymen and ministers 
 had ceased to appeal, and for whom in all the 
 land there existed no passionate sympathy 
 until George Whitefield arose, and spoke to 
 them in a voice often choked with tears of 
 death in sin, and life in Christ. 
 
 It is Whitefield who so pointedly raises, for 
 
252 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 the Student of oratory and its permanent 
 effects, the problem of emotional preaching. 
 Mr. Lecky tells us that " no talent is natu- 
 rally more ephemeral than popular oratory." 
 He does not go on to tell us that no talent has 
 produced such mighty results. The man who 
 can kindle the multitude, recreate faith in a 
 worldly age, and inspire the ideals of a whole 
 people does more than all the authors, artists 
 and statesmen put together. We, in Eng- 
 land, know perfectly well how the moral power 
 was generated which in the early years of the 
 nineteenth century swept the slave-trade from 
 the Empire, cleansed the prisons, multiplied 
 the schools, revolutionized the constitution, 
 and established a large measure of relig- 
 ious equality. All these reforms, and many 
 others, were the product of the new relig- 
 ious life of the common people. White- 
 field may have believed, or thought that 
 he believed, that Christianity aims at gath- 
 ering out of a lost world an elect, fit but 
 few ; but it was his practice and example 
 rather than his dogma that prevailed, and 
 his practice was to make appeal not to the few 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 253 
 
 but to the masses, believing that the power 
 of Christ over them is beyond all calculation ; 
 and the results, if they discredited his Calvin- 
 ism, abundantly justified his evangelism. 
 
 There are three points of great practical 
 value which I ought to press home upon you 
 before I close. The first concerns the art of 
 popular preaching ; the second concerns the 
 place in evangelism of theological formulas ; 
 and the third concerns the " call " of the 
 masses. On each of these I should like to 
 say a very few words. 
 
 (i) Popular preaching has come to have 
 a bad name among us. We are tempted to 
 pride ourselves on preaching that is unpopu- 
 lar, and to assume that the best test of good 
 preaching is that it should empty churches 
 rather than fill them. The man who draws 
 and holds the crowd must, we presume, be 
 a superficial preacher, while the man who re- 
 duces his audience, like Gideon's army, to a 
 small and high-souled elect, is like a farmer 
 who has successfully operated a milk-sepa- 
 rator, and has retained only the pure and 
 rich cream. This operation on the part of a 
 
254 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 minister is by no means uncommon, and is 
 usually assumed to be due to profound think- 
 ing. I suggest that we have come to the 
 time when we may wisely reconsider this 
 problem. The common people heard our 
 Lord gladly, and it is difficult to pay compli- 
 ments to ourselves, if they do not care to hear 
 us at all. I submit to you that in our reac- 
 tion against a frothy emotionalism, we have 
 gone to the extreme of impoverishing our 
 preaching of the human touch, and by so do- 
 ing we have lost our power over the human 
 heart. 
 
 When I read our Lord's infinitely moving 
 lament over Jerusalem, or His impassioned 
 indignation against religious hyprocrisy, I 
 marvel that we can ever imagine Christian 
 preaching to be admirable that is not deeply 
 penetrated with emotion. I am told that 
 this sort of advice does violence to our mod- 
 ern temperament and attitude of mind. To- 
 day we are all for self-control. We think a 
 man is a fool to " let himself go." Enthu- 
 siasm is at a discount ; scepticism is in the 
 ascendant. I am told that love has given 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 255 
 
 place to the science of eugenics ; and that 
 in the well-regulated modern world, when 
 the Romanticist and the Poet have been 
 suppressed in the interest of pure science, 
 emotion and imagination will have no place. 
 If this be so, our Revelation is still to the wise, 
 foolishness ; but it does not follow we are to 
 surrender to any so-called scientific school. 
 At any rate, if my protest were the last word 
 ever to be said in a Lyman Beecher lecture 
 in favour of " human preaching " and the 
 cultivation of the art of popular oratory, I 
 would venture to say it. You have every 
 chord of the human heart to play on. Surely 
 the art of eliciting their music is worthy of 
 your study and cultivation. Men and 
 women, after all their history and education, 
 are still human beings, compounded of 
 laughter and tears, sunshine and shadow. 
 Humanity is still, as it has always been, 
 capable of the heights of heroism, and the 
 depths of shame. Not one of the elemental 
 human passions has been eradicated by all 
 our philosophies. No process of evolution 
 has carried us, or ever will, beyond their grip. 
 
256 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ILife and death are just as poignant expe- 
 riences as in the early days of our race ; and 
 /• if our refinements have done anything for us, 
 they have made us more sensitive and not 
 more stoical. We may, of course, ignore 
 ' these facts, and assume that those to whom 
 we preach are above all things engrossed with 
 metaphysics, and have an inward craving for 
 the critical probability that there were two 
 I Isaiahs. But if that is our attitude we have 
 r I much to learn. Nobody ought ever to go 
 [ into a pulpit who can think and talk about 
 1 sin and salvation, and the Cross of Christ, 
 I which is for all true men the symbol of hope 
 and service, without profound emotion and 
 passion. 
 
 I recognize that for the business of read- 
 ing moral essays, disquisitions on ethics, or 
 treatises on movements in theology, but litde 
 equipment in oratory is needed. Oratory in- 
 deed is unthinkable apart from the inspiration 
 of some great human theme. When the 
 preacher's soul is blessed with real vision, 
 and the hand of the Lord his God is upon 
 him, he will be conscious of profound unrest 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 257 
 
 until he can deliver his soul to those multi- 
 tudes in the valley of decision, to whom his 
 message represents the way of life and liberty. 
 Do not misunderstand me. The order of 
 preaching friars must always be a catholic 
 one ; and there is room in it for the man of 
 quiet, thoughtful spirit who delivers to a 
 devoted flock his meditations on the Gospel. 
 But I like that phrase of the apostle of 
 Patmos, descriptive of his own experience — 
 " He carried me away in the spirit." We 
 cannot always be in the same mood, nor if it 
 were possible would it be well. But surely 
 this is one of our noblest capacities — this of 
 being transported out of ourselves by the 
 vision of God, and of His will, " carried 
 away " by the rush of emotion, enthusiasm 
 and imagination to that lofty standpoint 
 where we greet the dawn of the Day of 
 Christ's Kingdom on earth ; and watch the 
 Holy City, New Jerusalem, descending out of 
 heaven from God. That is why I lay stress 
 to-day upon the highest possibilities of 
 preaching. We are always being told that 
 this is a materialistic age ; that modern in- 
 
258 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 dustrialism has no soul ; that as our machines 
 grow more human, the men who make them 
 grow more mechanical. It is true. And tor 
 that very reason we want Poetry back again, 
 and Art, and Music, and, above all, the 
 Prophet who is the supreme interpreter of the 
 spiritual. 
 
 When I look at the famous portraits of 
 Whitefield, and conceive him as he faces the 
 multitude under God's sky, with the heavens 
 for sounding-board, the hillsides for meet- 
 ing-house, and some rude boulder for pulpit ; 
 as his splendid energy expresses itself in the 
 fold and sweep of his robes, and his passion 
 for souls in his kindled countenance, his 
 flashing eye, and the tender solemn tones of 
 his voice, I feel as if this is the one thing to 
 pray for — that God will raise up a new race 
 of genuine orators of the evangel, who with- 
 out any unworthy artifices will shake men's 
 souls and thrill their hearts. 
 
 (2) In the second place I am bound very 
 briefly to express my belief that theological 
 formulas will matter comparatively little in the 
 new evangelism. My reason for saying this 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 259 
 
 is an historical one. The two men who to- 
 gether were responsible for the Evangelical 
 Revival were representatives of two con- 
 trasted schools of theology, which all the 
 praiseworthy efforts of their successors have 
 not been able wholly to reconcile. White- 
 field affirmed with immense conviction what 
 Wesley decried with equal strenuousness. 
 There never has been in the history of 
 theological controversy, a deluge of pam- 
 phlets so virulent, and so scurrilous as those 
 with which their partisans assailed one an- 
 other. You might easily have supposed 
 that these antagonistic schools of theologians 
 would have neutralized one another, or, at 
 least, minimized the general effect of their 
 mutual labours. But it was not so. And 
 the reason is, of course, that in the mercy of 
 God the blunders of our finite minds are not 
 permitted to prevent His Word from having 
 free course and being glorified. It is not 
 creeds that bring the breath of life back to 
 exhausted souls, but faith. 
 
 That is not to say of course that crude and 
 unworthy teaching about God or man may 
 
26o THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 not produce painful reaction of an intellectual 
 sort. This that I am saying is no plea for 
 slipshod and shallow thinking. But just as 
 the most profound and wise theology may 
 utterly fail to inspire the hearer to virtue and 
 to faith, apart from men of soul and fire to 
 believe it and to preach it ; so a theology 
 that is greatly inferior in intellectual strength 
 may nevertheless be more than compensated 
 for by a preacher whose heart God hath 
 touched. It is faith, faith, faith, that con- 
 quers the world. The life of God is the 
 strength of the saints ; and it is the same 
 divine life in Calvin and in Wesley, in St. 
 Francis of Assisi and John Knox, in Jonathan 
 Edwards and Henry Ward Beecher. In 
 man's fight for life as a spiritual being the 
 mystic breath of the Divine Spirit is more 
 than all our formulas. 
 
 (3) Lastly, evangelism recognizes the call 
 of the masses. Explorers tell us that there 
 is a resistless power in " the lure of the wild." 
 They tell us that after a taste of it they soon 
 weary of our tame conventional civilization ; 
 and prefer all the risks and hardships and 
 
THE PASSION OF EVANGELISM 26 1 
 
 perils of the wild to the monotony of our 
 unambitious and routine existence. There is 
 a very true parallel between the life of the 
 explorer and the life of the evangelist. The 
 true evangelist listens to the call of the wild 
 — that raw, untamed, passionate human na- 
 ture that is a yet unknown and uncultivated 
 soil but that has all the virgin possibilities of 
 limidess ferdlity. I do not think our Lord 
 had no feeling of reverence for the Temple and 
 the synagogue, and those who were in sin- 
 cere association with these, but I do think 
 His soul responded to the call of the wild, — 
 the churchless multitude, neglected, outcast, 
 uncultured, waiting only for the ploughshare 
 and the seed to become glorious with the 
 harvests of God. To-day we may well thank 
 God, as I most humbly do, for our churches. 
 They form the base of operations for every 
 good and great campaign. But the cam- 
 paign must not be restricted to their bound- 
 aries. The campaign is for the lands beyond 
 the frontiers. The Church is still the home- 
 land to all the soldiers. Its patriotism fires 
 us. The warmth and joy of its hearth glow 
 
262 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 in our hearts when we are out on the great 
 adventure. Perhaps we never learn to love 
 it until we come to know at first hand the 
 meaning of that unhallowed secularity where 
 its atmosphere does not extend. Let every 
 preacher resolve he will be churchman and 
 evangelist in one. The call of the Church, 
 and the call of the wild are both to be heard, 
 I think, in the soul of every true ambassador 
 of Christ. We may not love Jerusalem less ; 
 but the song of the pioneer must be ever in 
 our hearts and on our lips, " They shall build 
 the old wastes — the ancient wilds, — they 
 shall raise up the former desolations, they 
 shall repair the waste cities, — the civilizations 
 run to waste, — the desolations of many gene- 
 rations." 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF 
 MODERN PREACHING 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF MODERN 
 PREACHING 
 
 THE danger of lectures that deal 
 mainly with the past, is lest the final 
 impression should be left, that our 
 own time is in the nature of an anti-climax to 
 the illustrious generations we have been pass- 
 ing in review ; that the great gates lead- 
 ing into the spacious lands of opportunity- 
 are all closed, and that nothing remains to 
 us but some shabby and petty doors giving 
 upon meagre and uninteresting fields. Some 
 critics speak as if there would have been 
 no romantic or heroic chapters in Christian 
 history, but for the grim and forbidding fig- 
 ures of the bigot and the tyrant, with all 
 their sinister apparatus of torture and death. 
 Sermons have been preached in celebration 
 of the funeral of bigotry ; though bigotry 
 takes a deal of burying, and has singular 
 gifts of resurrection after its obsequies have 
 265 
 
266 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 been ostensibly performed. Nevertheless, the 
 arm of the persecuter has been so far short- 
 ened that we no longer see the blackened stake 
 in the market-place ; and the instruments 
 by which heretics were put to the question, 
 are regarded as the evil evidence of an in- 
 tolerance and an inhumanity that we have out- 
 grown. Now and then, even in those days, 
 our heroes and heroines suffer death at the 
 hands of those who know not what they do. 
 Still the graves of the self-exiled evangelists 
 of the Cross multiply in fever-haunted lands ; 
 and lonely saints make brotherhood with 
 lepers, or burn out for Christ among savages 
 on remote islands or in the dark African in- 
 terior. But apart altogether from the fasci- 
 nation of incidents such as these, which lend 
 themselves to picturesque descriptions, I am 
 determined to persuade you in this closing 
 lecture that the work of the preacher in 
 modern times remains as romantic and dra- 
 matic as ever. 
 
 The question is whether we believe in the 
 mission of the Christian prophet as Wagner, 
 let us say, believed in the mission of Music, 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 267 
 
 or G. F. Watts in the mission of Art. Of the 
 latter, as you may remember, a modern poet 
 wrote these fine lines by way of epitaph : 
 
 " He knew her destined mission, dared to hail 
 The place assigned her in the heavenly plan, 
 Reader of visions hid behind the veil ; 
 Elect interpreter of God to man." 
 
 That is no more than to say that George 
 Frederick Watts was an artist with the soul of 
 a prophet ; and that with his canvas for pulpit 
 he preached, and will preach as long as his 
 pictures last, sermons that prove him to be 
 verily an " elect interpreter of God to man." 
 In whatever medium he works, the man who 
 has the soul of the prophet will fulfill the 
 same mission. His will be the skill to read 
 the " visions hid behind the veil." He will 
 keep alive the faith and the knowledge that 
 there is a world of reality behind the veil. 
 Thus he will fulfill his destiny to deliver his 
 generation from the dark influences of a 
 materialistic science, and to restore Faith, 
 Hope and Love as the guiding and govern- 
 ing realities of life. Let me repeat what I 
 have said before — that if the preacher is 
 
268 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 doomed to disappear as rationalism and ma- 
 terialism triumph, then the poet, the artist and 
 the musician will disappear in like manner at 
 the same time and for the same reason. 
 
 But now let us ask ourselves, what it is 
 about our high calling that gives it a peren- 
 nial fascination and glory ? For the only thing 
 that can kill preaching is, that we should lose 
 the sense of its majesty and unique author- 
 ity. The first thing that I would say is, that 
 pi^eaching can never lose its place so long as 
 the mystery and wonder of the human spirit 
 remain. For we are dealing with that which 
 is the source of all the amazing interest of 
 life. Man is a creature mystically elect to 
 strange conflicts and adventures of mind and 
 soul. He stands alone in God's august crea- 
 tion, in that he knows the exaltation of spiri- 
 tual vision, and the humiliation of remorse for 
 sin. He has inexplicable beatitudes, and as 
 inexplicable sorrows. His mysterious history 
 is blood-stained and tragic ; but it is lighted 
 everywhere with almost incredible heroism. 
 Robert Louis Stevenson would persuade us 
 that personality is dual, and that every soul 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 269 
 
 among us is half angel and half devil. Cer- 
 tain it is that underneath purely worldly exteri- 
 ors, dwell unsuspected philanthropies and be- 
 nevolences. Sordid and callous speculators 
 whose ambition seems to be to rig markets, 
 or inflate and depress shares at will, have pure 
 affections and holy memories lying detached 
 from their daily business existence, like a 
 ring of lilies around some foul morass. Con- 
 versely, some men and women to whom the 
 world bows down in respect and esteem, 
 carry with them the memory of secret sins, 
 the consequences of which all their zeal can- 
 not overtake. 
 
 The homes of the poor are the dwelling- 
 places of romance. Not a tenement stair- 
 case that does not echo to the feet of Love 
 and Hope, and all the attendant train of 
 ministering angels ; while Jealousy, Envy and 
 Despair and their evil brood are to be met 
 there likewise. I venture to say it is the ex- 
 perience of all those who visit sympathetically 
 among the poor, that they rarely come across 
 any house where, in some corner or other, 
 they do not distinguish the footprints of the 
 
I270 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 Son of Man ; He makes the place of His 
 feet glorious. The more we know of life the 
 more we discover what compensations and 
 alleviations are due to the divine capacities of 
 the human spirit. The child of poverty sits 
 in some corner of the ill-furnished room. 
 She is reading the story of " Ivanhoe," and 
 following breathlessly the adventures of the 
 stainless Knight. For a while she is not in 
 that wretched home at all. For her the lists 
 are set, and the lances coiiiched, and the 
 horses caparisoned. To her knights bow, and 
 courtiers bend, and grand ladies smile. For- 
 gotten are hunger and hardship and the 
 dreary outlook. She too is " carried away in 
 the spirit." How our hearts would leap if 
 we could really read all that lies behind the 
 faces that confront us so enigmatically on 
 the Sunday. What of their faiths and their 
 
 j doubts ; their ambitions and dissatisfactions ; 
 
 i their yearnings and wistfulness — and all 
 covered with so impenetrable a mask that 
 except in rare cases of confidence their near- 
 est and dearest friends are not permitted to 
 penetrate beneath the surface to the intimacy 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 27 1 
 
 of their real life ? Yet suddenly, at any mo- 
 ment, that may happen which will break up 
 all reserve, and bring the strong man to you 
 groping blindly for light, pleading for help 
 and comfort like a little child. For the hour 
 Cometh to all when it is Jesus Christ or noth- 
 ing ; and all the dollars in America cannot 
 pay the passage-money across the inevitable 
 sea. 
 
 We preachers live always in the conscious 
 presence of the supreme mysteries. We deal 
 with men and women, many of whom are 
 afraid to face them. It is our business to 
 know what doubt and grief and death can 
 do ; it is our business to prove what, given 
 the Gospel, doubt and grief and death can- 
 not do. But I should delude you if I were 
 to suggest, that this sacred task is to any of 
 us at any time an easy one. The first inci- 
 dent in my own ministry that I vividly re- 
 member, was connected with a bright young 
 girl who on her twenty-first birthday was en- 
 joying a picnic-party on the Thames. Her 
 lover went to the side of the launch to get a 
 camp-stool for a friend, tripped and fell into 
 
272 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 the river and was drowned before her eyes. 
 In a moment Hfe's happiest pageantry turned 
 to darl<:est tragedy. Well do I remember 
 being asked to go and see this stricken one, 
 and I shall never forget pacing up and down 
 the street outside the house with the drawn 
 blinds, trying to muster up courage to go in. 
 Why had no one told me that the Christian 
 ministry was like this ? I can see now in the 
 dark room the white marble face as of one 
 changed to stone ; 1 can see her holding out 
 hands to me for faith, when I was bankrupt 
 of my own 1 
 
 It is easy to stand up in a pulpit, and to a 
 listening crowd preach the truth of Christian- 
 ity ; but the preacher has to say something 
 that will count for faith and comfort, when 
 souls are tortured by sorrow almost to the 
 last agony. Have you taken a walk in the 
 spring-time, and felt disposed to take your 
 shoes from of! your feet before the miracle of 
 a flowering thorn? What a little while ago 
 was a bunch of black stems, with forbidding 
 spikes and thorns, is now a glorious mass of 
 gay flov/ers, shedding fragrance all around. 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 273 
 
 What a Divine touch it is that can make the 
 thorn to flower, and express its inner Hie in 
 such rare grace and scene ! Have we a like 
 Divine secret to turn the thorns of life to 
 beauty and sweetness ? Let no man venture 
 into the ministry without that knowledge. 
 It is the veritable key that opens the dungeon 
 of Despair. 
 
 The men who interest and fascinate us 
 most are they who illustrate the wonder of 
 the human spirit, and teach us preachers 
 with what potentialities we have to deal. 
 Man's uniqueness in the universe lies in the 
 wrestlings that are not with flesh and blood, 
 the struggle for existence that is not physical 
 but spiritual, the conflicts with principalities 
 and powers that are invisible but real. Bun- 
 yan suffered much from external persecutions, 
 but no one who has read his autobiography 
 can possibly believe that his physical suffer- 
 ings in prison, were at all comparable to his 
 agony of mind and spirit, when doubts threat- 
 ened the faith that was the very breath of 
 life to him. Cromwell knew the pains and 
 hardships of the battle-field and the sorrows 
 
274 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 that scorn and hatred can inflict ; but his 
 greatest conflicts were in the spirit, and his 
 hardest fights were with himself and his own 
 passionate temper and disposition. Luther 
 tasted to the full the cup of tribulation and 
 anxiety ; but you must read his commentaries 
 to discover that the fiercest war he waged was 
 not with the Church of Rome, but with the 
 treachery of his own heart and will. 
 
 You will ask yourselves whether such men 
 as these are alone in their mysterious strife, or 
 whether it is in some degree appointed to us 
 all. What means this exercise of the mind 
 and soul in the problems of faith ? Have we 
 not problems enough of a more practical sort ? 
 Why is mankind thus tormented with spiritual 
 anxieties ? Why, indeed, if the sceptic philos- 
 ophy of to-day be true which reduces all faith 
 to illusion, and spiritual vision to the agita- 
 tion of certain nerve-centres ! By that in- 
 terpretation, the noblest chapters in biog- 
 raphy are the record of incredible folly and 
 stupendous tragedy. These agonies of the 
 higher life, that mark the progress of man 
 with drops of bloody sweat, that distinguish 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 275 
 
 all his pilgrimage through the valley of hu- 
 miliation and the shadow of death — what are 
 they but the proofs of the divinity of the hu- 
 man spirit, and its struggles in the grip of the 
 consciousness of its destiny, and of the sub- 
 lime imperative of faith ? 
 
 The second thing I would say to you is, 
 that amid all changes of thought and phrase 
 the wojider of conversio7i remains, to be the 
 supreme joy and glory of the preacher. A 
 congregation gathered in the name of Christ, 
 and prepared by prayer for that message 
 which is the supreme call to life, is to me a 
 momentous assembly. It is the arena where 
 God and Self fight out stupendous duels. It 
 furnishes an atmosphere in which anything 
 may happen. At any moment Saul may 
 come to his crisis and the new Paul be born. 
 For our Gospel is not the survival of the fit ; 
 but the revival of the unfit. And here in the 
 society of Christ, those divine forces are 
 leagued and focussed which decide the des- 
 tinies of individuals, and even of nations. 
 Within that congregation men are being 
 braced up for big renunciations, and sacri- 
 
2/6 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 ficial enterprises. The voice from the pul- 
 pit is the ally of the trembling and even 
 fainting soul, that is at the point of giv- 
 ing up the battle for virtue and righteous- 
 ness. Lame consciences struggle to their 
 feet again. Nerveless wills are stiffened and 
 strengthened. It is as if a wave of pure 
 ozone passed over the breathers of some ex- 
 hausted air. You feel the stir of hope. 
 Feeble and enervated spirits drink the elixir 
 of life, and are conscious of recovery of tone 
 and health. The tonic air from the hills of 
 God works its miracle of rejuvenation, and 
 faith is born again. 
 
 There are so many sorts of conversion. 
 It is conversion when the faithless soul be- 
 lieves ; and it is conversion when a little 
 faith becomes a larger faith. It is conver- 
 sion when bad men become good men ; and 
 it is conversion when good men become 
 better men. It is conversion when the hands 
 that hang down are lifted up ; and when the 
 lame and erring feet are turned back into the 
 way. It is conversion when the business 
 standards of the world are exchanged for 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 277 
 
 higher and more human standards ; and 
 when the decision to do the brave and 
 honourable thing forces itself within a 
 worldly mind. While the preacher is at 
 work, any one and all of these changes may 
 take place. If he believes in his business, 
 and in the cooperation of the Divine Spirit, 
 he expects great events to happen. No 
 service can ever fall to the dead level of the 
 commonplace. Every hour spent within that 
 atmosphere of faith, beneath the spell of 
 Christ's presence and personality, is charged 
 with mystic feeling. 
 
 My own personal belief is that we do not 
 realize, as we might, the possibility of sudden 
 conversions. When we read the story of 
 Henry Barrows, who was one of the founders 
 of modern Congregationalism, passing down 
 the Strand in a wild mood, and entering a 
 church to scoff, and remaining to pray, pass- 
 ing as Lord Bacon said " at one leap " from 
 a libertine youth to " preciseness of conduct," 
 we do not doubt the story, and all Barrows' 
 after life until the day of his martyrdom was 
 a witness to its reality. But who can ex- 
 
278 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 plain that magic " leap " of the spirit from 
 dissoluteness to uprightness, and from the 
 darkness of doubt to the light of faith ? Was 
 such an experience possible only in days of 
 intellectual renaissance, or moral revival? 
 Is it too much to hope that the assembly 
 of praying and believing souls, and the wit- 
 ness of God's ambassador, may still lay a 
 sacred spell upon the soul ? In the biography 
 of one, who even in our tolerant nineteenth 
 century suffered imprisonment in England 
 for conscience' sake, and wrote in his prison a 
 history of America, it is told how in his care- 
 less youth he was arrested by the preacher's 
 message ; and when, at the close of the 
 sermon, the congregation began to sing the 
 quaint old hymn 
 
 " If Jesus is yours, you have a true friend ; 
 His goodness endures the same to the end. 
 Though pleasures may tarry and comforts decline 
 He cannot miscarry, His aid is divine," 
 
 " such was the emotion I experienced," he 
 says, " that I cried out before them all — ' Jesus 
 is mine I ' " That experience was one on 
 which he never went back ; and the Pres- 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 279 
 
 ence he realized then and there lighted in 
 later days his prison cell. 
 
 But my question is whether we have lost 
 the capacity to force careless and worldly 
 hearers to review their life ? Possibly if your 
 children of body were suddenly to rise up 
 and make use of some such exclamation as 
 I have indicated, you would call in the family 
 physician, and ask him whether he thought 
 it was the liver or the nerves. The very pos- 
 sibility of those searching spiritual experiences 
 which shake life to its centre seems so re- 
 mote to most of us, that it can hardly be said 
 to come within our consciousness. Yet there 
 is not one of us who does not know that, 
 historically, these sudden illuminations have 
 often marked the birth-hour of new eras of 
 human progress. I have never thought that 
 John Wesley was a very likely subject for 
 abrupt mental or spiritual change ; for in 
 many ways he was compact of ecclesiastical 
 prejudices. Yet at that little Moravian room 
 in Aldersgate Street, when suddenly he be- 
 came conscious of that strange inward 
 warmth and light of which he wrote so 
 
28o THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 simply and nobly, Mr. Lecky tells us a 
 new chapter in English history was opened, 
 and, I may add, one of the most fruitful of all 
 chapters. 
 
 Those ministers, if such there be, who do 
 not believe in these swift crises in man's 
 intellectual and spiritual life, are those who 
 are still the victims of the false view of time, 
 and who have not yet realized with what 
 freight of significance these flying minutes 
 may be laden. This belongs to the romance 
 of our opportunity, that so much destiny may 
 be crowded into so brief an occasion. The 
 surgeon may make careful preparations, but 
 how deft and swift is the critical work when 
 the cataract has at last to be removed from 
 the eye. The miracle of spiritual sight-giv- 
 ing is swifter still. The flash of a thought — 
 who can measure the duration of it ? The 
 glow of a new-born affection — who can esti- 
 mate the length of time of its origin ? The 
 outreach of the soul in faith towards its 
 Saviour — by what principles can you judge 
 if it be swift or slow ? All that we know is 
 that God can do His most amazing work on 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 28 1 
 
 human souls with a rapidity that even to 
 think of dazzles us. We have ceased to re- 
 peat, and perhaps to believe, the old lines : 
 
 << Between the saddle and the ground 
 I mercy sought, and mercy found." 
 
 But no transition of thought will ever des- 
 troy the inherent truth and beauty of the 
 memorable sentence in Hawthorne's " Blithe- 
 dale Romance," describing the suicide of 
 Zenobia, *' the fleeting moment after Zenobia 
 sank into the dark pool — when her breath 
 was gone, and her soul at her lips — was as 
 long, in its capacity of God's infinite for- 
 giveness, as the lifetime of the world." 
 
 Again, and in the same connection, let me 
 remind you that the preacher is always living 
 through the romance of the spring-tide. The 
 spring-tide is the time of mystic changes ; 
 when unpromising and unattractive seeds 
 and bulbs are clothed upon with a miracu- 
 lous raiment of loveliness. It is the time 
 when myriads of unsuspected germs of life 
 
282 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 break forth into living green, and array them- 
 selves in gay and glistering garments. It is 
 the time when the soft compelling breath of 
 spring touches the withered and decaying 
 trunks of ancient trees, and the magic sap 
 travels up their gnarled and knotted frames 
 and crowns them once again with glory of 
 leaf and fruit. It is the time when the shep- 
 herd and the labourer find their pathways on 
 field and hillside brave with shining flowers. 
 It is the time when even the slum child's 
 seeds in a broken flower-pot on a rusty bal- 
 cony, where the rays of the sun are rare 
 visitors, answer to the secret call to life and 
 put forth bloorn and fragrance. All this, 
 God help us, we take for granted ; and our 
 modern souls are too full of the notion that 
 it is scientifically explicable to surrender to 
 the simple imperishable marvel and rapture 
 of it. But we preachers have yet to learn 
 that the greatest thing God ever does, is not 
 when He spins His worlds in space, or re- 
 generates the face of nature by the annual 
 miracle of spring, but when human hearts 
 cry out with unspeakable joy, " As for our 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 283 
 
 transgressions Thou shalt purge them away." 
 The Hand that can reach to the secret 
 springs of Hfe, and purify them, washing 
 the stain from the conscience, and cleansing 
 the imagination of its pollutions, is engaged 
 in performing the most amazing miracle in 
 time. In the true church it is always spring- 
 time. From January to December is one sea- 
 son of regeneration. Revival is often thought 
 of as spasmodic and occasional ; but that is 
 our fault. It is normal. The Resurrection 
 time is not at Easter alone. There is not a 
 moment of any day, in any year, when we 
 may not rise with Christ into newness of life, 
 and walk in His ways with transfigured 
 spirits. All this goes to make up the charm, 
 the fascination, the rapture, the romance of 
 the ministry. 
 
 The third point that I would emphasize is, 
 that we are manifestly on the eve of new 
 applications of Christ'' s teaching, which will 
 revive the interest of the people in Christianity 
 to a surprising degree. One of the most 
 remarkable features in the history of Chris- 
 tian progress during the past few years in 
 
284 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 my ov/n country, has been the creation of a 
 new organization of a very simple character 
 called " The Brotherhood Movement." It 
 has attracted to itself hundreds of thousands 
 of men ; and the secret of its attraction is 
 twofold. Firstly, it presents for their ac- 
 ceptance a very simple faith, and secondly 
 it brings them to close quarters with certain 
 giant social evils which we of the churches 
 have ignored too long. It may seem to 
 some of you incredible, but it is literally 
 true, that it came as a revelation to multi- 
 tudes of men that Christianity had anything 
 to say about poverty more than that all good 
 Christian people ought to be charitable to 
 the poor. Meanwhile, the poor themselves 
 were inscribing on their banners " Justice not 
 Charity," and when Christianity was care- 
 fully examined the surprising discovery was 
 made that Christ Jesus and His apostles had 
 much to say about Righteousness and 
 Justice, and comparatively little to say about 
 the duty of being charitable, save as it was 
 included in the larger ideal. 
 
 The young preachers of recent years have 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 285 
 
 explored the contents of the word " Right- 
 eousness," with the enthusiasm of pioneers 
 opening up rich and fertile lands for the in- 
 heritance of the future. Something has been 
 happening even within the academic borders 
 of our colleges. Men have been facing life 
 as it is, and bringing it to the light of Christ. 
 The social economist has invaded our quiet 
 sanctuaries of religious thought with his dis- 
 turbing facts and figures ; and our young 
 men have seen visions. The new compulsion 
 has driven them down to the over-crowded 
 areas where the disinherited of civilization 
 make shift to exist; and the result has 
 been that unique personal experience which 
 changes scientific statistics into human facts. 
 Is any one surprised that a new note can 
 be detected in our preaching? Does any 
 one marvel that young prophets are flinging 
 down their challenge to society ; and that 
 features of industrialism which have been 
 too long accepted as inevitable are to-day 
 the objects of a fiery arraignment by men 
 who are looking at them through eyes 
 which Christ has purged and enlightened ? 
 
286 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 We are beginning to believe things which 
 would have appalled our ancestors. We are 
 beginning to believe that poverty need not 
 exist ; and that the restrictions upon human 
 life and happiness, due to poverty, may be 
 abolished. We see in the near future an 
 almost indefinite elevation of the standard of 
 living ; and we throw the whole authority of 
 Christianity into the scales in favour of the 
 two great modern ideals, that work shall be 
 equitably remunerated, and that wealth shall 
 be equitably distributed. 
 
 After all it is not strange. Great causes 
 always create a race of prophets. The 
 watchword of the past century was Freedom. 
 What orators the passion for Freedom 
 created in this great land ! Aye, and what 
 martyrs for Freedom it made ! The watch- 
 word of our new century is Justice. It will 
 create as splendid an army of prophets ; and 
 it may very well be that before the victory is 
 won, men and women will have to buy the 
 new inheritance at a great price. But buy 
 it they will ; for the master passion in the 
 breasts of the noblest of our young men is 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 287 
 
 that the will of the Father shall be done " on 
 earth as it is in heaven." 
 
 You will let me emphasize here a thought 
 that, familiar as it is, must win an entrance 
 into all your minds if you really mean preach- 
 ing. Knowledge should be great wealth. 
 But even as Mr. Ruskin used to teach that 
 only such of our possessions as we well and 
 truly use are well for us, or wealth ; so it is 
 with our treasures of knowledge. They only 
 become mental wealth as they are efficiently 
 and unselfishly used. Even the mere knowl- 
 edge of Scripture may prove an arch deceiver. 
 To know the names and the dates of the 
 kings of Israel and Judah, is not necessarily 
 to be a religious man ; any more than to be 
 able to answer Dr. Watts' catechism with all 
 the proof texts, makes the youthful expert a 
 true theologian. Science to-day is always 
 with us, deluging us with statistics. Many 
 a man has sought a reputation for philan- 
 thropy on the strength of his ability to quote 
 columns of social facts. If your young stu- 
 dent of medical and surgical science can 
 label every bone in your anatomy, and dis- 
 
288 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 course learnedly on the function of every 
 vital nerve, vein or tissue ; if his knowledge 
 of the scientific facts of the human organism 
 is encyclopaedic, he may, nevertheless, be as 
 far removed from being a true prophet in his 
 own sphere, as some dull and heavy bookman 
 is from being a great teacher. But if your 
 student of medicine and surgery be inspired 
 by a noble passion for humanity ; if he is 
 ambitious to be able to keep the breadwinner 
 well for his work, to sustain the mother in 
 the hour of motherhood, to cherish child- 
 hood for the sake of its God-given possibili- 
 ties, then he is in the way of becoming a 
 very prophet of health, and a living exponent 
 of the great saying of Paul that love re- 
 joiceth in the truth. Just in the same way 
 the mere accumulated facts as to human life 
 may produce a scholar rather than a seer. 
 All the social statistics ever compiled in the 
 new sociological laboratories may only prove 
 an incubus upon the mind, and a darkening 
 of counsel. I have known parliaments, as 
 well as churches, as intimidated by statistics 
 as the ten craven-hearted spies were cowed 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 289 
 
 by the walled cities of Canaan and the stature 
 of the sons of the Anakim. There has come 
 the ringing cry of some one with the divine 
 genius of faith, " Let us go up against them, 
 for we are well able to overcome them," and 
 somehow the walls of Jericho have fallen, and 
 impossibilities have melted away like the 
 mists of morning. So we are beginning to 
 see, beneath the baptism of our new Pente- 
 cost, that our vast inexorable problems, com- 
 pounded of prejudices, vested interests, and 
 ancient wrongs are by no means as impreg- 
 nable as they look. But they constitute a 
 supreme appeal to faith, and to what I may 
 call Christian patriotism. 
 
 The preacher who is going forth unto the 
 battle-field to-day for the kingdom of God on 
 earth, will enter the fray to hearkening strains 
 of music. The Church of Christ to-day does 
 not despair of calling into existence a Chris- 
 tian civilization. It refuses to acquiesce in 
 the permanence of those social vices and so- 
 cial wrongs that have entrenched themselves 
 so deeply even under the visible authority of 
 the Cross. There is arising an army of young 
 
290 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 knights of Christ who have taken sacra- 
 mental vows, that none of their brethren shall 
 have to live in the future under conditions 
 that are fatal alike to physical health and to 
 even a moderate standard of chastity and 
 honour. They have vowed that the cruel 
 exigencies of a merciless competition shall 
 not always kill the truth and self-respect of 
 those who are taken in its toils. They are 
 resolved that the progress of humanity shall 
 be something better and nobler than an un- 
 relieved struggle for existence ; and men 
 something diviner than 
 
 " Dragons of the prime 
 That bare each other in their slime." 
 
 They are resolved — "highly resolved," as 
 Lincoln used to say — that the slum and the 
 i sweater shall vanish from the face of this 
 I earth which Christ's feet once trod, and His 
 I deathless love forever sanctifies. They are 
 \ resolved that men and women shall not al- 
 * ways be subjected to the legion of tempta- 
 I tions that centre in the gaming hell and the 
 I saloon. They are resolved that human con- 
 ditions of labour and life, in the factory and 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 291 
 
 on the land, shall be substituted for conditions 
 which made health and happiness almost im- 
 possible. In other words, they have caught 
 the glow of the idealism of the great Jewish 
 prophets who saw in vision the Messianic 
 age, and hailed it as the destined day of God. 
 I am not here to urge you to identify your- 
 selves with any particular school of economics 
 or politics. I am one of those who can 
 honestly claim, that I can count the political 
 sermons I have preached in twenty-five years 
 on the fingers of one hand. But that has 
 been because I have taken other and more 
 unconventional opportunities of dealing with 
 great national issues, as they have arisen in 
 my own country. But I hold that that man's 
 soul is dead, and he is thereby incapacitated 
 for the office of preacher, who is insensitive to 
 the great human movements that are advanc- 
 ing in every land, and that have for their ob- 
 ject the throwing wide open of the doors of op- 
 portunity to all citizens, so as to make possible 
 for every worker a decent competence, and 
 for every child the fullest measure of culture 
 of which it is capable. Possibly some of the 
 
292 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 things that I am venturing to say to you, are 
 leading me on to dangerous ground. If so, I 
 must take the risk. This is not a plea for 
 any special set of opinions ; but it is a plea 
 for wide and generous social sympathies, and 
 such clear and courageous outlook as gave 
 to the Hebrew prophets the religious leader- 
 ship of their generation. 
 
 My fourth point is, that over this world 
 of military camps, bristling frotttiers and 
 armoured fleets, there is being heard to-day 
 with new insistence the ever-romantic strains 
 of the angels^ song of Peace and Goodivill. 
 The Gospel has a twofold mission. It is ours 
 to break down the barriers between man and 
 God, and it is ours to break down the barriers 
 between man and man. Nobody can calcu- 
 late the effect on the life of this world, if 
 every minister of Christ were to know him- 
 self charged with full authority as an 
 ambassador of peace, and were to make it a 
 definite part of his mission to plead the cause 
 of brotherhood with all other peoples. No 
 governments could resist such concerted ap- 
 peal. The Church of Christ can, if she will. 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 293 
 
 make the Hague Tribunal the centre of the 
 world's hopes. In my honest judgment, un- 
 less the Church brings this era of mihtarism 
 to a close, and exorcises the demons of hated, 
 suspicion and aggression, there is no power 
 that can. And it is right in the line of the 
 missionary crusade. It is but obedience to 
 marching orders, after all. I want to appeal 
 to you to include this definitely in your 
 military accoutrement — this fighting faith in 
 a world subject to reason and justice because 
 Christ-ruled. I ask you to believe that no 
 ideal of organized Peace is too extravagant 
 or ambitious to stand within your horizon. 
 To-day, all the dreams of science, which were 
 discredited and derided for generations by 
 that much overrated quality called common- 
 sense, are coming true. The children of 
 faith and imagination have had revealed unto 
 them what was hidden from the sapient and 
 prudent. 
 
 " The Heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic 
 sails, 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with 
 costly bales," 
 
294 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Science's predictions are coming true ; 
 science's splendid faith is being justified. 
 Tfie impossible is happening before our eyes. 
 The sages are being confounded ; and, as al- 
 ways happens, the seers are triumphing, and 
 the visionaries and the idealists are seen to 
 be the supremely practical people. But we 
 are still short-sighted ; at odds with the man 
 who sees a stage further than we can. Mr. 
 Arnold Bennett's inventor is full of scorn for 
 the man who is the mere slave of yesterday 
 and who will not believe that a wooden ship 
 must give way to an iron ship, but he is 
 equally scornful of the heir of to-morrow who 
 perceives that ari iron ship must give way to 
 a steel ship. But the most urgent question 
 of our day is whether moral progress is going 
 to keep pace with material progress. 
 
 " If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars 
 in rising, 
 
 If we wrapt the globe intently with one hot electric 
 breath, 
 
 'Twere but power within our tether, no new spirit- 
 power comprising, 
 
 And in life we were not greater men nor bolder men 
 in death." 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 295 
 
 We hail the realized hopes and dreams of 
 science, but shall the higher science arrive 
 with her material miracles, and is there to 
 be nothing but defeat and despair for the 
 higher morality ? Shall Reason win the day 
 in every sphere except where her victories 
 would be most fruitful ? Shall we erase from 
 the canvas of the future the most glowing of 
 all visions — the day of Humanity 
 
 " When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the bat- 
 tle-flags are furled 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the 
 world." 
 
 Who will say that man shall ride upon the 
 wings of the wind, and talk across the empty 
 spaces of ocean from ship to ship and from 
 shore to shore, and yet shall not conquer the 
 selfishness, mistrust and hatred in his own 
 heart ? Who will say that he shall vanquish 
 every physical disease, only to be conquered 
 by the venom of malice, envy and suspicion 
 that poisons the veins of his own soul ? No, 
 if you do your duty, the progress in the 
 world's idealism shall keep pace with her 
 advance in material prosperity ; and the ^ 
 
296 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 Church's early ideal of internationalism shall 
 be realized, with its glorious consequences in 
 the deliverance of the weary nations from the 
 burdens beneath which they groan ; and the 
 emancipation of the human spirit everywhere, 
 from those dark shadows of mistrust and fear 
 which have been the perpetual nightmare of 
 the past. 
 
 I have done. It remains only for me to 
 congratulate you on your birthright. You 
 are born to an inheritance in a great and 
 splendid age. All the Christian centuries 
 offer you their hoarded wealth. For you 
 every prophet has prophesied until now ; for 
 you the martyrs suffered, and the saints glori- 
 fied God in shining lives of holy love and 
 service. For you the poets have sung, and 
 at your feet every one of the world-thinkers 
 has laid the harvest of his brain. For the 
 last hundred years Science has been weaving 
 its wizard spells about this earth, and draw- 
 ing us all nearer and nearer together, so that 
 we may contribute what is best in our life to 
 the common stock of the world's wealth. 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 297 
 
 Into this magnificent heritage you have been 
 born ; and into the full possession of it you 
 are about to enter. My advice to you is, in 
 a word, "Belong to your century." "Hold 
 fast that which thou hast, that no man take 
 thy crown." To be alive here and now, with 
 the call of God in your souls, and the widen- 
 ing opportunities of to-day at your doors, is 
 indeed to have been crowned by Heaven. Let 
 no man discrown you. Do not live in the 
 past. Do not let the glamour of days and 
 events gone by seduce you from your loyalty 
 to the present hour. Whatever faults may 
 be chargeable to our century, it is the best 
 century for you and me. That is why I ap- 
 peal to you with all affection and solemnity. 
 " To-day, oh, that ye would hear His voice ! " 
 The voice of God in the life of to-day! 
 
 I have recalled to you, in the course of 
 these lectures, some of the memorable words 
 and deeds of those whose names are inscribed 
 in letters of gold on the roll of the Church's 
 leaders and prophets. It would have been a 
 great thing no doubt to have run with Tim- 
 othy on some errand for St. Paul. It would 
 
298 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 have been a great thing to have dared every- 
 thing for Christ when Nero was on the throne. 
 It would have been a great thing to have 
 confronted emperors with Athanasius, to have 
 died for freedom with Savonarola, to have 
 crossed the Atlantic with Brewster and Brad- 
 ford, to have waked the world to new spiri- 
 tual life with Whitefield and Wesley. But let 
 no man say that our age is inferior in oppor- 
 tunity to any that has gone before. The one 
 demand is the consecrated spirit, and the for- 
 ward mind. 
 
 It will belong to your ministry to conserve 
 for the men and women of to-day the eternal 
 truths in which our fathers lived, but to pre- 
 sent those truths as they have passed through 
 the living mind and been shined upon by the 
 broadening light, that is the precious gift of 
 God to our generation. I think perhaps this 
 ministry of yours can be best realized from 
 that description of the conversation between 
 the prophet Brand and his wife Agnes, that 
 we owe to the genius of Ibsen, 
 
 Brand says : 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 299 
 
 " Oftentimes ray light is low, 
 
 Dim my reason, dull my thought, 
 
 And there seems a kind of gladness 
 
 In immeasurable sadness. 
 
 In such hours as these I see 
 
 God, as at no other, near ; 
 
 Oh, so near, it seems to me 
 
 I could speak and He would hear. 
 
 Like a lost child then I long 
 
 To be folded to His heart. 
 
 And be gathered by His strong 
 
 Tender Father-arms to rest." 
 
 And Agnes says : 
 
 " Brand, oh see Him so alway ! 
 To thy supplication near — 
 God of love and not of fear." 
 
 But Brand replies : 
 
 " No, I may not bar His way, 
 Nor run counter to my call ; 
 I must see Him, vast, sublime 
 As the Heavens, — a pigmy Time, 
 Needs a giant God withal ! " 
 
 " Oh ! but thou mayst see Him near, 
 See Him as a Father dear. 
 Bow thy head upon His breast, 
 There, when thou art weary, rest. 
 Then, return, with face aglow 
 From His presence, fair and free. 
 Bear His glory down to me 
 Worn with battle-thrust and throe ! " 
 
300 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 It is given, I think, to tiie prophet of to- 
 day to combine a great sense of God's maj- 
 esty and might with an equal sense of His 
 nearness and fathomless love. The mighty 
 God is the Everlasting Father, and we must 
 preach the Gospel so. As Browning says : 
 
 " I who saw Power see now Love perfect too ! " 
 
 There is no more to be said. Let us have 
 courage. Our mission is to inspire men ; 
 and in Christ is inexhaustible inspiration ; 
 and revelation that is always new. In 
 Mr. Henry James' masterpiece "Roderick 
 Hudson," there is the clever successful artist 
 Gloriani, who has sold his soul to make 
 money, and grown cynical as to the trans- 
 action. He thinks the true inspiration of 
 genius is but a fickle thing, and few if any 
 can afford to pay the price. "My dear 
 fellow," he says to the real artist who is 
 suffering from temporary eclipse of faith, 
 " passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. 
 Some fine day every artist finds himself sit- 
 ting face to face with his lump of clay, with 
 his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank 
 
ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING 3OI 
 
 paper, waiting in vain for the revelation to 
 be made, for the Muse to descend. He must 
 learn to do without the Muse. When the 
 fickle jade forgets her way to your studio 
 don't waste any time in tearing your hair 
 and meditating suicide. Come round and 
 see me, and I will show you how to console 
 yourself." 
 
 Many has been the minister who has 
 thought and felt like that. He sees himself 
 sitting before a blank sheet of paper, waiting 
 in vain for the sermon that will not come. 
 He thinks that, if not now, yet a score of 
 years on, his inspiration may have " run to 
 seed." What is he to do ? Is he " to learn 
 to do without the Muse " ? Is he to " con- 
 sole himself " by some lower ideal and come 
 to regard himself as a hireling, and to look 
 upon his work as a profession and a liveli- 
 hood ? God forbid. We cannot do without 
 the spirit — without the inspiration. Without 
 that mystic light and power, our art is in- 
 deed barren and contemptible. But, re- 
 member, our inspiration includes all others. 
 Nature, Poetry, Art, Literature, Life — we 
 
302 THE ROMANCE OF PREACHING 
 
 have the freedom of all the schools. And 
 above and beyond all others, we have the 
 school of Christ. No minister shall ever be 
 bankrupt of a message who is living in that 
 Society. The jaded brain may sometimes 
 refuse its office. We may feel some Sunday 
 evening as if we had fired our last shot. 
 But there is still for the child of faith a cruse 
 of oil and a barrel of meal, that mystically do 
 not fail. 
 
 The miracle of our calling is that they who 
 wait upon the Lord renew their strength. 
 We may not always mount up on wings as 
 eagles, nor is it well we should. But by the 
 grace of God vouchsafed to us we can run 
 and not be weary ; we can walk — briskly, 
 one hopes ! — and not faint. In the splendid 
 certainty of inspiration which is the gift 
 of a God whose gifts are " without repent- 
 ance," may you accept your ministry at your 
 Master's hands ; and living in the dignity 
 and the glory of it, serve your generation, 
 by the will of God, before you fall asleep ! 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
NEW EDITIONS 
 
 FREDERICK LYNCH, D. D. 
 
 The New Opportunities of the Ministry 
 
 With Introduction by Hugh Black, M.A., D.D, 
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 The ringing, positive message which this book bears is 
 most opportune. It is written by a man who fully appreciates 
 the significance of_ the pastoral vocation and has the genius 
 to put his conception into trenchant, stirring phrases. That 
 the highest opportunities in life are to-day open to the pastor 
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 All the Year Round 
 
 An Outlook upon its Great Days. i2mo, clotli, 
 net $1.20. 
 
 Dr. Hillis' characteristics as a preacher are so well 
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 volume of "Sermons for Occasions" is distinguished by 
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 of style. Here the reader will find material for each great 
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 will give deeper meaning to the "days we celebrate." 
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 enforcing truth with dramatic, unusual, gripping narratives. 
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THE WORLD OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
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 The Renascence of Faith 
 
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 found contagious. ' — Living Age, 
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 The Faith of Coming Man 
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 versity: 'It is the finest apologetic for the modern mood of 
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 book in a masterly manner reveals the pathway of triumphant 
 faith.' " — Christian Advocate. 
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 The Science of Spiritual Life 
 
 An Application of Scientific Method in the Ex- 
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 ment in terms of modern psychology. 
 
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 What Does Christianity Mean? 
 
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 of lectures on the following subjects: 
 
 1. The Essence of the Christian Faith. 2. The Meanini; 
 of God. 3. The Basis of Character. 4. The principle of 
 Fellowship. 5. The Aim of Education. 6. The Goal of 
 Our Effort. 
 
Date Due 
 
 
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 NO 4 '53 
 
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