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The Ministry of the Word 
 
By G. CAMPBELL MORGAN 
 
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The James Sprunt Lectures delivered 
 Union Theological Seminary in VirgimM 
 
 ^tP 2 197; 
 
 The Ministry of the 
 Word 
 
 G. CAMPBELL'' MORGAN, D.D. 
 
 New York Chicaoo 
 
 Fleming H, Revell Company 
 
 JLONPPi; AND Edinbuhoh 
 
Copyright, 19 19, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago : 1 7 North Wabash Ave. 
 London : 2 1 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street 
 
Dedicated reverently and gladly to 
 THE WORD OF GOD 
 
 MY LORD AND SAVIOUR 
 
 Whose Gift of Grace has been my only equip- 
 ment FOR THE Ministry of the Word; and 
 Whose tender and long-suffering love and 
 
 PATIENCE have BORNE WITH, AND OVERRULED, ALL 
 MY DERELICTIONS IN THE EXERCISE THEREOF. If, 
 IN THE FURTHER EXERCISE OF THAT ASTONISHING, 
 
 AMAZING Grace, He will use this EXPObiTioN 
 
 TO HELP MY YOUNGER BRETHREN IN THE SACRED 
 OFFICE, THEN WILL MY HEART BE GLAD. 
 
 Oft when the Word is on me to deliver, 
 
 Lifts the illusion and the truth lies bare, 
 Desert or throng, the city or the river, 
 
 Melts in a lucid Paradise of air, — 
 Only like souls I see the folk thereunder. 
 
 Bound who should conquer, slaves who 
 should be kings, — 
 Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, 
 
 Sadly contented in a show of things ; — 
 Then with a rush the intolerable craving 
 
 Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call, — 
 Oh to save these ! to perish for their saving, 
 
 Die for their life, be offered for them all ! 
 
Contents 
 
 Prologue 9 
 
 The title, " The Ministry of the Word." 
 The Setting of the Phrase. 
 
 I 
 
 The Fundamental Conceptions 
 
 A. The Ministry 19 
 
 B. The Word 34 
 
 II 
 
 The Primitive Ideal 
 
 A. The Word as the Truth of the Apostle 53 
 
 B. The Word as the Burden of the Prophet 72 
 
 C. The Word as the Gospel of the Evan- 
 
 gelist ....... 92 
 
 D. The Word as the Wisdom of the Pastor 
 
 AND Teacher 112 
 
 III 
 
 The Modern Application 
 
 A. The Changed Conditions . 
 
 B. The Unchanged Obligation . 
 
 C. The Preparation of the Ministry 
 
 D. The Exercise of the Vocation 
 
 Epilogue . 
 
 The First Responsibility. 
 " Prayer." 
 
 156 
 176 
 198 
 
 215 
 
Prologue 
 
 THE phrase which constitutes the gen- 
 eral title of these Lectures has been 
 deliberately selected, as giving a Bib- 
 lical indication of the theme I propose to discuss. 
 It occurs in a very familiar passage in the Book 
 of the Acts of the Apostles. An appreciation of 
 the historic background of that passage, and an 
 understanding of the particular story contained 
 therein, will help us to find our true atmosphere, 
 and so start us on the right lines of our con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The historic background is that of the initia- 
 tion of the new Age of the Spirit. It has all 
 the freshness and fascination of dawn. It is 
 certainly true that no pages of the Biblical liter- 
 ature are more perennially interesting. We 
 have all read them again and again from child- 
 hood, and yet whenever we come back to them, 
 they make the same arresting and inspiring 
 appeal to mind and heart and will. We seem, 
 as we read, to feel the breath of the winds of 
 God, and to burn with the enthusiasm, which 
 
 9 
 
lo "THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD" 
 
 created the wonder of the men of Jerusalem, 
 as they observed its flaming forth, in the band 
 of Christian disciples. By the baptism of the 
 Holy Spirit these men and women, who had 
 hitherto been devoted followers of Jesus of Naz- 
 areth, were brought into mystic but mighty re- 
 lationship with Him as the victorious and as- 
 cended Lord; and were thus perfectly equipped 
 for witness bearing. Through this witness, the 
 number of believers was rapidly increased. Day 
 by day there were added to the Lord, and so to 
 the glad company, those who received the Holy 
 Spirit. These realized their communion with 
 each other, through their common fellowship 
 with their Lord. 
 
 The Day which had thus dawned was a Day 
 of remarkable power, of which there were 
 abundant signs. The healing of the man at the 
 Beautiful Gate of the Temple, as the members 
 of the Jewish council admitted, was a '' notable 
 miracle "; and so impressed with this fact were 
 the members of that council, that much as they 
 desired to put an end to the Christian propa- 
 ganda, they dared not, then, take any further 
 steps against the Apostles; but after threaten- 
 ing them, they permitted them to go back to 
 their own company. 
 
»'tHE MINISTRY OF THE WORD'* it 
 
 The Day, moreover, was one of a strange and 
 awe-inspiring purity. Within the new fellow- 
 ship hypocrisy and untruth could not exist, as 
 the swift judgment which fell upon Ananias and 
 Sapphira proved. The effect of this was felt 
 within the Church and beyond it; so that, to use 
 the suggestive phrase of the historian,, no man 
 durst join himself to them. New members were 
 added by the Lord, and by Him alone. 
 
 As the movement grew, hostility became 
 more daring. The Apostles were next impris- 
 oned, but they were supernaturally liberated, 
 and fear fell afresh upon their enemies. Still 
 resisting the power of the Spirit, the rulers beat 
 the Apostles, and then were confronted by the 
 astonishing spectacle of men who rejoiced " that 
 they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour 
 for the Name." Such were these wonderful 
 days. Within the fellowship, " the Twelve " 
 were exercising a ministry of teaching and guid- 
 ance on behalf of the whole multitude of those 
 who, believing, were being added to the Lord. 
 
 The paragraph in which the phrase occurs 
 opens with the words, "In these days"; and 
 reveals their special characteristics in the state- 
 ment, " the number of the disciples was multi- 
 plying." It then records the incident of the 
 
12 "THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD" 
 
 difficulty which arose in the distribution of the 
 common funds. This difficulty resulted from 
 the persistence of an old trouble within the 
 Christian atmosphere, that of the mutual sus- 
 picion and unfriendliness of the Hellenists and 
 the Hebrews. The former complained, in all 
 probability not without reason, that the He- 
 brews within the community neglected the Hel- 
 lenist widows. The dispute itself has no inter- 
 est for us now, but the way in which it was 
 dealt with leads us to our theme, and throws 
 considerable initial light thereupon. 
 
 When the murmuring occurred, the Apostles 
 " called the multitude of the disciples " to- 
 gether. In other words, the difficulty was dealt 
 with by the whole Church in solemn assembly, 
 under the guidance of the Apostles. There was 
 no panic, no dissension. The matter was speed- 
 ily and smoothly adjusted. In the midst of His 
 people was the Lord Himself, according to His 
 covenant; and He, by the Holy Spirit, made 
 known His will. The action thus taken was a 
 very remarkable one in many ways, but they are 
 not immediately relevant to our theme. One 
 matter, however, is of importance. 
 
 This was made the occasion for a necessary 
 and vital division of responsibility in the interest 
 
"THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD" 13 
 
 of the life and service of the Church. From 
 henceforth there were to be within her borders 
 two orders in the one ministry ; the one having 
 to do with the serving of tables, and the other 
 with the service of the Word. It is in this con- 
 nection that our phrase occurs. Having charged 
 the Church to elect " men of good report full 
 of the Spirit and of wisdom," for the business 
 of serving tables, the Apostles said; "We will 
 continue steadfastly in prayer, and in the min- 
 istry of the Word J' 
 
 That phrase is one of abiding importance in 
 its revelation of the true nature and method 
 of one aspect of Christian Ministry; that aspect 
 which demands the devotion of the whole time 
 and energy of those called upon to exercise it, 
 and which cannot be perfectly exercised by 
 those whose time and energy are taken up with 
 other matters, however right and proper such 
 matters may be in themselves. Within the 
 phrase itself are contained words which suggest 
 the fundamental conceptions. To these we shall 
 give careful attention before proceeding to deal 
 with the primitive ideal, or attempting to make 
 any modern application. In proportion as we 
 accurately apprehend the significance of the 
 terms "the Ministry" and "the Word," we 
 
14 "THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD" 
 
 shall be prepared for a consideration of the 
 whole subject of " the Ministry of the Word," 
 and the privilege and responsibility of those 
 called thereto. 
 
 Thus it will be realized that in these lectures 
 I am desirous of considering the subject of the 
 Christian Ministry solely from the standpoint 
 of New Testament ideals. It is, however, in- 
 evitable that there should enter into the con- 
 sideration the element of personal experience 
 and colouring. In the work of preparation I 
 have attempted to avoid that, so far as possible. 
 Necessarily it could not be wholly absent from 
 my own thinking, nor therefore will it be absent 
 from the minds of my hearers. My apology 
 then for the measure in which these personal 
 elements obtain in my outlook must be that of 
 the experience which has created them, and I 
 may be pardoned for referring to them in a few 
 sentences. 
 
 My father was a Bible preacher and teacher 
 of no mean order. He was a man of one book, 
 in a sense in which his son never has been. He 
 lived to the four score years, and during that 
 period never read a work of fiction. He had no 
 knowledge of general literature. He did know 
 his Bible. Under his influence and guidance I 
 
"THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD" 15 
 
 began to preach, delivering my first public ad- 
 dress when a boy of thirteen years of age. 
 From then until now, a period of over forty 
 years, I have continued to preach, except for 
 two years, when, through partial eclipse of faith, 
 I had to face the spectres of the mind. 
 
 During the earlier part of the time I was 
 being trained for the work of teaching, and 
 doing that work. Throughout that time I was 
 preaching on Sundays, and conducting evangel- 
 istic missions during holidays. 
 
 In the year 1886 I gave up my work as a 
 teacher, and devoted myself wholly to evangel- 
 istic work. During the later period, that is for 
 the past three and thirty years, I have continued 
 to preach. My work has never been Apostolic, 
 as I understand that phase of ministry, and 
 as I shall presently attempt to explain it. It 
 has been upon occasion Prophetic, constantly 
 Evangelistic, and principally Pastoral and 
 Teaching. 
 
 These then are the facts concerning the expe- 
 riences which must aflfect my thinking. I have 
 mentioned them now to dismiss them, having 
 recognized them. I trust they will be as little 
 obvious as possible, and that our consideration 
 may be wholly conditioned within Biblical light. 
 
I 
 
 The Fundamental Conceptions 
 
THE MINISTRY 
 
 WITHIN the phrase the " Ministry of 
 the Word," there is included the 
 whole conception of the work of 
 preaching as distinguished from that of serv- 
 ing tables. It should at once be recognized 
 that this is a distinction which must be made in 
 practice as well as in theory; but it is equally 
 important that the distinction should be made 
 intelligently, that is with scriptural warrant, 
 rather than on the basis of prejudice or custom. 
 It must be made in the interest of the work of 
 preaching, not in that of the preachers. To say 
 that, is simply to interpret at once the meaning 
 of the Twelve when they took the action which 
 set them apart from their brethren. They were 
 not actuated by any desire to create an order of 
 superiority for themselves, but wholly by a 
 passion for the complete success of the particu- 
 lar work to which they were appointed. The 
 
 19 
 
20 THE MINISTRY 
 
 work of serving tables is equally sacred. This 
 is evident from the apostolic description of the 
 character and qualifications of the men who 
 were to be appointed to that work. They were 
 to be men " of good report, full of the Spirit 
 and of wisdom." The two orders of the minis- 
 try were not intended to be conceived of as 
 higher and lower. They were equally impor- 
 tant and complementary. The work of each 
 was dependent for complete success upon that 
 of the other. Deacons might also be preachers, 
 as we soon discover in the case of Philip the 
 Evangelist. The probability is that in such a 
 case the work of the Diaconate was given up. 
 The story of Philip would lead us to that conclu- 
 sion. But even if so, it was not because the 
 work of serving tables was not most sacred, but 
 because no man could perfectly fulfil the work 
 of the service of the Word, while occupied in 
 the doing of the other. All this will be even 
 more clearly seen as we go forward with our 
 study. 
 
 Our first business must be that of attempting 
 to get these fundamental conceptions clearly 
 before us, for in proportion as we do so, we 
 shall be the better prepared for the fuller con- 
 siderations and applications which we propose. 
 
THE MINISTRY 21 
 
 The two conceptions are suggested by the 
 terms " The Ministry/' and " The Word." The 
 second of these reveals the central and supreme 
 matter; while the first indicates the method by 
 which the work is to be accomplished. We 
 shall devote a Lecture to each. The first, that 
 of the revelation of method suggested by the 
 term " The Ministry," is our subject now. 
 
 In order to an understanding of the funda- 
 mental conception suggested by the term The 
 Ministry, we will first examine the place which 
 the term occupies in our paragraph, and then 
 glance on to the development of the thought, as 
 it is found in one outstanding passage in the 
 apostolic writings. 
 
 Taking the Revised Version, we find three 
 words which we will note; in verse one, minis- 
 tration; in verse two, serve; and in verse four, 
 ministry. It will be granted at once that these 
 three words represent the same idea. In the 
 Greek New Testament this is even more appar- 
 ent, where the words respectively are diakbtiia^ 
 diakbnein, and diakbnia, the first and the last 
 being identical. The special word of our term 
 then is the word diakdmUy translated ministration 
 in verse one, and ministry in verse four. What 
 then, quite apart from any interpretation result- 
 
22 THE MINISTRY 
 
 ing from our habit and custom in the use of the 
 word, is the first and simplest idea that it sug- 
 gests? 
 
 Unquestionably the idea is that of the work 
 of a servant, the carrying out of responsibility 
 under command. The Greek word is derived 
 from the word diakonbs^ which simply means 
 an attendant, a waiter; which in turn comes 
 from an obsolete verb, diakb, to run on errands. 
 The simple thought then is that of service in the 
 most elemental sense, that of having work ap- 
 pointed, and that of doing that work under mas- 
 tery. Let us carefully observe that this idea is 
 never properly eliminated, nor changed in any 
 subsequent use of the word. That is the 
 thought in the first verse. The daily ministra- 
 tion was that of the actual giving out, from the 
 common fund, of the appointed portions to the 
 needy members of the community. Obviously 
 it is equally the thought of the word serve in the 
 second verse. When the Apostles declared 
 that it was not meet that they should serve 
 tables, they simply meant that the urgency of 
 the work to which they were specifically ap- 
 pointed was such, that neither their time nor 
 strength should be devoted to the actual details 
 of calculation and disbursement, which were 
 
THE MINISTRY 23 
 
 necessary in order to the maintenance of the 
 material aspects of the fellowship, 
 
 I have drawn special attention to these simple 
 and obvious facts, in order to leave upon the 
 mind most definitely the true impression of the 
 value of the word ministry, for it is of the ut- 
 most importance that this should never be lost 
 sight of. Whatever developments we may pres- 
 ently have to consider, this quality persists. 
 The idea of dignity, or of official importance, or 
 prerogative, is entirely absent from the word 
 itself. Of course there is a dignity in all service, 
 there are prerogatives which appertain to serv- 
 ice ; but these result from the nature of the work 
 to be done, and only exist in order that the 
 work may be done thoroughly. Ministry con- 
 notes subservience, submission; and implicates 
 necessarily, diligence and fidelity. This is 
 clearly emphasized in the Apostles' declaration 
 that in " the ministry of the Word " they would 
 continue stedfastly, the phrase being the transla- 
 tion of one word, which signifies an earnest de- 
 votion to the business in hand, a pushing for- 
 ward with strength in order to accomplishment. 
 
 This conception obtains in reference to both 
 lines of service recognized in the paragraph 
 under consideration, that of tables, and that of 
 
24 THE MINISTRY 
 
 the Word. In eadi case the objective is the 
 fellowship, the koinbnia ; that sacred unity of 
 Christ with His people, and their consequent 
 union with each other. This fellowship is far 
 more than an abstract idea. It is a living fact, 
 and is to find expression in spiritual develop- 
 ment and service, and in material well-being. 
 The tables are for the carrying out of the latter ; 
 the Word is for the realization of the former. 
 Hence the sacredness of the tables for the prac- 
 tice of fellowship. Hence the sacredness of the 
 Word for the practice of fellowship. Hence 
 also the sacredness of Ministry, whether of 
 tables or of the Word. 
 
 Thus we see that the fundamental conception 
 is that of diligent faithful devotion to an ap- 
 pointed work. Apart from that, there is neither 
 dignity nor privilege attached to the work of 
 Ministry. All this, I repeat, must never for a 
 moment be lost sight of in our consideration of 
 The Ministry of the Word, and much less in our 
 exercise thereof. 
 
 We may now proceed to consider a develop- 
 ment of the idea found in one outstanding pas- 
 sage in the apostolic writings. Before doing so 
 however, and even at the risk of being charged 
 with unnecessary repetition, let me insist upon 
 
THE MINISTRY 25 
 
 it, that development does not mean destruction 
 or change. It is rather the evolution of that 
 vi^hich is involved, the application of a persistent 
 principle to the supreme necessities of the work. 
 In the central idea of ministry with which we 
 have been dealing, there is no development, nor 
 can there be. Whatever the phase of ministry, 
 it always remains ministry, in the simplest and 
 therefore the final senses of the word. The de- 
 velopment is in the method by which service is 
 rendered, and in its application to certain as- 
 pects of the one work. 
 
 The passage in which this development is 
 most fully dealt with in the New Testament is 
 found in Paul's letter to the Ephesians (Eph. iv. 
 1-13). Let us first take a broad view of the 
 passage, and then observe its particular revela- 
 tion on this subject of ministry. 
 
 The passage opens the second part of the 
 letter, that in which the Apostle applied the 
 truths already enunciated, to the walk or be- 
 haviour of those to whom he was writing. The 
 keynote of the whole of this second section is 
 found in the words ; " I . . . beseech you to 
 walk worthily of the calling wherewith we were 
 called." In order to this, and as the first condi- 
 tion of doing so, he urged them *' to keep the 
 
26 THE MINISTRY 
 
 unity of the Spirit." This led him to write the 
 passage in which that unity is so graphically set 
 forth, and in the midst of which we find the idea 
 of Ministry so fully developed. 
 
 In verses four, five, and six, we have a vision 
 of the unity in itself. The organism is first de- 
 scribed; "One body, and one Spirit, even as 
 also ye were called in one hope of your calling." 
 That is an inclusive description of the Church. 
 It is one Body, Christ Himself being the Head, 
 and all who share His life being members. His 
 Body therefore has one life, that of the Spirit, 
 Who is in the Head, and in the members, and 
 thus unifies them in mind, and heart, and will, 
 and power. This organism has one function, 
 that of fulfilling the calling which the Apostle 
 had described in the earlier part of his letter. 
 
 Next in order, and in the briefest but most 
 pregnant phrases, we have an account of the 
 generation of that organism ; " One Lord, one 
 faith, one baptism." The one Lord is Christ, 
 as in the perfections of His Priesthood and 
 Kingship, He is presented in the Gospel to the 
 eye of men. The one faith is that of the repent- 
 ing submission, and complete confidence, by 
 which men yield themselves to Him as Saviour 
 and JUord. The one baptism is that of the Holy 
 
THE MINISTRY 27 
 
 Spirit, which is the Divine response to human 
 faith, and by which those who receive it are 
 included in the Body whose function is that of 
 the Divine caUing. 
 
 Finally, the ultimate and resulting relation is 
 described in the words; " One God and Father 
 of all. Who is over all, and through all, and in 
 all." The all refers in each case to the Head 
 and members of the Body, that is to Christ and 
 all believers; while the prepositions mark the 
 different phases of relationship; the of is in- 
 clusive, the over marks sovereignty, the through 
 signifies operation, and the in indicates com- 
 munion. 
 
 Following this vision of the unity, there is 
 a description of the growth of the organism, 
 which occupies verses seven to thirteen. For 
 the purposes of our present consideration we 
 need only note the main statement which is dis- 
 covered as we bring the seventh and thirteenth 
 verses together; " Unto each one of us was the 
 grace given according to the measure of the gift 
 of Christ . . . till we all attain unto the unity 
 of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of 
 God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure 
 of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 
 
 A careful examination of the passage will 
 
28 THE MINISTRY 
 
 show that this bringing together of these verses 
 is perfectly justified. All that lies between is of 
 the nature of exposition of the phrase " the gift 
 of Christ." The method of growth is that of 
 the development of the gift of grace given to 
 each member, in its relationship to the gifts of 
 grace bestowed on all the rest. As all these are 
 received and become operative, the whole Body 
 grows towards its completion, towards the 
 *' full-grown man," towards *' the measure of 
 the stature of the fulness of Christ." Neither 
 of these latter phrases applies to an individual 
 Christian, but to the complete and perfected 
 Church, which alone can realize '' the stature 
 of the fulness of Christ." 
 
 This brings us to the matter specially perti- 
 nent to our present consideration, that namely 
 of Ministry. It is dealt with in the verses eight 
 to twelve to which we have already referred as 
 being expository of the phrase in the seventh 
 verse, " the gift of Christ." 
 
 Having declared by quotation from the 
 Psalms, that when Christ " ascended on high 
 He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto 
 men"; and in a parenthesis having declared 
 that His ascension followed His descension, and 
 was an ascension to the place of supreme au- 
 
THE MINISTRY 29 
 
 thority, for the purpose of filling all things; — 
 the Apostle proceeded to speak of the gifts He 
 bestows, and to declare their purpose. Let us 
 first notice the purpose. It is stated in the 
 twelfth verse ; " For the perfecting of the saints 
 unto the work of ministering, unto the building 
 up of the Body of Christ." Thus the gifts be- 
 stowed were in order to perfect the saints, in 
 order that they — the saints — might fulfil the 
 work of ministering. In that is included both 
 the ministry of tables and of the Word, in so 
 far as these are necessary to the buildmg up of 
 the body of Christ; and necessarily also that 
 larger ministry which is the special vocation of 
 the Church both here and in the ages to 
 come. 
 
 It is of vital importance that we recognize 
 that the full ministry of the Church can only be 
 fulfilled by the whole Church, as that Church 
 consists in the unity of Christ with His mem- 
 bers. Nevertheless in order that the Church 
 may fulfil that ministry, there is a ministry 
 within her organic life, which is created by gifts 
 which the Head bestows by the Spirit, to quote 
 from another of Paul's letters, '' dividing to 
 each one severally even as He will." 
 
 These gifts are those of Apostles, Prophets, 
 
30 THE MINISTRY 
 
 Evangelists, and Pastors and Teachers. These 
 are all in the Ministry of the Word. 
 
 When we come to consider more fully the 
 primitive Ideal these will be dealt with more 
 particularly. For the present study a general 
 survey of the ground will be sufftcient. The 
 words themselves are suggestive, and may well 
 be examined quite simply. The word Apostle 
 is usually said to mean one who is sent. As a 
 matter of fact its first meaning is that of being 
 set apart. This we shall consider more particu- 
 larly later. The word, as it was commonly 
 used, referred to a delegate, an ambassador. 
 Luke tells us that our Lord definitely selected 
 the name for the Twelve, when He selected 
 them. The word Prophet means a fore-teller, 
 only we must bear in mind that the prefix fore 
 has the sense of " in front of," and refers to 
 place as well as time. The word Evangelist 
 simply means one who tells good news. The 
 final gift is indicated by the use of two words. 
 Shepherd and Teacher, thus signifying a double 
 function; the first in the realm of life, oversight, 
 and sustenance; the second in the realm of 
 knowledge, that of making known. 
 
 Such are the gifts, and they are all bestowed 
 by the Head of the Church according to the 
 
THE MINISTRY 31 
 
 good pleasure of His wisdom. The exercise of 
 these gifts may now be described with equal 
 brevity, and so the subject be reserved for 
 fuller treatment. 
 
 The Apostle deals with the whole body of 
 Truth. He has to state it, to systematize it, to 
 make it available to the saints, in order to their 
 guidance and sustenance. 
 
 The Prophet has to make the light of Truth 
 shine in front of men. He is a man of Light 
 and of Law. 
 
 The Evangelist has to apply the aspects of 
 Truth which inspire hope. He declares the 
 facts of the Evangel. He is a man of Life and 
 Love. 
 
 The Pastor and Teacher receives the obedi- 
 ent, shepherds and instructs them in all the 
 things of their life and service. 
 
 It is quite evident that these were separate 
 gifts, but those receiving them were all called 
 to Ministry, and once again the word must in 
 each case be interpreted by the values which we 
 discussed at the beginning. 
 
 A question arises as to whether these various 
 gifts are ever merged in the experience of one 
 man. We must not dogmatize, but personally 
 I think they rarely are. They are sometimes 
 
32 THE MINISTRY 
 
 changed in the course of a Hfe-work. The busi- 
 ness of every man is to define his gift, and then 
 to make full proof of his ministry in its use. 
 When this is done, the gifts are never in conflict, 
 but make up a perfect cooperation of service. 
 
 Thus then it is seen that the fundamental con- 
 ception of ministry v^ithin the Christian Church 
 is that of service rendered in obedience to au- 
 thority. This is equally true of the ministry of 
 the v^hole Church, the ministry of Tables, and 
 the ministry of the Word. Ministry is made 
 possible by the bestowment of gifts by the One 
 under Whose authority it is carried out. 
 
 Ministers then in every case, and so in that 
 of the preaching of the Word, are servants of 
 Christ. They owe to Him absolute and uncon- 
 ditioned allegiance. Therefore they are serv- 
 ants to none other, in the sense of submission 
 to authority. They become servants of all, in 
 the sense of doing their v^ork on behalf of 
 others. This is involved in the fact that they 
 are the servants of Christ, Who said of Himself; 
 " The Son of man came not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ran- 
 som for many." They take their orders only 
 from Him, but those orders are ever such as 
 compel them to serve the highest interests of 
 
THE MINISTRY 33 
 
 others, while emptying themselves in the sacred 
 work. 
 
 The conception of ministry then is full of 
 heavenly dignity, but it is ever the dignity of 
 self-emptying, and never that of self-aggrandize- 
 ment. The minister of Christ is careless as to 
 the opinion of all save his Lord, but he is full of 
 care for the welfare of all those loved of his 
 Lord. 
 
 In the secret place of his fellowship with his 
 Lord, he will ever submit himself with all lowli- 
 ness of mind, loyalty of heart, and submissive- 
 ness of will, in order that he may discover 
 exactly what he is to say, where he is to go, 
 and what he is to do. Then, as he passes out to 
 obey those behests of his Master, he will do so 
 without fear or faltering, in a consciousness of 
 complete authority, and in the very spirit and 
 behaviour of that gracious and unfathomable 
 love, which is the inspiration of the authority 
 under which he serves. 
 
B 
 
 THE WORD 
 
 WE now come to the consideration of 
 the second of the fundamental con- 
 ceptions as it is suggested by the 
 term " The Word." Here we are at once con- 
 scious of the necessity for the most careful atten- 
 tion. This term, '' The Word of God," is in com- 
 mon use to-day. Sometimes it is employed with 
 evident spiritual discernment; often I fear it 
 must be said with great carelessness; and for 
 the most part, even by devout souls, with scant 
 knowledge. We constantly hear the Bible 
 spoken of as the Word of God. Let me at once 
 say that I am not for a moment suggesting that 
 this is an improper designation, but I am sure 
 that the significance of the term is not under- 
 stood by many who thus employ it Ask them 
 in what sense the Bible is the Word of God, or 
 how it happens that it is the Word of God, or 
 what they mean when they call it the Word of 
 
 34 
 
THE WORD 35 
 
 God; and their answers, constantly devout in 
 intention, are, alas, often lamentably ignorant 
 in statement. We at once assume that our 
 phrase, " The Word," is a satisfactory abbrevia- 
 tion of this larger phrase, " The Word of God." 
 It undoubtedly v^^as so in the instance which we 
 have considered. When the Apostles declared 
 that they would give themselves to the ministry 
 of the Word, they referred to the Word of God. 
 What then, we inquire, is the Biblical interpre- 
 tation of the phrase? For answer to that in- 
 quiry we shall first glance at the general Biblical 
 use of the term, and then examine one out- 
 standing passage of interpretation. 
 
 In the Old Testament the term which is the 
 equivalent of Logos in the New, is Ddhdr. A 
 glance at a Hebrew Lexicon will show the per- 
 sistence of this term in the Scriptures of the 
 Hebrew people. The word means quite simply 
 a matter as spoken of; not the matter only, not 
 the speaking alone, but the truth as uttered. 
 We shall see presently how near akin is the 
 idea of the word to the simple meaning of the 
 Greek word Lxfgos. This word Ddbdr occurs 
 constantly in connection with the name of God, 
 and so we find the perpetually recurring for- 
 mula, " the Word of the Lord." The claim of the 
 
36 THE WORD 
 
 prophets to authority was persistently based on 
 the declaration, " the Word of the Lord came." 
 To these Hebrew thinkers that which they so 
 described was Wisdom. Their philosophies did 
 not begin by the asking of a question, but by 
 the affirmation of God, and of His essential Wis- 
 dom. The Word of the Lord to them was that 
 Wisdom, as He uttered it, or made it known. 
 
 When we turn to the New Testament we find 
 that every writer uses the term Ldgos in some 
 form. It was especially the term of three of 
 them, namely Luke, Paul, and John. It is at 
 least interesting to observe in passing that Luke 
 employed it seventy-four times, Paul fifty-six, 
 and John forty-three. That I recognize is a 
 very mechanical statement, but it has its value. 
 Their use shows that the intention of the word 
 is an almost exact equivalent of that of the 
 Hebrew Ddhdr; a matter, or truth, as uttered. 
 The outstanding passage of interpretation to 
 which I refer is of course that of the prologue to 
 the Gospel according to John, and to that we 
 shall return immediately. 
 
 Let us tarry for a few moments, at least, with 
 the term itself. In this connection it is inter- 
 esting to observe certain facts about the three 
 writers to whom we have referred. Luke was 
 
THE WORD 37 
 
 himself a Greek, and undoubtedly influenced by 
 the methods of Greek thought. Paul was a 
 Hebrew, but educated Hellenistically. John 
 was in my judgment evidently profoundly in- 
 fluenced, ere he wrote his Gospel by Philo. All 
 of them were perfectly familiar with the term as 
 then employed. 
 
 In the early Greek philosophies the term 
 Logds stood for the rational principle of the 
 universe, the word meaning an expression of 
 thought, and the thought so expressed; never 
 the one without the other. Philo definitely 
 used the term as referring to God's revelation of 
 Himself. The distinction between Philo and 
 John was that Philo never thought or spoke of 
 it as " made flesh." John used it in exactly the 
 same way as Philo, always including that deep- 
 est conception, that the Word was not only the 
 method of revelation, but also the matter re- 
 vealed; but his central declaration was that 
 " The Word was made flesh." In stating it, 
 however, he never detracted in any way from 
 the values of the eternal and spiritual concep- 
 tion. In other words, he did not qualify Christ 
 by Philo, but rather fulfilled Philo by Christ. 
 
 Now let us proceed to consider as far as we 
 are able, the full content of the phrase, " The 
 
38 THE WORD 
 
 Word," to the ministry of which these men gave 
 themselves. This we will do by glancing at 
 John's passage; and by a statement based upon 
 the BibUcal conceptions. 
 
 The scope of these Lectures does not neces- 
 sitate more than a glance at John's prologue. 
 A matter of supreme importance however is, 
 that the mind should be kept upon the per- 
 sistence of the thought of " the Word " through- 
 out that prologue. The thought ascends from 
 the abstract idea to that of personality. For 
 us, all the values are resident in the Person. 
 That Person is seen in different relationships, 
 but the identity does not change. He is vari- 
 ously " the Word," " the Only-begotten from 
 the Father," "Jesus Christ," " the only-begotten 
 Son "; but these descriptions apply to the same 
 supreme matter, or to the same Person. In 
 the course of the prologue, the Word is revealed 
 in cosmic relationships; in relation to God; in 
 relation to the whole creation ; in relation to the 
 processes of redemption; in relation to in- 
 dividual souls. But throughout, the Word is a 
 Person; and the Person is the Word. The 
 Person Who is the Word is seen in two princi- 
 pal relations, which may be described as eternal 
 and temporal. This may best be shown by 
 
THE WORD 39 
 
 bringing together verses one and fourteen, and 
 setting the three declarations of the one over 
 against the three of the other; 
 
 "In the beginning was the "The Word became flesh; 
 
 Word." 
 " The Word was with God." " Dwelt among us." 
 " The Word was God." " Full of grace and truth." 
 
 Thus the Word, according to John, is funda- 
 mental and eternal Grace and Truth, for ever 
 with God, and very God; but revealed in human 
 nature, and so resident among the sons of men 
 for their illumination and salvation. 
 
 This is the exhaustive statement of the ex- 
 haustless fact, to the service of which all those 
 are devoted who are in " the Ministry of the 
 Word." It is necessary however that we should 
 seek some more detailed explanation of the con- 
 ception, if we are to fulfil that ministry, and 
 therefore we shall attempt to make a statement, 
 which will carry us no farther; but may help us 
 to a working understanding of the most glori- 
 ous truth. 
 
 When we speak of the Word then, we employ 
 an inclusive term, which has a fourfold value. 
 I will state the four aspects, and then briefly 
 consider each in separation. 
 
40 THE WORD 
 
 The Word is Grace and Truth, essentially, 
 absolutely; and in their relation to all things. 
 
 The Word is that Expression of Grace and 
 Truth, which makes them comprehensible. 
 
 The Word is the Record of the Expression 
 of Grace and Truth; which Record is at once 
 the germ and norm of interpretation. 
 
 The Word is the Interpretation of the Record 
 of the Expression of Grace and Truth, as they, 
 through it, progressively unfold their meanings, 
 and urge their claims. 
 
 This brief summary will at once help us to 
 recognize the spacious glory of that, to the 
 service of which, we are called. As a summary 
 it is bare and cold, and that almost necessarily. 
 All the manifold colours of the infinite glory 
 of the Eternal God are merged in the phrase 
 The Word of God. Who then can hope to be 
 successful in definition? Nevertheless the 
 merging of those colours is Light, and Light 
 finally reveals all things except itself. In light, 
 I can look at everything except light. If any- 
 one doubts the accuracy of that statement, let 
 him look at the world in the light of the sun, 
 and then endeavour to look at the sun. The 
 only way of seeing it, is through a glass dark- 
 ened. Our summary is of the nature of that 
 
THE WORD 41 
 
 darkened glass. If it helps to a conception of 
 the glory of the Word of God, it will serve our 
 purpose. 
 
 The Word is Grace and Truth essentially. 
 This is the sense in which the expression is 
 used in the first sentences in the prologue of 
 John. " In the beginning was the Word, and 
 the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God." The reference is to the fact in its 
 entirety, to Grace and Truth in a unity which 
 is complete in itself. In that sense the Word 
 is the sum total of Wisdom. In its inclusive 
 potentiality it is all strength, that is the Truth 
 of it; and all beauty, that is the Grace of it. 
 That moreover is the full glory of the Father. 
 Of the Person, John said; "We beheld His 
 glory, glory as of an only-begotten from a 
 father, full of grace and truth." The reference 
 in the exposition which follows is to the rela- 
 tion of this eternal fact to phenomena. Phe- 
 nomena are things of sight, things that appear, 
 as Noumena are things of the mind. This was 
 the thought of the writer of the letter to the 
 Hebrews in the words : " What is seen hath 
 not been made out of things which do appear." 
 In other words, phenomena are the result and 
 demonstration, not of phenomena, but of 
 
42 THE WORD 
 
 noumena; not of things which do appear, but 
 of things not seen. " The ages " — which ap- 
 pear — " have been fashioned by the Word of 
 God " — which essentially is of the mind. The 
 Word of God therefore is the reason or meaning 
 of things. There is nothing unrelated thereto. 
 Everything is tested by it; and is known as 
 true or false, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, 
 wise or ignorant, by that abiding and unchange- 
 able standard. That is the ultimate definition 
 of the Word of God, and every other phase of 
 meaning is related to it, and so gathers force 
 and value from it. 
 
 In the second place, the Word of God is the 
 expression of Grace and Truth. That is the 
 sense in which the term is used in the second 
 great statement in the prologue of John; " The 
 Word became flesh . . . and dwelt among 
 us . . . full of grace and truth " ; and also 
 in the phrase employed by Luke in his prologue, 
 " eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word." 
 That is the sense of the declarations with which 
 the letter to the Hebrews opens, where the term 
 does not occur, but where the thought is pres- 
 ent, " God . . . hath . . . spoken unto 
 us in His Son." The idea is that of giving such 
 form to the eternal facts as will bring them 
 
THE WORD 43 
 
 within the compass of finite intelligence. In 
 God they are infinite, and so they can only be 
 known to God. If they are to be known to men 
 they must be expressed. According to Biblical 
 conceptions, this work of finding the form of 
 expression is always that of the Holy Spirit. 
 One of the most remarkable and illuminative 
 passages in the Bible on that subject is found 
 in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (ii. 10, 
 11) ; " Unto us God revealed them through the 
 Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, 
 the deep things of God. . . . The things of 
 God none knoweth save the Spirit of God." 
 Whenever then the Word is to be expressed, it 
 must be through the instrumentality of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 In the opening sentences of the letter to the 
 Hebrews, already referred to, the two methods 
 by which the Word has found expression 
 through this instrumentality of the Spirit are 
 declared. In the past, God spoke to the fathers 
 in the prophets, by divers portions and in divers 
 manners. That is a most inclusive reference. 
 Every aspect of truth made known, every gleam 
 of grace outshining, all portions of the essential 
 and eternal whole of the Word, came as God 
 spoke. This He did in many manners; some- 
 
44 THE WORD 
 
 times by direct and mystic communication with 
 the soul; sometimes by clear and unmistakable 
 interpretation of the events in the midst of 
 which men lived; sometimes by lifting the soul 
 into a realm of high exaltation, in which, ap- 
 parently out of its own consciousness, it uttered 
 songs of revealing and amazing beauty. By 
 these and many other methods, the Spirit gave 
 form and expression to the eternal Word as 
 men were able to bear it. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that this method 
 was not confined to the Hebrew people, al- 
 though in them it had its great centre and most 
 direct glory. There are many gleams of Grace 
 and Truth in pagan Hterature. We do not need 
 to turn to them however, for there is nothing in 
 them not to be found in the literature which, as 
 we shall presently ?ee, God created in a peculiar 
 way, not for the Hebrew people only, but for 
 humanity. 
 
 The second part of the opening passage of 
 the Hebrew letter tells of the central and final 
 method by which the Word is expressed; 
 " God . . . hath . . . spoken unto us in 
 His Son.'* That is but another way of ex- 
 pressing the fact which John expressed in the 
 words, " The Word was made flesh." By in- 
 
THE WORD 45 
 
 carnation, the Word found its inclusive and 
 perfect expression for man. In the Being of 
 Jesus, through His Person, through His speech, 
 and finally through the exodus He accom- 
 pHshed, — by the Cross, the resurrection, and 
 the ascension, — all of Grace and Truth which 
 man needs to know, or can know, found full and 
 final expression. 
 
 In relation to that, it is well at once to 
 say that the expression was far more wonderful 
 than man has yet discovered. His understand- 
 ing of it is gradual and progressive; and hence 
 arises the necessity for the other phases of the 
 Word to which we shall presently refer. Sufftce 
 it now for us to recognize the fact that the 
 Word of God incarnate includes all the divers 
 portions of the past; all the much more, which 
 we have already apprehended; and still very 
 much more, which we have yet to apprehend. 
 Indeed, in a mystery far transcending our pow- 
 ers of explanation, so complete is the expression 
 of the eternal Word in the Son of God, that 
 Paul could only express his sense of it by in- 
 clusively declaring; "In Him dwelleth all the 
 fulness of the Godhead corporeally." 
 
 Thirdly then, the Word is the record of the 
 expression of Grace and Truth. In order that 
 
46 THE WORD 
 
 men might know and profit by the Speech of 
 God, whether in the divers portions and man- 
 ners of the past, or in the Son, it was necessary 
 that the expressions should be preserved in such 
 form that they might be at the disposal of men 
 for all time. This was accomplished in the 
 sacred Scriptures. In the second letter of 
 Peter, we have a statement which reveals, so 
 far as it is possible, the method by which these 
 writings were produced (i. 21) ; " Men spake 
 from God, being borne along by the Holy 
 Spirit." In that statement we discover the 
 natural and supernatural elements. Men spake 
 from God. That is natural in the highest sense 
 of the word. As they spake, in their own lan- 
 guages, in conformity with their own mental 
 powers, influenced by their own surroundings, 
 so also they wrote. But they were borne along 
 by the Holy Spirit. The figure is that of a 
 vessel with all sails stretched to the winds, and 
 carried out beyond all the limitations which 
 hold it, apart from that action of the wind, into 
 the deeps. So these men, speaking and writing 
 with all the simplicity of a perfect naturalness, 
 were supernaturally guided into the most pro- 
 found deeps; being thus inspired to say and 
 write what should be said and written, and 
 
THE WORD 47 
 
 equally to omit the things which should be 
 omitted. The result of this method, at once 
 human and Divine, we have in our Bible. The 
 Old Testament is the inspired literature of need, 
 inquiry, hope; while the New is that of supply, 
 response, possession. To deal with human 
 need the Old Testament is necessary. To deal 
 with God's answer the New is essential. 
 
 The value of this phase of the Word is that 
 in these records of the expressions of the eternal 
 Word of Grace and Truth, we have at once the 
 germ and the norm of all revelation. We have 
 the germ, waiting for interpretation, develop- 
 ment, and persistent and progressive applica- 
 tion. But we have the norm also, by which 
 we test our speculations, theories, investiga- 
 tions. This is of central importance in the 
 matter of our Christology. It is always peril- 
 ous to attempt any other explanation of Him 
 tha \ that which adheres closely to the records. 
 By so doing we inevitably sooner or later des- 
 troy Him, and proceed to the proclamation of 
 a creature of our own futile speculations, rather 
 than the Christ of God. 
 
 But there is yet another phase of meaning 
 in the term " the Word of God." It is that of 
 the persistent and ever growing interpretation 
 
48 THE WORD 
 
 of the records to which we have already inci- 
 dentally referred. This also is of the Spirit of 
 God, and as surely Divine and actual as any- 
 thing with which we have already dealt. The 
 Holy Spirit is ever available to those called to 
 the ministry of the Word, in order to its ex- 
 planation and application. The laws of the 
 Spirit must be observed, and then He will 
 definitely, immediately, and accurately, explain 
 and interpret the writings. Thus the Word of 
 God is still living and powerful. 
 
 But more. Because the Word must ever be 
 incarnate in order to the illumination and saving 
 of men, and because the saints are called upon 
 to be witnesses, living epistles, the Spirit 
 energizes the will, and enables the life, and thus 
 all who obey become revelations of Grace and 
 Truth. 
 
 This then is the Word, to the ministry of 
 which we are called. To roughly summarize. 
 The Word is eternal Grace and Truth; Grace 
 and Truth expressed; the records of the ex- 
 pression of Grace and Truth; and the living 
 interpretation of the records of the expression 
 of Grace and Truth. 
 
 If this examination of the fundamental con- 
 ception enshrined in the phrase, " The Word/* 
 
THE WORD 49 
 
 be lacking in many ways, as it certainly is, it 
 does, at least I submit, help us to realize some- 
 thing of the vastness and glory of the service 
 to which those are called who enter upon " the 
 Ministry of the Word." 
 
 Because the Word of God is the full and 
 final wisdom, there can be nothing outside its 
 sphere. The whole sum of things in God, and 
 in His creation, are conditioned within that 
 infinite wisdom. Because the Word of God is 
 the expression of that Wisdom so that men 
 may know it, it has something to say on every 
 subject. 
 
 The ministry of the Word then, is only 
 limited by the instrument, and by the will of 
 God. The final thing can never be uttered by 
 any one man. The whole of the Truth can 
 never be expressed in any human system of 
 philosophy or theology. It is indeed, 
 
 "A deep, where all our thoughts are drowned." 
 
 Nevertheless, because the Word of God is 
 an expression of that ultimate wisdom, those 
 who are in its ministry have something intelli- 
 gible to say. They are interpreters, and the 
 things they are called upon to say will ever 
 be such, that those to whom they speak will 
 
50 THE WORD 
 
 apprehend their meaning; and in doing so, will 
 be including far more than at the given moment 
 they know, and thus be preparing accurately for 
 that growth in knowledge which must ever be 
 the experience of those who listen to the things 
 of God. 
 
 Thus I would fain leave on the mind the 
 impression of the stupendous and overwhelm- 
 ing greatness and grandeur of the work of 
 " The Ministry of the Word." In that Word 
 there is a simplicity so gracious, that children 
 will receive its teaching with gladness; and a 
 fulness so profound, that sages will ever feel 
 their comparative folly in contemplation. For 
 us the Word is found in Jesus. We look at 
 Him. We listen to Him. We walk with Him. 
 We talk with Him. It is all perfectly easy. 
 He is of our humanity. But in all the processes, 
 and growingly, the lights and glories of the 
 eternal things are breaking through, and we are 
 being led forward into ever more and more won- 
 derful unveilings. 
 
 To serve the Word is to fulfil the highest 
 function of which man is capable. Let those 
 called to its holy privilege halt in awe, worship 
 in wonder, and go forward with glad confidence. 
 
II 
 
 The Primitive Ideal 
 
THE WORD AS THE TRUTH OF THE 
 APOSTLE 
 
 WE now turn to a more detailed con- 
 sideration of the work of the Min- 
 istry of the Word as we find it 
 revealed in the New Testament, in order that 
 we may apprehend the primitive ideal. For 
 the moment we resolutely ignore all modern 
 conditions. To these we shall subsequently 
 return ; and we shall be able to deal with them 
 the more intelligently in proportion as we have 
 clearly seen these first things in the history of 
 this ministry. 
 
 From this point onward in our consideration, 
 the term " the Word '* must be understood 
 according to the interpretation already given. 
 Specifically it always refers to one or other of 
 the phases, and therefore involves all of them. 
 Following the line suggested by the apostolic 
 division of the work into four phases, we com- 
 mence with that of the Apostle. 
 
 In a previous Lecture we have defined the 
 apostolic functions broadly in these words; 
 
 53 
 
54 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 The Apostle deals with the zvhole body of Truth, 
 He has to state it, to systematise it, to make it 
 available to the saints, in order to their guidance 
 and sustenance. 
 
 In that definition we have employed the 
 present tense, because the need of true apos- 
 toHc work of this kind is perpetual; and, as we 
 shall see later, the apostolic gift is still be- 
 stowed within the Christian Church. That we 
 may be clear as to the nature and value of that 
 gift, we now consider the New Testament 
 teaching on the subject, dealing with; The 
 Apostolic Gift; the Apostolic Function; and the 
 Apostolic message or Truth. We shall en- 
 deavour to come to the New Testament without 
 prejudice, in order to discover its teaching. 
 Therefore we shall be elementary in our 
 method. 
 
 Starting with the statement of Paul, ** He 
 gave some apostles," we have to discover the 
 nature of this gift. We will begin with the word 
 itself; and then deal with its place in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 The word afiosfdlds is a noun derived from 
 the verb apbstello. Divesting our minds of 
 all the ideas which we usually associate with 
 the word, — which may be false or true, — we 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 55 
 
 have to recognize that the fundamental con- 
 ception is not that of sending, but of separa- 
 tion. This is very strongly so; and this lends 
 force and meaning to the idea of sending. The 
 action which makes an apostle is that of separa- 
 ting him from all other matters, in order that 
 he may be devoted to one particular business; 
 and that invariably, the business of the one who 
 thus sets him apart. The ambassador who goes 
 in the name of the king, to represent the king, 
 and to transact the business of the king, is set 
 apart to the work. This setting apart is the 
 fundamental idea suggested by the word itself. 
 In use however, the word always refers also 
 to the actual carrying out of the purpose for 
 which the separation has taken place. The 
 action is always that of the definite sending of 
 the one separated; so that the apostle is always 
 the messenger, separated in order to the fulfil- 
 ment of a mission, and the one who carries out 
 the mission. In the simplest sense of the word 
 then, an Apostle is one who is rigorously set 
 apart, in order to go on an embassy on behalf 
 of the One Who separates him. The apostolic 
 gift in the Christian Church is that Divine be- 
 stowment, which at once separates him who re- 
 ceives it to the doing of a certain clearly defined 
 
56 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 work; and perfectly equips him with all that is 
 necessary for the doing thereof. 
 
 The use of the word in the New Testament 
 is in strict accordance with these simple and 
 fundamental intentions. The verb with its 
 ordinary sense of " to send " is always used 
 with the idea of very definite authority in the 
 sending, and so also in the going. It is at 
 least an interesting fact that the first time we 
 come across the verb in the New Testament 
 is in the statement that Herod sent forth and 
 slew all the male children that were in Bethle- 
 hem. Here the fact of authority is clearly 
 marked. The noun is employed almost invari- 
 ably of the twelve disciples whom the Lord se- 
 lected, separated, and sent. The exceptions are 
 so few that we may name them. There are 
 five in all, of which three are definite, and two 
 are doubtful. The clear exceptions are; first, 
 where the word is used of the Lord Himself 
 (Heb. iii. 1) ; secondly, where in writing to the 
 Philippians Paul spoke of Epaphroditus as your 
 apostle (Phil. ii. 25); and finally, where in the 
 Apocalypse we read of false apostles (Rev. ii. 
 2). The doubtful exceptions are; first, where 
 our Lord used the word generally, but where 
 possibly He was still referring to the Twelve 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 57 
 
 (John xiii. 16) ; and, where Paul referred to 
 " our brethren the apostles of the Churches," in 
 which case he may have been thinking still of 
 the Twelve (2 Cor. viii. 23). In every other 
 case the noun is used of the Twelve. 
 
 Let us now consider the use of the word in 
 connection with the Twelve. Mark and Luke 
 give a careful account of how the Lord defi- 
 nitely selected twelve from among the number 
 of His disciples for specific work. In this con- 
 nection Luke tells us that He named them 
 Apostles. This is of great value as revealing 
 the fact that this name was not one which they 
 chose for themselves; nor was it one given to 
 them by outsiders. There can be no question 
 that our Lord selected it with a full sense of its 
 deepest meaning, and in order to define clearly 
 the nature of the gift He bestowed upon them, 
 and of the work that they would be called to do. 
 
 In Mark's story of this choosing of the 
 Twelve, he indicated the double nature of the 
 appointment. They were appointed; first, to 
 be with Him. This is the fundamental idea of 
 separation. There were senses in which the 
 rest of the disciples continued with Him; but 
 in the case of the Twelve, there was a special 
 separation from all other persons and business, 
 
58 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 in order that in close association with Himself, 
 they might be prepared for the specific work 
 for which they were intended. They were ap- 
 pointed also " that He might send them forth 
 to preach." Here we find the verb apostellb 
 involving the separation, and indicating the 
 work which they had to do. 
 
 Mark and Luke give the names of the Twelve 
 in connection with their accounts of this elec- 
 tion on the part of the Lord. Matthew, who 
 does not give this account, records the names 
 when he tells of their sending forth on their 
 first mission. The three of them, Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke, in giving the story of their 
 sending forth, make use of the verb apostello. 
 In each case it is evident that their specific and 
 central work was that of preaching. They were 
 sent by the Lord to proclaim His word, to de- 
 liver His message, to make known the Truth 
 about Himself. Certain powers were conferred 
 upon them, the exercise of which would serve 
 as signs, giving emphasis to their message. 
 These however were distinctly secondary in 
 importance, their chief responsibility being that 
 of the Word which they were to proclaim, the 
 understanding of which in their own case was 
 the result of their having been with Him. 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 59 
 
 After His resurrection from among the dead 
 it was to these twelve He specially appeared in 
 the upper room. Others were with them, on 
 some occasions, and once at least He appeared 
 to five hundred brethren. Luke in his second 
 treatise, the Acts of the Apostles, lays special 
 emphasis upon the fact that He gave command- 
 ment to the Apostles. He also tells how they 
 asked Him whether He would at that time re- 
 store the Kingdom to Israel; and how He re- 
 plied by a simple and yet inclusive definition of 
 their responsibility. They were to be His wit- 
 nesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, 
 and unto the uttermost part of the earth. This 
 charge was in a particular and peculiar sense 
 intended for the Apostles. While all believers 
 are to be His witnesses, it was the duty of this 
 apostolic band to state the Truth authorita- 
 tively. Hence we presently see the growing 
 company of the disciples continuing steadfastly 
 in the Apostles' teaching; and when Paul wrote 
 his letter to the Ephesians we find him referring 
 to them as constituting, with the prophets, the 
 foundation, of which Jesus Christ Himself is the 
 chief Corner-stone. It is thus that the Church 
 of Christ is not catholic only ; it is apostolic also. 
 As these Apostles formulated the Christian doc- 
 
6o THE WORD AS THE 
 
 trine under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
 they fulfilled the true function of their apostle- 
 ship. In this sense these men have had no 
 official successors. Indeed they had no power 
 or authority to appoint to the office. One of 
 their first mistakes after their Lord had de- 
 parted from them as to bodily presence, was 
 that of choosing Matthias, when already the 
 Lord had separated a man named Saul to make 
 up the number of the first Twelve. In another 
 sense they have always had successors, but to 
 that we shall come presently. 
 
 So far we have only seen the idea as set forth 
 in the history of the New Testament. We may 
 now pass to a statement of the true apostolic 
 function. What that function was in the case 
 of the Twelve clearly emerges from that exami- 
 nation. They were specially called for the clear 
 enunciation of Truth concerning the Lord Him- 
 self, and for the doing of this work they were 
 specially prepared by their close association 
 with Him. The principle upon which they pro- 
 ceeded to the election of a successor shows that 
 they appreciated the importance of this, though 
 they narrowed the conception of how this asso- 
 ciation was possible. Peter said; " Of the men 
 therefore which have companied with us all the 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 6i 
 
 time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among 
 us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto 
 the day that He was received up from us, of 
 these must one become a witness with us of His 
 resurrection." The idea that an Apostle must 
 have definite, first-hand knowledge of the Lord 
 Jesus in order to witness concerning Him, was 
 perfectly accurate. The mistake consisted in 
 the narrow conception of the way in which that 
 condition could be fulfilled. It was perfectly 
 realized in the case of Saul of Tarsus by special 
 revelation, notwithstanding the fact that he 
 probably never saw his Master in the days of 
 His flesh. All those called to apostleship were 
 men who had direct, first-hand knowledge of 
 the Lord, and who were thus prepared for the 
 work of stating the Truth concerning Him. 
 
 This particular apostolic function is suggested 
 by a statement found in the early part of the 
 Acts of the Apostles. Under the preaching of 
 Peter on the day of Pentecost about three thou- 
 sand souls were added to the Lord. Of these 
 Luke says that " they continued stedfastly in 
 the Apostles* teaching, and fellowship, in the 
 J)reaking of bread, and the prayers." In these 
 words we have an account of the fourfold safe- 
 guard of the ^arly Church. That safeguard is 
 
62 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 described by the use of four phrases, arranged 
 m two couplets. *' In the Apostles' teaching, 
 and fellowship; in the breaking of bread, and 
 the prayers." 
 
 Of these the first in order of statement was 
 first also in importance, because it was funda- 
 mental. It was that of the Apostles' teaching. 
 The word didache here translated teaching, de- 
 rived from didaskOy to teach, was used for in- 
 struction, both as to the act and the subject. It 
 was in that respect kin of the word logos, which 
 as we said in our earlier studies meant the 
 Word not only as an expression, but also as the 
 truth expressed. There can be little doubt that 
 in this particular passage the word had both 
 meanings. These people continued steadfast 
 in their attendance upon the actual teaching of 
 the Apostles, and in their obedience to what 
 they taught. The word occurs subsequently in 
 the Book of the Acts. The Sadducean Sanhe- 
 drim charged the Apostles with having filled 
 Jerusalem with their teaching, in spite of the fact 
 that they had been straitly charged to remain 
 silent (Acts v. 28). At Paphos, the pro-consul, 
 Sergius Paulus, ** believed, being astonished at 
 the teaching of the Lord" (Acts xiii. 12). The 
 men of Athens brought Paul to the Areopagus, 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 63 
 
 and asked to be told what the new teaching was, 
 which was spoken by Paul (Acts xvii. 19). All 
 these references point to the same conception 
 of a body of doctrine, or a statement of truth, 
 concerning the Lord Himself, which it was the 
 work of the Apostle to declare. 
 
 We may summarize our consideration of the 
 function of the Apostle then by saying that he is 
 a man chosen by Christ Himself; set apart to 
 Christ, to be with Him for special knowledge of 
 Him; sent by Christ, to deliver that very mes- 
 sage of truth concerning Himself, which he has 
 gained by this separation of comradeship and 
 communion. 
 
 This brings us to the last phase of this con- 
 sideration, that namely which is concerned with 
 the apostolic message, or truth. In writing to 
 the Ephesians, and in connection with his dis- 
 cussion of this subject of the ministry, Paul 
 made use of a suggestive and revealing phrase, 
 " As truth is in Jesus." In that phrase we have 
 an inclusive description of the whole of apostolic 
 teaching. Let us call to mind the statement in 
 which the phrase occurs. Urging these Gentile 
 believers to walk no longer as they had walked, 
 he said ; " Ye did not so learn Christ, if so be 
 that ye heard Him, and were taught in Him, 
 
64 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 even as truth is in Jesus.** That had been the 
 nature of his apostoUc teaching, beheving 
 which, these people had entered into life. Let 
 the phrase be pondered, and its inclusiveness 
 and value will be discovered. Truth here stands 
 for that which is essential and eternal; the ac- 
 tual and the absolute truth. It is the word 
 which our Lord employed when He said of 
 Himself, " I am . . . the Truth *'; and that 
 at once helps us to understand the full phrase, 
 " As the truth is in Jesus." The last five words 
 of the phrase constitute a sentence, which ex- 
 actly describes the apostolic conviction, and re- 
 veals the scope of their teaching. The truth is 
 in Jesus. They had found that essential and 
 eternal truth had its final expression in Jesus. 
 Their teaching was the exposition of the truth 
 so expressed. To them was given the gift of 
 enabling them to state that truth in such form, 
 as to be the guide of all believers in their growth 
 " into Him Who is the Head, even Christ, from 
 Whom all the body fitly framed and knit to- 
 gether . . . maketh the increase of the body 
 unto the building up of itself in love.'* 
 
 We shall gain further important light on this 
 subject as we consider how these first Apostles 
 did their work. They first preached Jesus ; that 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 63 
 
 is, they told the story concerning Him, as they 
 knew it, of their own personal experience. 
 Realizing that essential and eternal truth was 
 expressed in Him, they presented Him to others 
 as He had been presented to them. The whole 
 method of apostolic declaration may be gath- 
 ered from an examination of the first apostolic 
 pronouncement, that of Peter on the day of 
 Pentecost as it is recorded for us in the Book of 
 the Acts (chap. ii.). He told the listening mul- 
 titudes the simple yet inclusive story of Jesus; 
 as a Man through Whom God wrought signs in 
 His life, which showed Him to be approved of 
 God ; as One Who was delivered to death by the 
 determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, 
 and slain by the men of Israel, by the hand of 
 men without law, that is Gentiles; as having 
 been raised and exalted by God; and as having 
 shed forth the Holy Spirit upon all flesh. That 
 is to say that Peter preached or proclaimed 
 Jesus, and in so doing proclaimed Truth, and so 
 fulfilled his apostolic ministry. 
 
 Thus the Truth of the Apostles was that of 
 the Word of God, as it was in the beginning, 
 and as it was spoken to men in Jesus. This was 
 the first method and message of all the Apostles. 
 In this first message, as in all subsequent ones 
 
66 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 preserved for us, it is to be observed that these 
 men employed the v^ritings of the Old Testa- 
 ment in their preaching of truth as it is in Jesus. 
 They did not interpret Him by these writings, 
 but rather these writings by Him ; so proving at 
 once their true value and their limitation. 
 
 As time passed on, they added writing to 
 their preaching, and so under the guidance of 
 the Spirit provided those new writings which 
 complete the Old, as they give men for all time 
 the truth concerning Jesus, and so embody the 
 truth, " as the truth is in Jesus." Not all the 
 Twelve wrote. Moreover some wrote who 
 were not of the number of the Twelve. All the 
 writings however were under apostolic influ- 
 ence, and were produced in the fellowship of the 
 Apostles. This we shall see as we proceed. 
 
 Apostolic Truth then is found in our New 
 Testament. It is the literature of Christ. 
 There we hear Him, and are taught in Him, 
 even as Truth is in Jesus. The subject from 
 first to last is Jesus Christ the Word of God. 
 Therefore this literature is in very deed the 
 Word of God to us; and it is the apostolic 
 Truth, which was once for all delivered by these 
 Apostles to the Church. 
 
 It is not the purpose of this Lecture to deal 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 67 
 
 with these writings in detail, but it will be of 
 value to summarize their content. In the first 
 four of them the subject is that of the Word of 
 God, as He appeared in human history. Two 
 of these, those dealing with the Kingly and 
 Divine aspects of His Person, were written by 
 Apostles, Matthew and John. The other two, 
 those presenting Him in His saving and human 
 aspects, were written by men under the influ- 
 ence of Apostles, and in fellowship with them; 
 Mark with Peter, and Luke with Paul. Thus 
 the presentation of the Person is apostolic. 
 Then follow two and twenty writings in which 
 the Word of God is presented, as He is realized 
 and proclaimed through His mystical Body the 
 Church. Of these the first is a picture, full of 
 life and colour from the pen of an artist, Luke, 
 who travelled and wrought in fellowship with 
 the great Apostle Paul. In it, Christ the Word 
 is seen, moving out towards the uttermost parts 
 of the earth, through His Spirit-filled witnesses. 
 Then follow twenty-one letters and pamphlets, 
 which constitute a body of instruction for the 
 Church. In the writing of these, three Apos- 
 tles were employed, Paul, Peter, and John ; and 
 two, James and Jude, who were the close associ- 
 ates of the apostolic band. The one anony- 
 
68 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 mous pamphlet, namely the letter to the He- 
 brews, is certainly apostolic in its teaching, and 
 was probably Luke's reproduction of Paul's 
 teaching. At least that is as well-founded a 
 speculation as any other. Thus the presenta- 
 tion of the Church is apostolic. The subject of 
 the last writing is that of the Word of God, in 
 His personal glory, in His relation to His 
 Church, and in His governmental procedure, 
 whereby He establishes the Kingdom of God on 
 earth. This was written by the Apostle John. 
 Thus the final writing is also apostolic. 
 
 Thus then is revealed the apostolic message. 
 It was, and is essentially, that of the Word ; that 
 is, the Whole of Truth as it was embodied and 
 expressed in the Son of God, as the Son of man. 
 In the apostolic writings we have that Truth 
 stated, systematized, and applied. These writ- 
 ings then constitute at once the germ and norm 
 of all apostolic preaching. They are the germ, 
 needing development and progressive applica- 
 tion. They are the norm, by which all develop- 
 ments and applications must be tested, lest they 
 depart from the Truth. 
 
 While the number of the foundation Apostles 
 was completed, and in these writings we have 
 the full body of apostolic doctrine, it is never- 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 69 
 
 thelcss true that the apostoHc gift is still needed 
 and bestowed. It is needed wherever the Word 
 is to be given to a people in a new tongue, or to 
 meet new conditions. The work of translation, 
 which is too often looked upon as being merely 
 academic, is strictly apostolic. When we re- 
 member the great translators, that will be con- 
 ceded. The work of the true theologian is also 
 distinctly apostolic. It is that of stating the 
 eternal truth in the new terms of the new age; 
 and that without destroying its essential charac- 
 ter. For the doing of this work also, no merely 
 academic equipment is sufficient. The gift of 
 the Apostle is necessary. 
 
 From this interpretation it will be seen that 
 the apostolic is one phase only of The Ministry 
 of the Word. There is a sense in which all 
 Christian ministry is apostolic, whereas all 
 Christian ministry is not necessarily prophetic, 
 nor evangelistic, nor pastoral and didactic. All 
 ministry of the Word is apostolic, because it is 
 concerned with the Truth, which received apos- 
 tolic interpretation under the guidance of the 
 Spirit, and must always be tested by that inter- 
 pretation. In this sense apostolic ministry is 
 fundamental and continuous. There are proph- 
 ets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, who have 
 
70 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 not the apostolic gift, but all of them have to do 
 with this apostolic teaching. It is the bond of 
 union between them. The proportion in which 
 this fact is realized, is the proportion in which 
 any sense of conflicting interest in the exercise 
 of this ministry, as between those of the differ- 
 ent orders, is impossible. Each in his own 
 order will recognize the complementary nature 
 of all the orders, and there will be perfect co- 
 operation. 
 
 In this connection I may be permitted to say 
 how out of place the word succession is, in ref- 
 erence to the Christian ministry. There is no 
 such thing as Apostolic succession, as there is 
 no such thing as Prophetic, or Evangelistic, or 
 Pastoral succession. The call to the ministry is 
 personal and direct; and for the equipment of 
 those called, gifts and grace are supplied not 
 mediately, but immediately, by the Head of the 
 Church, through the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The historic continuity and unity of the 
 Christian ministry is maintained by The Word 
 of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. The 
 gifts vary, and the secondary means by which 
 they are received are more perhaps than we 
 have recognized. They were bestowed in New 
 Testament times by the laying on of hands, 
 
TRUTH OF THE APOSTLE 71 
 
 sometimes by bishops, or presbyters, sometimes 
 by the members of the Church; and so they still 
 undoubtedly are, as bishops and Christian be- 
 lievers act under the Lordship of Christ. In 
 those days they were received without any lay- 
 ing on of hands, and so they still undoubtedly 
 are. 
 
 That which mattered then, and that which 
 matters yet, is the Truth of which the Apostles 
 were, and are, the interpreters. The testing of 
 Apostolic ministry therefore is that of the Truth 
 itself. If one claiming apostolic gifts and func- 
 tions denies the faith once for all delivered to 
 the saints, his claim is disproved by that denial. 
 
 Thus the sacredness of the work of Apostolic 
 ministry of the Word is revealed. 
 
B 
 
 THE WORD AS THE BURDEN OF THE 
 PROPHET 
 
 WE now turn to the second phase of the 
 ministry of the Word referred to by 
 the Apostle, that namely of the 
 Prophet. We have already broadly defined the 
 term Prophet as referring to one whose office it 
 is ; To make the light of Truth shine in front of men; 
 he is a man of light and of lazu. 
 
 The work of the Prophet in the Christian 
 economy is always dependent upon that of the 
 Apostle. In his first letter to the Corinthians, 
 Paul explicitly stated this, when he wrote; 
 " God hath set some in the Church, first apos- 
 tles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers " * 
 (1 Cor. xii. 28). This does not mean that the 
 Apostle occupies a higher rank than the Prophet 
 
 *The reason for the omission of the Evangelist here 
 probably is that the Apostle was dealing with the gifts of 
 value within the Church, rather than with the one by which 
 men are brought into the Church. Whereas the work of 
 the Prophet has application beyond the Church, it also has 
 values within, and so was included. 
 
 72 
 
THE BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 73 
 
 or Teacher. Such an idea of rank is wholly of 
 this world, and has no place in Christian organ- 
 ization. 
 
 In considering this subject of the prophetic 
 gift we must give particular attention to the 
 idea as it is found in the New Testament. It 
 is to say the least, an interesting and suggestive 
 fact, that the word prophet is far more common 
 there than the word apostle. I confess that this 
 fact surprised me when I noticed it — but it is so. 
 
 In the New Testament writings we find a 
 group of words, all based upon one central idea. 
 To understand the true nature of prophetic min- 
 istry, we must discover that idea. In order to 
 do so, we shall again come to these writings 
 with an open mind, endeavouring to find the 
 conception, apart from all foregone conclusions. 
 We will follow the same method, considering; 
 the Prophetic Gift; the Prophetic Function; and 
 the Prophetic Burden. 
 
 The central word of the group referred to is 
 the word Prophet, employed by the Apostle 
 in his statement, *' He gave . . . some proph- 
 ets." Our word prophet is really a translit- 
 eration of the Greek word prophetes, which also 
 appears in the feminine form propketis^ ren- 
 dered prophetess. This is a compound word, 
 
74 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 made up of the prefix pro^ which means fore, in 
 the sense of in front of, or before; and the verb 
 phemiy to speak. This verb, v^hich Hterally 
 means to show, or make known, is derived from 
 phaino, to shine. 
 
 This very elementary method of considera- 
 tion gives us the simplest and the truest value 
 of the word itself. According to it, the Prophet 
 is one who makes Truth known to men in such 
 a way that it arrests the attention. He is one 
 through whose ministry the Truth shines forth 
 upon men, so that they find themselves in its 
 light. While the Apostle is chiefly concerned 
 with the Truth in itself, the Prophet is con- 
 cerned with its statement to men in such terms 
 that it may make its proper appeal to them. 
 The whole emphasis is on the Truth, as made 
 known, as shining forth, as applied. While the 
 Apostle is called to state the essential and eter- 
 nal Truth, as it found expression in Jesus, the 
 Prophet is supremely called to show the bearing 
 of that Truth on temporal things. In prophetic 
 ministry we find therefore what we may de- 
 scribe, for lack of a better term, as the tenses of 
 Truth. It deals with the past, as it makes his- 
 tory the vehicle through which eternal prin- 
 ciples have been revealed. It deals with the 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 75 
 
 present, as it measures the things of to-day by 
 eternal standards. It deals with the future, as 
 it declares things to come, in order that the un- 
 veilings may produce an immediate effect upon 
 the conceptions and conduct of men. 
 
 As we have said, this phase of ministry is con- 
 stantly referred to in the New Testament. In 
 addition to the words already cited, we find 
 these cognate forms; prhpheteud, to prophesy; 
 prdpheteiay a prophecy; and prophetikos^ pro- 
 phetic. A study of all the passages in which 
 these words are found makes it evident that the 
 idea was taken over from the old economy, and 
 from the writings of the Old Testament. To 
 them, then, we may properly turn for an inter- 
 pretation of the idea. 
 
 The Hebrew word for prophet is derived 
 from a verb which means to speak or sing by 
 inspiration. By inspiration here, I mean super- 
 naturally ; the speech or the song resulting from 
 some Divine influence operating through the 
 speaker or singer. There is nothing in the 
 word which suggests the method of inspiration, 
 but it stands for such speech, whether it deals 
 with past, present, or future, as results from a 
 Divine action, whereby the speaker utters, not 
 his own private interpretations of events or 
 
76 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 problems, but the Word of the Lord concerning 
 them. The whole conception of prophesying 
 was that of proclaiming the thoughts of God; 
 and therefore the Prophet was always the in- 
 strument through whom God made known His 
 will to men. 
 
 The Old Testament conception moreover, 
 was ever that of the practical and ethical value 
 of prophecy. The Old Testament Prophets 
 never spoke or wrote merely to satisfy curiosity, 
 either in their historic records, in their direct 
 messages, or in their foretelling of things to 
 come. The purpose of their ministry was ever 
 that of producing immediate results in the lives 
 of those to whom their words were addressed. 
 
 I pause to stress this fact, because a common 
 use of the word shows how sadly it has been lost 
 sight of. Constantly the word prophet is used 
 as though it referred to one able to predict com- 
 ing events, and prophecy is conceived of as con- 
 sisting wholly of such predictions. Moreover 
 altogether too often the study of the predictive 
 elements in Biblical prophecies degenerates into 
 a curiosity which is morbid, and often irrever- 
 ent, a desire to know ** times and seasons," sim- 
 ply for the satisfaction which such knowledge 
 produces. 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 77 
 
 Nothing can be more erroneous. That the 
 predictive element existed in prophetic ministry 
 in the Hebrew economy, no one denies. In- 
 deed it was the element which most clearly set 
 the seal of the supernatural upon that ministry. 
 This is clearly seen in the Book of Isaiah, where 
 the Prophet makes this fact of prediction the 
 proof of Divine authority, as he challenges the 
 false gods and prophets; ** Declare the things 
 that are to come hereafter, that we may know 
 that ye are gods. . . . Who hath declared it 
 from the beginning that we may know? and be- 
 fore time, that we may say, He is righteous? 
 yea, there is none that declareth . . ." (Isa. 
 xli. 23 and 26). Yet even here, and always, the 
 purpose of prediction was that of producing im- 
 mediate moral results, and not that of affording 
 intellectual satisfaction. This element was only 
 one however, and if we may measure its value 
 by its amount, it was the least important. 
 Prophecy was also the interpretation of history. 
 That is why all the historic books of the Old 
 Testament were included in the Division which 
 they named "' The Prophets." Their historians 
 were Prophets, because they ever set history in 
 relation to the government of God, showing 
 through it, how all disaster had resulted from 
 
78 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 disobedience to the Law of God, and all success 
 from conformity thereto. Prophecy was also 
 the interpretation of the will of God to men im- 
 mediately, the inspired utterance which made 
 known to men what was at the very moment 
 the Divine purpose and way. 
 
 This complete conception of the prophetic 
 office was taken over by the men of the new 
 age. This fact must be borne in mind in any 
 attempt to understand the gift of the Prophet. 
 Prophecy is truth spoken, as the result of Divine 
 inspiration, and with a view to producing Divine 
 results in huma\n affairs. The work of the 
 Prophet is that of making such truth known 
 to men in ways which command attention. 
 
 Let us now observe the idea as it is found in- 
 the New Testament, dividing our examination 
 into two parts ; first the references prior to Pen- 
 tecost; and secondly, those afterwards. In both 
 cases we find that references are constantly 
 made to the Old Testament prophets. There is 
 a sense of course in which the writings which 
 record the things before Pentecost are post- 
 pentecostal. That is to say, that probably none 
 of them was written before the coming of the 
 Spirit. Hence we find the constant statement 
 that the predictions of the Prophets of the old 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 79 
 
 economy were fulfilled in the life and death and 
 resurrection of Jesus. All such references are 
 of great value, not only as they reveal the rela- 
 tionship between the Hebrew and Christian 
 economies, but also as they serve to show the 
 true nature of Hebrew prophecy. In our ex- 
 amination I propose to confine myself to those 
 references which deal with the prophetic gift 
 within the Christian age. 
 
 The references to the ministry of the Prophet 
 within the Christian era in the Gospels are few, 
 but they are suggestive. Matthew gives us a 
 fuller account than any of the other Evangelists 
 of the ordination of the Twelve as they were 
 sent forth on their first mission (Matt. ix. 35- 
 X. 42). Here we find our Lord's charge to 
 them. It is quite evident that as He spoke to 
 them He was looking on to all the processes of 
 the age which He was then inaugurating. The 
 first part of the charge had to do with their im- 
 mediate mission (Matt. x. 5-15). The second 
 part covered the period from His ascension to 
 the destruction of Jerusalem (x. 16-23). The 
 final part dealt with the whole period thence, to 
 the consummation of the age (x. 24-42). In 
 the closing sentences of that final section He 
 said, " He that receiveth a Prophet in the name 
 
8o THE WORD AS THE 
 
 of a prophet, shall receive a Prophet's reward " 
 (ver. 41). 
 
 The only value of these v^^ords for the purpose 
 of our present study is, that they show that our 
 Lord deliberately indicated His adoption of the 
 prophetic method of ministry in connection with 
 the complete ministry of witness, to which His 
 people were to be sent forth. At the close of 
 His ministry He uttered the final doom of the 
 city of Jerusalem. This was preceded by His 
 woes against the rulers, at the close of which He 
 said, " Behold I send unto you Prophets, and 
 wise men, and scribes; some of them shall ye 
 kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye 
 scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from 
 city to city " (Matt, xxiii. 34). Here His refer- 
 ence undoubtedly was to the ministry of His 
 witnesses which would follow His departure, 
 and again we have evidence of His recognition 
 of the prophetic method. He employed the 
 term in reference to His own ministry when He 
 said, " A Prophet is not without honour, save in 
 his own country, and in his own house " (Matt, 
 xiii. 57) ; and the people spoke of Him as a 
 Prophet. These are the references to a Chris- 
 tian ministry of prophecy in the Gospels. They 
 are few, but they suffice to show that it was 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 8i 
 
 within the intention of the Lord Himself that 
 there should be such a phase of ministry. 
 When we turn to the more strictly post-pente- 
 costal times, we find a much more frequent oc- 
 currence of the idea. 
 
 In the Acts the prophetic character of pente- 
 costal preaching emerges in the first apostolic 
 declaration. When Peter interpreted the signs 
 of the Spirit to the inquiring multitudes, he 
 quoted the prophecy of Joel, declaring that it 
 found its fulfilment on that day. According to 
 that foretelling of the Hebrew Prophet, one of 
 the great results of the outpouring of the Spirit 
 would be that of the new age of prophecy which 
 would then begin (Acts ii. 17, 18, 19). When, 
 centuries before, the news was brought to 
 Moses that Eldad and Medad were prophesy- 
 ing, he had exclaimed ; " Would God that all the 
 Lord's people were Prophets" (Num. xi. 29). 
 From the hour when the great lawgiver 
 breathed the wish, we pass to the days when 
 Joel declared it would be realized, and so on to 
 Pentecost when it was fulfilled. 
 
 While it is true that the Spirit equips all be- 
 lievers for prophetic witness, it is also true that 
 there are those who have a special gift, and this 
 is seen in the Acts. When the new movement 
 
82 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 was about to begin from Antioch, Prophets 
 went down there from Jerusalem, and one of 
 them, Agabus, uttered the predictive word con- 
 cerning the great famine (Acts xi. 27, 28). 
 This man appears again in the account of Paul's 
 stay at Csesarea, and again his message was 
 predictive (Acts xxi. 10, 11). In the Church at 
 Antioch Prophets were found (Acts xiii. 1). 
 Judas and Silas are distinctly named as 
 Prophets (Acts xv. 32). At Ephesus the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit was signalized by the exercise 
 of prophetic ministry (Acts xix. 6). The four 
 daughters of Philip the evangelist prophesied 
 (Acts xxi. 9). 
 
 In his first Corinthian letter Paul gave ex- 
 plicit instructions concerning the exercise of the 
 prophetic gift. 
 
 All this is of value as it shows that the par- 
 ticular method of the Prophet in the ministry 
 of the Word obtained in the earliest days of the 
 Christian economy, and that it was one of the 
 gifts bestowed within the Church, by the Head 
 of the Church, through the Spirit. 
 
 The prophetic function emerges clearly into 
 view in our consideration of the gift itself. In 
 the second letter of Peter however, we have a 
 statement which is of the utmost value in order 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 83 
 
 to an accurate apprehension of the pecuHar na- 
 ture of prophesying. He was deahng with the 
 experience on the Holy Mount, and especially 
 with the influence which the voice, those who 
 were present then heard, had upon them with 
 regard to the prophecies of the past. The pas- 
 sage is so important that we quote it in full. 
 " We have the word of prophecy made more 
 sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, 
 as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the 
 day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts; 
 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture 
 is of private interpretation. For no prophecy 
 ever came by the will of man; but men spake 
 from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost " 
 (2 Pet. i. 19-21). 
 
 Through the testimony of the voice of the 
 Holy Mount to the Son of God, these men came 
 to a new understanding of the nature of the 
 prophetic writings, with which they had been 
 familiar from childhood. These writings were, 
 by this experience, made more sure to them. 
 With that aspect of Peter's message we are not 
 now interested, save in so far as it throws light 
 upon the prophetic function. We have already 
 seen that the idea in the New Testament is 
 identical with that in the Old. All that is here 
 
84 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 said concerning the prophecies of the past is 
 equally true concerning prophetic ministry to- 
 day. 
 
 The function of prophecy then, is that of 
 speaking the Word of God, that Word being 
 received from God by the ministry of the Holy 
 Spirit. The Prophet is not one who observes 
 his age and gives his own interpretation of it. 
 He is one who is carried along by the Spirit 
 into a place of vision and understanding, above 
 and beyond his age, from which he sees it as 
 God sees it, and in which he receives from God 
 the very message the age needs to hear. Such 
 messages constitute light in dark places, to 
 which men do well that they take heed. 
 
 Prophets then are men who are sure, because 
 they are Spirit-taught; and they speak therefore 
 with the note of absolute authority. The eflFect 
 of their speaking may be that of condemnation, 
 or of direction, or of inspiration. It is always 
 practical, ethical, spiritual. All this will be- 
 come yet clearer as we turn to the consideration 
 of the Burden of the Prophet. 
 
 The word burden, in relation to prophetic min- 
 istry, is strictly an Old Testament word, and it 
 has no exact equivalent in the New. Neverthe- 
 less we employ it, and are justified in doing so, 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 85 
 
 because, as we have seen, the whole conception 
 of prophetic ministry is carried over from the 
 Old Testament into the New. We will go back 
 then to the Old in order to discover the meaning 
 and use of the word there. The Hebrew word 
 (Massd) literally means a burden or a load in 
 our ordinary every-day sense. It is used of the 
 weights carried by beasts, and of responsibilities 
 resting upon men. The Prophets themselves 
 appropriated the word, and made it the peculiar 
 vehicle by which they expressed their own con- 
 ception of the nature of their messages. In 
 their use of it, we find it stood for the truth 
 made known to them by God; for the desire 
 which they experienced to utter the truth; and 
 for the message as they delivered it. We now 
 employ the word strictly in this sense. 
 
 The Burden of the New Testament Prophet, 
 like that of the Old, is first the Truth made 
 known by God in order that it may be declared 
 to men. Such truth, so made known to the 
 Prophet, becomes a burden of desire, compel- 
 ling him to utter it. The message which, under 
 such constraint, is proclaimed to men is the 
 Word of the Lord. 
 
 What then is the Burden of the New Testa- 
 ment Prophet? We may find a practically com- 
 
86 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 plete answer to that inquiry in the words of 
 Peter in the house of CorneUus. At the dose 
 of the address dehvered when he perceived that 
 the Gospel was for the Gentile as well as the 
 Jew, he said, " To Him bear all the Prophets 
 witness." While these words are usually em- 
 ployed as though they referred to the prophe- 
 cies of the past; and while such interpretation 
 of them is undoubtedly correct as far as it goes; 
 it is equally certain that they describe, and with 
 even more accuracy, the burden of Christian 
 prophesying. If the whole of that brief but 
 pregnant address be read, this will be the more 
 readily acknowledged. After telling the story 
 of Jesus in a very few words, he declared that 
 God had charged them '' to preach unto the 
 people that this is He Which is ordained of God 
 to be the Judge of quick and dead.'* To Him 
 then, all the Prophets give witness. They de- 
 clare His absolute sovereignty over all human 
 souls, whether quick or dead. Such declara- 
 tion ever involves the illustration of that sov- 
 ereignty; interpretation of its reasons, its 
 methods, its purposes; and application of the 
 one central fact to the circumstances in the 
 midst of which the Prophet is called to exercise 
 his ministry. 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 87 
 
 /■ 
 
 Some further light may be obtained from the 
 passage in Peter's second letter to which we 
 have already referred. Referring to the ex- 
 perience of the Holy Mount, he said; " We did 
 not follow cunningly devised fables when we 
 made known unto you the power and coming * 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ *' (2 Pet. i. 16). The 
 positive note in that statement is full of light. 
 The whole burden of prophetic ministry is ex- 
 pressed in the words " the power and coming 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ." They cover the 
 whole fact of His relation to the world. In the 
 next two sections of this letter he dealt with the 
 perils threatening these truths. First the perils 
 threatening the truth of the Power (chap. ii.). 
 Carefully observe that this peril consisted in 
 false prophets and teachers denying the Master. 
 Then the peril threatening the truth of the 
 Coming (chap. iii.). Again observe that this 
 peril consisted in the mocking of those who dis- 
 believed the predictions of the holy Prophets 
 and the teaching of the Apostles. True proph- 
 ecy then is that which proclaims His Power and 
 His Coming; and such prophecy is ever of the 
 nature of a lamp shining in a dark place. 
 
 Returning for a moment to a more abstract 
 matter, it ''^ interesting to turn to a passage 
 
88 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 in Jeremiah, in which terrible things are written 
 against false prophets (xxxiii. 9-40). Towards 
 the close of that passage the whole question of 
 the use and abuse of the word burden is dis- 
 cussed. In the course of the discussion, the 
 human questions to which the prophetic bur- 
 den is the true answer are given. They 
 are these; ** What hath the Lord answered?'* 
 "What hath the Lord spoken?" A real 
 prophetic burden then is the answer to 
 those questions; and the Prophet is the man 
 who answers them. In the light of that state- 
 ment we turn to the letter to the Hebrews; 
 " God having of old time spoken unto the fa- 
 thers in the Prophets by divers portions, and in 
 divers manners, hath at the end of these days 
 spoken unto us in His Son '* (Heb. i. 1, 2). The 
 Son then is the One Prophet of God, and all 
 Prophets in the Christian age are such as give 
 the answer of His truth to humanity as it in- 
 quires, " What hath the Lord spoken? ** 
 
 Thus then is clearly revealed the Burden of 
 the Christian Prophet. It is that of the Word 
 of God, embodied in the Word incarnate, the 
 Son in Whom God has spoken to all men and all 
 ages, everything that it is necessary that they 
 should know in order to the realization of the 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 89 
 
 purpose of God, which is also that of the true 
 and glorious destiny of humanity. 
 
 This Word the Prophet is to declare, to apply, 
 to insist on. His ministry is not that of the 
 Apostle, not that of the Evangelist, nor that of 
 the Pastor and Teacher. As we have seen, the 
 work of the Apostle is ever that of giving all his 
 attention to the Truth itself. The Prophet 
 must receive the Truth from the Apostle. His 
 prophesying in that sense must be apostolic. 
 As we shall see, the work of the Evangelist is 
 that of perpetually proclaiming the first things 
 of the Truth; while that of the Pastor and 
 Teacher is that of instructing the members of 
 the Church in Truth, that they may grow 
 thereby. The Prophet is rather the man who 
 addresses his age, declaring to it the crown 
 rights of the Lord, and showing how they affect 
 all the affairs of men. It is a great ministry, 
 full of infinite variety, charged with solemn re- 
 sponsibility, and yielding results which can 
 never be expressed in human statistics. The 
 voice of the Prophet will often be silenced by 
 the clamour of opposition, but his word will 
 abide, and being the Word of God, will never 
 return to Him void. 
 
 The gift has persisted throughout the 
 
90 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 Christian era, and it is still needed. Whether 
 they will hear or whether they will forbear, 
 men must still be compelled to attend to the 
 proclamation of the truth about themselves, and 
 about life, which Truth is all contained in the 
 Word of God, which found its complete utter- 
 ance in His Son. 
 
 That there have been, and still are those on 
 whom this specific gift is bestowed will, I think, 
 be readily conceded. Their preaching is ever 
 characterized by national and social applica- 
 tions, rather than by individual appeal. That 
 i& not to say that it has no personal value. It 
 certainly has, for the true Prophet never forgets 
 that the nation consists of the People, and that 
 the People, as a Commonwealth, is strong or 
 weak in proportion as the individuals making 
 up the whole are strong or weak. But it does 
 mean that the Prophet is a man who sees clearly 
 the whole movement of human life, and his mes- 
 sage has to do with all human inter-relation- 
 ships, and responsibilities, as these are condi- 
 tioned within the Will of God. The Prophet 
 therefore is not called upon to tarry with indi- 
 viduals. That is the work more specifically of 
 Evangelists and Pastors and Teachers. Neither 
 is he called upon to systematize the Truth. 
 
BURDEN OF THE PROPHET 91 
 
 That is the work of the Apostles. He, knowing 
 this Truth, and reahzing the fact that men are 
 only perfected as they fulfil the Divine ideal of 
 society, speaks to them as a whole. He will talk 
 to them of history, ignoring the accidental inci- 
 dents, as he interprets the fundamental and es- 
 sential things of Divine law and rule. He will 
 speak to every present situation, not discussing 
 it from the standpoint of human observation, 
 but declaring the Divine thought and purpose. 
 He will foretell the way of God with men in the 
 days to come, so far as that is revealed in the 
 Scriptures, carefully avoiding all personal spec- 
 ulation as to details unrevealed. 
 
 The ministry of Prophets is always needed, 
 but especially so in days of upheaval and break- 
 down in human affairs. Then, to men at their 
 wits' end, he is called upon to proclaim the 
 Word of the Lord, as it is found in the Son of 
 God. By so doing he will give direction to 
 men, following which, they will be able to build 
 again the waste places, and realize all the possi- 
 bilities of human society as they are known to 
 God. 
 
THE WORD AS THE GOSPEL OF THE 
 EVANGELIST 
 
 THE third phase of the Ministry of the 
 Word referred to by the Apostle is 
 that of the EvangeHst. In deahng 
 with the subject of the Ministry, generally, we 
 thus defined his work; The Evangelist has to 
 apply the aspects of Truth zvhich inspire hope. He 
 declares the facts of the Evangel, He is a man of 
 Life and Love. 
 
 In turning to a more careful examination 
 of the subject we are at once arrested by the 
 word itself. As in the case of the word prophet, 
 the word Evangelist comes into our language 
 by transliteration. That of course is true also 
 of the word Apostle. The Greek word euagge- 
 listes has become evangelist. The arresting 
 fact however is that this is a new word in the 
 Greek language, unknown apart from the 
 Christian fact. It is Biblical and ecclesiastical, 
 the word of the Bible and the Church. De- 
 rived from well-known words, all of which how- 
 
 9a 
 
THE GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 93 
 
 ever acquired new meaning^ in their Christian 
 use, this particular word, describing the men 
 called to the definite work of proclaiming the 
 Gospel, was created for this sacred use. Again 
 we shall follow the same method of considera- 
 tion, dealing in turn with. The Evangelistic 
 Gift, The Evangelistic Function, and The Evan- 
 gelistic Gospel. 
 
 In dealing with the gift referred to by the 
 Apostle in his statement that " He gave . . . 
 some Evangelists," we will once more give at- 
 tention to the suggestiveness of the new Testa- 
 ment group of words connected with the idea. 
 They are three; first, euaggelizo, that is to 
 evangelize, or to preach the Gospel; second, 
 ^uaggelio7i, that is the Evangel, or the Gospel; 
 and third, euaggelistes^ that is the Evangelist. 
 Of these the second two are derivatives of the 
 first; while that is a compound of two words, 
 eu, good; and aggellb, to bring tidings, or to 
 announce. Thus to evangelize is to proclaim 
 good tidings; the Evangel is the message of 
 good tidings; while the Evangelist is the one 
 who proclaims good tidings. The central con- 
 ception of the words is that of a message sent, 
 by someone to someone. That conception is 
 qualified by the word eu^ meaning good or glad. 
 
94 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 and gives character to the thought, as it sug- 
 gests that it is a message which the sender is 
 glad to send, and the receiver will be glad to 
 receive. 
 
 When we turn from the words in themselves 
 to their use in the New Testament, we find 
 that all these conceptions are present, and are 
 intensified and made superlative by the nature 
 of the Message which is to be proclaimed. The 
 strength of the idea everywhere is twofold. 
 The first element is that of the goodness of the 
 news. It is news such as to bring joy to the 
 heart of those who hear it. It is tidings of 
 great joy to all people. The greatness of it, 
 and the gladness of it thrill and throb through 
 every reference to it, and constitute the first 
 element of its strength. The second element 
 is that of the fact that it is sent. It is news 
 from God, and He sends it to men. Therein is 
 a revelation of His attitude towards men in 
 their need, in their sin, in their sorrow. His 
 purpose for them is that of goodness, and He 
 has news for them of how that purpose may be 
 fulfilled. That good news He has sent to them. 
 These facts make the Evangel, the Gospel, the 
 message from God, of the utmost importance, 
 of the first urgency, of supreme delight. It is 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 95 
 
 important because it is the message of God; 
 urgent because it has to do with human need; 
 and dehghtful because it is good news, news 
 that tells of a way of deliverance from all that 
 harms and hurts. 
 
 The Gospel is variously described in the New 
 Testament writings, and the phrases are in 
 themselves interesting and illuminative. In the 
 Gospels we read of " The Gospel of the King- 
 dom of God"; in the Acts of ''The Gospel of 
 the Grace of God"; in the Epistles of *'The 
 Gospel of God," and of "The Gospel of Christ"; 
 in the Apocalypse of " an eternal Gospel." It 
 may be that these phrases have dispensational 
 values, that is that they suggest the various 
 applications of the Gospel to various ages, or 
 periods. With that aspect of their significance 
 I am not now interested. That which impresses 
 me is the unveiling I find in them of different 
 aspects of the one Gospel, for finally there is 
 but one Gospel. In the phrase " the Gospel 
 of the Kingdom of God," I hear the note 
 of authority. The good news cannot be 
 doubted, for it is a royal proclamation, coming 
 with all the majesty of the Throne behind it. 
 The phrase " The Gospel of the Grace of God " 
 at once reminds me that the King is merciful 
 
96 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 and full of compassion, and I know that the 
 good news is a message of infinite and unfath- 
 omable Love. The phrase " The Gospel of 
 God " calls back to the mind the fact that the 
 King is God, that the Lover is God, and so 
 makes the sense of the authority of the good 
 news absolute, and the consciousness of the 
 love, such as to banish all doubt. The phrase 
 " The Gospel of Christ " speaks of the avail- 
 ability to man of all the grace promised in the 
 message, for He is the Anointed of the Father, 
 both as King and Priest, so that through Him 
 men may find their way into the Kingdom 
 through His Saviourhood. Such are the gen- 
 eral impressions made by the prevalent idea in 
 the New Testament writings. Let us take time 
 to consider a little more particularly the place 
 of the idea therein. 
 
 Here I begin with some incidental but none 
 the less interesting and illuminative notes. 
 The idea is not of frequent occurrence in Mat- 
 thew; the verb being found once, and the noun 
 four times. In Mark the noun only is found; 
 it is however the very key-note of his story, as 
 witness the opening phrase, " The beginning 
 of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." In Luke the verb 
 only is found; he being supremely concerned 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 97 
 
 with the proclamation. John never employs 
 either term save in the Apocalypse, where the 
 noun is found twice. In the Acts it is found 
 more frequently, the verb predominates, the 
 noun occurring twice, and the word Evangelist 
 once. In the letters of Paul the idea is constant, 
 and the use of both noun and verb is common; 
 the word Evangelist is found twice. 
 
 In the historic sequence of the mission of our 
 Lord we find the word Evangel first used by 
 Gabriel in his message to Zacharias concerning 
 the birth of John the forerunner. *' I was sent 
 to speak unto thee, and to bring thee this evan- 
 gel/' It was used again by an angel of the Lord 
 as he said to the shepherds, " Behold, I bring 
 you an evangel of great joy which shall be to all 
 people." Describing the preaching of the herald 
 John, Luke employs it as he says, " With many 
 other exhortations preached he the evangel unto 
 the people." Mark, describing the commence- 
 ment of the more public preaching ministry of 
 the Lord, says, "J^sus came into Galilee, preach- 
 ing the evangel of God." In the Acts the refer- 
 ence first in order to this aspect of ministry is 
 found in the words, "And every day, in the tem- 
 ple and at home, they ceased not to teach, and 
 to evangelise Jesus as the Christ." 
 
98 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 These are but illustrations, and are given to 
 show how this conception of evangelization 
 characterized the ministry of John, of the Lord 
 Himself, and of His earliest messengers. They 
 all went out among men with the joyful as- 
 surance that they had good news to tell them. 
 
 As we carefully follow the revelation through 
 the history, and through the writings, we can- 
 not fail to observe the growing apprehension of 
 the content and value of the Gospel, which 
 came to these men. They came to think and 
 speak of it as a glorious Gospel, a Gospel pro- 
 ceeding from the happy God, — for so we may 
 read the words, " the ever-blessed God." They 
 found it to be a lonely Gospel; if men preached 
 other gospels they were not gospels, for there 
 was but this one. They proved as they 
 preached it, that it 'was a powerful Gospel, of 
 which not to be ashamed, even in Rome. They 
 realized growingly that it was a testing Gospel, 
 dividing men as they heard it, into two distinct 
 classes, those of believers, and unbelievers, and 
 so those elected to life and glory, and those 
 doomed to death and shame; the division and 
 electing resulting from their response to the 
 message. 
 
 The gift of the Evangelist is that special qua!- 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 99 
 
 ification which fits a man for proclaiming that 
 good news to men powerfully and prevailingly. 
 He gave — and He gives — some Evangelists. 
 
 The evangelistic function then is patently 
 that of proclaiming this Gospel. Its special 
 emphasis in the commission of our Lord is 
 found in that recorded by Mark/ *' Go ye 
 into all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
 the whole creation " (Mark xvi. 15). In this 
 phrase " preach the Gospel " the verb ^uag- 
 gelizo is not employed. The noun etiagge- 
 lion is preceded by the verb kerusso, which 
 means to proclaim as a herald, or simply to her- 
 ald. The command is to herald the good news. 
 Thus the phrase is rich in its revelation of the 
 function of the Evangelist. The command to 
 herald the Gospel gives the note of authority to 
 evangelistic preaching. It speaks of the au- 
 thorizing King; considers the message as au- 
 thorized; and thus creates the authority of the 
 messenger. This aspect of the work of the 
 Evangelist implicates the claim of God upon 
 man, and the consequent duty of man towards 
 the message which God sends. While the mes- 
 sage is one of infinite grace, good news indeed; 
 
 * The commission as recorded by the four Evangelists 
 must not be confounded. See my Missionary Manifesto. 
 
loo THE WORD AS THE 
 
 it comes from the King, and therefore it is not 
 one which man can treat Hghtly. Upon his re- 
 ception of it, issues of tremendous and age-abid- 
 ing importance depend. If the Prophet comes 
 to men with the authoritative formula, "Thus 
 saith the Lord,*' so also does the Evangelist, 
 and this he will never forget. He offers a mes- 
 sage of incomparable grace, but it is the procla- 
 mation of eternal government, with which men 
 must not trifle. Indeed the one sin which has 
 no forgiveness is that of refusing to believe the 
 message, and so resolutely declining the Di- 
 vinely appointed way of deliverance-. 
 
 But we return again to the other word of the 
 phrase. It is the Evangel which is thus to be 
 heralded. The King sends a message, but. it 
 is a message of Love. The eternal Govern- 
 ment issues its proclamation, but it is a proc- 
 lamation of Grace, ofifering pardon, deliverance, 
 restoration of all forfeited rights and privileges. 
 This aspect of the work of the Evangelist im- 
 plicates the need of man, and the Grace of God. 
 And this is the supreme matter. The function 
 of the Evangelist is not that of denouncing sin ; 
 nor is it that of discussing judgment in the sense 
 of punishment. Both these things he will cer- 
 tainly have to do in the course of his preaching, 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST loi 
 
 but he cannot end with them. They are not 
 the things he is specifically called upon to do. 
 He is sent to sinning men, to men under sen- 
 tence of punishment, to tell them of God's pro- 
 vision for their forgiveness, cleansing, deliver- 
 ance. The Evangelist then comes ever w^ith 
 joy and gladness. He is a man alive with the 
 tremendous fact that God has found a way by 
 which His banished ones may return; and his 
 preaching must ever be vibrant with the pas- 
 sionate joy of it in his own soul. A gloomy, 
 pessimistic Evangelist is a contradiction of 
 terms. An Evangelist, cheerful even to hilarity, 
 and optimistic in spite of the most utter hope- 
 lessness in human thinking, is in the natural or- 
 der. The Evangelist goes out in faith, in love, 
 in hope. To take the central word first. He 
 goes out in love, because he is the messenger 
 of the King of Love, and the message he bears 
 is the love message of God. The love of God is 
 shed abroad in his heart. The love of Christ 
 constraineth him. Therefore he loves those to 
 whom he is sent, and that in spite of all their 
 unworthiness, their defilement, their folly; for 
 this is the Love of God, the Love of Christ. 
 He goes out in faith; that is faith in God, in his 
 message, and therefore in all those to whom he 
 
I02 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 is sent. As in the days of His flesh the faith 
 which the Son of God had in the sons of men 
 was the very inspiration of their faith in him, 
 so is it still with those who herald His Evangel. 
 And so he goes out in hope. He knows nothing 
 of hopeless cases from the standpoint of the 
 power of his Gospel, and therefore his business 
 is to inspire hope in the most desponding and 
 dejected. 
 
 The Evangelist goes into all the world, that 
 is to the whole creation, groaning and travail- 
 ing together in pain; he faces its sorrow, its 
 sighing, and its sin, where they all originate, in 
 man; and his message is a royal proclamation of 
 Grace. He publishes the good news that what 
 man cannot do for himself, or for the creation, 
 God in Christ has done; and that therefore 
 there is hope for man, and through him, as he 
 becomes in a new sense a son of God, for the 
 whole creation beneath him. 
 
 We may now consider the Evangel which is 
 thus to be proclaimed. That Gospel is con- 
 tained in the first four books of the New Testa- 
 ment. It is not without significance that the 
 Church has named the writers Evangelists. 
 Two of them were Apostles, and two of them 
 were closely associated with the Apostles in 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 103 
 
 their service. Yet the nature of their apostoHc 
 writings constituted them Evangelists in very 
 deed, for the story they tell is that of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, the Son of God, and the Saviour of 
 the world. That story is the Gospel. 
 
 In Paul's final summary of instructions to 
 Timothy, we find a paragraph bounded by two 
 injunctions ; " Preach the Word " ; and " Do the 
 work of an Evangelist, fulfil thy ministry " 
 (2 Tim. iv. 2-5). Again therefore the Word is 
 the Gospel. The Evangelist is doing his work, 
 not when he is telling anecdotes, — though these 
 may be of great value when they are true and 
 subservient; he is doing his work when he is 
 telling the One Story of Jesus. This marks the 
 limitation of his message. The limitation does 
 not mean that his message is narrow or super- 
 ficial. It is as broad as the love of God, and 
 as profound as humanity's deepest spiritual 
 needs. In the preaching of the Word by the 
 Evangelist, the emphasis is on the message of 
 God to men, as it meets their first needs, which 
 are fundamental. The Evangel is God's love 
 message to men. The whole of it is nowhere 
 more perfectly summarized than in those most 
 familiar, but most sublime words ; " God so 
 loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
 
I04 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should 
 not perish, but have eternal life." That is the 
 Gospel. If that is a perfect summary, we may 
 find perhaps the most perfect analysis of content 
 in the words of our Lord concerning the mis- 
 sion of the Spirit in the world, spoken to His 
 disciples in the course of the paschal discourses 
 (John xvi. 8-11). We will confine ourselves 
 then to that passage, endeavouring to under- 
 stand its main teaching. 
 
 Let us first observe the subjects with which 
 the Spirit deals in His ministry in the world; 
 " He . . , will convict the world in respect 
 of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." 
 
 These are the fundamental things of human 
 consciousness, when the soul is spiritually awak- 
 ened. That awakening may come in a thou- 
 sand ways; it may come over and over again, 
 without producing any effect whatever upon 
 life. But whenever it comes, these are the mat- 
 ters of which the soul is conscious, sin, right- 
 eousness, judgment. 
 
 Sin is first a volitional spiritual act; and then 
 it is an experience resulting from the act. The 
 spiritual act is that of disobedience. The ex- 
 perience resulting is that of ruin. To say that 
 sin is disobedience implies two things. Of these 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 105 
 
 the first is that of the relation of God to man; 
 that He is Sovereign, and that His law is the 
 true standard of human life. The second is that 
 of man's relation to God; that he is capable of 
 obedience to the law of God, and consequently 
 that he is responsible. Sin fundamentally then 
 is the wilful act of disobedience on the part of 
 man, to the law of the Sovereign Lord to Whom 
 man owes allegiance. 
 
 The resulting experience of ruin is that of the 
 alienation of the soul from God. This issues 
 in suffering, and in paralysis, both individually 
 and socially. Man out of fellowship with God 
 has lost the secret of joy, and of power; and so 
 is unable to realize his life personally and rela- 
 tively. The soul of man spiritually awakened, 
 comes to this consciousness. 
 
 Righteousness is first a volitional spiritual atti- 
 tude ; and then it is an experience resulting from 
 that attitude. The spiritual attitude is that of 
 obedience. The experience resulting is that 
 of realization. To say that righteousness is 
 obedience, implies exactly the same things as 
 to say that sin is disobedience; those namely, 
 first of the Sovereignty of God, and secondly 
 of the capacity and responsibility of man. 
 Righteousness fundamentally then, is the will- 
 
io6 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 ing attitude of obedience on the part of man to 
 the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. 
 
 The resulting experience of realization is that 
 of the fellowship of the soul with God. This 
 issues in peace and joy, by the Holy Spirit's 
 enablement, both individually and socially. 
 Man in fellowship with God possesses the secret 
 of joy and of power; and so is able to realize his 
 life personally and relatively. The soul of man, 
 spiritually awakened, comes to this conscious- 
 ness. It is involved in that of sin. Sin is the 
 consciousness of failure. Righteousness is the 
 consciousness of the ideal. 
 
 Judgment is government, executive action, 
 administration on the part of God. It is that 
 activity whereby He realizes His purposes, es- 
 tablishes and maintains order. It marks there- 
 fore the centre of human responsibility. Right- 
 eousness in human life is right relationship with 
 that judgment. Sin is rebellion against it, which 
 nevertheless cannot escape from its activity. 
 Judgment then in the case of man is that activ- 
 ity of God, wherein He rewards the righteous, 
 and punishes the wicked. The soul of man 
 spiritually awakened comes to this conscious- 
 ness. It knows that judgment is active. 
 
 These then, the fundamental things of human 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 107 
 
 consciousness spiritually awakened, are the 
 things concerning which the Spirit of God has 
 a message, which message He delivers through 
 those called to be Evangelists. That message 
 is the Gospel. The Gospel is the Word of the 
 Cross. The Word of the Cross is infinitely 
 more than the story of the crucifixion. It is 
 first the story of the Word made flesh; the 
 presentation of the Person of Christ. It is then 
 the story of the work of Christ; which includes 
 the Cross, the resurrection, and the ascension. 
 It is finally the story of the claim of Christ; the 
 declaration of the appeal which the Word of 
 the Cross makes to all those who hear it. 
 
 The Gospel first presents the Person of 
 Christ. He is God manifest, in His character, 
 in His law, in His activity. He is also Man 
 unveiled, in His capacity, in His obedience, in 
 His realization. So also therefore He is the 
 One Whose presence in human history has 
 unmasked evil, as the opposite of all that is in 
 God, and the secret of human undoing. All 
 this is the first part of the Gospel, the light in 
 which man discovers the truth. 
 
 The heart of the Gospel is the story of the 
 work of Christ, and of how He brings sin, 
 righteousness, and judgment into relationship 
 
io8 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 with Himself. Returning to our passage we 
 find His declaration, to which we need to pay- 
 close attention. 
 
 " Of sin, because they believe not on Me." 
 In these words our Lord made His superlative 
 claim to perfect Saviourhood. By using them, 
 He claimed to have provided perfect salvation 
 for men. All the fact of sin He has dealt with. 
 He is able to forgive, to cleanse, to restore. Sin 
 now has a new meaning. It is the rejection of 
 the Saviour. This Saviour is God the Sovereign 
 Lord. To re^ject His grace then is the final 
 and irremediable sin against His government. 
 To yield to His grace is the central act of sur- 
 render to His government. It is the act that 
 introduces the soul to the attitude of right rela- 
 tionship. That is the first note of the good 
 news, which declares that " He died for our 
 sins." 
 
 " Of righteousness, because I go to the 
 Father; and ye behold Me no more." In these 
 words our Lord made His superlative claim to 
 absolute authority, and spiritual power. He 
 not only died for our sins, He rose for our 
 justification, and ascended to the right hand of 
 the Father to receive gifts for men. Men, no 
 longer beholding Him with the eyes of sense. 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST 109 
 
 may yet be brought into such Hving fellowship 
 with Him, that in them may be fulfilled the 
 ideal of righteousness. That is the second note 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 " Of judgment, because the prince of this 
 world hath been judged." In these words He 
 made His superlative claim to complete victory. 
 The Stronger than the strong has wrested the 
 usurped sceptre from the enemy; and hence- 
 forth He exercises His executive authority, 
 delivering those that are bound, and moving 
 ever triumphantly forward towards the consum- 
 mation, when He shall deliver up the perfected 
 Kingdom to His Father. This is the final and 
 triumphant note of the Gospel. 
 
 The Evangelist is called to declare that mes- 
 sage, to herald that good news; and then to 
 urge the claims of Christ. Those claims are 
 threefold. He asks for confidence, for loyalty, 
 for cooperation. Faith in Him is the condition 
 of salvation ; loyalty to Him the law of life; and 
 cooperation with Him the activity of His own. 
 
 Thus then is revealed the Gospel of the 
 Evangelist. It is the Word of God which pro- 
 claims His perfect provision in Christ for all 
 human need. The gift is still bestowed and 
 needed. 
 
no THE WORD AS THE 
 
 Ever and anon the Head of the Church has 
 sent forth some Evangehst whose message has 
 arrested the attention of the multitudes to such 
 an extent that nations have been moved to 
 their very depths. Such times have been v^on- 
 derful times. We necessarily long and pray 
 that they should be repeated. We need to be 
 careful however lest such longing and prayer 
 should make us neglectful of the work of 
 perpetual evangelization, for the doing of which 
 gifts are constantly bestowed. When God 
 sends Francis, or Wesley, or Whitefield, or 
 Jonathan Edwards, or Finney, or Moody and 
 Sankey, let us rejoice, and cooperate with them ; 
 but in days when no conspicuous and outstand- 
 ing personality is with us, let us recognize and 
 help gladly all those, oftentimes simple and 
 obscure souls, who know the joy of the Gospel, 
 and are specially qualified to proclaim it in the 
 ordinary ways of their more regular and quiet 
 life. And moreover, let every man or woman 
 who is possessed by this joy and power for 
 evangelism exercise their gifts constantly and 
 restfully. 
 
 If I may venture to quote a modern illustra- 
 tion of real success in evangelistic work, I shall 
 refer to a man whom I have known intimately 
 
GOSPEL OF THE EVANGELIST iii 
 
 for over a generation. That man is Gipsy 
 Smith. He is one of God's great gifts to His 
 Church. I refer to him only to say that, under 
 God, his success has been largely due to the 
 fact that he has given himself wholly to evan- 
 gelism. He has never attempted the work of 
 Apostle, of Prophet, of Pastor and Teacher. 
 But he has given himself with all devotion of 
 mind and heart and will, both to the work of 
 understanding the Gospel, and proclaiming it. 
 His widespread popularity is accidental. He 
 has never sought it. Had he done so he would 
 not have had such conspicuous success. 
 
 Not every Evangelist is called to paths of 
 service which result in popularity. Every 
 Evangelist is called to devotion to his message 
 and to its proclamation. Let the Evangelist 
 magnify his office, as he glories in his Gospel. 
 
THE WORD AS THE WISDOM OF THE 
 PASTOR AND TEACHER 
 
 IN our preliminary chapter on " Ministry " 
 we described Pastors and Teachers as: 
 Those zvho receive the obedient, and shepherd 
 and instruct them. 
 
 That definition properly links their work with 
 that of Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists. 
 The apostolic teaching is that which the Pastor 
 and Teacher interprets and applies to those who 
 are brought into the fellowship of the Church. 
 The work of the Prophet will inevitably result 
 in the turning of those who hear and are influ- 
 enced by the message, to the Church for in- 
 struction. To these the Pastor and Teacher 
 will minister, as he sets forth the way of life 
 more perfectly. This statement involves the 
 truth that every living Church should be so or- 
 ganized that provision is made for those who 
 are inquiring. Here the far-seeing wisdom of 
 
 112 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 113 
 
 John Wesley was manifested, in that his Society 
 classes were formed for those who were so in- 
 quiring, as well as for those who had come to 
 definite and conscious relationship with Christ. 
 The work of the Evangelist, which is specifically 
 that of proclaiming the Evangel, and bringing 
 men into definite relationship with Christ, de- 
 mands most especially the work of the Pastor 
 and Teacher. Those who are new-born need 
 care; and the work of shepherding and teaching 
 them is that of the Pastor and Teacher. Thus 
 we see that there is no conflict in the nature of 
 the case between the different phases of this 
 ministry of the Word. They are complemen- 
 tary. None is complete without the rest. Each 
 is completed in the work of all. 
 
 This particular phase of the Ministry of the 
 Word is defined by two words. Pastors and 
 Teachers. These terms are mutually interpre- 
 tive as we shall see. This is the only occasion 
 of the occurrence of the particular word Pastor 
 in the New Testament, either in the Authorized 
 or Revised Versions. Elsewhere the Greek 
 word is translated Shepherd. It has however 
 passed into the currency of Church terms, and 
 is valuable and suggestive. We shall follow the 
 method of previous studies, and consider in 
 
114 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 turn; The Pastoral Gift; Function; and Wis- 
 dom. 
 
 In considering the Gift we turn first to the 
 words themselves, that we may gather their 
 first and simple suggestions. 
 
 Our word Pastor comes to us from the Latin 
 pastorem, which means shepherd, and is derived 
 from the verb to feed. The Greek word in the 
 text, of which Pastor is a translation, is the 
 word poimht, which is the word for shepherd, 
 but the affinity of which is uncertain. It has 
 been suggested by some that it is akin to pdia^ 
 herbage, grass; * and by others that it is derived 
 from a root meaning to protect. Seeing that 
 this question of affinity is uncertain, we may 
 treat the word as a primitive one, and so employ 
 it, according to its constant use, as referring to 
 a shepherd, whose work it ever is to find pastur- 
 age and to protect. 
 
 The word Teacher is a translation of the 
 Greek word didaskalos, which is clearly derived 
 from didaskb, which is the causative form of the 
 verb dady to learn. Hence our word Teacher 
 conveys the exact sense. 
 
 ' Some render pota in James iv. 14, " Grass is your life." 
 Most agree however that poia there is the feminine of 
 poios, of what nature? 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 115 
 
 The use of the two words here to describe 
 the one office is, as we have already said, of the 
 nature of interpretation. On the purely natural 
 level the word Pastor has to do with sheep, and 
 the thoughts of feeding and protection are suf- 
 ficient. When it is used of the flock of the 
 Shepherd of souls, it needs the explanation of 
 the word Teacher, which at once reveals the 
 method of feeding and protection. 
 
 In our Lord's use of the figure of the Shep- 
 herd as apphed to Himself (see John x.), the 
 idea is radiantly set forth. The shepherd knows 
 his sheep, and is known of the sheep. The 
 shepherd takes oversight of his sheep; that is, 
 he exercises rule over them, leading them out 
 and in. The shepherd finds pasture for his 
 sheep. The sihepherd defends the sheep ; if 
 necessary, laying down his life that they may 
 be preserved from the ravening wolf. 
 
 In our Lord's work as a Teacher we have the 
 final interpretation of the method. It is that of 
 imparting knowledge, carefully, patiently, pro- 
 gressively, arid purposefully. 
 
 Thus the thought suggested by the double 
 description is that of shepherding through 
 teaching, and of teaching as a shepherd. The 
 work of the shepherd is to be done by teaching. 
 
ii6 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 The sheep are to be made to know the Chief 
 Shepherd, to submit to His rule, to shelter 
 within His defence, to avail themselves of His 
 pasture, by careful, patient, progressive, pur- 
 poseful instruction. The measure in which this 
 can be done is the measure in which the Pastor 
 is a Teacher, — himself taught in these very 
 ways, and submitted to the teaching. The 
 work of teaching is to be done in the spirit of 
 the Shepherd. There must be concern to know 
 the sheep, to exercise a true rule over them, to 
 defend them at all costs, to provide their meat in 
 due season. The measure in which this can be 
 done is the measure in which the Teacher is a 
 Pastor, so intimately in fellowship with the 
 Shepherd heart of the Lord, as to be able to feed 
 the lambs, to shepherd the sheep, to feed the 
 sheep. 
 
 The place of the idea in the New Testament 
 is assured. That of the Shepherd, as the figure 
 of the true nature of rule and authority, is an 
 Old Testament idea, but it is carried over into 
 the New; and it is there that it finds its final 
 interpretation in the Person and work of Christ 
 Himself. Paul's employment of the word 
 *' Pastors " here is the only occasion where the 
 word Shepherd is fig^uratively made use of in 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 117 
 
 the New Testament for any other than Christ. 
 Luke employs the word four times in the early 
 part of his Gospel; not in a figurative sense, but 
 definitely, of those who were keeping watch 
 over their flocks by night in the neighbourhood 
 of Bethlehem. Matthew, Mark, and John use it 
 only of Christ. In describing the attitude of 
 the Lord towards the multitudes which He saw 
 as He went from place to place, teaching, 
 preaching, healing, Matthew says that " He was 
 moved with compassion for them, because they 
 were distressed and scattered as sheep not hav- 
 ing a shepherd." Clearly involved in that state- 
 ment is the fact that He was the very Shepherd 
 they needed. Our Lord according to John 
 claimed to be "the Good Shepherd." The 
 writer of the letter to the Hebrews called Him 
 " that Great Shepherd." Peter wrote of Him 
 as " the Chief Shepherd." All this makes the 
 word " Pastors," as describing an office in the 
 ministry of the Word, the more suggestive and 
 sacred. 
 
 The word Teacher is also constantly em- 
 ployed in the Gospels of Christ Himself; and in 
 the days of His flesh it was used of Him by 
 foe and friend. His work of teaching is per- 
 petually referred to, and in the passage in 
 
ii8 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 Matthew previously quoted, it is stated that it 
 was as He went about teaching, that His com- 
 passion was moved for the multitudes. The 
 truths He uttered were persistently described 
 as His Teaching. When we come into the 
 Epistles we find this idea of teaching is con- 
 stantly present in any consideration of the work 
 of the ministry. In the passage referred to in 
 an earlier consideration, where Paul was dealing 
 with the spiritual unity and organization of the 
 Christian Church, he used the word "Teachers" 
 alone, to describe the third order of those whom 
 God has set in the Church to fulfil its ministry. 
 It is of the utmost importance as we pass on to 
 consider the function of Pastors and Teachers, 
 that these two ideas should very clearly remain 
 with us, as revealing the method and manner of 
 the work. It is that of the oversight and in- 
 struction of the members of the flock. 
 
 In considering the pastoral function, we may 
 change the figure and employ a common one in 
 the New Testament wriiings, that of edification. 
 The work of Pastors and Teachers is that of edi- 
 fication. In this word there are special values in 
 the interpretation of this subject. It comes to us 
 from the Latin words, aedis, a building, and 
 ficdre, to make. Thus it exactly coincides with 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 119 
 
 the Greek word, which is composed of two 
 words, oikos, a house, and demo, to build. The 
 idea of edification then is simply that of con- 
 structing a building, with appropriate materials. 
 This larger conception is always included. 
 Whatever is done with the material, is done in 
 the interest of the whole building. In the house 
 of God, every individual must be perfected in 
 order to the perfecting of the whole. Those 
 attracted by the Prophet, or enrolled by the 
 EvangeUst, constitute raw material. The work 
 of the Pastor and Teacher is that of building 
 them up into the Head, which is Christ, and so 
 into the Body, which is the Church. Granted a 
 group of persons who have heard, believed, 
 obeyed, been born again ; by the act of the Holy 
 Spirit they are already members of the Christ, 
 and so members of the Church ; but their life is 
 immature, their service is imperfect. To fall 
 back upon the figure already used, they consti- 
 tute raw material, the very material needed, but 
 in the rough. They need much labour to fit 
 them into their true place and function in the 
 house of God. This is the work of the Pastor 
 and Teacher. That work may at once be de- 
 scribed as that of shepherding and teaching 
 them, so that they come into complete subordi- 
 
I20 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 nation to Christ, and thus into perfect coordina- 
 tion in the Church. 
 
 This work is so supremely important that we ' 
 will take time to look at it carefully in both 
 these aspects, remembering their vital connec- 
 tion. Neither the one nor the other can be 
 done separately. The perfecting of the indi- 
 vidual is in order to the perfecting of the 
 Church. The perfecting of the Church can only 
 be accomplished by the perfecting of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 The subordination of the individual soul to 
 Christ demands three things; Christ must be 
 apprehended intelligently, adored emotionally, 
 and obeyed volitionally ; and, as we shall see, 
 that is the true order. 
 
 When considering the work of the Evangelist 
 we spoke of the content of the Gospel as re- 
 vealed in Christ's words in the paschal dis- 
 courses. The Spirit's message is concerned 
 with Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment, as 
 these things, — fundamental in the consciousness 
 of the spiritually awakened soul, — are dealt with 
 by Christ. The vision of tire Lord to which the 
 soul yields itself in faith may be that of His 
 sufficiency in all these matters. Or it may be 
 that one aspect only is apprehended. It may 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 121 
 
 be that He is first seen as the Saviour from sin. 
 It may be that His power to realize righteous- 
 ness attracts the soul. It may be that the glory 
 of His government makes its appeal to the 
 heart. There is one Lord ; and whatever aspect 
 of Truth appeals to the soul, there is one faith, 
 that of confidence in Him; which faith leads to 
 the one baptism in the Spirit, whereby the soul 
 receives the gift of life. 
 
 Now in every vision of Christ all Truth is im- 
 plicated; but the implicates are never immedi- 
 ately seen. This is a progressive experience, 
 and results from shepherding and teaching. In 
 order to perfect subordination, this intellectual 
 apprehension is necessary ; and to lead the new- 
 born to it, is the sacred work of the Pastor and 
 Teacher. Without staying to dwell upon it 
 now, we may remind ourselves of the constantly 
 expressed desire of Paul, especially in his later 
 letters, that the children of God should have full 
 knowledge of Christ; and also of Peter's injunc- 
 tion that they should grow in the grace and 
 knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Such growing intellectual apprehension al- 
 ways results in deepening emotional adoration. 
 The more perfectly He is known, the more 
 
122 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 amazed is the soul at the surpassing wonders of 
 His grace and glory; and the deeper becomes its 
 love, the more complete its adoration. If it be 
 true as we sometimes sing that — 
 
 " Some have lost the love they had," 
 
 then it is because they have for some reason 
 failed to " follow on to know the Lord." 
 
 Such deepened love inevitably becomes the 
 inspiration of more complete surrender to the 
 will of the Lord, more perfect loyalty to all His 
 service. " If a man love Me, he will keep My 
 word," said the Lord Himself. 
 
 Thus it is evident that in order to the com- 
 plete subordination of individual believers to the 
 Lord, the matter of first importance is that they 
 should know Him. To make Him known to 
 them is the supreme business of the Teacher, 
 and he must do his work as a Shepherd, know- 
 ing, ruling, defending, feeding. The whole con- 
 ception of this individual responsibility is per- 
 fectly set forth by Paul in the words, " Admon- 
 ishing every man, and teaching every man in all 
 wisdom, that we may present every man perfect 
 in Christ" (Col. i. 28). 
 
 These words breathe the true spirit and 
 passion of the Pastor and Teacher. He is pre- 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 123 
 
 eminently concerned about every individual 
 soul. Observe the thrice repeated ** every 
 man." The Pastor-Teacher has far more to do 
 than to preach to his congregation. That un- 
 questionably he will do, and his preaching will 
 be of the teaching order. But " every man " is 
 never reached in general teaching. The Pastor- 
 Teacher must in the necessity of the case ac- 
 quaint himself with the individuals which make 
 up his flock. He must get to know them per- 
 sonally. Every man has his own idiosyncrasy, 
 peculiarity, problem, temptation, capacity. 
 Therefore if every man is to be presented per- 
 fect in Christ, every man must be considered, 
 prayed for in the light of that consideration, ad- 
 monished and taught in wisdom in such ways 
 as to meet his own particular need. 
 
 All this throws very clear and searching light 
 on this subject of pastoral work, correcting 
 much of modern irrelevancy therein. The true 
 Pastor will do much more than make social calls 
 upon members of his flock. That he will do. 
 Indeed he will seek to mix with his people in all 
 the interests of their lives, that he may know 
 them, not inquisitorially, but sympathetically. 
 But he will do all this, never forgetting that his 
 particular work is that of perfecting them in 
 
124 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 Christ, by admonishing them where necessary, 
 and always by teaching them. 
 
 But again. All this must be done with a view 
 to the bringing of the individual into coordina- 
 tion with the Church. It may be said that the 
 work of perfecting every man in Christ is in it- 
 self that of bringing every man into coordina- 
 tion with the Church. While that is true, it is 
 nevertheless of the utmost importance that this 
 larger purpose should always be kept in mind. 
 In this very connection Paul urged, as the first 
 duty in a walk worthy of vocation, that we 
 should give " diligence to keep the unity of the 
 Spirit" (Eph. iv. 3).' This idea runs through 
 his teaching on ministry in this epistle. The 
 aim of ministry is that of " the building up of 
 the body of Christ " (iv. 12) ; the purpose of all 
 articulation within the body is that of " the in- 
 crease of the body unto the building up of itself 
 in love " (iv. 16) ; and the goal of everything is 
 " the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ " (iv. 13) ; which can only be realized in 
 the whole Church. It is only as this is seen 
 that the real importance of individual develop- 
 
 * The word he employed, and which we have translated 
 keep, was ^reb, to observe, that is, to keep in view; and not^ 
 phulasso, to guard. 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 125 
 
 ment will be realized. The Pastor and Teacher 
 then has to reveal to the souls under his care 
 the purpose for which the Church exists; the 
 consequent importance of her being a perfect or- 
 ganism; and the necessity therefore for the 
 completeness of the individual member. In 
 proportion as this is apprehended, the glory of 
 the trivial, the responsibility of the small, the 
 importance of the obscure, will be realized. 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing in which the Church 
 has failed more conspicuously than in this reali- 
 zation of spiritual unity. It has sometimes 
 been entirely lost sight of; and at others has 
 been falsely apprehended. Yet it is at once the 
 supreme glory of the Church, and its secret 
 of power in its mission, that it is an organism, 
 in which no member can fail, without in the 
 measure of that failure wronging the Body, and 
 preventing the true fulfilment of its function in 
 the world. As one cog out of order in complex 
 machinery stops the perfect action of the 
 whole; as one link weak in a chain renders the 
 whole chain weak; as one unguarded place in a 
 fortress makes the whole citadel unsafe ; so one 
 member of the Church, failing to realize in vi- 
 sion and virtue its responsibility to the Church, 
 halts iht Churcji in its progress, The cog is for 
 
126 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 the machine, and its final perfection is that of its 
 relation to the whole. So with the link in the 
 chain. So with every part of the fortress. So 
 also each member of the Church, in life and 
 service, is for the Church. The work of the 
 Pastor then, is ever that of coordinating every 
 several member within the whole body of be- 
 lievers. 
 
 In all the ministry of the Word there is no 
 more important work than that of the Pastor 
 and Teacher, and none needing more consecra- 
 tion, zeal, and patience. To fail here is to make 
 abortive all apostolic, prophetic, and evangel- 
 istic labour. It is with that conviction that we 
 have taken longer in dealing with both gift and 
 function than in the previous considerations; 
 and also because in the natural order of things, 
 in the history of the Church more have received 
 this gift than either of the others. 
 
 The title selected for this Lecture is that of 
 the Word as the Wisdom of the Pastor and 
 Teacher. Our reason for employing the word 
 Wisdom in this connection is that of the apos- 
 tolic use of it; especially Paul's teaching con- 
 cerning it, in his first Corinthian letter; and his 
 declaration already quoted from the Colossian 
 letter that the responsibility, of the ministry is 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 127 
 
 that of '* admonishing every man, and teaching 
 every man in all v^isdom." The word sophia 
 was perfectly familiar in the apostolic age, and 
 the people who read these writings had a very 
 clear conception of what was intended by the 
 term. Aristotle defined sdphia as " mental ex- 
 cellence in its highest and fullest sense." Wis- 
 dom is broad and full intelligence; not as 
 capacity merely, but as knowledge. Wisdom is 
 in reahty the sum total of Truth. It was in this 
 sense that Paul used the word when writing to 
 the Corinthians he said ; " We speak wisdom 
 among the perfect, yet a wisdom not of this 
 age, nor of the rulers of this age which are com- 
 ing to nought, but we speak God's wisdom in a 
 mystery" (1 Cor. ii. 6). To this wisdom then 
 he referred when he spoke of " Teaching every 
 man in all wisdom." Immediately following 
 this declaration we have a clear definition of this 
 wisdom in which every man is to be taught in 
 the words ; " The mystery of God, even Christ, 
 in Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge hidden " (Col. ii. 2, 3) ; and again 
 later in his injunction, " Let the Word of Christ 
 dwell in you richly in all wisdom " (Col. iii. 16). 
 The wisdom in which the Pastor and Teacher 
 is to instruct the flock of God is that of the 
 
128 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 Word of Christ; for in Him are all the treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge. To revert again to 
 a phrase which was under consideration in a 
 previous study, *' As the truth is in Jesus "; the 
 wisdom of the Christian Church is the sum total 
 of Truth as that Truth has had its exposition in 
 Jesus. The practical values of that wisdom are 
 all suggested in the familiar words, ** Christ 
 Jesus, Who was made unto us Wisdom from 
 God ; both righteousness, and sanctification and 
 redemption" (1 Cor. i. 30). I have intention- 
 ally adopted the marginal reading of the Re- 
 vised Version here because I hold that '' Wis- 
 dom from God " is the inclusive phrase, of 
 which the practical analysis is given in the 
 words " both righteousness and sanctification 
 and redemption." Righteousness is that which 
 is imputed to man when sin is put away; sancti- 
 fication is the impartation to man of the life 
 whereby righteousness is made the victorious 
 principle of conduct; redemption is the final im- 
 planting of the likeness of Christ at His coming, 
 whereby the judgment or government of Christ 
 will come to its full and perfect victory. This 
 then is the Wisdom which the Pastor and 
 Teacher must impart; and these are the pur- 
 poses for which it is to be taught. 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 129 
 
 That Wisdom is contained in the Sacred 
 Writings, for in these alone we have the litera- 
 ture of the Christ. This is a most important 
 fact. There is no Christian literature which 
 is not the outcome of these New Testament 
 writings, because only in these have we any 
 history of Christ. By reference, and allusion. 
 He is placed in human histories; but we know 
 nothing from them of Who He was, of what 
 He taught, of what He did. For all these we 
 must come to the New Testament. To deny its 
 accuracy is to be left without any certain knowl- 
 edge concerning Him. All the spiritual and 
 moral triumphs of two thousand years have been 
 won by belief in the Christ, as He is presented 
 in these writings. This matter however needs 
 no argument here. We have the Truth about 
 Christ in these writings in germ and in norm. 
 It is there in germ. That is to say, that for its 
 full understanding, there has been necessary the 
 progressive interpretation of the Holy Spirit. 
 The meaning of Christ, of His Person, of His 
 teaching, of His work, was far profounder and 
 more far reaching than the men who wrote the 
 records knew. Indeed even to-day, " all the 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge " hidden in 
 Him have not been discovered. There is cer- 
 
I30 THE WORD AS THE 
 
 tainly yet much more light and truth to break 
 forth from " the Word of God." 
 
 But it must also be remembered that in these 
 writings we have the truth concerning Christ in 
 norm. That is to say that interpretation must 
 be, in the nature of the case, exposition of the 
 statements themselves; and not that of addition 
 or denial. Every action of the mind in its at- 
 tempt to grasp the meaning of the revelation 
 must be guarded and corrected by the revela- 
 tion. Directly an interpretation makes neces- 
 sary the denial of a statement of the writings, it 
 is thereby proved to be false. These things be- 
 ing granted, we say that the wisdom of the 
 Pastor and Teacher is the Word of God in its 
 totality, as it is contained in the Scriptures of 
 Truth. It is his business, in the spirit of the 
 true Shepherd, to understand, to explain, to 
 apply, to enforce that Truth. 
 
 Thus as we conclude our consideration of the 
 primitive Ideal we may draw attention to the 
 fact that in every exercise of the Ministry of the 
 Word, whether apostolic, prophetic, evangelis- 
 tic, or pastoral, the fourth phase of the Word is 
 realized. 
 
 It is that of the interpretation of the Word, 
 first in the preparation of the Records ; and then 
 
WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 131 
 
 in their progressive unfolding; and the insistent 
 urging of their claims ; so that in and through 
 Christ, the Eternal Word, life may be brought 
 into harmony with the will of God. For this, 
 as surely as for all revelation, the Spirit of God 
 Who alone knoweth the deep things of God, is 
 needed; and He is the ever-willing Guide of all 
 who, called to the Work, yield themselves to 
 His illumination. 
 
 When that is said, it must be added, that 
 the Spirit of God in interpretation, only acts 
 through the painstaking toil of those who are 
 called upon to interpret the Wisdom of perfec- 
 tion to those who are to be presented *' perfect 
 in Christ.** Ruskin*s words should be carefully 
 considered by all called to this holy service; 
 " The Word of God . . . cannot be made a 
 present of to anybody in morocco binding." Or 
 again, what he wrote of ** man's best wisdom," 
 is more than ever true of this Wisdom ; " When 
 you come to a good book you must ask yourself 
 — Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner 
 would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good 
 order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves 
 well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and 
 my temper? " 
 
 When the Pastor and Teacher treats his 
 
132 WISDOM OF PASTOR AND TEACHER 
 
 work in that spirit of complete dedication, then 
 the Holy Spirit of consecration will work with 
 him, and in his case it will never be true that — 
 
 " The hungry sheep look up — and are not fed." ' 
 
Ill 
 
 The Modern Application 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 SO far our study has been Biblical in a very 
 narrow sense. This use of the word nar- 
 row is not intended as an apology for 
 what we have done. It is rather an acknowl- 
 edgment. The narrowness has been intentional 
 and vital. In this matter, as in all others, 
 " Narrow is the gate, and straitened is the way, 
 that leadeth unto life." 
 
 We have looked at the beginnings of the 
 Christian ministry of the Word; the times of 
 Jesus, the times of the Apostles. We have 
 been dealing with the primitive Ideal. Some- 
 times there is a suspicion of contempt in our 
 use of the word primitive. There is no justifi- 
 cation for any such contempt. The word sim- 
 ply means first or earliest of its kind. Thus we 
 have been concerned with the beginnings, the 
 origins. We have been at the sources of the 
 great rivers. 
 
 135 
 
136 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 George Borrow in his Wild Wales tells how 
 when he had ascended Plynlimmon to see the 
 sources of the rivers Severn, Wye, and Rheidol, 
 he said to his guide; " It is not only necessary 
 for me to see the sources of the rivers, but to 
 drink of them, in order that in after times I may 
 be able to harangue about them with a tone 
 of confidence, and authority." This quaint con- 
 ceit of the erratic genius has very definite value 
 when applied to our studies. We have — as I 
 said — been at the sources of the great rivers, 
 and I trust we have been doing more than look 
 at them; we have been drinking of them. 
 
 The springs among the glorious hills of 
 Wales, however, are only known in all their 
 glory, beauty, and strength in the resulting 
 rivers; and ultimately in their return to that 
 great sea, from which they first came through 
 the ministry of clouds and mists, all sun-created. 
 So also for us, the interpretation of these first 
 things must finally be sought in all the growth 
 and glory of the resulting rivers of grace and 
 power. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance therefore that 
 we should remember the law of development. 
 We have seen it already operating in the earliest 
 times, as set forth in the apostolic references to 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 137 
 
 ministry. Nothing is more patent in the book 
 of the Acts than its revelation of the operation 
 of this law in the Christian enterprise. In that 
 book we clearly see that the early Church was 
 entirely unhampered by anything in the nature 
 of stereotyped policy or method. Where the 
 Spirit of the Lord is, there is Uberty ; and among 
 other things, that certainly means liberty to 
 adapt methods to changing conditions. 
 
 It is equally important however that we re- 
 member that development is not destruction. 
 Rightly apprehended, evolution always means 
 involution. That is not true evoluiion which 
 destroys the original intention, or subverts its 
 order. It is therefore most pertinent that we 
 inquire how far the primitive Ideals are prac- 
 ticable in modern conditions. 
 
 In dealing with this subject I propose to make 
 two statements, following each by a question. 
 The first of these is that the conditions are 
 changed. The second is that the conditions are 
 unchanged. The question in each case may be 
 expressed in the use of the one word; — How? 
 Along these lines of consideration and inquiry, 
 we may come to an understanding of our own 
 times, and of our own responsibility. 
 
 In considering the subject of changed con- 
 
138 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 ditions we are of course confined to what we 
 usually describe as civilization. There are still 
 regions where the conditions are unchanged, 
 places where civilization is no more advanced 
 than was that in the midst of which Christ and 
 His Apostles did their work; as there are also 
 still places in which man is living in savagery 
 and darkness. Our concern is with the condi- 
 tions of modern civilization, as it has advanced 
 from that of the times of Christ and the first 
 preachers of the Word. We shall confine our 
 inquiry to three matters, those namely of Phi- 
 losophy, Science, and Government. It goes 
 without saying that we can only glance at these 
 matters in the most general way. 
 
 The study of Philosophy may be said to have 
 begun nearly six centuries before Christ. Plato 
 declared that Philosophy was the child of won- 
 der, and that is at once a fair definition, and a 
 perfect vindication. Men began to be discon- 
 tented with traditional and mythical explana- 
 tions of the nature and origin of things, and 
 sought to discover the truth. It is not inaccu- 
 rate to say that Philosophy was from the begin- 
 ning an attempt to answer the very question 
 which Pilate asked of Jesus, " What is truth? '* 
 It is not necessary for us, here and now, to at- 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 139 
 
 tempt to trace the history of the efforts made to 
 answer that inquiry, nor indeed would it be pos- 
 sible. It is a history full of fascination, the 
 story of the most wonderful activity of man, far 
 surpassing all his material inventions, and in- 
 deed, the inspiration of them in their higher 
 achievements. 
 
 Beginning with questions growing out of the 
 vision of things that appear, that is the physical 
 and manifest facts, it proceeded to questions 
 concerning the inward mysteries, the things 
 which do not appear, save as material things are 
 their expression. The great period of creative 
 thinking ended with the death of Aristotle, 
 about three hundred years before Christ. This 
 was followed by nearly two thousand years of 
 comparative barrenness. The first eight cen- 
 turies of this period are usually described as the 
 period of Greek-Roman Philosophy. It was far 
 more practical than speculative. The chief 
 movements were those of Epicureanism, Stoi- 
 cism, and Neo-Platonism ; of which the first two 
 were mainly ethical, while the last was more 
 distinctly religious. 
 
 Before Christ came, four main philosophies of 
 life had been produced, the Platonic, the Aris- 
 totelian, the Epicurean, and the Stoic. Of 
 
I40 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 these the first resulted in an ascetic ideal of 
 ethics; the second, subordinating the individual, 
 aimed at social realization; the third became 
 selfish in its pursuit of personal pleasure to the 
 forgetfulness of all relative obligations; while 
 the last demanded a self-control that vi^as in it- 
 self selfish, and became cold and callous. 
 
 In a thought atmosphere largely influenced 
 by these ideas, Jesus and His Apostles exercised 
 their ministry; only it must be remembered that 
 it was a dead and barren season even in these 
 matters. When Paul preached at Athens, he 
 wsiS not speaking to living and original thinkers, 
 but to men v^ho v^ere discussing v^ords, and the 
 theories of dead thinkers. It v^^as a time when 
 the dead hand of a great past was resting upon 
 human thought, and Philosophy was decadent 
 indeed. 
 
 Science in our modern sense of the word 
 was not then born. It was a department of 
 Philosophy. Bacon was the father of modern 
 Science, by his introduction of the inductive 
 method, the application of the faculty of logic 
 to the consideration of facts. In the days of 
 Jesus and His Apostles, the Hebrews believed 
 with all simplicity the revelation of their Scrip- 
 tures concerning the relation of the world to 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 141 
 
 God, interpreting that revelation with more or 
 less of accuracy, in the light of the thinking of 
 the age in which they lived. That thinking was 
 largely nebulous, and certainly far from accu- 
 rate, as all modern investigation has proved. 
 The conception of the universe was narrow, and 
 the understanding of the earth, by comparison 
 with that of to-day, childish and ignorant. 
 
 As to Government, it is sufficient to say that 
 Christ lived during the period of the Pax 
 Romana, the peace established among nations 
 under the rule of Rome. In other words it was 
 the time when the known world was bruised and 
 beaten into quietness and submission, under the 
 military despotism which had usurped all gov- 
 ernment, and claimed the authority of Deity for 
 its Imperators. It was the period when human- 
 ity was ground under the relentless and iron 
 heel of brute force. It had no true liberty. In 
 its chains, it made roads, conducted commercial 
 enterprises, and all unknowingly to itself, pre- 
 pared for the new age which was about to dawn. 
 It was nevertheless a period of utmost cruelty, 
 in which the vast majority of human beings 
 were in actual slavery, and those supposed to be 
 ruling, were in turn coerced by those above 
 them, until the Emperor was reached, and he 
 
142 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 lived in perpetual terror of the assassin's dag- 
 ger, or the intriguer's poison. It was the day 
 of triumphant despotism, and of incipient revo- 
 lution. 
 
 Philosophy was in a state of futile discussion 
 of the great thinking of the past, without a ray 
 of new light, or a breath of true inspiration. 
 Science lay inchoate in the womb of this mori- 
 bund Philosophy, satisfied for the moment with 
 inaccurate guessing upon the basis of imperfect 
 thinking. Government had wrought itself out 
 in utter godlessness to a cruel and destructive 
 despotism. 
 
 Under these conditions, there went forth into 
 the world, the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, 
 and Pastors and Teachers of the Christian 
 Church. Their methods we have considered; 
 and the content of their message ; the Apostles 
 declared the Word, as Truth is in Jesus; the 
 Prophets were burdened with the Word of God ; 
 the Evangelists heralded the great Evangel; the 
 Pastors and Teachers gathered the souls won 
 from the prevailing darkness and death, and 
 shepherded and instructed them in the Wisdom 
 of God. With what speedy and far reaching 
 victory they prosecuted their ministry we know. 
 But the conditions are marvellously changed; 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 143 
 
 more largely as the result of their work than 
 we sometimes recognize. Let us consider the 
 change. 
 
 First as to Philosophy. Dr. Elias Compton, 
 Professor of Philosophy in Wooster College, 
 has said that '* Apart from Christ, the western 
 world has brought forth no other great Phi- 
 losophy of life than the four — the Platonic, the 
 Aristotelian, the Epicurean, and the Stoic. The 
 modern systems are variants of these, with 
 graftings from Christianity." This is a daring 
 statement, but there is no doubt whatever that 
 it is literally true. Any careful student of these 
 philosophies of the past will discover how all 
 that was excellent in them is included within 
 the scope of Christian Truth, purged from alloy, 
 and welded into the complete whole, of which 
 Christ was in His personality the Incarnation, 
 and in His ethic the Exponent. The long bar- 
 ren period in human Philosophy continued from 
 the death of Aristotle in 322 B. C. to the time of 
 Bacon and Descartes in the seventeenth century 
 of the Christian era. It was not wholly barren, 
 for Christian teaching was at work, and prepar- 
 ing for the modern period of activity which be- 
 gan three hundred years ago. After the strictly 
 apostolic period came the patristic, with its dis- 
 
144 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 cussion of the apostolic. This was followed by 
 that of the scholastic, which for a thousand 
 years was active. 
 
 Then came the period when Bacon initiated 
 the era of Science; and, under Descartes, Phi- 
 losophy was born again, and entered upon its 
 second period of activity. The march of phil- 
 osophic thought during these three hundred 
 years may be indicated by the names of those 
 men whose philosophies have contributed some- 
 thing to the sum total of human intelligence, 
 and then passed, as others have succeeded them 
 with yet more light. Descartes, Hobbes, Spi- 
 noza, and Leibnitz led the way, as pure rational- 
 ists, declining to believe anything but those 
 things which they considered axiomatic, that is, 
 which could not be called in question. Then 
 came the period of the Empiricists, Locke, 
 Berkeley, Hume, declining to receive anything 
 as true that did not find ratification in known 
 experience. Closely allied with these was Kant 
 the critic, yet his influence created a period in 
 itself, by his insistence on pure, or a priori 
 truths, and finally on the corner-stone of moral 
 reason, conscience. Then followed the great 
 period of German idealism, of which the ex- 
 ponents were Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 145 
 
 and the last and greatest, Hegel. Comte fol- 
 lowed Hegel with Positivism, declaring that 
 knowledge can only be of facts and their inter- 
 relations, thus swinging back towards the em- 
 piricism of Hume. Lotze took thinking back 
 into the realm of idealism, as he declared that at 
 last the universe must be interpreted in the 
 terms of the spiritual. Most recently we have 
 had the Pragmatic Philosophy of James and 
 Dewey, which declares that the only way to 
 know is to test by experience. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that since the days of 
 Christ and His Apostles, and, as we have 
 claimed, largely under their influence, directly 
 or indirectly, Philosophy has gone far, but it 
 has arrived at no final findings. It is still in a 
 state of flux. 
 
 As to Science, we need only say that, during 
 the three hundred years in which it has really 
 been a separate section of human thought, it has 
 made marvellous strides, and given to men the 
 consciousness of a far more wonderful and much 
 vaster universe. 
 
 Science and Philosophy for a generation have 
 been enormously under the influence of the evo- 
 lutionary theory, which has been applied back- 
 ward to the beginnings of things, and forward to 
 
146 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 the inclusion of the ultimate realization of des- 
 tiny. That there is an evolutionary process at 
 work in the universe is universally admitted. 
 That it accounts for everything is not only open 
 to grave doubt, it is explicitly denied by Divine 
 revelation. Nevertheless, modern conditions 
 are dominated to a large extent by the theory. 
 
 When we come to Government we find an 
 equally remarkable change in conditions. Not- 
 withstanding the backward plunge of the last 
 generation, culminating in the tragedy of the 
 world war, to the attempt to master the world 
 by brute force, we realize how far men have 
 travelled towards the realization of the suprem- 
 acy of the authority of ideas, and these of the 
 highest, — Truth, Justice, Compassion. More- 
 over, to-day men are realizing the importance 
 of freedom for all, rather than for the few ; with 
 its inevitable corollary of necessary bondage to 
 the principles of Truth, Justice, and Compas- 
 sion for all, in order to the freedom of all. It is 
 well to remind ourselves that these higher 
 things have been quite as clearly manifest in 
 this world war as have been the lower. It is for 
 these that millions went forth to suffer, and 
 multitudes of them to die. Here the Christian 
 influence has been direct and immediate. All 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 147 
 
 these higher conceptions are the direct outcome 
 of Christian Truth. 
 
 So far as the attempt to impose brute force 
 upon humanity as the basis of government can 
 be defeated by force of arms, it has been de- 
 feated upon these fields of blood and agony. 
 That which succeeded two millenniums ago 
 under Rome, has been crushed in its most re- 
 cent adventure. The victory has been gained 
 as the result of the power of the conceptions 
 which came into human thinking with the com- 
 ing of the Incarnate Word, and were proclaimed 
 by the first ministers of that Word. 
 
 The victory is not yet complete. The battle 
 passes finally into the realm of ideas, and their 
 application to the actuaUties of life. There, it 
 is now proceeding. Such is the full meaning of 
 all our discussions in the realm of reconstruc- 
 tion. If brute force be dispossessed of the 
 sceptre, into whose hand is it to pass, is the 
 question of questions. If the disorderly im- 
 pulses of men are not to be controlled ulti- 
 mately by the mailed fist, how are they to be 
 controlled? These are the problems creating 
 the conditions under which the ministry of the 
 Word is now to be exercised. 
 
 The preacher of to-day then has to face an 
 
148 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 age of greater enlightenment, fuller knowledge, 
 and higher conceptions of life, all largely result- 
 ing from the preaching of the Word according 
 to the primitive Ideal ; but he has still to face a 
 world waiting for a true and perfect authority 
 in order to the realization of perfect order. 
 
 We turn then to our second contention, which 
 is that the conditions are unchanged. Here I 
 begin with a general affirmation. It is Biblical, 
 but it is borne out by all experience, and it is 
 that humanity is essentially one, and in that 
 sense it is unchanged. It is one in all the cen- 
 turies; in all its own divisions of race, caste, and 
 creed; in spite of its varied and ever-varying 
 customs, habits, manners. That essential unity 
 is that of its spiritual nature ; it is not uniformity 
 of bodily powers ; it is not unanimity of mental 
 conceptions; it is unity of spiritual being. 
 
 Of that unity there ever have been, and still 
 are, two universal expressions, those namely of 
 the quest for truth, and the sense of sin. These 
 may be described by other phrases, but they are 
 found in all human beings, call them by what 
 names we may. 
 
 The quest for truth is the inspiration of edu- 
 cation in a child, in an adult, in a race. It is 
 simple, elemental, fundamental. In a child it 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 149 
 
 expresses itself in the eternal Why? How? 
 What? It is the desire to know. Call it in- 
 quisitiveness, curiosity, or what you will, it is 
 there; persistently making demands, refusing to 
 be silenced. It is everlastingly asking ques- 
 tions, seeking to discover secrets, knocking at 
 barred doors. It persists in adult life, and all 
 advance in thought and power results from the 
 insistent determination to find out hidden 
 things. 
 
 This ineradicable passion of humanity ex- 
 presses itself in revolt, and in investigation. It 
 revolts against custom, and against tradition. 
 It breaks through the former, and violates the 
 latter, in its determination to find the reason 
 for each; and if there be no sufficient reason, 
 then to find its way out into the larger spaces, 
 the more ample freedom. It declines bondage, 
 save as bondage can be proven to be the condi- 
 tion of freedom. Therefore it challenges all 
 sanctions, demanding that they vindicate them- 
 selves in the terms of truth, which are the only 
 terms of ultimate necessity. No Philosophy, 
 no Science, no Religion, which refuses to yield 
 to the asking, the seeking, the knocking of the 
 human soul, is ultimately tolerated. 
 
 That universal spirit of man will consider the 
 
ISO THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 suggestion, examine the hypothesis, attend to 
 the claim, until it is halted and forbidden to in- 
 quire. When that is done, the soul refuses to 
 submit, and flings over the barrier as an imperti- 
 nence and an enemy. All this is the push of the 
 human soul towards the facts, and that ulti- 
 mately, if we know how to direct it, is the push 
 of the human soul towards God. The activity of 
 the soul is that of investigation, in the conduct 
 of which it is often apparently ruthless; but the 
 soul is never in such dire peril as when the 
 process ceases, and it becomes content not to 
 know, ceases its asking, abandons its seeking, 
 no longer knocks. 
 
 It may be said that this cessation of effort 
 is the normal condition of humanity. I can 
 only reply that I do not believe it. It may be, 
 and alas it is so, that men follow false lights, 
 and seek to discover by wrong and disastrous 
 methods, but deep down in the spiritual nature 
 of man this quest is powerful and persistent. 
 
 It must be added however that the quest for 
 truth is not in itself the finding of the Truth. 
 Every discovery creates new problems, more 
 complex than those which have been solved by 
 investigation. Beyond the reach of the finite 
 mind are vast spaces, which cannot be discov- 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 151 
 
 ered, and entrance to which can only come by- 
 revelation, the yielding up of secrets as from 
 within. They are only yielded in answer to 
 investigation along true lines; but even then, 
 they must be given from within, or they will 
 never be found. The more earnest and sincere 
 the search for truth is, the more teachable be- 
 comes the soul. When the soul is not teach- 
 able, it is because it has ceased investigation. 
 It has stopped at some half-way house, which 
 perchance it may call agnosticism. Content- 
 ment with ignorance, that is with agnosticism, 
 is the paralysis of the spirit. Yet even when 
 man has so halted, the capacity remains. Can 
 these bones live? may be our question as we 
 look at men; but the answer of the Bible, and 
 the answer of experience is that by the breath 
 of the Lord they can. This is one phase of the 
 unchanged and unchanging fact in human con- 
 ditions. 
 
 To leave the statement there, would be to 
 have recognized a fact, but not to have realized 
 the whole fact. Side by side with the quest for 
 truth, there is the sense of sin. Again I say 
 we may describe this by any other phrase. The 
 fact remains. It is that of humanity's abiding 
 bondage, its persistent paralysis. M'^n desiring 
 
152 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 truth yield to a lie; endeavouring after good- 
 ness, they are unequal to realization. This 
 sense has many, and oftentimes strange, meth- 
 ods of expression. Sometimes it expresses it- 
 self by vehement denial. Such denial only 
 holds good v^hen it operates in the realm of 
 theory, and of formulated terminology. A man 
 will deny sin, but will admit deflection from 
 strict veracity, departure from the mastery of 
 the highest; or at least he will confess that he 
 has not been able to realize perfectly his own 
 ideal of human life. He may try to console 
 himself by saying that no one has realized the 
 ideal, but that does not change the true nature 
 of his admission. Sometimes the sense of sin 
 is expressed in attempts to excuse it. This may 
 be done by laying the blame of it on others — a 
 very old human expedient; or by declaring 
 it to be a necessary part of the process of devel- 
 opment, a more modern method. Such excuses 
 do not get rid of the fact. Far oftener than we 
 sometimes imagine, the sense of sin is expressed 
 within the soul in a poignant agony, born of the 
 consciousness of pollution, and of consequent in- 
 capacity. Whatever the expression, the fact 
 remains that Paul gave utterance to a great 
 elemental human consciousness when he wrote, 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 153 
 
 " When I would do good, evil is present with 
 me." 
 
 It may be that the fact is laughed away; it 
 may be tolerated as inevitable; it may be that 
 it is the cause of perpetual agony; it is there, a 
 persistent consciousness of humanity, in all 
 ages, under all conditions, in spite of all human 
 attempts to deal with it. 
 
 What effect have the changes we considered 
 had upon these unchanged things of human ex- 
 perience? All the increased light in which we 
 live, philosophical, scientific, and governmental, 
 has but served to reveal our ignorance more 
 profoundly. 
 
 Philosophy has not given us the final secret, 
 Science has not solved the riddle of the universe. 
 Men are still as far as ever, in their unaided 
 wisdom, from the knowledge that brings rest 
 because it illumines the mind, and gives rest in 
 the midst of unsolved problems. Indeed it is 
 questionable whether there ever was such un- 
 rest in the realm of human thought as there is 
 to-day. Men are filled with a deadlier hopeless- 
 ness, because they are less ignorant than they 
 were, because access of knowledge has only 
 meant the discovery of vaster mysteries than 
 man had ever imagined. 
 
154 THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 
 
 The clearer light in human government, in- 
 dividual, social, national, has but served to make 
 man more terrifically conscious of the av^ful 
 power of sin, and the appalling corruption of 
 human life. The things that are changed are 
 after all the accidentals of life. The essentials 
 are unchanged, and v^e are at once reminded 
 that the primitive Ideal of preaching W2is fun- 
 damentally that it had to do with these essential 
 things. It may be said with confidence that our 
 Lord and His Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, 
 did not profess to deal with Philosophy, Science, 
 or Government. All were included in their 
 message; all have been affected by their min- 
 istry; but they dealt directly, invariably, with 
 these very essential things of the soul. They 
 went out to answer its quest for truth by the 
 revelation of the God of Truth ; and to deal with 
 the sense of sin by proclaiming the Evangel of 
 the way of deliverance. To deal with essen- 
 tials is to control accidentals ; and this was the 
 aim of the primitive Ideal in the Ministry of 
 the Word. 
 
 Nothing is more self-evident in any consid- 
 eration of the history of the Christian ministry 
 of the Word than the effect it has produced 
 upon human conditions. It has flung light upon 
 
THE CHANGED CONDITIONS 155 
 
 the whole realm of philosophical inquiry, in- 
 troducing new elements, which it has been im- 
 possible for philosophers to ignore, and which 
 have ensured an advance in human intelligence 
 which is one of the most wonderful things in 
 human history. It has claimed for men that 
 freedom for investigation which has been the 
 secret of all scientific activity and discovery. 
 It has touched the human spirit with that sense 
 of its own inherent greatness, which has re- 
 sulted in its protest against every form of 
 tyranny which holds men in bondage. 
 
 Thus the ministry of the Word has to be 
 exercised to-day in changed conditions, which 
 are the results of that same ministry, as it began 
 with the Christ, was carried on by the earliest 
 Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and 
 Teachers; and has been maintained, with vary- 
 ing force and effectiveness, by the long and 
 gracious succession of those called to the sacred 
 work until now. 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 IN this study we return to the more strictly 
 BibHcal position, that is, to the Christian. 
 Recognizing the persistence in human ex- 
 perience of the quest for Truth, and of the sense 
 of sin, we face the subject of obHgation. 
 
 If these facts of experience abide, and we 
 need not argue this further; and if the deposit 
 of the Christian Church be that Word of God 
 which meets these facts of experience, and that 
 is the assumption on which Christian Ministry 
 is based; then the fact of obHgation is patent. 
 Our final obligation is that of preaching the 
 Word. To the consideration of that matter I 
 propose to lead up, by a brief discussion of the 
 wider human obligations which make that 
 preaching necessary. 
 
 Of these the fundamental is that man be right 
 with God. That, to the Christian, is the inclu- 
 sive philosophy of life. It is based on two 
 
 156 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 157 
 
 matters which constitute the first and simplest 
 things of our belief; those namely of the nature 
 of man, and of the character of God. 
 
 The Biblical doctrine of man is that he is the 
 creation of God ; that his creation was a separate 
 act, by which — although related to everything 
 beneath him in the earthly scale of being — he 
 was placed at an infinite distance from these 
 lower forms, and given the right and the power 
 to reign over them as the representative to 
 them of the God from Whom all had come ; that 
 the nature of this act was that of an inbreathing 
 of the breath of lives, whereby man became 
 offspring of God, in the Divine image and 
 likeness. 
 
 This conception of man necessarily involves 
 the conviction that in the deepest fact of his 
 personality, which is spiritual, he has in his 
 very nature the closest relationship with God; 
 a relationship which must be maintained if man 
 is to realize his own life, fulfil his destiny, be- 
 come experimentally what he is potentially. 
 This necessity abides, in whatever condition 
 man may find himself. Nothing can possibly 
 be substituted iru the spirit-life of man, for its 
 direct access to God, and dealing with Him, 
 without disaster of the most complete kind 
 
158 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 eventuating in the experience of man. More- 
 over, v^herever that disaster has eventuated, 
 nothing can set it right but the return of man 
 to this relationship v^ith God, which he has lost. 
 All this, as v^e have said, is not based upon a 
 law imposed upon man apart from the facts of 
 his nature; it is inherent in his nature. To be 
 alienated from the life of God is to be destroyed. 
 
 The Biblical doctrine as to the nature of God 
 is that He is love. That is the final and inclusive 
 truth. While that is the final revelation of the 
 Bible concerning God, we need the Biblical in- 
 terpretation of love, or else we may wander 
 very wide of the mark in our exposition of this 
 truth. God is holy and just, as surely as He is 
 merciful and full of compassion. All these 
 things are so because He is love. All this being 
 so, the fact that man's first obligation is that of 
 right relationship with Him is still more patent. 
 To be right with Him is indeed to be conformed 
 to His likeness, to share His nature ; it is to be 
 love, and such love as is holy and just, merciful 
 and full of compassion. These are the things 
 that make personal life really strong and beauti- 
 ful, and apart from which human fellowship can 
 never be brought to perfection of realization. 
 
 In his Gifford Lectures on " The Varieties of 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 159 
 
 Religious Experience," Professor James gave 
 his final conclusion in these words: 
 
 ** We and God have business v^ith each 
 other; and in opening ourselves to His 
 influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled." 
 
 That conclusion of the modern philosopher is 
 the starting point of Christian belief, the fact 
 revealed in the first pages of the Bible. 
 
 The fundamental obligation resting upon the 
 Christian ministry of the Word then is that of 
 bringing men to the sense of this fact, and to 
 willingness to yield to it. That which became 
 almost the catch-word of a recent evangelistic 
 movement, and which was resented by some, 
 and sneered at by others, " Get right with God," 
 was really the brief statement of the profound- 
 est secret of human life. 
 
 Of this matter there are individual and social 
 applications. Being right with God, means the 
 realization of all the essential capacities of per- 
 sonality. For a moment leaving out of view 
 the question of sin altogether, we say that a 
 human being living in true relation with God 
 is one in whom no natural power is atrophied, 
 no natural capacity abortive, no natural pur- 
 pose unfulfilled. It is a little difficult to think 
 
i6o THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 of this matter thus in the realm of the ideal, 
 because we have no knowledge of what the 
 conditions would be if there had been no failure. 
 The only hint we have of this is the one of 
 primitive conditions in a garden. There how- 
 ever the man failed. The only Man Who thus 
 lived His» life in right relationship from first to 
 last was the Man Who lived that life in the 
 imperfect conditions, resulting from sin. Had 
 the first Adam lived spiritually as did the last 
 Adam, every power of his own being reaHzed 
 and governed by the perfect will of God, all 
 beneath him would have been perfected in being 
 and use, through the sacred and delightful put- 
 ting forth of his energy in work in fellowship 
 with God. That is the golden goal, the far-off 
 Divine event, to which the whole creation 
 moves, as it sweeps round the cycles of the age 
 of God. To-day it is for every man to re- 
 member that being right with God means that. 
 The last Adam, our Lord and Saviour, realized 
 it to perfection in His own personal life. There 
 were limitations, self-emptyings, imposed upon 
 Him in His humanity, as the result of His living 
 in a ruined world; but, so far as was possible 
 within those conditions. His human life was full, 
 rich, perfect. 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION i6i 
 
 In thinking of men to-day, it is necessary to 
 speak of becoming right with God, before we can 
 speak of being right with Him. Moreover there 
 are senses in which that becoming will continue 
 through life's pilgrimage. Becoming right with 
 God then, means the realization of our capacities 
 in spite of sin. This for men to-day is the 
 fundamental personal obligation ; but it is also 
 the final impossibility, apart from the activity of 
 the Divine Grace, whereby a man is born again, 
 and thus enabled to come at last to the realiza- 
 tion of his personality, in right relationship with 
 God. 
 
 In all such consideration, God's racial purpose 
 must not be lost sight of. In the Divine pur- 
 pose, humanity is not an aggregate of persons, 
 living separate and independent lives. It is a 
 family, a fellowship, through which He will 
 accomplish ends, which we may not yet see or. 
 know, but which are certainly far wider than 
 this earth, and more extensive than that of 
 which we speak as time. The fundamental 
 obligation upon which the minister of the Word 
 has to insist, and to the realization of which he 
 has to point the way, includes the regulation of 
 human life in its inter-relationships. This be- 
 gins with the family circle, and stretches out 
 
i62 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 through all the widening circles, until the whole 
 race is included in its influence. This is at once 
 the first ideal to be remembered, and the final 
 result to be achieved. 
 
 This brings us to the second phase of obli- 
 gation, which we may describe as the proces- 
 sionary, that is the obligation which is con- 
 cerned with the processes by which the Divine 
 purpose of bringing humanity into right rela- 
 tionship with Himself may be accomplished. 
 
 Inclusively we may say that it is, for this 
 age, that of creating and conditioning a society, 
 in which that rightness of relationship is real- 
 ized and revealed. It will at once be seen that 
 this is an exact description of the very purpose 
 for which the Church of God exists in this 
 world. The Church is the House of God, the 
 Church of the living God, and as such, she is the 
 pillar and ground of the Truth; that is, she is 
 the instrument through which the light of truth 
 shines upon the world. She is to be the ex- 
 ample, and thus the witness, to the possibility 
 of failing men being made right with God, and 
 so of finding their way into right relationship 
 among themselves. 
 
 Here also, necessarily, the obligation begins 
 with the individual, and proceeds to the so- 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 163 
 
 ciety. All the members of the society must be 
 those who know God, and so are at perfect rest. 
 They must be those who are in fellowship with 
 God, and so are at ceaseless work. Therefore 
 those who constitute the membership of the 
 Society, the Church, the holy Nation, must be 
 those who are redeemed from the pollution and 
 paralysis of sin; and who share the life of God, 
 through Him Who came to give men life, and 
 that more abundantly. 
 
 Again, the mere gathering together of indi- 
 viduals, by the multiplying of the number of 
 such, is not enough. These must be trained 
 into all the experience of such submission to the 
 one Lord, as shall result in the manifestation of 
 the glorious liberty of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 This whole matter of the obligation as to 
 the process is of the utmost importance, and 
 cannot be overstated. The principle involved 
 is that the Word of God can only be appre- 
 hended of men as it is incarnate. That is the 
 reason of the Incarnation. It was only when 
 the Word became flesh, and dwelt among men, 
 that they beheld His glory, or came to a true 
 apprehension of its message. It was when the 
 Lord opened the understanding of His disciples 
 after Pentecost, by showing the relation of their 
 
i64 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 sacred Writings to Himself, that they under- 
 stood the Scriptures. The value of the New 
 Testament is that it creates a consciousness of 
 Christ, which, flashing back upon the writings, 
 illuminates them. The most powerful and pre- 
 vailing exposition of these writings is never 
 that of written or spoken interpretation. It is 
 that of living witness. In proportion as the 
 Christ of the New Testament is formed in in- 
 dividual souls, and manifested through the com- 
 munity sharing His life, is He able to carry for- 
 ward the purpose of His heart, and lead other 
 men into right relationship with God, and so to 
 exhibit in human history the real glory of the 
 Divine ideal for humanity. The strength of the 
 Divine Society is the strength of the Divine 
 Witness; and the strength of the Divine Wit- 
 ness is the process of the Divine Purpose and 
 Work. 
 
 If the first obligation be that man be right 
 with God; and the obligation as to processes 
 be that a Society exist in which that Tightness 
 is realized and revealed; it follows that the 
 ultimate obligation is concerned with the whole 
 world. It may be expressed in the words of 
 our Lord Himself in His intercessory prayer, 
 when praying for the unity of His Church He 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 165 
 
 said, ** That the world may believe," and " that 
 the world may know " (John xvii. 21, 23). 
 
 This is the unchanging purpose of God, and 
 it is a purpose which means the perfect meet- 
 ing of the world's need, in and through man. 
 The word which our Lord employed in each 
 case was the inclusive word kosnibs, showing 
 that while His work was preeminently on 
 behalf of man, it would operate through man 
 on behalf of the whole creation. That phrase 
 '' the whole creation " is Paul's equivalent for 
 kds7?tos in the Roman letter, when he writes of 
 its groaning and waiting for the revealing of the 
 sons of God. It has been for the meeting of 
 this widest need that God has ever acted in His 
 Self-revelation, whether in the divers portions 
 spoken in times past through the prophets, or 
 through the final speech through the Son in 
 these days. Only as the world is kept in view, 
 and God's purpose is kept in mind, will the 
 Word of God in any form remain quick and 
 powerful. In this matter, no man and no com- 
 munity can long eat their morsel alone. 
 
 If we consider this world purpose a little 
 more fully as expressed in these simple and yet 
 sublime words of our Lord, we shall discover 
 how it exactly meets human need as we dis- 
 
i66 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 covered it when dealing with the unchanged 
 conditions. Then we said that there persists in 
 human history and experience a twofold spir- 
 itual fact, which we described as, The Quest 
 for Truth, and The Sense of Sin. Our Lord's 
 words indicate the Divine purpose in each of 
 these, but in the other order. The sense of sin 
 is dealt with through belief; the quest for Truth 
 is answered through knowledge. This is the 
 necessary order in human experience, for man 
 can only come into knowledge in its fulness, as 
 sin is put away. 
 
 The sense of sin is, as we have seen, a sense 
 of pollution and of paralysis. The word of the 
 Gospel is a word that promises forgiveness and 
 life. That in each case is a promise that is only 
 possible of belief if it comes from God. When 
 the critics of our Lord said, '' No man can for- 
 give sins save God only," they said what was 
 perfectly true. When our Lord claimed that 
 the gift of life must be a gift of God, He claimed 
 what none can dispute. The question then for 
 man is as to whether He Who brought this mes- 
 sage was sent by God. To bring the world to 
 that belief is the ultimate purpose of God; for 
 by that faith men may have the sense of for- 
 giveness, and the experience of life, full and 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 167 
 
 forceful. The only sin for which there is no 
 forgiveness, and which is an age-abiding sin, is 
 that of refusing to believe on Him Whom the 
 Father hath sent. To this His words bear wit- 
 ness, " Of sin, because they believe not on Me." 
 The quest for Truth is a demand for knowl- 
 edge. It is a revolt against all authority and 
 limitation which are not final and inevitable. 
 It is, as we said, in the last analysis, the push of 
 the soul through towards God. The claim of 
 Jesus to be the Truth was His claim that in 
 Him man may find God. This claim we know 
 He constantly made, and with such emphasis 
 and clarity that there can be no mistaking of 
 His meaning. The question for men then is 
 as to whether He Who made this claim was 
 really from God. To bring the world to that 
 knowledge is the ultimate purpose of God; for 
 in that knowledge men will find the answer to 
 all their questions about the meaning of life, its 
 origin, its development, its destiny. To know 
 God as He is revealed in His Son is to have 
 found the secret of all knowledge. The growth 
 into it may be gradual, as it surely is, but there 
 are no locked doors, no barred gates. From 
 that knowledge, and in its light, man may go 
 forward to perfected intellectual attainment. 
 
i68 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 To this also the words of our Lord bear wit- 
 ness; "This is life eternal, that they should 
 know Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom 
 Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ " (John 
 xvii. 3). 
 
 Involved in all these matters is the fact that 
 the immediate obligation of the Church is that 
 the Word should be preached to these ends; in 
 order that man may be set right with God; in 
 order that the Society may be created through 
 which the nature of this rightness may be re- 
 vealed; and in order that the world may be- 
 lieve and know. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to enter into 
 any lengthy argument in this series of studies 
 as to the importance of preaching in itself, as a 
 method of making the Word known. That has 
 not been our theme at all. It has been assumed 
 from first to last. Nevertheless it is so vital a 
 matter that we may at least tarry with it for a 
 brief space. 
 
 The whole subject is inclusively, and one may 
 almost say exhaustively, dealt with in a passage 
 in Paul's letter to the Romans (x. 13-15), in 
 which man's dependence on preaching is stated 
 absolutely; the method and value are revealed; 
 and the one essential to success in preaching is 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 169 
 
 declared. So important is the passage that we 
 will quote the whole of it: 
 
 " Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
 the Lord shall be saved. How then shall 
 they call on Him in Whom they have not 
 believed? And how shall they believe in 
 Him Whom they have not heard? And 
 how shall they hear without a preacher? 
 And how shall they preach except they be 
 sent?" 
 
 In the opening affirmation the first necessity 
 of man is suggested, and the way in which it 
 is met is declared. The necessity is that of 
 salvation. This is the dealing with the sense 
 of sin and the quest for truth, which takes 
 man through forgiveness and life into knowl- 
 edge. The declaration is that men receive that 
 salvation when they call upon the name of the 
 Lord. 
 
 This affirmation is followed by four ques- 
 tions in sequence. The first shows that men 
 will only call on the Lord as they believe in 
 Him. Of course that qualifies the idea of call- 
 ing on the name of the Lord, and shows that 
 it is much more than an intellectual, or formal 
 thing. It is that calling of Jesus Lord, which 
 involves the surrender of the soul to Him, and 
 
I70 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 which, in his Corinthian letter, Paul said no 
 man could do but by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The next question shows that men cannot 
 believe in some one whom, or of whom, they 
 have not heard. It is interesting to observe in 
 passing that the Revisers, both English and 
 American, have rendered the question : " How 
 shall they believe in Him Whom they have not 
 heard? " instead of " How shall they believe in 
 Him of Whom they have not heard?" The 
 omission of the word " of " gives the idea a new 
 force, suggesting that it is necessary to hear 
 Him, and thus giving a special character to the 
 work of preaching. In it, men must not only 
 hear about the Lord, they must hear Him. 
 Perhaps it is not safe to place too much 
 emphasis on this fact, but to me it does suggest 
 that preaching is only truly powerful when in 
 it the Lord Himself is made real to the hearer, 
 so that the Word is known as His own. 
 
 Then comes the question which reveals the 
 supreme importance of preaching, as it makes 
 hearing the Lord dependent upon a preacher. 
 The word for preacher and preaching here is 
 the word kerussb, which signifies the work of 
 the herald, the one who delivers the King's mes- 
 sage with authority. 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 171 
 
 The final question recognizing the impoi*- 
 tance of preaching reveals the secret of success 
 therein. It is that the preacher should be sent. 
 The Christian preacher is called and sent by 
 the fact that he is equipped for his work by 
 his gift, of which we shall have more to say 
 in our next study. 
 
 The value of this passage for us now is its 
 revelation of the importance of preaching, and 
 the light it throws on the immediate obligation 
 of those in the Ministry of the Word. 
 
 The Word is to be proclaimed apostolically, 
 as to its system, and balance and proportion; 
 evangelistically, as tc its glorious news, and 
 the claim it makes upon men concerning their 
 salvation; prophetically, as to its bearing upon 
 all human affairs; and pastorally, as to its sus- 
 tenance of life, and the consequent growth of 
 the soul into Him Who is the Head, and so 
 into its true place in the Church. 
 
 No change in the accidental conditions of 
 human thought and circumstances has changed 
 the essential facts of human nature. There- 
 fore the obligation to preach the Word abides, 
 and is as urgent as it ever was. To make men 
 right with God; to edify the Christian Society; 
 to reach the world with the Evangel, and to 
 
172 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 make it know the truth ; these are the most im- 
 portant things of human Hfe; and to do this 
 work men are still given gifts by the Head of 
 the Church, which it is at their peril they fail to 
 employ. 
 
 The value of the written Word for this work 
 is patent; as also is its perfect suitability. There 
 are times when we are tempted to wish that 
 we found more explicit instructions in the 
 presence of problems; but a more careful con- 
 sideration will show how much better is the 
 Divine way than the human. If in the Sacred 
 Writings we had merely detailed applications of 
 the Word of God to any one age, they would 
 inevitably become obsolete with the passing of 
 that age. Instead we have the statement of 
 eternal truths and principles with illustrative 
 applications. These things abide, and have new 
 application in every age. Thus to quote the 
 words of our Lord ; " Every scribe who hath 
 been made a disciple to the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is like unto a man that is a householder, which 
 bringeth forth out of his treasure things new 
 and old." To do this is the abiding obligation 
 of every man called to the Ministry of the 
 Word. 
 
 The realization of this obligation must surely 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 173 
 
 settle very many questions which inevitably 
 arise in the exercise of that sacred ministry. 
 All we have said about the changed conditions 
 in the midst of which we have to preach the 
 Word to-day, recognizes that we do so in the 
 midst of constantly new problems, and ever 
 varying situations. 
 
 The new vigour of philosophic inquiry is 
 creating new attitudes of mind, and giving rise 
 to new problems in every department of human 
 knowledge. These are not merely interesting, 
 they are of vital importance to human life. 
 What then is the attitude of the preacher of the 
 Word to be towards them? He must be con- 
 scious of them. They will confront him in all 
 his reading, both the more serious, and the 
 ephemeral. He knows that his people are read- 
 ing the same things, and are being influenced 
 by them. Is he to refuse to consider them? 
 By no means. His first duty is to do every- 
 thing that lies in his power to make himself 
 familiar with them. In this sense he must keep 
 abreast of his times. But he will not change his 
 message in order to bring it into conformity 
 with these changing and fluctuating currents of 
 human opinion. He will however give himself 
 with new diligence to the study of his message. 
 
174 THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 
 
 in order that he may apprehend and proclaim 
 its bearing upon these movements of the human 
 mind. 
 
 In this process he need have no fear. The 
 Word of God liveth and abideth for ever. It 
 deals, not with the accidentals of thought, but 
 with Truth essentially, and therefore has per- 
 sistent and corrective bearing upon all human 
 thought. The obligation of the minister of the 
 Word is that of discovering and proclaiming 
 that bearing. In the process he may have to 
 change his mind, but never his message. That 
 is to say he may discover that his apprehension 
 of the message has been faulty. Then he must 
 honestly and fearlessly say so. Consistency 
 with yesterday's honest conviction may be of 
 the essence of dishonesty. Loyalty to the au- 
 thority of the Word in itself is of the essence of 
 the obligation resting upon its minister. 
 
 So also the very restlessness of men in all 
 matters social and economic is creating new 
 situations. These also are of supreme impor- 
 tance to human well-being. Of these the 
 preacher must, and ought, to be conscious. To 
 live in ignorance of them is to be unable to bring 
 to bear upon them the witness of the Word of 
 God. That is his work. He is not called upon 
 
THE UNCHANGED OBLIGATION 175 
 
 to join committees to discuss these situations, 
 in order to help men to discover some solution 
 of their own. He must be able to bring to bear 
 upon their discussions the searchlight of the 
 Divine Law, and the guidance of the Divine 
 Will. That is his one obligation. 
 
 Again we say he need have no fear. No sit- 
 uation has arisen or can arise in human life, in- 
 dividual, social, or national, which is outside 
 the Divine interest; and within the compass of 
 the Truth as it is revealed in Christ, there is 
 explanation and direction, accepting and follow- 
 ing which, men will be led into the highest con- 
 ditions of life. The obligation which abides is 
 a grave one, but it is most gracious, for it has 
 to do with the things for which the world is 
 waiting, and without which it can find neither 
 righteousness, peace, nor joy. 
 
THE PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 WHEN dealing with the fundamental 
 conception of the ministry, and again 
 in our last study, I referred to the 
 fact that in each case the gift bestowed by the 
 Head of the Church is potentially the necessary 
 qualification for the doing of the work. This 
 we must now consider a little more particularly, 
 because it is vital in the consideration of the 
 subject of the training of ministers. 
 
 Training is for those who have received gifts. 
 Apart from the gift, training can never prepare 
 men for the Ministry of the Word. I often 
 wish that our Protestant Churches, especially 
 the Free Churches, had not lost the word Voca- 
 tio7t, concerning the ministry; and that, in the 
 sense in which it is employed in the Roman 
 Church. Men cannot choose to become minis- 
 ters of the Word. This calling is differentiated 
 from all others, in this very fact. While, as we 
 
 shall see presently, natural fitness is important, 
 
 176 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 177 
 
 it is not enough. While a man can, upon the 
 ground of natural ability, decide whether he 
 will be doctor, lawyer, or commercial man, he 
 cannot so choose to become a minister. The 
 words of our Lord are of abiding application, 
 and must be taken in their fullest sense ; " Ye 
 have not chosen Me, but I have chosen yDu." 
 So strongly do I feel upon this matter, that I 
 never ask men to enter the Christian ministry. 
 I have had occasion, in the exercise of the pas- 
 toral office, to ask some man who seemed to me 
 to have special fitness for the work of the min- 
 istry, whether he had carefully considered what 
 was his Lord's will for him in the matter. This, 
 however, is quite a different thing from a gen- 
 eral or particular appeal, which seems to sug- 
 gest that men can choose the Ministry of the 
 Word as a calling. The only men who can 
 really enter this Ministry are those whom the 
 Lord chooses, calls, and equips, by the bestow- 
 ment of gifts according to the wisdom of His 
 will. 
 
 In considering this initial subject of gifts, 
 there are two elements which must be recog- 
 nized; and which we may describe as the super- 
 natural and the natural. I confess this is a dis- 
 tinction which ultimately I dislike, but it has its 
 
178 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 use, and we will employ the terms in the gener- 
 ally accepted sense. 
 
 For the work of the Ministry of the Word the 
 gift which we thus describe as supernatural is 
 supreme. This is the gift which is definitely 
 bestowed upon a man by the Head of the 
 Church through the Spirit; and which gives 
 him the equipment he needs for the exercise of 
 that ministry as an Apostle, a Prophet, an 
 Evangelist, or a Pastor and Teacher. 
 
 In the Ephesian passage to which we have 
 given attention in considering the different 
 phases of the Ministry of the Word, we have 
 the central declaration concerning this matter. 
 From the passage let us take an extract, en- 
 abling us to see that declaration in all its sim- 
 pHcity ; 
 
 " When He ascended on high, He led cap- 
 tivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. . . . 
 And He gave some, apostles; and some, 
 prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, 
 pastors and teachers " (Eph. iv. 8 and 11). 
 
 That is the true sequence so far as this sub- 
 ject of gifts is concerned. In this statement 
 the twice repeated verb " gave ** (diddmi\ and 
 the noun " gifts " {ddma\ are related, and refer 
 to gifts in the simplest way, as a bestowment. 
 
 / 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 179 
 
 the emphasis being upon the freedom of the 
 gift. The word "gift" (dbr^a) in a previous 
 verse, " the measure of the gift of Christ " 
 (ver. 7) also means a gratuity, but in use carries 
 the thought of a sacrifice or offering. Nov^^ the 
 whole context shows that these gifts for the ex- 
 ercise of the Ministry of the Word are freely 
 bestowed by the Head of the Church, in virtue 
 of His victorious ascension, to the place of full 
 and final authority; an ascension made possible 
 by His descent into the lower parts of the earth, 
 and all He accomplished there. Tht gifts then 
 are bestowed by infinite grace, and absolute au- 
 thority. 
 
 There is, however, another New Testament 
 word which we must consider if we are to ap- 
 prehend the full value of these gifts. It is the 
 word charisma. This is the word employed by 
 Paul in his Corinthian letter when deahng with 
 the same subject. He also used it in his Roman 
 letter, and in writing to Timothy about the work 
 of the ministry. Peter also used it once (1 Pet. 
 iv. 10). This is the only occurrence of the word 
 in the New Testament outside the writings of 
 Paul. Thayer clearly sets forth what he calls 
 " the technical Pauline sense " of the term in 
 these words ; 
 
i8o PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 " Charismata (gifts) denote extraordinary 
 powers, distinguishing certain Christians, 
 and enabling them to serve the Church of 
 Christ, the reception of which is due to the 
 power of Divine Grace operating in their 
 souls by the Holy Spirit." 
 
 That definition of course applies to other gifts 
 than those bestowed for the ministry of the 
 Word, but it certainly includes them. Thus a 
 gift is a bestowment of grace, which is an en- 
 dowment, a qualification, a faculty. In the pos- 
 session of such a gift a man is potentially pre- 
 pared for the exercise of a function. Apart from 
 its possession he cannot do the work for which 
 it is the equipment. 
 
 The second element is that which we may 
 describe as natural, although natural gifts are 
 also supernatural in that they are Divinely im- 
 planted. Whatever special natural capacity or 
 aptitude a man has, he possesses because God 
 the Father of spirits gave it to him in his crea- 
 tion. These natural gifts always constitute the 
 instruments of supernatural gifts in the econ- 
 omy of God. 
 
 The gift of the Apostle is bestowed upon men 
 of very varied mental powers, but upon men 
 who are supremely men of thought, capable of 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY i8i 
 
 analytic, synthetic approach to truth. Hence 
 the abiding value of the apostolic gift is that 
 Truth ever needs setting forth in proper bal- 
 ance and proportion; in every new age of hu- 
 man thinking, it demands the true terms of ex- 
 pression in order to accurate apprehension. 
 Here is the work of Translators and Theolo- 
 gians. 
 
 The gift of the Prophet is bestowed upon 
 men of naturally statesmanlike outlook, and of 
 clear powers of speech. Thus the constant 
 value of the prophetic gift is that Truth ever 
 demands application to all the new circum- 
 stances of human life as they arise. 
 
 The gift of the Evangelist is bestowed upon 
 men who naturally are possessed of the power 
 of speech and of persuasion. The persistent 
 value of the evangelistic gift is that under all 
 circumstances, and to all classes of men, the call 
 of the Gospel needs to have utterance. 
 
 The gift of the Pastor and Teacher is be- 
 stowed upon men w o supremely have aptitude 
 for teaching, and arc full of patience. The per- 
 petual value of the pastoral and didactic gift is 
 that as men and women are brought into the 
 Christian experience, they need training and 
 guidance. 
 
i82 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 All this I hold most strongly. A great deal 
 that has been said about a gift bestowed making 
 a man a preacher who had no natural ability, is 
 sheer nonsense. God's natural and spiritual 
 worlds are not so out of joint. Nevertheless 
 the final truth is that no natural ability qualifies 
 a man for the work of the Ministry of the Word, 
 apart from the bestowment of a gift of grace 
 which is a spiritual qualification. There can be 
 no training of the minister until that gift is 
 received. 
 
 It may be well at once to say that the con- 
 sciousness of the reception of a gift, that is of a 
 call to the ministry, may come in many ways, 
 and may vary in the most divers manners. To 
 one man it comes suddenly, like the flash of the 
 lightning, the peal of a trumpet. To others it 
 comes slowly, like the dawn creeping over the 
 hills, the whisper of a distant voice. • To some 
 it comes as a great joy, filling the soul with 
 hope and ecstasy. To others it comes through 
 travail, and is almost a sorrow and a pain. One 
 is at once filled with the sense of confidence and 
 strength; another trembles and shrinks, and is 
 conscious only of appalling weakness. 
 
 These different experiences are natural, and 
 are largely due to temperament. The spiritual 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 183 
 
 fact is the certainty, from which no man can 
 escape who has received the gift, and felt its 
 sacred heat. Until men have the most pro- 
 found conviction and certainty in this matter, 
 no training of them should be attempted. It 
 is here that the importance and value of the 
 Church's recognition is first manifested. I do 
 not think any Theological College or Seminary 
 ought to receive a man for training whose per- 
 sonal sense of a call is not reinforced by the 
 recognition and endorsement of the Church. 
 
 Necessarily this opens a wide subject, and 
 one which it is not within the province of these 
 lectures to deal with, that namely of the organ- 
 ism of the Christian Church, and its mainte- 
 nance in full strength. Much of our modern 
 Church life lacks the experience of fellowship to 
 so large a degree — even when the theory is ac- 
 knowledged — that it cannot exercise this func- 
 tion of cooperation in the work of setting men 
 apart to the work of the ministry. The man 
 who receives the Divine call may be compara- 
 tively, and indeed often completely, unknown 
 to the majority of those who constitute the 
 membership. It is impossible therefore for 
 them to come to anything like spiritual conclu- 
 sion on the subject. Moreover tdo often, even 
 
i84 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 when the man is known, our modern methods of 
 work, and the organizations connected there- 
 with, afford no opportunity for our young men 
 to exercise their gift under the sympathetic ob- 
 servation of the Church. Both these facts work 
 disadvantageously — to put it no more strongly 
 — in the interest of the ministry. Every local 
 church, especially, should constitute a true fel- 
 lowship, in which the life of the whole is 
 strengthened by the knowledge of each, and 
 contribution in prayer and converse is made by 
 all to each, and by each to all. Every church 
 should moreover have some training ground for 
 its young people in Christian speech, and that, 
 not relegated to a society separated from the 
 main currents of its life, but nurtured in the 
 very midst thereof. 
 
 All this being granted, we may now consider 
 how those men who have received one of these 
 gifts are to be trained. Neither the man him- 
 self, nor they who are responsible for his train- 
 ing may, at first, have any definite conviction as 
 to the particular nature of the gift. That will 
 emerge in the course of training, and should 
 qualify the later stages especially. At times a 
 man from the beginning is conscious of the 
 peculiar gift with which he is entrusted. When 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 185 
 
 that is so, training should be from the beginning 
 with a view to its development. These particu- 
 lar applications however must be left. It is not 
 a difficult task. The nature of the gift suggests 
 the special treatment necessary for its cultiva- 
 tion in each case. I propose to deal with the 
 subject in the most general way. 
 
 There are four phases of training which must 
 be kept in mind, and I shall define them in gen- 
 eral terms as. Academical, Theological, Practi- 
 cal, and Spiritual. Let me at once say that the 
 first two should be taken in the order named, 
 first the academical, and then the theological; 
 while the last two, the practical and spiritual, 
 should run concurrently through all the course. 
 
 The training which I have called academical 
 is really the training of the mind. It is that 
 which, in our present University system of edu- 
 cation, we should describe as the Arts Course. 
 This should, in my view, be of the widest na- 
 ture, and as thorough as possible. The value 
 of this is twofold. First, and again in my view, 
 principally, is the fact that such a course of 
 mental discipline trains and perfects the instru- 
 ment. There is nothing more important than 
 that men should be taught to think for them- 
 selves, and to think their way through. Now I 
 
i86 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 affirm it as my strong conviction, that men do 
 not do either the one or the other without 
 serious discipHne. In the realm of Christian 
 preaching, it is as true as in any other, that evil 
 is wrought by want of thought as well as want 
 of heart. It must be remembered that the 
 Word of God is no small matter. We may do 
 incalculable harm by talking about the simple 
 Gospel. There is a simplicity in the Gospel as 
 there is in Christ, from which we do well that 
 we do not depart. But it is not the simplicity 
 of superficiality. There are the profoundest 
 depths in the Truth, as there are in Him, in 
 Whom it has pleased the. Father that all the 
 fullness of the Godhead should dwell corpo- 
 really; and we equally do well not to forget this 
 fact. To deal with these matters, it is of the 
 greatest value that the mind should in itself be 
 perfectly trained, in order that in its approach 
 to the Truth, it may do no bungling work. It 
 is true that the Apostle is called upon to make 
 Truth clear to others; the Prophet to make its 
 application living; the Evangelist to make its 
 first message simple; the Pastor and Teacher 
 to make it available to the youngest and weak- 
 est disciple; but the more complete the knowl- 
 edge of the preacher in each case, the more sue- 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 187 
 
 cessful will he be in accomplishing this purpose. 
 The completeness of the preacher's knowledge 
 depends to a large extent on the perfecting of 
 the instrument of his mind. Hence the first 
 value of academic training. 
 
 The second value is that of the acquisition of 
 knowledge in itself. Nothing is without some 
 value in the work of preaching. The man who, 
 in the finest sense of the word, is- a well-read 
 man, is thereby greatly enriched for the work of 
 the ministry; and that for two reasons. First, 
 because over the whole realm of knowledge 
 Christ is King, and whatever department a man 
 knows, is in itself a part of the territory over 
 which His sway extends. Secondly, because in 
 all realms of knowledge illustrations may be 
 gathered which are of the utmost force in the 
 elucidation and application of the Truth he has 
 to proclaim. Of course the realm of knowledge 
 is so vast that no one man in a lifetime can cover 
 the whole of it; and men preparing for the 
 ministry have a specific subject on which to 
 specialize. Therefore selections must be made 
 in the interest of the special work. 
 
 Generally speaking I should urge that the 
 study of language should be kept to the front; 
 especially those languages in which the Sacred 
 
i88 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 Scriptures were written. A careful and thor- 
 ough study of English, the tongue in which 
 preaching is to be done, is of the greatest im- 
 portance. The poor Anglo-Saxon of some 
 Hebrew and Greek scholars is deplorable. 
 
 Then all history is of enormous value. It is 
 not without profound significance that the He- 
 brews included the Historic books in the class 
 of Prophetic writings. They understood first, 
 the truth about prophecy, that it is the speaking 
 forth of the Word of the Lord supremely, and 
 that the predictive element is only one part of 
 it. Then, they realized that the true value of 
 History is created by the fact that it reveals the 
 way of the Divine government in the past, and 
 so teaches men fundamental things concerning 
 their present actions. This is as true of history 
 outside the Biblical Literature as of that within, 
 for as Paul said on Mars Hill, God " made of 
 one every nation of men for to dwell on all 
 the face of the earth, having determined their 
 appointed seasons, and the bounds of their 
 habitation." Hence the importance of this 
 study. 
 
 The importance of the study of human sys- 
 tems of philosophy cannot be overestimated. 
 This I need not stay to emphasize in view of 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 189 
 
 what we have already said concerning it in a 
 previous lecture. 
 
 The science of psychology is perhaps only yet 
 in its infancy, but the infant is singularly well 
 nourished, and full of strength, and as it seems 
 to me, those called to the Ministry of the Word 
 cannot afford to neglect it. I do not suggest 
 that they are to be experts in the science, or 
 that they will be called to lecture on it; but an 
 understanding of the mind of man, so far as it 
 is known, must be of untold value to those who 
 have to deal with the Truth. It is unanimously 
 conceded that such knowledge is important in 
 educational work. It is not enough to know 
 the subject to be taught. It is necessary to 
 know the mind of those to be taught. 
 
 Personally, moreover, I would compel every 
 man who is going to preach to take a course 
 in the theory and practice of pedagogy, and of 
 elocution. The value of knowing how to im- 
 part knowledge, which is of the very essence 
 of real teaching, is fundamental to the work 
 of proclaiming the Truth, and that in every 
 phase of the work of the Ministry. A man 
 may be able to write, and to recite a treatise, 
 and such work is excellent; but it is of very 
 much greater service to men and to the cause 
 
igo PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 of Christ, if he be able so to impart the knowl- 
 edge that others may receive it. It may be that 
 preaching which is of this nature may lack 
 something of literary finish, but I would sacri- 
 fice a good deal in the interests of clarity. Elo- 
 cution in this regard is not to be neglected. 
 Anything strained, artificial, theatrical, is to be 
 sedulously avoided; but articulation, enuncia- 
 tion, light and shade, should be as sedulously 
 cultivated. 
 
 For my illustrations I am prepared to 
 apologize, but not for my main contention that 
 the minister of the Word cannot know too 
 much, nor have too thorough a training 
 academically. 
 
 All this however is preliminary; and because 
 it is preliminary my conviction is that it ought 
 to be taken first in order of time. Wherever 
 possible I would prevent any man approaching 
 the study of Systematic Theology until his 
 academic training was complete. It is my own 
 conviction that to bring a half-trained mind, or 
 a mind in process of training, to that study is a 
 grave mistake, and issues in those hasty judg- 
 ments which are too often mistaken for 
 advanced thought. Necessarily throughout the 
 whole of this academic training, the student will 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 191 
 
 continue his reading and diligent study of the 
 Scriptures themselves. This for devotional 
 purposes, and also to give him the grounding in 
 knowledge of them, w^hich v^ill be of value v^hen 
 he begins the more systematic study of The- 
 ology. 
 
 The mind having been thus trained in the 
 academic course, the great v^ork may begin, 
 that namely of the instruction of the trained 
 mind in its special subject, which we now define 
 by the general term Theology. To that term 
 I have no objection, providing always that we 
 remember that it connotes more than it means 
 philologically. Technically, Theology is the 
 science of God, and that is the knowledge of 
 God. According to our Lord Himself this is 
 life eternal. It is therefore the Word of God in 
 all its fulness. 
 
 With any particular method or system of 
 Theology I have nothing whatever to do now, 
 and I am not proposing to tarry here, save to 
 insist upon one or two fundamental matters. 
 The first is that of the absolute necessity for 
 the training of every man who enters the min- 
 istry in Theology in this widest sense. Here a 
 man must do more than specialize in a depart- 
 ment. He must see the whole, so as to realize 
 
192 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 the value of the parts. Nothing is more dan- 
 gerous than the over-emphasis of a truth. 
 Every phase of Truth is not only completed by, 
 it is corrected by, every other phase. George 
 Herbert's v^^ords about the Bible may be quoted 
 here as most appropriate to the subject of The- 
 ology ; 
 
 " O that I knew how all thy lights combine. 
 And the configurations of their glory ! 
 Seeing not only how each verse doth shine. 
 But all the constellations of the story." 
 
 There have been many systems of Theology. 
 They are still emerging. Doubtless there will 
 be many more. These are all valuable, — little 
 systems, that have their day, and cease to be. 
 They are valuable, both in their day, and in 
 their ceasing to be; as they help men to imme- 
 diate understanding, and then make way for 
 new statements adapted to the new age. The 
 one System that is for every successive day, and 
 that does not cease to be, is that which we have 
 in the Bible. 
 
 Fundamentally then theological training is 
 Biblical, and to the Bible Literature itself most 
 earnest attention must be given. It should 
 have the supreme place in theological training. 
 Let the method with all human systems be ec- 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 193 
 
 lectic. The more of these a man can examine 
 in his course the better, providing that he al- 
 lows them to be tested by the Biblical standard, 
 and does not attempt to crowd the Biblical sys- 
 tem into their narrow formulae. That is all I 
 desire to say on that subject. 
 
 We now come to the two phases of training 
 that should be conterminous with the whole 
 course, those namely which are practical and 
 spiritual. 
 
 From the beginning of their training, men 
 called to the exercise of the ministry of the 
 Word should have practice in preaching under 
 wise and sympathetic oversight. It is well also 
 if he can have pastoral practice, also under 
 apostolic oversight. It may be objected that 
 the plea I have urged for the academic course 
 having the first period in training, is against 
 this idea, because the student has no theological 
 training. To that I should reply; first, that 
 every man who is a Christian believer, and is 
 conscious of the call to preach, has already some 
 knowledge of the Word; and secondly, that 
 neither the man himself nor his congregation 
 will expect that his preaching should be other 
 than the simple statement of those things which 
 he believes. I think no greater mistake can be 
 
194 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 made than to neglect preaching for a number of 
 years. 
 
 Here I propose to take the opportunity of 
 protesting with all the force of the strongest 
 conviction against the ordinary sermon-class, in 
 which a man is called upon to preach before his 
 fellow students and members of the faculty. 
 The whole method cuts at the root of the true 
 idea of preaching. The man prepares for his 
 sermon-class, from an entirely wrong motive. 
 His sermon will be criticized, sometimes kindly, 
 sometimes brutally, from the lower standards 
 of consideration. Its essential character of be- 
 ing a message of God to men cannot be dealt 
 with in a sermon-class. It is above and beyond 
 criticism. Moreover what man can preach to 
 such an audience? Of course he does not at- 
 tempt to do so. He preaches before them, and 
 preaching before men is not preaching in the 
 Biblical sense. No; this is not the practice for 
 which I plead. Let these men in training be 
 sent out two by two into the villages, into the 
 towns, especially to difficult places; and let 
 them go to preach the Truth as they know it, to 
 the people. Let the two be encouraged to go 
 in manly, sane, and yet distinctly spiritual fel- 
 lowship ; let them go to help each other, not to 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 195 
 
 manifest their cleverness either in the preach- 
 ing, or in the criticism. Then they will do two 
 things at once. They will help those to whom 
 they go, and they will grow in the ability to deal 
 with men as they preach. 
 
 During the whole course of training, such 
 preaching should be under the guidance of 
 competent men, both as to its matter and its 
 method. As to the matter, written sermons 
 should be submitted, such sermons as have ac- 
 tually been preached, that the Teacher may 
 show the faults of reasoning, or the failures of 
 illustrations; or, on the other hand, encourage 
 evident ability in certain directions, as it mani- 
 fests itself. These men should be encouraged 
 to preach from notes, and these notes should be 
 submitted for the same kind of revision. As to 
 the method, the Professor of Homiletics would 
 gain much of real influence if in turn he was the 
 other one of the two, and so heard the man him- 
 self preach. Let him walk home with the stu- 
 dent, or get him into his study for a quiet talk 
 afterwards, and point out the failures and excel- 
 lencies which he observed. We have sadly neg- 
 lected the true practical training of men for 
 the work of preaching, and the neglect is being 
 felt everywhere to-day. 
 
196 PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 The final matter is that of spiritual training. 
 In some senses this is supreme. The first ex- 
 perience of the man knowing that he is called to 
 the ministry of the Word, is inevitably that of 
 the grandeur and solemnity of the work. He 
 faces it with a sense of joy, mingled with fear 
 and trembling. 
 
 The perils of the period of training are very 
 definite. Inevitably the necessary work of crit- 
 ical investigation will seem to challenge every- 
 thing that he has held most sacred. From this 
 there can be no escape, and I am inclined to say 
 that the man who does escape it, misses one of 
 the surest methods to the finding of a firmer 
 and larger faith. Nevertheless the process is a 
 very searching one. 
 
 Then there is the special peril of the commu-^ 
 nity of purpose and of faith. Christian men in 
 other walks of life have the advantage of the 
 friction caused by daily contact with those who 
 are not Christians. Students for the ministry, 
 for a period, largely lack this. Very often too, 
 a sane dread of anything that savours of cant 
 and unreality will prevent that spiritual inter- 
 course which is really necessary to the develop- 
 ment of strong spiritual life. There is also the 
 peril of the first gaining of new knowledge. A 
 
PREPARATION OF THE MINISTRY 197 
 
 man is always at least threatened with the vain 
 imagination that he knows much, when really 
 he has hardly found out how ignorant he is. 
 
 All these things, and many others peculiar to 
 the period of training, can only be guarded 
 against by the careful cultivation of the habits 
 of the truly religious life. Habits I say, re- 
 membering that they have to be formed, as cer- 
 tainly as do evil habits. Theological students 
 need pastoral oversight as surely as do other 
 Christian people, and of a very special kind. 
 
 Happy are the men who, called to the Minis- 
 try, have the privilege of a full and careful train- 
 ing; and highly privileged are those to whom 
 the sacred work is committed. 
 
THE EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 THE day when a man stands girded at 
 the threshold of his actual work in the 
 ministry of the Word, is a day full of 
 mystic wonder. He is conscious of strange 
 lights and shadows, of joy and of fear, of hope 
 and almost of despair. The opportunities of 
 service are seen to be at once so vast, and so full 
 of solemnity, that he is seized with a sense of 
 inability, and of unworthiness. He feels in his 
 own soul what the Apostle undoubtedly felt as 
 he inquired; "Who is sufficient for these 
 things?" Nevertheless he is conscious anew 
 of the iact that his call was from God, and that 
 Divine resources are ever at the disposal of 
 those called to Divine service; and so a sense of 
 dependence is also a sense of confidence. These 
 apparently conflicting emotions fill the soul 
 with a great and reverent awe. 
 
 Perhaps the most common disaster in min- 
 198 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 199 
 
 isterial life is the loss of this very sense of awe. 
 The glory passes; the light becomes dim; the 
 wonder ceases; and work becomes routine, and 
 preaching a drudgery. How is this to be obvi- 
 ated, and the first glory maintained undimmed? 
 This is really a great question, demanding seri- 
 ous consideration. I propose to deal with it so 
 far as I am able strictly from the positive side. 
 There are four matters which seem to me to be 
 of paramount importance in the exercise of the 
 vocation of the ministry of the Word. They 
 are; first, the prayerful culture of the spiritual 
 life; secondly, the persistent study of the Word; 
 thirdly, the practice of purposeful preaching; 
 and finally, the patient shepherding of the flock. 
 
 Wherever a man gives himself with all his 
 heart and mind and will to these things, the 
 glad surprise and mystic glory of his work will 
 never cease. Dark days, and weary ways, he 
 will certainly know; but so also did his Lord. 
 Nevertheless the light for Him never failed, and 
 all the tiresome ways led onward to the glori- 
 ous goal. So also will it be with those whom 
 He calls, sends, accompanies, if they are true to 
 Him and to His service. Of these things then 
 let us think. 
 
 The matter of first importance is that of the 
 
200 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 culture of the spiritual life, or to put it in an- 
 other way, the maintenance of life in the Spirit. 
 The minister of the Word must ever remember 
 that his one business is to deal with spiritual 
 things. This by no means suggests that he is 
 to separate spiritual truth and being from 
 things mental and material, as though they 
 were in some sense abstractions, having no liv- 
 ing relation with these matters. But it is of 
 absolute urgency in order to the exercise of his 
 true function, that he should remember that he 
 is not called and equipped by the heavenly gift 
 for deahng with the mental and the material, 
 apart from the spiritual. His one business in 
 the realm of thought is to bring to bear upon it 
 the light of the eternal Wisdom ; and his one re- 
 sponsibility in the realm of action is to seek to 
 inspire it with spiritual principle and passion. 
 The work of the Christian preacher is that of 
 bringing to bear upon human words, opinions, 
 teachings, the correcting and guiding light of 
 the Word of the living God. The work of the 
 Christian preacher is that of relating all human 
 action, in whatever realm, to the Divine pur- 
 pose and enterprise, in order that it may be 
 true, and strong, and lasting. 
 
 It follows that a man called to be the instru- 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 201 
 
 ment of such service must himself Hve in the 
 spiritual atmosphere. This means that he must 
 practise the presence of God. This is much 
 more than accepting the theory of the Divine 
 immanence. It is the persistent and perpetual 
 relating of all personal thought and action to 
 that Presence. This demands, first of all, the 
 exercise of the spiritual faculties. Inquiry must 
 be made of God, as to w^hat the way and the will 
 of God may be, with regard to everything, the 
 great and the small, the small as earnestly as 
 the great. Not only must there be inquiry, the 
 spirit must be trained to wait and to listen. 
 The haste that cannot wait on the Lord must 
 be denied. If there is not time to seek the 
 Lord, there is not time to do anything. The 
 doing that begins without the discovery of the 
 Divine will is indeed deadly. All this in turn 
 calls for response to the demands which are 
 made as the result of such inquiry and such 
 waiting. There must be the yielding of the 
 judgment, that is the renewing of the mind ; 
 the consent of the heart, that is the dedication 
 of the aflFection; and implicit obedience, that is 
 the yielding of the will. This life, actively in 
 the spiritual world, must be resolute, and con- 
 tinuous. No man can fulfil his ministry in spir- 
 
202 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 itual things, save as he himself is Uving in right 
 Telation with spiritual things. When the Word 
 ceases to be a light, a fire, a joy to a man in his 
 own life, searching, energizing, heartening him ; 
 his preaching of it becomes a weariness, a 
 drudgery to his own soul, and utterly ineffective 
 in the lives of others. 
 
 Of true spiritual life for the minister of the 
 Word, as for all others, there is a twofold condi- 
 tion, and test, in the realm of the material. No 
 divorce between the body and the spirit is pos- 
 sible in this life. The body is the instrument of 
 the spirit. No separation between ordinary 
 human afifairs, and the things of the spirit, is 
 possible in this world. The things of everyday 
 life are the opportunities of spiritual realization 
 and expression. The condition for true per- 
 sonal spirituality is bodily fitness. The test of 
 spirituality is the use a man makes of his body. 
 Not by its destruction does he demonstrate his 
 spiritual attainment, but by its possession and 
 use. The opportunities for spiritual service are 
 the commonplaces of everyday life. The test 
 of spirituality is the use a man makes of these 
 opportunities. Not by escape from them does 
 he demonstrate his spirituality, but by their 
 sanctification and beautifying. To minister the 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 203 
 
 Word so as to produce these results in the Hves 
 of others must be to live by the Word in this 
 very sense. No minister of the Word can neg- 
 lect the habits of the spiritual life vi^ithout dis- 
 aster to his ov^n soul, and to his w^ork therefore. 
 The second matter of importance is that of 
 the persistent study of the Word on the part of 
 the minister. This seems so obvious as to need 
 no argument, and yet I fear that it is at this 
 point that very many have sadly failed. In the 
 years of preparation much has been done, in the 
 very necessity of the case; and all that has been 
 done is of the greatest value. Indeed the real 
 value of the technical w^ork of these years will 
 only now begin to be known. Nevertheless all 
 this has been preparatory. By that I do not 
 mean preparatory to preaching merely, though 
 of course that is true. I mean preparatory to 
 that particular study of the Word which must 
 be undertaken, as the definite work of the min- 
 istry is taken up. The minister will now turn 
 to the Word in the company of his work, as he 
 goes to his work in the company of the Word. 
 That is to say, he will not now go to his Bible 
 in order to discover its teaching in the abstract 
 merely. He will turn to it, burdened with the 
 needs, the problems, yes, and the agonies of 
 
204 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 men; in order to seek its light upon these 
 things, so that his ministry may be a service of 
 direction, of healing, of help. To sit down in 
 happy seclusion, separated from all men and 
 matters, in order to know the Scriptures, is one 
 thing, and a great and joyful thing. It is quite 
 another matter to go into seclusion, carrying in 
 with you the sins and sorrows of human souls 
 in order to find the Divine salvation and com- 
 fort. Happy indeed is the man who has had a 
 thorough training in the former method. That 
 will be of inestimable value now. But he can- 
 not wholly depend on it. He must ; back to 
 a yet more diligent devotion to stuu3 . Using 
 our great phrase, " The Word of God," as re- 
 ferring to the Sacred Writings, I declare that 
 its deepest tones are never heard, its most won- 
 derful revelation is never known, until great 
 human need appeals to it. The minister of the 
 Word must make that appeal vicariously, for 
 those to whom he is called upon to minister. 
 
 Who that has been long in the work has not 
 known the travail and the triumph of this expe- 
 rience? It is an awful and a glorious thing to 
 be made the bearer of the sin, the shame, the 
 suflFering of human souls; to carry these things 
 into the light of the Divine revelation; to hear 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 205 
 
 its message of power, of hope, of comfort; and 
 then to minister to those in need. The man 
 who does not so continue to be a student of 
 the Word will fail in the exercise of his min- 
 istry, however talented he may be in other 
 ways. 
 
 Here then is a peril which confronts a man as 
 he leaves his college and commences his work. 
 We are apt to think that in the days of prepara- 
 tion we have done our work, and that we know 
 our Bibles. We are tempted to turn to human 
 opinions, even to be enamoured of that illusory, 
 ephemeral, anaemic thing called " current 
 thought." Let us guard against the tempta- 
 tion from the very beginning, and continuously. 
 In the comparatively small compass of our 
 Bibles we shall find all that the human soul 
 needs. While we may have much help from 
 other literature in illustration and interpreta- 
 tion, let us never forget that of all other writ- 
 ings in comparison with the Bible it may be 
 said, 
 
 " These are but broken lights of Thee." 
 
 Therefore let us be diligent students of the 
 Word. 
 
 It is not the purpose of these lectures to give 
 
2o6 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 anything like technical details, but I may at 
 least give a general suggestion as to a minis- 
 ter's method. First, let his library be carefully 
 chosen, and let it be good, rather than large. 
 To any man beginning the work of library 
 building I should say, let these words guide 
 you, Exegesis, Exposition, Everything. Keep that 
 order. Never make the worst blunder of all, 
 that of getting everything first. Neither make 
 perhaps the more common mistake of putting 
 exposition in the place of exegesis. The former is 
 at best very often no more than the opinions 
 of others. The latter will, in the proportion in 
 which it is really scholarly, help you to know 
 what the Word really says. 
 
 Then I would urge every minister as he com- 
 mences his actual work to get a new Bible, and 
 begin all over again, giving special attention to 
 two matters. First, let him turn to the books 
 he thinks he knows best, in order to find how 
 much there is that he had not discovered. 
 Then let him resolutely turn to the parts least 
 known, most neglected, determined to face and 
 to know them. As I have said before, for my 
 illustrations I apologize, but not for my conten- 
 tion. No man can be a successful minister of 
 the Word — and I use the word successful in its 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 207 
 
 best sense — who ceases to be a student of the 
 Word. Let me add that no man need fear that 
 he will exhaust its treasures. 
 
 The third matter of importance is that of pur- 
 poseful preaching. All preaching, whether 
 apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, or pastoral, 
 has one aim ; that namely of the capture of the 
 central citadel of Mansoul, the will. The intel- 
 lect and the emotions are highways of approach, 
 and both should be employed. The one thing 
 of which we need to be constantly reminding 
 ourselves, is that we have never accomplished 
 the real end of preaching until we have reached 
 the will, and constrained it towards the choices 
 which are in harmony with the Truth which we 
 declare. I say " constrained it " towards these 
 choices, rather than " compelled it " to them, for 
 this latter we can never do. The former we 
 may, and it is our one business to do so. To 
 instruct the intelligence is necessary, but it is a 
 means to an end, rather than an end. The last 
 word of the preacher along these lines is, " If 
 ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do 
 them.'* It is in order to the doing of the will 
 of God that His will is to be made known. To 
 touch and move the emotions is perfectly 
 proper, but it also is a means to an end, rather 
 
2o8 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 than an end. The last word of the preacher 
 along these lines must ever be that of the Lord, 
 " If ye love Me ye w^ill keep My command- 
 ments." That man is indeed happy, who, him- 
 self instructed in the things of God, and inspired 
 by the love of God, can storm the citadel of 
 human will, along the avenues of intelligence 
 and emotion, capturing it for his Lord, and con- 
 straining it to obedience to His Word. 
 
 The minister of the Word has two questions 
 which he must always ask himself concerning 
 his preaching; first, What is the need I am to 
 address? Secondly, What is the message I am 
 to deliver? The answer to the first is known 
 fundamentally and essentially. He always 
 speaks to the deepest things in human life, the 
 things of the spirit, the things that are of abid- 
 ing importance, and which touch and influence 
 finally all the secondary things. But these 
 things have an almost infinite variety of inci- 
 dental expression ; and the man who would 
 preach the Word prevailingly to his fellow men 
 must live among them; he must know the hu- 
 man spirit as well as the Word of God. His 
 business must be to know the need he ad- 
 dresses. 
 
 Knowing this need he must then seek his 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 209 
 
 message. Here again inclusively he is never at 
 a loss. That by which man lives, in the deep- 
 est of his life, is the Word of God. But the in- 
 cidental application must be as varied as is the 
 incidental expression; and he who would preach 
 the Word prevailingly must live with the Word ; 
 he must know the Word of God as well as the 
 human spirit. His business must be to know 
 the remedy for the need he addresses. 
 
 Besides these two, no other question is really 
 important. The preacher is not to ask whether 
 they will hear or whether they will forbear; al- 
 though the passion of his soul must be to per- 
 suade them to obey. He will never halt in the 
 delivery of his message to inquire as to whether 
 it is likely to be pleasant or disturbing. Neither 
 of these is necessarily authoritative, and this the 
 preacher should remember. To some tempera- 
 ments there is always the temptation to think 
 that the unpleasant is the true and the power- 
 ful. Others are tempted to imagine that the 
 restful is the only valuable note. Both ideas 
 are equally false. The Word of God will some- 
 times shake the very foundations, and disturb 
 the spirit to its depths; while at others it will 
 come as peace and quietness, calming all the 
 storm into rest. The passing effects of the 
 
2IO EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 Word are nothing. The ultimate victory in 
 the sanctification of men and women to the will 
 of God is everything. 
 
 The preacher therefore has always two su- 
 preme duties in preaching, beyond the procla- 
 mation of his message. They are those of ap- 
 plication and appeal. The Word declared must 
 be applied to the need as it is known. This 
 must be done with knowledge and discretion; 
 but it must be done, or the preaching may fail 
 to realize its highest intention and purpose. 
 Moreover he must appeal to the will, calling it 
 to surrender in the name of the Lord. This 
 appeal must be made with conviction as well as 
 with passion. Passion characterized by un- 
 reality is of no avail; it is worse than convic- 
 tion without passion. Painted fire never burns. 
 But conviction without passion often fails to 
 reach its goal. Unlit fuel never burns. 
 
 Let ministers of the Word preach the things 
 of which they themselves know the power, and 
 preach them with the passionate earnestness of 
 which such things are worthy, and the ministry 
 will be a constant triumph and a perpetual joy; 
 even if it be also a constant travail, and per- 
 petual fellowship with the sufferings of the 
 Lord. 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 211 
 
 The final matter in the exercise of vocation 
 is that of the patient shepherding of those who 
 are gathered into the flock as the result of 
 preaching. The word shepherding has applica- 
 tion principally to the distinctly pastoral office, 
 but the principles involved apply in each case. 
 In apostolic ministry there is need for such de- 
 tailed interpretation as may be necessary to 
 meet the need of individual cases. In prophetic 
 ministry, administration as well as application 
 will constantly be called for. In evangelistic 
 ministry, personal direction will inevitably be 
 necessary. In each case much more than sur- 
 face knowledge is demanded, both of the mes- 
 sage and of the men to be instructed, guided, 
 directed. 
 
 I propose to confine myself to the more 
 strictly pastoral phase. Here there must first 
 be the perpetual feeding of the flock by the 
 systematic teaching of the Word. The work 
 of the Pastor in this regard is not completely 
 done by preaching from isolated texts. It goes 
 without saying that it is not done at all by 
 preaching about topics, save as they are dealt 
 with in the light of the Word. It is the busi- 
 ness of the Pastor and Teacher to lead the peo- 
 ple under his care in careful and intelligent 
 
212 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 study of the Sacred Writings. Every Church 
 should be a Bible School, a Bible College, and 
 its minister should take oversight of all Biblical 
 teaching, from the Primary Department of his 
 Sunday School, through every grade, and up 
 to the oldest members of the Church. Much of 
 the detail work he must delegate to others, but 
 nothing of it should be outside his knowledge 
 and direction. His charge is to feed the lambs, 
 and the sheep. 
 
 I refrain from discussion of methods in detail, 
 contenting myself with this statement of a 
 broad principle, which I hold to be of great 
 importance. 
 
 Beyond this, however, the Pastor has a dou- 
 ble duty. He must take oversight of the flock, 
 and he must guide it. What John Ruskin said 
 of the Bishops in Sesame and Lilies is true of all 
 shepherds of the flock. If they do not know 
 their people and their needs they are no 
 bishops. Here is the true place of pastoral 
 visitation. This however is a whole subject, 
 and in some senses a separate one. I refer to 
 it because it ought to have the closest relation 
 to the ministry of the Word. It is by this 
 method that the true Pastor discovers the needs 
 of his people, and so knows how to bring forth 
 
EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 213 
 
 things new and old out of his treasury. It goes 
 without saying that pastoral visitation is much 
 more than calling at houses, drinking tea, and 
 indulging in profitless conversation. 
 
 His guidance of his flock is a sacred duty, 
 also. Sometimes it is his duty to indicate a 
 worthy line of conduct, even when his advice is 
 not sought. This is not always easy; it is at 
 times found to be unwelcome, even resented; 
 but if he is faithful to his duty it must be done, 
 and it is wonderful how responsive the human 
 soul is to such guidance. Such guidance is con- 
 stantly sought, and the methods of private per- 
 sonal interviews and correspondence are of 
 great value in shepherding the sheep. 
 
 There is yet another thing the Pastor may 
 have to do. He may have to fight. There are 
 still evil, wolfish interests, and human beings 
 who prowl around the flock to destroy, and 
 with such the shepherd is always at war. 
 
 In view of all these responsibilities, — which 
 are privileges also because they are shared with 
 the Good, the Great, the Chief Shepherd, — how 
 important it ever is that the Pastor should de- 
 fine his spiritual relationship with his people 
 clearly. He should see to it that he establish 
 no relation with them, either political or social, 
 
214 EXERCISE OF THE VOCATION 
 
 which would prevent his fulfilment in their lives 
 of his high spiritual function. 
 
 To realize this ideal of the exercise of the 
 vocation of the ministry of the Word will give 
 the minister no spare time. It will, however, 
 demand recreative intervals, in which, escaping 
 entirely from all the particular work of his sa- 
 cred office, he finds renewal and recuperation. 
 Such intervals should be marked ofif as sacred, 
 and no pressure of work should be allowed to 
 interfere. To say that is to have to add; 
 " Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable of- 
 fenders, and incline our hearts to keep this 
 law." 
 
 But again this conception as the goal of en- 
 deavour will preserve the minister from any 
 sense of failing interest. It will often almost 
 burden him that his opportunities are so vast, 
 never that they are narrow. With every pass- 
 ing year, the Word to which he yields himself 
 that he may give it to others, will grow in 
 strength and beauty, and the joy of declaring it 
 will be his strength as well as his duty. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 IN our introductory study we considered the 
 setting of the phrase which has constituted 
 our Theme. In conclusion we return to 
 that setting. In the statement of which the 
 phrase is a part, we find two activities referred 
 to, both of which are quahfied by an attitude of 
 mind, and a corresponding output of energy; 
 " We will continue stedfastly in prayer, and 
 in the ministry of the Word." The activities 
 are those of " prayer " and " the ministry of 
 the Word "; the attitude is that of *' continuing 
 stedfastly." 
 
 The attitude indicated was that of the whole 
 Church. In the strangely mysterious days be- 
 tween the ascension and Pentecost, they " con- 
 tinued stedfastly in prayer." After Pentecost 
 the Apostles and early disciples, together with 
 those brought into the company through 
 Peter's preaching, " continued stedfastly in the 
 Apostles' teaching, and fellowship; in the 
 breaking of bread, and the prayers." 
 
 Now in the case of the Twelve the attitude 
 215 
 
2i6 THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 had special application to two matters, 
 " Prayer," and *' The Ministry of the Word." 
 This meant limitation; but such limitation as 
 made for intensity in the direction indicated; 
 and so limitation, in the interest of the whole 
 fellowship of the Church, and of its mission in 
 the world. All the other duties of the Fellow- 
 ship were most sacred, but they were to be at- 
 tended to by others. These men, in the spirit 
 of continuing stedfastness, which was the spirit 
 of all, were to do two things; they were to 
 pray ; and they were to serve the Word. 
 
 Having completed our consideration of the 
 ministry of the Word, we pause in conclusion 
 to remember the work which is first named, 
 that of Prayer. This work is thus first named, 
 because it is preliminary; and it is connected, 
 because it must be continuous. Nothing more 
 is necessary in this connection than a most 
 simple examination of the idea of continuing 
 stedfastly in prayer. 
 
 The word for prayer in this passage is at once 
 the most common in use, and the most inclusive 
 in suggestion. It is the word proseuchomai, a 
 compound word, made up of the preposition 
 pros, and the verb ^uchbmai. The preposition 
 suggests motion towards a goal; while the verb 
 
THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 217 
 
 simply means to wish, to desire. The simplest 
 idea then of prayer is that of desire towards 
 God. The word is always used of prayer to the 
 gods or to God. It includes the whole attitude 
 and activities of prostration in worship, of the 
 sense of dependence, and of the expression of 
 desire. 
 
 The phrase " continued stedfastly " is the 
 translation of one Greek word prbskartereo, 
 which again is a compound of the same prepo- 
 sition proSy and the verb kartereo^ which means 
 to be strong; that is, earnest, determined in 
 effort. Thus the whole word indicates persist- 
 ent, powerful perseverance. 
 
 It is thus that those called to the ministry of 
 the Word are to pray. The prayer attitude is 
 that of a consciousness of need, of dependence 
 upon God; and of perfect confidence in God. 
 Apart from this attitude and activity, no man 
 can fulfil his ministry of the Word. The ques- 
 tion, " Who is sufficient for these things? " and 
 the answer, " Our sufficiency is of God," com- 
 bine to inspire earnest and persistent prayer, in 
 the power of which the ministry of the Word 
 may be exercised. 
 
 It is then of the utmost importance that, 
 from the first, the man called to this ministry 
 
2i8 THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 should cultivate the habits of prayer. This 
 needs to be done. The habits of the religious 
 life are no more spontaneous than are those of 
 the godless life. It is by the doing of things 
 regularly, systematically, and of set purpose, 
 that the time comes when they are done habit- 
 ually. 
 
 The habits of prayer are of two kinds ; which 
 may be described as the regular and the irregu- 
 lar. The regular habits are those of set times 
 and places and forms. These should be ar- 
 ranged according to temperament and oppor- 
 tunity, and then rigidly adhered to. The min- 
 ister's study should be first of all his oratory; 
 the place into which he can go and shut the 
 door against all intruders; and that not only, 
 and not first, to study, but to pray. 
 
 The irregular habits of prayer are those in 
 which the soul is trained to the perpetually 
 Godward attitude in thought, in purpose, in 
 activity. Thus prayer will be ejaculatory, or 
 unuttered as to words even in thought; the 
 Godward desire perpetually operating, and so 
 influencing all thinking, all loving, all doing. 
 Than this, nothing is more important, or more 
 potential. It is thus that we may pray without 
 ceasing. 
 
THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 219 
 
 To continue stedfastly in preaching, it is nec- 
 essary to do so in prayer. There must be 
 prayer in preparation, for the shining of the 
 true light upon the holy page, for the interpre- 
 tation of the One Interpreter. There must be 
 prayer in preaching, for the cooperation of that 
 Spirit, through Whom the demonstration, or 
 making plain, alone can come to the hearers. 
 There must be prayer in all the pastoral work 
 which follows preaching, for true wisdom in 
 dealing with those who are to be, not only in- 
 structed in the Truth, but led into obedience to 
 its claims in all manner of behaviour. Granted 
 the man gifted, trained, and continuing sted- 
 fastly in prayer, the ministry of the Word 
 through him will be powerful and prevailing. 
 
 This is to dismiss a subject of overwhelming 
 importance with almost discourteous brevity. 
 It is so dismissed, not from lack of the sense of 
 urgency, but on account of the limitations of 
 my present theme. Under other conditions 
 there is nothing I should count a greater privi- 
 lege than to speak at length on the vital relation 
 between prayer and preaching. Here and now 
 I must content myself with this brief and con- 
 densed reference to that relationship. If there 
 is one thing of which experience has made me 
 
220 THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 more sure than of anything else, it is that there 
 can be no fruitful and victorious ministry of the 
 Word, which is not conditioned from first to 
 last, not only in the sense of dependence upon 
 God, but also in the active expression of it, 
 which has been made available to us in the 
 sacred privilege of prayer. 
 
 The briefest backward glance over the 
 ground we have traversed will illustrate and 
 emphasize this matter. Service, or Ministry, 
 can only be intelligently rendered as the serv- 
 ants or ministers of the Word hold constant 
 converse with Him of Whom the Word is the 
 Expression, through the Word Who is His per- 
 fect exegesis. The Word can only be rightly 
 apprehended as the interpretation of the Spirit 
 is sought, and that persistently. The Apostle 
 who is to render it available to men by transla- 
 tion or systematization needs all the time to 
 ask for guidance. The Prophet proclaiming it 
 to his age needs to remember that it only be- 
 comes potential as it is delivered in the power 
 of the Spirit, and accompanied in the delivery 
 by His demonstration ; and for this cooperation 
 he must ever seek in prayer. The Evangelist 
 can only combine the warning and wooing 
 notes in the harmony of his message, as in 
 
THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 221 
 
 prayer he gains that preparation of spirit neces- 
 sary to so delicate and glorious a task. The 
 Pastor and Teacher will be perpetually driven 
 by the very variety of the claims made upon 
 him, to seek in the Secret Place the direction of 
 the One Great Shepherd of the flock. 
 
 To meet the changed conditions of to-day in 
 loyalty to the unchanged obligations of his min- 
 istry, every preacher w^ill need to guard his own 
 mind and heart and will by diligent cultivation 
 of communion with God in prayer. Through 
 all the perilous processes of training, men need 
 prayer, prayer, and always prayer. When we 
 pass out from training to the exercise of the 
 holy vocation, then perhaps it is more true of 
 us than of any man, and more true than at any 
 time, that " men ought always to pray, and not 
 to faint." 
 
 Perhaps the final word on this matter, to be 
 spoken with reverent reticence, and yet to be 
 uttered unhesitatingly, is that The Word of 
 God, in days of limitation, resulting from His 
 infinite Self-emptying, found necessary the long 
 quiet seasons of communion with God alone 
 upon the mountains; and constantly interrupted 
 even His pubHc speech, to offer praise or prayer 
 to His Father. 
 
222 THE FIRST RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 Surely then for us in the Ministry of the 
 Word, the final injunction, exhortation, should 
 be. Let us pray, and that without ceasing. 
 
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