4^.1'^^ 
 
 GIFT or 
 
THE DECAY 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN PREACHING 
 
The Decay 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN Preaching 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 BY 
 
 r. ?. MAHAFFY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., 
 
 1883. 
 

 ^ ^\.:\\\.y^^^^^'^ 
 
^^ 
 
 GEORGIO SALMON 
 S. T. P. 
 
 OBSERVANTJiE CAUSA 
 
 383333 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 Introduction, § 1-3. 
 Division of the Subject, § 4 — into 
 
 /- Loss of Novelty, § 5. 
 I. Historical Causes, J Increase of Education, § 6. 
 §5-8. I (Objection answered, § 7.) 
 
 ^Quietness of Modern Life, § 8. 
 
 II. Social Causes, 
 S 10-15. 
 
 III. IV. Personal 
 Causes, § 16-26. 
 
 V. Defective Types, 
 § 27-43 
 
 VI. 
 
 Concerning 
 Remedies. 
 
 /"King N^omos, § 10- 11. 
 -j Absence of Debate, § 12-13. 
 '-Family Life of the Clergy, § 14. 
 
 (-Want of Ability, § 16. 
 I Want of Piety, § 18-20. 
 I Want of General Culture, § 21. 
 • [\^\ Rhetoric, 
 
 Want of Special J § 23. 
 Training, §23-26. I In Theology. 
 I § 24-26. 
 
 f The Logical Extreme, § 27, 28. 
 I The Emotional Extreme, § 29-31. 
 
 The Orthodox Extreme, § 32-35. 
 ! Digression on the Semitic Ideal o( 
 Royalty, § 36-38. 
 
 The Heterodox Extreme, § 39, 40. 
 
 Excessive Sameness, § 41. 
 
 Excessive Variety, § 43. 
 
 ' The Avoidance of Extremes, § 44. 
 Material Inducements, § 46. 
 
 Higher Culture. -[^•^"'^.'■f'J 47. 
 ^ !_ Special, § 4b. 
 
 Celibacy, § 50. 
 
 Itinerancy, § 51. 
 
 Authorised Sermons, § 53. 
 
 . Elasticity in Services, § 54. 
 
 Epilogue, § 55. 
 
THE DECAY OF MODERN 
 PREACHING. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 § I. There are perhaps few institutions 
 in modern life more universally accepted, 
 and, at the same time, decried, than 
 that of preaching. The Reformed side of 
 the Christian Church, which, among its 
 various sects, from Ritualist to Revivalist, 
 includes most of the better classes of the 
 English people, is agreed on the import- 
 ance of this manner of propagating and 
 confirming the faith. Not only do the 
 parting words of our Lord specially enjoin 
 it, but the great conquests of the early 
 Church, so far as they can be ascribed 
 to any human effort, are commonly as- 
 cribed to it. In those sects which have no 
 B 
 
2 ON PREACHING. [SECT. I. 
 
 established ritual, or where the ritual is so 
 unattractive as to command little interest, 
 preaching forms a main part of modern 
 worship, and extempore prayer is generally 
 little more than an indirect exhortation of 
 the same kind. Most people, whether 
 really religious or not, are conservative 
 enough to go regularly to their church 
 on Sunday, and would feel that they 
 had been defrauded of part of their due 
 exercise if the sermon were omitted. A 
 great preacher, though perhaps no longer 
 a great power, attracts crowds of hearers 
 wherever he is to be heard. 
 
 And yet in this very case it is plain 
 enough that he no longer occupies the 
 position which preachers once held. How 
 common it is to hear the remark, that 
 such an one has thrown away his oppor- 
 tunities, that he might have shone in the 
 senate or at the bar ! Men feel that, 
 however impressive or affecting he may be 
 in the pulpit, he only affords a sort of 
 
SECT. I.] INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 religious pastime to society ; whereas their 
 serious affairs — as if religion were not the 
 most serious of all — are always debated ^ 
 and on other platforms. 
 
 If this be the condescending verdict on 
 great and successful preachers, what in- 
 dulgence are the average likely to obtain ? 
 Any one who, coming from a strange 
 country, were to overhear the ordinary 
 congregations of our churches as they 
 come out, from the first impatient rush 
 of boys and servants to the sober exit of 
 the elders and church -wardens, would 
 wonder at the harsh strictures, at the 
 indifference, at the ennui expressed by 
 the majority, even when well educated 
 and highly intelligent. The most regular 
 and attentive churchgoers do not fall 
 behind the rest in speaking freely of the 
 dulness, the sameness, the inconsequence, 
 the narrowness, the laxity, the length of 
 the sermon. A preacher of any but the 
 highest powers who ventures to detain his 
 
4 ON PREACHING. [sect. i. 
 
 hearers beyond half an hour, is regarded as 
 a sort of social criminal, and the "prospect 
 of an hour's sermon would keep most 
 people away. How far are we removed 
 from the days when Bishop Burnet, who 
 preached with an hour-glass running be- 
 side him, was requested by the whole con- 
 gregation, when it ran out, to reverse it, 
 and continue his discourse for a second 
 hour ! This appears to us quite mediaeval, 
 and yet it is but yesterday that the fashion 
 of short services and shorter sermons has 
 been insisted on by the taste of the day. 
 Within our own memory, in Evangelical 
 Dublin, a minister was not considered to 
 have fulfilled his duty with a sermon under 
 forty minutes ; nor was an hour thought 
 extravagant. We used to go to church 
 at twelve, and continue there till a quar- 
 ter past two o'clock. The service, with 
 very little singing, and only regarded 
 as a prelude to the sermon, was very 
 slowly and reverently performed ; and the 
 
SECT. I.] INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 preachej-, though always and on prin- 
 ciple, choosing the same, or almost the 
 same topic, dilated upon it at his leisure, 
 and yet to the satisfaction of his people. 
 Thus the modern impatience of preaching 
 is of recent growth, aod only recently 
 attracting serious attention. But now the 
 clergy may well say : We have piped unto 
 you, aiid ye have ttot danced ; we have 
 mourned to you, and ye have not wept. 
 
 All this is the ordinary worldly aspect 
 of the matter ; from the spiritual point of 
 view the complaints are not only frequent, 
 but far more serious. How often do we 
 hear pious people complaining that they 
 live in a dry and barren land, where no 
 water is ! How often do we see serious 
 people vainly searching for deeper spiritual 
 life, and complaining that when they ask 
 for bread they receive but a stone ! It is 
 in fact only the simplest or the most old- 
 fashioned congregations who are now-a- 
 days satisfied with preaching, and who 
 
6 ON PREACHING. [sect. ii. 
 
 regard it as a spiritual boon — I mean, of 
 course, habitually ; for we may freely con- 
 fess the exceptional delight which all occa- 
 sionally feel when something striking is 
 said, or a deep spiritual impression is 
 made, from the pulpit. But then we say : 
 Would to God ordinary preaching were 
 like this ! This is what once reformed 
 and regenerated the world. 
 
 § 2. Is this a fair statement of the con- 
 dition of the pulpit in these our days ? 
 Has the censure conveyed been too hard 
 or too sweeping ? It may seem so to those 
 who count acquiescence as approval, and 
 who think that regular attendance on the 
 part of the congregation implies real in- 
 terest. But alas ! most of this is mere 
 conservatism ; it is the desire to be re- 
 spectable and orderly, and to perform 
 duties handed down from our forefathers. 
 Nothing displeases the majority of our 
 respectable people more than hearing their 
 traditional religion questioned. They do 
 
SECT. II.] INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 not wish to be forced to turn inwards and 
 to analyse what amount of earnestness and 
 what amount of real interest their regular 
 devotions imply. They look upon such 
 heart-searching as inexpedient and danger- 
 ous ; it is likely to turn some people away 
 from church altogether ; it is likely to dis- 
 quiet others, and render them less satisfied 
 with themselves. Why disturb our most 
 orderly habits with these questionings ? 
 
 These are the arguments of those who 
 say to themselves, Peace, Peace, when there 
 is no peace. Immorality and crime are 
 still rife after so many centuries of preach- 
 ing ; indifference and hypocrisy are on the 
 increase. Is it not time to institute a 
 thorough and searching inquiry, and see 
 whether the decadence of the pulpit is 
 necessary and inherent in the nature of 
 things, or whether it is due to defects and 
 difficulties which may be lessened or re- 
 moved ? Is it not time to consider 
 whether the growing want of sympathy 
 
8 ON PREACHING. [sect. in. 
 
 between the ordinary preacher and his con- 
 gregation is due to his fault, or to theirs, 
 or to the fault of both, or to the march 
 of events which neither can control ? 
 
 § 3. The main result of such an inquiry- 
 should be to suggest practical hints for 
 preachers, based upon historical and psy- 
 chological grounds. People of great piety 
 may despise such aids, and consider that 
 the influence of the Spirit and the earnest 
 desire of the pious teacher are sufficient, 
 and more than sufficient, to endow a 
 minister. Yet it is a fact that the aids 
 given by human wisdom have been gladly 
 accepted by the greatest teachers. Many 
 a well-meaning Christian, for the very 
 want of being wise as a serpent, has not 
 been harmless as a dove, but mischievous 
 to the great cause he rashly or feebly 
 advocates. Surely all our faculties and 
 all our powers deserve to be enlisted in 
 this great service. 
 
 I will only add, that while the argu- 
 
SECT. IV.] DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 9 
 
 ments and illustrations which follow apply 
 primarily to the Church which I desire 
 loyally to serve, they will be general 
 enough to afford suggestions to members of 
 other sects, and even other religions. Nor 
 will such readers find anything to offend 
 them, unless it be an implication that their 
 faith is mistaken. For I have assumed 
 throughout that the preacher honestly 
 believes his professed creed, and have 
 avoided all discussion of heresy, as a dif- 
 ferent, though kindred, subject. 
 
 Division of the Subject. 
 
 § 4. The causes of hindrance to the 
 success of the pulpit are of three different 
 kinds, which may be broadly distinguished, 
 though in some respects they coincide, as 
 most complicated agents on society are 
 wont to do. We may class them as Ais- 
 toricaly as social, or diS personal. 
 
 By historical causes are meant those 
 
lo ON PREACHING. [sect. iv. 
 
 which depend on the great changes in 
 human life and opinion produced by the 
 course of ages; and hence they may, of 
 all others, be fairly regarded as necessary 
 causes, which we can hardly even modify, 
 far less change, but upon which we must 
 count, or rather, with which we must 
 reckon, in attempting to solve the problem. 
 So far as these causes are active the 
 preacher is not in fault. 
 
 Social causes are those arising from the 
 general action of society upon the pulpit, — 
 an action depending on old tradition, and 
 that curious unwritten law which has de- 
 spotic force in all well-organised and long- 
 established States. Though not necessary 
 in the same strict sense as the former class, 
 social causes are such as any single man 
 can hardly overcome, for revolt against 
 society on the part of an individual is 
 always a desperate venture, generally end- 
 ing in miserable failure ; and this is more 
 especially the case when the business of the 
 
SECT. IV.] DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT, ii 
 
 individual is to be in sympathy with 
 society, and to influence it by affection- 
 ate persuasion. But however stern may 
 be this despotism, it is not so inherent in 
 the nature of things that it should not 
 relax or change ; and the weight of reason- 
 able opinion, disseminated with earnestness 
 and care, may induce such a change where 
 it cannot be rudely enforced. 
 
 The last kind of hindrances are personal, 
 and arise not from the outer circumstances, 
 but from the character of the preacher. 
 Most of these, derived from mistaken 
 theories of preaching or from defects in 
 education, can and ought to be remedied. 
 Every attempt to advise and improve the 
 preacher in these particulars ought there- 
 fore to be received with an honest desire 
 to profit by it, and perhaps too little has 
 been done to help theological students in 
 this practical way. 
 
 But even were all these defects — those 
 of mistaken training, or of false theory 
 
12 ON PREACHING. [sect. iv. 
 
 — removed, there remain unfortunately 
 hindrances which are practically insur- 
 mountable, wherever a large body of 
 men must be employed in any kind of 
 work. For a large body cannot consist ot 
 superior men, and must, when exceed- 
 ing certain numerical limits, conform in 
 ability and earnestness to the ordinary 
 level or average of human nature. Now 
 the average of human nature has neither 
 the intellectual power nor the moral 
 earnestness necessary for the profession 
 of preaching. Hence, though a small sect 
 may provide itself with adequate pulpit- 
 power, it is impossible that a large or 
 national Church should not count among 
 its ministers a majority really unfit for the 
 noble office of persuading their fellows to 
 adopt a higher moral and religious life. 
 And we shall see that it is a defect in the 
 organisation of a Church to ignore this 
 fact, and to insist upon all its ministers, 
 at every religious service, attempting a 
 
SECT, v.] HISTORICAL CA USES. 13 
 
 duty certain to be inadequately, or even 
 badly, performed. 
 
 But this suggestion will find its place 
 in the concluding sections, in which the 
 remedies which are possible or practicable 
 will be briefly noticed, and this with the 
 view of helping those who feel them- 
 selves burdened with a weight which they 
 cannot easily bear. The chief merit in 
 such hints is to be practical, not to be 
 new. It is not likely that novelties will 
 be of much value to solve so old, and 
 so anxiously-considered a difificulty. 
 
 I. Historical Causes. 
 
 § 5. Nothing is more marked in most 
 Christian preachers than the firmness with 
 which they hold and declare that their 
 form of faith was established once for all 
 by its Founder, and that no change or 
 modification whatever is to be tolerated by 
 the orthodox. This rigid adherence to 
 
14 ON PREACHING. [sect. v. 
 
 the doctrines of Christianity is extended 
 even to the very form in which it is 
 preached, and nothing is thought better or 
 more profitable than to repeat the old 
 watchwords of those who once stirred the 
 world to its depths. And yet, quite apart 
 from the question of doctrine, to which 
 we shall return presently, the circum- 
 stances of the world have so changed that 
 some modification of the form of preach- 
 ing would seem imperatively demanded. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment the posi- 
 tion of the early missionaries of Chris- 
 tianity. They heralded a new faith, in an 
 unknown god, to a public professing various 
 forms of polytheism ; they boldly claimed 
 to have destroyed the reality and power 
 of the Greek and Roman pantheons ; they 
 called upon their hearers to abandon all 
 their old beliefs, their old ceremonies, their 
 old offerings, and break absolutely with 
 traditions which had been hallowed by 
 the observance of centuries. To exclaim, 
 
SECT, v.] HISTORICAL CA USES. 15 
 
 Believe in the Lord Jesus Christy before 
 such congregations, meant to expound to 
 them the birth, life, and passion of an un- 
 known deity, the teaching of a reformed 
 and purified morality, the complete change 
 of all their modes of life and thought. 
 They were to hate father and mother and 
 brethren for His sake; they were to quarrel 
 with the whole civilised world, and set 
 themselves apart as a peculiar society. 
 
 Such preaching had in it a boldness 
 and a novelty which must have been most 
 striking to all that heard it. The man 
 who proclaimed it must have acquired a 
 thorough confidence in his message ; he 
 must have felt a strange enthusiasm and 
 excitement in telling his ' good news ;' 
 and they who were weary with seeking a 
 better spiritual life, who found no peace 
 in the teaching ot heathendom, must have 
 felt a strange interest in this wonderful 
 message. This was the significance of 
 the great formula ; this was the ^ ground 
 
i6 ON PREACHING. [sect. v. 
 
 of its perpetual repetition. By itself it 
 had then 'no meaning ; it required full 
 and explicit commentary; it was the brief 
 standing text of a. long discourse. 
 
 Nothing can replace for the modern 
 preacher these unique advantages, unless 
 he too is the advocate of a new faith, and 
 even then, what new faith could show the 
 splendid and pathetic surroundings of the 
 cradle of Christianity? But the orthodox 
 preacher, who is merely expounding re- 
 ceived dogmas to his hearers, who tells 
 them what they know very well already, — 
 nay, who is regarded with suspicion or 
 dislike if he ventures on anything new, — 
 how can he hope to rival the early pioneers 
 of his creed ? It is indeed unreasonable 
 to expect it. He cannot possibly have the 
 same force, or arouse the same interest 
 and excitement about his discourses ; and 
 so far the complaint against him means 
 only this, that times have changed, and 
 that most men are not now adherents of 
 
SECT, v.] HISTORICAL CAUSES. 17 
 
 some old and decrepit religion. Indeed, it 
 is the very successes and conquests of his 
 forerunners which have rendered his task 
 less splendid and striking. 
 
 Let us, however, add, that if he expects 
 the very formula which then reformed 
 the world to have the same kind of effect 
 now, he is guilty of the same kind of 
 anachronism as the objector. To exclaim 
 to a company of Christians, Believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, is to tell them to do 
 what they already profess to do. They are 
 not asked to abandon any other gods, any 
 diverse ritual, any hallowed observances. 
 In its ordinary acceptation, this grand 
 appeal is now a mere truism, and the 
 preacher has to refine upon it, and treat 
 its terms with subtlety; he has to devise a 
 new sense for the term belief, and so 
 secure for his text a new interest to 
 make up for what it has lost. Originally, 
 to believe in Jesus meant simply to give 
 such credence to the facts of His life, and 
 
i8 ON PREACHING. [sect. v. 
 
 His claims to more than human origin, as 
 to displace all other religions and beliefs, 
 and dethrone other gods. Nor was this 
 great sacrifice likely to be made by any 
 people not in earnest about the change. 
 Now we are told that intellectual belief is 
 one thing, and saving belief another ; 
 that we must believe in the latter sense, 
 and not in the former only, not with the 
 head, but with. the heart. 
 
 I will not dispute one word of this. 
 All I contend for is that such subtle dis- 
 tinctions will not lay hold of the world as 
 the old preaching did. There is a neces- 
 sary decrease in the power of preaching 
 from the loss of novelty in its creed. 
 This is enhanced by the stubborn adherence 
 to old formulae, and to aphorisms which, if 
 they have not lost their meaning, have be- 
 come mere truisms. The preaching of the 
 eighteenth century is in form not the best 
 preaching for the nineteenth. How much 
 less is the preaching of the second century 
 
SECT. VI.] HISTORICAL GA USES. 19 
 
 a model for those who desire now to 
 reform the world ! No employment of 
 second century formulae, with the aid of 
 new and subtle meanings, will satisfy the 
 present need of spiritual help and direction. 
 § 6. This is all the more certain, owing 
 to the great change caused by the develop- 
 ment of history, — nay, by the influence of 
 Christianity itself on the intellectual, and 
 perhaps in the moral, relations of the 
 preacher and his hearers. And in this 
 place we must broadly distinguish between 
 the more educated people and the ignorant 
 masses, which are yet but partially re- 
 modelled by the course of civilisation. 
 Taking first the educated classes, — a very 
 large body now-a-days, and often reaching 
 down to the artizan or servant, who reads 
 his newspaper and hears the conversation 
 of enlightened people, — there is no longer 
 a difference of intellectual level between 
 the preacher and his audience. He is no 
 longer standing forth, if not an inspired. 
 
20 ON PREACHING. [sect. VI. 
 
 at least an authorised and authoritative 
 teacher, who knows vastly more, and can 
 speak vastly better, than those who hear 
 him. Nor is he their only instructor, 
 upon whose guidance they must depend 
 for all their spiritual sustenance. They can 
 read other opinions; they can search the 
 Scriptures, even in the original. They 
 can criticise the preacher's arguments 
 and correct his mistakes. They are apt 
 to come to church, not to be led and 
 instructed, but to approve or disapprove, 
 according as their critical judgment leads 
 them. They are furnished in books and 
 journals with theological matter in a more 
 elegant form than most preachers can 
 command; their private judgment is exer- 
 cised to the fullest measure of liberty, if not 
 of license. If a second Paul were to stand 
 forth to this people, even though they 
 had the discretion or the good taste not to 
 mock, they would say to him calmly, We 
 will hear thee again of this matter. 
 
SECT. VI.] HISTORICAL CAUSES. ai 
 
 To such people, preaching — at least 
 regular, every-Sunday preaching — is well- 
 nigh useless, and for all practical purposes 
 an anachronism. No doubt most of them 
 will not confess it ; they take it as a very 
 mild spiritual stimulant ; they like it as 
 affording scope for their criticism ; they 
 even like it in order that they may, express 
 their approval of piety, of earnestness, or 
 of learning. But it is not true that this 
 class, as a class, intends or desires to be 
 reformed and enlightened by preaching. 
 Nor can we see how its growth could have 
 been precluded by any efforts of the Church, 
 any more than the existence of Stoics and 
 Epicureans, who listened to St. Paul with 
 idle curiosity, or contempt. 
 
 The case may best be illustrated by 
 the success of missions over the world. 
 With the rarest exceptions, missionaries 
 only produce large effects when preaching 
 to a people below them in mind and 
 culture, — not too far below them, for then 
 
22 ON PREACHING. [SECT. vii. 
 
 preachers become unintelligible, and speak 
 of spiritual things to creatures who hardly 
 know what a spirit means, — but below 
 them so far as to look up with veneration 
 to the preacher as a man of superior 
 learning and higher moral aims. 
 
 Thus no missions are attempted, for ex- 
 ample, to the professors at the German 
 universities, though they are believed by 
 Evangelical Christians to require conversion 
 as much as any class in the world. But 
 their intellectual level is too high, and, like 
 the Brahmins in India, they look with con- 
 tempt upon the most earnest and pious 
 missionary, because they believe he has not 
 thought, or is not capable of thinking, as 
 deeply on spiritual subjects as they. 
 
 § 7. There may occur to many readers 
 the somewhat random but common state- 
 ment, that ' the world was originally con- 
 verted by twelve ignorant fishermen.' It 
 is often alleged that the deepest earthly 
 wisdom is confounded by the power of 
 
SECT. VII.] HISTORICAL CA USES. 23 
 
 spiritual insight in the poor and the igno- 
 rant, — that to babes and sucklings are re- 
 vealed things hidden from the wise and 
 prudent. Nothing is more misleading 
 than this too common practice of dealing 
 out texts instead of arguments. Granting 
 that the original preachers of Christianity- 
 were ignorant men, they were endowed with 
 miraculous powers, and were able to enforce 
 their doctrine with signs in a manner 
 wholly impossible to the modern preacher. 
 It might as well be argued that the leading 
 feature in Christ's own preaching was His 
 humble human origin. His divine powers 
 outbalanced a thousandfold the advan- 
 tages which could have been acquired by 
 all the culture of the day. A poor and 
 ignorant man, with miraculous powers to 
 aid him, affords by his success no guarantee 
 that poverty and ignoi'ance are favourable 
 conditions for preaching.^ If, therefore, 
 
 ^ These are of use in two respects only : in securing a 
 certain freshness and directness, which is generally lost 
 
24 ON PREACHING. [sect. vii. 
 
 these twelve ignorant fishermen, led by a 
 carpenter's son, had converted the world, 
 it is idle to assert that any other party of 
 ignorant men, as such, could convert the 
 mass of men superior to them in knowledge 
 and culture. The capital feature is omitted 
 in all such arguments. 
 
 But it is high time to add that the state- 
 ment itself is historically false, and that the 
 world was not converted by a set of ignor- 
 ant fishermen. As soon as the preaching 
 of Christianity began to extend beyond 
 the narrow bounds of Palestine, was it 
 entrusted to such preachers ? Nothing 
 of the kind. There is a chosen vessel 
 selected, a man born in a famous university 
 town (Tarsus), versed in the Stoic philoso- 
 phy, as his sermons amply show,^ — learned, 
 
 by long reflection on dogmas arid difficulties ; in catching 
 the sjinpathy of the masses for a man of like passions and 
 of like mental standing with themselves. 
 
 ^ St. Paul's sermon at Athens, for example, is nothing 
 but a statement of the Stoical morality, with the doctrine 
 of Jesus Christ and the Resurrection superadded. And it 
 
SECT. VII.] HISTORICAL CA USES. 25 
 
 besides, in all the wisdom of the Jewish 
 schools. He associates with him men like 
 Apollos, skilled rhetoricians ; he seeks the 
 aid of all the culture of the day to enforce 
 his doctrine. And even before Paul, or 
 apart from him, there was a spirit of learn- 
 ing at work in the earliest teachers of the 
 Church. Consider the fourth Gospel. If its 
 author had been originally an ignorant 
 fisherman, he was something very different 
 when he penned his account of the life of 
 Christ. He is learned in the subtleties of 
 neo-Platonism; he knows the metaphysics 
 of Alexandria ; and unless we adopt the 
 crudest theory of verbal inspiration, and 
 hold that he wrote down things which he 
 did not understand, we must confess that 
 here too we have advanced learning and 
 
 is quite plain that if these were his precise words, he was 
 arguing on the Stoical side against the Epicurean, just as 
 he took the Pharisee's side against the Sadducee on a 
 memorable occasion. Any one who knows what the 
 Stoic theodicy and morals were, cannot possibly deny 
 this. 
 
26 ON PREACHING. [sect. vii. 
 
 high culture employed in the early pro- 
 pagation of Christian doctrine. 
 
 If, then, high culture and education 
 were necessary even then to give effect to 
 preaching, how much more necessary must 
 they be now ? For there were other 
 reasons at that age of the world why a 
 mere revivalist preacher, a mere herald 
 of new doctrine, must have an influence 
 denied .him now. Not only were the 
 world's faiths and creeds then waning and 
 passing into decay, but there was in most 
 of them a spirit of tolerance, a spirit of in- 
 difference, which admitted without scruple 
 the claims of a rival creed. Provided that 
 a new cult did not assert itself exclusively, 
 — provided it did not directly conflict 
 with the established worship, — the nations 
 of that day were rather disposed to regard 
 it as a varying form of the same thing, a 
 new name for the old gods, a special revela- 
 tion to one nation of the truths revealed 
 in common to all mankind. And this led 
 
s^CT. vni.'] HISTORICAL CAUSES. 27 
 
 people dissatisfied with their own reh'gion 
 to inquire into novelties of dogma with an 
 earnestness and an interest now unknown 
 or reprobated. When they found that 
 Christianity would tolerate no rival and 
 admit of no identification with other faiths, 
 then came the struggle which has already 
 been noticed ; but the first heralding of a 
 new faith was received with far different 
 feelings from those with which we regard 
 the claims of any revelation which could 
 be, or which has been, made in our times. 
 § 8. And, apart from the inclusiveness 
 and cosmopolitanism of heathen theology, 
 there were features in life and society which 
 made men more anxious generally for 
 some revelation which would bring peace 
 to their troubled hearts, and hope of future 
 rest from the tumults of life. Christianity, 
 and with it modern civilisation, have so 
 quieted down the wild passions and con- 
 flicts of men, that now most of us lead a 
 sober and peaceful life, with little fear that 
 
28 ON PREACHING. [sect. viii. 
 
 we shall be disturbed in our homes, or in 
 the still course of our life, by the invasion 
 of enemies, or the far worse inroads of 
 the tyrant and his minions. 
 
 But we must remember that in the de- 
 cay of the old world injustice and violence 
 were common, and it was no strange or 
 exceptional thing to pass from peace and 
 prosperity into hopeless misery and slavery. 
 If in our day a hostile army invades a 
 country, even the soldiery is obliged to 
 respect the rights of unarmed people, and 
 many of the defenceless victims escape 
 with no greater damage than the loss of 
 money, of movable property, and of their 
 domestic comforts. In old times, when 
 women and children brought a price in 
 the market as slaves, and were regarded 
 as the lawful spoil of the conqueror, — when 
 the butchering of prisoners in battle, 
 though hardly the rule, was not only 
 allowable but even frequent, — then indeed 
 the terrors of war were far different from 
 
SECT. IX.] HISTORICAL CAUSES. 29 
 
 anything that now threatens civilised 
 people. Even the Roman peace did not se- 
 cure outlying provinces from these terrors ; 
 and at home, when they had disappeared 
 save in days of revolution (and these not 
 by any means rare), we know that the cruel 
 despotism of many emperors produced a 
 horrible uncertainty not less destructive 
 than war of that sense of security which 
 is our greatest earthly blessing. Hence 
 thoughtful men in the first ages of Chris- 
 tianity were driven by their circumstances 
 to seek spiritual peace and a spiritual 
 liberty beyond the chances of war and the 
 caprice of tyrants, with an eagerness not 
 easily to be appreciated in modern society. 
 § 9. So, then, it has been shown that by 
 reason of historical necessities, some of 
 which are beyond our control, and others 
 produced by the very successes of preach- 
 ing itself, it is impossible that the pulpit 
 should now hold the great position as an 
 eng-ine of moral reform and culture which 
 
30 ON PREACHING. [sect. x. 
 
 it once undoubtedly occupied. The loss 
 of all novelty in the subject, the gain in 
 learning and intelligence among the con- 
 gregations, and the quiet and undisturbed 
 flow of our modern life, which is rarely 
 stirred up by seasons of intense excitement, 
 — all these causes have produced their 
 effect, and it is impossible to undo it. 
 
 II. Social Causes. 
 
 § lo. The settled and calm course of 
 modern life, however, suggests to us that 
 the causes hitherto assigned are only part 
 of the obstacles to the success of modern 
 preaching, and that, apart from the great 
 historical agents already discussed, there 
 exist social hindrances, whose influence is 
 more proximate, and often more deeply 
 felt. They are not indeed necessary in 
 the strict sense, inasmuch as they depend 
 on social arrangements which may be re- 
 versed, and which we may even hope to 
 
SECT. X.] SOCIAL CA USES. 31 
 
 see reversed, by a proper education of pub- 
 lic opinion. Nevertheless, to the individual 
 preacher they are bonds which tie him to 
 a certain routine with irresistible force, and 
 perhaps nowhere does he feel a greater 
 and more stringent necessity. They are 
 therefore to be placed on debatable ground 
 between the necessary and the contingent 
 obstacles to the success of preaching, and 
 as such naturally find their place in this 
 part of the discussion. 
 
 I need hardly insist that the older and 
 more settled a society, the more surely 
 will the majority of its members adopt a 
 certain fixed course of life, regulating 
 even the most trivial details with a sullen 
 uniformity. We find it in dress, in the 
 hours of eating and sleeping, in the daily 
 round, not only of business, which must be / 
 uniform, but of pleasure, which ought not \ 
 to be so. This is that King Nomos ot 
 whom Plato speaks as the real ruler of 
 society ; it is the Deb of the Turcoman 
 
32 ON PREACHING. [sect. x. 
 
 nomad, who fixes even his rude life accord- 
 ing to its unwritten behests. But nations 
 differ in the intensity of their devotion to it, 
 or in the invariabihty, it may be, of their 
 acquiescence — often a heedless acquies- 
 cence, — till some one dares to violate it, 
 when they quickly enforce the law by 
 unwritten, but not the less stringent, 
 penalties. Let a man change but the cut 
 of his coat or the height of his hat, and he 
 is not only pursued by ridicule, but is cen- 
 sured by grave people as guilty of eccen- 
 tricity, — the unpardonable sin of modern 
 society, — and therefore as generally un- 
 trustworthy in the serious affairs of life. 
 
 In no case is this feeling more tyrannical 
 or exacting than in the ordinary observ- 
 ances of religion. The smallest variation 
 from the usual practice in our services 
 excites the ire of the orthodox. Even 
 those otherwise careless in religion and 
 lax in morality pose as the guardians of 
 purity and uniformity in ritual. But we 
 
SECT. X.] SOCIAL CAUSES. 33 
 
 are not here concerned with ritual in its 
 ordinary sense. We are here occupied 
 with the social uniformity which asserts its 
 authority over the preacher more than 
 Rubrics or even Articles, which insists that 
 he shall submit to the dictates of a society 
 which cares not to be disturbed, which 
 hates to be alarmed, and which desires 
 little more from the* pulpit than a confir- 
 mation of its prejudices. 
 
 Thus he is required, on fixed and 
 very frequent occasions, however indis- 
 posed or empty he may feel as regards 
 teaching, to ascend a narrow pulpit, where 
 he has no power of movement or action. 
 Indeed all action more violent than that 
 of speaking very loud, or thumping the 
 cushion before him, is prohibited, and 
 even these symptoms of energy have come 
 to be considered excessive and ill-bred. 
 He is obliged to find a text of Scripture 
 from which to draw his lessons, even though 
 
 there be none exactly appropriate, and 
 D 
 
34 ON PREACHING. [sect. xi. 
 
 though he be forced to employ many 
 quibbles and subtleties to graft on his 
 discourse to the text. He is not to speak 
 too loud or too low ; he must not be too 
 long or too short : if the former, he offends 
 the worldly and idle, who only come to 
 church from habit, and desire to escape 
 as soon as may be convenient ; if the latter, 
 he annoys the serious and respectable 
 people, who think that such brevity re- 
 flects on the importance of his subject. If 
 he employs anecdotes and descends to par- 
 ticulars, in order to give colour to his ser- 
 mon, he is thought familiar ; if he keeps 
 to dogma only, he is thought dry. In fact, 
 every sort of departure from a fixed norma, 
 a fixed way of speaking, a fixed way of 
 thinking, is resented by some section of 
 his congregation. 
 
 § 1 1. Above all, to be amusing is a great 
 crime. The shadow of puritanism still 
 hangs over our churches, and if a genera- 
 tion ago all ornament in churches was 
 
SECT. XI.] SOCIAL CA USES. 35 
 
 thought to savour of worldliness or of false 
 doctrine, so all levity, as it is called, is 
 considered as excluded by the solemnity 
 of the subject. And yet men pleading 
 for life and death, for great issues of poverty 
 and wealth, for great party struggles which 
 involve the weal and woe of millions, do 
 not disdain to attract and to divert their 
 audience by an appeal to that peculiarly 
 human quality, the faculty of laughter. 
 There is no orator in the world, speaking 
 on the subject nearest to his heart, and 
 most vital to those he addresses, who 
 avoids this great help to persuasion, ex- 
 cept the preacher. To him, while wit 
 is wholly inadmissible, even humour is only 
 allowed in the form of bitterness and sar- 
 casm, the very forms which are really most 
 unsuitable to his sacred office. 
 
 There is, moreover, a large section of 
 Christians, who will not tolerate any variety 
 of subject, who think that the preacher has 
 but one message to bring, and that so 
 
36 ON PREACHING. [sect. xi. 
 
 paramount in importance, that every 
 moment not devoted to it is lost or 
 wasted, and they require him to repeat 
 this message every Sunday of his life. 
 
 Such are the bonds of uniformity 
 with which modern society trammels the 
 preacher, and from which only a strong 
 and exceptional nature can free itself. 
 The average preacher, who feels no special 
 force or originality, never even thinks of 
 struggling against them ; and so, if we 
 walk into any strange place of worship, 
 we may anticipate, in nine cases out of 
 ten, exactly the sort of thing we shall hear. 
 It will be respectable and commonplace, 
 delivered with a voice and tone implying 
 official seriousness. It will generally be 
 all true, when not too narrow, and it will 
 be excellent advice for people to follow. 
 But we also know that in nine cases out 
 of ten, we shall see plainly that most of 
 the congregation may feel acquiescence 
 in it all, but no interest. Modern society 
 
SECT. XII.] SOCIAL CA USES. 37 
 
 has done its best to make preaching a 
 perfunctory duty, and it has succeeded. 
 People even play the part so well as to 
 deny with not unreal indignation the truth 
 of this picture. They assert boldly enough 
 that to them preaching is a source of spirit- 
 ual profit and moral good. But the facts 
 remain. Wherever preaching still retains 
 its life and power, it is an exception to the 
 rule ; and the rule, at least in established 
 churches, is very much as above described. 
 § 1 2. It is, I think, an effect of this same 
 tendency that serious debate is excluded 
 from our pulpits. Any rival statements of 
 doctrine are carefully avoided, and any 
 preacher who should admit to his pulpit an 
 opponent of his views, and carry on a real 
 debate, even at intervals of a week between 
 charge and counter - charge, would be 
 thought to violate all propriety. Is not 
 each minister supposed to teach the whole 
 truth, and would not the admission that his 
 statements were open to refutation destroy 
 
38 ON PREACHING. [sect. xii. 
 
 his authority as a teacher ? Such is the feel- 
 ing, and hence, though rival teachers may 
 reply to each other by hint and innuendo, 
 and it be understood that one discourse 
 is an answer to another, no really honest 
 or serious debate is possible. This depends 
 to a great extent on the nature of the sub- 
 ject, and the claims to certainty made by 
 religious people who teach. It may be, 
 therefore, a necessary defect in the ser- 
 mons of an established church, and one for 
 which its preachers are not to be blamed. 
 But then we allow ourselves controversy, 
 and it is not unusual to hear from the 
 pulpit a criticism of some new theological 
 work, or of a rival system. Indeed, the 
 most interesting and striking sermons I 
 have ever heard were of this kind ; they 
 were the controversial discourses against 
 Popery, which were once usual in all the 
 evangelical churches of Dublin, and which 
 were undertaken by the ablest men. These 
 discourses were generally on week-day 
 
SECT, xiil.] SOCIAL CAUSES. 39 
 
 evenings ; the preacher was allowed some 
 license of illustration and argument, and 
 though the churches were chiefly crowded 
 with Protestants who came to hear their 
 own orthodoxy and superiority to their 
 Catholic brethren demonstrated, it was 
 not unusual for Roman Catholics to enter 
 unsuspected, and hear what was to be said 
 against their faith. These sermons had 
 real life in them. The speaker was com- 
 bating what was felt a great and pressing 
 evil ; he had the warm sympathies of his 
 congregation ; he was allowed ample time 
 for his discourse ; and though he had no op- 
 ponent there to contradict him, or to repu- 
 diate the strange travesties of Romish doc- 
 trine he often presented to his hearers, there 
 was at least some semblance of a discussion. 
 § 13. To revert for a moment to the 
 subject of the last chapter, does not this 
 popularity and interest of controversy show 
 the mighty influence exercised by the first 
 Christian preachers, when there was a great 
 
40 ON PREACHING. [SECT. xiii. 
 
 conflict of rival faiths, and when men met 
 to consider, not the ordinary lessons of a 
 religion in which all were agreed, but the 
 life or death of a whole creed, the estab- 
 lishment of a whole system of doctrine, the 
 reality of a whole body of alleged facts ? 
 
 But now our congregations are some- 
 what weary of controversy. They cannot 
 work themselves up to take a keen part in 
 the argument They say it is all very 
 well to argue one side, when you have no 
 one to answer on the other. They say 
 that it is rather the duty of the preacher to 
 enforce truth than to seek out and expose 
 error. Many a stumbling-block to the 
 faith, they add, would be unknown to the 
 people, if the preacher did not quote it 
 from an adversary, often without the power 
 of removing it satisfactorily. All this is 
 evidence, I think, of a waning in true in- 
 terest about religion, in real anxiety about 
 the spreading and confirming of the faith. 
 And it is not very logical that this spirit, 
 
SECT. XIV.] SOCIAL CA USES. 41 
 
 which is so great an obstacle to effective 
 preaching, should set people to turn upon 
 the very ordinance which they are depriving 
 of its power, and charge it with debility 
 and decay. 
 
 § 14. But the tyranny of social circum- 
 stances does not merely lie in wait for the 
 preacher when he ascends his pulpit ; it fol- 
 lows him into everyday life, and imposes 
 upon him such conditions as react unfavour- 
 ably upon his sermons. The ministry of 
 most modern forms of religion is no longer 
 a celibate, but a married order ; and so 
 strong is the objection to the usage of the 
 Church of Rome in Protestant churches, 
 that celibacy is positively disliked, and we 
 may assume the preacher to be a family 
 man, living in the midst of his people. It is 
 no part of the present subject to discuss 
 generally the advantages or disadvantages 
 of celibacy in the clergy. No doubt there 
 are many drawbacks and difficulties in 
 such a restriction, and it may be that 
 
42 ON PREACHING [sect. xiv. 
 
 those people who, after a young clergyman 
 has remained some years in a parish, posi- 
 tively complain of him if he does not marry, 
 have some weighty reasons on their side. 
 
 But from the point of view of preaching, 
 there can be little doubt that married life 
 creates great difificulties and hindrances. 
 The distractions caused by sickness and 
 other human misfortunes increase neces- 
 sarily in proportion to the number of the 
 household ; and as the clergy in all countries 
 are likely to have large families, the time 
 which might be spent in meditation on 
 their discourses is stolen from them by 
 other duties and other cares. The Catholic 
 priest, when his daily round of outdoor 
 duties is over, comes home to a quiet study, 
 where there is nothing to disturb his 
 thoughts. The family man is met at his 
 door by troops of children welcoming his 
 return, and claiming his interest in all their 
 little affairs. Or else the disagreements 
 of the household demand him as an um- 
 
SECT. XIV.] SOCIAL CA USES. 43 
 
 pire, and his mind is disturbed by no 
 mere speculative contemplation of the 
 faults and follies of mankind, but by their 
 actual invasion of his home. Hence it is 
 that the weekly sermon is so often scamped, 
 or copied hurriedly from some diverse 
 thinker, so that it fits him badly, and 
 sounds hollow and foreign in his mouth. 
 
 Need we add that the defects of his 
 family, the mistakes of his wife and chil- 
 dren, his own foibles in daily life, any 
 chance scandal in the house, for which he 
 may not be to blame, — all these things, 
 seen by his neighbours and discussed in 
 the parish, must necessarily take from the 
 weight of his exhortations in the pulpit. 
 If he maintains, as he is bound, an ide^l 
 standard in his teaching ; if he inveighs 
 against the lesser faults of men, and urges 
 upon his hearers the higher spiritual life, 
 they are ready enough to retort that his 
 own household does not show forth an 
 adequate illustration of his precepts. They 
 
44 • ON PREACHING. [SECT. xiv. 
 
 will say, Physician, heal thyself ; the won- 
 ders which he would work in the homes 
 of others should first be shown under his 
 own roof. 
 
 All this is really irrelevant and unfair. 
 It is absurd to say that a man should not 
 aim at things higher than he can perform ; 
 it is absurd that hindrances which he is 
 often really unable to overcome should be 
 charged to him as personal shortcomings. 
 But it is not the less true, that in this 
 case familiarity breeds contempt, and the 
 preacher must be a very rare personage, 
 and blessed with a very rare wife and 
 children, if they prove no hindrance to the 
 power of his sermons. That there are 
 such exceptional cases must be freely and 
 thankfully admitted. There are men whose 
 daily life, far from injuring their eloquence, 
 is its real and even its only source, so that 
 when a stranger hears them he wonders 
 at the earnestness of their crowded con- 
 gregations. These men live their sermon 
 
SECT. XIV.] SOCIAL CAUSES. -45 
 
 through the week ; they show forth in their 
 conduct the ensample of a holy life. If the 
 great majority of preachers were of this 
 kind the present essay would have little 
 practical use. But we are dealing with 
 the average, — both the average preacher 
 and the average congregation, — and it is 
 with these we must reckon and balance 
 the account. For it is quite certain that 
 there is no prospect of the mass of the 
 ministry in any large or national Church 
 ever rising to so high a level. They must 
 be men of like intellects, like passions, like 
 character, to most of mankind. 
 
 To such the settled family life of our 
 clergy is a great obstacle, and indeed the 
 course of history shows that the most emin- 
 ently striking and successful preachers have 
 been celibate monks and anchorites, living i 
 apart from the world, assumed by the crowd 
 from their ascetic life to be of exceptional 
 sanctity, and flashing upon the people at 
 intervals from their holy seclusion. Such 
 
46 ON PREACHING. [SECT. XV. 
 
 were Peter the Hermit, and Savonarola, 
 and John the Baptist. When men of a 
 different type have attained to a like 
 eminence it has generally been as itinerant 
 preachers, whose roving life prevented any 
 long familiarity with their domestic con- 
 cerns, or their ordinary moments, so that 
 by this expedient they exalted themselves 
 practically to the condition of celibates, 
 •only known to their hearers when they 
 appeared as heralds of great truths and 
 denouncers of prevailing sin. 
 
 § I 5. Thus, then, modern society lays its 
 shackles about the preacher, and entwines 
 him in a net of conditions most unfavour- 
 able for his office. He is placed, so to 
 speak, in a house of glass in the middle of 
 his people ; he is encouraged to surround 
 himself with a family, thus giving hostage 
 after hostage, not only to fortune, but to 
 criticism ; so that it is a marvel if he can 
 come before his audience without a con- 
 sciousness on his part that they know his 
 
SECT. XV.] SOCIAL CAUSES. 47 
 
 foibles and discuss his failures, and a con- 
 sciousness on theirs, that though now it is 
 for him to warn and to censure, they can, 
 during the week, repay him his exhorta- 
 tions, perhaps with interest. This, indeed, 
 may be one reason why the clergy find it 
 necessary to occupy their discourses either 
 with the explanation of dogmas, or with 
 such general reflections as will not en- 
 courage a retort. But, if so, they lose 
 in directness, and consequently in power. 
 No man will be great as a teacher who is ; ( 
 felt to be avoiding the burning topics of ) / 
 the day. 
 
 It is to be noted in limitation of these 
 remarks that the evil is worst in the best 
 society, and where the congregation is on 
 a level with, or even above, the preacher. 
 Those who have the privilege of teaching 
 simple rustics or rude mechanics are indeed 
 subject to criticism, and will have any 
 scandal in their family very roughly cen- 
 sured ; but they are less likely to have 
 
48 ON PREACHING. [SECT. xvi. 
 
 their ordinary life microscopically ex- 
 amined, and made the subject of minute 
 daily gossip. Still, even here, the feeling 
 that the man is smaller than his profession, 
 — that the teacher of ideal virtues is no 
 paragon himself, — mars the gospel in his 
 mouth, and makes men tolerate him for 
 his office sake, not for his personal weight. 
 Great preachers, like great saints, will 
 overcome all this. Would they were more 
 numerous ! 
 
 III. Personal Causes. 
 
 § 1 6. We come now to those personal 
 causes, which are for the most part not neces- 
 sary, but the fault of individuals, and it is 
 here accordingly that we may fairly expect 
 to suggest some practical improvement. But 
 though most of the hindrances we are now 
 to discuss be contingent on the preacher's 
 own faults, even here there are personal 
 defects for which he can hardly be blamed ; 
 
s^CT. xvi.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 49 
 
 they are the result of his parentage and 
 his education. Thus it is usually the fault 
 of some reckless or foolish marriage that 
 he grows up a sickly or a stupid child ; 
 it is the fault of his parents that whatever 
 faculties he has are not developed by 
 proper education. It is unfair to ascribe 
 these defects, though personal, to the man 
 himself, and call them faults which he 
 might avoid. Yet, on the other hand, some 
 of them can be either avoided or lessened, 
 both by his own care and the care of those 
 who train him, so that even here, from a 
 wider point of view, we may regard them 
 as for the most part remediable. 
 
 The greatest and most constant, which 
 tells against all professions, is want of 
 ability. But while this is conceded else- 
 where, on preaching it is common enough 
 to cite texts about confounding the wise, 
 about being puffed up with human know- 
 ledge, about administering the pure gospel 
 as milk to babes, and many other true 
 
* 50 ON PREACHING [sect. xvi. 
 
 and inspired texts which are in this con- 
 nection wholly irrelevant. We shall con- 
 sider in due time the paramount value of 
 piety and simplicity in a preacher, and I 
 trust no one will accuse me of underrating 
 them. But this must be insisted upon, that 
 want of brains is a capital defect, and that 
 no amount of moral excellence will make 
 a stupid man a successful preacher. He 
 may, by his firmness of character, his purity 
 of life, his unaffected piety, attain such in- 
 fluence that he may appear to those who 
 know him to have power in the pulpit. 
 But this, as has been said already, is not 
 really preaching ; it is living his sermon, — a 
 very noble thing it is, nobler, no doubt, than 
 any preaching ; — and if we could secure a 
 majority of such men, it would follow not 
 so much that the pulpit would gain in 
 power, as that it would lose in importance. 
 But in discussing preaching as such, — in 
 discussing the reasons that make it weak 
 and ineffectual, — we are bound to note 
 
SECT. :x.vi.'] PERSONAL CAUSES. 51 
 
 direct causes as prior to indirect, and of the 
 direct causes there is none more serious 
 than want of ability in our preachers. 
 No doubt the majority of mankind is 
 wanting in this quality ; the average of 
 intellect is low, and most people are very 
 dull ; but when we find so many men pro- 
 fessing to teach from the pulpit who are 
 totally unable to frame a sustained argu- 
 ment, — nay, more, unable to understand 
 it when put before them, — we cannot but 
 conclude that the abler young men of our 
 day do not adopt this profession, and that 
 our preachers, as a body, are below even 
 the average in intellect. I remember very 
 well — indeed painfully well — a class of 
 divinity students which I instructed in the 
 Epistle to the Romans, and after labouring 
 a whole term with all possible care, and 
 making them go over the argument, and 
 write it out, and rehearse it, they con- 
 fessed to me in a body at the end of the 
 term that they had made no advance in it 
 
52 ON PREACHING. [sect, xvi, 
 
 whatever, for that no7ie of them was able to 
 follow an argument. They were not many, 
 — eight, I think, — and such a case only 
 occurred to me once in many years' teach- 
 ing ; but in every year there were some 
 men of this kind — men who deliberately 
 adopted the profession of religious teach- 
 ing, with the consciousness that they could 
 not possibly understand what they had to 
 teach. They were, in fact, adopting this 
 profession because they were too dull 
 for any other. 
 
 If it is no wonder on the one hand that 
 such men produce no effect, and bring 
 preaching into disrepute, on the other it 
 is not the least surprising that the ministry 
 should be regarded as suitable for a 
 stupid man. In most forms of settled 
 religion intellectual ability does not receive 
 the rewnrd it deserves and gains in other 
 walks of life. In religion people are con- 
 servative ; they dislike novelty and change, 
 and cleverness is akin to a disposition 
 
SECT. XVI.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 53 
 
 for new views. Throughout most of a 
 minister's duties moral qualities are natur- 
 ally far more appreciated. Moreover great 
 ability leads him to seek wider influence, 
 to declare himself on politics and public 
 affairs, to burst the trammels which society 
 has placed around him. Hence society 
 has itself banished intellect from its pulpits, 
 and now complains that their teaching is 
 dull ! 
 
 There are creeds or sections of churches, 
 like the Dominican Order, and the Free 
 Church of Scotland, in which ability in the 
 pulpit leads to great eminence and a 
 high public position. Accordingly, these 
 churches or orders have never wanted men 
 of intellect in considerable numbers. But, 
 generally speaking, how few men of talent 
 turn to preaching ! How rare it is to go 
 casually into the religious service of any 
 creed and hear a really able discourse — a 
 discourse which, apart from the special 
 dogmas propounded, or the external gifts 
 
54 ON PREACHING. [sect. xvii. 
 
 of the speaker, shows a real grasp of his 
 subject ? No doubt he is hampered by 
 the social causes already discussed ; he is 
 limited to a subject so well worn that, but 
 for its native majesty and indestructible 
 importance, one might venture to call it 
 threadbare. Yet all these obstacles might 
 be, and are, overcome if a man of intellect 
 undertakes the task. It lies then with 
 society, which criticises the preacher, to re- 
 form this defect, and see that the task is en- 
 trusted to men of talent. No other quality 
 will make a man an effective teacher of 
 those superior to him in intelligence. They 
 may follow him for the novelty of his doc- 
 trine, or the firmness of his character, or 
 the piety of his life ; but when he shocks 
 their intellects by want of common sense, 
 or by a display of bad logic, — in fact, as 
 soon as they feel that he is stupid, — he 
 will generally fail to reach their hearts 
 or stir them to higher and purer lives. 
 § 1 7. If he does so, it will be by means 
 
SECT. XVII.] PERSONAL CA USES. 55 
 
 of a mental quality far rarer even than in- 
 tellect — the quality of leading men by 
 strength of will or character. This capital 
 source of influence is generally combined 
 with some intellect, though many men of 
 intellect have it not ; we may even ad- 
 mit that great subtlety of mind is hardly 
 compatible with it. But there are rare 
 cases where a man, endowed with but 
 moderate intellectual ability, has this 
 curious force in him, — a something hard 
 to define, not necessarily resulting from ex- 
 ceeding honesty, or piety, or unselfishness, 
 though generally coupled with these, — a 
 mental quality which we know by its effects, 
 for it always marks out its possessor as a 
 leader of men. It is, however, so rare that 
 we need hardly take account of it in dis- 
 cussing the general conditions of preaching. 
 Here we mention this force for a dif- 
 ferent reason. Because it is sometimes 
 coupled with piety, with that unselfishness 
 which follows from the devotion to the 
 
56 ON PREACHING, [sect, xviii. 
 
 higher life, we might imagine that piety is 
 the real spring of this commanding "power ; 
 and hence most rehgious people, if asked 
 what they thought was the main cause 
 of the modern decay in preaching, would 
 answer directly that the main cause was 
 want of piety ; and that if this want were 
 supplied, all the arguments of the present 
 argument might be laid aside as idle talk. 
 
 Thus we come to a quality of the first 
 importance to the preacher, and one which 
 has been postponed to this chapter only 
 because its logical place forbade us to 
 approach it at the outset. 
 
 § 1 8. We need only consider the number 
 of cases in which men of real piety fail to 
 interest or to influence their congregations, 
 to demonstrate that this quality by itself 
 is quite insufficient to produce the effects 
 generally attributed to it. But we cannot 
 so easily convince serious and religious 
 people that, though of vast importance, it is 
 not really an essential to good preaching. 
 
SECT. XVIII.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 57 
 
 Yet there have been, there are, and there 
 will be, great and effective preachers who 
 are not remarkable for piety. This will more 
 readily be granted when we consider preach- 
 ing by itself, and take instances from those 
 orders and churches where this duty is iso- 
 lated from other functions, and where the 
 man who occupies the pulpit is not at other 
 times in close relation to his hearers. 
 
 The opposite and prevalent opinion is 
 based altogether on our experience of resi- 
 dent or parochial clergy, whose weekly 
 duties are more important than their ser- 
 mons. These men, as has already been 
 explained, live under the closest supervision, 
 and if their daily life contrasts with the ideal 
 aspirations which they inculcate, and ought 
 to inculcate, upon their hearers, the discord 
 between their precept and their example is 
 immediately felt, and they are set down 
 as something like hypocrites, or at least as 
 men so inconsistent that their counsels 
 have no weight. So it is that the diffi- 
 
58 ON PREACHING. [sect. xix. 
 
 culties of modern preaching react upon each 
 other, and are so closely related that the 
 discussion of each suggests the others. If 
 we regard the preacher merely as such, we 
 must take him in that position by itself, and 
 consider him just as he is in his pulpit, or 
 as strangers would judge him who heard 
 him for the first time. It is not necessary 
 that he should possess personal piety, or 
 presuppose it in himself. He may give 
 great expositions of dogma; he may give 
 splendid exhortations to a holy life; and, 
 provided he be really in earnest, — provided 
 his enthusiasm be not fictitious, or his 
 earnestness assumed, — he may be a great 
 champion of his faith. For he may feel 
 all the value of goodness, he may sincerely 
 believe in the truth and value of his creed 
 and yet he may not have attained that 
 inner calm of the soul, that closer walk 
 with God, which is the privilege of the 
 very few among men. 
 
 § 1 9. It may seem strange to insist upon 
 
SECT. XIX.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 59 
 
 the non-essential character of piety ; nay, 
 it may seem to many that any one anxious 
 for the reform of the pulpit cannot pos- 
 sibly put too much stress upon it, for that, 
 whether it be logically an essential or not, 
 it is practically the great thing to attain 
 in all the relations of life. So strong will 
 this feeling be in many readers, that they 
 will possibly attribute want of religious 
 earnestness to the man who detracts in 
 aught from the paramount importance of 
 this condition. But in a survey of this 
 matter on philosophic grounds we must not 
 despise logical questions, for we may be sure 
 that if we do, it will lead somewhere to mis- 
 takes in practice. This is particularly the 
 case with the facts now under discussion. 
 
 In the first place, if intense pidty in 
 every preacher affords the only hope of a 
 reform and rehabilitation of the pulpit, we 
 may give up the case as lost For the 
 history of our race shows that intense 
 piety or complete devotion to the will 
 
6o ON PREACHING. [sect. xix. 
 
 and service of God is far rarer than even 
 great moral purity or great intellectual 
 ability. It is the attainment or privilege of 
 the few. A great spiritual outburst, such 
 as that predicted by the prophet Joel, 
 is simply miraculous, and therefore does 
 not come within the prospect of human 
 speculation. 
 
 Secondly, apart from these general con- 
 siderations, the belief that this piety is an 
 indispensable requisite for religious teaching 
 hinders many of our best and most earnest 
 men from undertaking that duty in their 
 church, and thus actually injures the cause 
 for which it is so scrupulous. The man 
 who hesitates because he feels no consum- 
 ing ardour for the propagation of his faith 
 and the moral improvement of his fellows, 
 often shows by his very hesitation the high 
 ideal he has of his duty, and so far, his very 
 fitness for the calling which he abandons. 
 If he were persuaded that in this, as in 
 other professions, earnestness and diligence 
 
s^CT.iLVX..'] PERSONAL CAUSES. 6i 
 
 are sufficient moral conditions, he would 
 certainly become a useful member of the 
 ministry, possibly an eminent one, and his 
 enthusiasm would increase with his closer 
 knowledge of the great work upon which 
 he had entered. 
 
 There is a certain inconsistency in our 
 judgment about the ministry of Christian 
 Churches. On the one hand, most of the 
 ordination services postulate an inward 
 calling in the candidate, — a special motion 
 of the Spirit : they do not recognise any 
 other motive as lawful, and assume that 
 the clergy of the Church are, each and 
 all, men who are constrained by a Divine 
 impulse to enter upon their duties. The 
 general public, on the other hand, and 
 the majority even of serious parents, re- 
 gard the ministry as a profession to be 
 ranked with law or medicine, and they 
 assume that any man who feels a turn for 
 it, in the ordinary sense of the word, is 
 entitled to enter it. This is indeed a true 
 
62 ON PREACHING. [sect. xix. 
 
 and practical view, because, if the higher re- 
 quirement were maintained, so few would 
 dare to present themselves as to render 
 our pulpits empty, and the maintenance of 
 our churches impossible. Even the most 
 pious bishop would hesitate to enforce such 
 a condition, were he given an insight into 
 the hearts of the candidates ; nor would he 
 venture to reject those who were honestly 
 disposed to do their duty as professional 
 men, without possessing a higher calling. 
 
 This inconsistency of view is a very 
 serious thing, and contributes not a little 
 to weaken the power of our modern preach- 
 ing. For the candidate often enters upon 
 his duties with this stain upon his con- 
 science, that his ordination presupposes far 
 higher motives and a far purer character 
 than he feels himself to possess. He 
 stands at the threshold of his ministry 
 with the jar of this discord within him. 
 He starts with the consciousness of a false 
 position ; or still worse, he settles for him- 
 
SECT. XIX.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 6^ 
 
 self that the requirement of the high ideal 
 is but a formal demand, which expects no 
 fulfilment. Is it any wonder that with these 
 antecedents his preaching is unreal, and 
 his life without earnestness } Yet such 
 are the results which might he produced by 
 over-strictness in demanding the quality of 
 piety in our preachers. 
 
 This criticism does not apply to preach- 
 ing only ; it is equally true in the case of 
 all the higher offices in our churches, 
 which require sense and vigour in dealing 
 with human affairs. Thus we need not 
 hesitate to affirm that an honest and 
 sensible, though worldly man, if en- 
 dowed with a quick insight into charac- 
 ter, would make a better bishop, in the 
 strictest sense of better, than a simple and 
 unintellectual man of the deepest piety, 
 whose very devotion to things unseen 
 leaves him liable to deception by hypo- 
 crites, and to mistakes in action through 
 the influence of selfish and designing men. 
 
64 ON PREACHING. [sect. xx. 
 
 The latter would be a better Christian, no 
 doubt, — a purer example to those who 
 could contemplate his private life, — but a 
 worse bishop than his worldly brother. 
 
 § 20. It will be hard to prevent illogi- 
 cal readers — and they are many — from 
 thinking that these reservations to the 
 paramount claims of piety imply a want 
 of appreciation of its dignity and beauty. 
 It is indeed most ungrateful to urge 
 anything against that one feature in man- 
 kind, so rare, so holy, so majestic, that 
 in this, and in this alone, we may be said 
 to approach the perfection of a future 
 state. To say that such a quality gives 
 weight to a man's teaching, adds convic- 
 tion to his arguments, disarms the criticism 
 of his mistakes, lends an ineffable charm to 
 his persuasion, is to state mere truisms 
 in which all will concur. It is indeed ab- 
 surd to say that without education, without 
 any natural gifts, without special training, 
 it will make a man preach well or elo- 
 
SECT. XXI.] PERSONAL CA USES. 65 
 
 quently. But its influence, especially in a 
 fixed society, where its beauty radiates 
 incessantly on those around it, is always 
 vast and constant, and we may safely 
 agree with those who declare that with 
 the increase of this grace our preaching 
 will gain in power and effect, and that 
 without it general success will be impos- 
 sible. We have made our reservations ; we 
 have stated our limitations ; let no one 
 imagine that on this account we underrate 
 the value of piety. It is a gift of the Spirit, 
 rare, like genius ; without a miracle i1 
 will never become common among men, 
 but the oftener it occurs, the more cer- 
 tainly will the power and the persuasion 
 of preaching increase throughout the 
 world. 
 
 IV. Personal Causes — Contimied. 
 
 § 2 1. But if piety without ability, or piety 
 without firmness of character, is very often 
 
66 ON PREACHING, [sect. xxii. 
 
 an unsafe guide in human affairs, so piety 
 without learning is seldom of much effect 
 in the pulpit. I do not merely mean that 
 general learning, without which all speakers 
 become thin and jejune, and weary their 
 hearers with constant repetitions and with 
 platitudes. This is indeed important, and 
 requires considerable leisure and ability 
 for its acquisition. But we must lay 
 even more stress on that special theo- 
 logical training, without which no man, in 
 any religion, or reasonable system of theo- 
 logy, can properly teach and explain to 
 his congregation the dogmas they should 
 believe and the duties they should perform. 
 It will be 'well to spend a few moments 
 in considering the necessity of both forms 
 of learning to the modern preacher. 
 
 § 2 2. As to the first or general culture, all 
 good rhetoricians, from Greek days to our 
 own, have ever insisted upon its necessity. 
 The two men who tell us most about the 
 art of eloquence in Greece, — Isocrates and 
 
SECT. XXII.] PERSONAL CA USES. 67 
 
 Aristotle, — put it in the foreground. The 
 proper invention of striking ideas, though in 
 part depending on natural ability, depends 
 still more on having the mind fully stocked 
 with all kinds of knowledge, from which 
 to draw, like the householder out of his 
 treasure, things new and old.. Cicero and 
 Quintilian, the greatest names among the 
 Romans, in practical and theoretical rhe- 
 toric, insist upon the same thing. 
 
 I remember seeing the most popular 
 evangelical preacher of his day in Ireland 
 borrowing an encyclopaedia from a friend, 
 who asked him what need he, a busy and 
 devoted minister, could have for such a 
 book. He answered that it was necessary 
 to keep storing his mind with all manner 
 of information, otherwise he could not 
 make his sermons interesting to his 
 hearers. This was a practical man, a 
 man of sound common sense, as well as 
 of deep piety. He had probably never 
 read the advices of Aristotle and Cicero ; 
 
68 ON PREACHING. [SECT. xxii. 
 
 he felt out the right theory by his native 
 intelligence. 
 
 This general culture is all the more 
 necessary now that our congregations 
 have become more educated, and naturally 
 desire an intellectual flavour in their 
 spiritual food. For if the preacher be 
 inferior in culture to his hearers, — and this 
 he cannot fail to show every time he 
 addresses them, — he is more likely to excite 
 contempt than respect. This is particu- 
 larly the case when his ignorance leads 
 him to make blunders in his allusions or 
 illustrations, to show credulousness or 
 scepticism in the wrong place as regards 
 physical laws and matters of history — nay, 
 even to cite facts or names inaccurately, 
 and show that they are only known to 
 him by accident and from inferior sources. 
 These trifles often destroy the effect of a 
 good and solid discourse, and are among 
 the most common causes of that contempt 
 and indifference shown by the educated 
 
SECT. XXIII.] PERSONAL CA USES. 69 
 
 world to our ordinary preaching. This is 
 the proper vindication of those bishops 
 or churches that insist upon their clergy 
 undergoing an university training previous 
 to ordination. Even this is, of course, 
 quite insufficient. The mere passing of 
 an arts' course is only the first beginning 
 of an education, but it is the beginning ; 
 and a man who has thus overcome the 
 first obstacles to acquiring information, 
 and knows the grammar of language and 
 the rudiments of science, can afterwards, 
 without any excessive tax upon his powers, 
 go on towards the higher culture which 
 will give him power as a public speaker. 
 
 § 23. We may pass from this topic to 
 the special training required in theology by 
 means of an intermediate branch of study, 
 not peculiar to theologians, and yet a 
 special study in itself — the study of rhetoric. 
 And here perhaps the intelligent public 
 will not be so ready to agree with me as 
 on the former requisite. The general 
 
^ 
 
 70 ON PREACHING. [sect, xxiii. 
 
 want of culture is admitted to be one of 
 the greatest and most constant causes of 
 failure in the pulpit ; but people are not 
 so ready to acknowledge the usefulness 
 of the special study of public speaking as 
 such to the preacher. For we moderns 
 differ in this completely from the ancients. 
 To them extempore speaking was very 
 rare and exceptional ; indeed it would have 
 been thought disrespectful to a serious 
 audience. They studied and analysed the 
 nature of persuasion by logical clearness, 
 by elegant expression, by appropriate 
 emotion, by graceful action. They were 
 successful, too, in their efforts, for they 
 produced models of eloquence which have 
 served the world ever since, and which 
 will probably never be excelled. It may 
 also be assumed that these, the work of 
 great masters, are not more remarkable 
 in their way than the results produced in 
 speakers of ordinary abilities by the use of 
 fixed methods and orderly procedure. We 
 
SECT. XXIII.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 71 
 
 may be sure that the average of public 
 speaking among people so trained was in- 
 finitely higher than that of our time. 
 
 For now a sort of suspicion or con- 
 tempt hangs over the art of rhetoric, as 
 artificial and affected. It is thought 
 enough for a man to have clear ideas, and 
 to learn to speak them forcibly, as best he 
 can, by his own practice. All suspicion 
 of rounded periods and studied emotion, 
 of regulated pathos and factitious indigna- 
 tion, excites ridicule in any public speaking, 
 but more than ridicule in so solemn an 
 office as that of preaching. 
 
 Now all this feeling against what is called 
 the rhetoric of the schools is quite sound 
 and true, but wholly beside the point. 
 The old Greeks would have said the ver) 
 same thing, but would have added that it 
 was a criticism, not of the use of rhetoric, 
 but only of bad rhetoric. There are arts — 
 such as architecture — where it is interesting, 
 and therefore proper, to show constructioti. 
 
72 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxiil 
 
 In others, such as tailoring, it is part 
 of the artist's duty to conceal it. In 
 none is it expedient to show the refuse, 
 the failures, the untidinesses of the work. 
 The modern public is so unused to real 
 rhetoric (as an art) that we set down the 
 vulgarities and failures of rhetoricians as 
 the natural outcome of their science. It 
 must be owing to this strange misappre- 
 hension concerning rhetoric, that in our 
 principal divinity schools among Protest- 
 ants no care is taken to train men in the 
 externals of eloquence^ in the proper use 
 of the voice and of the hands, still less 
 in the proper method of constructing a 
 persuasive discourse by an adherence to 
 reasonable rules. There are college societies, 
 which are practising grounds ; but as no 
 censor is there formally to criticise de- 
 fects and correct them on the spot, such 
 practice generally gives the student no- 
 thing but fluency, and even hardens him in 
 all the faults which he may have possessed 
 
jECT. XXIII.] PERSONAL CA USES. 73 
 
 at the outset or acquired. While theo- 
 logical learning, of which we shall speak 
 presently, is fairly provided, hardly a 
 thought is given to the expression of that 
 learning, without which it is dead, and, as 
 it were, buried in a tomb. 
 
 If the greatest speakers of the day were 
 consulted, they would at once confess that 
 their successes have been in proportion to 
 their preparation, and that their apparently 
 most sudden and inspired flights were the 
 result of careful calculation. Are we then 
 to despise this sort of persuasion in preach- 
 ing ? Are we to say that the smallest 
 artifice in the pulpit is an offence 
 against its dignity, and to be avoided as 
 unworthy? Are we to insist that preachers 
 now-a-days are, like the Apostles, to take 
 no heed what they shall say, for that the 
 Spirit will give them utterance ? For this 
 too is a reason why the study of rhetoric 
 is discouraged among religious people. 
 Here we again stand face to face with that 
 
74 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxiii. 
 
 very noble but ideal view of the preacher 
 as a man of intense piety, inspired to 
 speak with more than mortal power and 
 wisdom, and trusting implicitly to the 
 Divine Spirit to give him words. With- 
 out for one moment denying the existence 
 of such men at all ages of the Church, we 
 may fairly say that to depend on such 
 grounds in ordinary preaching is not only 
 chimerical, but tends to prevent the 
 preacher from adopting the lawful means 
 of persuasion placed within his reach. 
 He might as well start upon a voyage 
 round the world and expect that the 
 power of strange tongues would be given 
 him to preach to the nations he found on 
 his way. 
 
 If by the subtlest logic, by the most 
 deliberate emotion, a man can force his 
 own deepest convictions upon his hearers 
 — I say Jiis own deepest convictions, not 
 mere official topics — then such artistic 
 rhetoric is not only defensible, but strongly 
 
SECT. XXIV.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 75 
 
 to be encouraged. The true effects 
 of eloquence are far n:iore commonly 
 attained by repressing than by forcing 
 emotion, by avoiding than by displaying 
 logic — in fact, by straining no chord of 
 sympathy in the hearer. Thus real rhetoric 
 w^ill preserve us from exaggeration or false- 
 ness of axiy kind — a fault fatal to all sound 
 conception of it. If our pulpits at'e to 
 regain their power, men will have to study 
 this art ; they will have to realise that 
 though random talking may at times be 
 effective upon the platform, it will never be 
 fruitful or impressive from the pulpit. 
 
 § 24. We come now to the last of 
 those personal defects which hinder the 
 effectiveness of preaching. It is that 
 want of learning which does not consist 
 in general absence of culture, or in the 
 general absence of rhetorical training, 
 but in the want of that special theo- 
 logical training in which the layman ex- 
 pects the preacher to be his superior. 
 
76 ON PREACHING, [sect. xxiv. 
 
 This want exists in all kinds of creeds 
 and sects, and therefore embodies a capital 
 fact. The teacher is supposed to know 
 more than those whom he teaches, or else 
 how can they look upon him with respect? 
 Perhaps a qualified exception to this 
 general statement may be made in the case 
 of those extreme Protestants, who think the 
 private judgment of any layman as good 
 as the best professional opinion which can 
 be had. But this theory, though held by 
 so many respectable and pious people, 
 is too unreasonable to be considered a 
 serious limitation of our general state- 
 ment. Still it has its effect, inasmuch as 
 it affords some sort of pretext or excuse 
 to young men in Protestant communities 
 who offer themselves for the ministry with- 
 out any special training. There is a sort 
 of vague belief abroad that to feel strongly 
 on the subject, and know one's Bible, is 
 sufficient to warrant a man in assuming 
 the office of a teacher of religion. 
 
SECT. XXIV.] PERSONAL CA USES. 77 
 
 If we only think for a moment what 
 it really means to hiow one's Bible it will 
 explode this theory. To know the Bible 
 in any reasonable sense, so as to be able to 
 form any independent judgment about it, 
 implies at least a good knowledge of 
 Greek, in many cases a knowledge of 
 Hebrew, and, besides, a careful study of 
 the development of Christian opinion 
 about the inspiration and authorship of 
 the various books. These good people talk 
 as if the whole volume had been penned 
 at once and directly by the Holy Spirit, 
 and not by a variety of men in divers 
 ages, under various conditions, and doubt- 
 less with a varying share of inspiration. 
 Probably, now-a-days, no one in his senses 
 would assert that the Book of Esther and 
 the Gospel of St. John did not differ in 
 this last respect. Accordingly, the very 
 people who lay the greatest stress on 
 private judgment should learn that to 
 attain this liberty they must undergo a 
 
78 ON PREACHING. [sect. xxiv. 
 
 long period of careful and critical study of 
 their Bible as a collection of historical 
 documents, often obscure, and sometimes 
 apparently inconsistent. The ignorant 
 lay preacher, who dares to offer an 
 opinion on these difficult problems, is 
 really the most abject slave of tradition ; 
 he is led blindly by no more critical guide 
 than the headings of the chapters inserted 
 by the Church whose authority he repu- 
 diates, or the opinion of his Sunday school 
 teacher, which he learned when a child. ' 
 He may assume, for example, as an axiom, 
 on no better evidence, that the Song of 
 Solomon is an allegory representing Christ 
 and the Church. Nay, the very Bible, the 
 very collection of books whose authority 
 is set up against that of the Church, is a 
 collection gathered and sifted by the 
 Church, and only handed down to him 
 under its care and authority. In no wise, 
 therefore, can the preacher who does more 
 than preach simple morals escape a de- 
 
SECT. XXV.] PERSONAL CA USES. 79 
 
 liberate and careful study of his Bible, 
 except by a blind submission to the tradi- 
 ditional creed of his Church. 
 
 And surely every effective preacher must 
 do more than preach mere morals. The 
 human race has hitherto been led, not by 
 precept, but by dogma. It is not the en- 
 sample of a holy life, but the assertion of a 
 separate creed, of new privileges resting on 
 new beliefs, which has reformed the world 
 once and again. If, therefore, in the 
 present times of discussion, of historical 
 criticism, of speculative interest in religion, 
 a preacher avoids dogma, he is not likely 
 to produce any permanent effect. 
 
 § 25. All these considerations go to 
 prove that theological training is absolutely 
 necessary to raise the condition of the 
 pulpit, and that it is not mere ornament, 
 but an essential qualification. No illustra- 
 tion of this truth will be so convincing as 
 the contemplation of those cases where the 
 denial of it is confessed. There have been 
 
8o ON PREACHING, [sect. xxv. 
 
 of late years many cases of preaching 
 being adopted, from serious conviction, by 
 middle-aged men of other professions — 
 soldiers, lawyers, engineers — who have left 
 their calling to follow after Christ, as they 
 conscientiously believe. These men wait 
 for no training ; they do not seek, and 
 could not obtain from any sensible bishop, 
 formal ordination ; they are known as lay 
 preachers, and attract audiences often from 
 the very contrast of their previous calling or 
 character to that which they have suddenly 
 adopted. It is most remarkable that these 
 men, however pious, however zealous, 
 however popular among their co-reli- 
 gionists, however able in their former 
 professions, have one and all, so far as I 
 know, failed in making their mark as 
 preachers beyond the narrowest bounds. 
 Their fame is transient ; their discourses, 
 if published, find no general sale ; they 
 come and go without leaving any 
 perceptible trace on public opinion, or 
 
SECT. XXVI.] PERSONAL CAUSES. 8i 
 
 redeeming in any high degree the decay- 
 ing reputation of their assumed profession. 
 And yet if zeal without knowledge could 
 work great effects, we might expect that 
 some of them, at least, would be re- 
 garded as lights in the spiritual firmament 
 of the age. There may be a few isolated 
 cases where this is so, but to assert for 
 them generally any great position such as 
 that of the Hebrew lay preachers, the pro- 
 phets, — if indeed these prophets were lay 
 preachers, — would be simply unhistorical. 
 § 26. This is not the place to dis- 
 cuss in detail what theological learn- 
 ing is requisite to avoid these mis- 
 takes, and to raise the preacher to the 
 position which he ought to hold as an 
 authoritative teacher of his faith. The 
 general outline is plain enough. First of 
 all, he must thoroughly understand the 
 documents on which his faith is based, the 
 historical credentials with which he is 
 provided. What this implies has already 
 
82 ON PREACHING, [sect. xxvL 
 
 been indicated, and through such prepara- 
 tion alone will he avoid the pitiful exhibi- 
 tion, not unfrequent now-a-days, of hearing 
 himself confuted out of the very docu- 
 ments of his creed, which he cannot read 
 in their original language. In the next 
 place, he must know the history of opinion 
 in his Church concerning these documents 
 — in fact, the history of dogma developed 
 from them. For it requires no ordinary man, 
 no single man's judgment, to gather up all 
 the teaching of these many and various 
 books into a system. The controversies of 
 the early Christian Church show how diffi- 
 cult and gradual was the formation of such 
 a body of Christian doctrine as could be- 
 come a proper system. Lastly, we must 
 add the history of the ritual he adopts, if 
 he does not mean to repeat it as a parrot, 
 but to understand the why and wJierefore 
 in the details of ceremonies. 
 
 I will not add a knowledge of con- 
 troversy, lest we should go too far and 
 
[sect. XXVI. PERSONAL CA USES. 83 
 
 demand too much for the standard of 
 any large profession. Yet the history of 
 dogma cannot but consist mainly of con- 
 troversies, though in our day these are of 
 less importance than the broad principles 
 of natural religion, vi^hich must be defended 
 against sceptics on philosophical grounds. 
 He that vv^ill approach this kind of contro- 
 versy — and who can now avoid it ? — must 
 be skilled in metaphysics ; he must have 
 examined the conditions of knowing "and 
 being, as the philosophers say ; he must 
 meet subtleties with counter - subtleties, 
 and show that even in the handling of 
 such weapons he is no despicable adver- 
 sary. This is the kind of man who, in the 
 days of Louis XIV. and of Queen Anne, 
 raised the Christian pulpit to a position of 
 power and authority, not only among the 
 poor and simple, but among the most cul- 
 tivated and refined, and even the most 
 worldly and critical thinkers of the day. 
 This long catalogue of personal defects 
 
84 ON PREACHING, [sect. xxvi. 
 
 in the modern preacher will seem to most 
 people sufficient in itself to account for 
 the failure of the pulpit, at least as regards 
 the higher classes ; and they will perhaps 
 think that no more need have been said. 
 But these personal causes would be easy 
 enough to* combat were it not for the wider 
 historical and social conditions lying be- 
 hind them and making reform so difficult. 
 I will not, however, go over old ground 
 again, but will endeavour, before speaking 
 of possible remedies, to illustrate the effect 
 of the faults now discussed on the actual 
 preaching of the day. This is the more 
 necessary as some readers may be impa- 
 tient to know what is meant by the failure 
 of the pulpit apart from the complaints 
 made by thoughtless and irreligious people. 
 And even supposing that the fact will be 
 generally admitted, there may be critics who 
 will say that matters are not worse than 
 might be expected, that, after all, more good 
 is done than people think, and so forth. I 
 
SECT. XXVII.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 85 
 
 do not deny the good it does, but am here 
 concerned with what it ought to do. 
 
 V. Specimens of Defective Types. 
 
 § 27. It is probably oftener due to de- 
 fective training than to want of ability 
 that men make habitual mistakes in their 
 preaching. They fall into extremes and 
 are guilty of exaggerations because they 
 have not been carefully warned to main- 
 tain the balance of Christian doctrine ; be- 
 cause they have not been warned agafnst 
 faults in rhetoric, against exaggeration of 
 their favourite points, against an over de- 
 mand on their hearers' sympathy ; in fact, 
 against all the faults which an inexperi- 
 enced speaker is sure to make. But as 
 most of our various ministers of religion 
 are not trained in the manner as well as 
 the matter of their discourses, it is rare to 
 find a man who, by his natural genius, 
 avoids these faults. For open criticism of 
 
86 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxviii. 
 
 sermons is, by the nature of the case, ex- 
 cluded, and the preacher is the last to hear 
 the censures with which the suppressed 
 critics indemnify themselves at home. 
 
 The following are some of the most 
 general types of exaggeration or defect 
 which may be found in the average preach- 
 ing of our day. 
 
 § 2 8. I will take first what may be called 
 the Logical Extreme, into which men fall 
 who think that everything ought to be 
 clearly proved, and that they cannot enforce 
 a doctrine without a regular demonstration 
 deducing it from higher principles. 
 
 Perhaps the most common case of this 
 extreme is to be found in those many 
 discourses which profess to explain the 
 doctrine of the Atonement of Christ as 
 a sort of bargain, or equivalent offered to 
 God for the sins of mankind. The de- 
 mands of the Creator are set down with 
 painful precision, as if they were those of an 
 exacting creditor ; and we are told that the 
 
SECT. XXVIII.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 87 
 
 magnitude of the payment must be exactly 
 proportioned to that of the debt. No 
 severer indictment can be brought, not 
 only against the mercy but against the 
 justice of the Deity, tlian this account of 
 vicarious punishment ; and it is very likely 
 now-a-days, when people think freely on 
 such questions, to shake them in their very 
 belief of the Atonement. 
 
 Similar to this is the old argument, now 
 only to be heard in remote country places, 
 that the eternal punishment of sinners is 
 to be explained by the fact that sin against 
 an infinite Being is an act of infinite enor- 
 mity, and therefore necessitates infinite 
 punishment. The subterfuge that the 
 condition of the damned is one in which 
 they are perpetually guilty of new sin, 
 and therefore subject to a constant renewal 
 of their lease of punishment, is, if pos- 
 sible, more unreasonable. Both views, 
 when adopted in their full enormity, base 
 themselves on the theory that the Deity, 
 
88 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxviii. 
 
 being an absolutely despotic Ruler, has a 
 right to do what He pleases with His own 
 Creation. To this theory we shall return 
 in connection with another type of ser- 
 mon. 
 
 The defect in all this kind of argument is 
 that it pretends to discover laws and to lay 
 them down with logical precision in matters 
 where such precision is totally out of place 
 or unattainable. The preacher may think 
 the whole matter perfectly clear ; he may 
 assert boldly that there can be no mystery 
 about it, that he can deduce it accurately 
 from various texts of Scripture. Such 
 clearness is surely the result of ignorance, 
 of apprehending but a small part of a com- 
 plex problem, of feeling a false confidence 
 in one's own powers of discernment or spiri- 
 tual endowment. There is no preaching 
 more offensive to educated men than this, 
 which puts forward with unblushing assur- 
 ance all manner of assumptions and irre- 
 levancies as cogent and irrefragable de- 
 
SECT. XXIX.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 89 
 
 monstrations. For theology is a science 
 full of mystery ; we are met almost at 
 every step by the unknowable. If we 
 attain in such a science to clear convictions 
 it is not by the logical apparatus of elabo- 
 rate syllogism. 
 
 § 29. The opposite pole in preaching, 
 from which the former is a reaction, or 
 which it may produce by way of reaction, 
 is the Emotional Extreme. As it was the 
 great vice of the Schoolmen to attempt the 
 teaching of theology in a logical system, so 
 this extreme brings us back to the Mystics, 
 who thought that true religion could not 
 be acquired by way of cold argument, but 
 was an affair of the heart, or rather of 
 that beatific vision which far transcends 
 the ordinary ways of sober thinking. 
 
 There is not wanting a great attraction 
 in this school. The sense of holiness, like 
 the sense of beauty, is something too pure 
 and subtle for analysis ; the revelations of 
 a vision are infinitely grander and clearer 
 
90 ON PREACHING. [sect. xxx. 
 
 than the deductions of the understanding. 
 There is, too, the feeling, the right feeling, 
 that a science which deals with the unseen 
 and the infinite cannot be an exact science, 
 and cannot set down its conclusions as 
 mathematically demonstrable. But the 
 boundary between the persuasion of the 
 intellect and the conviction of the heart is 
 not easily defined ; it is very hard to say 
 where argument is to end and sentiment 
 to assert itself Hence a great many 
 men, from vagueness of mind, from idle- 
 ness, from sentimentality, adopt a style of 
 preaching which consists in nothing but 
 appeals to the heart, and demands upon a 
 sympathy which they must soon exhaust. 
 
 § 30. Some do it from vagueness of 
 mind, not knowing what a proof means, 
 and being, therefore, unable to con- 
 struct or explain one where it is really 
 possible. Let me add that wherever 
 rational persuasion is attainable, this is the 
 noblest and purest kind of eloquence — 
 
SECT. XXX.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 91 
 
 indeed, that which alone deserves the 
 name. The preacher who attempts de- 
 liberately to lead his hearers by appeals 
 to their emotions, when he knows that it 
 is possible to do it by their reason, is 
 so far degrading his sacred ofifice, and 
 helping to degrade his hearers. But 
 the case before us is not so bad ; it is 
 that of a man who knows no better than 
 to make such appeals, and who accordingly 
 ends by alienating the better class of his 
 congregation. 
 
 Some do it from idleness, from the 
 want of that honest vigour which seeks to 
 grapple with the difficulties of the subject — 
 that diligence which spends the midnight 
 hours over grammars and commentaries, 
 or works out independently solutions for 
 the difficulties which occur to every ear- 
 nest student in theology. It is, of course, 
 far cheaper to idle during the week, and 
 repeat worn-out sentiments from the pulpit 
 on Sunday ; but they sound hollow and 
 
92 ON PREACHING. [sect. xjcx. 
 
 formal ; they have not the ring of pure 
 metal ; and so the preacher becomes 
 ultimately the worst kind of ritualist 
 or formalist — the formalist in worn-out 
 sentiment. 
 
 This is probably the largest division of 
 over-sentimental preachers, and there is 
 none more mischievous. It is these who 
 have brought into fashion that gushing 
 tone of voice and that affected solemnity 
 of manner which are frequently assumed to 
 be the index of piety, while they are really 
 the index of shallowness and insincerity. 
 Nothing reduces the effect of preaching in 
 \i our day more than the fact that so many 
 
 preachers adopt with their vestments a new 
 voice and a new manner. They drawl 
 out certain sacred names with mawkish 
 emphasis; they constantly assume a sickly 
 smile while they are expressing an arti- 
 ficial love of God, or of their erring brethren. 
 The whole sermon becomes empty and 
 official, and is understood to be the mere 
 
SECT. XXX.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 93 
 
 performance of a stated duty. In fact, 
 when we hear a preacher begin in a natural 
 style, and with his proper voice, — when he 
 speaks directly as a plain man to plain 
 men, — when he seeks to argue with us as 
 if he were arguing some matter of every- 
 day life, — then it is that we at once gather 
 up our attention, and set ourselves to hear 
 him carefully. We feel that he means 
 business; we conclude him to be in earnest; 
 and so whatever he has to say produces 
 its due effect. I do not know what 
 the schools of sacred rhetoric teach, but of 
 this we may be certainly convinced, that 
 the first thing they ought to teach is an 
 abhorrence for that vicious sentimentality 
 of manner which is so uniformly adopted 
 by certain schools of religious thought. 
 
 There are, thirdly, some men who adopt 
 sentimental appeals from a peculiarity of 
 constitution, to whom this side of things is 
 very attractive, and who, therefore, natur- 
 ally put it forward. In them it is not in- 
 
94 ON PREACHING, [sect. xxx. 
 
 deed a vice, but still a defect. They should 
 be reminded that religion loses all its nerve 
 and vigour if it be reduced to a mere matter 
 of emotion, and to effusions about Divine 
 love — effusions which often mislead them 
 into strange metaphors and strange misin- 
 terpreting of very unsentimental facts. 
 
 Adam Smith argued with great force 
 that all social propriety, nay, even all 
 morals, depended upon not overstraining 
 the sympathy of our fellow men. They 
 were the touchstone by which we could test 
 and repress the displays of vanity, or self- 
 consciousness, or whatever other excesses 
 our own self-love might urge us to commit. 
 In no case is this more vital than in that of 
 public speaking ; in no relation of life does 
 a man's success depend more frequently on 
 the sympathy of his fellows. But in this 
 peculiar branch of speaking, the trammels 
 of another propriety have prevented any 
 outspoken expressions of that sympathy ; 
 coldness and, silence are not, as elsewhere, 
 
SECT. XXX.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 95 
 
 plain evidences of its absence, and so the 
 preacher may flatter himself that he is being 
 heard with interest when he is merely toler- 
 ated from motives of public decency. He 
 must therefore be more on his guard than 
 any other speaker ; and instead of presum- 
 ing on the respect with which he is treated, 
 and abusing it, he should ever watch with 
 care how far he can count on the real 
 sympathy of his hearers, and ask why it is 
 that it dies out so frequently. Few men 
 have the presence of mind, the keenness 
 of sight, the modesty, to watch for these 
 symptoms, which are evanescent or sub- 
 dued in our congregations. One cannot 
 but wish that propriety did not extend 
 so far, and most honest preachers would 
 purchase, at the cost of some rude experi- 
 ences, an increase of honest and outspoken 
 criticism in congregations which are now 
 oppressed and wearied with a formality 
 which they hate, but which they have no 
 power to abolish. 
 
c,6 ON PRE ACHING. [s^CT. :iixxu. 
 
 § 31. If a digression were lawful, we 
 might illustrate the same defect of over- 
 sentimentality from the popular hymns of 
 the day, which often revel in rhapsodies 
 worthy of censure for their vulgarity, were 
 they not made infinitely repulsive and mis- 
 chievous owing to the holiness and mys- 
 tery of the topics which they handle. There 
 is also much of the same exaggeration in 
 the religion taught to children, who are 
 supposed to understand no argument, and 
 are therefore only to be approached 
 through their feelings. How often does 
 this unsound assumption beget future 
 scepticism or indifference ! But these 
 considerations, however interesting, must 
 not lead us from our path. 
 
 § 32. Let us turn to a new kind of de- 
 fect, and one which at first sight will not be 
 obvious — perhaps not even generally ad- 
 mitted to be a defect : I mean Extreme Or- 
 thodoxy in preaching. What, the reader will 
 ask, is it possible for the preacher to be too 
 
SECT. XXXII.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 97 
 
 orthodox according to his hghts ? Surely 
 he alone is entitled to teach any religion 
 who believes thoroughly, and can expound 
 and defend, every article of the creed 
 which he professes. All this, generally 
 understood, is perfectly true, and it is cer- 
 tain that dogmatism is a very important 
 element in vigorous and clear preaching. 
 Nevertheless, there is a sense, and a very 
 important one, in which a preacher can be 
 too ortJiodox. 
 
 It is rightly believed by most Christian 
 communities that by the advent of Christ 
 religion was finally fixed upon certain 
 definite lines, contained in the Bible, and 
 formulated by the Churches. This finality 
 of our faith, the impossibility of any fur- 
 ther change or development during the 
 present dispensation, — these are articles of 
 every faith which is Semitic in character, 
 and they mark the whole history of re- 
 ligion throughout modern Europe. Thus, 
 
 in a remarkable passage in the Mosaic 
 H 
 
98 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxxiii. 
 
 law, the people are warned that if a 
 teacher arise who shall teach contrary to 
 that law, though he prove his mission by signs 
 and wonders, he is to be rejected and put to 
 death (Deut. xiii. I - 5 ). This is the attitude of 
 all our Christian communities, — indeed, of 
 the Jews and Mohammedans also. The one 
 thing about which people feel perfectly sure 
 is, that their own religion is absolutely true, 
 and can tolerate no modification. This is 
 of course the very essence of faith ; if we 
 are not assured that we possess the whole 
 truth, we are bound to seek it out at once, 
 and adopt some other persuasion which 
 will give it to us, if such can be found. 
 
 § 3 3. And yet there have been great re- 
 forms in religion ; even since the revelation 
 of the Gospel, there have been great changes 
 in faith. But they were all justified as re- 
 turns to the original purity of the Bible, 
 which had been corrupted by men. In 
 no case have reformers ventured to preach 
 their gospel as new; they have always 
 
SECT, xxxiii.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 99 
 
 insisted upon its being a return to the old 
 and therefore to the pure. Even those 
 wild sects in America, which lay claim to 
 a new revelatiori, and teach strange morals 
 and stranger social laws, base themselves 
 on ancient authority, and endeavour to 
 find a warrant in the now abandoned 
 standpoints of the Old Testament. 
 
 It is not necessary to inquire here how 
 far this claim of all religious reformers 
 to have merely returned to the primitive 
 faith of their ancestors in its original 
 purity can be historically maintained. It 
 is likely enough that if a modern Pro- 
 testant and a Christian of the second 
 century met in the flesh, they would be 
 astonished at the mutual divergence in 
 their spiritual views, still more in their 
 religious forms. It may, indeed, be fairly 
 argued that an absolutely unmodified re- 
 turn to what existed centuries ago is 
 perfectly impossible, and that any restora- 
 tion must contain much that is new, in- 
 
loo ON PREACHING. [SECT, xxxiv. 
 
 fused into it by the spirit of the age. But 
 though we may distinguish in art the 
 archaic from the archaistic, the really an- 
 cient from the elaborated antique ; it is 
 not expedient to do so in religion. Here, 
 at least, it will be enough to show that 
 even within the limits of strict orthodoxy, 
 within that narrow liberty of opinion 
 which the members of each sect accord 
 to one another, there is such a thing as 
 a development of doctrine, or, if that ex- 
 pression implies too much, let us call it 
 a drifting of public sentiment in certain 
 directions, or away from certain aspects of 
 religion. Here are some examples. 
 
 § 34. There was no subject which ob- 
 tained more painful prominence in the 
 earlier preaching of the Church than the 
 punishment ot the wicked. Harrowing 
 pictures were drawn of the eternal miseries 
 ot the damned, and art was summoned to 
 aid by horrible illustrations the language 
 of the pulpit. The main reason alleged 
 
SECT. XXXIV.] DEFECTIVE TYP.ES. loi 
 
 for insisting upon this doctrine was no 
 doubt the duty of warning sinners from 
 the wrath to come. It was considered 
 that the terrors of hellfire would be a 
 potent incentive to turn men from vice and 
 heresy, and lead them to embrace ortho- 
 doxy and pursue virtue. This reason is 
 still alleged by those who think it profit- 
 able to bring forward the subject, and it 
 is, whether sound or not, the only defensible 
 one. For the idea which is said to be 
 prominent in Tertullian, that the eternal 
 punishment of the lost, being contem- 
 plated by the saints in Heaven, will add to 
 their happiness, is only a pandering to the 
 passion of revenge. This may be thought 
 excusable in days of great persecution, but 
 now -a -days is simply disgusting. As a 
 matter of fact, a preacher addressing a 
 cultivated congregation, and under normal 
 circumstances, did use the idea of Tertullian 
 very lately in the diocese of Dublin. I 
 happened to meet many of his congrega- 
 
I02 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxxiv. 
 
 tion the same day, and they were all open- 
 mouthed against him for so gross a viola- 
 tion, not only of good taste, but of Chris- 
 tian charity. In days of trouble and 
 persecution, moreover of rudeness and vio- 
 lence in social life, we can conceive the 
 harried Christians consoling themselves 
 with the reflection that their tormentors 
 had their good things in this life only, and 
 that God's vengeance would requite them 
 a thousandfold hereafter. 
 
 But let us set aside this extreme and truly 
 un-Christian form of using the doctrine of 
 eternal punishment. For we may go fur- 
 ther, and say that in our own day even the 
 orthodox have become undecided about it ; 
 many eminent and pious divines have ex- 
 pressed themselves against it; and we may 
 take it for certain that in any educated con- 
 gregation the majority regard it as a sort of 
 obsolete appendix to their creed, which they 
 lay aside and forget, but which they will 
 not positively deny unless they are pressed. 
 
SECT. XXXIV.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 103 
 
 Here, then, we come in view of what I 
 mean by a preacher being guilty of an 
 extreme in orthodoxy. Though pubhc 
 opinion in our churches has drifted away 
 from this doctrine, some men will take it 
 up, insist upon it as taught in their Bible 
 and recognised by their creed ; and so annoy 
 and alienate their hearers by the perpetual 
 enforcing of a dogma which many high 
 and orthodox authorities have declared to 
 be no essential of the Christian creed.^ He 
 will urge, no doubt, that he is convinced of 
 the doctrine, and regards it as of great 
 importance; that the deterrents from vice 
 in this life are not strong enough; and 
 that he were neglecting his duty if he did 
 not constantly bring this awful consequence 
 before his pegple. He will cite texts from 
 the Bible in support of his views, and 
 charge his critic with lukewarmness and 
 
 ^ The reader will remember, in case this passage is 
 misrepresented hereafter, that I am speaking of eternal 
 punishment, not of future punishment generally. 
 
I04 ON PREACHING, [sect. xxxv. 
 
 sentimentality in not adopting and pro- 
 claiming the whole truth. But in spite of 
 all this, his sermons will have no effect, or 
 a bad effect, because they are anachronistic, 
 out of time and place, and preached to 
 congregations who are estranged from that 
 particular dogma in their Christianity. 
 
 § 35. Akin to this error in preaching is 
 the propounding of that Calvinistic side of 
 religion which insists upon the small num- 
 ber of the elect, and the great number of 
 those who will fall short of the kingdom of 
 heaven. It may be logically accurate that 
 the omniscient Deity foresees the whole 
 future of each man, and that it is by His 
 divine decree that the majority of mankind 
 are allowed to remain in ignorance of the 
 higher truth or in neglect of it. It may 
 be theologically sound that few only will 
 be saved, and that broad is the way that 
 leadeth to destruction ; but nevertheless, to 
 remind the congregation constantly that 
 by a divine and immutable law most of 
 
SECT. XXXVI.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 105 
 
 them must be lost, and that the condi- 
 tions of salvation require not great and 
 earnest personal exertions, but special elec- 
 tion by the Deity, is the most mischievous 
 thing which a preacher can do. The day 
 is gone by even for so great an orator as 
 Massillon to terrify his congregation by a 
 sermon on the small number of the elect. 
 The doctrine of election may be felt a 
 great privilege by many true Christians ; 
 it may be the only view reconcilable with 
 certain aspects of Scripture ; and yet to 
 preach it with special insistence upon its 
 corollary, — the multitude of the damned, 
 — is an excess of orthodoxy which will dis- 
 credit a modern preacher. We may indeed 
 go further, and say that even attacks on this 
 extreme Calvinism are now out of date, 
 and that most people regard it as a waste 
 of energy to combat a doctrine so little 
 in sympathy with the temper of modern 
 society and the belief of most Christians. 
 § 36. All these special severities of doc- 
 
io6 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxxvi. 
 
 trine seem to be derived from the same 
 fountain-head, and the drifting of modern 
 society away from them to be accounted for 
 in like manner. This is so important and 
 fundamental a matter in explaining the 
 varieties of orthodoxy that we must dis- 
 cuss it with some detail. 
 
 The doctrines of the eternity and in- 
 finite severity of punishment reserved for 
 those who fail by a hair's- breadth to attain 
 the felicities of Heaven ; the doctrine of 
 the selection from all the inhabitants of 
 the world by a perfectly arbitrary act 
 of a small number for these felicities, 
 and the exclusion of the rest — all such 
 doctrines are necessarily based on the 
 conception of the Deity as an absolutely 
 despotic Ruler, whose powers and rights 
 over his subjects have no limits. This is the 
 purely Oriental conception of monarchy. 
 The Oriental despot was thought to own 
 his subjects like so many cattle; and to 
 take away their property or their life, even 
 
SECT. XXXVI.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 107 
 
 with torture, was no more a straining of 
 his actual rights than it was to put to 
 death, in the manner best suited to his 
 convenience, the lower animals he had 
 domesticated, though it involved great 
 and unnecessary suffering. Indeed the de- 
 spotic feeling as regards the lower animals 
 is only now gradually giving way in the 
 most enlightened parts of Europe; and 
 humanity, though recognised in the law of 
 England, is a notion quite foreign to the 
 Irish peasant, to the Italian- and Spanish 
 peasant — indeed to the Governments of 
 the latter countries — in fact, to most of the 
 world. We need not cite the East, where 
 humanity to men is not yet comprehended. 
 So it is with the Eastern despot as regards 
 His subjects. He can assign the severest 
 punishments for the most trivial crimes, 
 the greatest rewards for small or acci- 
 dental merits. He rules with reference to 
 himself, and any thought for the welfare 
 of his people is accepted as a proof of 
 
loS ON FRE AC ff/NG. [sect, xxxvu 
 
 generosity and condescension on his part, 
 not as the performance of a duty. 
 
 Such being the case, we have only to 
 add that in all speculations concerning the 
 nature of the Deity men are obliged to use 
 human analogies, and to represent as the 
 king of kings, as the supremest of rulers, 
 the great Being who is Lord over the 
 world. It was perfectly impossible for early 
 and Oriental writers to form any other 
 conception of God than that of a Despot 
 in the sense just explained. They acknow- 
 ledged his great mercy and benevolence, 
 but as a condescension on his part, not as 
 a claim on the part of his subjects. Nay, 
 he was a jealous God, visiting the sins of 
 the fathers upon the children to the third 
 and fourth generation, — in this, above all, 
 an Oriental monarch, for there it was cus- 
 tomary to involve all the innocent family 
 of an offender in his crime, and root out 
 the whole household of him who dared to 
 displease his King. He who ventures to 
 
SECT, xxxvii.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 109 
 
 offend by not putting on a wedding gar- 
 ment is punished for this disrespect as 
 being guilty of a hideous and unpardon- 
 able crime. The King exalts whom he 
 will, and degrades whom he will. We are 
 but as the clay in the potter's hand, from 
 which he makes one vessel for honour and 
 one for dishonour. And even St. Paul 
 cannot see the possibility of question- 
 ing these absolutely despotic rights on 
 the part of the King of kings. What- 
 ever He chooses to <\o for His own glory is 
 not only justifiable, but His natural course 
 of action, and no man can possibly gain- 
 say it. 
 
 § 37. The very statement of these views 
 - — and citations to support them could be 
 multiplied indefinitely — produce in the 
 modern reader a certain painful impression, 
 and why ? Our notion of monarchy has 
 changed ; we no longer regard the absolute 
 despot as the most splendid of types ; we do 
 not recognise that the earthly monarch's 
 
no ON PREACHING, [sect, xxxvii. 
 
 proper object is his own glory, but rather 
 the good and welfare of his people. Our 
 highest conception is that of a constitutional 
 king, who establishes wise and beneficent 
 laws, and binds himself to act in conform- 
 ity with them, even though he have the 
 power to reverse or violate them. 
 
 There are not wanting expressions of this 
 side of God's character, even in the Semitic 
 Scriptures. But according as modern civil- 
 isation has more and more determined it 
 to be the highest ideal of a king, so this 
 aspect of the Deity has become the pre- 
 vailing one in modern theology of the 
 higher kind ; and this, the moral view of 
 the government of the world, has super- 
 seded the despotic view of older days. 
 The fact that diseases engendered by vice 
 are hereditary may be identified with the 
 proclamation that the sins of the fathers 
 are visited upon the children to the third 
 and fourth generation ; but the ground and 
 reason of both are widely different. The 
 
SECT. XXXVII.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. in 
 
 former is the assertion of a great natural 
 law, that the consequences of vice are be- 
 yond our control, and lead to disastrous 
 results affecting those whom we should be 
 the last to injure. It teaches us to com- 
 pute the loss and damage inflicted upon 
 the human race by the wickedness of a 
 few. The latter is distinctly asserted to 
 be the consequence of the jealousy of the 
 Deity, who wreaks His vengeance upon all 
 the household of him who commits high 
 treason in allowing any other being to 
 usurp the place of his one and only 
 Sovereign. 
 
 Thus there' is a contrast, — I will not say 
 a conflict, — between the despotic and con- 
 stitutional aspects of the Deity in modem 
 theology. On the one hand we have the 
 analogies'and arguments suggested by the 
 sacred authors, who lived under despo'.!c 
 governments ; on the other the modern or 
 constitutional view of God's government. 
 To insist upon the former is an excess of 
 
112 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxxviii. 
 
 orthodoxy, and gives rise to the promi- 
 
 Aj^%., • ' nence of the doctrines ;arrd imply the 
 
 severity and exclusiveness of Christianity. 
 
 We must allow that the actual omni- 
 potence of the Deity, and still more the 
 fact that he is the Creator of man, and not 
 his Ruler only, afford the Absolutist in 
 theology a strong ground for denying the 
 analogy between modern kings and the 
 great King of kings. It may be argued 
 with perfect consistency that His rights 
 and powers over man are absolute, and are 
 justly represented as such by sacred 
 writers. But this logical side of the matter 
 will not outweigh the feeling in the minds 
 of modern congregations, that despotism is 
 not the highest form of government, and 
 therefore the modern preacher will do well 
 to study with care that constitutional side 
 of God's government which corresponds 
 to the temper of our society. 
 
 § 38. It was necessary to enter with more 
 than usual detail into what I ventured to 
 
SECT. XXXVIII.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 113 
 
 call the orthodox extreme, because the 
 expression was liable to be misconstrued, 
 and the underlying facts misconceived. 
 And yet to those who will not admit any 
 development, or even any drifting, in ortho- 
 dox religions, all that has been said is vain. 
 I will cordially admit that a stern dog- 
 matic preacher, who refuses to vary with 
 any wind of doctrine, and sets forth the 
 truth as it was conceived and expressed 
 by the great divines centuries ago, affects 
 serious hearers with a feeling of great 
 respect for his consistency and singleness of 
 heart. But we must feel that he is repro- 
 ducing these ideas from himself, and not 
 copying them slavishly from the forgotten 
 tomes of a theological library. This latter 
 kind of preaching, common enough even 
 among those who ought to know better, is 
 simply contemptible ; and the anachron- 
 isms exhibited are not those psychological 
 anachronisms which we have just spoken 
 of as interesting, but those unconscious 
 
114 ON PREACHING. [SECT, xxxix. 
 
 anachronisms which only excite amuse- 
 ment or pity. 
 
 § 39. But the real dignity of dogmatic 
 preaching is more strongly exhibited by its 
 contrast with what may be called the broad 
 or Heterodox Extreme, a form oi preaching 
 very common, and even fashionable, at 
 present, and one which perhaps more 
 than any other brings preaching into dis- 
 repute. It is not here intended to discuss 
 the cases in which men set forth from 
 their pulpits doctrines clearly at variance 
 with the creed which they have professed, 
 and present the painful spectacle of incon- 
 sistency and self-contradiction in a teacher, 
 who ought to be of all things clear 
 and consistent. Even to be suspected of 
 holding views inconsistent with his pro- 
 fession, spreads doubt and distrust among 
 his hearers ; and hence there is no 
 weapon to which malicious people of 
 ostentatious orthodoxy more frequently 
 resort than this disseminating of sus- 
 
SECT. XXXIX.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 115 
 
 picions, when they dislike rivals, or fear 
 theological antagonists. 
 
 But I am not here concerned with cases 
 of distinct heresy, or with those men who 
 think that their position permits them this 
 license. What is here meant by the hetero- 
 dox extreme, as opposed to the excessive 
 orthodoxy just discussed, is rather a general 
 laxity as regards the importance of dogma, 
 and a sort of easy-going implication that 
 we must leave men great liberty as to 
 their beliefs, provided they are strict in 
 their duties and their life. This error, like 
 all those which affect preaching, consists 
 in the distortion of a valuable truth. 
 Liberty of opinion, and the right ot 
 private judgment as to doctrine, is the 
 stronghold of modern enlightenment ; it 
 has been the common error of all Churches, 
 — 'and not least of the ultra- Protestant 
 Churches, — to shackle it unduly. Thus 
 Descartes, a great scientific discoverer, 
 found in the reformed theologians ot 
 
ii6 ON PREACHING, [sect, xxxix. 
 
 Holland far bitterer enemies than in the 
 Roman Church. 
 
 But if, through recoil from this error, 
 modern preachers come to believe that 
 dogma is of little importance, provided a 
 higher morality be enforced, they make, 
 in my opinion, a very grave mistake. For 
 I take it to be historically certain that the 
 world has been reformed, not by preach- 
 ing morals, but by preaching dogma. The 
 most perfect example only reaches those 
 immediately around it ; a recital of its 
 perfections has no power to stir those afar 
 off in age or country. Thus the early 
 teachers of Christianity seldom insisted on 
 the details of Christ's life. Indeed, if all 
 the personal allusions in the Epistles were 
 gathered together, we should fail utterly 
 to obtain from them a picture of the man. 
 What converted the world was not the 
 example of Christ's life ; it was the dogma 
 of His death. It was the assertion of His 
 divinity and His atonement which formed 
 
SECT. XL.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 117 
 
 the real substance of early Christian preach- 
 ing, and it was this which reformed the 
 world, 
 
 § 40. It would be easy, but would re- 
 quire large space, to show the same feature 
 in the other religions founded by a great 
 personality. It was always the founder's 
 divine mission, and the dogma revealed to 
 him, which remained the lifeblood of the 
 new religion. Hence the very usual idea 
 among fashionable preachers, that they 
 need not insist upon dogma, that they may 
 admit great differences on speculative 
 points, that they need only teach purer 
 morals and higher practical aims in our 
 life, — all this is based on a very natural 
 error, but an error which history has long 
 since exposed. This is the weakness of 
 such books as Ecce Homo, in themselves 
 beautiful and true, but not able to produce 
 any permanent impression on society. 
 
 It is not here asserted that moral preach- 
 ing is of no use. Far from it. But this is 
 
ii8 ON PREACHING. [sect. XL. 
 
 asserted, that moral preaching by itself 
 will have but little effect ; it must be used 
 as an accessory to dogmatic preaching, for 
 it is dogma which rules the great changes 
 in the religious thought of the world. 
 Hence appears the error of what I have 
 called the heterodox extreme, which plays 
 with foreign doctrines as interesting varia- 
 tions of opinion, which will not controvert 
 any article in a speculative creed, and 
 which professes to care for none of these 
 things, provided a pure life be preached. 
 
 It has been remarked that all great 
 social and political revolutions have been 
 preceded and introduced by intellectual 
 movements. It was Voltaire and Rousseau 
 and the Encyclopaedists who awakened the 
 French mind to the ideas of the Revolution. 
 So it was the Gospel of St. John and the 
 Epistles of St. Paul on which the main body 
 of Christian dogma is founded, and these 
 are the speculative parts of the New Testa- 
 ment. To evade dogma, then, or to hold it 
 
SECT. XLi.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 119 
 
 of little account, is a defect in the preacher, 
 who is never, or hardly ever, successful, ex- 
 cept he be dogmatic. The moral essayist 
 in the pulpit is common enough now-a- 
 days ; he is often a literary artist, and 
 attracts many people by his grace of diction 
 and richness of ideas. He never shocks or 
 frightens them, for his real gospel is that of 
 modern culture. So it was with Menander 
 and the genteel comedy of the Greeks, when 
 the stage had given up all idea of reform- 
 ing mankind, and confined itself to pictures 
 of human life. There are great lessons to 
 be gained by such portraiture, and by the 
 graceful but forcible exposure of the weak- 
 ness and folly of men. But this is not 
 preaching, and will not preserve for the 
 preacher the great vantage ground he once 
 possessed as the leader of earnest men. 
 
 § 41. The two excesses now discussed 
 may perhaps be classed, with others which 
 have not been mentioned, under another 
 pair of defects, which affect the general 
 
I20 ON PREACHING. [sect. XLI. 
 
 character of a preacher, irrespective of the 
 particular doctrines he propounds. The 
 first and commonest of these is the Ex- 
 treme of Sameness which characterises our 
 sermons, and which tends to make people 
 think that they will only hear what they 
 knew long before, and 'what is therefore 
 hardly worth hearing over again. 
 
 And yet this feeling on the part of 
 the hearer is met on the part of the 
 preacher by the distinct principle, that the 
 great cardinal doctrines of his faith not 
 only require constant restatement, but that 
 this restatement is a necessary part of his 
 duty. There is even a school of pious 
 men who think that all Christianity centres 
 round one cardinal doctrine — Justification 
 by Faith in Christ's Atonement ; and I 
 have often heard them say that they 
 should feel unable to give an account of 
 their stewardship if a stranger had chanced 
 to attend for once their ministry, and, being 
 ignorant of the truth, had not heard it 
 
SECT. XLI.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 121 
 
 from their lips. These excellent and pious 
 men put such stress on this consideration, 
 and were so convinced that their preaching 
 might be, and often was, the occasion for 
 sudden conversion from darkness to light, 
 that nothing would induce them to vary, 
 beyond the text and some illustrations, 
 the character of their preaching. 
 
 It always appeared to me that they 
 curiously ignored the lessons taught by 
 their ritual, the reading of the Scriptures at 
 every service, and still more the fact that 
 practically every hearer, though not un- 
 derstanding the Gospel after their fashion, 
 is baptized and brought up in the faith. 
 Still, exceptions, though rare, were pos- 
 sible, and so far their position was logically 
 defensible. More serious was the fact that 
 the great majority heard the same thing so 
 often, — that, for the sake of the accidental 
 stranger or careless hearer who might be 
 struck with the new light, the rest were left 
 in intellectual as well as spiritual poverty. 
 
122 ON PREACHING. [sect. xlii. 
 
 They were taught no higher lessons ; they 
 were fed with milk and not with meat ; 
 and those among them who felt the desire 
 o{ going on towards perfection, were often 
 starved by such preaching. 
 
 Although, therefore, the sameness in this 
 knid of preaching was the result of prin- 
 ciple, and arose from notions of duty, it 
 tended in general to bring preaching into 
 disrepute. And indeed the cases I have 
 cited were only the highest and best cases. 
 How many followers of these men have 
 kept repeating the same thing merely from 
 laziness, from ignorance, from poverty of 
 thought, consoling themselves all the while 
 that they were doing their duty thoroughly! 
 How many of them put off thieir prepara- 
 tion till the night before, and then ran 
 together a string of pious platitudes to 
 satisfy the requirements of their office ! 
 
 § 42. This error of sameness is by no 
 means confined to the particular school 
 here cited to illustrate it In all faiths and 
 
SECT. XLII.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 123 
 
 creeds it is to be found ; we are even told 
 that the Positivists always preach on the 
 same text. There are also many men with 
 a favourite doctrine who think that no one 
 knows its importance but themselves, and 
 so keep reiterating it to their weary hearers, 
 who deliberately compose themselves to 
 inattention as soon as they hear the sub- 
 ject introduced. 
 
 A considerable amount of sameness is 
 unavoidable in a preacher on a definite 
 form of faith, shackled by all manner of 
 social trammels, and obliged to preach far 
 oftener than is consistent with long and i 
 thoughtful preparation. But if a certain 
 variety be not attained, — if people know 
 beforehand exactly what they will hear, — 
 then the sermon, however true and good, 
 becomes like some well-known melody — 
 well-known because of its beauty and 
 associations, but nevertheless at last pall- 
 ing on the sense, and heard with impatience 
 and disappointment. If it be true that 
 
124 ON PREACHING, [sect, xliii. 
 
 there are many people who never tire of 
 such a melody, so there are also many 
 who never tire of hearing the same argu- 
 ments. But these are not the people 
 benefited by preaching, nor is it they, 
 happily, who lead public opinion. 
 
 While, therefore, I feel very strongly 
 that the sameness of modern preaching is 
 often due to the most serious convictions, 
 and is defended by the most pious and 
 earnest men, it cannot but be regarded as 
 an active cause in the decay of pulpit in- 
 fluence. The modern public are used to 
 much more intellectual variety than their 
 forefathers. They find intellectual recrea- 
 tion in various literature, in open debate, 
 in the many and often thrilling subjects 
 expounded from public platforms. It is, 
 no doubt, an unfair expectation that the 
 pulpit shall keep pace with this change, 
 but the total neglect of it is certainly not 
 a practical way of dealing with the difficulty. 
 
 § 43. But there is one way of dealing with 
 
SECT. XLlli.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 125 
 
 it which cannot but be regarded as an error 
 in the opposite direction. It is the desire 
 in some men to make variety their first 
 object, — to go out of the way and seek 
 anywhere and everywhere the materials 
 for a new and startling discourse. To 
 this feeling, the Excessive love of Variety, 
 may be ascribed the vulgar habit of intro- 
 ducing anecdotes in the pulpit, — anecdotes 
 which are not only foolish and beside the 
 point, but often practically untrue, inas- 
 much as the preacher always explains the 
 facts, and the explanation may be palpably 
 invented. Anecdotage in the pulpit grati- 
 fies only the most ignorant and vulgar of 
 hearers, and from vulgar I mean to ex- 
 clude all those, of however low degree, 
 who come to hear seriously for the sake 
 of spiritual benefit. The use of such 
 illustrations is therefore very dangerous, 
 and not to be resorted to without the 
 greatest caution, especially in the assign- 
 ment of motives or causes for the facts. 
 
126 ON PREACHING, [sect. XLiii. 
 
 Of a similar character are those excur- 
 sions into politics, into popular science, 
 into secular poetry, which sometimes 
 occupy whole discourses, and which are 
 listened to with attention and amusement, 
 but seldom with profit. If these things 
 be used in illustration of great truths, 
 they are evidences of large culture in the 
 preacher, and also have their real value. 
 But to make variety the main object of 
 preaching is to forget that eternal truths 
 require more than a passing notice. The 
 broad lines upon which human conduct 
 should be built must be often and often 
 explained and enforced. In the words of 
 a great heathen moralist — Conviction does 
 not easily arise in a man unless he shall 
 every day hear the same things, speak the 
 same things, and at the same time apply 
 them to life} It was said of a well-known 
 Roman Catholic prelate, who in late years 
 exercised enormous influence over Ireland, 
 
 ^ Encheir. of Epictetus, ed. Rolleston, p. 57. 
 
SECT. XLiii.] DEFECTIVE TYPES. 127 
 
 that if you asked him any question a 
 second time, even at an interval of years, 
 he would give the same answer in the 
 same words. And that was the secret of 
 his power. Strong and clear persistence 
 in the same great truths is not an element 
 of weakness, but of power in a speaker. 
 But he must take care to confine his 
 insistence to points of real importance ; in 
 lesser matters it is, as we have shown, 
 tedious and ineffective. 
 
 It may be considered the test ot serious 
 ness in an audience, and an index whether 
 they come for improvement or for amuse- 
 ment, to inquire whether they insist on and 
 appreciate variety beyond everything in 
 their preacher. If they do, we may be 
 sure that it is not their spiritual welfare 
 which guides them, but the mere desire 
 of spending an hour pleasantly, or less 
 unpleasantly than usual, in their church 
 on Sundays. And so those preachers 
 in our large cities who affect this sort 
 
128 ON PREACHING. [sect. xliv. 
 
 of variety are sure to command a con- 
 siderable attention from the idle classes 
 — I mean spiritual idlers — who now 
 abound everywhere. It is a mistake 
 to consider the preaching which attracts 
 a crowd of this kind successful preach- 
 ing. It does not even raise the preacher 
 in the proper and sound estimation of 
 those people whose opinion is but worth 
 having ; it is very likely to mislead him 
 into the belief that he is doing good, 
 when he is doing at best nothing at all. 
 For in most cases he is doing worse than 
 nothing ; he is training his people to the 
 sensation-sermon, an analogous thing to 
 the sensation-novel, and one which pro- 
 duces the same kind of effect upon those 
 who pursue it continuously. 
 
 VI. Concerning Remedies. 
 
 § 44. It cannot but be suggested to many 
 readers by all this balancing of extremes 
 
SECT. XLIV.] REMEDIES. 129 
 
 that the art of preaching is, like Aristotle's 
 ethical perfection, a sort of mean between 
 faults in both directions, and that the 
 whole matter might have been summed 
 up in one sentence : to avoid excess 
 and defect, and hold the middle course. 
 And yet, though perhaps logically strong, 
 such a position would practically be as 
 weak as possible, and contain the most 
 fatal advice. The man who goes through 
 life in any capacity, avoiding excess, keep- 
 ing clear of mistakes, correcting in himseli 
 and others all extravagance, — this man 
 may pass through life as a respectable 
 member of society, but he will never 
 kindle enthusiasm ; he will never have a 
 following ; he will seldom even command 
 respect from any but the poorest intellects. 
 He may obtain the praise of some for 
 thorough good sense, as the phrase is, and 
 for having no enemies, and for that com- 
 mon wisdom which merely consists in ad- 
 vising caution — a cheap wisdom too often 
 K 
 
I30 ON PREACHING. [SECT. XLIV. 
 
 current : he will never be a great or a 
 striking man. This, which is true gene- 
 rally, is especially true of preachers. The 
 man who avoids unpleasant doctrines, and 
 avoids all bold statements of his own 
 opinion, who keeps within the narrowest 
 bounds set him by the theological public, 
 and takes no lead in the march of opinion, 
 will never be a good, far less a great, 
 teacher. These are what we call the safe 
 men in the Church. They may appear safe 
 at the moment ; in the long run they con- 
 tribute to the ruin of the Church they 
 represent. For they are essentially cold, 
 and they repress in their surroundings all 
 the glow and fervour of enthusiasm. I 
 repeat it again on account of its import- 
 ance — the so-called safe men in a Church 
 are among the surest causes of its decay. 
 
 Thus, then, we seem to have arrived at 
 this curious position, that while the great 
 and mischievous hindrances to effective 
 preaching consist in the adopting of ex- 
 
SECT. XLV.] REMEDIES. 131 
 
 tremes — excess in doctrine or its absence, 
 in logic or its absence, in uniformity or 
 its absence — we find on the other hand 
 that the avoidance of extremes tones 
 down everything into a sombre mediocrity, 
 which is perhaps more mischievous than 
 they are. Success in preaching would 
 seem therefore impossible, and all our 
 labour in vain. It re^mains for us to 
 see how far this dilemma is absolute, and 
 how far the review of the whole question 
 enables us to suggest remedies, and pre- 
 dict their chances of success. 
 
 § 45. If a man of large sympathies 
 and wide experience were asked which 
 among his worldly friends he considered 
 to have lived the happiest life, he would 
 certainly not choose those who had 
 timorously and ^circumspectly avoided 
 every extreme. In human life there 
 are many great delights in themselves 
 an excess, and very frequently leading 
 tc loss and damage of some kind. And 
 
132 ON PREACHING. [sect. XLV. 
 
 yet the damage can be made good and 
 the loss recovered; and then the man 
 has added to his experience that which 
 will make him know human life in some 
 truer and deeper way than that of mere 
 speculation. He who has lived, in many 
 senses of the term, intensely, even passion- 
 ately, is often a more interesting man from 
 many aspects than he who has merely kept 
 clear of dangers. He is interesting because 
 he possesses a stronger, bolder nature, 
 which is guided, sometimes, at least, by 
 great and noble impulses ; he is interesting 
 because he knows what suffering is as 
 well as joy ; in fact, he may be forgiven 
 much, because he has loved much. In 
 any case he knows the great interests and 
 great temptations of the world really, and 
 not by hearsay, and ^can estimate the 
 amount of good and evil in human nature 
 which the theoretical observer only guesses 
 from the outside. 
 
 This is not sanctioning that men shall 
 
SECT. XL v.] REMEDIES. 133 
 
 be passionate in order to excuse vice ; far 
 from it. But it is really a distinct counter- 
 statement to the old theory that happiness 
 consists in the avoidance of extremes ; it 
 asserts that to have fallen into the extremes, 
 and to have escaped the tempest, not with- 
 out some pain and loss, may possibly be 
 happier, if we morally survive it, than to 
 live, like the gods of Epicurus, in the ifiter- 
 niundia between felicity and sorrow, and 
 never to ruffle the eternal calm of a placid 
 existence. 
 
 But this is not the place to criticise such 
 an argument, for it is only here introduced 
 to serve as an illustration of what really 
 great and full sermons should be, as con- 
 trasted with the discourses of the safe man. 
 All the extremes which have been dis- 
 cussed are censured rather because they 
 absorb a man's preaching, than because 
 they are in themselves faulty. In the 
 largest sense it is sameness which ruins, 
 and variety which quickens, all public 
 
134 ON PREACHING, [sect. xlvi. 
 
 speaking. The preacher should not avoid 
 strong and even harsh statement of doc- 
 trine ; he should not be afraid in any one 
 discourse of any of the faults above noted ; 
 he should fear them as spread over the 
 whole of his preaching. St. Paul on one 
 side, and St. James on the other, afford an 
 infinitely stronger and better statement of 
 the full Christian creed than a balanced 
 declaration made by qualifying the one 
 with the other, and adding limitations and 
 reservations to each proposition. 
 
 § 46. What is therefore required of the 
 preacher is to feel that his subject is broad 
 and has many sides, and that each deserves 
 to be put forward strongly and clearly — 
 it is even better to do it inconsistently as 
 regards the various sides — but each in its 
 turn. To do this efficiently, the best thing 
 we can suggest is higher and more careful 
 culture in the teacher. Piety — a great and 
 effective, though not all-sufficing condition 
 — can, unfortunately, not be secured in any 
 
SECT, xlvl] remedies. 135 
 
 large class. We may even predict that it 
 will remain always the privilege of the few. 
 Intellect, in the higher sense, is not to be 
 secured, for the same reason. Like the 
 wise man of the Stoics, who differed in kind 
 from the rest of the world, a few men have 
 real brains or intellectual power ; and until 
 the conditions of producing the human race 
 change more than is likely within the pre- 
 sent age, these cases of mental power will 
 remain the exceptions.^ But as the pious 
 man naturally gravitates towards a profes- 
 sion .which gives full scope to the aspira- 
 tions of his heart, so the intellectual man as 
 such will turn to the course of life which 
 not only gives him scope for speculation, 
 but scope for power and influence. Hence 
 he will naturally adopt such professions 
 as enable a man to attain great position, 
 as the natural consequence of success. 
 It is therefore by the great prizes at the 
 head of a profession that really able men 
 
 1 Cf. on this my Old Greek Education^ § 65. 
 
136 ON PREACHING. [SECT. XLVi. 
 
 are attracted. They are not dispirited by 
 the slowness or lateness of the reward. 
 They are even content to toil for nothing, 
 provided that when their power is felt 
 there will be high place and influence to 
 reward it. 
 
 This, then, is a point of view which 
 modern society should not forget, when 
 reflecting on the possibility of reforming 
 and improving our preachers. There were 
 in older days, and there are even still in 
 established churches, these great prizes, and 
 consequently very able men will accept 
 poverty in their youth in order to attain 
 them. But when we hear it stated as 
 a good feature in the present Protestant 
 Church of Ireland that any curate can 
 command twice the salary he could for- 
 merly obtain, we should ask. What about 
 the bishops and deans? what about the 
 best livings ? And when we hear that a 
 young man is likely to get as much salary 
 in five years as he will ever get, — when we 
 
SECT. XLVi.] REMEDIES. 137 
 
 see in the Irish the difficulty and dislike of 
 giving their new bishops nniore than a re- 
 spectable pittance, we may safely conclude 
 that though the better pay of curates will 
 secure for such a ministry the entrance of 
 a great many poor men who want a quick 
 return for the outlay of their education, 
 the lack of real prizes will deter all such 
 as are able and ambitious to succeed, un- 
 less they at the same time feel a deep 
 and controlling call to devote themselves 
 to the teaching of religion. 
 
 No doubt the majority of pious people 
 in the Irish Church would accept this con- 
 clusion as the right one. They would say, 
 What do we want with clever men in our 
 ministry, if they are not seriously called to 
 it from within ? Intellect without piety is 
 surely dangerous, and will lead the Church 
 into trouble. Let us have safe, pious men, 
 and scorn the aid of human intellect ! 
 The heathen by wisdom know not God, and 
 so forth. All we need here add is, that if 
 
138 ON PREACHING. FsECT. XLVi. 
 
 stupid men on the average are more pious 
 than able men, there is something wrong 
 about the creed which is not in harmony 
 with power and force in human character. 
 But without going again into this ques- 
 tion, it is enough to repeat that here, in 
 this argument, the question of preaching 
 alone is before us. It is certainly true 
 that if we are to have able and vigorous 
 preaching, we must have clever men. It 
 may be worth while to despise human 
 ability for the sake of higher ends ; it may 
 be worth while to keep out ambition and 
 energy for the sake of the dangers they 
 provoke. But though your safe men, 
 your men of small ambition and poor 
 abilities, may make valuable ministers in 
 other respects, they will not, however pious, 
 make preachers. Perhaps preaching is al- 
 together a mistake now-a-days. If so, let 
 it be abandoned ; but as long as we have 
 it, and as long as we desire to have it good 
 and telling, we cannot despise intellect in 
 
SECT. XLVII.] REMEDIES. 139 
 
 any ministry, but must try to secure it by 
 all reasonable means. 
 
 § 47. Next comes the question of cul- 
 ture. This is the point where good can 
 really be done by care and forethought. 
 Hence it is that bishops and colleges and 
 synods should insist that all possible efforts 
 be directed to make the teachers in their 
 Churches superior in culture to the aver- 
 age of their congregations. Hence it is 
 that they should insist on University train- 
 ing, or whatever other training in science 
 and literature will lift men out of the herd, 
 and fit them to speak as educated men 
 on the great topics which they profess to 
 expound. 
 
 For the same reason those theological 
 colleges in favour with the Roman Church 
 and the extremest Protestants alike are 
 radically defective. They either give no 
 general culture at all, or give it with a bias 
 and flavour of theology, which it retains 
 all through a man's teaching, and which 
 
I40 ON PREACHING. [SECT. XLVIII. 
 
 shows evidently the source from which 
 it has sprung. Those ancient seats of 
 learning, where theological students both 
 live with, and are taught along with, lay- 
 students, are therefore much preferable ; 
 and as a matter of fact it would be hard 
 to find a really eminent preacher coming 
 from a close theological college, at least 
 in the Protestant Churches. Contact with 
 the world, familiarity with lay science 
 and lay professions, union among all 
 civilised men in feeling and temper, — 
 these influences give a more human and 
 sympathetic tone to the young preacher, 
 and are likely to teach him what kind 
 of arguments are suitable for convincing 
 men. 
 
 § 48. But while the universities are pre- 
 eminently the best training places in the 
 way of general education, they are much 
 to be blamed for not having given more 
 attention to the special training of theo- 
 logical students in their schools. It is all 
 
SECT, xlviil] remedies. 141 
 
 very well to say that they are only con- 
 cerned with general preparation, and that 
 the student must learn the special matters 
 himself. If they adopt a theological course 
 at all, they are not to be excused for ne- 
 glecting all practice in rhetoric, and in the 
 composition of sermons. Writing an occa- 
 sional exercise, which the professor reads, 
 or perhaps corrects, is little to the point; 
 but I should be very sorry, on the other 
 hand, to see classes established in Sacred 
 Rhetoric, — as the manner of some is, — as 
 if sacred rhetoric were different from any 
 other rhetoric. The sort of training here 
 meant is this, that the Professor should 
 not only announce a subject and require 
 written exercises on it, but himself correct 
 them, and show how the subject ought 
 to have been treated, giving specimens 
 of his own wherewith the students may 
 compare their less perfect essays. He 
 should also point out to them those 
 simpler arts in composition which many 
 
142 ON PREACHING, [sect. XLViii. 
 
 of us only learn by continual failures, and 
 which many fail to appreciate all their 
 lives. This suggestion and criticism of the 
 lines of treatment which as ubject admits, 
 is a vital part of the training of a preacher 
 which has hitherto been strangely ne- 
 glected. So much for the composition of 
 written sermons. 
 
 But every preacher who addresses large 
 and ignorant congregations should also be 
 trained in extempore speaking, which alone 
 affects the masses. If they lose the 
 speaker's eye, they will hardly follow 
 the thread of his discourse. And they 
 want homely, vernacular English, such 
 as a man of culture may recoil from 
 writing down in his study. Training in 
 rhetoric, properly so called, is therefore 
 necessary ; and all theological students 
 should be carefully taught and watched as 
 to their language, action, and delivery, so 
 that when they come to occupy a pulpit 
 they will not at once offend the hearer by 
 
SECT. XLix.] REMEDIES. 143 
 
 awkwardness or mannerism, but attract 
 him by unaffected simplicity. It was 
 the study of these principles which made 
 orators of the Greeks and Romans, whose 
 works are models to the present day. 
 They did not venture to come before any 
 audience whom they wished to persuade, 
 without the anxious use of every possible 
 aid. Do we imagine that we can expect 
 successful preaching from a body of average 
 men who do not even know what the 
 science of rhetoric means ? Training in 
 rhetoric is therefore a very pressing need 
 of our preachers, and will do more to im- 
 prove them than can well be estimated. 
 
 § 49. Let us here repeat the objection 
 which many serious readers have been im- 
 patiently reconsidering while reading this 
 page. What do we want, they say, in 
 the pulpit with artificial rhetoric ? What 
 do we want with affectations and manner- 
 isms ? We want men to speak simply 
 from the heart plain and striking truths. 
 
144 ON PREACHING. [SECT. XLix. 
 
 We want to feel the good man, and not 
 the polished orator, addressing us. In all 
 this I perfectly concur. But let me repeat 
 to these objectors that they are wholly 
 in error when they assume that speakers 
 are natural if they neglect rhetoric, arti- 
 ficial if they employ it. For we are not 
 speaking of bad and vulgar rhetoric ; we 
 are not speaking of the vulgar teaching of 
 elocution by some self-styled Professor, like 
 those of music and dancing. Bad rhetoric 
 will produce many evils ; it is the duty of 
 good rhetoric to obviate the very faults of 
 
 own abuse. 
 
 There is no greater fault in a speaker 
 than to produce the impression that he 
 is studied and artificial ; there is no- 
 thing which a good teacher should cor- 
 rect more severely. And it is not the 
 voice of nature, but the voice of the 
 most consummate art, which speaks simply 
 from the heart clear and striking thoughts. 
 To attain this perfection is the highest 
 
SECT. XLix.] REMEDIES. 14S 
 
 ideal at which rhetoric can aim. It is 
 a profound mistake to expect it from un- 
 tutored nature. There may be one man 
 or perhaps two in a generation who have 
 this highest of all arts by a divine gift of 
 genius. Among ordinary men nothing is 
 so natural and inevitable, when they 
 attempt public speaking, as mannerism. 
 It infects them immediately, constantly, 
 pertinaciously ; while we require the 
 most unwearied care and diligence to 
 root it out. We may regard it as an 
 axiom that the more ignorant and un- 
 cultivated a speaker, the less natural will 
 he be ; he will use absurd and fallacious 
 arguments ; he will indulge in tawdry and 
 extravagant metaphors ; he will display 
 awkward and offensive action. If he be 
 gifted, as the Irish are, with natural 
 fluency, it will probably only intensify 
 these faults. In the preacher especially, 
 who is secure from open ridicule on 
 the part of his audience or succeeding 
 
146 ON PREACHING, [sect, xlix 
 
 speakers, they are apt to grow up 
 unchecked, and to mar his power. 
 
 Thus it is certain that the adop- 
 tion of a religious voice in the pulpit, a 
 voice distinct from the ordinary tone, and 
 intended to convey an impression of 
 greater solemnity, is one of the chief 
 causes of the preacher being regarded 
 as artificial, and his subject foreign to 
 our ordinary business and our serious 
 worldly interests. No one can tell how 
 much this simple and common blunder 
 has done to sever our religion from our 
 ordinary life, and relegate it to special 
 moments, so as to be assumed with Sunday 
 clothes and services. It should, therefore, 
 be the first duty of a sound rhetorician to 
 extirpate this fatal mannerism in the 
 preacher, and insist that real seriousness 
 is quite inconsistent with any such airs 
 and graces. 
 
 So much, then, may be urged concern- 
 ing the better training, both general and 
 
SECT. L.] REMEDIES. 147 
 
 special, which the clergy of all denomina- 
 tions, of all sorts and classes of men, 
 ought to receive, and without which their 
 preaching will only be effective in those rare 
 cases where nature has done everything 
 in a way which art can only faintly copy. 
 § 50. Turning to other considerations, it 
 must be confessed that for a preacher, who 
 should soar above the practice of ordinary 
 life, and proclaim ideal piety, ideal virtue, 
 ideal self-sacrifice, the Roman Catholic 
 law of celibacy is very profitable. The 
 orator who emerges from his study or 
 his cell, unknown or scarcely known to 
 his audience, can reason of justice, and 
 temperance, and judgment to come, with 
 far more singleness of heart and far more 
 force than he who is engaged in the 
 trivialities and distractions of family life, 
 and lives in a society more or less 
 inquisitive and censorious. If, therefore, 
 celibacy could be maintained for an order 
 ot preachers in the Reformed Churches, 
 
148 ON PREACHING. [sect. li. 
 
 it would tend in many ways to make their 
 discourses more impressive, more down- 
 right, more ideal in aim. It is Elijah from 
 the desert, it is John the Baptist from 
 the wilderness, it is Savonarola from his 
 cell, who are best qualified to impress and 
 lead mankind by preaching. 
 
 § 5 I. But if in many sects or churches 
 this be found difficult or impossible to 
 attain, it could be in some measure made 
 good by establishing an Order of itinerant 
 preachers, whose whole duty should be to 
 travel from place to place for the purpose 
 of speaking from the pulpit Of course 
 such an order, which need never be large, 
 should consist of men specially selected for 
 their preaching talent, and the fact that 
 they seldom addressed the same congrega- 
 tion would make it unnecessary for them 
 to prepare more than a limited number 
 of discourses, on which they could spend 
 all their care and attention. These dis- 
 courses would even gain in terseness and 
 
SECT. LI.] REMEDIES. 149 
 
 completeness by frequent recasting; and 
 thus we might expect to obtain the best 
 work which the best preachers could pro- 
 duce, instead of remaining at the mercy 
 of some half-educated curate, with neither 
 talent for speaking nor time for prepara- 
 tion. 
 
 Above all, our preachers would not 
 be subject to that most damaging, but 
 most illogical criticism : Does he live up 
 to what he preaches f Damaging this 
 criticism is, as everybody knows. It is 
 also illogical, because, as a preacher, it is 
 his duty to say the best and finest things; 
 it is his duty rather as a man than as a 
 preacher to endeavour to live up to them. 
 What should we say if the preacher were 
 to lower his standard to suit his own 
 life ? What should we say if he only 
 recommended a limited purity, a qualified 
 faith, a doubtful hope, because he felt he 
 could rise no higher himself? Of course 
 such a thing would be absurd. He is 
 
ISO ON PREACHING. [sect. lii. 
 
 bound in the pulpit to take the highest 
 possible ground. Hence it is obvious 
 that his foibles, which are inevitable, 
 should be kept out ot sight of his hearers. 
 § 52. It is a natural corollary from this 
 principle to suggest the abolition of con- 
 stant sermons. To expect from any one 
 two good sermons every week, or even one, 
 is unreasonable; how much more to expect 
 them from a hard-working parish priest, — 
 from a man whose practical duties and 
 whose family cares must occupy most of 
 his time. The sooner this necessity is 
 recognised among Protestants of all kinds 
 the better. The days are now passing 
 away when the sermon can be considered 
 the main service, with a mere preface of 
 prayers and Scriptures. There is no 
 magic in the sermon, nor in this constant 
 preaching ; and the practice of setting 
 young men, on their first ordination, to 
 produce sermons at such a rate* is generally 
 fatal to their success. In a year or two 
 
SECT. Llll.] REMEDIES. 151 
 
 the'y get into the habit of winding up 
 as much theological commonplace as will 
 keep going for twenty-five minutes; 
 all attempt at elaborating or" sifting a 
 subject is impossible ; and so we have 
 created for ourselves that class of average 
 preachers whom we hear, and do not hear; 
 whom we attend, and do not attend to. 
 This duty of having one or two sermons 
 ready every Sunday, under all circum- 
 stances of mind and temper, of business 
 or recreation, of indisposition or depres- 
 sion, is the most intolerable tyranny 
 conceivable, until the victim of it learns 
 to do it in a slovenly and inefficient way, 
 so that it comes to weigh lightly upon 
 his conscience and his time. Constant 
 preaching, therefore, should be abolished, 
 or handed over to the itinerant order, 
 whose visits would relieve the stationary 
 priest of some of the duty. 
 
 § 53. To help in another way, it would 
 seem very expedient that instead of the old- 
 
152 ON PREACHING. sect. Liii. 
 
 fashioned homilies ordered to be read in 
 some Churches, a new and large collection 
 of authorised sermons should be issued by 
 the heads of each Church, selected from 
 her greatest doctors, and given to every 
 parish minister to use freely when he is 
 unable to produce anything useful of his 
 own. Such a collection, made in a large 
 spirit, and from the greatest preachers, 
 would save many a congregation from 
 the waste of time and temper caused by 
 a foolish discourse, and would accustom 
 the minister to acknowledge his obliga- 
 tions openly, and not appropriate the 
 words of others in silence. Indeed, it is 
 very likely that the habit of indiscriminate 
 plagiarism which is now permitted, and 
 which must be permitted, to our over- 
 taxed preachers, leads to a laxity in their 
 notions of honesty in other respects, and 
 lays them open to the charge of holding 
 a lower standard in this all-important side 
 of morals than their secular neighbours. 
 
SECT. LIV.] REMEDIES. 153 
 
 The homilies attempted to meet the diffi- 
 culty in their day. How infinitely better 
 it could be met by culling from our splen- 
 did pulpit literature ! 
 
 § 54. On the other hand, on those occa- 
 sions when a great preacher is to address the 
 people, and when the sermon really is the 
 main thing, all our Churches should show 
 more elasticity in shortening or dispensing 
 with their services, and not wearying the 
 audience before the orator obtains their 
 attention. A service of an hour is a very 
 bad introduction to the mental strain of fol- 
 lowing a sustained argument ; many people 
 are so impatient of long prayers that they 
 will not even go to hear the sermon. 
 Nor can it be urged now-a-days, when 
 most people can read for themselves, that 
 constant and long services are in any way 
 so essential or useful as they were when 
 the people could obtain no other spiritual 
 sustenance. Thus the sermon by itself 
 would often be attractive, and would not 
 
154 ON PREACHING. [sect. lv. 
 
 only enlist the interest of the audience, but 
 that of the preacher himself, who would feel 
 listlessness and laziness on his part to be 
 indeed criminal when they stand out by 
 themselves, and cannot escape under cover 
 of the listlessness of the audience. 
 
 Possibly it might be well to vary 
 even more the external circumstances of 
 preaching. It might be well to have ser- 
 mons not in pulpits, but on platforms, or 
 from the chancel, or in some other way less 
 bound by fixed ceremony. In all these 
 changes caution should be used, and in no 
 way should the seriousness of the office be 
 impaired ; but let the seriousness be real, 
 not fictitious ; let it be in the spirit, not 
 in the letter. 
 
 Epilogue. 
 
 § 5 5. It may be asked at the conclusion 
 of this study what the writer really hopes or 
 anticipates for the future of preaching, and 
 
SECT. LV.] EPILOGUE. 1 55 
 
 whether he has no larger and more 
 thorough-going reforms to suggest. A few 
 words on each of these points will fitly 
 bring these remarks to a close. As regards 
 the future of preaching, I confess that 
 among the better classes, and with edu- 
 cated congregations, I think its day is 
 gone by. They no longer want instruc- 
 tion from the pulpit when they can find it 
 in thousands of books ; nor will they be led 
 by the opinions of men who are not superior 
 to themselves in intellect and culture, often 
 not even in training. They will no doubt 
 continue to attend sermons for years to 
 come, by way of occupation on an idle 
 day, — it may be from some intellectual in- 
 terest in special preachers, or as an example 
 to young people. But the days for any 
 average minister to lead and influence such 
 people by his preacJiing are gone by. He 
 may do it by visiting, by special argument 
 with each, by the example of his life. 
 He will no longer do it by a set discourse. 
 
iS6 ON PREACHING. [sect. LVi. 
 
 when people can read many better dis- 
 courses, and have grown callous to those 
 sudden impressions which stimulate the 
 ignorant masses. 
 
 With these, on the other hand, the power 
 of the pulpit ought still to be great ; and 
 seeing that the majority of congregations, 
 even in the most civilised parts of the world, 
 is still ignorant and unlettered, there is a 
 great scope here for powerful preaching. 
 The masses are still to be reached, so far as 
 good influences go, only through the plat- 
 form and the pulpit. Through the press, 
 alas ! they frequently obtain little more 
 than the worst and vilest instruction. It 
 is here, in the mission for what is noble 
 and true and spiritual to the masses, 
 that the failure of modern preaching is 
 deeply blamable, and it is to this point 
 that reforming churches should direct their 
 efforts. 
 
 § 5 6. Are there, then, no larger reforms 
 or improvements to be suggested than 
 
SECT. LVi.] EPILOGUE. 157 
 
 those to be found in this essay? No 
 doubt there are ; its main object is to ex- 
 hibit the decay, not to attempt the reform, 
 of modern preaching. Other minds ap- 
 proaching the problem from this latter side 
 will throw light upon it, and the very criti- 
 cism of the faults of this essay may suggest 
 new and fruitful views. But I will here 
 insist that the reform suggested of training 
 specially the men set apart for preaching 
 is not a trifling one, and is likely, if 
 adopted, to have far larger effects than 
 may at first be imagined. The preaching 
 of modern (Jays, so far as we know it, is 
 purely an amateur performance, taken up 
 without special talents or special training, 
 by those who offer themselves for the 
 office in the various Churches. No doubt 
 the Church of Rome, with her usual 
 wisdom, has established preaching orders, 
 where some selection is made according to 
 talent, and some training given, though I 
 know not what it is, and whether it is 
 
158 ON PREACHING. [sect. LVi. 
 
 really efficient. But with this limited 
 exception, there is nothing whatever 
 done to improve preaching by human 
 means. Some people, too, think there 
 ought not to be ; that men need take no 
 thought what they shall say. With these 
 people I am not agreed, as the whole of 
 this essay considers the matter from a 
 human point of view. 
 
 But from this point it cannot be urged 
 too strongly that random and amateur 
 attempts are likely beforehand to be of 
 little value; and were any impartial 
 judge from another world shown what 
 the training of our ministers is, and 
 what they were expected to accomplish, 
 he would wonder at such expectations, 
 and argue with certainty that, as in 
 all other things human, special care and 
 training are needful to attain perfection, 
 so preaching also can be of no use or 
 influence, so long as there is no reason- 
 able care taken to ensure a better result. 
 
SECT, lvl] epilogue. 159 
 
 It may perhaps be argued that when 
 good effects are only anticipated among 
 ignorant people of the lower classes, such 
 a limitation cuts away the ground from the 
 advocates of higher training in the clergy. 
 It may be said. Of what use is special train- 
 ing to these people, who do not know the 
 difference between good and bad rhetoric, 
 who can only understand the plainest and 
 simplest language? I will conclude by 
 once more exposing this serious blunder. 
 Ignorant people may not be able to explain 
 the difference between good and bad 
 rhetoric ; they feel it more keenly than their 
 betters ; they are more easily and violently 
 affected by a real orator ; they are as 
 easily disgusted by incompetence. No- 
 where are the arts of eloquence so neces- 
 sary and so telling as with the vulgar 
 crowd. And if it be true that they want 
 and understand only simple words and 
 plain speaking, I repeat once more that to 
 rival nature in art implies a very high 
 
i6o ON PREACHING. [SECT. LVL 
 
 stage of perfection ; and that to avoid arti- 
 ficiality, cant, mannerism, extravagance, 
 tediousness, is given, not to the ignorant 
 amateur, but to the best and most thorough 
 artist 
 
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