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LECTURES ON PREACHING 
 
Lectures on Preaching 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 IN APRIL AND MAY, 1894 
 
 BY 
 
 W. BOYD CARPENTER, D.D., D.C.L. 
 
 BISHOP OF RIPON; HON. FELLOW OF ST. CATHARINE's 
 COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 London : Macmillan & Co. 
 
 And New York 
 1895 
 
 j^/l rights- reserved 
 
^.\boS^\ 
 
 First Editum April 1895 
 Reprinted October 1895 
 
 
 o^ 
 
The lectures which follow are published in 
 deference to the wish of those who heard 
 them. The lectures were spoken. What 
 is oiFered in this volume is little other than 
 the shorthand writer's report. As such I 
 hope they will be read. A protracted ill- 
 ness has delayed their publication. I desire 
 to express my thanks to my friends Arch- 
 deacon Waugh and Professor Ryle, who, 
 when I was forbidden all work, undertook 
 the ungrateful task of reading the proof- 
 sheets. 
 
 W. B. RIPON. 
 
 February 1895- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 The Preacher Himself . 
 
 I 
 
 2. 
 
 The Training of the Preacher 
 
 ■ 33 
 
 3- 
 
 The Sermon 
 
 • 75 
 
 4- 
 
 The Structure of the Sermon 
 
 . ii8 
 
 5- 
 
 The Preacher and his Age 
 
 . i6o 
 
 6. 
 
 The Aim of the Preacher . 
 
 . 209 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 I HAVE to speak to you on the subject of 
 preaching. It is a subject of commanding 
 interest, especially to you who are looking 
 forward to the work of ministry in the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 There was a phrase employed by an 
 English statesman which became famous in 
 its time. He spoke of the need which the 
 state had of men of "light and leading." 
 The phrase aptly describes the twofold 
 aspect of the preacher's work. I need hardly 
 remind you of the difference between the 
 men of light and the men of leading. 
 The man of light gives us knowledge and 
 
 B 
 
2 Lectures on T reaching lect. 
 
 truth, and their value is quite independent 
 of the man who gives it : but the man of 
 leading leads because of certain qualities 
 in himself which come into activity when 
 in contact with men. 
 
 The function of the man of light is 
 to unfold some truth. He is the man 
 who enlarges our sphere of knowledge, 
 and sheds new light upon the dark places 
 of the world or of ourselves. He is 
 Columbus, increasing our knowledge of 
 the geography of the globe. He is 
 Newton, giving us clearer light respecting 
 the order of the universe. He is Harvey, 
 disclosing to us something fresh concern- 
 ing the constitution of our bodies and 
 making us understand ourselves the 
 better. In like manner the preacher must 
 have a message which brings light to the 
 minds of men. He need not, like the poet, 
 aspire "to justify the ways of God to 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 3 
 
 men," but he must be an interpreter of 
 
 the eternal moral order, of the significance 
 
 of life, of the subtle processes of the heart 
 
 of man. He must, in a sense, when once 
 
 within 
 
 " the pulpit-place, 
 
 Interpret God for all." 
 
 Or, to translate the same thought into 
 sacred and familiar language, he must 
 have an eternal word of God to deliver to 
 men, a message which is more than man's 
 word. 
 
 The preacher must thus be a man of 
 light. But he must needs be a man of 
 leading also. His work brings him into 
 contact with the people. If he has light 
 to shed upon them, it must be transmitted 
 to them through the medium of his 
 personality. It is here that the human 
 touch is felt. It is here that the function 
 of leadership comes into play. The 
 
4 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 preacher is not one who influences men 
 through the medium of the newspaper 
 article or the written treatise. He is the 
 public speaker whose personality is, in a 
 fashion, the chief thing about him. He 
 is not like the discoverer or inventor 
 whose moral and personal qualities are 
 of no moment, because his work is purely 
 intellectual and impersonal ; he is a man 
 whose personality must affect everything 
 that he says and does. In all works, save 
 those of pure science, the personal element 
 plays its part, and especially in all 
 creative workmanship. We feel the 
 personal differences of Wordsworth and 
 Byron in their poetry. We know that 
 the one places a cooling palm upon our 
 forehead, while the touch of the other is 
 always feverish. We can feel the serene 
 detachment from life's affairs which the 
 canvas of Raphael discloses ; the world 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 5 
 
 is nothing to the painter, kings may- 
 make war and nations may perish, but 
 the colours on his brush will take no sad 
 or ruddy hue in consequence. On the 
 other hand, we can feel the passionate and 
 superb human interest in the work of 
 Michael Angelo ; his hand trembles with 
 emotion ; sorrowful sympathy with human 
 affairs gives vehemence and vividness to 
 his touch. The personal qualities of the 
 painters reveal themselves on their canvas. 
 It is the same with the great composers of 
 music. Who has listened to Berlioz's Faust 
 or Wagner's Lohengrin without becoming 
 conscious of the difference between the two 
 men ? Berlioz has seen Faust and Mephis- 
 topheles in the streets of Paris, and has 
 heard the bustle and hustle of the weird 
 procession overhead. Wagner has lived 
 apart from his age and in the companion- 
 ship of sights and sounds which have 
 
6 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 little in common with the glare and 
 the glitter of modern cities. Men express 
 themselves as well as their theme in their 
 works. The force of personality not only 
 works beneath the form, but makes itself 
 seen and felt throughout. The personal 
 element must be an important factor in all 
 creative work. The real self of the man 
 cannot but make itself felt in his work. 
 Self-suppression is next to impossible, and 
 never more so than in the sermon. But 
 further, it is undesirable. However greatly 
 a man may wish to let the naked truth do 
 its work, he cannot forgo the aid of emotion 
 and personal conviction. To speak or to 
 preach as though the message we have to 
 deliver were a matter of indifference to 
 ourselves is to invite its rejection. How 
 can we persuade others, if we are not 
 persuaded ourselves ^ 
 
 It is this deep and real influence of per- 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 7 
 
 sonality which makes such marked differ- 
 ence between preachers. You know how 
 the same message delivered by different 
 men may become almost a different message. 
 One messenger delivers it in such a sort 
 that we feel a pleasure in receiving it ; the 
 message carries with it a genial tone which 
 is most welcome. Another delivers it in a 
 fashion which provokes our resentment, — 
 we will have none of it. In the same way 
 preachers may be quite agreed as to the 
 message of God to men, but one delivers 
 it in a perfunctory and indifferent style 
 as though he had no interest in it ; 
 another in a hard and peremptory fashion 
 as though he liked the official right of 
 giving the message, but had no personal 
 affection for the message itself; while a 
 third speaks his message persuasively as 
 though his heart were in it, and as one who 
 is alive to the meaning and the object of the 
 
8 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 message itself. It is with these things 
 as with a landscape seen under different 
 aspects. When the rain is falling or the 
 fog is enveloping the hills and meadows, 
 we find it difficult to realise the beauty of 
 the scene which, seen in clear sunlight, is 
 a pure beauty and a joyous memory for ever. 
 Some preachers preach a damp gospel ; 
 others enfold it in fog ; the true-hearted 
 man sheds over it the sunlight of his own 
 conviction, or, better still, of the divine 
 love which he has realised as the basis of 
 all divine utterances. 
 
 As a matter of history, the charm 
 of the great preachers of the past has 
 lain in something which their published 
 sermons could never have produced. 
 Those who heard Newman preach tell 
 us that it was not exactly the thing said 
 which impressed them, but the sense of the 
 preacher's personality as it passed across the 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 9 
 
 manuscript to the hearer's heart. Another 
 illustration of the same principle is given 
 us in Dr. Chalmers's life. He was fond of 
 preaching his old sermons. He did so 
 openly, giving notice of his intention ; but 
 the crowds still came to hear from his lips 
 even sermons which were in print. The 
 personal force of the man gave something 
 which the printed words could not give. 
 The words became luminous as they sprang 
 from his lips. This fact explains that 
 disappointment which comes to us when 
 we read the sermons of some well-known 
 preacher. Dean Kirwan's sermons, for 
 example, and even George Whitfield's, 
 sadly disappoint us. In reading them 
 we can hardly understand the tears and 
 the lavish offerings which were drawn from 
 the people who heard these famous men. 
 But here, it is evident, it is not enough 
 to read. We must have heard the man 
 
lo Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 to understand him and his power. The 
 secret lay in the magnetic influence of 
 personality. This it was which won for 
 Kirwan his wondrous ascendency over 
 the charity of the people of Dublin. 
 He gave out his own self in the sermon. 
 As it was said of him, " in feeding the 
 lamp of charity, he exhausted the lamp of 
 life." This it was which gave Whitfield 
 his power over the rough Somersetshire 
 colliers : he was real, he was in earnest, 
 his soul was in his words. The tears, 
 which made channels down grimy cheeks, 
 were due to that wondrous, indefinable, 
 personal power which knits soul to soul 
 in living sympathy. I think that it is in 
 the light of this principle that we can best 
 understand Demosthenes' saying that the 
 first, second, and third requisite for the 
 orator was action. This of course does 
 not mean mere gesture, as Julius Hare 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 1 1 
 
 pointed out long ago. By action 
 Demosthenes alludes, I think, to the 
 orator's capacity for self- identification 
 with his message. The speaker is for 
 the moment the living voice of the 
 truth with which he is imbued. Just 
 as the true actor is the man who 
 lives his part, completely identifying 
 himself with the character he assumes, 
 so the forcible speaker is the man 
 whose whole personality is enlisted in 
 his subject. This is the true viroKpicn'i, 
 which is not the assumption of a part, 
 but the identification of self with it. The 
 man makes it his own, as we say. His 
 own personality is one with his subject. 
 The words are there, but the man is there 
 too. We hear him; and his very heart-beats 
 sound in his voice. Hypocrisy assumes 
 the appearance of things which it does 
 not feel ; this is the bad sense : Demos- 
 
12 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 thenes used the word in the good sense. 
 He meant that power of really feeling, 
 living, and acting in the thoughts and 
 words spoken, which I call the power of 
 self-identification with one's work. This 
 is to be found in all genius. The artist 
 identifies himself with Nature, and so 
 becomes fit to interpret her. The poet 
 does the same. The skilful and successful 
 lawyer identifies himself with his client. 
 The capacity to do this is a kind of 
 instinct, which is almost genius. But 
 the lower order of minds, whether 
 of artist or of poet, do not possess 
 it ; they do their work with conscien- 
 tious endeavour, and are honest imitators 
 of what they see. The man of true 
 genius seizes the object, sees with its 
 eyes, feels with its emotions ; he is 
 sincerely transported into the realm which 
 he describes ; there is no sense of unreality 
 
1 Lectures on Preaching 13 
 
 in his endeavours to delineate. He does 
 not copy what he sees : he describes what 
 he knows. 
 
 From a sacred point of view, something 
 of this sort is needful for the preacher. 
 It is not a question of genius here : it 
 is a matter of sincerity. The things of 
 which he speaks must not be ideas 
 merely ; they must be convictions. 
 
 " If from the soul the language does not come 
 By its own impulse, to impel the hearts 
 Of hearers with communicated power. 
 In vain you strive, in vain you study earnestly." 
 
 Unless we speak what we know and testify 
 what we have seen, we shall seek in vain 
 to move the hearts of men. 
 
 In the Guesses at Truth the brothers 
 Hare said that oratory might be 
 " symbolised by a warrior's eye flashing 
 from under a philosopher's brow. — But 
 why a warrior's eye rather than a poet's ? 
 
14 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Because in oratory the will must pre- 
 dominate." This is only saying the same 
 thing in another form. The whole person- 
 ality of which the will is the final exponent 
 must be enlisted in the sermon. The 
 preacher has a message. He must ex- 
 plain ; he must instruct ; but he must 
 do more than this. He is not a teacher 
 merely. He is sent to persuade man, and 
 the whole weight of his personal character 
 and will must be thrown into his utterances. 
 If he teach, he may be a man of light ; 
 but it is only as he persuades men that 
 he fulfils the other requirement of his 
 calling and becomes a man of leading. 
 
 In so far as we have a truth to tell, we 
 have light for men. In so far as we are 
 persuaded of the truth, we can be leaders 
 of men. Truth is of importance, but the 
 personality of him who speaks it is of 
 scarcely less importance. It would be 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 15 
 
 untrue to say that the personality of the 
 speaker is of more importance than the 
 truth which he speaks ; but it is certainly 
 true that the personality is of great im- 
 portance to the transmission and reception 
 of the truth. It makes a diiFerence whether 
 the light which is enclosed in an earthly 
 vessel shines through a clear or a dull 
 medium. Certainly the Apostle was 
 earnest in his counsel — " Take heed unto 
 thyself and to the teaching." 
 
 If then our personality counts for so 
 much in our work, it becomes our duty to 
 regard this as a sacred gift and to do our 
 best to make it an efficient force. There 
 are two conditions requisite for this. The 
 first is, "Be yourself." There is a self- 
 confidence which is evil, but there is a 
 self-confidence which is good. It Is good 
 when it is the expression of a desire just 
 to be ourselves, and to be none other 
 
1 6 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 than ourselves. This is not evil, for it is 
 compliance with a simple and divine order. 
 Everything expresses itself according to its 
 own order. It is the tendency of every 
 organism to build itself up according to its 
 type. The ambition or effort to be other 
 than self ends in disaster and confusion. 
 The primrose should be content to be 
 a primrose, and not try to rival the 
 rose. The willow with its supple branches 
 has its place in nature as well as the firm 
 unyielding oak. It is a safe rule never 
 to violate nature. Be yourself ; and never 
 let admiration for another's gifts betray you 
 into the folly of copying that which is 
 another's. The men who have succeeded 
 have invariably recognised this principle. 
 " I shall not preach like them," said Mas- 
 sillon after hearing the great preachers of 
 his day. He had his own natural bent. 
 David will not wear Saul's armour. It 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 17 
 
 is usually only an ass that ventures to 
 put on the lion's skin ; but it is perhaps 
 more pitiable when the lion stoops to 
 wear the skin of an ass. And there is 
 risk of this when the weak spirit of imi- 
 tation is given free rein. No ; your own 
 individuality is a sacred thing, and you 
 can never rise so high as you can by 
 being, in this sense, true to nature. 
 
 " Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon 
 verre," 
 
 sang Alfred de Musset. The goblet you 
 carry to the world may not be fit to bear 
 the copious supply for the thirst of many, 
 but you may carry some invigorating 
 refreshment to a few. At any rate, you 
 will avoid that miserable feeling of un- 
 reality which is the heritage of those who 
 do but imitate. 
 
 There is a snare against which you will do 
 well to be on your guard, namely impatience. 
 
1 8 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Impatience leads men to imitation. They 
 see a successful man. It is, or it seems to 
 be, an easier and quicker path to copy his 
 methods than to discover their own. It 
 is perhaps a more rapid way at first, but 
 it is not the best way in the end. It is 
 like the proverbial short cut which takes 
 you far from your destination. It is like a 
 series in arithmetical progression ; while the 
 earnest determination to be oneself and to 
 improve oneself is like a series in geometrical 
 progression. At first the arithmetical series 
 may appear better, but in the end the 
 series which multiplies in upon itself yields 
 the best results. The longest way round 
 may be the shortest way home. Be sure 
 of this, — impatience wall tempt you to 
 imitate, faith will teach you to wait. 
 For faith will remind you that the qualities 
 and powers of nature are God's gifts, and 
 that it is in the use of the talents which 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 19 
 
 God has given that you will best serve 
 Him. But the vain and foolish desire to 
 be other than you are will not only end 
 in the failure which waits on all unreality, 
 but will leave unused and undeveloped the 
 very gifts which the divine wisdom gave 
 you, that with them you might serve your 
 generation. 
 
 The second rule is, " Suppress yourself." 
 This is the paradox of power. We must, 
 before all things, be ourselves ; and yet 
 we must, above all things, suppress our- 
 selves. In the order of nature's gifts we 
 must be ourselves ; we must yield to no 
 temptation, which ambition or indolence 
 sets before us, to be mere copyists of 
 another man's talents. But in the order 
 of moral and spiritual life we must suppress 
 ourselves. We must learn the meaning 
 of that apostolic thought — " I, yet not I." 
 The man must be himself, but yet he must 
 
20 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 crucify self. For only thus can the fulness 
 of his very self come forth. Galahad 
 realised this when he cried, "If I lose 
 myself, I find myself." If self-expression 
 be a true instinct, the safe avenue to 
 self-expression lies through self-repression ; 
 for self-consciousness is the hindrance of 
 all free expression, whether by pen or pencil 
 or tongue. The powers of our nature do 
 not work freely without careful develop- 
 ment ; and even when developed, self- 
 consciousness comes as a check upon the 
 free use of our powers. This is the 
 explanation, I think, of a great deal of 
 that ineffective industry which is such 
 a pathetic spectacle. We see people of 
 unquestioned ability and of persevering 
 dispositions, who yet fail to produce 
 any really effective work. Their con- 
 scientious determination seems to miss 
 its reward. Their talent only serves to 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 21 
 
 show how easy it is to miss the mark. 
 " Cousin Dryden," said Milton, " you will 
 never make a poet." Diligence could 
 not supply the place of the one missing 
 element. George Eliot could write a 
 novel, but when she took to verse her 
 right hand lost its cunning. The 
 abandon, the self-forgetfulness, the losing 
 of self in the joy of the creative work, 
 does not belong to such workers. We 
 understand what Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 meant when he said of the painstaking 
 work which exhibited faultless accuracy of 
 treatment, " It wants that." " It wants that" 
 — the indescribable something, which adds 
 enchantment and charm to picture or verse, 
 is lacking. Such artists have missed the kiss 
 of the fairy at their birth. The glorious 
 self-absorption in the thing that has to be 
 done, is not there : the delight in the work, 
 apart from results, and still more apart 
 
22 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 from human applause or gain, is absent. 
 The achievement is attempted in the wrong 
 way. It is sought directly ; the end is 
 clear ; the means are clear ; the worker 
 understands the rules ; he toils by measure 
 and with a painful fidelity to well-recognised 
 canons ; but he fails. There is no inspira- 
 tion in it ; he is self-conscious all the while. 
 Wholly different is the way of genius 
 which is interpenetrated with the enthusiasm 
 of art. Were none at hand he must 
 draw, if he is a painter. If he is a poet, 
 he sings but as the linnets do. The song 
 is sweet ; the colour is sacred ; and the form 
 is full of joy. Such a person is not 
 governed by success. The ruling power 
 is the passion to do ; the whole self is in 
 it, and lost in it. There is no thought 
 of self ; there is a supreme necessity to do 
 that one thing. This is the inevitableness 
 of genius of which the critics have spoken. 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 23 
 
 The same spirit kindles in the hearts 
 of those who feel that they have a 
 message from God. There is no thought 
 of self. The coal from the altar has 
 touched their lips. The word of the 
 Lord is as fire in their bones. Necessity 
 is laid upon them. Like the Apostle they 
 cry, " Woe is me if I preach not the gospel." 
 The " I " is lost in the message, and the 
 divine prompting is shown in the " not I." 
 It is only when a divine enthusiasm takes 
 possession of the soul that the miserable 
 self-consciousness can be got rid of. 
 
 This self- consciousness hinders alike 
 the man of intellectual and the man of 
 emotional type. The man of intellectual 
 type distrusts his emotions ; his power of 
 self-criticism makes him averse to any 
 display of feeling. He hates to make a 
 fool of himself. He restrains, curbs, and 
 almost kills natural feeling. His self- 
 
24 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 consciousness takes the form of a pride 
 of indifference. He thereby loses the aid 
 which the strong emotions of earnestness 
 might give him. He is not, being proudly 
 reticent, his real self. None the less does 
 the emotional type of man become the 
 victim of self-consciousness. He has no 
 reticence ; he yields too readily to his 
 feelings ; even when there is no adequate 
 cause he is sentimental ; his intellect 
 exercises no guiding judgment. He 
 bubbles into emotionalism on the smallest 
 provocation. He cultivates the emotional 
 manner till it becomes an unreality. His 
 very self-consciousness leads him into an 
 exaggerated manifestation of the emotions 
 which at first were genuine and natural, 
 but which have at length become artificial 
 and insincere. The remedy for both these 
 evils is the same : the presence of a pure, 
 simple love — the love of work, the love of 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 25 
 
 God, the love of man. The first and great 
 commandment is the panacea for all moral 
 and spiritual maladies, for disingenuous- 
 ness, for fear, for ostentation, for pride. 
 Love has no self-consciousness. Genuine 
 kindness has no room for pride or timidity, 
 and has no need of gush. Its own reality 
 protects it. It banishes shyness, which is 
 a subtle form of pride. It endows with 
 courage. " Think of the pleasure you can 
 give to others, and you will not think of 
 yourself," said Archbishop Whateley to the 
 girl who was painfully shy when asked 
 to play the piano at an evening party. 
 When Mrs. Bancroft was young, and 
 appearing upon the stage was too shy to 
 raise her voice sufficiently to be heard, 
 her mother overcame her shyness by a 
 similar appeal. " Over yonder," she said, 
 " there is a poor man who has paid his 
 hard-earned shilling to see the play ; if 
 
26 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 you don't speak so that he can hear, he 
 will go away disappointed." There was 
 profound wisdom in such an appeal. It 
 called up the better feelings to overcome 
 the worse. Think of the people to whom 
 you are speaking. Think of their needs, of 
 the spiritual want which perchance you 
 can supply, of the heart-craving which you 
 can satisfy, of the inward unspoken sorrow 
 which you can console, and a new and 
 better passion than self-consciousness will 
 take possession of you. You will forget 
 your pride, your timidity, in thinking of 
 their wants. You will catch the spirit of 
 your Master ; you will hear His voice 
 saying, " I have compassion on the multi- 
 tudes." A joy and a zest of work will 
 be yours, and the much - hindering self- 
 consciousness win disappear. You will 
 lose the thought of self in the thought 
 for others. 
 
1 Lectures on Preaching 27 
 
 There remains only one thing more to 
 be said. Better perhaps, as leading us to 
 the highest source of power, is it when we 
 lose the thought of self in the remembrance 
 of God. To lose ourselves in our work, 
 and in the earnest wish to be of service to 
 our people — this is good. It is a still 
 higher thing to forget ourselves in God. 
 After all, it is the realisation that He 
 has sent us, which brings with it the sense 
 of that nobler necessity which not only 
 banishes that miserable feeling of self- 
 consciousness, but lifts us to a higher 
 plane of life. The sense that there is 
 something which God would have us do, 
 which He has ordered for us beforehand, 
 raises us above the passing emotions, dreads, 
 and failures of the present. That strong 
 and striking fatalism which marked the 
 mental attitude of great men in the past 
 was but the groping after this truth. The 
 
28 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 sense of God behind us, behind our life, 
 behind our work, imparts a charm, a 
 worshipfulness, a joyous security, to all 
 that we do. We can understand the 
 longing of gifted men to realise the 
 guidance of God in their work. We can 
 understand how Haydn never attempted 
 to compose till he had prayed. Upon the 
 instrument of Goimod the head of the 
 Christ was carved, to remind him of Him 
 whose presence and power could sanctify 
 and elevate human work. The preacher 
 should not be behind such men as these. 
 He, of all others, needs to realise the 
 divine power and presence. It is when his 
 own personality is interpenetrated by the 
 presence of One greater and higher than 
 himself that his personality is really capable 
 of expressing itself most fliUy and most 
 truly among men. It is when he yields 
 himself most absolutely and completely 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 29 
 
 to the message which God gives him 
 that he is nearest to reaching the people's 
 hearts. Like the Baptist, he must have no 
 name, no self, to put before his audience. 
 " Who art thou .'' " is the constant question ; 
 and still the answer must be, " Not Elias, 
 not Jeremias, not one of the prophets, nor 
 I nor any other name of earth would I 
 be to you. Only would I be the voice 
 which speaks the divine message to men." 
 In such a man the realisation of the 
 divine call will overpower every other 
 feeling. Egotism can find no place. Our 
 ambition of saying smart things, tell- 
 ing good anecdotes, concocting effective 
 passages, will die out. We shall desire 
 only to carry words that may live in the 
 hearts and lives of men. A young man who 
 was about to be ordained went to bid good- 
 bye to the master of his college. " You 
 are going to be a clergyman," said the 
 
30 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 master, " and no doubt you think that the 
 essays you have composed here will be 
 of use to you in preaching. Do not use 
 them — preach living words to living men." 
 Such was the counsel of the late Master 
 of Balliol. 
 
 No, gentlemen ! no higher ambition can 
 be ours than that our words should be 
 living words ; and only when they are 
 the honest expression of our own con- 
 victions, spoken under the power of a 
 compulsion greater than our own, will 
 they be living words to living men. Nor 
 need we doubt or despair ; heaven's way 
 is always open to men. There is a story 
 of an artist confined in Crete among a 
 rude people. He longed to cross the 
 ocean to some cultivated city where his 
 work would be valued and understood ; 
 but no way was open across earth or 
 ocean. He could not, he reflected, pass 
 
I Lectures on Preaching 31 
 
 to other towns ; but one way was 
 open — 
 
 " Restat iter casli, cslo tentabimus ire." 
 Restat iter deli. You may be called to 
 preach among people who seem to you 
 dull and unsympathetic. You may be in 
 the lonely moorland parish, where the folk 
 care little for anything beyond the growth 
 of the fields and the changes of the weather. 
 You may be in the crowded town, where 
 the intellectual and moral level is low 
 and discouraging. You may be tempted 
 to think, " These are dull, ignorant people 
 — anything will do for them." When this 
 temptation is yours, recall the divine 
 message and the divine calling, and 
 resolve to put your whole self into your 
 work of preaching. If success, or 
 popularity, or encouraging appreciation be 
 not given to you, remember the heavenly 
 way of earnestness, of honesty, of God's 
 
32 Lectures on Preaching lect. i 
 
 approval, is still open. If there be few 
 to listen and none to applaud, remember 
 that none the less your whole spirit and 
 soul are God's, and that they must be in this 
 work ; for only thus will you become, 
 what I am sure you desire to be, real, 
 efficient, and whole-hearted ministers of 
 Christ. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 The last lecture dealt with the great and 
 supreme importance of preserving, and 
 working through, our own personality. As 
 life is sacred, so is our selfhood to be 
 esteemed a sacred thing, inasmuch as it is 
 the vehicle through which we can carry 
 God's message to the world. As God has 
 given to every seed its own body, and to 
 every flower its own form, so is there for 
 every human being an order according to 
 which it is natural that he should develop, 
 and it is in his ripening according to this 
 order that he can best discharge his duty 
 and deliver a true message to mankind. 
 
 D 
 
34 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 The more clearly we grasp this thought, 
 the more reverently shall we gird ourselves 
 for that vocation in life to which God may 
 see fit to call us. This is true of every life. 
 It is emphatically true of the clergyman's 
 life. The man who is called to so sacred 
 a ministry must be of all others that man 
 which God meant him to be. The gifts, 
 powers, and capacities given to him from 
 his birth it is his duty to cultivate, because in 
 the cultivation of these lies the best possible 
 means of his self-expression ; and the better 
 he can express himself to mankind, the 
 more completely will he be able to fulfil his 
 ministry among men. 
 
 To fulfil this ministry it is our duty 
 in the highest and noblest sense to make 
 the best of ourselves. We touch here 
 the duty of self-cultivation. In the first 
 place, I ask you to notice the great necessity 
 that exists for it. In the second instance, 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 35 
 
 the spirit and methods in which we can 
 best attain it. 
 
 First, I would speak of the necessity of self- 
 culture and of self-training for the work of 
 preaching. I say for the work of preach- 
 ing, for though it applies to all aspects of 
 ministerial work, the subject of preaching 
 is that which it is our special duty to keep 
 in mind. Two or three preliminary diffi- 
 culties may be dealt with. Training and 
 cultivation may be objected to on the 
 ground that preaching ought to be natural 
 and not oratorical. " I dislike," we have 
 sometimes heard it said — " I dislike ora- 
 torical preaching." What is natural, we all 
 agree, is certainly best. But we may con- 
 sider whether we are not likely to be 
 betrayed by the use of a phrase into a mis- 
 conception of the case ; we may be misled 
 by the ambiguity of a word. 
 
 This argument against what is called 
 
36 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 oratorical preaching seems to me to in- 
 volve either a quibble or an untruth. It 
 may involve a quibble. If the word 
 oratorical is used in a bad sense, and is 
 the equivalent of the artificial and unreal 
 speech which strains after eiFect, then by 
 all means let us banish oratorical preaching. 
 But why should we condemn the word ora- 
 torical to bear this sense .? Many words are 
 capable of a good as well as of a bad sense. 
 Even in the presence of those learned 
 teachers who are here, I may say that it is 
 possible to speak of a Professor as if we 
 meant a mere Professor and nothing more. 
 But why should we speak as though only 
 a bad meaning attached to the word .'' It is 
 an unfair method of argument to commence 
 by forcing an ill meaning on a word, and 
 then conducting the argument in such a 
 fashion that the good meaning of the word 
 is forgotten. But, gentlemen, you will 
 
II Lectures on V reaching 37 
 
 not be imposed upon by such a quibble in 
 the case of this word oratorical. Oratorical 
 does not necessarily mean artificial and 
 ostentatious. But the objection that 
 natural preaching is to be preferred to 
 oratorical, if not a quibble, suggests what 
 is untrue. It suggests that all oratory is 
 unnatural — and by what right do you tell 
 me that what is oratorical is not natural .'' 
 On the contrary, few things are more natural 
 to a man than oratory. Watch a child in 
 a passion and see how oratorical are its 
 utterances. Observe the old woman in the 
 market - place when she is eager to vend 
 her wares, and tell me if she is not most 
 proficient in the art of oratory. I call 
 to mind how once in the market-place 
 at Bangor I was fascinated by the eloquence 
 of an old woman. I understood not a single 
 word of her speech, for she spoke Welsh, but 
 her eloquence was obvious. If you listen 
 
38 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 to the Cheap- Jack who wishes to persuade 
 you to a bargain, you will find him eloquent 
 and oratorical, for he is in earnest. There 
 is often fire in his words, for he speaks 
 with a purpose. If you speak with a 
 purpose, you too will find your heart 
 glow ; you will become oratorical when 
 life enters into your words. I therefore 
 challenge the theory that to be oratorical 
 is necessarily to be unreal, for oratory is 
 natural to men. 
 
 But this leads us to another difficulty. 
 It may be said, " If oratory is natural, 
 then training is needless." But this again 
 is mere trifling. We can safely traverse 
 the spirit of such a statement. It is true 
 that no man will become a great preacher 
 or a great speaker by training, but it is 
 also true that no man will become a great 
 or effective speaker without training. No 
 man will become great in any line of life 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 39 
 
 merely by training. There are callings, it 
 may be, which need no special aptitude ; 
 ordinary intelligence and industry conjoined 
 with training will fit a man for them. But 
 there are vocations for which some special 
 aptitude or gift is necessary, and without 
 the possession of some such quality success 
 is impossible. Where this is wanting no 
 amount of training will supply its place. 
 No power of evolution will develop the 
 beautiful mechanism of the hand out of 
 the head of a broomstick. There must 
 be original capacity for development in 
 a certain direction, or there will be no 
 fitting development. You cannot by mere 
 training make a man a great poet, or 
 even a minor poet, unless he be a poet 
 born. It is the same with the true artist ; 
 he is not made by mere training. Train- 
 ing will not give the poet's eye for beauty, 
 or the artist's eye for colour. Attempt 
 
40 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 it, and your attempt will result in calami- 
 tous failure. Training cannot supply the 
 place of native capacity. 
 
 Does it follow, then, that training is ot 
 no service .? Shall we argue that because 
 a man cannot be made great by training, 
 therefore training is superfluous.? or that 
 because natural gifts are essential to success, 
 therefore their cultivation is needless .'' — no 
 reasonable man will argue thus. Reflec- 
 tion will show us that many things are 
 natural to us, but the power to do them 
 does not come to us by nature. It is 
 natural to us to walk, but we were all 
 taught to walk. It is natural to us to 
 talk, but were not the first syllables of 
 speech put into our lips ? It is natural to 
 man to swim, but who ever heard of a 
 man being able to swim without having 
 learned? It is a mistake to suppose that 
 because a thing is natural there is no need 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 41 
 
 of trained skill in the doing of it. Educa- 
 tion develops our capacities, and training 
 bestows skill upon us. In the full pos- 
 session of our powers, and of skill in the 
 use of them, we become free men. All 
 early life resembles a struggle for free- 
 dom. Young life is like the life of the 
 man who is dragged out of the water half 
 drowned ; he fights to recover his breath, 
 because he recovers freedom and power of 
 existence in recovering his breath. The 
 same is the case with the child born 
 yesterday : it struggles to enter into the 
 possession of its life. Every step of growth 
 is a step towards that full possession of 
 life which is freedom. When the child 
 is taught gymnastics or dancing, what is 
 the real value of such teaching .? Do you 
 believe that the wise parents think first or 
 mainly of the triumphs of the field or 
 the ball-room ? No ; they are alive to a 
 
42 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 nobler gain than such trifles. They see 
 that the advantage of such a training lies 
 in the mastery which the child acquires 
 over its own frame, in the capacity to 
 use its powers. This is the true value 
 of the drill-ground. Children's clumsy 
 little hands and awkward limbs need 
 discipline. Their fingers are all thumbs, 
 we say ; they need to be exercised till 
 they answer readily to the bidding of the 
 will ; the nerve-centres are not yet capable 
 of prompt response and firm guidance. 
 Training is directed toward bringing the 
 physical powers under the control and 
 direction of the will. Grace of movement 
 is naturalness of movement ; this, in the 
 early stages, is lacking, because the will- 
 power, nerve-centres, and muscle are not 
 yet co-ordinated. The child is trained 
 that it may gain the mastery over, and the 
 use of, its own powers. It is the same with 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 43 
 
 mental discipline. When Euclid was put 
 before you for the first time in your 
 life, it was not simply that you might 
 learn that the angles at the base of an 
 isosceles triangle are equal, or that the 
 three angles of a triangle are equal to 
 two right angles. There was a purpose 
 greater than mere knowledge in your 
 study. Gymnastics give mastery over the 
 physical frame, so the discipline of Euclid 
 makes you master of your powers of 
 reason. It is the possession of mental 
 power, not of mere knowledge, that is 
 aimed at, for only when a man is master 
 of his powers of frame and brain is he 
 truly a free man ; not till then has he 
 power to live his life fully. We hear 
 people talk about freedom of thought as 
 though freedom of thought meant the 
 right to accept any novelty of opinion 
 or mad freak of ignorance. Freedom of 
 
44 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 thought is only possible where there is 
 freedom of mind, and the mind is only 
 free when it can work freely and smoothly 
 as a well-made machine, working accord- 
 ing to its own order. Thus the natural 
 use of the mind is given to us through 
 training. 
 
 As then it is natural to use our limbs, 
 but we need training to use them gracefully, 
 i.e. naturally ; as it is natural to use our 
 minds, but it is needful to train them for 
 their natural use ; so also it is natural to 
 speak, but there is need of some training 
 that speech may be effective. 
 
 But there is another objection which 
 may be noticed. It is argued that training 
 may be necessary, but that it has a ten- 
 dency to denaturalise the man in the 
 process ; the trained speaker, it is said, 
 becomes the artificial speaker. There is of 
 course always a risk of this, but we must 
 
11 Lectures on Preaching 45 
 
 not conclude that training necessarily de- 
 naturalises, merely because we have met 
 with some persons who, after elaborate 
 training, have become artificial in manner. 
 Artificiality is rather an evidence of in- 
 adequate training than a proof of the 
 viciousness of all training. There is no 
 necessity that training should lead to arti- 
 ficiality. Where this result occurs it is 
 more likely that the training has been 
 bad, or else (you will forgive the sugges- 
 tion) there has been something wrong 
 in the person who has been trained. It 
 may be possible that the defects com- 
 plained of may be the defects due to 
 character, or to neglect of opportunities. 
 In this the parable of the sower may 
 teach us. Our Lord told us that some 
 seed fell by the wayside ; it was profitless 
 sowing, for no fruit grew up. Other seed 
 fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang 
 
46 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 up with it and choked it ; other fell upon 
 rocky soil, which lacked depth of earth 
 and therefore withered under the heat 
 of the sun. It is a lesson for all life. 
 The value of teaching depends upon the 
 spirit with which it is met. With some, 
 teaching leads to no result whatever. In the 
 case of others, there is a quick and shallow 
 result ; while with others, conceit, or vanity, 
 or idle imitativeness spring up with the 
 seed, and the result is scarcely profitable 
 because mixed with unreality. Personal 
 eagerness for success ruins the effect of 
 education. Thus thorns choke the develop- 
 ing powers, and the best results of study 
 are thwarted and weakened. Honest and 
 careful study, on the other hand, when 
 conducted on right lines, will enlarge our 
 views, increase our natural capacity, and 
 add to our strength of will. 
 
 There is, however, another danger against 
 
II Lectures on T reaching 47 
 
 which the student needs to watch. He may 
 be betrayed by the worship of form, instead 
 of remembering that form is only the vehicle 
 of thought. There are artists who are wor- 
 shippers of form. Everything must be sur- 
 rendered rather than external beauty. To 
 such the raiment is more than the body. 
 Truth and fidelity to the idea are less 
 than the form. This worship of form 
 results in a certain development of taste, 
 a fastidiousness of taste, but it leads to 
 loss of power. The truth, the idea, must 
 find its own form, rather than lose its 
 veracity by being forced into some special 
 mould. Nature expresses herself in an 
 infinite variety of forms, and all of them 
 have a beauty of their own, but the form 
 is a true expression in each case. It is 
 not assumed because it is beautiful. It 
 is beautiful because it is a natural and 
 true expression. Here again we meet the 
 
48 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 inevitableness of which I spoke in my last 
 lecture ; wherever there is this inevitableness 
 there must be beauty. It is so true, and so 
 truly expressed, that we feel it could not be 
 otherwise. We may worship too much what 
 is called the artistic side of things; but 
 in doing so, we may cease to be artists. 
 Faultlessness of form is not the same as 
 splendour in art. On the contrary, the over- 
 straining after it produces a certain weakness. 
 You remember how Browning put this before 
 us in his poem. The faultless painter, 
 Andrea del Sarto, criticises the work ot 
 his great contemporary. His eye, keen for 
 form, detects the ill-drawing of the forearm 
 in one of the figures. With one touch he 
 could set it right, but he abstains — 
 
 "Indeed the arm is wrong, 
 I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see. 
 Give the chalk here — quick, thus the line should 
 
 go ! 
 Ay, but the soul ! he's Rafael ! rub it out." 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 49 
 
 We see the whole position. In his soul 
 Andrea worships the natural strength of the 
 greater artist, but he himself has lost his 
 original strength ; he has denaturalised him- 
 self through a weak and fastidious devotion 
 to mere form. Now the object of training is 
 not to suppress nature, but to enable nature 
 to affirm itself in fitting form. True art is 
 reached when nature can express itself nobly 
 and well. The history of English poetry 
 illustrates this principle. The soul of song 
 was well-nigh lost by the tyranny of form. 
 It is the restoration of the spirit of nature 
 when we pass from the smooth versification 
 of Pope and his imitators to the free heart- 
 utterances of Cowper and Wordsworth. In 
 all work there is the danger which springs 
 from the worship of the material rather 
 than of the thought which the artist compels 
 the material to express. He is the truest 
 artist who compels the material to speak 
 
50 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 his thought to the world. To surrender 
 your thought to the vehicle of form is 
 to confess yourself weaker than your 
 instrument. " I have never," said Dante, 
 " used a word for rhyme's sake." With 
 him thought was first, and words must 
 do the bidding of thought : thought 
 must not be surrendered for the sake 
 of a beautiful word. Better poorer 
 material in which thought lives than the 
 richest which fails to express it. Quin- 
 tilian long since spoke the same truth. 
 Marble is a precious stone, but a common 
 stone wrought into beauty by the hand 
 of Phidias is more precious than marble. 
 The mind of genius lifts the stone above 
 its natural value. Cultivation and train- 
 ing are designed to give freedom to the 
 artist's hand of genius. By their means he is 
 able to express his soul to the world : the 
 material he uses becomes obedient to his 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 5 1 
 
 mind and will. This is his creative power, 
 for thus his spirit embodies itself in 
 form. In this way the preacher should by 
 cultivation become master of his material, 
 and so capable of giving forth freely 
 and simply his thought and message to 
 men. 
 
 What spirit and method may we best 
 use in this self-cultivation? I am not 
 about to lay down any rules of oratory 
 — far from it. Gentlemen, there are 
 hand-books on elocution and manuals 
 for orators to which some public men fly, 
 as the indolent-brained resort to ready- 
 reckoners. There may be some apology, 
 grounded on practical utility, made for the 
 use of the ready -reckoner; but there is 
 no such apology for the reliance upon 
 manuals which pretend to abridge the 
 labour of the preacher. Short cuts to 
 success are usually quick roads to disaster. 
 
52 Lectures on ^reaching lect. 
 
 By-path Meadow led to the Castle of 
 Despair. 
 
 I do not believe that we can ever evade 
 the wholesome law of hard work, which 
 tests earnestness and invigorates power. 
 The wish to reach the goal without 
 running over the course is the sign of 
 a vain and foolish mind. I would not, 
 therefore, even if I could, give you a single 
 rule which would enable you to evade the 
 labour and industry which are indispensable 
 to all who desire to do lasting good. I 
 speak to you as men who are, I hope, 
 persuaded that only honest hard work 
 and patient study can lead to true success. 
 Let us dismiss from our minds at once the 
 delusive idea that we can ever do worthy 
 work by unworthy means, that we can reap 
 without sowing, or have any hope of winning 
 the race by evading the fair rules of the 
 course. I would only speak of the true 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 53 
 
 forms of training. This you will under- 
 stand. All that I can do is to put you on 
 your guard against some mistaken ideas of 
 preparation for work. Let me illustrate two 
 opposite methods. There are two men com- 
 mencing their studies in the same sculptor's 
 studio. One thinks he will find out the 
 trick of the master who teaches him. He 
 carefully watches every movement of the 
 skilful hand. He sees with what trained 
 dexterity the artist employs, as living instru- 
 ments, his fingers. It is a wondrous trick 
 which the sculptor possesses. He is eager to 
 catch it. He thinks he sees what it is — yes, 
 he has, so he believes, nearly caught it ; but 
 he never does. The other man puts his 
 whole soul alongside the artist's soul. He 
 endeavours to read his larger purpose. 
 He fain would catch, not the trick, but 
 the spirit of the master. With unskilful 
 fingers and clumsy hands he strives to 
 
54 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 mould the clay. His work in it is crude, 
 unfinished, yes, unsightly, but he has put 
 himself into it : it is living work with the 
 spirit of the man in it. This is the differ- 
 ence between desire to do real work and 
 the desire of mere effect. Idle and disin- 
 genuous souls are content with the clever 
 trickery which simulates art. Honest men 
 are discontented with anything short of 
 real bona-fide work. 
 
 I am not, you will understand, at the 
 present, speaking of the preparation of the 
 sermon — later, I hope to speak more 
 specifically of that. I am now speaking of 
 the general training of self and of the 
 cultivation of those qualities which are in- 
 dispensable to all effective work. We must 
 prepare our sermons, but before we do this 
 it is needful that we prepare ourselves to be 
 teachers of others. In the judgment of Cicero 
 oratory included the study of philosophy, 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 55 
 
 of laws, of the structure and nature of man's 
 frame, of the arts of reasoning, of history 
 and poetry. Indeed, as Fenelon remarked, 
 he seems to think that an orator should 
 know everything. I am ready to admit 
 that time and opportunity are often against 
 the possibility of so elaborate a training. 
 But the spirit of Cicero's counsel is just 
 and fit. Cicero meant that the man who 
 would speak effectually to his fellowmen 
 must be a man whose range of thought 
 and study was large. Everything belong- 
 ing to the provinces of human life and 
 thought, of human history and human 
 nature, should enlist his interest, and 
 provide food for his thought. His range 
 must be larger than his profession. In the 
 same spirit Gounod said to his pupils, 
 " Be wider than your calling." And con- 
 sistently with this advice he contended for 
 the maintenance of the Grand Prix de 
 
56 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Rome. When the opponents argued that the 
 students who were sent to Rome did not get 
 musical training in Rome, Gounod pleaded 
 in reply that the Prize was good and useful 
 inasmuch as men gained by the associations 
 of the past ; they caught inspiring thoughts 
 and feelings from the masterpieces of great 
 artists. These things were helps, though 
 not directly allied with musical training ; 
 for art waS more than technical skill in 
 one branch ; it was a spirit belonging to all. 
 Gounod's practice corresponded with his 
 theory. He surrounded himself with helps 
 and influences from other avenues of life 
 than his own. His library embraced books 
 on many and varied subjects. Medallions 
 bearing the names of great men decorated 
 his staircase. Raphael, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 Michael Angelo, Bach, Rubens, Rembrandt, 
 Dante, Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, 
 Corneille, and Moliere, were there. He 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 57 
 
 knew that to be efficient in your calling 
 you must be wider than your calling. 
 Bulwer Lytton in My Novel expressed 
 the same thought. He says of the young 
 poet : " He read what poets must read if 
 they desire to be great — strict reasonings 
 on the relations between motive and 
 conduct, thought and action ; the grave 
 and solemn truths of the past world ; 
 antiquities, history, philosophy." 
 
 Those who were privileged to enter 
 Tennyson's study will remember that walls 
 and bookshelves preached the same lesson 
 — Be wider than your calling. The poets 
 were there, but philosophy, theology, 
 history, found place beside the masters 
 of song, and the poet lived among them 
 all and found strength in their com- 
 panionship. So, I repeat it again, if you 
 wish to preserve strength and freshness, 
 if you wish to be able to make your 
 
58 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 message clear, be wider than your 
 calling. 
 
 But here I can imagine a feeling of 
 hesitation arising. Ought we not to limit 
 our studies to our calling .? Does not the 
 Ordination Service bind us to limit our 
 studies to matters of faith.? Are we not 
 bound to draw all our studies this way.? 
 It is perfectly true that as we are guardians 
 of spiritual things, so to these should be 
 dedicated our thoughts and lives. But the 
 drawing of our studies this way implies 
 not limitation of study so much as con- 
 secration of it.. The consecrated life is 
 the life which is lived in the realisation of 
 the sacred purpose of life. AU studies may 
 be turned to consecrated uses by one who 
 shall so resolve. Just as the poet and 
 musician make all their studies subservient 
 to the one supreme purpose of life, so 
 the clergyman should draw all studies into 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 59 
 
 sacred uses. He is not a consecrated man 
 merely because he confines his reading to 
 certain books. He is a consecrated man 
 whose whole heart and mind are alive to 
 the needs of men and to the message of 
 God for men — whose reading ranges every- 
 where, that he may know more of human 
 need and of divine strength. No doubt, 
 practically, we must put limits on our 
 studies — time and mental aptitude and 
 personal limitations will compel this — but 
 the wise and earnest man, who can keep 
 the sense of his consecration always before 
 his mind, will neglect no study which tends 
 to make him stronger and more efficient in 
 his influence and ministry. 
 
 If then our consecration is to be real, 
 it should be the consecration of all our 
 powers ; none of those powers and faculties 
 which God has given us should be suffered 
 to wither or decline. We ought not to 
 
6o Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 be one-sided men. The cultivation of all 
 our intellectual endowments should be our 
 aim. Reason, knowledge, imagination, 
 aifection, should be trained into strength 
 and use. 
 
 I. You must cultivate your powers of 
 reason. It is important that you should 
 remember that sound reasoning is indis- 
 pensable in your calling. We can never 
 be too careful in this matter. We are so 
 easily carried away by impulse, bias, pre- 
 judice. We need, in self-protection against 
 these traitors to thought, to exercise con- 
 stantly, so that we may gain the power 
 of using habitually, our reasoning faculty. 
 We need in our studies, in our pulpit 
 preparation, in our meditation, the help of 
 what Bacon called the dry light of reason. 
 Then thought is dispassionate; personal 
 feeling and diverting emotions are kept 
 far away ; reason is doing its work. If 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 6i 
 
 we fail in cultivating this habit we shall 
 sooner or later be the victims of our 
 whims, passions, transient emotions, or 
 fixed prejudices. In order that you may 
 cultivate your powers of reason, it is well 
 to have always on hand some book that 
 compels you to think. A schoolmaster of 
 mine used to say that if he were shut up 
 in prison with the choice of only four 
 books, he would choose the Bible, Euclid, 
 Plato, and Shakespeare. Now, gentlemen, 
 you are not, I hope, literalists : I hope you 
 never will be. A literalist is one who 
 understands not the spirit of a matter ; he 
 discerns not an allegory; he is puzzled by 
 a fable ; he argues about a joke, and 
 poetry is far out of his sight. I hope 
 that you are not such, and that you will 
 not insist on interpreting this little list of 
 books too literally. The value of the 
 suggestion lies in the fact that these books 
 
62 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 touch four great powers of man. In 
 Euclid you must exercise the dry light of 
 reason. In the study of the other books, 
 other powers are brought into exercise. 
 Euclid stands, therefore, for any book 
 which compels calm, sustained, and con- 
 centrated thought. There is no philo- 
 sophical prejudice or theological bias about 
 Euclid. He makes you keep to the 
 point : he allows no room for likes and 
 dislikes. Best of all, he will not let you 
 oiF. If your wit wanders, he compels you 
 to begin again. Books which do this for 
 the mind are wholesome ; and I would 
 counsel you never to be without such a 
 book for study. It is no matter, in one 
 sense, what book it is, so long as it is a 
 book which reminds you that logic is a 
 good thing, and that the laws of thought 
 count for something in human life. Such 
 studies brace up the mind. For my own 
 
II Lectures on Preaching d'}, 
 
 part, I think that if they did nothing else 
 in this direction, clergymen would not be 
 the worse for tackling occasionally a good 
 stifF mathematical problem, or trying their 
 hand at some recent examination paper in 
 logic or science. 
 
 2. Study what will enlarge your range of 
 knowledge — keep up what I may describe 
 as your fund of information. Read what 
 will widen your acquaintance with philo- 
 sophy, history, scientific discovery. The 
 exercise of reason is good. The acquisition 
 of knowledge opens up to us fields over 
 which thought and reason can range — 
 material is stored up which will be of 
 service in your various duties. The lecture, 
 the address, the young men's class, will be 
 the gainers ; you will have a mind ready 
 with some subject, or furnished with facts, 
 incidents, and examples. 
 
 3. Do not leave the imagination unfed. 
 
64 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Arguments, as Fuller said, are the pillars of 
 a discourse ; illustrations are the windows 
 which let in the light. Imagination, 
 no less than reason, is God's gift. It 
 is the power by which dulness or bald- 
 ness is avoided. Now, imagination is 
 lacking in some men ; it is exuberant in 
 others. If a man has no gift of imagina- 
 tion, he is just the man to cultivate it. If 
 he says that he has not a particle of 
 imagination, and that therefore there is 
 nothing to cultivate, I venture to disbelieve 
 him. He has only to recall his infant 
 days, his delight in giant story or fairy 
 tale, or his own day-dreaming, and he will 
 find that there is some germ of imagination 
 in him. But should he fail, and find no 
 interest in poetry, or parable, or romance, 
 or allegory, or in the arts that shed a 
 beauty upon life, he had better abandon all 
 thought of standing up to speak in pulpit 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 65 
 
 or on platform. But if imagination be 
 strong in a man, then again he is just the 
 man to cultivate it, by the study of grave 
 and noble examples ; for these will teach 
 how imagination is a power only in the 
 hands of men who possess also a large 
 reasonableness. Cultivation in this case 
 will chasten and purify the native power 
 and increase its effectiveness and use. For 
 the preacher this restrained imagination is 
 useful. Many a sermon would have gained 
 in brightness and interest if only the 
 preacher had put in some windows. In 
 healthy schools the window space should 
 be equal to the floor space. In Germany, 
 since more light has been allowed in the 
 schools, short sight has declined. Culti- 
 vated imagination puts window space into 
 a sermon, and the perceptive power of 
 the people is improved. 
 
 But cultivate imagination in a wise 
 
 F 
 
66 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 fashion. In some clergymen's studies I 
 liave noticed a certain book. It is very 
 thick ; it is in truth a bulky volume. I 
 know not how many pages there may be, 
 but they must run to a thousand or more. 
 The title is Illustrative Anecdotes, Pulpit 
 Aids, or Fragments of Fancy. These are 
 crutches of the imagination. They may 
 suit the lame, but they do not strengthen 
 those who can walk. A man's imagina- 
 tion should be somewhere else than on his 
 book-shelves. What I plead for is the 
 study which will keep the imagination 
 fresh, ready, and vigorous. It should be 
 no reproach to the Christian minister that 
 he desires to teach through the imagina- 
 tion. Our Lord used imagination in 
 teaching; He spoke by parables, and in 
 speaking by parable He appealed to the 
 responsive imaginations of men. He strove 
 to make nature and home -life preach to 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 67 
 
 men. He would have the grass and 
 the lily tell their story. He sought to 
 make men imagine, through some earthly 
 story, the depth, the fulness, and the un- 
 weariedness of the divine love. He knew 
 that thus there was a way to human hearts. 
 He knew that the power to tell a simple 
 tale might be greater than the power to 
 conduct an argument. He used simili- 
 tudes. He consecrated for us the use of 
 imagination. We need not fear to use it. 
 When you would make a thing clear to a 
 child, you take up the little one on your 
 knee and you tell him a story, calling 
 fancy to your aid to make it plain. And 
 among your people there will be plenty of 
 those children of a larger growth whom 
 you may reach best through the imagina- 
 tion which stirs the heart. Use reason, 
 by all means ; but, remember, not reason 
 alone has won victories in the past over 
 
68 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 the spirits of men. Reason is strong, but 
 not so strong that she can afford to dis- 
 dain imagination as her comrade. Reason 
 can but walk. Imagination gives her wings. 
 With these she may reach those high places 
 and rocky spots where the spirits of men take 
 refuge from pursuit of disagreeable truths. 
 One more faculty needs to be cultivated 
 — the faculty of devotion. I have counselled 
 the study of a reason -bracing book, like 
 Euclid, for the sake of the intellect ; 
 Shakespeare might well be your companion 
 for the sake of the imagination ; but, in 
 these cases, your selection of suitable books 
 must be left to yourselves. When, how- 
 ever, I come to the necessity of maintain- 
 ing the power of spiritual affection and 
 sincere devotion, I speak of the Bible, not 
 merely as a type, but as the one book 
 which should be your supreme guide and 
 constant companion. I need not remind 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 69 
 
 you of the unique homage of reverent 
 faith which our own Church pays to the 
 Bible. You have only to turn to the 
 Ordination Service to find how strong and 
 worshipful is this faith. You cannot com- 
 pass the doing of the weighty work of 
 your ministry " but with doctrine and ex- 
 hortation taken out of the Holy Scriptures, 
 and with a life agreeable to the same " ; 
 and therefore you are to " consider how 
 studious you ought to be in reading and 
 learning the Scriptures, and in framing the 
 manners both of yourselves and of them 
 that specially pertain unto you, according 
 to the rule of the same Scriptures." The 
 promise which the candidate makes is that 
 he will out of the Scriptures instruct the 
 people committed to his charge. At this 
 solemn hour of life the Bible is spoken of 
 as the source of help and the basis of 
 instruction. For the clergyman, therefore, 
 
70 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 there ought to be and there can be no 
 choice in this matter. He is pledged to 
 be a diligent student of the Bible. And 
 this not merely for the sake of his sermons, 
 but for the sake of himself. There are 
 many manuals of devotion, little volumes 
 designed to stimulate our spiritual affec- 
 tions or raise our flagging faith. They 
 are well meant, and there may be times 
 in which they may be read with profit, 
 but they are of doubtful value at the best ; 
 and if they are used as substitutes for Bible 
 study, they are worse than useless : they 
 are leading the clergyman to the betrayal 
 of his spoken promise. They are but 
 sorry substitutes, moreover, — all that is 
 best in them is drawn from the Bible ; 
 and there is often in them a strain of 
 unreality. I am persuaded that the truest, 
 healthiest, and most robust devotional life 
 is that which is built up of patient, regular. 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 7 1 
 
 prayerful Bible study. I need not remind 
 you that in our own time the incentives to 
 this study are great indeed. Questions of 
 criticism, of history and archaeology, have 
 been discussed. On all sides there are 
 reasons for special thought ; from all sides 
 light is streaming upon us if we will only 
 have the eyes to see. And if these very 
 questions should fill us with dismay at the 
 task before us, and make the study of the 
 Bible seem more laborious than before, we 
 may yet remember that none of these 
 questions practically touch the spiritual 
 teaching of the Bible, or have had power 
 to dethrone the Bible from its place as the 
 greatest, purest, deepest, and truest book of 
 devotion in the world. 
 
 The scheme which I have sketched out 
 embraces the cultivation of all your powers 
 of reason, knowledge, imagination, and de- 
 votion. If you are to be true teachers and 
 
72 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 true guides of your people, you will neglect 
 none of these. All the past teaches us that 
 those have best taught the world who have 
 best taught themselves. The apparent ease 
 with which a skilfid man does his work 
 tends, however, to deceive us. It seems so 
 easy that we imagine it can easily be done. 
 But this is a deception which reflection 
 will dissipate. The steamship glides past 
 us as we watch it from the shore. She 
 glides over the waters like a thing of life. 
 Her movement appears to us easy and 
 noiseless ; but when we take our place on 
 board we know what effort, what expend- 
 iture of thought, labour, and fuel has 
 secured this swift and graceful movement. 
 To the idler on the shore the thing is easy. 
 To the men on board it means real and 
 ceaseless work. Can we expect that we 
 can do any profitable work without labour? 
 If we desire to reach skill and power, we 
 
II Lectures on Preaching 73 
 
 must be prepared to pay the price, and 
 that price is zealous, sedulous, constant 
 self-cultivation. Every preacher will tell 
 you the same. Their sermons, which seem 
 as we listen to them to be so natural and 
 inevitable, are the outcome of much read- 
 ing and thought. Whether the individual 
 sermon has cost more or less, the price has 
 been paid in general labour and constant 
 study beforehand. At the gate of life 
 stand two angels. One promises you 
 success in life without exertion, the other 
 offers you the prize if you work for it. 
 You can take your choice. You may win 
 a cheap, rapid, and easy success by lax 
 methods and smart -mindedness ; but if 
 you desire the true prize, you will only 
 find it in the way of labour. But even 
 here I do not mean the prize of success 
 or the applause which follows a great 
 preacher. I put before you no such aim. 
 
74 Lectures on Preaching lect. ii 
 
 There is a better : it is the simple desire to 
 be a sincere and effective minister of Christ. 
 With such an aim you will think no toil 
 too great, no demand on your time too 
 burdensome, if only you can do true work 
 and lay it as an offering at the feet of Him 
 who laboured and toiled and bled for you. 
 With such a spirit you will not offer 
 what costs you nothing ; but you will, 
 while the vigour of life is still yours, and 
 before the day comes when age makes 
 work difficult and new habits impossible, 
 establish good habits of self-cultivation. 
 You will continue these through life. 
 You will never give up thinking, reading, 
 and studying. The more you reverence 
 your life, your calling, and Him who 
 orders your life and gives you your call- 
 ing, the more earnestly will you cultivate 
 every capacity and every gift that can be 
 drawn into the service of Christ your Lord. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 The subject of my lecture is the Sermon. 
 
 The first qualification for writing a 
 sermon is, that you should have some- 
 thing to say. No man can carve a statue 
 until he has the stone ready ; no man can 
 mould a figure till he has the clay ; and 
 no man should imagine that he can write 
 his sermon till he has something to say. 
 You will not wonder that I reiterate this, 
 because many a man sits down in his study 
 on a Saturday to write his Sunday's sermon 
 and finds himself the victim of blank 
 despair, and racks his brain with anxiety 
 because he is conscious that he has nothing 
 
76 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 to say. Now an authority tells us that 
 whenever a preacher finds he has nothing 
 to say, he may be sure that the fault lies 
 in himself. We must certainly agree with 
 him ; for if there is anything great and 
 glorious in Christianity, it is extraordinary 
 that any man charged to preach it should 
 find himself with nothing to say. 
 
 I might enlarge on the sadness of this 
 discovery. It is enough to say that such 
 a discovery should be an incentive to self- 
 questioning : we must take ourselves to 
 task, and ask ourselves why it is so. Has 
 our early fervour abated.? Has our 
 perception of divine things grown dim? 
 Have we been neglectful of study .'' Have 
 we laid aside the culture of spiritual life 
 which is indispensable to the vigour and 
 force of our religious conceptions ? Ques- 
 tions such as these we may well ask, when 
 our spirits find no message of God for our 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 77 
 
 people. But consciousness of mental 
 barrenness is not always a symptom of 
 spiritual decline. Physical and nervous 
 conditions play some part in these experi- 
 ences. In certain states of health, the very 
 fact that you have to say something operates 
 as a kind of paralysis on thought. The re- 
 currence of this necessity, week after week, 
 in the midst of many calls on time, mind, 
 and sympathy, may occasion intellectual 
 numbness, and make creative work difficult. 
 This condition is not wholly caused by 
 decline in the spiritual life. 
 
 Do not be dismayed or daunted because 
 you experience such a thing as that. Take 
 yourself to task, by all means. Be 
 vigilant against yourself; but do not 
 conclude that you are in a hopeless con- 
 dition — many a man of God has met with 
 similar experiences. 
 
 Yes, your very zeal may lead you 
 
78 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 into this land of bitter experience. Some 
 have entered upon the work of ministry 
 full of enthusiasm. Have they not the 
 gospel to preach.'' Can they ever weary 
 of this glorious message? But they have 
 wearied, for they have found that the 
 work of a stated ministry involves more 
 responsibility and close study than the 
 work of casual and peripatetic evangelism. 
 They have discovered that the wonderful 
 evangelistic fervour which carried them 
 through occasional or special mission efforts, 
 is not always stable enough to make them 
 useful and efficient teachers of Christ in 
 a parish. Thus our very ardour may mis- 
 lead us, and cause us to feel an incapacity 
 or unfitness for regular ministry. For 
 parochial zeal we need much " staying " 
 power. 
 
 For this purpose a man must have 
 material at command. It is better to 
 
XII Lectures on Preaching 79 
 
 realise this necessity, even though it should 
 lead you to discover how small your stock 
 of material is, than that you should indulge 
 in indolent self-complacency, and should 
 attempt to spin something out of nothing. 
 It is hardly a satisfactory criticism of a 
 preacher which declares he had nothing to 
 say, and he said it. We have all heard 
 sermons which have made us feel sad, 
 because they were so evidently the attempt 
 to say something which had not been 
 settled beforehand. Such efforts can hardly 
 be successful. There is a dull uninteresting 
 game which in certain households we are 
 asked to play. The game is called Fish- 
 ponds. The process is something of this 
 sort. You attempt by means of something 
 which is not a fishing-rod to pick up some- 
 thing which is not a fish. Now I have 
 never seen that game played without being 
 irresistibly reminded of the preacher who has 
 
8o Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 not anything to say. As in the game you 
 drop down that which is not a fishing-rod 
 to pick up what is not a fish, so the preacher 
 preaches a discourse which is not a sermon, 
 but in which the sermon seems always about 
 to begin. There is a vain attempt to pick 
 up something which, when he has got it, 
 is not worth anything. I would rather 
 that blank despair settled upon your 
 spirits and miserable anxiety should keep 
 you from sleeping all the nights of the 
 week, than that you should attempt to 
 do such a thing as that. You must have 
 something to say ; and you must make up 
 your mind how to say it. In other words, 
 you must first get your material, and then 
 put it into form. 
 
 First, get your material. You will 
 not find in handbooks on oratory 
 many suggestions respecting the method 
 by which to accumulate material. But 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 8i 
 
 there is one simple method. If I may 
 borrow the example, consecrated by usage 
 for many generations, I would bid you 
 remember the three Rs, which lie at the 
 root of all true knowledge, the same, with 
 one exception, as those with which we are 
 familiar. The three Rs I would suggest 
 are. Reflection, Reading, and (the precedent 
 warrants the inaccuracy) Writing. 
 
 First, Reflection. You remember the 
 appeal of Demosthenes, which we may repeat 
 and need to repeat often : " For God's sake, 
 gentlemen, I beseech you to think." Richter 
 gave us a parallel but more complete precept, 
 because he insisted on the order of these 
 three needful processes. He says : " Never 
 read till you have thought yourself hungry ; 
 never write till you have read yourself full." 
 There are but few people willing to keep the 
 first half of this precept, though many may 
 be willing to keep the second. They are 
 
82 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 willing to rush to their books in order to 
 be ready to write ; but they are not willing 
 to deal with the preliminary drudgery of 
 patient thought upon their subject. Yet it is 
 indispensable that before we write we should 
 think. The precept does not mean that 
 we must do all our thinking before we 
 read — that is impossible ; but it does 
 mean that reading without previous thought 
 is apt to be profitless. To use a simple 
 illustration, it is like sitting down to a meal 
 before we have got an appetite. Thought 
 is as important to the mind as exercise to 
 the body. Both give appetite ; the hunger 
 comes from exertion. We hunger to know, 
 because we have thought. We are then 
 guided by a healthy wish for information ; 
 our reading becomes intelligent ; we know 
 what we want. Time is saved, and we are 
 the better able to digest what we have 
 studied. 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 83 
 
 There is also a moral argument on behalf 
 of this precept, to reflect before we read. 
 It is easy to go to our books, and it 
 is true that from them we may gather 
 material, but it is material very difficult to 
 digest. The chances are that we shall 
 utilise such material without much reflec- 
 tion. We shall not assimilate it, and 
 make it our own. But to have thought 
 beforehand is to make our whole nature 
 ready for wprk ; it is to promote a kind 
 of mental integrity with regard to the 
 material employed. We shall have put 
 our own mind and our own endeavour 
 into our work. There is more satisfac- 
 tion because there is more honesty in such 
 work — we are thinking and working out 
 our subject, we are not merely looking 
 for something to say. 
 
 Therefore, for the sake of mind and of 
 moral vigour, do not get into the habit of 
 
84 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 ransacking on Saturday all the books which 
 are likely to give you suggestions for the 
 Sunday sermon. Be wise and thoughtful 
 beforehand. Have your subjects well in 
 hand. Think them out. Find out where 
 you need information. Note what lines of 
 thought are involved. Observe your own 
 deficiencies in such subjects or directions of 
 thought. Thus, by reflection, make ready 
 for study. 
 
 Secondly, Reading. In my last lecture I 
 spoke of reading as it affected the general 
 course of a clergyman's life; now I am 
 to speak of it in relation to the sermon 
 itself. For besides general reading you 
 will need some special study for your 
 sermons. You will need to study whatever 
 will serve to elucidate and illustrate the 
 subject. But even here, do not be content 
 with merely reading for that special subject. 
 Take care to read more than you require. 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 85 
 
 Dr. Fitch tells us in his book on Educa- 
 tion that " no person can adequately 
 teach any subject unless he knows more 
 than the points he is prepared to put for- 
 ward." I remember a description once 
 given me of a clergyman. It was said of 
 his sermons that he always worked himself 
 up to his subject. But this is not the best 
 plan. It is better that a man should go 
 down to his subject. To seem to work up 
 to it is to give the impression of strain and 
 effort. To descend upon your subject is 
 to act with the confidence of mastery. In 
 the one case a man seems to be putting 
 things into his sermon in order to bring it 
 up to average length ; in the other case, 
 the preacher has selected from his treasury 
 of study that which will best make clear 
 his subject. The preacher is like a general 
 who takes up a position with the intention 
 of fighting a battle ; but as the wise 
 
86 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 general is one who makes himself well 
 acquainted, not with his camp-surroundings 
 only, but with the whole geography of the 
 neighbourhood, so is the wise preacher one 
 who knows not only his subject, but the 
 bearing of it on kindred questions and 
 interests. He should know not only the 
 ideas he wishes to put before his people, 
 but also the facts which justify his doing 
 so, and their general significance in relation 
 to other realms of thought. Such a man 
 has climbed above his subject, and can 
 descend upon it with a feeling of confidence 
 and power. Survey your subject from the 
 heights of wide and careful study. Read 
 more than is required for the immediate 
 occasion. This gives the sense of security, 
 which only conscientious work can provide. 
 It will save you from the sense of shame 
 which an ill-prepared or hastily -worked 
 sermon may bring. There may be among 
 
Ill Lectures on breaching 87 
 
 your hearers those who have studied much. 
 The knowledge of their presence, when 
 you are conscious of haste and slovenliness, 
 will fill you with misgiving. Your faith 
 in your message will suffer as you speak, 
 for you will be conscious how easily some 
 auditor can, with his powers of criticism 
 and knowledge, show how threadbare are 
 your little rags of thought. Daniel Wilson, 
 when preaching in Bedford Chapel, was 
 asked, " Are you not afraid when you see 
 so many learned and distinguished people 
 in your congregation .'' " He said, " No, 
 I am not ; though I know that many are 
 my superiors in general knowledge and in 
 Bible scholarship, yet I am sure that none 
 of them has studied the particular subject 
 of my sermon more diligently than I have." 
 This is one secret of confidence — study. 
 Leave no stone unturned beneath which 
 fact or knowledge may lurk. Reflect and 
 
88 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 read that you may be fully persuaded of 
 the meaning and truth of what you say. 
 
 It is in meditation and study that zeal 
 will awaken. What we gather heedlessly, 
 and treat without reverence, will never 
 awaken our interest or stir our ardour. It 
 was while the Psalmist was " musing that 
 the fire kindled." The fire of ambition 
 to do worthy work kindles as we think 
 and read of matters which touch human 
 life. But a purer fire than that of the 
 purest human ambition may kindle as we 
 meditate, study, and pray. God's own 
 fire from heaven will descend upon our 
 hearts. It was when the prophet had 
 built his altar, prepared the wood, and 
 laid his sacrifice in order, that the fire 
 from heaven descended in answer to his 
 prayer. God hdlps those who help them- 
 selves. To those who use all diligence 
 and neglect no means of success, He gives 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 89 
 
 His aid. His inspiration descends not 
 upon the careless and the idle ; but to 
 those who wait on Him and work He 
 comes in power, and gives them that 
 kindling spirit which consumes foolish 
 egotism and base timidity, and glows 
 within them with the pure love of doing 
 good. 
 
 Thirdly, Writing. I am not now 
 referring to written sermons in con- 
 trast to what are called extemporaneous 
 sermons. I am speaking of writing as a 
 part of preparation, whether you speak or 
 read your sermon. In either case use your 
 pen. It is a foolish and dull mistake to 
 suppose that the extemporaneous preacher 
 forgoes the use of his pen. The idea is 
 next to a myth. I think that though you 
 were to give me examples of such a practice, 
 you would only give me examples of in- 
 efficient preaching. No man can afford to 
 
90 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 do without his pen. It is no doubt true 
 that a man after thirty or forty years' 
 experience of preaching may use his pen 
 comparatively little in his preparation ; 
 but his power to forgo the use of the 
 pen is due to the accumulated force of 
 those thirty or forty years of hard pen 
 work. It may be taken as a standing rule 
 that no man can afford to do without his 
 pen in the modelling of his sermons. 
 Cicero said, " The best master of the 
 orator is his pen," and Cicero will be allowed 
 to be a good authority in such matters. 
 If you are going to deliver your sermon 
 extemporaneously, still write, write much. 
 Be diligent in the use of your pen. 
 
 A very able writer has said that there 
 are two ways in which the written sermon 
 may be prepared. The first is, by writing 
 down the outlines of the subject, and then 
 re-writing it when you have made up your 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 91 
 
 mind as to which is the best form. This 
 is what may be described as finding your 
 way with your pen to the order of treat- 
 ment. The other way is by determining 
 that the first time you write, the form 
 shall be as complete as possible. I think 
 that this second way is mistaken, and that 
 the attempt to make your work complete 
 at the start will only end in failure. 
 Whatever you may be able to do after 
 years of practice I know not, but I think 
 you will find it well to work off the froth 
 with your pen. It is by thinking with 
 your pen that you will find your way to 
 the heart of your subject. Most of our 
 minds are like some of those bottles of wine 
 which come from abroad ; you have to pour 
 oiF the ullage before you can reach the wine. 
 You may need to write ofi^ your first and 
 crude enthusiasm. I am not sure that in 
 the matter of preaching second thoughts 
 
92 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 are not better than first, and the third the 
 best of all. 
 
 You will find that this is what will 
 happen. You will choose your text. 
 There will have dawned on you the first 
 conception of its meaning. Your mind 
 will be full, perhaps, of the novelty or 
 the attractiveness of your first thoughts. 
 Write them down by all means, but depend 
 upon it you are not going to use them as 
 they are. For let your second thoughts 
 go over the subject, and you will be pos- 
 sessed by a critical mood. Your thoughts 
 will not seem so fit or worthy as they did 
 at first. You feel bound to reject, to add, 
 to rearrange. Do not be afraid. Go 
 through it all over and over again. After 
 a time you will find that the thoughts 
 begin to come to you in clearer fashion 
 and better form. Your third thoughts 
 will perhaps harmonise with your first, 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 93 
 
 through the aid of the criticism of your 
 second thoughts. Write till your mind 
 is perfectly clear, and till you certainly 
 know your own thoughts. You will gain 
 accuracy of thought. Long ago Lord 
 Bacon told us that if reading makes a 
 full man, writing makes an exact man. 
 We shall lose nothing by the pen-work 
 which promotes exactitude, and so makes 
 us truly masters of our thoughts. We 
 shall get rid of those vague ideas which 
 seem great, and we shall get in their place 
 those simple and clear ideas which may be 
 useful. 
 
 Further, writing is likely to give you 
 the faculty of expression ; for it often 
 compels you to put things in various 
 ways. Cultivate the habit of writing 
 down your thoughts. Test them as they 
 stand before you in black and white. You 
 will see reasons for writing them afresh. 
 
94 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Things will strike you in a different way. 
 In your efforts after clearness you will gain 
 mastery over language, for mastery over 
 language is little more than mastery over 
 our own thoughts. 
 
 On these three things — Reflection, 
 Reading, and Writing — you must rely if 
 you are to accumulate fit and useful 
 material. Briefly, then, what we have 
 said amounts to this. Firstly, find 
 out what you want: reflect. Secondly, 
 supply yourself with it : read. Thirdly, 
 clear away all the needless encumbrances, 
 and get your thoughts on the subject 
 clear: write. At this stage you are like 
 the modeller who has found out how much 
 clay he requires. He has now to use his 
 power in modelling it. 
 
 What power shall we employ? My 
 answer is — The power of truthfulness. 
 Of that I now wish to speak very specially. 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 95 
 
 Our first wish, when we have provided 
 our material, will be to set it fitly and 
 worthily before our people. We are all 
 human, and the desire to do well what we 
 have to do is not altogether a bad one. 
 You wish, then, that what you do shall 
 be done as well as you can do it. This is 
 reasonable, but it leads to snares. The 
 desire to do well becomes the desire to 
 excel. The desire to excel becomes the 
 desire to be original ; and when a preacher 
 desires to be original his fate is sealed. 
 Beware of that hateful word — Originality. 
 There was at the Battle of Waterloo a 
 certain ditch over which the French troops 
 were obliged to pass, but as they charged 
 over it numbers fell into it to rise no more. 
 Originality is as that ditch to the preacher. 
 Into it many a man of promise has fallen, 
 and lost his power of higher usefulness. 
 If you wish to be original, turn your back 
 
96 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 upon this desire of originality. What do 
 you mean by originality ? Is it something 
 out of the common ? Do you mean that 
 you do not wish to deal out the platitudes 
 of the pulpit which have been so much 
 condemned, that you do not wish to be 
 commonplace in your sermons, and to say 
 what other people have said a hundred 
 times before? But consider. Do you 
 wish to say something which is both true 
 and striking .'' or do you wish to say 
 something that is striking, whether it is 
 true or untrue ? If the former, then seek 
 truth first; if the latter, your originality 
 is untrue. The best way is the way of 
 truth, and the best question to ask your- 
 self is not " Is this original .? " but " Is it 
 true .? " There is no peace in the work of 
 him who is straining after that wretched 
 thing people call originality. At the best 
 we can be but messengers of what is true. 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 97 
 
 " I am the Voice," said the Baptist, and 
 for us this saying is best ; " I am the 
 Voice of the truth which is given me to 
 say ; I seek no originality ; I affect no 
 eccentricity ; I am the servant of truth." 
 This is the honest attitude of mind ; all 
 other leads to self-deception and unreality, 
 but this leads to the only real originality. 
 
 For what is originality.'' It is that 
 which springs from the ultimate source of 
 thought, which owes nothing to any other 
 channel. It follows that in truth alone is 
 there originality ; and if God Himself be 
 the root of all thought and life, then that 
 which has its origin in Him is truth. To 
 keep near to Him, to seek His truth, and 
 to speak it, is the secret of the utterance 
 which is original, and which, coming from 
 Him who made man's'spirit, cannot fail to 
 reach the spirits of men. The true origin- 
 ality is truth. Originality in the mode 
 
 H 
 
98 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 of presenting truth is nature's gift, and 
 can only be ours when we are natural. 
 The spirit of truthfulness, therefore, 
 must be ours in our preaching work. 
 This must enter into every part of it. 
 We must treat with truthfulness our text, 
 our subject, our people, and ourselves. 
 
 There must be truthfulness in the treat- 
 ment of the text. This is not a needless 
 caution. There are ways of dealing with 
 texts which can only be described as un- 
 truthful ways. You choose a text ; it 
 is a striking text ; it will produce an 
 effect upon the congregation by the mere 
 announcement ; you do not ask what is 
 the truth which underlies this text ; you 
 are content with the words. I doubt the 
 wisdom or the Tightness of this method. 
 It is motto-preaching. There are cases, no 
 doubt, in which the misapplication is too 
 obvious to mislead. When Rowland Hill 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 99 
 
 preached against the extravagant head- 
 dresses of his day, he selected as his text 
 " Topnot, come down." That was strik- 
 ing if you like ; it was certainly too 
 grotesque an adaptation of the words " Let 
 them that are on the housetop not come 
 down " to deceive any one. But though the 
 incident is attributed to a good man, I am 
 not persuaded that it was wise or well for 
 him to have so handled a text. But worse 
 than a grotesque adaptation like this is the 
 custom of selecting a text and forcing into 
 it a meaning quite alien to the author's 
 thought, and doing so, seriously, as though 
 the sermon were an exposition of the text. 
 Fenelon in his discourse on eloquence gives 
 an example. He describes the friend who 
 speaks in glowing terms of the very interest- 
 ing and striking sermon which he has heard. 
 The sermon had been preached on Ash 
 Wednesday, and the text was " I have 
 
lOO Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 eaten ashes as it were bread." The text 
 seemed so admirably appropriate ; and the 
 method of treatment was ingenious, and 
 skilfully led up to the theme of Lent. 
 But Fenelon concludes that the sermon was 
 a sorry one, because in it Scripture had 
 been falsely applied. The original mean- 
 ing of the words had been neglected, and 
 a totally foreign one imported into them. 
 There was no connection between the 
 sorrows of the Psalmist, who had suffered 
 disaster and humiliation at the hands of 
 his enemies, and the humiliation of a 
 Christian who seeks to disengage himself 
 from sinful pleasures. The same objection 
 applies to treating the text "Why tarry 
 the wheels of his chariot ? " as though the 
 advent waited for was that of our Lord, 
 or that of death, coming to deliver some 
 waiting Christian out of the miseries of this 
 sinful world. Expositions of this sort are 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching loi 
 
 examples of violence and unworthy violence 
 done to the old story. Such far-fetched 
 falsehoods are in every way to be avoided. 
 Those who preach from the Bible may 
 well remember Cecil's saying — not less 
 valuable now than in his day — "The 
 meaning of the Bible is the Bible." 
 
 If you desire to deal with texts in this 
 fashion you are a motto-preacher, and you 
 should explain to your people that you are 
 such a preacher. They can then go else- 
 where if they wish for wholesome preach- 
 ing. But I hope that you will cultivate a 
 better and truer method by being ever true 
 to your text. 
 
 Be true to your subject. There 
 is a temptation to zealous men in this 
 matter. It arises from the earnestness 
 and devotion with which you are attached 
 to certain great Christian truths. God 
 forbid that I should say one word to lessen 
 
I02 Lectures on F reaching lect. 
 
 your belief in those truths which God has 
 made helpful to your souls. Cherish those 
 truths, but do not suppose that you are 
 bound to drag them in when you are 
 preaching upon some text in which they 
 have no appropriate place. To do so is 
 to commence a faithless habit. Against 
 this method I may cite the opinion of 
 one whose name in Cambridge, and among 
 Cambridge men, will be held in reverence 
 and honour, for the life of devotion and 
 piety spent in Cambridge — I mean Charles 
 Simeon. He stated that it had been 
 his aim in his Horae Homileticae not so 
 to pervert the Scripture as to make it 
 refer to Christ and His salvation when no 
 such object appears to have been in the 
 contemplation of the inspired writer. " He 
 regrets to observe in some individuals what 
 he knows not how to designate by any more 
 appropriate term than that " (which, how- 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 103 
 
 ever, he uses with much hesitation) " of an 
 ultra-Evangelical taste ; which overlooks 
 in many passages the practical lessons they 
 were intended to convey, and detects in them 
 only the leading doctrines of the Gospel." 
 
 This contains wise counsel. It reminds 
 us that even zeal should be under the 
 control of reverence for truth. Where 
 this is forgotten much harm may be done. 
 The hearers are irritated by irrelevancies. 
 We dishonour the very truths we seek to 
 exalt ; we cannot justify our exegesis. 
 Such methods are seldom defensible and 
 are often offensive. We may pardon the 
 Puritan divine who, when preaching on the 
 triumphal entry into Jerusalem, divided 
 his subject into three heads, showing first 
 how by nature every man is an ass ; 
 secondly, how grace saddled and bridled 
 him ; and thirdly, how the Lord rides 
 him in triumph into the New Jerusalem ; 
 
I04 Lectures on V reaching lect. 
 
 but we cannot forgive the preacher who 
 brought together the parallel passages from 
 the gospels, " Are not two sparrows sold for 
 a farthing ? " " Are not five sparrows sold 
 for two farthings ? " and asked his people 
 to observe the generosity which threw in 
 the extra bird on the larger transaction. 
 
 We cannot commend those who find 
 spiritual meanings and vital truths in every 
 chance arrangement and incident of Old 
 and New Testament story, who find deep 
 significance in the fact that four-and- 
 twenty knives were brought back from 
 Babylon, who devote whole sermons to 
 the bell and pomegranate of the high- 
 priest's garment, who see an argument 
 for the existence of hell in the everlasting 
 burnings of Isaiah Ixvi., and hints of the 
 Holy Sacrament in the twopence given 
 by the good Samaritan to the inn-keeper. 
 All this is trifling, and when practised by 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 105 
 
 the preacher is likely to become mis- 
 chievous trifling ; for such treatment of 
 sacred texts only reveals a spirit which is 
 intellectually frivolous where it ought to be 
 sincere, reverent, and earnest to preserve and 
 to preach truth, not handling the word of 
 God deceitfully. The truths we reverence 
 can very well stand on their own natural 
 and legitimate foundations. When will 
 men learn that truth needs no unlawful or 
 enforced aid .'' We should reverence truth 
 too much to dream of supporting it by 
 anything which is not truth. Our first 
 duty towards our subject is to make it 
 clear, and for this we must ask of any 
 passage we wish to expound. What is the 
 truth which lies here ? what was the 
 writer's meaning in these words } Make 
 that truth preach to the people ; make 
 it clear to them ; and you will have quite 
 enough to do. 
 
io6 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Be truthful to the people. Every 
 school of thought has its pet phrases ; 
 and congregations addicted to certain 
 lines of thought or attached to certain 
 schools get into the habit of look- 
 ing for the accustomed phrases. The 
 temptation to use these is great. The 
 expectant congregation can easily be 
 satisfied. Their distrust of the young 
 preacher (and there are always some dis- 
 trustful critics at church) is lulled to sleep 
 as soon as the pet phrase has been em- 
 ployed. The young man is all right. 
 He is sound. He has given the required 
 password. They may go to sleep ; and they 
 do go to sleep. There are those whose 
 whole religion lies in a phrase. They look 
 for and regard its use as the superstitious 
 do that of a dream, an amulet, or a relic. 
 The use of the expected phrase acts like 
 a spiritual narcotic on hearers of this sort. 
 
 j^- 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 107 
 
 It is ill for the hearers to give them such 
 things, and yet there are preachers who 
 are not at ease till they have brought out 
 the magic word. Sermons of such men 
 are like a rabbit-hunt. The hunt begins : 
 there is a scratching and a scrambling 
 and a flinging up of dirt, then suddenly 
 out comes the terrier with the wretched 
 dead rabbit. So with the sermon in ques- 
 tion. The preacher announces his text. 
 We do not see how the phrase can well 
 be brought in, the text hardly justifies it ; 
 but the preacher, like the dog, is equal to 
 the occasion : he tears aside the difiiculties, 
 dives below the meaning, flings out some 
 irrelevant generalities, and drags forth the 
 expected phrase and pronounces it with 
 unction. The smile of approval is forth- 
 coming, then the contented folding of the 
 hands, and the patronising slumber of people 
 at their ease in Zion. I do not say never 
 
io8 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 use such phrases. If the phrase represents 
 to you some real truth and you can honestly 
 use it, do not be afraid to do so, but use it 
 cautiously, seldom, and never without some 
 explanation. But if you cannot use it 
 honestly, avoid it ; and deny yourself the 
 use of it, if your mind does not attach any 
 clear and real significance to it. 
 
 If I may speak frankly, I think that, 
 as a rule, phrases are enemies of truth. A 
 phrase in its first coinage is often the 
 expression of a grand truth. It embodies 
 some clear principle which thousands 
 hold dear ; its utterance evokes enthusiasm ; 
 it becomes a watchword ; it is a living 
 thing, because it expresses a real, intelligible 
 thought. But when a generation has 
 passed, the force of the phrase is weakened, 
 because the stirring controversies which 
 gave it birth no longer exist. Men's minds 
 have drifted otherwhere. The earnest souls, 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 109 
 
 who fought for what they understood and 
 loved, have disappeared. Their place is 
 taken by those who have inherited their 
 language but not their souls. The fol- 
 lowers of a great movement have been 
 succeeded by the utterers of phrases. The 
 passionate devotion to truths has disap- 
 peared. The eager keenness to discern 
 heretical phraseology proclaims that the 
 worship of the letter has commenced its 
 reign. From that moment the very phrase 
 which meant truth, and was in its day so 
 true, becomes the foe of truth and the 
 source of spiritual torpor. Against this 
 state of things be on your guard. Resolve 
 never to be mere repeaters of phrases. 
 If a phrase embodies a truth to you, 
 speak out its truth simply and boldly ; 
 but never use it because it is a phrase, 
 or because it is a phrase which the people 
 expect you to use. Be more true to your 
 
I lo Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 people than to allow them to rest on the 
 magic of reiterated phrases. Be so true to 
 them that you will give the heart of truth 
 and not the mere semblance of it only. 
 In failing to be quite honest with them 
 you endanger your own integrity and, with 
 it, your power of usefulness. 
 
 This brings us to the last counsel, viz. 
 Be true to yourselves. First, be true to 
 yourself from an intellectual point of view. 
 Be content to use your own powers. 
 Whatever gifts God has given you, use 
 them to their utmost in the expression of 
 His truth. Read for yourself; think for 
 yourself. Take care that what you study 
 becomes your own. Do not transfer 
 knowledge from paper to paper, but as- 
 similate what you study. Read, mark, 
 learn, and inwardly digest all that you 
 can. Do not be ambitious to appear more 
 or better than you are. Do not imitate 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching iii 
 
 the frog in the fable. Remember, not 
 every soil can produce the same fruits. 
 " Nee vero terras ferre omnes omnia pos- 
 sunt." Be true, therefore, to your own 
 genius; for in so doing you are being 
 true to that which God gave you. Culti- 
 vate and develop your own gift. Do not 
 fling it on one side for the sake of copying 
 another man. Secondly, be true to yourself 
 from a spiritual standpoint. You may 
 meet among your people many who are 
 much more experienced in Christian life 
 than yourself ; they will speak of their ex- 
 periences to you, and you may be tempted 
 to think that because you are a clergyman 
 in the parish you ought to be at least 
 their equals in those things which belong 
 to the kingdom of heaven. But here, 
 perhaps above all here, be content : be 
 humble : be ready to learn. Do not 
 strain after that which God has not given 
 
112 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 you. Do not attempt to transcend your 
 own spiritual experience. Be true to your- 
 self in this as in all else. It may be that 
 you can only give to them as yet the milk 
 of the Word ; but if you give this, as God 
 shall enable you from your own early 
 experiences, it will be sweeter and more 
 wholesome food than all the made-up food 
 prepared out of borrowed experiences. 
 Surely it is wise and well to speak only 
 what you do know, and to wait patiently 
 for the many things which God will reveal 
 to you as your life and heart -experience 
 grow. Follow closely His teaching and 
 His light. As you do so, what He teaches 
 will become so true that you needs must 
 believe it. And if you see other men 
 higher up on God's hill than yourselves, 
 be content on the lower levels. Thank 
 God that they are there. Trust Him that 
 He will yet bring you there. In this way 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 113 
 
 you will build up experience and know- 
 ledge which will be more to you in the 
 years to come than any present or hasty 
 success. Do not be eager to overtake 
 your life. Take quietly your daily bread. 
 Nourish yourself on it. Be learning every 
 day. Be wise enough to postpone preach- 
 ing on some topics. Many a young 
 preacher has been tempted to deal with 
 matters of which, from the nature of the 
 case, he must really be ignorant. If the 
 poet counselled that a poem might be left 
 nine years, may we not leave for a few 
 years some subjects of which perchance in 
 that time we may be prepared to speak ^ 
 Do not let haste sow regrets in your life. 
 Note all you can. Accumulate thought. 
 Miss no opportunity of learning, whether 
 by study or by experience. You will never 
 meet with a single experience in life which 
 will not prove valuable to you in later life. 
 I 
 
114 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 I am persuaded that God apportions our 
 experiences and grants us opportunities to 
 fit us for the place to which He means to 
 call us. Use therefore all offices and all 
 experiences simply and truthfully, in the 
 faith that by doing the work we are given 
 to-day, we are fitting ourselves for that 
 which God may give us to-morrow. In 
 this, and in all, be true to yourselves. 
 
 Let me sum up what I have said. I 
 have urged upon you to reflect, to read, to 
 write. I have pointed out to you that in 
 the use of materials so accumulated we 
 must be possessed by a spirit of unfeigned 
 truthfulness. All this may find expression 
 in two words — diligence and sincerity. 
 Exercise great diligence. Do not think 
 that you can do by quickness or genius 
 that which can only be done by simple, 
 honest, hard work. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 pointed out to his students long ago that 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 115 
 
 reliance on talents to the neglect of hard 
 work has brought it about that one who 
 was looked upon as more than a man at 
 sixteen has often been found to be less 
 than a man at sixty. Bulwer Lytton puts 
 similar wisdom into the mouth of one of 
 his characters. He says : " I attribute 
 my success in life to three things. I have 
 never relied upon genius for that which only 
 can be gained by labour ; I have never 
 attempted to teach what I have not 
 thoroughly studied ; and I have never 
 made a promise which I have not done 
 my best to fulfil." I need not point out 
 the value of such counsel. It is as profit- 
 able in a clergyman's life as in other 
 callings. Be examples in these things. 
 Reverence hard work. Read and study 
 before you preach. Make any sacrifice 
 rather than fail or be deficient in your 
 work. You are called to this. At your 
 
ii6 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 ordination you will give the solemn pledge 
 to be diligent students, devoted to such 
 studies as may make you wax riper and 
 stronger in your ministry. Be diligent. 
 
 Be sincere. Ciiltivate inward truthful- 
 ness. Do not be content with what I may 
 caU professional truthfUness. Be scrupu- 
 lous to maintain inward integrity. Be 
 earnest that the thing you preach is true 
 for you as well as for your people. Let 
 your utterances be the outpourings of what 
 you truly feel, know, and believe. For 
 this baptize your hours of study and pre- 
 paration with prayer. Before and after 
 and while you prepare your sermon, pray. 
 Lay all your thought and labour at God's 
 feet. Bossuet never entered the pulpit 
 without prayer. 
 
 When Essex came back from Ireland 
 under Queen Elizabeth's displeasure he 
 consulted Lord Bacon, and asked whether 
 
Ill Lectures on Preaching 117 
 
 the Queen's displeasure was likely to be 
 lasting. Lord Bacon replied, " To speak 
 the truth, nubecula est. It is but a 
 cloudlet ; and if the cloud descend it will 
 melt in mist, but if it go upwards it will 
 come down in rain." 
 
 It is the same with our work, " nubecula 
 est." If we allow it to drop earthward it 
 will vanish in profitless mist ; but if we 
 lift it upwards in prayer it will rise to the 
 throne of God. He will touch it with His 
 inspiration, and filled with His power it 
 will descend in refreshing rain upon the 
 thirsty hearts of men. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 The subject of our lecture is the structure 
 of the sermon. I beg to remind you at 
 the outset that the best things grow, 
 and they take their structure during their 
 growth. Anything like an enforced, 
 elaborate, and artificial structure defeats 
 itself. Therefore I would lay down the 
 preliminary caution that many of the 
 counsels which I may give to-night are 
 true of the later development of the 
 preacher's experience, and are hardly as 
 true, or as fully applicable, in the very 
 early stages of his career. It is wise to 
 remember this, for though rules may be 
 
LECT. IV Lectures on Preaching 119 
 
 useful, they may be mischievous, and they 
 almost certainly mislead those who seek to 
 apply them before they have caught the 
 spirit which underlies them. Moreover, 
 each man must discover methods for him- 
 self ; and if he is wise he will regulate the 
 structure of the sermon according to his 
 own genius and character. All that can 
 really be hoped Is that by such lectures 
 as these some thoughts and principles 
 may be scattered, which in time to come 
 you may be able to assimilate, transform, 
 and utilise according to your own 
 method. 
 
 But there is a certain general principle 
 of method which I think you will find to 
 be of service even in your earliest attempts. 
 You remember the passage in the prophecy 
 of Ezekiel where the prophet is bidden 
 to preach or prophesy to the dry bones. 
 The bones lay scattered, disorganised, before 
 
I20 Lectures on Preaching lect, 
 
 him ; but, as he spoke, bone knit itself to 
 its bone, the flesh came up and covered 
 the framework, and at last the spirit of 
 life from God came into them, " and they 
 stood upon their feet, an exceeding great 
 army." I think that we may find here an 
 illustration of the method of preparation. 
 For in the progress of the vision we see 
 material, order, beauty, life ; and the 
 sermon should exhibit all these. We must 
 have material, but we must not allow it to 
 remain structureless material. It must be 
 organised material, knit into form and 
 clothed with beauty and instinct with life. 
 In other words, our materials must be 
 compacted of those elements which appeal 
 to the reason and affection of our hearers. 
 Too often sermons embody only those 
 materials which the preacher favours, and 
 the appeal of the sermon is limited in 
 consequence. A man, for instance, of an 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 121 
 
 argumentative disposition will fill his 
 sermon with reasoning, and his discourse 
 bristles with suitable and unsuitable 
 arguments. If, on the other hand, he 
 delights in instructing people, he will 
 pack his sermon close with an imposing 
 amount of information. If, again, he has 
 a poetical temperament, he will be tempted 
 to make his sermon sparkle with quotations, 
 metaphors, and literary allusions. If he is 
 a man of a merely devout temperament 
 (by which I mean devout without being 
 anything else), he will be tempted to 
 imagine that his ethos will atone for all 
 deficiencies, and because the spirit of 
 devotion is there, there is no need of 
 conviction and instruction. 
 
 In all these instances there are defects. 
 Those to whom we speak have minds, 
 consciences, and hearts ; and our aim 
 should be to enlist the interest and alliance 
 
122 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 of all these powers. The sermon should 
 be reasonable, instructive, convincing, and 
 persuasive. It should appeal to the under- 
 standing, the conscience, the imagination, 
 and the affections. 
 
 Last time I spoke of the great lines of a 
 clergyman's reading. I reminded you of 
 the importance of pursuing those studies 
 which will brace up the mind, enlarge the 
 arena of knowledge, cultivate the imagina- 
 tion, and above all, quicken a devout spirit 
 within us. As these should be the ranges 
 of our studies, so all of these should find a 
 place in the sermon. If the sermon be all 
 reasoning, it will be dry ; if it be full of 
 information only, it will be pedantic ; if it 
 be overlaid with illustrations, it will leave 
 the mind unsatisfied ; if it be limited 
 to devotional meditations only, it will 
 lack robustness and so far effectiveness. 
 Remember the nature of your people ; 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 123 
 
 endeavour to meet them in their whole 
 being. You will not find it a bad rule to 
 ask yourself while preparing your sermon, 
 Is there reason in what I am making 
 ready? is there that which will appeal to 
 the minds of thoughtful men ? But ask 
 also whether you are providing instruction 
 for the ignorant. Here let me say that 
 there is cheap chatter which tells us that 
 the clergyman is behind the age. Do not 
 be misled by this sort of talk. I certainly 
 would not advise you to be content with 
 ignorance which keeps you behind the age. 
 But you may be tempted by idle talk of 
 this kind to assume that all your hearers 
 have read the last review or are acquainted 
 with the last novel. You may be tempted 
 to touch on these things instead of teach- 
 ing what you were sent to teach. Re- 
 member that there may be people who are 
 full of the spirit of the age, but who are 
 
124 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 deficient in the ordinary knowledge which 
 is common in a third-rate Sunday school. 
 I have heard of the children of well-to-do 
 and so-called cultivated people who were 
 delighted with the story of the Prodigal 
 Son, which they heard for the first time by 
 accident — or rather by Providence — in 
 church. We cannot too often remind 
 ourselves that many things which are 
 familiar to us are not familiar to our 
 people. Our position is a difHcult one, 
 because we have to steer our way to the 
 hearts and consciences of people whose 
 knowledge and scientific appreciation may 
 be in advance of our own, but who at the 
 same time may be extremely ignorant on 
 the subjects which it is our duty to teach. 
 
 It is not unwise to give explanations 
 even of obvious things, if only we do so in 
 a way which is natural and not patronising. 
 I heard of a schoolmistress who had taught 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 125 
 
 the New Testament for years, and who yet 
 had never realised the meaning of the 
 Crucifixion till she happened to see that 
 last scene delineated in a stained - glass 
 window. Recognise the importance of 
 giving information. The clergyman lives 
 too much in the pulpit and too little in 
 the pew. He forgets the weak^ the ignor- 
 ant, the untrained. Believe me, the man 
 who sits in the pew is not offended at 
 hearing what he already knows. If the 
 clergyman tells him something which he 
 knew before, he is not altogether displeased : 
 he congratulates himself that he knows that. 
 If the clergyman tells him something which 
 he did not know, he is by so much the 
 gainer. Be careful to weave real instruction 
 into your sermon ; strive that nobody who 
 listens can go away without some clear idea of 
 the meaning of the text or story with which 
 you are dealing. And this can easily be 
 
126 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 done without appearing to play the school- 
 master. The history, manners, and customs, 
 which, when understood, throw light upon 
 the passage, can be set forth in clear though 
 subordinate place. When thus treated as 
 supports to the main purpose of the sermon, 
 there will be little likelihood that any 
 hearer wiU feel that he is being lectured as 
 a schoolboy. Briefly, instruction, though 
 clear, should be subordinate to argument ; 
 for argument is essential to your main 
 purpose, which is to convince. 
 
 Reason and information should enter 
 into the sermon ; but I plead that illustra- 
 tion may have a place there also. A 
 sermon may be sound in reasoning and 
 replete with information, but it may still be 
 dull. There is illumination in illustration. 
 But there is more. It is chiefly through 
 illustration that the thought of the sermon 
 can be brought near to the hearer's mind. 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 127 
 
 Imagination links thought with life, trans- 
 lates for the audience the abstract into the 
 concrete, and shows how the principles 
 which were strong and vivid in sacred story 
 have their living message for our own day. 
 It is well, then, that the preacher should 
 sometimes, as his sermon takes shape, ask 
 himself if his subject has been made suffi- 
 ciently clear. If he feels doubt on the 
 point, let him bethink himself whether his 
 sermon is not all walls and no windows ; 
 and if so, let him take pains by illustration 
 or example or story to let In the light. 
 
 But all these are of little value unless a 
 true ethos pervades the sermon. Here, if 
 anywhere, rules are useless. The ethos is 
 the outbreathing of the spirit which is in 
 us. If our souls are set on vanity, puffed 
 up with self, demoralised by indolence or 
 self-indulgence, no amount of effort can 
 avail to make the tone of the sermon what 
 
128 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 it should be. The only road to success 
 here is the road of self-vigilance, of per- 
 sonal devotion and spiritual sincerity. For 
 this we must be men who live in the 
 realisation of God's presence and in personal 
 communion with Him. In vain we shall 
 strive to awaken spasmodic sentiment or 
 create by eiFort the devotional feeling. We 
 cannot in a moment contradict ourselves or 
 counteract the subtle influence of character 
 upon speech. Live, therefore, in prayer, 
 and learn to consecrate all your hours of 
 preparation and every eiFort of duty with 
 constant and repeated prayer. When we 
 rely not on ourselves, but on the spirit of 
 the Lord, the true ethos will not be far 
 from the sermon. 
 
 I have spoken hitherto of the elements 
 which should find a place in the sermon. 
 I now come to the subject of arrangement. 
 You remember that Demosthenes said 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 129 
 
 action was the first, the second, and the 
 third requisite for an orator. Of the 
 sermon I would say that the first requisite 
 is order, the second order, and the 
 third order : without order there is no 
 sermon. In many sermons this is dis- 
 regarded ; but order is imperatively needed 
 for the sermon's sake, for the people's sake, 
 and for your own. 
 
 For the sermon's sake. The value of 
 the combination of two elements may de- 
 pend upon the order in which they are 
 taken. From chemistry we may learn this. 
 The alkali must precede the acid if effer- 
 vescence is to follow. It has been well 
 said, " Without order in a discourse you 
 cannot get into your subject, and without 
 good order you cannot get out of it." An 
 army in disorder, Quintilian reminds us, is 
 a hindrance to itself. Parallel to this is 
 the thought so often expressed that the 
 
130 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 difFerence between an army and a mob is 
 organisation. A speech without order has 
 been aptly called a mob of words, but 
 well -marshalled words add emphasis to 
 thought. Be careful, therefore, about the 
 order of the sermon. 
 
 For the sake of the people observe order. 
 When you have decided on your subject, 
 consider your people. Are they educated or 
 uneducated ^ Let us suppose that they are 
 educated. You may be sure that a dis- 
 ordered discourse will be intolerable to minds 
 accustomed to some precision of thought. 
 Order is indispensable for such an audience. 
 But suppose that they are uneducated — are 
 you going to conclude that anything will 
 do for such ? You cannot make a greater 
 mistake. Here order is of even higher 
 importance. Without order, incoherence 
 will mark your sermon, and incoherence 
 makes it unintelligible. The educated 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 131 
 
 person may indeed be able to disentangle 
 your meaning from your chaotic expression, 
 but the uneducated will be bewildered ; 
 whereas if you observe just and well- 
 considered order, the educated will appre- 
 ciate it and the uneducated will be able to 
 understand. For the poor and ignorant, 
 therefore, you will need to take pains with 
 the structure of your sermon. In this Dr. 
 Chalmers was an example to all preachers, 
 for he took as much trouble in the pre- 
 paration of his sermons for simple folk as he 
 did in that for his university work. This 
 is the spirit in which real work should be 
 done. Slovenly, disorderly work carries 
 little profit. For the sake, therefore, ot 
 those to whom you are sent, take the 
 trouble to observe order in your sermons. 
 
 For your own sake be careful of order. 
 If you are in the habit of flinging your 
 thoughts on paper anyhow, you will do 
 
132 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 harm to your own mind and character. 
 The habit of accuracy is closely allied to 
 truth ; and the observance of order shows 
 a kind of conscience. Disorder, on the 
 other hand, betrays a spirit not folly alive 
 to responsibility. It leads to that heed- 
 lessness which puts down anything without 
 thought ; it leads to a lack of reverence 
 towards our work. Cecil said that it re- 
 quires as much skill to know what not to 
 put into a sermon as what to put into it. 
 This is true ; but it requires also a reverent 
 courage to reject what is inappropriate or 
 unfit. The preacher who fills up his 
 sermon with padding, regardless of object 
 or purpose, suffers a moral deterioration. 
 
 I hope, therefore, that we are agreed as 
 to the importance of order in a sermon. 
 But order is not sameness. Order may 
 exist in more than one form. The same 
 method does not suit all men. One man 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 133 
 
 has a gift for analysis ; another a ready 
 power of synthesis. A sermon may be 
 topical, as it is called ; it may be ex- 
 pository. Every man must follow his 
 gift in these matters. Nature's order is 
 not always the same, and each man 
 must use his own style. This will 
 readily be allowed ; but it may be asked 
 whether the preacher should vary his own 
 style, or having discovered his own method 
 adhere to that one method only. In 
 other words, ought a man to form every 
 sermon after the same model, or ought 
 he to use a structure which varies accord- 
 ing to his subject? One very eminent 
 man (whose unique gifts gave him a com- 
 manding position among the very greatest 
 and best preachers), Bishop Phillips Brooks 
 of Massachusetts, gave his judgment in 
 favour of adhering to one settled order. 
 His argument was, that in the haste and 
 
134 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 pressure of work there is an enormous 
 economy of time in having a fixed frame- 
 work or movdd into which you can cast 
 your subject. I admit the economy of 
 time, but I cannot bring myself (though 
 in the face of such an authority one may 
 well doubt) to accept this view. It is 
 certainly an economy to have my frame- 
 work always ready. I am like the ship- 
 builder who is ready to build at any given 
 notice a certain ship on given lines. The 
 builder who confines his work to the con- 
 struction of yachts may do well to have 
 his lines ready ; but if he accepts larger 
 business he must be prepared with variety. 
 In other words, the difficulty is that all sub- 
 jects do not lend themselves to the same 
 mode of treatment. There are subjects 
 which almost claim an analytical treatment, 
 and others which may be said to demand a 
 synthetical method. Further, in expound- 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 135 
 
 ing a passage, the chosen framework will be 
 of little avail. Consider, too, the variety 
 of people whom you may have to address. 
 The method which is suitable for the church 
 may not be the best for the mission-room. 
 Synthetic treatment may be best in the 
 morning ; analytical in the evening. The 
 same subject may suit both town and 
 country ; but for country folk it may be 
 wise to recast your material. In this ques- 
 tion, therefore, I cannot help thinking that 
 each man must work out his own answer. 
 Personal capacity must be allowed a place in 
 determining such matters. But I think that 
 he is best equipped who is capable of dealing 
 with various subjects in various ways, and 
 can be analytical or synthetical as necessity 
 arises. For such a man will be able to break 
 the bread as his people are able to receive 
 it. For him there are more ways than one 
 to reach their hearts and minds. 
 
136 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 It may also be worth remembering that 
 all habits and customs have a reflex effect. 
 We first form our own habits, and we then 
 become their victims. This being so, it 
 is always well to consider what possible 
 effect this or that habit may have on our 
 characters. It may seem too serious a 
 consideration to import into a small matter 
 like this of method in sermon -structure, 
 and I certainly do not wish to import high 
 moral significance into a question which 
 is mainly intellectual ; but, nevertheless, 
 method seems to me largely like habit, 
 and our intellectual activity may be de- 
 pendent in some degree upon our choice 
 of methods. To be in the habit of using 
 only one method may result in sameness 
 and monotony. Diversity, on the other 
 hand, leads to freshness. New methods 
 have in themselves new interest. There 
 is less chance of the mind growing stale 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 137 
 
 when we exercise it in well-selected variety 
 of method. Strong men, with free and 
 fresh minds, can after long practice infuse 
 their own freshness into the one method 
 which they have made their own ; but, till 
 you have made your own method and 
 established your own strength, I think 
 that it will be a wholesome discipline to 
 practise yourselves in more than one 
 method. 
 
 But whatever plan you follow, there is 
 one principle which should, I think, guide 
 you, and which I might venture to describe 
 as an indispensable and governing principle 
 in all sermon -preparation, and that is the 
 principle of unity. I know that the 
 affectation of observing the unities has 
 met with well -deserved ridicule. That 
 pompous and ignorant patron of the pro- 
 vincial drama whom Nicholas Nickleby 
 encountered will occur to your minds. 
 
138 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 But over and above the absurdities and 
 aiFectation which brought the pedantic 
 preaching of the unities into contempt, 
 there is virtue in the principle which 
 demands harmony of conception and 
 true coherence and consistency in our 
 work. 
 
 Beauty consists very largely in the 
 happy subordination of all details to some 
 leading idea. The gift is less than the altar. 
 The thought and purpose must dominate 
 every part of the discourse. Fenelon 
 speaks strongly on this point, though we 
 may not approve of the illustration he 
 uses. His illustration is a contrast be- 
 tween Greek and Gothic architecture. The 
 Gothic appears to him to be overweighted 
 with ornament. He prefers the severe 
 simplicity and abiding unity of Greek 
 architecture. We may not bow to 
 his architectural opinion, but we shall all 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 139 
 
 accept the principle that everything which 
 tends to divert the mind from the leading 
 purpose of the work is a sign of bad 
 taste in the workman. This is only the 
 proper realisation of fitness and proportion. 
 When Maclise heard a person break into 
 loud admiration of some small object in 
 the foreground of his picture, he felt 
 that the praise was in truth blame. He 
 was sorry to hear it, and forthwith he 
 painted out the offending object. The 
 trifle had no right to be there if it so 
 arrested the eye of the spectator. It 
 marred the composition of the whole. 
 That is tasteful which carries one thought 
 or one idea, and carries it pleasingly, to 
 eye and heart. Bad taste in dress is dis- 
 tracting ostentation in details. Good taste 
 demands harmony. The apparel must be 
 in harmony with something. "Dress in 
 the colour of your eyes," is the counsel 
 
140 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 of some experts. Gounod used to say of 
 the candidates who came to have their 
 voices tried, " I see it in their eyes : one 
 always has the voice of one's eyes." All 
 these examples point in the same direction. 
 That which is natural and beautiful is 
 under the rule of some predominant note. 
 Vulgarity in art, in dress, in all workman- 
 ship, is the ostentatious and distracting 
 disregard of this principle. Therefore let 
 the sermon, whatever tones it utters and 
 through whatever changes it moves, be 
 always governed by some one ruling 
 thought, purpose, and aim. 
 
 This does not mean that the sermon 
 need be tame. It only means that all 
 arguments, information, and appeals shovdd 
 cohere and should gather round one central 
 leading thought, as in the prophet's vision 
 the bones were gathered into human forms. 
 Though there were many bones, they were 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 141 
 
 all so drawn together that they built up, 
 not formless things, but men. So should 
 a sermon, with whatever material it be 
 made, yet be fashioned into that which 
 proclaims itself as a clear and intelligible 
 message. I have sometimes thought, in- 
 deed, that a sermon ought to be a kind of 
 syllogism ; and I still believe that, taken 
 in a large sense, there is truth in the 
 thought. In the syllogism there is the 
 major premiss, the minor premiss, and the 
 conclusion. The sermon should corre- 
 spond. There is some truth, a truth which 
 you have seen as a truth of God, and 
 which you desire to make clear to your 
 people. This Is, as it were, your major 
 premiss. But this is not enough. The 
 medium through which alone you can 
 speak to people is the medium of their 
 own experience. Till you can bring your 
 truth Into correspondence with this you 
 
142 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 speak in vain. You must speak in the 
 language they understand ; and the lan- 
 guage they understand is the language of 
 the life and of the heart, of the inward and 
 outward experiences of existence. The 
 truth may be divine, but the audience is 
 human ; and in order that the truth may 
 reach men, you must bring it to them 
 through that which they know and under- 
 stand. Besides divine truth, you need to 
 remember human experience. In this 
 latter you have your minor premiss. A 
 sermon should link together divine truth 
 and human experience, and from these 
 should enforce its application as an irre- 
 sistible conclusion. You will not, of 
 course, be so foolish as to suppose that 
 I am commending to you a hard, dry, 
 syllogistic structure. True art conceals 
 itself. What is needful is that you should 
 be careful to realise and keep clear in your 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 143 
 
 minds the truth you wish to enforce, and 
 that you should carry this truth into the 
 range of the human life of your audience. 
 The recognition that this is your work and 
 duty will perhaps give you the line and 
 direction which you can follow. It will 
 furnish you with a principle which you can 
 carry into your preparation. It may facili- 
 tate the arrangement of your material. It 
 will at least start you in the right track in 
 selecting fitting material. For if there be 
 no truth of the divine kingdom which you 
 have to tell, then what message of God 
 have you to give ? If there be no human 
 experience with which you can associate 
 this truth, where is your message for man ? 
 Or how can you bring conscience and heart 
 under your influence unless the tones of 
 heaven and earth mingle in your sermon ? 
 "Without the human experience, the sermon 
 runs the risk of becoming hard and dog- 
 
144 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 matic. Without the divine truth, it will 
 only deal out flabby humanities. St. 
 Chrysostom was great both in his knowledge 
 of the Bible and of men. He was a master 
 in the art of blending the divine truth 
 with human experience. We do well to 
 remember that we are called to be 
 " divines." None the less let us remember 
 how true it is that we can only touch 
 humanity by being human. If I have 
 carried your thoughts thus far with me, 
 you will follow me when I say that the 
 ideal and warrant of this principle is found 
 in our Lord Himself. After well-nigh 
 nineteen hundred years of preaching, Jesus 
 Christ Himself still remains the one sermon 
 for the world. He is the convincing ideal 
 of life, embodying in Himself that which 
 lays hold upon the conscience and meets 
 the heart of humanity. In Himself He 
 unites the living divine truth and the living 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 145 
 
 human experience ; therefore He is supreme 
 in the spirits of men. If we wish our 
 sermons to be reflections of Him to our 
 people, we shall make them resemble Him 
 in this, that the divine and the human 
 shall both find place in them. In Him 
 divine truth expressed itself in human 
 form. His incarnation gives us a message 
 of method which has often been forgotten 
 in doctrinaire ages, when opinion was mis- 
 taken for faith and philosophy for religion. 
 Against this His incarnation has borne 
 witness ; and the last who should reduce 
 their sermons to theological essays or 
 metaphysical speculations, the last who 
 should forget that true Christianity appeals 
 to human nature in its loftiest aspirations 
 and in its deepest and most sorrowful 
 experiences, are those who realise the true 
 divinity and perfect humanity of Him who 
 was Son of God as well as Son of man. 
 
146 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 If in our sermons we set Him forth to our 
 people as He truly is, in His strength and 
 in His sympathy, if our sermons reflect 
 Him and preach Him, we shall reach men's 
 spirits, for they will thus be drawn unto 
 Him. 
 
 The framework of the sermon, then, 
 should obey some principle of unity. But 
 the framework is not everything. When 
 the bones have been knit together so as to 
 present an articulate form, they needs must 
 be clothed with flesh. The outline of a ser- 
 mon is a skeleton at the best. We have still 
 to clothe our thoughts in language. And 
 here the first requirement is that language 
 should be fit and appropriate. Now good 
 and useful thoughts may appear in feeble, 
 meagre, and unworthy form. It is possible 
 so to vest our thoughts that they shall be 
 concealed rather than revealed. The first 
 condition of fitness of speech is clearness. 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 147 
 
 It is the fashion (why, I know not) among 
 young ladies who sing to be inarticulate. 
 We may hear the voice but not the speech 
 of her who sings. One is tempted to ask 
 why, when words are wedded to music, 
 they should be denied their natural rights,, 
 or why, when words are made eloquent in 
 melody, the power of their eloquence should 
 be lost by their becoming inaudible. It is 
 satisfactory to find Gounod remarking that 
 pure diction is the first law of song. We 
 may echo this view with regard to the 
 sermon. Clear language — language, that 
 is, which carries its own meaning straight, 
 and without starting side -puzzles in the 
 minds of our hearers — is the first condition 
 of fitness of language. From this it will 
 follow that what is simple and natural is 
 best. The ambition of grand or high- 
 sounding words is a poor ambition, and 
 like most mean ambitions it defeats itself. 
 
148 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Let us avoid the example of the clergyman 
 who counselled the boys, to whom he was 
 preaching on the subject of mirth or cheer- 
 fulness — " Let your mirth be as the aestival 
 electricity, lambent, but innocuous." Talk 
 English and not Johnsonese. Let your 
 thought govern your language, and not 
 your language your thought ; and for this 
 purpose give your thought its natural 
 expression. Do not let your minnows talk 
 like whales. Is your thought simple .'' Be 
 content with simple words. Is your 
 thought noble? Then simple language 
 most nobly drapes it. If you use lofty 
 and dignified language, let it be because 
 the thought itself insensibly lifts your style 
 to a loftier range. The glory of the white 
 crests upon the ocean wave lies not in their 
 froth and foam, but in the fact that they 
 are lifted high by the great insurgent mass 
 of resistless waters which roll them towards 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 149 
 
 the shore. They are Hke the shaggy mane 
 upon some lion's neck, great because they 
 speak of a hon's strength. Words, in hke 
 manner, have no greatness in themselves, 
 but in the thoughts below them. .As these 
 grow full and strong our language will 
 grow nervous, tense, eloquent. The culti- 
 vation of word-worship is the decay of 
 thought. The ambition of word-painting 
 is a small one, and must thwart true 
 eloquence ; for if your thoughts be not 
 eloquent your words will only mock them. 
 
 Briefly let me give you a few words 
 of counsel on this matter. Keep clearly 
 before your mind the end you have in 
 view. Make straight for it. You will 
 thus be kept from rambling too far into 
 tempting but irrelevant fields, and you will 
 not greatly covet the golden apples on 
 which magniloquent men waste their time. 
 
 Be direct. Write as if you were writing 
 
150 Lectures on ^reaching lect, 
 
 a letter to a friend rather than as if you 
 were writing an essay. I mean put the 
 personal feeling, personal interest, and per- 
 sonal conviction into it. Try and realise 
 that your object is to persuade, to instruct, 
 to help, and to edify. You are not writing 
 for a professor's eye ; there is no prize at 
 stake, except this — the prize of being able 
 to help some anxious, sorrowful, or per- 
 plexed heart. Let your wish be to say 
 what you have to say so that it may bring 
 food to that hungry heart, and you will 
 surely fall into a natural and unaffected 
 style of address. 
 
 Lastly, if you are to look for models, 
 find them in speeches rather than in 
 sermons. You will gain more by reading 
 John Bright's speeches than by reading 
 Blair's sermons. The object of the sermon 
 is not to produce a dissertation which will 
 be praised for its elegance of tone and 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 151 
 
 phrase, but to say something which will 
 move men. Those men who have known 
 how to speak clearly, directly, earnestly, 
 are our best guides here ; and in this there 
 are few better than John Bright. 
 
 For the sermon, then, we need material, 
 order, language — the bones, the framework, 
 the flesh. But this is not all. There yet 
 remains — perhaps more important than all 
 else — the moment when the sermon is to 
 become a living thing among men. The 
 sermon has to be preached. We touch 
 here the question of delivery. It is im- 
 possible to evade the often discussed 
 claims of written and spoken sermons. 
 The debate on this matter seems not 
 always to have been wisely conducted. 
 King Charles II.'s order to your University 
 on the subject was one of those foolish 
 acts which show how easy it is to 
 forget that all gifts are not the same. 
 
152 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 God gives to one man after this manner, 
 and to another after that. It is a great 
 mistake to suppose that there is not room 
 for both methods. It seems to me foolish 
 not to realise that however good the 
 written or spoken plan may be, it cannot 
 be good that either should claim to 
 be regarded as the only method. Good 
 and eminent men have preached written 
 sermons. Good and eminent men have 
 preached what are called extempore 
 sermons. There is much to be said on 
 both sides. There is deliberation, caution, 
 protection against some rash phrase, the 
 opportunity of literary polish, in the 
 written sermon. 
 
 On the other side, let me give you two 
 opinions. Professor Butcher, in his Aspects 
 of the Greek Genius, says : " How few men 
 write like themselves and give us a true 
 impression of what they are. Once on 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 153 
 
 paper, men are apt to lose their own char- 
 acter, and either to become neutral and 
 impersonal, or to take unconsciously a ficti- 
 tious personality." There is force in this. 
 There is a self-consciousness which, once 
 awake, thwarts and criticises, and so dis- 
 turbs the full expression of our thoughts 
 and of ourselves when we take the pen. 
 Insensibly the personal and intellectual 
 attitude shifts. We tend to become 
 critical, doubtful ; we no longer think so 
 much of persuading others as of justify- 
 ing ourselves. The persons addressed 
 are less to us than the thing we write. 
 From this it would follow that if we 
 write our sermons it is of moment that 
 we should at least try to escape the 
 tyranny of the written style, and en- 
 deavour to write as though we were 
 speaking to a friend. 
 
 My next citation is from Archdeacon 
 
154 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Hare, who wrote : " What do our clergy 
 lose by reading their sermons ? They lose 
 preaching ; the preaching of the voice in 
 many cases, the preaching of the eye 
 almost always." The significance of this 
 is that the force of a man's personality 
 is weakened. Both the citations point in 
 the same direction. The spoken sermon 
 seems to bring the man himself into closer 
 contact with the people. The manuscript 
 acts like a screen and seems to keep the 
 fire off. A man needs a great deal of 
 personal force and fire to make himself 
 felt through it. There have been such 
 men ; but it is a rare gift to be able so 
 to realise the people when you are alone 
 in your study that you can write as though 
 you were pleading with them face to face. 
 
 There is another condition which must 
 not be overlooked. The time, place, and 
 presence of the audience create conditions 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 155 
 
 very different from those under which the 
 sermon has been prepared. The thoughts 
 and truths to be spoken may remain fit 
 and appropriate ; but the written language 
 may not meet the occasion. Another 
 mood may be on the preacher; he is re- 
 sponding to the sympathy of the moment 
 and to the subtle unspoken appeal of the 
 people who are there. The machine which 
 worked well enough in the cool tempera- 
 ture of the study will not work in the 
 temperature which the sense of common 
 need and sympathy has heightened. As he 
 reads his sermon the preacher feels that in 
 his present mood, though he would have 
 written this truth, he would not have written 
 it thus. But not being accustomed to speak 
 he cannot modify his language, or bring his 
 utterance into harmony with the needs of 
 the moment. The power of personal com- 
 munion between a man and his audience 
 
156 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 is inexplicable, but real. The bond of 
 common life is felt, and it kindles the soul. 
 Responsive sympathy wakes intelligence, 
 memory, and love. The preacher enters 
 into the spirit of his hearers. He speaks, 
 and they in their turn enter into his spirit. 
 It is something at such moments to be able 
 to adjust your speech so that it may be truth- 
 ful to the hour as well as to the theme. If 
 you are truly master of your subject and 
 know it, as a skilful captain knows every 
 tide and current, promontory and bay, you 
 will be able to shift your course without 
 departing from your general route, to seize 
 and use the changing wind and more suc- 
 cessfully to make your port. 
 
 What follows from these considerations 
 is chiefly this. Let the written sermon be 
 as though it were spoken, and the extem- 
 pore sermon as though it were carefully 
 written. Let the spoken sermon be the 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 157 
 
 ofFspring of much writing and much study. 
 Let the written sermon be always so well 
 mastered and so familiar that it may be 
 read as though spoken. Let it be always 
 written with the remembrance of your 
 people, that in the preaching it may be 
 as the communing of your own heart with 
 theirs. As you write, you should listen 
 to your words as well as see them, should 
 hear them as though spoken in the church. 
 You must escape the essay-feeling ; you 
 will thus be able to test whether you are 
 phrasing and fashioning your sermon as 
 the simple and natural outpouring of truth 
 from your soul to their souls. In this 
 way your own personality will enter as 
 a living thing into your sermon. 
 
 Here I might end were there not one 
 matter more. Our personality may and 
 should live in our sermons, but not thus 
 is there that quickening of God which 
 
158 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 we most desire. The imagery of the 
 prophet will help us here. After he had 
 prophesied to the bones, and the bones 
 had come together, bone to his bone, and 
 flesh had clothed them, so that they began, 
 to assume their human form, the prophet 
 was bidden once more to prophesy, not 
 this time to the dead men at his feet, 
 but to the four winds of heaven. After 
 you have gathered your material, ordered 
 it, and clothed it with speech, it is still 
 your poor weak effort, strengthless for the 
 higher purpose of your work. You need 
 the breath of the Spirit of God to give life 
 to your message. Around you, wherever 
 you are, in the city parish or in the scantily 
 peopled village, there is the presence of 
 that Divine Spirit in whom we live and 
 move and have our being. From all 
 quarters, and in every lonely or crowded 
 place, does the Spirit move in the spirit 
 
IV Lectures on Preaching 159 
 
 of man. He will preach best who prays 
 most, and who after the most careful 
 preparation relies not on self, but on that 
 Spirit which can make our dead thoughts 
 to live, and can quicken the nerveless 
 hearts of multitudes till, filled with the 
 vital force of heaven, they become mighty 
 forces for good, and stand before the world 
 an exceeding great army of God. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 I WISH to speak to you to-night of the 
 preacher in relation to his age. We may 
 exaggerate the importance of our own age, 
 or we may despise it. Both habits are 
 wrong. Schiller's saying respecting the 
 poet expresses the fitting attitude which the 
 wise man should occupy towards his own 
 times : " The poet should be the child of his 
 age, but woe to him if he be its favourite 
 or its slave." This sets forth very fitly the 
 relationship of any man, whether prophet, 
 preacher, or poet, towards his times. He 
 should be "the child of his age." We 
 see what this expresses. Every man owes 
 
LECT. V Lectures on Preaching i6i 
 
 allegiance to his age. The atmosphere 
 which he breathes is that of the age in 
 which he has been born. He is the son of 
 that special epoch. He owes it reverence ; 
 but he does not owe it, nor any age, servile 
 homage or thoughtless flattery. Reverence 
 the age in which you live, but do not dread 
 it. Yield it the homage which all those 
 born in it are bound to give it, but do 
 not be enslaved by it. To put this in 
 another form, you must be in your age, but 
 you must not be wholly of it. 
 
 Recognise that you are the child of your 
 age. Resolve not to be its slave. 
 
 I. Recognise that you are the child of 
 your age. Therefore reverence it — learn its 
 language — understand its spirit. 
 
 I . Reverence it. It is a common tempta- 
 tion to pay homage to any other age than 
 that in which our lot is cast. We look wist- 
 fully back on other epochs and regret that our 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 lot was not cast in them. This is the wish 
 to have lived in any century than the one 
 in which God has called us to live. Some 
 think, speak, and act as though the third and 
 fourth centuries of our era were the only 
 worthy centuries ; others have hearts only 
 for the tenth ; to others, again, the sixteenth 
 century is all in all ; while not a few of us 
 have postponed our worship till the twentieth 
 century shall have brought us its imagined 
 good. Why should we thus forget or 
 ignore the very century in which by 
 God's providence we were born .? To do 
 this is a blunder and to forfeit our power 
 of influence. It is a blunder to do so, for, 
 whether we like it or not, it is in the nine- 
 teenth century, and in no other, that we are 
 living. It is in this year of grace that our 
 duty is to be found. We sigh. Yes, it 
 must be so ; we wish, perhaps, that we might 
 have lived in some more romantic epoch 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 163 
 
 than in this hard, prosaic nineteenth century. 
 But here again we make a mistake. We are 
 carried away by the poetical feeling of dis- 
 tance and we clothe other ages with glory. 
 In matters of history as in landscape — 
 
 " 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, 
 And robes the mountain in its azure hue." 
 
 No age was romantic to the people who 
 lived in it. We see it surrounded with the 
 halo which memory, story, and heart-stirring 
 achievements lend to it. We may give it 
 a place far loftier than that which belongs to 
 it ; and we may overlook the romance of 
 our own day visible to all who can recognise 
 the possibilities of the age in which they 
 live. The men who moved their age were 
 not the men who lived in dreamy regrets over 
 the romance of other days : they were men 
 alive to the tendencies of their own era, who 
 perceived its dangers and its prospects, and 
 who sought to do their duty in it. These 
 
164 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 were the men who secured greatness for 
 their age. If we are to serve our age we 
 must learn to realise its possibilities and we 
 must study its characteristics. We cannot 
 do so, if we indulge in comparisons which 
 tempt us to despise it. Nay, rather let us 
 reverence our age, as the age in which 
 by God's providence we were born. Our 
 work lies not in the past, but in the 
 present. Our task is to serve our genera- 
 tion by the will of God. We can aspire 
 to no nobler duty than this. 
 
 Let us reverence it as men who realise 
 the possibilities of the age in which they 
 live. It is easy, in seeking to praise things 
 which are far off, to become blind to the 
 splendours which lie at our feet ; but we 
 must be blind indeed, if we cannot discern 
 some glory in our own times. It is 
 no age of twilight slumber in which we 
 live. It is an age in which the horizon of 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 165 
 
 knowledge has been enlarged, and powers 
 undreamed of have been put into our 
 hands. It has disclosed to us the order and 
 development of living things. It has with 
 pickaxe and spade disinterred the buried 
 pages of the earth's story. It has laid open 
 the foundations on which human history is 
 reared. It has demonstrated the common 
 elements out of which the universe has 
 been built. While it has seemed to rob 
 man of his glory, it has robed him with a 
 greater glory than any which it has taken 
 away. With the same breath with which 
 it taught him that he was but a part of 
 nature, it has told him how great a part of 
 nature he is and how truly he is the crown 
 of all created things. It is an age not 
 satisfied to rest content with the achieve- 
 ments of the past — its very discontents 
 witness to its greatness, and to its capacity 
 to achieve yet greater things. It is an 
 
1 66 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 age in which a strange sadness mingles 
 with an unquenchable hopefulness. To 
 minister to it we must understand its 
 melancholy and sympathise with its hope. 
 We must be able to console and to encourage, 
 to banish its needless regrets, and to move 
 forward with it in its march of conquest 
 and of hope — nay, to do more, to point 
 forward to the Shekinah light which moves 
 before it, and to sustain it with the faith 
 which grows out of faith in God, that " to- 
 morrow will be as to-day and much more 
 abundant." For the past with its heritage 
 of knowledge is ours, and the future advances 
 towards us with hands laden with gifts. We 
 are as those to whom is given the wisdom 
 of age and the elasticity of youth. 
 
 " We are ancients of the Earth 
 And in the morning of the Times." 
 
 Reverence your age, but reverence it 
 with the homage of truth, for in no better 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 167 
 
 way can you serve your age or render 
 it reverence than by showing that your 
 reverence for it is second to, and so 
 safeguarded by, your reverence for truth. 
 Even in the sacred calling which is to be 
 yours there is temptation to suppress truth 
 out of deference to the prejudices of our 
 age. If we are the children of our age we 
 must take heed lest we become its slaves. 
 
 But here there are two temptations to 
 which we are exposed. First there is the 
 temptation to state as truth what is really 
 only an exaggerated phantom of what is true. 
 The jackal precedes the lion, but the jackal 
 is not the lion. To outrun truth is not 
 truthfulness. The growing light of know- 
 ledge and criticism is not equally distributed 
 over men's minds. Many are blind to the 
 new aspects of truth. Many cling to their 
 prejudices as though they were undoubted 
 truths. But the exaggeration of new 
 
1 68 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 aspects of truth is not a real remedy for 
 this state of things. We cannot hope to 
 diminish prejudice by accentuating oppo- 
 site views. To insult prejudice is not to 
 dispel it. The second temptation leads 
 us in the opposite direction. We may be 
 tempted to suppress what we feel to be true 
 out of an ignoble fear. These are tempta- 
 tions which we may meet. They are felt with 
 special acuteness in an age of rapid move- 
 ment and accumulated discoveries. Under 
 these circumstances what ought to be the 
 attitude of the teacher who desires to be faith- 
 ful to himself and to truth, and also to help, 
 not damage, the faith of his people.'' He 
 cannot be other than open-eyed towards 
 truth. Honesty and earnestness demand 
 this. He cannot be other than gentle and 
 considerate towards the weak and the igno- 
 rant. His compassion and his zeal for their 
 spiritual and moral progress necessitate this. 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 169 
 
 Shall he then exercise a kind of reserve 
 in his teaching ? If by this is meant that 
 he should ever allow himself to state as true 
 what he believes to be untrue, or to declare 
 to be untrufe what he is persuaded is true, 
 then our answer must be, no such reserve is 
 possible to an honest man. Such reserve 
 is an ignoble reserve. Never, therefore, 
 exercise any reserve with regard to anything 
 which is true, when it is your bounden duty 
 to speak. But at the same time we may 
 remember that it is not our duty to speak 
 of every conceivable aspect of truth. As 
 honest men we shall say nothing that we 
 are not persuaded is true ; as wise men 
 regardful of the real purpose of our ministry, 
 there may be many true things of which 
 we shall not speak. There may be many 
 matters of interest on which we may have 
 adopted what are called new views ; we 
 may be persuaded of the truth of these 
 
lyo Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 views ; but we are not called to be exponents 
 of every new thing even if it be true. While 
 truth is to be spoken, the use of edifying 
 should be remembered. 
 
 To act on this principle protects us on 
 the one side from being untrue to our- 
 selves, and on the other from flinging 
 broadcast among our people theories which 
 may prove to be little more than our 
 crude paraphrases of other men's doubtfiil 
 speculations. Be truthful with both the 
 courage and the reticence of truth. You 
 will be the more desirous of this if you 
 realise that you are living in a scientific 
 age. You will be resolute in this principle 
 if you remember that you are little likely 
 to glorify God, or to help forward the wel- 
 fare of your people, or the cause of religion, 
 either by suppressing any needful truth, or 
 by entering upon discussions which are 
 outside your province. But there are 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 171 
 
 matters of which we must speak, and in 
 treating of which we cannot avoid the 
 realms of critical and scientific inquiry. 
 We cannot without cowardice or insincerity 
 skilfully evade every subject about which 
 old and new views are in conflict. Then 
 we must not hesitate to speak what appears 
 to us to be true. But here again our duty 
 is to be mindful of our people's welfare. 
 It is possible in the exposition of our views 
 to state what we believe, in an aggressive 
 and offensive fashion. It is possible to pur- 
 sue a destructive method ; but it is always 
 wiser and better to follow a constructive 
 one. He who does so will succeed in being 
 instructive. The real danger arises when 
 the teacher of new truth speaks as though 
 this new truth were the only truth, and 
 makes no eiFort to show that the new truth 
 is related to principles and convictions 
 which enter into the hearts and lives and 
 
172 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 minds of men. If you are preaching on 
 a passage drawn from some book of the 
 Bible, the date of which is earlier or later 
 than has been popularly supposed, do not 
 begin your sermon by announcing that the 
 date at the heading of this book is " all 
 wrong." Do not abruptly declare that all 
 the views which have ever been held by 
 anybody on the subject have been " con- 
 clusively proved to be incorrect." I call 
 that a brutal way of dealing with the sub- 
 ject. Your statement about the date may 
 be true in itself, but if you stun people 
 whom you wish to persuade, they will find 
 it hard to understand your arguments. It 
 is quite possible, and it is much better, to 
 approach the same subject in a different 
 way. It is always our duty to give the 
 spiritual teaching a foremost place. All 
 critical and exegetical matters should lead 
 up to this. We may explain, we may draw 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 173 
 
 the picture of the manners and customs 
 which the passage demands, we may set 
 forth the historical background, but the 
 higher purpose should maintain the supreme 
 place in our thoughts. When this is the 
 case, questions of debate and controversy 
 will be more or less lightly touched ; and 
 they will be set out in a constructive way. 
 We shall not be as one who knocks the 
 crutch from the lame man's arm before he 
 has given him something better to walk 
 with. Be truthful enough, moreover, to be 
 sometimes alive to your ignorance. Do 
 not be afraid to acknowledge that there are 
 some matters which are as yet beyond your 
 range. It requires some courage to con- 
 fess this, but if truthfulness be our rule 
 there may be times when this course will 
 be the only one open to us. This de- 
 termination will save us from dealing 
 precipitately, and therefore crudely, with 
 
174 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 questions which we have not studied. 
 There are plenty of questions connected 
 with science, Biblical criticism, and socio- 
 logy on which we can exercise self-denial 
 and patience and forbearance. Do not 
 be impetuous — still more, do not yield 
 to the impulse which takes pleasure in 
 frightening the dull and limited minds of 
 worthy folk with startling statements. A 
 clergyman should not behave like a school- 
 boy, who lets oiF fireworks for the pleasure 
 of causing a panic. Such a disposition does 
 not contribute to the advance of truth : it 
 does not promote the spirit of confidence 
 and mutual respect which should exist be- 
 tween you and your people. At the same 
 time, cultivate the spirit of candour. Show 
 that you are awake to all the messages of 
 God from whatever source they come, for 
 God speaks through many books — the 
 book of nature and the book of history, as 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 175 
 
 well as the books of the Bible ; and besides 
 these, He has given us the ever-open book 
 of the human heart. Whatever of truth 
 comes to us from these books, do not be 
 afraid to trust it. In the long run there 
 will be no contradictory message from 
 them. At any rate, to all of them must 
 our ears be open if we are to minister 
 with reverent truthfulness to our own 
 generation. 
 
 2. To carry out your ministry efficiently 
 you must do more than reverence your 
 age, you must also learn its language and 
 understand its spirit. Learn its language. 
 I need not remind you that language slowly 
 undergoes a process of change. The speech 
 of one age is not as the speech of the pre- 
 ceding age. I cannot help thinking that 
 this fact is not sufficiently realised by 
 teachers and preachers. There is often as 
 much difference between the language of 
 
176 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 one age and that of another, as there is 
 between one provincial dialect and another. 
 It would have been as hard for the English- 
 man of the Stuart period to understand the 
 Englishman of Chaucer's day as it is for the 
 peasant of Norfolk to understand the York- 
 shire dalesman. The preacher must needs 
 be alive to the changes of speech and 
 phrase which have taken place and still are 
 taking place. I once listened to a good 
 sermon, which was at the same time singu- 
 larly ineffective, for the simple reason that 
 its language was the language of fifty 
 years ago. There was nothing to object 
 to in the language itself, except that it 
 abounded in phrases which have lost their 
 force, and are almost meaningless in our 
 ears. If we are to avoid ineffectiveness we 
 must speak the speech of our own day. 
 In our studies we are apt to catch the 
 style and to adopt the phraseology of our 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 177 
 
 favourite authors ; we are apt to forget that 
 the language of our most excellent and 
 rightly approved theological writers often 
 needs translation, if it is to be a living 
 language to our people. Would any con- 
 gregation of the present day really appre- 
 ciate a sermon cast in the style of Hooker, 
 Bishop Andrewes, or Bishop Hall, or even 
 Jeremy Taylor ? They are excellent 
 masters, if you will, but they spoke to the 
 men of their generation, and we have to 
 speak to the men of ours. To use their 
 style, however excellent, is to lose touch 
 with our people, and with it the power of 
 reaching their intelligence. The Church 
 of England has followed the Apostolic 
 rule of enjoining on her ministers that they 
 are to use " a language understanded of 
 the people." The spirit of this principle 
 throws upon us the duty of seeing that the 
 people do understand us, and that we spare 
 
 N 
 
178 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 no pains that what we say shall come to 
 them in language which is efFective, because 
 it is the language of their hearts and of 
 their homes. 
 
 Now it does not seem a difficult task 
 which is thus set us. Our power to do 
 it will depend chiefly on two things — the 
 observance of a due proportion in our 
 studies, and the cultivation of close and 
 friendly intercourse with our people. It 
 will be necessary to give our studies their 
 true proportion. If we confine our studies 
 to one class of subjects or one kind of 
 writer, we lose the sense of the relative 
 value of matters. It is by comparison that 
 we judge distances and perceive qualities. 
 Students who bury themselves in one set of 
 studies lose the power of discrimination. 
 They are tempted to regard their one sub- 
 ject as sufficient for all knowledge. They 
 give it authority beyond its province. 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 179 
 
 Whatever question arises, they seek for 
 an answer in their favourite author, or in 
 their one row of volumes. They become 
 learned in one department of knowledge, 
 but their learning is pedantic and useless 
 because it is unaccompanied by that general 
 breadth of view which keeps men from 
 injudicious applications. Cultivate a wide 
 and healthy breadth in your studies. Be 
 acquainted with the past ; be alive to the 
 present ; and use all knowledge in its 
 place and season. Do not take your 
 science from the Fathers, nor your theology 
 from some modern novel. Remember the 
 true end in all your studies. When you 
 read your Bible, you read it to search out 
 the principles of the spiritual kingdom, 
 you do not read it to discover the laws of 
 matter or the facts of natural philosophy. 
 When you read the Fathers, you read 
 them as those who throw light on the 
 
i8o Lectures on F reaching lect. 
 
 history of theological opinion, but you do 
 not read them as experts in science. In 
 all your studies remember the range and 
 limit of the writer. Where he is speaking 
 within his province, give him sympathetic 
 attention. Beyond his province, he is of 
 no value. Gather knowledge from all 
 sources and from writers of all ages ; but 
 remember that you cannot learn to speak 
 the language of to-day by studying the 
 theology of the past. Early and later 
 divines teach us excellently well on certain 
 matters, and for these we do well to read 
 them, but they are not infallible even on 
 those points, and on some questions they 
 were necessarily in complete ignorance ; 
 but in addition to this, their modes of 
 expressing truth are seldom fitted to the 
 nineteenth century. The thing which is true 
 in St. Chrysostom or St. Augustine, often 
 needs to be translated and rephrased if it 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 1 8 1 
 
 is to become intelligible to the men of our 
 own day. We must take care lest in study- 
 ing the great men of the past we forget the 
 language of to-day. The phrases of the 
 past have altered meanings in the present. 
 If you would become apt in the language 
 of your own times, you will gain more for 
 your purpose from ordinary modern text- 
 books of history, science, and literature, 
 than you will out of whole libraries of 
 ancient treatises. Do not be content with 
 saying, I preach the truth. Do not be 
 content till you have translated the truth 
 into the language of your own day. Study 
 that language which gets near to the 
 heart of the people. The language of the 
 greatest sons of the past is not sure to 
 reach that heart. The sermons of Latimer 
 and Jeremy Taylor and South would find 
 yawning audiences among ourselves. We 
 need to alter the obsolete phraseology of 
 
1 82 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 the past into the living language of to-day. 
 That language you must use if you are 
 to make truth clear to your people. Read 
 Dr. Carpenter's Energy in Nature, or 
 Emile Caillard's Forces of Nature. Study 
 books like these, because they put you in 
 immediate contact with the thought and 
 language of your own time. Study them, 
 because they express the teaching which is 
 being given to those whom you have to 
 address. For the same reason visit our 
 public galleries and museums. There are 
 to be found in them increasing oppor- 
 tunities of education. Read the stories 
 pictured on their walls. There you may 
 learn in the stratification of the rocks and 
 soil the unfolded tale of the growth of 
 the earth. There you may meet with the 
 gigantic forms of those creatures who 
 dwelt as our predecessors on this globe. 
 It is well to know something of these. 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 183 
 
 Cultivate, if I may say so, a bowing ac- 
 quaintance with the ichthyosaurus and the 
 iguanodon. Such knowledge will enlarge 
 the mind, and help us to apprehend the 
 language of our times. I am not advo- 
 cating the use of scientific terms or the 
 ambition of long words, but only that 
 general knowledge of the thought and 
 speech of the age which will contribute 
 to clear expression of our thoughts, and 
 to sympathy with the ideas of our people. 
 But this is not all. Our knowledge must 
 not be of books and museums only. We 
 need to gain knowledge of our people and 
 their speech. Be much among your people. 
 Study their ways of thinking and speaking. 
 Observe the value which they attach to the 
 phrases which are current among them. 
 This will correct any tendency to pedantry 
 of either ancient or modern form. You 
 will learn the life and heart of your people. 
 
184 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 You will establish that living sympathy 
 which will find expression in simple and 
 natural language. Their heart will be with 
 your heart, because your heart is with 
 theirs. 
 
 3. This leads to our next thought. We 
 must not only speak the language, we 
 must above all catch the spirit, of the age. 
 You will have understood that I do not 
 counsel you to parade all the information 
 you may gather from scientific treatises 
 or visits to museums. Nothing is more 
 objectionable, or more useless, than a ser- 
 mon packed with pedantic display of the 
 knowledge superficially and cheaply picked 
 up in the week. Your studies must be 
 bond fide. You must read that you may 
 know, and not merely that you may seem 
 to know. You must not appear among 
 your people as the purveyor of shallow 
 novelties, or as one who appears to challenge 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 185 
 
 approval on the score of his being abreast 
 of the times. Here, as elsewhere, the letter 
 killeth. It is the spirit of our age with 
 which we must be acquainted. We must 
 not be ambitious of any parade of human 
 learning, ancient or modern. We must 
 rather so study that our people may feel 
 that even when we are speaking on the 
 simplest possible topics that have no rela- 
 tionship with any scientific question, we are 
 treating them with the spirit of a thoughtful 
 man whose mind moves in sympathy with 
 the best thought of his day, and who 
 reverences truth from whatever source it 
 may come. To do this is more useful than 
 to take some parody of a scientific state- 
 ment, and enjoy yourself and disgust the 
 better class of your people by crushing 
 your invented adversary in the pulpit. 
 You are not called upon to do such things ; 
 there is very little profit in them. As you 
 
1 86 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 read, study in the spirit of the age. When 
 you speak let every person feel, from the 
 very way in which you speak, that you 
 are acquainted with the discoveries and 
 problems of the age in which you live, 
 and that you are capable of treating your 
 subject candidly and intelligently. 
 
 Study the spirit of your age. We some- 
 times are told that our age is an irreligious 
 age. The age is scientific, but it is not 
 therefore irreligious in its spirit. Some 
 indeed have argued that it must be so ; 
 but this appears to me either a thoughtless 
 or an insincere mode of argument. It is 
 perfectly true that scientific studies may be 
 conducted in an irreligious spirit, but there 
 is nothing necessarily irreligious in the 
 spirit of investigation. On the contrary, 
 the spirit of investigation is a religious 
 spirit in the world, for if it is sincere it 
 must be earnestly athirst for truth. To 
 
V Lectures on Vr caching 187 
 
 argue from misuse against all use is a 
 dangerous argument. It is possible to turn 
 its edge against the most reasonable and 
 most religious of customs. Our church 
 services may be made irreligious when they 
 are conducted in an irreligious manner, but 
 we should despise as well as resent the 
 argument that because one man imports 
 an irreligious spirit into divine service, 
 therefore all such services are irreligious. 
 But there is no need to waste time or 
 words on such faulty arguments. I desire 
 only to caution you against the too com- 
 mon assumption on the part of timid and 
 inexperienced people that to be scientific is 
 to be irreligious. Tres medici, duo athei is 
 not true, and it is neither just nor wise to 
 imagine that it is. Above all things we 
 need to be just and truthful if we are to 
 help and understand our age. Indeed, if 
 we are to serve our generation we must 
 
1 88 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 cultivate the patient, honest, and truth-lov- 
 ing qualities of the genuine scientific spirit. 
 This leads me to say, do not be irreligiously 
 hasty. There are many who cannot formu- 
 late their thoughts and views in the current 
 phraseology of Christendom. They feel 
 they must be true to themselves. They 
 dread lest by appearing to countenance 
 phraseology to which they cannot subscribe 
 they should be taken to agree with that 
 with which they do not agree. But they 
 are not therefore unchristian. They re- 
 cognise that mankind has inherited in 
 Christianity an untold wealth of spiritual 
 thought, and a power of ministry to the 
 religious consciousness of the race. And 
 they would not dream of damaging that 
 power or of robbing men of that in- 
 heritance. 
 
 Many of those whom you may be 
 tempted to denounce may, perchance, not 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 189 
 
 be far from the kingdom of God. It is 
 well to remember that our Lord pronounced 
 a woe not only against those who took away 
 the key, but also against those who hindered 
 them that were entering into the kingdom. 
 We need to take heed lest in our ministry 
 we, by the petty spirit of ignorance or mis- 
 understanding, appear to close the gate of 
 heaven to any seeking soul. You know 
 what disastrous results this attitude of mind 
 has wrought in the history of the past. I 
 need only to mention the name of Galileo, 
 or to remind you how John Owen wrote 
 that the philosophy of Newton was a vain 
 speculation and dangerous to the authority 
 of Holy Scripture. John Owen was in 
 many ways a great man, but he was pro- 
 foundly ignorant of the science and spirit 
 of his age. The history of the past may 
 give us lessons for our duty in the present. 
 And the duty which it teaches is the 
 
190 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 duty of cultivating an appreciative spirit 
 towards our own age, lest in misunder- 
 standing its drift and tone we fail to do 
 our duty in it. 
 
 It is, moreover, a blunder to think that 
 every movement of thought is hostile to 
 religion. To think this is to give away 
 the battle beforehand. To believe this is to 
 forget that the Lord sits above the water- 
 flood and the Lord remaineth a King for 
 ever. It is worse than weakness to lift up 
 our hands in terror at the advance of know- 
 ledge and to cry aloud that the foundations 
 are cast down. Our faith ought to be of 
 stronger metal. We ought to rely upon 
 that Providence which ordereth all things in 
 heaven and earth. But more, we ought to 
 be intelligent enough to perceive that a great 
 deal of the present age movement is on the 
 side of faith. We live in times that may 
 be described as difficult times. Questions 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 191 
 
 are debated, and we cannot escape the sound 
 of debate. You will be exposed to the 
 necessity of saying " Aye " or " No " upon 
 many questions in the progress of your life. 
 But you will not be able to answer wisely 
 either Aye or No, unless you have realised 
 how many are the elements in modern 
 thought which are helpful to faith. It is 
 not for me to pronounce an opinion upon 
 scientific matters, but it seems to me that 
 the fear which many entertain of the theory 
 of evolution is a mistake. Certainly the 
 strongest help to faith in the present day 
 comes from those who have frankly ac- 
 cepted it as a working theory. With 
 trivial or secondary points modern thought 
 may indeed be in conflict, but it often 
 affords support and illustration to weightier 
 matters of faith. Essential matters remain 
 untouched. Light has been thrown upon 
 the growth of religion. Our notions may 
 
192 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 be modified, but our spiritual convictions 
 are unimpaired, and even strengthened. 
 The future has been illuminated. The 
 life of the world to come has been brought 
 into clearer relief with the intenser realisa- 
 tion of the one spiritual principle ever 
 working in man's life. 
 
 But there is yet another reason for 
 catching the spirit of our age. By doing 
 so you will learn to avoid dull and offensive 
 blunders. We shall not, for instance, use the 
 illustration of a magnet passing over and 
 attracting a number of metal filings as 
 exhibiting the manner in which the bodies 
 of the dead or their scattered members may 
 be raised again. One hardly knows whether 
 to smile or to sigh over an illustration like 
 this, which reveals alike bad science and 
 bad theology. It is difficult to pardon St. 
 Augustine for teaching that in the resurrec- 
 tion every material item we had ever lost. 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 193 
 
 even to the parings of our nails, would be 
 restored to us ; but it is quite unpardon- 
 able that a Christian of the nineteenth 
 century should sanction such absurd and 
 unscriptural materialism. In the same way 
 we shall not foolishly declare that cremation 
 destroys the doctrine of the Resurrection, 
 for we shall realise that the power of God 
 cannot be set aside by our crude ideas. 
 We shall not reject historical or geo- 
 graphical explanations of difficulties or 
 customs with the view of gaining credit 
 for greater spirituality of mind, and of being 
 able to claim that " we walk by faith and 
 not by sight." It is our duty to avoid 
 casting stumbling-blocks in our brother's 
 way. It is our duty so to understand our 
 age and to be in harmony with its know- 
 ledge that we shall not put before our 
 people raw and foolish theories which 
 irritate the thoughtful, which make the 
 
194 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 righteous sad, and which bring profit to 
 no one. But if we show reverence towards 
 knowledge, if we patiently strive to under- 
 stand our age and are sympathetic to catch 
 its spirit, we shall be children of our age, 
 able to convey to it our message, because 
 able to translate eternal truth into the 
 tongue of our own times. 
 
 II. But, if we ought to be the children 
 of our age, we must take heed not to be 
 its slaves. We are not to be its slaves, 
 because our duty is towards eternity as 
 well as time. We are to minister to the 
 men of our own age, but we are to minister 
 truths which belong to every age. We are 
 men ministering in time, but we are men 
 dealing with principles which are above 
 time. We touch the eternities among the 
 men of a day. And this is the very reason 
 which has made me plead with you to know 
 the language of your own age. If yours 
 
V Lectures on F reaching 195 
 
 was only an ephemeral message, the language 
 in which it was told would be of little 
 moment, but because yours is a message 
 concerning things which endure, it is your 
 part to make it clear and to translate it into 
 the language which the people will under- 
 stand. For the same reason we must be 
 men unterrified and unseduced. It is not 
 for us to pander to men's fancies or to sink 
 to the level of the world's thoughts or 
 customs ; we are to be the vehicles of 
 God's truth to our fellow-men. Do not 
 therefore allow yourselves to become the 
 slaves of the present. Do not be in a 
 hurry to go after every strange or novel 
 idea. Do not be the votary of shallow 
 magazine literature. Scorn to pick up the 
 cheap commonplaces of some second-rate 
 writer and to serve them out to your people 
 in the third-rate fin de siecle language. 
 Remember that the essential principles with 
 
196 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 which you have to deal never change. If, 
 therefore, you are not to be the slave of 
 your age, you must be in the possession of 
 truths which you are perfectly convinced 
 are outside the power of time to touch, and 
 the power of human thought to change. 
 
 It was said by Marion Crawford ot 
 certain people that they had no indoors in 
 their life. Unfortunately this is too true 
 of many people. In crossing the threshold 
 of their first acquaintance you have learned 
 all there is to know of them. They are 
 soon ransacked. They have no deep inner- 
 most life where dwell eternal convictions and 
 thoughts of that which is high above the 
 changing present. Such people become the 
 sport of the hour, the victims of fashion, 
 creatures at the mercy of the most thread- 
 bare periodical or the most vapid of theo- 
 logical novels. Our manhood should scorn 
 to be such as these. The preacher's calling 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 197 
 
 demands more abiding moral characteristics 
 and more conscientious exercise of thought. 
 It is the preacher's function to witness to 
 that which is changeless in the midst of 
 that which is changing. Any one can be 
 the messenger of change ; but none can be 
 a messenger of comfort to man who cannot 
 speak of the unchangeable to those who 
 weary amid life's vicissitudes. For changes 
 are inevitable. To the young change is 
 welcome, because novelty is sweet where 
 hope is strong ; but to those who have 
 overpassed the springtime of life, change 
 means loss and sorrow. Such grow tired 
 of change. They ask for something fixed. 
 They are familiar enough with the shifting 
 scenes of the drama of life. They know 
 what tragedies are unfolded in the develop- 
 ment of the piece. They long to be 
 assured that something abides in the tiring 
 movements which bring sorrow and dismay. 
 
198 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 They want some interpreting voice to tell 
 them that there is a changeless wisdom 
 which presides over these heart-breaking 
 vicissitudes. They turn from the scenes 
 which are so fiill of disappointment and 
 disaster to listen to the comments, explana- 
 tions, or lessons of the chorus. What the 
 chorus was in ancient drama the preacher 
 is called upon to be in the theatre of life, 
 the witness of the permanent among the 
 perishable. 
 
 But not for the sake of the people alone 
 is this hold upon the permanent needful. 
 It is needful for the preacher himself. You 
 are most of you young, and it is the privilege 
 of youth to hope for change, and to be 
 convinced of its own unchangeableness. In 
 the clear atmosphere of the morning every 
 object is seen with distinctness ; and the 
 distinctness of vision is mistaken for the 
 changelessness of the object. When we are 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 199 
 
 young we are very sure of what we see and 
 of what we believe. We are gifted with a 
 large confidence. We doubt the possibility 
 that we shall ever change the views which 
 seem so firmly fixed in our minds. But 
 nothing is more certain than that, if we 
 are worth anything, we shall change our 
 views. Not to change is not to grow. 
 The very law which regulates the growth 
 of our moral stature carries with it the 
 necessity of some change in our intellectual 
 apprehensions. The man of fifty does not 
 think in the same way as the young man of 
 twenty. Great men have often shown their 
 greatness in recanting their early opinions. 
 Men as far apart in time and temper as St. 
 Augustine and Richard Baxter were at one 
 in this. St. Augustine wrote his Retracta- 
 tions, and Richard Baxter in his mellower 
 days has told us how many opinions, which 
 seemed to him important in his young 
 
200 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 days, appeared to him insignificant in his 
 maturer life. It is so with those who 
 think and follow truth. It will be so with 
 many of you. But for this very reason, I 
 urge you to remember that you need to 
 grasp the permanent amid the perishable. 
 You need to lay hold of the kingdom which 
 cannot be shaken, for be sure that the 
 increase of knowledge and experience and 
 the developments of life and thought 
 will shape down many things which appear 
 immovable now. You as much as your 
 people need to have assurance of that which 
 does not change ; for without this how 
 can your heart be fixed, or your message 
 helpful in the world ? There is one change- 
 lessness which I hope will not be yours. I 
 would not have any of you, out of sheer 
 dread of change, climb into the seat of 
 smug and self-satisfied infallibilism. Though 
 your calling is to be teachers of men, 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 201 
 
 remember that though you are teachers 
 you are still men. The call to teach does 
 not confer upon you immunity from error. 
 The sacred and solemn hour which sets 
 you apart from the world for your high and 
 responsible function carries with it consecra- 
 tion of life, but not freedom from the possi- 
 bility of mistake. It is only ignorance which 
 imagines itself to be infallible ; and it is 
 arrogant ignorance which imagines that, in 
 virtue of having put on a white tie, there 
 is no question in heaven or earth, in science 
 or theology, upon which it is not competent 
 to give an opinion. Difficulties do not die 
 at your ordination. 
 
 But neither would I have you fly to the 
 opposite extreme, and pose as the infallibilist 
 of uncertainty, the prophet who is certain 
 that nothing is certain. If you have no 
 message except to declare that there is 
 neither moral order nor truth nor righteous- 
 
202 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 ness in the world — that the universe is 
 chaos and man's reason pulp — then why 
 speak at all? Wherefore shouldest thou 
 run, seeing thou hast no tidings ? 
 
 No ; if you are to be ministers to the 
 sorrows and teachers of the ignorance of 
 men, you must grasp something which is 
 sure and changeless. You must be ready 
 to speak with modesty, but also with con- 
 viction and moral earnestness. We may 
 not, we cannot, claim to satisfy all the 
 doubts, and to solve all the problems, 
 which beset the minds of the men of our 
 generation, but we may have, notwith- 
 standing, a clear and assuring word for 
 their hearts and consciences. For this we 
 need to disentangle ourselves from the 
 transient and insignificant points of brain- 
 wearying controversies which disturb the 
 world and distract the church. We need 
 to go back to the simple and spiritual 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 203 
 
 attitude of the childlike in heart. Ab 
 exterioribus ad interiora : ab interioribus 
 ad superiora. The things without bewilder : 
 there is an inner sanctuary, a holy of holies, 
 in the soul of each man, from whose altar 
 he may ascend to God. Our glance must 
 never be only around us. We need to 
 look upward and inward if we are to bear 
 any true message to those who are around us. 
 When the seer of the Apocalypse was about 
 to set forth the terrible and heart-daunting 
 drama of those principles which are in per- 
 petual conflict in the story of the earth, he 
 was shown first of all the vision of God 
 and the sacred emblems of His eternal 
 and righteous government. Before the 
 scenes of carnage, confusion, and change 
 were delineated, the immovable throne of 
 the Changeless One was seen. The vision 
 serves to remind us that, amid all the 
 strange vicissitudes of human history, there 
 
204 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 was a sovereignty which suffered no shock, 
 no lessening or lowering of its power. In 
 the foreground of the stage were the shift- 
 ing scenes of human progress and human 
 change : in the background, never leaving 
 the stage, there was God's throne — God's 
 presence, the Lamb as it had been slain, 
 the Sevenfold Spirit of God. Whatever 
 else might change, the relation between 
 God and man did not change. God was 
 still the Eternal God, the Father and 
 Refuge of His people. The bond of love 
 and sacrifice still bound heaven to earth 
 and man to God. Still the Eternal Spirit, 
 in manifold, varied, and constant power, 
 might dwell in the hearts of men, instruct- 
 ing their minds and disciplining their 
 lives. Here we may learn the lesson of 
 the changeless truths which at all times 
 it is given to us to declare. Whatever 
 else may alter, however much our opinions 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 205 
 
 on minor matters may be modified from 
 time to time, God is still the same, the 
 Everlasting One, the Succour of His 
 children, the Rock higher than man, the 
 Everlasting One who fainteth not, neither 
 is weary. Whatever confusion may fill our 
 minds, in God who is the Father of all, in 
 the Son in whom is redemption for all, in the 
 Spirit by whom all may be sanctified, there 
 is no change. In our weakness we may de- 
 pend upon the Fatherly love of God. We 
 may enter into fellowship with Him in the 
 law of love and sacrifice revealed in Christ. 
 And in the sustaining power of His Spirit we 
 may grow up into His likeness till we are 
 perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. 
 
 These are truths and spiritual principles 
 which do not change. We must lay hold 
 of these principles if our message is to be a 
 real and assuring one to men who live in the 
 midst of so much that is liable to change. 
 
2o6 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 In conclusion, there is one word I should 
 like to say. If any helping message is to 
 pass from you to men, your sermons must 
 not be the mere product of your study, they 
 must be the outcome of your heart, the 
 expression of your innermost self and life. 
 Avoid altogether, therefore, the habit of 
 looking on your sermons as the necessary 
 task to be undertaken as the week draws 
 to its close. Let your sermons rather be 
 the natural product of your own personal 
 reading, praying, and living. Do not 
 preach because the sermon is an inevitable 
 duty, but because you are full of something 
 which you long to say. Do not preach 
 because you have to say something, but 
 because you have something to say. There- 
 fore be true to yourselves. Cultivate your 
 own heart and character. Make reading 
 and prayer and thought part of your daily 
 life. Let your sermons rise naturally out 
 
V Lectures on Preaching 207 
 
 of what you have been finding true through 
 your own study. In short, be devout men. 
 Make the Bible — the Bible is no less the 
 spiritual book of the world than it was 
 before criticism became a science — make 
 the Bible your constant study. Read, 
 mark, learn, and that with the more 
 earnestness because you live in a thinking 
 and critical age. Let your sermons be, as 
 much as possible, the outcome of this 
 personal study of the Bible, the mel- 
 lowed fruit of your own thought and 
 prayer. Then you will go to the pulpit, 
 not with the unsatisfactory feeling that 
 your sermon has been hastily put together 
 under the dire necessity of time-pressure, 
 but that it is the calm, honest expression 
 of intelligent and earnest conviction : 
 it is that which you have seen, heard, 
 looked upon, and which your hands have 
 handled. It will then come straight from 
 
2o8 Lectures on Preaching lect. v 
 
 your heart. It will be a true message, 
 instinct with the tenderness of human 
 sympathy, and glowing with the fire of 
 God. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 I WISH to speak to you, in this last lecture, 
 on the aim of preaching. But before 
 doing so, I would remind you of one 
 characteristic feature of our age — I mean 
 the force of public opinion. Public opinion 
 has been in varying degree a power in the 
 life of the world ; but it has been reserved 
 for the last few centuries to realise the 
 sovereign greatness of this power. As 
 progress is made, this power is likely to 
 increase ; and, speaking of our own age, 
 I think few will disagree with the opinion 
 of the late Earl of Carnarvon, that there 
 is no greater known force than that of 
 p 
 
2IO Lectures on V reaching lect. 
 
 public opinion. Now it is the preacher's 
 duty to influence this confessedly great 
 power. Public opinion is a strange 
 aggregate of ideas, convictions, and senti- 
 ments. Thought, conscience, and affection, 
 hold sway over men ; and a man's views 
 are generally the outcome of the influ- 
 ence of this combined sovereignty, modi- 
 fied by the power of that imitative faculty 
 which puts men largely at the mercy of 
 tradition, example, or contagion. By in- 
 voking, therefore, the powers of thought, 
 conscience, and love, public opinion can be 
 reached. By these avenues men may be 
 won. To persuade men is the preacher's 
 duty and privilege. If he is true to his 
 calling and to the example of his Lord, 
 he will scorn all baser modes of ascendency 
 over men. He will realise, indeed, the 
 importance of influencing public opinion, 
 because, by its power, laws, which touch 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 211 
 
 the health, honour, and happiness of thou- 
 sands, and customs, perhaps more in- 
 fluential than laws, are established. But 
 more than public opinion, he will wish to 
 influence men. He will certainly not care 
 to ask whether his teaching is in harmony 
 with public opinion or not. He does not 
 seek to be popular. He seeks to draw 
 men within the sacred circle of truth 
 and righteousness. He is content to be 
 a messenger, watchman, and steward, to 
 teach and to premonish, to feed and pro- 
 vide for the Lord's family, and to seek for 
 Christ's sheep that are dispersed abroad. 
 He is to be a fisher of men.. He is to 
 seek that response which is deeper than 
 any mere popular movement of public 
 opinion, the response of the heart, the 
 life, the character. He seeks not the 
 applause, but the souls of men. Like the 
 Apostle, " not yours, but you " is his motto. 
 
212 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 I. Let me then say to you, keep clearly 
 this aim in view. It is always important 
 to have a clear and dominating realisation 
 of the purpose of our work. Often, indeed 
 in all the nobler aspects of life's work, we 
 must act without clearly seeing the issue of 
 our actions ; we must resolve on the venture 
 of faith. But though the issue may often 
 be obscure, the aim of our actions should 
 be clear ; for the consciousness of purpose 
 in our work exercises a strong and healthy 
 influence upon us. The student knows 
 that to study without discovering the pur- 
 pose of a writer, is to lose the value of 
 his teaching. We are like mariners on 
 the ocean without a compass ; we are like 
 critics without a conscience — we read into 
 the work our own fancies, pet theories, or 
 ill-temper. 
 
 " In every work regard the writer's end. 
 Since none can compass more than he intend." 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 213 
 
 If this is a sound principle for the 
 student, and a wholesome counsel for the 
 reviewer, it is a safe and wise one for the 
 preacher. He too needs to keep in view 
 his purpose, lest he fall below the true mark, 
 or be carried away by the influences which 
 tend to obscure this aim. 
 
 There are many such influences. Some 
 of these are obvious enough. The criticism 
 or the flattery of men may tempt us to 
 lower our flag, or to aim at a less worthy 
 end than the winning of men's souls. I 
 need not speak of these temptations ; they 
 are strong and obvious enough to those 
 who know themselves. I select other 
 influences less patent, but of real power. 
 These are the monotony of work, the 
 tyranny of method, and the spirit of 
 clericalism. 
 
 I . There is the monotony of work. At 
 the commencement this is not felt. Every- 
 
214 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 thing is new, and what is new is ever 
 delightful to those whose life is still before 
 them. But when once we have " learned the 
 ropes," the danger appears. We fall into the 
 routine of the parish work. The services 
 must be taken as a matter of course. The 
 Sundays come round with amazing rapidity. 
 The nervousness, which at first made us 
 circumspect or anxiously careful, wears oiF. 
 Every duty becomes a matter of course. 
 Then comes the temptation to treat it as a 
 matter of course. Then human nature is 
 prone to choose the path of least resistance. 
 We fall into a groove, and the groove will 
 generally be found to be along the easiest 
 road ; and the easiest road is not always the 
 road towards the highest goal. Our aim is 
 to get through our work with the smallest 
 possible trouble. We no longer wrestle 
 with our work. We forget that our aim 
 is to win souls. Monotony has fallen upon 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 215 
 
 us with paralysing power. The true end of 
 our work is no longer clearly seen. 
 
 2. There is the tyranny of method. 
 Every good thing has its shadow. Method 
 is good, but a man may become the slave 
 of method instead of its master; and in 
 that case the thing which might be a help 
 becomes a hindrance. In other words, we 
 may fall into a set way of doing things, 
 and the freshness may vanish from our 
 work. We become mechanical ; and in 
 becoming mechanical, we become lifeless 
 and ineffective. We lose sight of the end 
 in the means. We think more of the 
 machinery than of the work which the 
 machinery is designed to do. We are 
 content with things as they are. We have 
 confidence in the methods to which we 
 are accustomed. We distrust new methods. 
 But this attitude of mind invites failure. 
 The reason is simple. It is not always 
 
2i6 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 because the old method is bad, and the new 
 good, that the man who clings to the old 
 fails ; it is rather because the preference 
 for the old is so often an idle preference. 
 It is a sign of the indolence which shirks 
 the trouble of trying anything new. The 
 dislike of fresh enterprise is a symptom of 
 the decay of vitality. It may be a token 
 of the decline of mental energy, and even 
 of moral earnestness ; and even if it is 
 not a sign of such a decadence of power, 
 it may be a cause of it. The man who 
 obstinately cleaves to old methods may lose 
 moral force as a penalty of his obstinacy. 
 It is needful to keep all our powers on the 
 alert, and to be ready to employ every variety 
 of lawful effort to achieve our end. Earth's 
 laws are dead laws, said the Chinese sage, 
 but Heaven's laws are living laws. The 
 sign of intellectual vitality is often seen in 
 the capacity to employ various methods to 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 217 
 
 attain one end. Dulness or indiiFerence is 
 content with one way. The thing has 
 always been done that way — why trouble .'' 
 Why trouble .? Because the readiness to try 
 a new way, or any way which will cause 
 the work to be better done, is an evidence 
 of a spirit which is in earnest not to get 
 work done, but well done. Dulness is 
 ready to quarrel with the living earnestness 
 which tries various methods. It did so in 
 our Lord's day. The dull and indifFerent, 
 unable to see in variety the proof of 
 vigorous love, complained that variety was 
 inconsistency. They were like the children 
 in the market - place ; they did not 
 perceive in the different methods of the 
 Baptist and of our Lord the evidence of 
 that unchanging love which seeks in 
 manifold ways to bring men to itself 
 The proof of an unchanging purpose lay 
 in change of method. If, therefore, you 
 
2 1 8 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 keep steadily in view the great aim of 
 your work you will be quick and 
 capable in varying your methods ; you 
 will not, I think, frame your sermons 
 after one model. You will have your 
 people in your mind. You will consider 
 their needs, and you will weigh many 
 plans with the view of selecting that 
 which is most appropriate to their require- 
 ments. You will keep before your mind 
 the true end of your preaching. You will 
 not neglect the welfare of your people in 
 order to please or glorify yourself by the 
 adoption of some ambitious method. Archi- 
 tects have been known to build stately and 
 noble churches in which no one can hear : 
 the comfort and welfare of the people have 
 been sacrificed to magnificence of effect. 
 Others have built comely houses in which 
 the staircases have been forgotten. It is 
 thus that tyranny of method makes men 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 219 
 
 forget the real end of their work. Those 
 who keep the purpose of their work in 
 view show more alacrity of mind in 
 adjusting means to the end. Love, with 
 quickness of mind, is alive to its object. 
 She will change her modes and vary her 
 plans because she is constant to her aim. 
 So will the true-hearted minister of Christ. 
 He will become all things to all men, that 
 he may by all means win some. If we 
 would possess that freedom of spirit which 
 is elastic in method because it is immov- 
 able in purpose, we must be on our guard 
 against the tyranny of method. 
 
 3. There is the spirit of clericalism. 
 You remember Gambetta's famous saying 
 — " L'ennemi, c'est la clericalisme." We 
 may not agree with the French statesman, 
 but the words may serve as a text to warn 
 us against a very real hindrance in work. 
 I say in work, for it is true in all avocations 
 
220 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 that one enemy of efficiency and vitality in 
 work is clericalism. We all recognise the 
 truth of this when we speak scornfully of 
 Red Tape. There is a clericalism of law 
 and of medicine, as well as of theology. 
 We sometimes mean the same thing when we 
 talk of professionalism. We feel that there 
 is weakness, perhaps something worse than 
 weakness, when the man is buried underneath 
 his professionalism. " Now, doctor," said 
 a shrewd-witted patient, "don't be pro- 
 fessional, but tell me the truth." We see 
 immediately what the patient meant. The 
 man is often lost in his profession. His 
 range of thought, his clearness of vision, 
 perchance his veracity and his manhood, 
 may be enslaved. This clericalism or pro- 
 fessionalism may show itself in different 
 forms. It may appear as dogmatism, or 
 intellectualism, or as mere officialism. 
 
 (a) It may appear as dogmatism. We 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 221 
 
 know how much has been said about 
 dogmatism in recent years. It is declared 
 that people are impatient of dogmatism. 
 When we ask what this means, pessimists 
 declare that it is because the evil hearts of 
 men dislike all doctrine, and would fain 
 have a religion which is robbed of all 
 distinctive teaching. And then they quote 
 St. Paul, who tells of a time when men will 
 not endure sound doctrine. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, I do not believe that 
 this is a fair or adequate account of the 
 matter. There may, of course, be some in 
 every place who are impatient of order, 
 reason, and law ; but it is not, I think, 
 true in any wide sense that people are 
 impatient of teaching. On the contrary, 
 I meet constantly with the very opposite 
 view. I find many saying, I wish that our 
 clergymen would really teach us. We do 
 not so much want vehement or earnest 
 
222 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 exhortations as clear and methodical teach- 
 ing. Yet though this is true, we must admit 
 that there is a very general dislike of dog- 
 matism. We need therefore to ask what 
 is this dogmatism of which people are 
 impatient. It is not teaching itself which 
 is objected to ; nor is it teaching which is 
 clear and definite, and which sets forth 
 distinct principles of faith and conduct. 
 It is rather that form of teaching in which 
 truth is treated as a thing apart from life. 
 It is that dogmatic insistence on the accept- 
 ance of a series of theological propositions, 
 but which fails to bring them into line 
 with the facts and needs of human life and 
 experience. It is the preaching of theo- 
 logical theories instead of living truths. 
 Theological theories may enshrine living 
 truths, but they may be set forth in such 
 a fashion that they sound only as arbitrary 
 propositions. Truth to be true to men 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 223 
 
 must touch man and man's life. An 
 anatomical museum is no doubt a most 
 useful place for studying the structure of 
 the human frame ; but it does not interest 
 everybody. It is a display of dead truth. 
 The sight of a little child building sand- 
 castles on the shore has more of life in it. 
 The bones of men are not men. The 
 scientific parade of theology is not religious 
 teaching. " As art for mere art's sake ends 
 in depraved taste, so mere theology ends in 
 depraved religion " — so wrote Julius Hare. 
 It is a true saying, and one which we do 
 well to lay to heart. The resentment of 
 people is not against religious teaching, 
 but against the arid dogmatism which is 
 offered to them as a substitute for it. 
 This is the danger which besets us. But 
 here again we shall find the careful re- 
 membrance of the aim of preaching a pro- 
 tection to us. We shall remember that 
 
224 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 our purpose is to win men's souls. We 
 shall therefore be under the necessity of 
 considering our teaching in the light of 
 human need. We shall not be satisfied 
 with setting dry bones before our people. 
 We shall seek to feed them with food 
 convenient for them. We shall be earnest 
 in maintaining principles, but we shall seek 
 to make them principles of life. We shall 
 strive to show that the things of God are 
 things of man, because we believe that 
 whatsoever things were written aforetime 
 were written for our learning, and that the 
 message of God must have a fitness for 
 man. 
 
 {b) Besides this dogmatism, clericalism 
 may appear in the guise of intellectualism. 
 Even the man who honestly seeks to 
 teach may not escape this temptation, for 
 there is a snare which waits on teaching. 
 It is the snare which arises from interesting 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 225 
 
 passages. Teaching may degenerate into 
 clever or erudite expositions of these inter- 
 esting passages. The expository teacher 
 may be caught in this snare. The dehght 
 of unfolding unexpected meanings, the 
 keen intellectual pleasure of disentangling 
 the true sense from the false, and the 
 attraction afforded by historical or geo- 
 graphical comments on the text, may absorb 
 the attention, and the moral and spiritual 
 purpose of preaching may be forgotten. 
 But let us keep in view the real aim, and 
 all these intellectual methods will be made 
 subordinate to that aim. 
 
 (c) Lastly, this clericalism may appear 
 in the form of officialism. This is the least 
 pleasing perhaps of all. There is a true 
 and valid meaning in the Apostle's declara- 
 tion, " I magnify mine office " ; but there 
 is a petty self-important officialism which 
 is the very opposite of St. Paul's exaltation 
 Q 
 
226 Lectures on Preaching lect, 
 
 of his calling. No man indeed can value 
 too highly an office of so great dignity and 
 of so great difficulty as that of the minister 
 of Christ ; but he alone magnifies his office 
 whose whole soul is intent upon making 
 himself day by day more fit for its duties. 
 He magnifies his office aright who approves 
 himself as the minister of God " by pureness, 
 by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kind- 
 ness, by the Holy Ghost, by love un- 
 feigned, by the word of truth, by the 
 power of God, by the armour of righteous- 
 ness on the right hand and on the left" 
 (2 Cor. vi. 6, 7). He, on the other hand, 
 brings his office into contempt who pre- 
 sumes on his official position to claim 
 respect for his absurdities, and who delights 
 to throw into ludicrous prominence his 
 little brief authority. The truth is that 
 egotism easily creeps under the cassock ; 
 and a clergyman may make himself and 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 227 
 
 his position the centre of his thoughts. 
 He may judge everything by its bearing 
 on his office and authority. But if he 
 does so, he will find that his office is dis- 
 honoured, and his authority will be flung 
 to the winds. Happier is he who keeps in 
 mind the end of his ministry, and thinks 
 of himself as the servant of God, set for 
 the help of the world. He will remember 
 that his work is to win men to righteous- 
 ness and to God. All his thoughts will 
 revolve round this centre. All events 
 will be measured by reference to this 
 object. Self will be less and less ; God 
 will be more and more ; and his joy will 
 be in any labour, necessity, or distress which 
 will make righteousness and the love of 
 God known and obeyed by men. 
 
 Once again, then, let me urge you to keep 
 clearly in mind and to have always printed 
 in your memory the true aim of preaching. 
 
228 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 It is not for the applause of men, still 
 less is it for self-glory. It is to win men 
 to the love of good and to the love of 
 God. It is to bring them into allegiance 
 to the spirit of Christ. It is to rouse in 
 them enthusiasm for righteousness, love of 
 their kind, and faith in the laws and pur- 
 poses of God. It is the aim which was 
 Christ's in His life and death — it is to 
 bring them to God. 
 
 II. You will not think it strange that 
 I say to you in the next place — Realise 
 your authority. 
 
 Keep clear before you the aim of your 
 teaching, but realise also your authority. 
 
 I. Realise in the first place that it is 
 bestowed on you for a purpose. It is 
 that which the Lord hath given you for 
 edification, and not for destruction. Not 
 for destruction. It is not yours to cast 
 darkness or doubt upon men's hearts. It 
 
VI Lectures on F reaching ii<) 
 
 is not for you to fling out wild denuncia- 
 tions, still less to hurl out anathemas. 
 Only the infallible may venture to do this. 
 Remember that it often happens that what 
 a clergyman says is invested in the mind 
 of some simple listener with a weight 
 and authority far higher than it merits. 
 " I heard it in church " is with some as 
 sufficient for faith as " I read it in print " 
 is for others. It will not do for us to 
 shake off the responsibility by saying that 
 such people are foolish. The foolish, the 
 ignorant, and such as are out of the way 
 are entitled to our consideration. Towards 
 these we must show compassion. We must 
 be jealous over ourselves lest we lead these 
 astray. Our utterances must always be 
 such that they may prove helpful to others. 
 We must take heed lest we cause a weak 
 brother to stumble. Our influence, our 
 authority, and our office are for salvation 
 
230 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 and not for ruin, for life and not for death, 
 for hope and not for dismay, for edification 
 and not for destruction. 
 
 2. ReaUse your authority. By this I 
 mean, however, not realise to yourselves 
 that you have an authority, but make it real 
 in itself, and in its influence in the world. 
 At the commencement of your work this 
 authority is only formal and potential. 
 It is only as experience, knowledge, and 
 spiritual force are gained that it becomes 
 actual. You have, indeed, at the first, 
 authority to act in certain ways — to con- 
 duct the service, to administer the rites of 
 the Church, to visit, and to preach the 
 Gospel. But, as in every other calling, 
 your capacity for work matures with use and 
 honest endeavours aided by diligent study 
 and prayer. When then I say " Realise 
 your authority," I mean use all your 
 power and patience to make it real, in real, 
 
VI Lectures on F reaching 231 
 
 not in mere formal, fashion. Let it be an 
 authority which is not so much asserted as 
 conceded. When authority is formally and 
 ostentatiously claimed, it is as often as not 
 denied. On the other hand, when authority 
 has once been won by having made itself 
 real, it is admitted without being claimed. 
 As long as your authority is only outward 
 and formal, you gain little by having it 
 conceded : you lose disastrously in imperi- 
 ously thrusting it forward. But when once 
 influence has made itself felt within, when 
 the truth spoken has won the inward re- 
 sponse of the conscience and heart, then 
 you have no need to put forward claims 
 which have already been made good in the 
 souls of men. In other words, let your 
 authority become real in having a real and 
 ethical basis in the moral natures of your 
 hearers. It was the Apostle who said. We 
 preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the 
 
232 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 Lord, who was able also to say that by 
 manifestation of the truth he sought to 
 commend himself to every man's conscience 
 in the sight of God (2 Cor. iv. 5 and 2). 
 If we thus make our authority real, we shall 
 take one safe path to make men realise it. 
 
 But we shall not leave other paths 
 untrodden. As we desire to make men 
 realise the true character of our message, 
 we shall seek the knowledge of men, and 
 skill in the fitting ways of approaching 
 them. 
 
 3. Knowledge of men is indispensable 
 for our work. It is only reasonable to 
 say that some knowledge of the nature 
 of those whom we seek to win is requisite. 
 He is a poor fisherman who has not studied 
 in some sort the ways and habits of the 
 fish he seeks. He is a poor parson who does 
 not understand something of human nature. 
 Now this knowledge of human nature, as a 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 233 
 
 rule, comes only with years and experience. 
 Doubtless, there is a gift of insight be- 
 stowed in varying degrees upon men ; and 
 this may be, though rarely, an endowment 
 of the young. But this is unusual. Know- 
 ledge of human nature, insight into its 
 processes and motives, is, as a rule, the 
 heritage of men who have reached ma- 
 turity, and who have exercised their 
 powers of observation and reflection. But 
 whether this knowledge comes early as a 
 gift, or late as an acquisition, the preacher 
 who does not possess it must remain in- 
 effective. St. Chrysostom's knowledge of 
 human nature was as evident as his know- 
 ledge of the Bible. His sermons hold up 
 the mirror to man. He knew well how 
 to show vice its own image. It would 
 not be difficult to derive from his homilies 
 a portrait gallery of typical men. There is 
 no need to insist on this point. Only he 
 
234 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 who knows men can speak to men. The 
 need of this knowledge is evident. How 
 can it be acquired.'' There are only two 
 answers to this question, I think. Know- 
 ledge of human nature can only be gained 
 through the study of books and of men. 
 
 («) By books. I put this first, not as 
 being the most important or effective means 
 to this end, but merely to insist on the fact 
 that there are books which do give us 
 insight into the working of the human soul. 
 Men who have been called upon to in- 
 fluence their fellow-men have recognised 
 this. St. Chrysostom was a diligent student 
 of Aristophanes. This example may stand 
 as a type. It may remind us that the 
 study of the great dramatists is the study of 
 human nature. The poet who sings of the 
 flower and of the bird may delight us. 
 His music is sweet when we are tired of 
 toil, perhaps disgusted with men. To 
 
VI Lectures on F reaching 235 
 
 listen to him is like sitting under the grate- 
 ful shade and listening to the music of 
 the songster who rises skyward. But 
 as man is greater than the flower and 
 the bird, so the poet is greatest who can 
 make man his theme. The whole range 
 of the literature of the great poets of man 
 lies open to us. In their pictures we may see 
 life in miniature and recognise other men's 
 portraits and our own. Sophocles, Terence, 
 Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe may be our 
 helpers in this study. History, too, will 
 aid us here, and if we are wise we shall not 
 forget the sacred literature of the Old 
 and New Testaments, wherein prophet and 
 historian, philosopher and apostle, and 
 chiefly He who spake as never man spake, 
 combine to show us what is in man. 
 
 {h) But the study of books tends to 
 theory. From the study of books we may 
 only make the acquaintance of " bookish " 
 
236 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 men ; we must go to life also. The power 
 of Velasquez as a portrait -painter lay in 
 his sense of the individual : "Bien com- 
 prendre son homme est la premiere qualite 
 du portraitiste." The preacher too must 
 understand man and men ; and he can 
 only adequately do this by that best of 
 teachers, experience. However expert we 
 may be in drama and history, we need to 
 know something of the living flesh and 
 blood, the perplexed minds, the sorrowing 
 hearts and troubled consciences of the men 
 of our own generation. I repeat, therefore, 
 what I have already spoken of before, be 
 wise enough to know your people per- 
 sonally. Visiting will often prove the 
 armoury of the preacher. It will supply 
 him with many a weapon. I do not mean 
 that the confidences of the home and of the 
 heart are to be made the opportunities of 
 the pulpit — only a vulgar mind parades in 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 237 
 
 public these personal sanctities. It is in 
 quite another fashion that visiting gives aid 
 to preaching. Smart and shallow men may 
 be tempted to make capital out of the 
 concrete instance. The true-hearted and 
 honest student works back to principles, 
 and slowly accumulates from the experience 
 of many individual cases that mature and 
 sympathetic knowledge of man which gives 
 him an insight and a power of exposition 
 which is almost prophetic. I cannot leave 
 this point without reminding you of one 
 aspect of this study of human nature which 
 opens to all an opportunity of knowledge. 
 I mean the knowledge of self which comes 
 from honest, but not morbid, self-examina- 
 tion. Know thyself— the counsel is never 
 out of season. Know yourself, for your 
 own sake. Know yourself, for out of 
 self-knowledge often springs the knowledge 
 of others. When Massillon was asked 
 
238 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 whence he had derived his knowledge of 
 human nature, he replied, "By the know- 
 ledge of myself." Human hearts have 
 kinship all the world over ; and he who 
 knows one human heart, even if it be his 
 own, has found a key which will unlock 
 the hearts of thousands. 
 
 To gain this knowledge of men is to 
 be on the high road to the possession ot 
 wisdom in approaching men. Those who 
 heard Bourdaloue's sermons were filled 
 with wonder at the strategic skill with 
 which he advanced upon the hearts of his 
 hearers. He threw out his arguments, he 
 hemmed in his adversary, and only delivered 
 his main attack after he had made retreat 
 impossible. There was consummate ability 
 in this. It illustrates the duty of laying 
 hold upon men. Our best efforts must be 
 directed to this end. And for this end 
 we must approach men through the 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 239 
 
 avenues of the conscience and of the 
 affections. 
 
 (f) Through the conscience. You must 
 do this, for till you have touched the moral 
 sense you have missed the mark. You are 
 not a politician who wants men's votes, nor 
 a professional who wants their applause, 
 nor a cheap -jack who wants their money. 
 You seek the response of the conscience. 
 You seek its homage to the laws of the 
 kingdom of righteousness. Your appeal 
 must be to the conscience. Here you have 
 a force which does not change. In the 
 shifting opinions of men, in the advance of 
 knowledge, in the changes of taste, there is 
 small prospect of firm standing- ground. 
 But the sense of right and wrong remains. 
 This power is changeless in humanity. We 
 may alter our opinions about what is right 
 and wrong : as the race makes progress 
 this must necessarily be the case. The 
 
240 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 sense of wrong should deepen and widen. 
 The rough-handed brutalities of earlier ages 
 are intolerable to us to-day. The balances 
 of the conscience become more sensitive as 
 God educates men. But the power to 
 weigh right and wrong is the changeless 
 right of the conscience. The sceptre which 
 the conscience wields is an imperious 
 sceptre. Specious arguments and special 
 pleadings are swept away. When the ark 
 was opened, the pot of manna and the rod 
 of Aaron had disappeared ; the tables of 
 the law written and graven in stone re- 
 mained. The emblems of miraculous sus- 
 tenance and official authority had vanished 
 in the lapse of generations ; but the moral 
 law was there, unchanged, and still in force. 
 To the moral sense we may appeal. If not 
 in form, yet the work of the law is written 
 in men's hearts ; conscience bears witness, 
 and men's thoughts accuse or else excuse 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 241 
 
 one another (Rom. ii. 15). To the con- 
 science the apostle appealed (2 Cor. i. 12, 
 iv. 2). The response of the conscience 
 was sought by our Lord. We have only to 
 turn to the narrative of His conversation 
 with the woman of Samaria to see this ex- 
 emplified. He first awakened her yearning 
 for a life more restful than her own ; He 
 then struck home to her conscience — "Go, 
 call thy husband." She attempts to fence. 
 He presses home the truth — "He whom 
 thou now hast is not thy husband" (John 
 iv. 16-18). In another fashion, in the 
 case of the sick of the palsy, Christ touches 
 the conscience. " Thy sins be forgiven 
 thee " are His first words. They seem 
 irrelevant, but they are in truth the 
 message for which the uneasy conscience of 
 the sufferer has thirsted. Far worse than the 
 physical weakness which sin has brought 
 upon him is the haunting remembrance of 
 
242 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 the sin itself. The conscience is touched, 
 and the heart is stirred. 
 
 (^) The heart is stirred. The message to 
 the conscience alone is not enough. Indeed, 
 only the tender-hearted who wing their mes- 
 sage with love can provoke the true response 
 of the conscience. Many upright-minded 
 people who have a stern hatred of wrong- 
 doing are powerless to move or melt the 
 wrong-doer's heart. Highly conscientious 
 folk are often powerless to raise the fallen, 
 because they come with the words of reproach 
 and the hard law of retribution in their hands. 
 They tear open the wound. They hardly 
 realise that perchance the wound is painful 
 to the wounded one. They awaken anger, 
 perhaps even just resentment, because in 
 their determination to be outspoken and 
 honest they have taken a narrow and un- 
 fair view of the case. In maintaining the 
 standard of righteousness they have used 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 243 
 
 words which have done an injustice to the 
 sinner. They have made the sore heart 
 more sore. They have alienated sympathy. 
 They went armed with the law ; they 
 brought no oil of love to the wounded one. 
 Far otherwise was our Lord's action. He 
 always brought hope to the heart that He 
 sought to win. He did not avoid the pain- 
 ful truth. The sick of the palsy had been 
 guilty of sin ; and our Lord speaks of his 
 misconduct as sin — " Thy sins be forgiven 
 thee." But He speaks with love. The 
 man has fallen ; the man has suiFered ; 
 but he is no outcast from love. He is a 
 son, God's son, still — " Son, be of good 
 cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee." 
 
 Truth without tenderness misses the 
 mark. Remember St. Augustine's precept, 
 " Magis monendo quam minando." Let 
 love therefore mingle with your witness to 
 righteousness. Let the appeal to the con- 
 
244 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 science be spoken with the force of sym- 
 pathy. We need this power more than we 
 know. The eye of youth, though it can see 
 visions, cannot always discern the need of 
 this power. It is no mere flabby sentiment 
 which weakens the force of your appeal; 
 it is a force which invigorates and intensi- 
 fies that appeal, for it enables the preacher 
 to keep in mind his duty of winning men. 
 It widens his horizon. It enables him 
 to discriminate essential ethical righteous- 
 ness from the mint, anise, and cummin, 
 to which are too often given both a 
 ludicrous importance and a moral value 
 to which they have no claim. We need 
 in pressing home moral truths to possess 
 a clear discriminating power. He is no 
 preacher of righteousness who invents new 
 sins, or who treats the varieties of custom 
 or habit or individual feeling, which dis- 
 tinguish human race and temperament, as 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 245 
 
 matters of vast ethical moment. It is no 
 sign of spiritual ripeness to see sin in things 
 indifferent. Richard Cecil spoke a great 
 truth when he said that one sign of the 
 matured and mellowed Christian life was 
 the possession of " less of scrupulosity and 
 more of tenderness of conscience." This 
 spirit — earnest for righteousness, free from 
 pedantic scruples, instinct with loving pur- 
 pose — carries with it a wondrous power. 
 It is much more than morality tinged with 
 emotion ; it is righteousness inspired by 
 love. Such was the spirit of our Lord. 
 He maintained and manifested sternly and 
 strenuously righteousness before men. Yet 
 with what matchless tenderness He spoke 
 and acted. Nay, His very love made 
 righteousness more vivid and more attrac- 
 tive to men. To sin, as such. He was stern 
 and uncompromising. To sinful ways 
 masked by hypocrisy He gave no quarter. 
 
~ r 
 
 246 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 To the sinning, He was unfailing in His 
 compassion. Love taught Him the sweetest 
 artifices to win back the erring. His words 
 touched old chords in the heart, awakened 
 forgotten memories, and called forth dor- 
 mant aspirations; and then the weary and 
 heavy-laden crept to His side, and the poor, 
 world-despised, fallen one braved the angry 
 and averted looks of men to wash His 
 feet with tears (Matth. xi. 20-30, and 
 Luke vii. 36-50). To such He spoke the 
 reassuring words, " Thy faith hath saved 
 thee : go in peace." We vainly try to 
 storm men's consciences by terror. Unless 
 love be in our hearts, we lose as much as 
 we gain ; for since He who rules on the 
 throne of the Universe is love, and since 
 Christ came to reveal that love to us, we 
 may be sure that love, and love alone, is 
 omnipotent in the spiritual world. Love 
 will crown your authority. This spirit 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 247 
 
 carries its own credentials with it. In 
 jealousy for righteousness and in tenderness 
 of love, you will best make men realise the 
 authority of your utterance. 
 
 III. There remains one thing more. 
 Have faith in your message. We live in 
 an age of quickly-changing thoughts, and 
 the difficulties of the times carry with them 
 temptations. The old ways are played out. 
 We must go with the times. Timid con- 
 servatism is always barren. We must meet 
 the age with its own weapons. There is 
 a sense in which we may cordially agree 
 with this appeal to employ new methods. 
 If it means that we should be ready to 
 adapt our methods to new needs, the appeal 
 is wise and harmless enough ; and of the 
 folly of refusing it I have already spoken. 
 But sometimes this language means some- 
 thing very different. Sometimes it conveys, 
 not the spirit of the vigorous earnestness 
 
248 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 which strives by all means to win men, but 
 the spirit of despair and flat unbelief in 
 the power of God's love and God's spirit 
 among men. Then it embodies, not the 
 wish to win men to God, but the thirst for 
 men's applause or for men's adhesion to a 
 particular party. Temptations are ready at 
 hand. Under the plausible plea of new 
 methods, all sorts of doubtful expedients 
 are tried. The man, having no message 
 from God to give, essays desperate, perhaps 
 undignified, methods of filling his church. 
 He will engage distinguished soloists. He 
 will approximate his methods as nearly as 
 may be to those of a music-hall. The idea 
 of worship recedes into the background. 
 The Church is no longer the home of 
 souls, the birthplace of new spiritual 
 resolves, the quiet place where God meets 
 with men and the voice of His message is 
 heard. It is a successful enterprise. It is 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 249 
 
 full. It is popular. But it is no longer 
 the house of prayer, or the gate of heaven 
 to tired and sin-wearied souls. 
 
 The man who retains faith in his message 
 will resort to no such vulgar expedients. 
 He has a message to give. It is his to 
 deliver it. Whether men hear or whether 
 they forbear, he must deliver his soul. 
 Success in the shape of crowded audiences 
 is not his affair. Success in the sense of 
 doing his best to make his message clear, 
 forcible, and loving, and of bringing men 
 to realise the near, righteous, and loving 
 God, is his desire. Believing that he has a 
 message, and believing in the message which 
 he has, his own supreme aim is that, where 
 he can and as he can, the message should 
 be spoken. He feels that popularity-seek- 
 ing expedients are needless. Christianity 
 is still fitted to do its work. "The ever- 
 lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the 
 
250 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is 
 weary" (Isaiah xl. 28). His word and 
 message shall prosper in the thing whereto 
 He sends it. 
 
 Have faith in your message. It is stiU 
 a strong, heart -reaching, and unfailing 
 message. It is the message of the love 
 which encircles human life, which redeems 
 human frailty, which dwells in human 
 hearts. If it seem to us weaker and less 
 apt to achieve victory than in the days of 
 yore, it is not because God has changed, 
 or the force of His love, or the truth of 
 His word ; it is because we grasp His 
 hand with less firmness and less courage 
 than they of old did. But if His 
 strength and love remain the same, the 
 wonderful works which were done of old 
 may be wrought anew in our generation. 
 If this be thought by some to be too good 
 to be true, remember Ruskin's caution that 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 251 
 
 the highest unfaith lies in such a sentiment, 
 for it means that it is possible for us to 
 conceive a good beyond God's power to 
 make true, and that God has given us laws 
 and principles which we can appreciate, but 
 which will not work. No, let us dismiss 
 this despondency of unfaith. , In our day 
 and generation one word of assurance is 
 opening to us more clearly than to the men 
 of the past. We no longer look to the 
 marvellous for the attestation of the moral, 
 for we may find in the moral itself fresh 
 wonders and an unfailing witness of things 
 spiritual. In man's nature we may find an 
 evidence higher than the miraculous could 
 afford. In the things within us, rather 
 than in the things above us, we may find 
 the true soul of life. 
 
 " You'll find the soul you have missed 
 Within yourself." 
 
 " The man who wrote that book made 
 
252 Lectures on Preaching lect. 
 
 me," was the language of the native who 
 was aiding Bishop Boone in his translation 
 of the Bible. "I believe this to be 
 God's book because it is man's book," has 
 been the thought if not the language of 
 thousands. For in spite of all the vexed 
 questions of miracles and criticism, the 
 spiritual and moral power of the sacred 
 message finds response in the hearts to 
 which it is sent. The spirit of Christ is 
 recognised everywhere as the true spirit 
 which, living in human hearts, would bring 
 about the true revolution and the golden 
 age. He has become the conscience of 
 humanity. He is His own witness. He 
 is the door, and He also enters by it ; and 
 as He enters, He is recognised as the 
 Shepherd of mankind. 
 
 If you will but preach simple Christ to 
 simple men, you will have no reason to 
 doubt the power of God in the nine- 
 
VI Lectures on Preaching 253 
 
 teenth century. This means much. It 
 means certain and solemn verities which are 
 believed among us. But it means more. 
 It means a message for society. It means 
 a message for the Church. It means a 
 message to men. In the world it means 
 the regeneration of the world. In the soul 
 it means the inspiration of the soul. In 
 the hereafter it means satisfaction. "When 
 I wake up after Thy likeness, I shall be 
 satisfied with it." Study this message till 
 you know it, till you love it, till you 
 assimilate it. 
 
 Never leave off this study. Seek to in- 
 crease in stature and strength. Doubt will 
 grow less and less, though the reasons of 
 doubt may grow more and more. Your 
 grasp upon the inward and spiritual will 
 be too strong. The world and life you 
 will feel to be, as Browning said, "too 
 big to pass for a dream." It will be 
 
254 Lectures on Preaching lect. vi 
 
 " no blot for you, nor blank." It will 
 mean "intensely and mean good." Your 
 message will be to you more simple and 
 more real from day to day, your faith in 
 it more strong ; and that, because your faith 
 and hope will be in God, and because you 
 will have clearer vision of Him who is alive 
 for evermore, and who is with you always, 
 even unto the end of the world. 
 
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