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THE 
 
 IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 REV. JOHN I. SWANDER, D. D., Ph. D , F. S. Sc. 
 
 Author of "The Substantial Philosophy," "Text Book on 
 
 Sound/' "The Invisible World," "The Reformed 
 
 Church/' "The Swander Family," "Old Truths 
 
 IN New Form," "The Evolution of/Keligio'n/' " 
 
 "The Divinity of Our Lord," "The Mer- 
 
 CERSBURG Theology/' Autobiography 
 
 AND Selected Works of Dr. Swan-x'^^R'^ Or rrUr^^j-Q 
 der. "Seeing The Invisible/"" x v^ 
 
 JAN le 1989 
 
 A COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 Delivf:red in the Theological Seminary of the Reformed 
 
 Church in the United States, at Lancaster, Pa., on- 
 
 THE Foundation of the Sw^ander Lectureship, and 
 
 Published Under the Directory of the Faculty. 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO 
 
 CENTRAL PUBLISHING HOUSE 
 
 1914 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I. Ministerial Authority — Its Source, Scope and 
 
 Limitations 1 
 
 II. The Ministerial Motive 15 
 
 III. The Ministerial Message 32 
 
 lY. The Ministerial Message — Continued 46 
 
 V. The Ministerial Message — Concluded 62 
 
 VI. The Ideal Preacher's View of the Relation Be- 
 tween God's Remedial Kingdom and the Other 
 Institutions of Divine Ordination 78 
 
 VII. The Supernatural Source of the Ideal Preacher's 
 
 Efficiency 94 
 
 VIII. The Ideal Preacher as a Christian Philosopher. . 107 
 
 IX. The Ideal Preacher's Sermonic Use of Divine 
 
 Revelation 125 
 
 X, The Ideal Preacher's Sermonic Use of the Bible 
 
 and the Pericopes 145 
 
 XI. Art as an Element in the Ideal Preacher's Ser- 
 mon and its Delivery 161 
 
 XII. The Ideal Under- Shepherd's Relation to the 
 
 Lambs of the Flock 180 
 
 XIII. The Ideal Preacher as an EvangeHst 199 
 
 Hi 
 
FOUNDATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Swander Lectureship 
 
 The Swander Lectureship in the Theological Seminar}' of 
 the Reformed Church in the United States, located at Lan- 
 caster, Pa., was founded by the Reverend John L Swander, 
 D. D., and his wife, Barbara Kimmell Swander, for the two- 
 fold purpose of promulgating sound christological science and 
 of erecting a memorial to their daughter, Sarah Ellen Swan- 
 der, bom April 30th, 1862, died September 29th, 1879 ; and to 
 their son, Nevin Ambrose Swander, born August 7th, 1863, 
 died March 29th, 1884. It shall be known as the "Sarah Ellen 
 and Nevin Ambrose Swander Lectureship." For its main- 
 tenance a sum of money was given to the Board of Trustees 
 of the said Theological Seminary, the interest of which is to 
 be applied for the publication of lectures in book form, in 
 accordance with the conditions defined by the terms which 
 accompanied the convej-ance of the fund into the hands of 
 the aforenamed Board of Trustees. 
 
 These lectures are delivered by members of the Faculty of 
 the Theological Seminary, and others whom the Faculty may 
 select and secure for such service; and while the said Faculty 
 shall guard diligently against the admission of anything into 
 these memorial volumes at variance with the truth as it is in 
 Jesus, they shall not be held responsible for the views of the 
 individual lecturers. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE I 
 MINISTERIAL AUTHORITY. 
 
 Its Source^ Scope and Limitations. 
 
 The proper and thorough discussion of this sub- 
 ject must start, like all other logical inquiries, with 
 one or more assumptions, and with the probability 
 that the truth of such assumptions will manifest it- 
 self more and more until it finds itself confirmed and 
 glorified in an incontrovertible conclusion. 
 
 First, It must be assumed that the Bible as a col- 
 lection of Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testament, is a duly authenticated record of a revela- 
 tion of truth from a higher to a lower realm of ra- 
 tional and ethical being. 
 
 Second, That the source of such revelation is the 
 eternal and personal God, the Fountain Head of all 
 principalities, powers and authority in Heaven and 
 on earth. 
 
 Third, That the medium and personal fullness of 
 such revelation is the Son of God who was made or 
 assumed flesh and dwelt among us, and still continues 
 to dwell among us in and through the Holy Spirit, 
 full of grace and truth. 
 
 Fourth, That the Son of God as Immanuel, has 
 planted and is now developing a kingdom upon the 
 earth to be an Everlasting Kingdom, and to rule 
 over all by gathering up into itself all the essential 
 
2 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 elements in all the lower kingdoms in the ascending 
 series of nature's economy, to the end that Christ may 
 be all in all to the glory of God the Father in the 
 eternal happiness of his redeemed people. 
 
 Fifth, That this kingdom now has its embodiment 
 in the Church which is not only pre-eminent over all 
 mere human corporations and organizations, but also 
 an organism or the mystical "body of Christ" for the 
 very purpose of perpetuating through all time the 
 remedial and completive virtues and forces of the 
 incarnation until all "the ransomed of the Lord shall 
 return and come to the heavenly Zion, with songs 
 of everlasting joy upon their heads, when sorrow 
 and sighing shall flee away." 
 
 Sixth, That in all the ages and stages of its de- 
 velopment this Messianic Kingdom has in itself and 
 acting out from itself agents and organs heralding 
 the wall of the King and the mission of His spiritual 
 empire upon our planet. 
 
 Seventh, That these agents and organs include a 
 distinct, yet inseparable class of men called and an- 
 ointed of God to negotiate a treaty of peace with his 
 rebellious subjects, and perpetuate a brotherhood of 
 all who surrender themselves to become new^-born 
 children of their Heavenly Father, and consequently 
 heirs by grace to that inheritance which is undefiled, 
 incorruptible and that fadeth not away. 
 
 These offices or agencies are not separable from 
 the organism of the Church. They cannot exist out- 
 side of it. The ministry is endowed with functional 
 authority because of its organic connection with the 
 church in which it is grounded and through which 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 3 
 
 it stands so vitally related to Christ as to derive its 
 authority both immediately and mediately from Him. 
 Legitimate ministerial authority is, therefore, not so 
 much dependent upon direct apostolic succession as 
 it is upon the fact of Christological and ecclesiasti- 
 cal procession. A house of bishops presupposes a 
 complemental house of the laity. And there can be 
 neither without the Christian Church in which they 
 both stand and rejoice in the hope of the mediatorial 
 glory of God's incarnate Son. The divine-human 
 Head implies a divine-human "body fitly framed and 
 knit together by virtue of that spiritual synovia 
 which every joint supplieth. " Here, then, is author- 
 ity from Christ, because of life and power in Christ ; 
 and any authority used by a minister is valid only 
 as it is exercised in Christ's name, and in accordance 
 with the directions given in his credentials and com- 
 mission. 
 
 Grounded in the Christian Church, as an organic 
 part thereof, an ordained agent therein, and an 
 ambassador of Christ, the authoritative Head thereof, 
 the minister has authority to exercise all his minis- 
 terial functions, according to the full scope of his 
 commission as such ambassador. His official author- 
 ity, received from Christ in the organism of the Holy 
 Catholic Church, is as broad as his commission and 
 as extensive as the religious and ethical necessities 
 of the human race. 
 
 Christ's Messianic ministry, although he was sent 
 by the Father, proceeds from Himself as the foun- 
 tain head of all remedial virtue and authority : The 
 minister's ambassadorial authority is derived from 
 
4 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Christ in accordance with his ''Go ye therefore'^ and 
 is as wide as the open door to the field of his oppor- 
 tunities. 
 
 Furthermore, the distinct, yet inseparable func- 
 tions of the Christian ministry are not only derived 
 from, but also correspond with the three distinct and 
 inseparable sides of Christ's Messianic character. 
 Like Christ, before him, hack of him, above him, and 
 within him, the minister performs official acts be- 
 cause he has an official character. In this respect, 
 the difference between Christ and his ambassadors 
 is the fact that while Christ is the Fountain opened 
 up in the House of David the minister merely stands 
 in and moves forward with the living stream of life 
 and authority whose mission it is to "make glad the 
 City of God, the habitation of the Most High." 
 
 Moreover, all Christians, whether ordained min- 
 isters or laymen, or laywomen, are, in a general sense, 
 partakers of Christ's life and authority because of 
 the fulfilment of Joel's prophecy: "I will pour out 
 my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your 
 daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream 
 dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also 
 upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those 
 days will I pour out my Spirit." 
 
 Ever since the Reformation this general partici- 
 pation in Christ's fullness has been called and empha- 
 sized the general priesthood of all believers. This 
 was and is in distinction, though not necessarily 
 separable from the more special Charisma or gift 
 with which ordained ministers are invested. The 
 general ''priesthood^' of believers is, however, a term 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 5 
 
 fully commensurate with the true idea of all that may 
 be possessed and practiced by every true Christian. 
 
 Perhaps the Heidelberg Confession, more truly 
 than any other symbol of doctrine, brings out this 
 truth in Questions 31 and 32 : " Why is He called 
 Christ that is Anointed?" "Because He is ordained 
 of God the Father and anointed with the Holy Ghost, 
 to be our chief Prophet and Teacher who fully reveals 
 to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning 
 our redemption ; and our holy High Priest, who by 
 the one sacrifice of Himself has redeemed us, and ever 
 liveth to make intercession for us with the Father; 
 and our Eternal King who governs us by his word 
 and Spirit, and defends and preserves us in the re- 
 demption obtained for us." "But why art thou 
 called a Christian?" "Because by faith I am a 
 member of Christ and thus a partaker of his anoint- 
 ing." 
 
 As already said, this partaking of Christ and his 
 anointing is common to all Christians; yet it belongs 
 more specifically to ordained ministers to govern, in- 
 tercede and teach in his name and by his authority — 
 not only by his authority over them, but also in them 
 and through them as thus divinely anointed and 
 appointed by him. 
 
 In the Old Testament dispensation these several 
 functions of Prophet, Priest and King, as the shadows 
 of better things to come, were vested in three dis- 
 tinct classes of men, the Prophet of God, the High 
 Priest of the Sanctuary and the King of Israel. For 
 example it may be cited that while Nathan was the 
 Prophet, Zadock was the Priest and David the King. 
 
6 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 At the close of that dispensation, these several 
 functions were embodied in the Anointed One, The 
 Christ. Probably this fact was in part what Paul 
 meant in writing to the Ephesians ; 1 : 10. " That 
 in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might 
 gather together in one all things in Christ, both which 
 are in heaven, and which are on earth ; even in him. ' ' 
 Moreover these gifts or charisma were thus concen- 
 tered in Christ to be sequentially and qualifiedly 
 conmiunicated or imparted by him to all who are 
 vitally united with him in his mystical body, the Holy 
 Catholic Church, the fulness of Him who filleth all 
 in all. 
 
 This fact is therefore to be emphasized in our 
 present-day hair-splitting disputations and hair-pull- 
 ing discussions over Catechisms, Creeds and Eccles- 
 iastical polities. Authority from Christ to the Chris- 
 tian minister is not communicated merely on paper 
 outside of the parties interested, as an abstract power 
 of attorney authorizing one party to act as a mere 
 representative of the other and greater party, but 
 rather by virtue of a historic continuity in the con- 
 stitution of concrete and organized Christianity, ex- 
 tending thus with unbroken succession through all 
 time. This would be the case indeed even though if 
 by some calamity all the Bibles in Christendom were 
 to go up in smoke. The self-perpetuating kingdom 
 of God on earth would still not perish from the earth, 
 whether men were ordained by bishops, by the lay- 
 ing on of hands of the presbytery, or, as claimed by 
 Henry Ward Beecher, through the unbilical chord. 
 
 But while we have the Bible as belonging to the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 7 
 
 great ethical plan of the ages, and as an incarnation 
 of God's "more sure word of prophecy" whereunto 
 we do well to take heed, it must be held as above tra- 
 dition, yet not in such exclusive way as to ignore all 
 that is authoritatively valuable in organized and his- 
 toric Christianity. Here and at this point all gen- 
 uine and intelligent Protestantism is out of agree- 
 ment with the utterances from the Council of Trent 
 that all ecclesiastical traditions approved by Ecumeni- 
 cal Councils have didactic authority equal to that of 
 the Bible. " 
 
 This finally brings us to the question more directly 
 under discussion in this lecture, viz. : Who is to give 
 the Bible infallible interpretation for the preacher 
 in the exercise of his prophetic function? 
 
 Here let the pope's bulls be taken by the horns 
 with the declaration that no one is able so to inter- 
 pret everything in the Bible as to reach an abso- 
 lutely infallible conclusion. The Bible itself, as now 
 constituted, is not without its elements of human 
 errancy, although God's Woi^d — the Divine side of 
 the book — "is forever settled in heaven" (Psalm 
 119:89). Indeed it was settling itself on earth and 
 in time for twenty-six centuries before the first syl- 
 lable thereof was statutorialized on stone in Mount 
 Sinai ; and even then its fragile statutorial form was 
 dashed to pieces by human imperfection, at the foot 
 of the mountain. 
 
 With this instructive and suggestive lesson before 
 us, let us now meet the question more calmly than 
 did Moses when he lost his superlatively devout tem- 
 per in a paroxysm of religious zeal for holy and 
 
8 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 sacred things. Conceding that all the original manu- 
 scripts of the Canonical Scriptures, including St. 
 James' "Epistle of Straw/' were written by holy 
 men under the plenary inspiration of the Holy Ghost, 
 and that they were without any defects, whatever; 
 yet the generally acknowledged interpolations by 
 scribes and translators, and the obviously incorpor- 
 ated parts by many subsequent and conflictive re- 
 visions of the Bible are enough to lead any candid 
 and openminded Christian scholar to admit that the 
 Book now contains defective elements in the human 
 side of that most important and trustworthy of all 
 sacred literature, and the most reliable record that 
 we have of the world's past history. 
 
 The Pope is not perfect and infallible as the self- 
 proclaimed vice-gerent of Christ in regal authority, 
 in his pretentious primacy at the head of an ecclesias- 
 tical priesthood; and how can he be in his interpreta- 
 tion of all the mysteries that the angels have vainly 
 sought to fathom. And how much better is the little 
 narrow-contracted papacy of exclusive private judg- 
 ment when the self-isolated individual, esteeming 
 himself wiser than all the rest of Christendom, puts 
 his own theory into the Bible and draws it out again 
 through the little pipestem of his own opinion? 
 Neither is it any better to say that the Bible inter- 
 prets itself, when all the testimony in such case is of 
 necessity passed upon by the same individual in the 
 exercise of private judgment. 
 
 The ancient and more modern symbols of doctrine 
 are not perfect. Creeds are rather the apprehensions 
 of the truth by various schools of religious philoso- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 9 
 
 phy in the respective ages that formulated and gave 
 them birth, instead of shackles to bind and paralyze 
 the freedom of all the ages to come. For this reason 
 even the best of creeds must be subject to a recast 
 at least into new phrasings, and made to adjust them- 
 selves and their teachings to later developments of 
 the more manifest meaning of the Bible in the 
 broader, brighter splendor of recent discoveries in 
 philology, archeology, ethics and religious psychology. 
 Not that truth changes in its essential essence and 
 elements. "The eternal years of God are hers; 
 *'Yet modern Christian scholarship may lead to 
 many modifications of ancient apprehensions of the 
 truth as reached in the defective ages that have 
 already rolled away. 
 
 But, assuming that the individual minister has 
 authority vested in him immediately from Christ and 
 mediately in the Church, what is the scope and what 
 are the limitations of such authority? Certainly its 
 scope does not extend beyond what is committed to 
 him by the "great Apostle and High Priest of his 
 profession, Jesus Christ." Neither is such authority 
 limited to any one or two of the three several func- 
 tions of his ministerial office. He is, in some quali- 
 fied sense, placed in possession of the regal function 
 to have part in church government. Otherwise, what 
 can there be in the language of the Chief Shepherd 
 and royal Bishop of the Church in His announcement 
 to somebody; "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth 
 shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall un- 
 bind on earth shall be unbound in heaven." What 
 would be the use of the "Keys of the Kingdom of 
 
10 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Heaven ' ' if not given to somebody to exercise author- 
 ity in opening the doors of the Church and in closing 
 them in administering ecclesiastical discipline? Are 
 we ready to admit from our proper Protestant stand- 
 point that these keys are exclusively in the hands of 
 St. Peter and his papal successors in office upon the 
 banks of the Tiber? 
 
 Secondly, the minister is, in some limited sense, 
 a Christian priest. Does he not have part in the con- 
 secratory act performed in holy baptism? Does he 
 not offer eucharistic sacrifice at the holy communion? 
 May not the minister who as a preacher proclaims the 
 promise of ablution to the penitent through the cleans- 
 ing blood of Christ also pronounce conditional abso- 
 lution by the authority of the Great High Priest? 
 Does he not in his delegated authority intercede for 
 the people at a throne of grace, and pronounce the 
 benediction upon the dispersing assembly ? Are these 
 not priestly acts? 
 
 Thirdly, the general office of the Christian minis- 
 try involves the preaching or teaching function. He 
 is a prophet or herald to proclaim the truth as it is 
 in Jesus. This prophetic function, though not more 
 essential than the regal and sacerdotal in the full 
 scope of his anointing authorizes him to stand out 
 more prominently along the firing-line of God's em- 
 bannered and embattling host. It is the most obvious 
 manifestation of God's purpose and power in his pro- 
 gressive and aggressive kingdom in the world. Un- 
 der the influence of the Holy Spirit, the sermon 
 authoritatively calls upon the world to bring forth 
 the royal diadem and crown Immanuel Lord of all. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 11 
 
 Especially is it thus emphasized since Luther un- 
 chained the Bible at Erfurt, since Zwingli brought 
 out the meaning of his Greek testament, and since 
 John Calvin's Christian Institutes were wrought out 
 in the laboratory-brain of the Genevan Reformer. 
 For one thousand years previous to that time the pul- 
 pit had been crowded back into a corner of the great 
 cathedral to make room for the undue prominence of 
 the celebrant and his priestly mummeries. The Re- 
 formation and the consequent scintillations of greater 
 evangelical light from the emancipated Bible have 
 made the pulpit and the prophetic function of the 
 minister the Gibraltar of all genuine Protestantism. 
 
 But even in Protestantism, as now exploited by 
 many, the pulpit is not inerrant and infallible. Its 
 prophetic forces are too generally misdirected or its 
 fragrance lost upon the desert air. While the Romish 
 church has the dry rot. Protestantism has its fester- 
 ing sores. This religious condition of things is in 
 part the result of the evolution of the germ-principle 
 of humanism in the rennaissance of the 15th century, 
 carried over into the Reformation in the 16th century, 
 and now being carried out to its ultimate consequences^ 
 in our disastrous sect system and religious individ- 
 ualism. The predominancy of the centripetal trend 
 in the pre-reformation age has reached over to the 
 rampant centrifugal tendency of false freedom. 
 Freiheit rules the camp, the crown, the court. And 
 perhaps this false and fatal drift is nowhere more 
 obviously manifest than in some of our so-called 
 Protestant pulpits. All that some novices have to do 
 to become spectangular evangelists is to sprout their 
 
12 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 own wings and graduate from the gambling house, 
 the saloon or in some den of unmentionable infamy. 
 Like the Egyptian frogs, these pulpit mountebanks 
 leap into the dough-trays of God's sanctuary and 
 spawn their miserable stuff under the pretence of 
 ministerial authority. This poisonous float is labeled 
 as the bread of life and palmed off upon the religious 
 credulity of starving men. There is no heavenly 
 authority for such damnable hodge-podge. Out up- 
 on such travesty ! It is served neither by the author- 
 ity nor in the Spirit of Christ. If any man have 
 not the quiet and orderly spirit of Christ, he is none 
 of his, whether preacher or layman. If any have the 
 Spirit of Christ, he has also, in some degree, the mind 
 of the Master. This the true minister is presumed 
 to have in a sense not strictly predicable of those who 
 have not been clothed upon and invested with the 
 prophetic function and the corresponding qualifica- 
 tions and ability of versatile Christian scholarship. 
 
 Christ spoke as one having authority, and not as 
 a scribe; and so do we. The day of Pentecost has 
 now fully come. The Apostolic commission has been 
 given. The Scribes were not ambassadors for him. 
 He that heareth you heareth me, saith the Lord. As 
 though Christ doth beseech the world by us, we pray 
 it in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God. 
 
 Our authority is, however, limited within the com- 
 pass of authority derived. He spoke as one having 
 authority in himself, and as peculiarly related to the 
 Father : We speak as many having authority delegated 
 by him to men related ambassadorily to himself. ''As 
 my Father hath sent me, so send I you." 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 13 
 
 Furthermore, this authority from Christ and the 
 message he commits unto us are subject to limitation 
 and enlargement, according to the degree in which 
 we stand mutually related to him, to all saints, and 
 in touch with all sound theologians and to the whole 
 body of the Head. This truth we can not wave aside 
 as a mere figure of rhetoric. "I in them and they in 
 me." Neither can religious experience be ignored as 
 a part of the minister's equipment. Christ speaks 
 in the hearts and minds of all true believers; but 
 especially to the ministers who study exegesis upon 
 their knees, and when, like St. Paul, they seek to 
 comprehend with all saints. The minister who seeks 
 to comprehend all truth in and by himself, will prob- 
 ably fail to comprehend the fact that he is a clerical 
 ass. We may be neither able nor obliged to 'believe 
 all the doctrines and teachings of Christendom. 
 Neither need we endorse blindly all that is set forth 
 in the creeds, but we can not wisely say that they 
 were all fools who like the Church Fathers lived 
 nearer than we do to the Fountain Head of truth, 
 and received their inspiration as under the very 
 breath of the personal truth incarnate. 
 
 Furthermore, it is not required of us ministers that 
 our sermons and teachings be absolutely free from 
 all error in doctrine and manner of presentation. If 
 our Lord himself bare our infirmities; if the Cap- 
 tain of our salvation was made perfect in some sense 
 through suffering; if the Bible be not absolutely free 
 from defects peculiar to the human side thereof; if 
 the Church be not yet free from spots and wrinkles 
 and other such things, it should not be expected of 
 
14 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Tis and we should not look for immaculacy in our- 
 selves or in others. However pure the truth of God, 
 we have this treasure in earthen vessels; and why 
 should we expect these vessels to be more pure than 
 the icicle that hung from the eave of Diana's temple"? 
 Jf we now know only in part, w^e can only prophesy 
 in part. And only when that which is perfect is 
 come shall we know as we are known and see as we 
 are seen. Till then we can do no better than to arise 
 and go to Jesus, and say unto him as did some of his 
 disciples of old, "Lord, to whom shall we go but unto 
 thee. Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we 
 know and are assured that thou art the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God." 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 15 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 The Ministerial Motive 
 
 In the foregoing lecture, on The Ideal Preacher, 
 it was shown and seen that ministerial authority pre- 
 supposes the existence of the great mystery of God- 
 liness, with its fountain head in Immanuel ; assumes 
 that the Bible is the most divinely inspired and 
 authenticated record of the revelation which God has 
 yet made of his will to man ; that there is a class of 
 men called, ordained and authorized to negotiate a 
 treaty of peace between a righteous heaven and a 
 rebellious earth ; that this class of men or ministers 
 receive their commission both immediately from 
 Christ and mediately through the Church as the 
 embodiment of his kingdom in the world; that the 
 source, scope and limitations of such ministerial 
 authority are all conditioned upon the minister 's vital 
 and organic relation to Christ, the Anointed One, 
 in his messianic character; that according to the 
 teaching of the Bible, as reflected by the Heidelberg 
 Catechism, the minister is, in a limited sense, officially 
 a prophet, priest and king, by virtue of his being a 
 partaker by faith of Christ 's anointing ; that in order 
 to make his ambassadorial calling and election sure, 
 the minister must stand organically in the Church 
 which is Christ's body and receive his credentials 
 therefrom, as well as in personal touch with Christ 
 himself, the immediate source of such ministerial 
 authority; that he should have an experimental 
 
16 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 knowledge of Christ and know the power of his resur- 
 rection in order to become a workman in Christ's 
 vineyard that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly 
 dividing the word of everlasting truth; and finally, 
 after he has fully complied wdth all these conditions, 
 and availed himself of all these means of ministerial 
 efficiency, and conditions of ministerial success, he 
 will still have reason to acknowledge the limitation 
 of his power, and exclaim with the prophet of old : — 
 Who is able for these things? 
 
 Next in importance to authority from above is the 
 question of proper actuation from within. In the 
 case of a true minister, the voice from heaven is sup- 
 plemented, or rather complemented by a correspond- 
 ing voice from the inmost sanctuary of the soul. 
 These two testimonials in mutual harmony with each 
 other, are indispensable to the fulness of a genuine 
 call to the ministry. The authority that speaks from 
 above has its echo in the proper ministerial motive. 
 The subjective must respond to the objective, to make 
 our common Christian calling sure to that inheri- 
 tance which is ''undefiled, incorruptible and fadeth 
 not away." How much more, then, is it the case in 
 the minister whose duties in the vineyard of the Lord 
 are more specific, whose responsibilities are more tre- 
 mendous and whose scope of action is more official. 
 
 As we may never be able to understand fully the 
 eternal cause of the infinite impulse that first moved 
 heaven to come down to our planet and ransom a 
 world from the poison and power of human sin, so 
 may we never be able to know just how the myster- 
 ious process of forming the proper ministerial motive 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 17 
 
 in the laboratory of the human soul, nor the exact 
 nature of the ethical protoplasts that form the proper 
 incentive in the true aspirant to the holy ministry 
 of the gospel. The impulse that moves us to ordinary 
 duty originates so mysteriously in the fecundous 
 womb of ethical forces that we can know neither the 
 principle of its substance nor the manner of its evolu- 
 tion. How much more inscrutable and past finding 
 out must be the origin and unfolding of the minis- 
 terial motive that properly impels a man to become 
 a worthy watchman on the walls of Zion. Probably 
 the most and the best that can be said upon this 
 point is that it, like many other profound truths, be- 
 longs to that sublime reality, and yet unfathomable 
 mystery to which the angels themselves are not able 
 to adjust the angle of their vision. 
 
 Perhaps the nearest approach that can be made 
 toward the philosophic solution of the question as to 
 whence and why a man is impelled by such a proper 
 motive is to be found in the truth that he, having been 
 created in the image of God, and having been restored 
 to that image through regeneration, is moved by the 
 heavenly force planted in him, in virtue of such new 
 birth, to seek and reflect the original of that which 
 he is the likeness, and to bring the whole creation 
 back to Him "of whom, by whom and unto whom are 
 all things." Anything short of such a pure, un- 
 selfish and comprehensive desire does not measure 
 up to the requirement that seems to have been 
 nominated in the bond of man's proper relation to 
 his Maker. A proper ministerial motive includes 
 more than a desire to save souls from hell and conse- 
 
 2 
 
18 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 quently have many stars in the ministerial crown. 
 The incentive of an intelligent theologian and Chris- 
 tian philosopher in desiring the office of a bishop, 
 while it aims at the salvation of men from sin and 
 death, includes also the broader aim and ambition 
 to have part in bringing the whole ethical universe 
 back to the normal relation it sustained to its Maker 
 before the occurrence of the great catastrophe in 
 Eden, in which the whole creation was "made sub- 
 ject to vanity." Yet, since not all preachers can be 
 profound theologians and speculative philosophers, 
 the scope of their motive and the law of its limita- 
 tions may find its proper measure in the apostolic 
 commission. 
 
 In what sense and to what extent such motive 
 may be an inborn principle in the man himself, as a 
 product of natural birth, without favorable environ- 
 ments or without transmission in germinal form from 
 a religious ancestry is a question more interesting 
 than easy of solution. That it is sometimes measur- 
 ably transmitted along the line of hereditary piety 
 may be assumed to be as true as the divine promise 
 that "the righteousness of the Lord is unto children's 
 children to those who keep his covenant and remem- 
 ber his commandments to do them." The unfeigned 
 faith that was in Timothy had dwelt first in his 
 grandmother Lois and in his mother Eunice. And is 
 it not reasonably presumable that along that same 
 hereditary line of the transmission of "faith," Timo- 
 thy inherited also the germ-principle of an incentive 
 to "desire the office of a bishop." Indeed it may be 
 regarded as no rare occurrence that when God in- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 19 
 
 tends to raise up a good man for a great mission he 
 starts the process in the preparatory departments of 
 a pious ancestry, and carries it forward from genera- 
 tion to generation until the motive and the man are 
 matured and glorified together in the completion of 
 the divine purpose. 
 
 However, or wherever its order of development, 
 the worthy and sincere minister's motive, as to its 
 essence, is simply love to God and love for man. 
 "The love of Christ constrain eth us." This mys- 
 terious fountain of divine beneficence, which has its 
 origin in the bosom of God, and which flows forth 
 through Christ and onward in his Church, will never 
 cease to constrain men to the gospel ministry, until 
 in its returning tide it calms its current in the crystal 
 sea. 
 
 What an impulse in the bosom of God! What a 
 propulsive power in the ethical universe ! What an 
 incentive in the fully consecrated minister of the 
 gospel! No wonder that there is a "glorious com- 
 pany of the apostles, a goodly fellowship of the 
 prophets and a noble army of martyrs ! ' ' The great- 
 est of all is charity. 
 
 "When love speaks, the voice of all the gods 
 Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony." 
 
 This proper motive for entering the Christian min- 
 istry, though not identical with a genuine call there- 
 to, is nevertheless, inseparable therefrom. This dis- 
 position of heart and mind is necessary to the proper 
 ordination of a minister as his "actual investiture 
 with the very power of the office itself, the seal of 
 
20 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 his heavenly commission, the assurance from on high 
 that his outward consecration to the ambassadorial 
 service of Christ is accepted, and that the Holy Ghost 
 will most certainly be with him in the faithful dis- 
 charge of his official duties." 
 
 A proper motive in the candidate for the min- 
 istery is not something ah extra or a quantity of 
 something from without, added to what the man is 
 supposed to already possess in germ and possibility 
 of proper development. It is not a strictly supple- 
 mentive creation de novo. The motive of the Christ- 
 ian, back of the minister, is nothing more or less 
 than a regenerated disposition to do something; 
 just as Christian faith is regenerated reason. Such 
 faith is not a strictly new function brought into the 
 soul from without. In this particular, at least, the 
 Heidelberg Catechism is up-to-date. According to 
 Question 21, the Holy Ghost works faith in — ^not into 
 — the heart of the receptive subject through the 
 preaching of the gospel. So the motive of the Christ- 
 ian to serve as a minister in the economy of God's 
 kingdom as embodied in the Church, is not a for- 
 eign importation, but a rightly-directed development, 
 under the present power of the heavenly world, of 
 a concrete germ and possibility already in the soul, 
 as a constituent element therein. This motive is al- 
 ready more or less quickened and developed in all 
 Christians. They have "small beginnings" of a de- 
 sire to minister unto the wants of others, rather than 
 a mere wish to be ministerd unto. The difference is 
 that in properly elected ministers or preachers this 
 motive is more specific and intense as they hear the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 21 
 
 heavenly call to the more special work in the vineyard 
 of their Lord. 
 
 The proper ministerial motive, furthermore, re- 
 mains the same, as to its essential contents, through 
 all the ages of God's kingdom of grace and truth. 
 Notwithstanding the fact that the Church is con- 
 stantly in the process of developing its life-principle, 
 as conceived in the eternal purpose of the Father, 
 quickened by the incarnation of the Son, and brought 
 to real birth on the day of Pentecost by the Holy 
 Ghost it remains as to its constituent essentials, like 
 its divine-human head, yesterday, to-day and forever 
 the same. For this reason there can be no radical 
 change in the incentive that moves men to enter the 
 holy ministry. The genuine desire and purpose of the 
 modern evangelic preacher are not different in their 
 essentials from that which constrained Paul not to be 
 disobedient ''to the heavenly vision" and the old 
 prophet to exclaim; "For Zion's sake 1 will not hold 
 my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest." 
 It could not be otherwise indeed, for the very suffi- 
 cient reason that the true ministerial motive in the 
 elect preacher is not born of the flesh nor of the mere 
 will of man but always of the will of Him who said 
 "Ye have not (primarily) chosen me, but I have 
 chosen you and ordained you." 
 
 Neither is this divine order essentially changed by 
 the fact that the power and responsibility of electing 
 men to the office of the holy ministery assert and 
 manifest themselves through the organized community 
 of believers. And if preachers are sufficiently moved 
 toward the holy ministery, by the heavenly power 
 
22 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 that reaches them from the inmost sanctuary of the 
 Church, the motive thus begotten or conceived in 
 their hearts must be not only the product, but must 
 also partake of the very substance of the Church her- 
 self. Hence the general ministerial motive has beei) 
 essentially the same in all ages and stages and chang- 
 ing conditions of God's kingdom on earth, and will 
 so continue until the church militant is caught up 
 into the paradise of God. 
 
 The King's business requires many elements of 
 fitness in his ambassadors; yet among all these quali- 
 fications there is none of more superlative importance 
 that a pure and unselfish motive moving them to 
 choice and' action. Without such holy incentive, no 
 man can hope to be fully qualified to speak by heaven- 
 ly authority. This is the wedding garment at the 
 great gospel festival without which the clerical guests 
 ought to remain speechless. Broad intelligence, ver- 
 satile scholarship, heavenly pathos and holy passion, 
 with all the magnetic mastery of burning eloquence 
 in the awful realm of a prolific imagination, are only 
 secondary in their value, when compared with that 
 incentive of the soul and the secret spring of charac- 
 ter in those who stand on Zion's hill to preach the 
 everlasting gospel and minister in the mysteries of 
 godliness at the altar of the Most High. Proper 
 motive directs the formation of worthy personality, 
 determines the quality of excellent choice and stamps 
 the divine impress of approval upon the real merit 
 of moral heroism in all the spheres and activities of 
 human life, but most of all in the life of the ambas- 
 sador for Christ. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 23 
 
 It should not be inferred from the foregoing test 
 or standard applied to the ministerial character that 
 such excellency is required or attainable without some 
 degree of defect in even the most eminent of God's 
 servants. Neither should the author be understood 
 as teaching that all men who are lawfully called into 
 the ministery of Jesus Christ must be able, as Tim- 
 othy, to show the evidence of hereditary preparation 
 for the responsibilities of the episcopal trust in "the 
 Church w^hich is the pillar and ground of the truth." 
 Furthermore, it is not reasonable to expect that their 
 calling and election to such a high and important 
 position must be accompanied by the flashes of a 
 peculiarly supernatural light as in the case when Saul 
 of Tarsus was changed into Paul of Damascus, or in 
 the case of John the Baptist, the personal harbinger 
 of Christ,or in Samuel the old prophet. There are 
 many potential Philips and embryonic ''Isrealites 
 indeed" like Nathaniel under the fig-tree, foreseen 
 of the Master, whose place in the Master's plan and 
 purpose is to preach the unsearchable riches of Him 
 of whom Moses, in the Law and the prophets did 
 write. 
 
 Neither should the foregoing claims lead anyone 
 to the conclusion that, in view of such rarity and 
 absence of similar prevenient preparation and form 
 of call to the gospel service, there can now be no 
 proper motive or incitement in sincere men to desire 
 and choose the office of a bishop and '^do the work 
 of an evangelist." The methods sanctioned and em- 
 ployed by the King in the formative periods of his 
 kingdom on earth and in time, are no longer in gen- 
 
24 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 era! use, since this kingdom of God is at hand to be 
 promoted in the world by the more ordinary methods 
 authorized for its perpetuation. And yet it should 
 not for a moment be supposed that such change in 
 Christ's process of procedure in calling and qualify- 
 ing ministers for the work which the Father gives 
 them to do, implies any lowering of the standard 
 governing the motive which should incite them to 
 enter the hallowed arena of men's highest possible 
 activity, and contend lawfully for the prize of their 
 high calling in Christ Jesus, their Lord. 
 
 False motives, elastic consciences and consequent 
 perfunctory performances in semi-secular clergymen 
 contribute largely to the disastrous trend of mistaken 
 utilitarianism in religion. Hence it is that the high- 
 way of Zion is strewn with apostate preachers, the 
 wrecks of clerical characters and the cargoes of com- 
 mercial commodities. The heresies and preverseness 
 of Simon Magus, the Samaritan, are still in the decad- 
 ent tendencies that afflict the church of God in the 
 19th century of her history. The minister with an 
 improper motive is frequently found to foster in him- 
 self, either an inordinate love of mammon or that un- 
 hallowed ambition by which the angels fell. Hence 
 his desire to pose upon the pedestal of pictistic pre- 
 tention, do business upon false capital, get his 
 name in the papers, perform as a star actor upon 
 some questionable stage, and give out that '' himself 
 is some great one ' ' in the social arena upon which are 
 heard, and around which are echoed admirations and 
 adulation of frienzied fools. 
 
 Many of the afflictions now resting upon the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 25 
 
 Church, like the scourge of Egyptian frogs upon 
 Pharaoh's subjects of old, and settling down upon her 
 sensitive sores like swarms of unswatted flies are oc- 
 casioned by and attributable to unworthy motives in 
 unworthy ministers. The specific nature or form of 
 such clerical defects is doubtless superinduced by each 
 individual preacher's predominant psychological ido- 
 sjmcrasy. Each of these peculiar predispositions to- 
 ward character in a falsely motived preacher is sus- 
 ceptible of one of several shades of development 
 according to environments or prevailing sentiment of 
 the church or community in which such preacher set- 
 tles himself for business. Indeed the mutual force 
 of the pastoral relation is retroactive. "And it shall 
 be, as with the people, so with the priest" (Isaiah 
 24 : 2) . This reversal of the normal order of religious 
 influence indicates an abnormal disorder in Zion. The 
 degree of such disorder and moral disease is, there- 
 fore, partially attributable to the obvious fact that the 
 ' ' priest ' ' or minister has lost his proper grip upon the 
 situation, as the result of not being properly motived. 
 Perhaps there is no greater occasion to the temp- 
 tation now alluring some young men to a develop- 
 ment of one or more of several possible false motives 
 to enter the gospel ministry by "climbing up some 
 other way," than that which is found in the seem- 
 ingly unavoidable working out of our beneficiary sys- 
 tem of education. How saddening the fact that the 
 Church's purest purpose in systematic charity is sus- 
 ceptible of perversion by unworthy beneficiaries. 
 Benevolence in church-extension enterprise creates 
 the occasion for maleficence in the concealment of real 
 
26 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 character, under assumed virtue in nominal religion. 
 The beneficiary board challenges young men who pro- 
 fess to be called to the gospel ministry and offers them 
 financial help in the solution of the scholastic problem 
 in their preparation for that high and holy office. 
 Some of them are worthy, and receive such assistance 
 with a full realization as to what the spirit of the 
 mutual contract properly implies. Moved by a holy 
 impulse formed within them, under the powers of the 
 heavenly world, they lay themselves upon the altar 
 of the gospel in full surrender and consecration of 
 all that they are and have in body, soul and spirit. 
 Such Philips and Nathaniels are Israelites indeed in 
 whom there is no dissembling guile. Others who 
 have not been delivered from all pride, vainglory and 
 hypocrisy receive the assistance to gratify some car- 
 nal ambition, luxuriate themselves in the hope of 
 realizing imaginary ease, or in the expectation of 
 parading themselves before the public, under a false 
 masque, as gods of popular idolatry, with the an- 
 ticipation of basking themselves in the stolen sunshine 
 of social refinement. 
 
 There is probably no class of men more unfit for 
 the ministry than those worthless imitations of man- 
 kind who are constitutionally indolent. Such indo- 
 lence combined with a dissembling disposition, pro- 
 duce the abominations of desolation standing in the 
 holy place of consecration. It matters but little 
 whether such indolence is of a mental or physical 
 type. It is, however, still worse when the clerical 
 invalid is afflicted with the disease in its complicated 
 form. ' ' They toil not, neither do they spin, ' ' except 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 27 
 
 when they spin pulpit yarns as labor-saving substi- 
 tutes for sermons which require work. Instead of re- 
 maining on the outside of the vineyard waiting for 
 some man to hire them, they crowd through the gate 
 before the eleventh hour to lounge and luxuriate all 
 day in ease and slothfulness. They are entirely out 
 of place. The gospel ministry is the last place in the 
 world for lazy men. They are both intolerable and 
 incurable. No serum has yet been discovered suffi- 
 ciently powerful to eradicate such microbes from the 
 lazy preacher's system. They will remain hopelessly 
 incurable unless they should find a cure in an allo- 
 pathic dose of purgatory. For such the gates of 
 heaven never stand ajar. We read of the penitent 
 thief having the promise of paradise, and that many 
 Gentiles shall come from the East and from the West 
 and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the 
 kingdom of God, but the Holy Scriptures give- the 
 lazy minister no assurance that he will ever pass the 
 heavenly portals ; and should he by some miraculous 
 transition be floated through the gate into the celes- 
 tial city, it is not probable that the angels would be 
 superlatively jubilant over his arrival. 
 
 Another class of unworthy ministers includes those 
 whose chief motive is to obtain false aggrandizement 
 and cheap notoriety. To accomplish such an end a 
 correspondingly superficial education is required. To 
 acquire such an education money must be obtained 
 from some source. A false position is therefore 
 assumed for the purpose of leaving a false impression. 
 Consequently they deceive the very elect members 
 of the beneficiary board, who are sometimes superla- 
 
28 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 tively zealous in the work of making perfunctory 
 preachers. The church is appealed to to open the chal- 
 ices of her charity and pour her new wine into old 
 goat-skins. The miserable monsters in disguise are 
 matriculated into a college and seminary course, and 
 the mill begins to grind the grist of cheat and smut. 
 The flour is not improved very much by the false senti- 
 ment and stimulating methods that cling to and shape 
 the curriculum up to the day of graduation. The 
 young bachelors of divinity are licensed and ordained 
 to the ministry with too little inquiry as to the real 
 motives of the candidates for a sinecure in the holy 
 office. They enter upon the performance with no clear 
 consciousness as to what has brought them to the stage. 
 Their original motive is now put to the test, and their 
 work is tried of what sort it is. Soon it begins to 
 dawn upon their false vision that the real excellency 
 of the gospel and their consecration thereto is not just 
 what is called for by their carnal ambition. The 
 darnel seed which was sown for wheat has reached 
 that degree of germination and development which 
 reveals its real nature. The goat-skins begin to burst, 
 and the near-wine escapes by the force of its false 
 fermentation. 
 
 These apocryphal preachers thus find themselves 
 so fully consecrated to the cause of self and selfish- 
 ness as to be ready to resign their maiden charge 
 and "see their way clear" to go anywhere according 
 as the Lord calls them to higher salaries, easier work, 
 greater usefulness in the gratification of vanity and a 
 wider opening for ephemeral notoriety. The print- 
 ing press must now bring them before the public. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 29 
 
 They advertise their sermons in catch phrasings, and 
 seemingly seek to bring out the more excellent glory 
 of the old gospel in the novel glimmerings of their 
 spluttering tallow-dips. They are ready for every 
 new movement that tacitly ignores the essential sub- 
 stance of the old faith ''once for all delivered to the 
 saints." They discount the value of old and estab- 
 lished truths for which the martyrs died, to chase 
 after the imcertainties of modern religious theories 
 and questionable methods. Opinions are substituted 
 for faith, and entertainment for devotion. They go 
 into sanctimonious paroxysms for union with any- 
 thing that stammers out: — "Lo! here is Christ," 
 while they divorce themselves from the sure founda- 
 tion and most sacred traditions of Christendom. 
 They originated in Nebula and develop themselves 
 into Saint Jude's wandering stars — poor little plane- 
 toids and ass-teroids ''to whom is reserved the black- 
 ness of darkness forever." 
 
 This occasion to abuse the confidence of the 
 Church, and misuse the sacred funds of her benefi- 
 ciary boards becomes more alluring to unprincipled 
 dissemblers when there are several distinctive schools 
 of theology supported and controlled by different 
 synods. Each synod wishes to see its own college 
 and seminary patronized and the ministry recruited 
 by men who represent, and are willing to labor to 
 promote its peculiar type of theological thought. 
 Hence holy emulation is in danger of becoming un- 
 hallowed competition and lead to practical bribery. 
 Unworthy young men, finding themselves challenged 
 and counter-challenged by the over zealous agents of 
 
30 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 such false emulation, will naturally be tempted to 
 advance the price of their questionable commodities, 
 and accept the highest price offered in those danger- 
 ous transactions which are equivalent to bribery on 
 the one hand and simony on the other. The market 
 place of disreputable wares stimulates the growth of 
 false motives to enter the ministry, and has the bane- 
 ful effect of filling its ranks with too many unworthy 
 men, instead of swelling those already depleted ranks 
 with good and sincere ministers whose holy ambition 
 is to prove themselves worthy of fellowship in Christ's 
 sufferings, and of having been baptized with the 
 baptism with which the great Prince of Preachers was 
 baptized when he had not where to lay his head. 
 
 Whether stimulated by the hope of beneficent 
 assistance from the Church or prompted primarily 
 by his own innate desire to secure something for 
 nothing, a young man is incited to an unworthy life 
 when he looks upon the holy ministry as an easy 
 calling or a lucrative position in which he may make 
 a living for himself and family. Such an incentive 
 is an abomination before God and treason to the 
 Church. The ambassadorial office is too sacred in its 
 character and too sfi/penduous in its responsibilities 
 to be made primarily shpendous as an earthly means 
 to prolong a miserable existence. Such a preacher 
 classifies himself with Judas Iscariot and other "sons 
 of perdition." The best thing that such candidates 
 for holy orders can do is to hang themselves before 
 they undergo the solemn farce of an empty ordina- 
 tion. 
 
 Assuming the correctness of the foregoing ani- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 31 
 
 madversions, it may be pertinent to the subject under 
 consideration to raise the question as to whether 
 something corrective of the evil should not and could 
 not be done to either eliminate or diminish the pos- 
 sibilities of temptation to young men who are not, 
 like Caesar's wife, above suspicion, and who are not 
 beyond the power of pervertable opportunities. Less 
 theological seminaries in the Church would not only 
 make it possible to increase the teaching force and 
 efficiency of those left in mutual consolidation and 
 co-operation, but also diminish the un-Christian and 
 unprofitable contention between competitive schools 
 of theology and discordant methods in practical relig- 
 ion. Such mutual concentration of her scholastic 
 forces would obviously enable the Church to select 
 her future ministers from the less corruptible men 
 who are now honestly waiting to hear and to heed 
 the proper call to the ambassadorial office. 
 
32 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE III 
 The Ministerial Message 
 
 The last lecture was devoted to an inquiry into 
 the motive that should prompt the man who desires 
 and chooses the office of a bishop. It was shown 
 and seen that respect for authority from above was 
 the source of corresponding and responsive action 
 from the inmost sanctuary of the preacher 's soul ; 
 that motive, more than any other factor, determines 
 the character of the man; that false motives lead 
 some candidates for the holy office to hold low and 
 unworthy views of that high calling; that young 
 men may allow themselves to be appealed to by hopes 
 of ease in indolence, promises of a livelihood in good 
 Christian society and seduced by an inordinate thirst 
 for enviable notoriety; that the holy and worthy 
 cause of beneficiary education becomes the occasion 
 of temptation to young men whose motives have not 
 been tested and whose consciences are not inelastic ; 
 and, finally, that the Church would do well to be more 
 considerately cautious and economic in the handling 
 of her beneficiary funds. 
 
 Since the earliest dawn of written history down 
 to this present time there has been a growing dis- 
 agreement as to just what should constitute the full 
 and proper contents of a religious and authoritative 
 message from a prophet to the people in the matter 
 of their duty to God in time and their dwelling with 
 God in the eternal world. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 33 
 
 Beside the conflictive harangues of heathen oracles 
 and bewildered reason in nominal Christian lands 
 there has always been a great confusion of tongues 
 in and around the Babylon of a false Christianity 
 which is ever seeking to establish itself in the New 
 Jerusalem which cometh down from God out of 
 heaven. 
 
 This babble of didactic confusion has been heard 
 to echo down the aisles of all the ages from the first 
 false teaching by the old serpent in the garden of 
 Eden to some of the modem utterances of self-con- 
 stituted evangelists in the garden of the Lord's house. 
 — From the free love proposition of Potiphar's wife 
 in the palace of the Pharaohs to the vaporings of Mrs. 
 Eddy in her cult of Christian Science — falsely so- 
 called. — From the rider of Baalam's ass to the illu- 
 sive fox-fire of Russell's Millennial Dawn. — From 
 the confounding of tongues on Shiner's Plain to the 
 confusion of teachings in the barren desert of pre- 
 sent-day sectarianism. — From Barak's double-dealing 
 devotion to Mrs. Blavatski's theosophic notoriety. — 
 From the false prophets of olden times to the teach- 
 ings of false Christs in the perilous times of these last 
 days. 
 
 It is a fairly debatable question as to which is the 
 greater impediment to the proper progress of Chris- 
 tianity in the world, the teachings of false religions 
 or the false teachings of the true and absolute relig- 
 ion. 
 
 The fact that Christian teachers differ so much 
 and so widely as to just what should always be taught 
 and as to what should constitute the essential ele- 
 
 3 
 
34 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ments of their sermons does not necessarily imply that 
 some of them are necessarily more honest, sincere and 
 orthodox than all others, but rather that they see the 
 truth from different view-points of the whole evan- 
 gelical compass, under the kaleidoscope of its various 
 shadings ; and oh, how numerous the refracting angles 
 and reflecting surfaces of the prisms that shade and 
 color the truth of God's revelations to men and for 
 their salvation ! 
 
 The various stages of ethical and intellectual de- 
 velopment in the history of the human race; the dif- 
 ferent degrees of capability and capacity in the var- 
 ious races of mankind; the progress made along the 
 lines of the secular sciences ; the modifying influences 
 of the various schools of moral and mental philos- 
 ophy; the religious psychology and individual ido- 
 syncrasies, as well as the undue predominancy of one 
 function over another in the trichotomous nature of 
 men — all of these must be considered in any success- 
 ful attempt to solve the complex problem now under 
 consideration. Child preachers think as children and 
 speak as children, and it is only when they become 
 men and master workmen that they are able to preach 
 as men grown to the full stature of Christ, the Prince 
 of preachers. 
 
 Under the influence of the philosophic school of 
 Hobbs and Locke the pulpit is likely to be uncon- 
 sciously moulded by the single element of experience 
 in religion until it dro^vns itself in the shallow pool 
 of felicitous empiricism. Controlled and carried for- 
 ward by the full sweep of the Hegelean Wissenscliaft, 
 the preacher is in danger of starting in the realm of 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 35 
 
 mere reason and ending under the ruinous reign of 
 Christless rationalism. Under the star of scholastic 
 theology the parable of the leaven was explained so as 
 to make the three measures of meal to mean Europe, 
 Asia and Africa, which explanation did very well 
 until the science of navigation came along and dis- 
 covered America, when there was not leaven enough 
 to meet the actual necessities of the case. 
 
 In the earlier periods of our holy religion instruc- 
 tion was imparted through tradition and truth taught 
 by parables. Later on the proverbial and poetic 
 vehicles of cummunication were used for the convey- 
 ance of religious ideas from mind to mind, and pro- 
 clamations were heralded by the sounding of trumpets. 
 Some of the prophets employed parables and other 
 similitudes when speaking as living oracles between 
 God and men. Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel used these 
 figures of speech when the 'burden of the Lord was 
 upon them to foretell the events of the future. 
 Nathan and Machaiah thus addressed the kings di- 
 rectly and face to face. 
 
 John the Baptist, although he had eaten con- 
 siderable wild honey, did not employ very mellifluous 
 phraseology in his preaching. His language would 
 not be considered as helles letters in our superlatively 
 refined modern pulpits. "Oh, generation of vipers, 
 who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to 
 come?" It was the employment of a very expressive 
 similitude. As the transitional link between the Old 
 Testament dispensation and the shadow of better 
 things to come, he stood upon the border of the wil- 
 derness and banks of the Jordan and pointed to the 
 
36 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Lamb of God who had come to take away the sin of 
 the world. He rang out the old and rang in the new 
 as he harbingered the coming of the Prince of preach- 
 ers. Our Lord then stepped upon a new stage and 
 occupied a pulpit, such as the Jewish world had never 
 seen. Never did man speak with such a tongue and 
 deliver such a message. He employed the parabolic 
 form of utterance. "And without a parable spake 
 he not unto them." 
 
 The sermons of the early Church were in accord- 
 ance with the religious necessities of that formative 
 period. Those delivered by the apostles consisted 
 largely of addresses to both Jews and Gentiles, set- 
 ting forth the fundamental facts connected with the 
 Messianic character and unique life of Jesus. These 
 were usually given with unctuous exhortations to 
 repentance, faith and baptism, and a fervent appeal 
 to the converts to live in accordance with the prin- 
 ciples and precepts of the gospel thus delivered unto 
 them. They were usually in the form of testimonials 
 to the reality of the new religion thus being made 
 known to the world. Specimens or samples of these 
 addresses are handed to us in some of the parts of 
 the apocryphal New Testament, in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, in some of the letters of St. Paul and in the 
 canonical writings of St. John. They may be called 
 the epistolary homilies of the great preacher to the 
 Gentiles, and the sermonic messages received from 
 Christ by the beloved disciple, on the Isle of Patmos, 
 in the holy trance of his apocalyptic vision, and sub- 
 sequently delivered to the churches in Asia Minor. 
 
 Preaching among the early Christians, in both 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 37 
 
 matter and manner, was in accord with the spirit and 
 child-like character of the primitive faith at first 
 delivered to the saints. As the primitive believers 
 assembled for worship and mutual encouragement, 
 they were addressed by some person of Christian 
 experience, bishop or presbyter. The sermon fre- 
 quently took the form of a missionary address to the 
 heathen or unconverted. It consisted largely of a 
 statement of the fundamental facts and requirements 
 of the gospel, followed by practical exhortation to 
 repentance, and a challenge to faith, a new life and 
 good works. The aim was to confirm believers in the 
 faith, and to kindle a divine life in the hearts of the 
 susceptible hearers present in the assembly then and 
 thus gathered. 
 
 Later on and in about the middle of the second 
 century, the Christians, according to Justin Martyr, 
 when assembled on the first day of the week to cele- 
 brate the Lord's resurrection, listened to ''the 
 memoirs of the Apostles" or the reading of the gos- 
 pels from the original manuscripts, in connection 
 with which the leader or president of the assembly 
 would deliver a discourse of exhortation to those 
 present. These assemblies were frequently held 
 when under the reign of heathen persecution the 
 Christians were in danger of being tossed into the 
 lion 's den for their fidelity to their Christ and to each 
 other. Persecution was so furious that to live like 
 a man was to die like a martyr; yet, realizing that 
 they were the salt of the earth, they were anxious to 
 live for the^ perpetuation of the faith. They there- 
 fore frequently met together in secret in upper cham- 
 
38 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 bers, in caves and in the catacombs among the em- 
 balmed bodies of the sainted dead. At such times 
 there was more need for prayers and Christian sym- 
 pathy than for sermonic utterances. 
 
 Still later, and down toward the triumph of the 
 new religion over old heathenism, under Const antine, 
 much preaching was crowded out of the Christian 
 assemblies to make room for polemics in the consi- 
 deration and discussion of the question of our Lord's 
 Messianic character. And still later, as evangelical 
 inquiries after knowledge began to center around 
 and narrow themselves in the monasteries, public 
 preaching became more and still more rare until it 
 was tacitly classed among the lost arts. There were 
 very few pulpit magnets like John Chrysostom the 
 golden-mouthed, Basil the great and eloquent, and 
 Savanarola, the courageous and intrepid evangelist 
 of a later period. The rising of the Romish heirarchy 
 lowered the pulpit beneath its proper level to make 
 room for the exhibition of prelatical pride. 
 
 Then came the beginning of the dark ages when 
 nations were compelled to hold their breath or linger 
 in the dance of death. For how could they be saved 
 without calling upon the name of the Lord? and 
 how could they call upon him in whom they did not 
 believe? and how could they believe in him of whom 
 they had not heard? and how could they hear with- 
 out a preacher? (Rom. 10:14). 
 
 All predictive prophecies concerning God's way 
 in the world, and all the subsequent fulfillment of 
 such prophecies in the onflow of history may be cited 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 39 
 
 as evidence that only "the entrance of God's word 
 giveth light," and that it is God's will that through 
 the written word the people — all of the people — 
 should be permitted to hear what the Spirit saith 
 unto the churches — all the churches. Furthermore, 
 it stands out in plain manifestation of medieval his- 
 tory, that in the proportion that the manuscripts 
 and memoirs of the gospels were hidden away in the 
 monasteries, the demand for a reformation and a 
 vernacular pulpit was pushed forward into the great 
 event of the 16th century of the Christian era. 
 
 When the great divine-human movement of that 
 century unlocked the sepulchres of evangelical truth 
 and thundered out the will of heaven that the peo- 
 ple should be restored to their own blood-bought in- 
 heritance and be permitted to hear the Word of God 
 in their own vernacular language, the pulpit was 
 brought out of its chronic seclusion in the sanctuary, 
 and the Reformers began to speak with other tongues 
 as the Spirit gave them utterance. 
 
 The Reformers were not primarily pulpit stars 
 according to the standard under which some preach- 
 ers now glorify themselves in the body. They were 
 rather teachers and leaders in the great work which 
 the Father had given them to do. That work was 
 extraordinary and tremendous. Heresies in doctrine 
 and corruptions in practice had fortified themselves 
 behind a thousand years of moss-covered mummeries. 
 These could not be driven out at the sound of a 
 mere trumpet. Such fortresses could not be success- 
 fully stormed by mere logic, philosophy and oratory. 
 
40 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ''Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith 
 the Lord." The case required expert leadership 
 combined with Christian and biblical scholarship, 
 and these under the battle-cry: "The sword of the 
 Lord and of Gideon." 
 
 Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, with their coadju- 
 tors, were primarily stage managers in that great 
 drama of heroic action under the powers of the 
 heavenly world. Theirs was a formative, as well as 
 a reformative period in the history of Christendom. 
 The work to be done called for a high order of ethi- 
 cal, religious and scholastic qualifications rather than 
 the silver tongues of human eloquence. Didactic dis- 
 putations and doctrinal discussions were required, 
 as well as pulpit magnetism. Hence much of the 
 preaching of that stirring period was little better 
 than the dialectics of the old scholastic age, when 
 angels were made to dance a cotillion on the point 
 of a needle without crowding each other from the 
 stage. 
 
 An age of philosophy or religious controversy 
 may produce dialectic giants, and star the arena of 
 intellectual pugilism, and yet that age may not be 
 necessarily a period productive of great preachers. 
 The function of fantasy is not cultivated when there 
 is a want of congenial soil and salubrious atmosphere. 
 The latent powers of imagination are essential factors 
 in the production of the orator, and these have but 
 little to stimulate them into action in the arena of 
 pure polemics. It is only when the man of God 
 bathes his soul at the fountain head of living water 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 41 
 
 that his tongue may be baptized with heavenly fire. 
 Such an orator has been with Jesus and has learned 
 of Him that which is not taught in the common 
 schools of earth. He then speaks with a superna- 
 tural power almost omnipotent in its sweep of potency. 
 Because of its more sacred source and heavenly 
 realm the eloquence of the pulpit is presumed to be 
 of a higher order than the mere spectacular and 
 spread eagle oratory of the secular rostrum. 
 
 Shortly after the Reformation, and still in the 
 birth-throes of that great conflict with chronic error, 
 the theological disputations began to assume another 
 form and take another polemical course. Instead of 
 continuing the discussion of the relative merits of 
 tradition as compared with the authority of the Bible 
 in matters of faith and practice, the clash of intel- 
 lectual giants, in the pulpit and out of it, was heard 
 between Calvinists and Arminians. The metaphysi- 
 cal side of Calvinism was taken up and disputed by 
 Gomoris. Luther had a battle with Pope Henry 
 VIII. There was a naval engagement between the 
 Pedos and the Anabaptists. The polemical conflicts, 
 thus waged, involved the pulpits disastrously, until 
 to this state of things Butler replied most humor- 
 ously in his Htcdihras: — ■ 
 
 "They settled controversy by 
 
 Infallible artillery, 
 
 And proved their doctrines orthodox 
 
 By apostolic blows and knocks, 
 As though religion were intended 
 For nothing else than to be mended." 
 
42 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 The Christian forces of Church history have hud- 
 dled together a remarkable number of somewhat 
 notable names in and around the 17th century of the 
 Christian era. Among these may be seen and men- 
 tioned Calixtus, Franke, Spener, Paul Gerhart, 
 George Fox, John Kobison, Elias Hicks and William 
 Penn. These persons, to a certain extent, pre- 
 sented a pictistic form of spasmodic opposition to 
 much morbid error which had, unconsciously or other- 
 wise, fortified itself in the Church of the living God. 
 In Germany the holy paroxysm aimed to correct a 
 growing formalism in faith and worship. In Eng- 
 land it remonstrated against ecclesiastical authority 
 by civil government. In North America it aimed to 
 start a new Christianity directly from the Bible : 
 A religion which was not to have spot or wrinkle or 
 any other such thing. In other words, the move- 
 ment in Germany was largely inspired by Teutonic 
 impetuosity: In England it was fired by religious 
 independency : In North America it was largely 
 either a Puritanic sentimentalism uttered with a nas- 
 al tone, or a religious humanism. From the fecun- 
 dous womb of such over-zealous pietism were brought 
 forth more modern sects than mighty preachers. The 
 atmosphere in which these abnormities still flourish 
 like green bay-trees is never favorable to the pro- 
 duction of that magnetic oratory in the sacred desk, 
 before which large assemblies are sometimes swept, 
 as by holy entrancement, into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 There are, however, many great preachers in the 
 world. Neither are they all in Berlin, London, Edin- 
 burgh, New York and Lancaster. Some of them are 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 4a 
 
 not constantly exhibiting themselves before an audi- 
 ence of applauding fools. Full many a ministerial 
 flower is ''born to blush unseen, and waste its sweet- 
 ness on the desert air." Yet their fragrance is not 
 lost in the reckoning of Him who receives the in- 
 cense rising from every fully consecrated Christian 
 altar. Our own Reformed ministry has not been 
 without its worthy representatives of that class of 
 preachers of sterling qualities; and the last century 
 of our history was not without its full quota of illus- 
 trious pulpit giants. 
 
 Dr. Benjamin Bousman of Reading, Pennsylvania, 
 was a great preacher. When not judged according 
 to the questionable standard of popular pulpit 
 exploiters, he had few peers and less superiors among 
 the clergymen of America. Bold in his ministerial 
 modesty and forceful in his unpretentious style, he 
 swayed his audiences, not by carnal declamation, but 
 rather by a convincive presentation of evangelical 
 truth. It was my privilege to hear him preach before 
 the Ohio Synod at Akron in June of 1861. He had 
 already made his tour of Palestine and other coun- 
 tries of the Orient. His book of travel — Si7iai and 
 Zion — had just been published and placed before his 
 American readers. He preached on the gospel for 
 the Seventh Sunday after Trinity — Jesus feeding 
 the multitude. His discourse was introduced by an 
 artful description of the situation. He told us that 
 in his then recent visit to the historic place he had 
 made a note of the fact that there was still ''much 
 grass" in the place, and in the course of his great 
 sermon, he charged us ministers that we should al- 
 
44 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ways regard it as our first duty to "feed the flock 
 of God." 
 
 Only when the preacher is able to keep in con- 
 scious, living touch with Christ, and to see the invis- 
 ible, can he properly proclaim the realities of the 
 heavenly world. Only when he can see visions and 
 dream dreams, something as did the inspired prophets 
 of old, may he be able to speak the burning words of 
 Spirit and life. When thus emptied of his own emp- 
 tiness and "filled with all the fullness of God" will 
 he be able to kindle the fires of destruction in the 
 combustibility of sin as a foreign element in the hu- 
 man family. Then will his torch of heavenly fire 
 burn with sufficient intensity of holy heat to light 
 the beacons of hope and immortality in the hearts 
 and homes of all, who, under the present power of 
 the world to come, are made to receive that inheri- 
 tance which is undefiled, incorruptible and that fad- 
 eth not away. 
 
 The religion of a personal divine-human Saviour 
 calls for an approximately correct conception of the 
 personality of Him who is altogether lovely. In the 
 religion of the Cross, the preacher must be alive with 
 a most vivid sense of tragedy. With such proper 
 conception of Christ and him crucified the preacher 
 will be endowed with such limited omnipotence as to 
 able to 
 
 Make a Suffering Saviour known 
 
 In Bozras garments dyed with blood 
 
 Until a helpless world shall own 
 
 Immanuel, the Christ of God 
 Because his pealing thunders roll 
 From lightning flashes in his soul. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 45 
 
 Thus pathos with its pearly tear 
 
 May thrill the soul with all its chords 
 
 And modulation charm the ear 
 
 With fitting, fervent, florid words, 
 And truth's great banner be unfurled: 
 A living Christ for a dying world. 
 
46 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 The Ministerial Message — Continued 
 
 A recapitulation of the leading thoughts expressed 
 in the first section of this treatise on ' ' The ministerial 
 Message" will show that the following statements 
 were made and discussed, viz; that there is and al- 
 ways has been great confusion as to just what the 
 minister should preach in order to discharge his full 
 duty to God and his f ellowmen ; that this confusion 
 arises largely from the facts that preachers, though 
 men of like passion, are of different temperaments, 
 of different natural abilities and scholastic attain- 
 ments, of different racial peculiarities and prejudices, 
 as w^ell as men dominated more or less by different' 
 schools of philosophy; that these differences do not 
 imply that some ministers are for such reasons nec- 
 essarily more honest, sincere and orthodox than 
 others; that during the earlier periods in the history 
 of our holy religion some of the preachers and 
 prophets employed somewhat singular similitudes as 
 vehicles for the conveyance of truths in their more 
 primitive forms ; that one of the characteristics of the 
 sermons preached by the Apostles and early Church 
 Fathers was the witness-bearing element, associated 
 with experimental testimonials to the realities of 
 Christianity, and fervent appeals to their audiences 
 along the lines of Christian faith and practice; that 
 later, according to Justin Martyr, the sermon was 
 rather an address delivered in connection wdth the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 47 
 
 celebration of the Lord's Supper, the reading of 
 memoirs of the gospels from manuscripts that were 
 still warm under the unctuous breath of divine in- 
 spiration ; that under the weight of heathen persecu- 
 tion some of these sermonic addresses were delivered 
 while the Christians were secretly assembled in caves 
 and catacombs ; that during the approach of the dark 
 ages, and under the sombrous dawn of the scholastic 
 theology the pulpit was pushed into one corner of the 
 cathedral to make room for the greater display of the 
 perverted priestly function of the Christian minis- 
 try; that only after the beginning of the Reforma- 
 tion was there a successful effort made to restore the 
 pulpit and the evangelical sermon to their proper 
 prominence in the services of the sanctuary; that un- 
 der such restoration great emphasis was laid upon 
 the claim that the people should be permitted to hear 
 what the Spirit saith unto the churches ; that the 
 swing of this very proper reformation movement, car- 
 ried into the realm of false freedom, landed the min- 
 istry in the seething caldron of unprofitable dispu- 
 tations, and many of the preachers in uncharitable 
 discussions ; that this trend of pernicious activity led 
 the Church into various shades of formalism and gave 
 rise, by way of reaction, to paroxysms of much spur- 
 ious piety, which then carried a sample of itself across 
 the ocean, and landed its puritanic progeny on Ply- 
 mouth Rock ; that the Spenarism of Germany, the 
 Independency of England and the Sentimentalism 
 of North America so ground themselves in the mere 
 subjective side of our holy religion as to be unfavor- 
 able to the production of the ideal preacher; that 
 
48 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 only when the preacher is able to touch bottom rock 
 in the objective facts and truths of the Christian 
 faith, and finds himself under the present power of 
 the heavenly world may he make full proof of his 
 ministry; that, finally, the religion of the Cross re- 
 quires in its heralds a vivid sense of that holy tragedy 
 before they can sway their audiences, and sweep their 
 hearers into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The foregoing restatement of the contents of the 
 former lecture, while it showed progress in the right 
 general direction, made it more obviously manifest 
 that we had not reached the promised land. Our 
 eyes had not yet beheld the full realization of the 
 prophet's dream when he, in rapturous vision, fore- 
 saw the coming of God's gospel messengers with 
 beautiful feet upon the mountain slopes. That neck 
 of the wilderness through which we were passing 
 was seen to be full of ephemeral manna, murmur- 
 ings and moving tents. Instead of feasting upon the 
 substance of things hoped for, we were served to 
 rather a negative diet in mere anticipation of better 
 things to come. We are, however, moving on toward 
 Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem and the reme- 
 dial kingdom of the living God, in which alone we 
 shall be able to find the inmost sanctuary of the min- 
 isterial office, and the truly gospel sermon. There- 
 fore, let us go forward in the full assurance of a 
 rational faith, until we find ourselves able to an- 
 swer the question : What is the ideal ministerial mes- 
 sage ? 
 
 Continuing, we are now ready to remark that 
 much of the preaching at the present time, as well 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 49 
 
 as too many of the pulpit harangues of the past, may 
 be classed with the waste-basket literature of abstract 
 reasoning and absurd ranting. The everlasting gos- 
 pel of facts in flesh and blood has been too generally 
 held in the mind and heralded from the mouth of the 
 preacher as a mere purpose or plan in the mind of 
 God, or a mere abstract proposition or promise pub- 
 lished from the eternal throne. The sermon has the 
 wood and the fire, but the worshiping assembly is 
 left, with Isaac, to inquire; ''Where is the lamb for 
 the offering?" Such diets of abstractions though 
 proclaimed by the preacher as the living bread, is no 
 better than Luther's Diet at Worms. 
 
 As the Church, in her Romish form, involved in 
 herself the necessity for a reformation, so did the 
 Reformation secrete in its fecundous womb the pos- 
 sibility of ultraistic impulses and erratic methods of 
 abnormal growth. And it is not so easy to decide 
 and explain just how far such centrifugal forces of 
 religious impetuosity carried the great movement of 
 the 16th century forward until they gave birth to 
 the occasion for the development of rationalism in 
 Germany, infidelity in France, the deism of Boling- 
 broke and the skepticism of Hume in England, and 
 hydra-headed religious sentimentalism in North Amer- 
 ica. One thing may probably be assumed without ar- 
 gument, viz : that these false flashes of intellect and 
 emotional impulses are largely productive of a deca- 
 dent and effeminate clergy. Possibly Daniel Webster 
 was partially justified in his seeming radical criti- 
 cism of the cloth when he averred that the strongest 
 evidence of the divine reality of the Christian relig- 
 
 4 
 
50 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ion is found in the fact that it continues to perpetu- 
 ate itself in spite of the many perverted pulpits in 
 Christendom. And yet it cannot be said in truth 
 that the average sermon has fallen so far below its 
 proper ideal as to justify the question now being 
 raised and discussed in certain communities as to 
 whether the pulpit or the press is today wielding 
 the greater power in the progress of God's kingdom 
 in the world. One thing, however, is beyond reason- 
 able contradiction, that nothing but an unpardonable 
 decadence of the pulpit could render its soteriologi- 
 cal influence inferior to the power of the printing 
 press. 
 
 Perhaps the most fruitful germs of the above- 
 mentioned anti-evangelical forces w^ere fostered by 
 the peeuliar condition of the Church in or about the 
 beginning of the 17th century. William Laud's 
 prelatical tyranny, Francis Cheynell's controversial 
 piety and the exclusive policy of the English Church 
 were favorable to the production of such men as Wil- 
 liam Chillingworth who arose as a wandering star 
 of Bible Christianity, and proclaimed that great 
 "book as the religion of Protestantism." His vol- 
 ume, the "Religion of Protestantism A Safe Way 
 to Salvation/' though not a new utterance upon the 
 subject, was a conspicuous cry in the wilderness of 
 religious confusion. Although the book was buried 
 with its author at Chichester in 1644, the sentiments 
 advocated therein have continued to ring down the 
 aisle of all subsequent church history until they have 
 established themselves in much superficial religious 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 51 
 
 thinking as something plausible in much popular 
 piety. 
 
 A splendid bill of fare on toast, 
 Upon a fancied table spread, 
 Garnished with garlands by the host, 
 For nutrient food and living bread, 
 
 Is served for thoughtless guests who look 
 
 For their salvation in a book. 
 
 A sacrifice by paper priest. 
 
 Proclaiming unsubstantial things 
 
 Is but a poor and meager feast 
 
 Though brought from heaven on angels' wings. 
 God never meant that paper plan 
 Should serve as bread for starving man. 
 
 Away with abstract vanity ! 
 
 How lean its half starved children look. 
 
 Away with such insanity ! 
 
 Redemption all within a book. — 
 In concrete form the truth is given. 
 Receiving which we rise to heaven. 
 
 Christ hath the realm of flesh outgrown, 
 
 And hence to higher realm ascended ; 
 
 He lives in Person on his throne, 
 
 His person must be apprehended. 
 The truth is, man, to be complete. 
 Needs grace and truth in Life Concrete. 
 
 The foregoing reference to the Bible and to the 
 mistaken views sometimes taken of the same by over- 
 zealous religionists, cannot lower the proper estima- 
 tion of its character and value in the economy of 
 divine redemption. It is and ever has been held in 
 high and holy regard by all devout men and all truly 
 Christian and sound theologians. And in all the 
 years of the future it will continue to hold its proper 
 
52 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 place in the sanctuary of good men's gratitude and 
 esteem. Such esteem is justified and guaranteed, 
 not only by its unique contents, but also by the rela- 
 tion it sustains to its Divine Author, as well as by its 
 prophetic pointings to Him of whom it testifies. 
 Higher Christian criticisms, or the corrections of its 
 errant human elements have been neither disposed 
 nor able to do God's word any harm. Lower, skepti- 
 cal and irreverent criticisms have only blunted their 
 shafts of assault upon that inspired ''armory of Da- 
 vid in which there hang a thousand bucklers, all 
 shields of mighty men." The holy shrine of its con- 
 tents, the purity of its precepts, the value of its his- 
 torical records, the brilliancy of its lamps let down 
 from heaven, and the flashlights of its hopes of dis- 
 persing the clouds that hang around the horizon of 
 the future will always help to hold the Bible in holy 
 esteem until the last curfew tolls the knell of time's 
 departing day. 
 
 Indeed, the Bible stands so high above the flood- 
 tides of infidelity that nothing can ever besmirch its 
 heavenly character or remove the canonical Scrip- 
 tures of Grod's revelation to man from their proper 
 place in the ark of the covenant, except to substi- 
 tute them for the ark itself, or for the hidden manna 
 therein. When that is the case men spend their 
 money for that which is not bread and their labor 
 for that which satisfieth not. In the Old Dispensa- 
 tion a "feast of trumpets" served a religious pur- 
 pose ; but now, since ' ' the day of Pentecost has fully 
 come," a mere paper pabulum is a poor means of 
 nutriment to hungry souls. Wind instruments were 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 63 
 
 used to blow down the walls of old Jericho ; they 
 have, however, less potency in building up the walls 
 of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Noah's Bible, though unwritten, was "Come thou 
 and all thy house into the ark." In obedience to 
 the "Word of God" thus conveyed, the righteous old 
 patriarch and his family entered the "ark," and 
 rose above the elements of a destructive flood. 
 Abram's Bible — "the word of the Lord" was "Get 
 thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and 
 from thy father's house unto a land that I will show 
 thee, And I will make of thee a great nation, and I 
 will bless thee and make thy name great, and thou 
 shalt be a blessing." And Abram, believing the 
 teaching of his Bible — the Word of God — entered 
 into and found salvation in the covenant which God 
 made with him. The beginning of Moses' Bible was 
 given him when the word of the Lord was addressed 
 to him out of the midst of the burning bush, saying, 
 "Draw not hither," but rather pointing him unto 
 a land whither he was to lead the children of Israel, 
 even to a "land flowing with milk and honey," in 
 which land they found their national salvation and 
 developed their racial character. 
 
 Young gentlemen: You will always show great 
 respect for the Holy Scriptures. In all your pulpit 
 exploitations never pound the Bible. It was inspired 
 from heaven and written by men of God as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost. With reverential sense 
 of their responsibility, the bishops in the early Coun- 
 cil at Hippo began to sift it from the apocryphal 
 writings of the more primitive periods, and the 
 
54 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Council of Nicea placed its stamp of approval upon 
 the great book in canonical form. It comes down 
 the aisle of the ages commanding a reverential 
 admiration from all who have received it as a lamp 
 of ethical, religious and civil illumination. With- 
 out it there would have been no Magna Charta given 
 at Eunneymede, no political millennium for the 
 Anglo-Saxon race and no charter of civil liberty for 
 the nations of the world. 
 
 Although the Bible is so constituted as to have 
 a human side and include a literary element it is not 
 to be catalogued with mere literary volumes. It is 
 unique in its nature, unparalleled in the history of 
 its growth, unequalled as a beacon light in the path 
 of the world's progress, and a conservatory of truth 
 in the economy of the world's redemption. It 
 should, therefore, never be forced out of its proper 
 place in the plan of the ages, or from the part 
 assigned it in the great religious drama of human 
 life. In its peculiar position, as umpire in the mat- 
 ter of religious disputation, it may be decried, but 
 it can never be dethroned. Indeed, nothing can be 
 dishonored as long as it remains in its place; and 
 nothing can be held in proper esteem when out of 
 its proper position and relation to other things. 
 What then is the position assigned the Bible in the 
 solution of the great ethical problem of the universe? 
 Hear it utter its voice in 1 John 5:11. "This is 
 the record that God hath given us eternal life, and 
 this life is in his Son." 
 
 Could we hear the silent voice that echoes from 
 every sacred page of holy writ, our dumb ears would 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 55 
 
 soon be unstopped by the announcement of the great 
 Messianic Master: "In the volume of the book it is 
 written of me, Lo, I come to do thy will, Oh, God. ' ' 
 To hear that sacred symphony of heaven, our ears 
 must, however, be attuned to something more than 
 the rustling of paper and the rattling of literary 
 artillery. The auricular organ of our qickened 
 souls must be adjusted to the language of the invis- 
 ible world. As God spoke of Elijah from the still 
 small voice, rather than from the storms and whirl- 
 winds of emotional and commotional religiousness, 
 so he still speaks to his people, and especially to his 
 ministerial ambassadors, through the Bible from the 
 eternal background of all mere Scriptural media of 
 conduction. 
 
 Much, however, depends upon the preacher's atti- 
 tude toward God's inspired record of the revelation 
 which he has thus made to man, if he would have 
 his spirit intoned and brought into receptive relation 
 to the invisible and spiritual realm. No preacher 
 can live unto himself if he would live unto the Lord. 
 Indeed it is dangerous for any minister to so isolate 
 himself as to suppose that he can draw all the proper 
 materials for a truly biblical sermon from the Bible 
 while he is standing out of the council chamber of 
 Christendom. Historic Christianity as embodied in 
 the one, Holy Catholic Church is the Supreme Court 
 having final jurisdiction in the matter of determin- 
 ing what the sacred oracles mean as they testify of 
 Christ and tell of heavenly things too deep to be 
 penetrated even by the eyes of the angels who always 
 behold the face of the everlasting Father. And yet 
 
56 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 there are preachers who, in their own opinion, know 
 more than the combined piety, wisdom and intelli- 
 gence of all the ages from the closing of the garden 
 gates to Eden to the opening of the portals of the 
 New Jerusalem. They are little Pontius Pilates sit- 
 ting in judgment upon both the Law and the Divine 
 Prisoner at the bar. 
 
 To '^ rightly divide the word" is to properly dis- 
 tinguish between the two complemental forms there- 
 of. This the true preacher of the everlasting gospel 
 will do in all his closet meditations and pulpit minis- 
 trations. He will clearly recognize a distinction, 
 without separation, between the "word^* as a thought, 
 idea or purpose in the mind of God, spoken, revealed 
 or made known to the finite mind by being inscribed 
 or expressed on stone parchment or some other 
 material in manuscript or printed form, and the 
 Personal Word as He was in the beginning with God, 
 and was God, who, in the fulness of time came down 
 from the eternal realm, became man for us and for 
 our salvation — God manifest in the flesh, seen of an- 
 gels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the 
 world and caught up into glory, where he ever liv- 
 eth to make intercession for all who come to the 
 Father through hs divine-human mediation. 
 
 These two forms of the "word" are joined to- 
 gether in bonds of everlasting wedlock. Let no min- 
 isterial man put them asunder. Without the writ- 
 ten word there would be no such heaven-born testi- 
 mony of the Christ; without the incarnate word the 
 written word would be an empty promise unfulfilled. 
 Christ is the yea and amen of the Bible. The high- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 57 
 
 est and holiest form of God's great revelation to man 
 is not the written word, but the ''word made flesh.' ^ 
 He is the life-giving word. The light of Scripture 
 is not the life of men. The great cardinal fact of 
 human redemption is expressed in a form the very- 
 reverse of such a bibleolotrous notion. In Him was 
 life, and the life was the light of men. As in the 
 time-process under which the old order of creation 
 was brought forth, Gen. 1, the lower forms of life 
 w^ere generated before the light was more fully 
 flashed upon such forms of being; so in the divine 
 process of producing "new creatures in Christ 
 Jesus," life-productions seem to precede light-pro- 
 ductions. The sequential manifestation is the light 
 of life (John 8:12), rather than the life of light. 
 Each in its own order: Christ first and consequenti- 
 ally that inseparable element in the Divine Being 
 which scintillates from the living Son of Righteous- 
 ness with healing in his wings. 
 
 Young Gentlemen : Only as you make your ser- 
 mons ground themselves in these cardinal facts of 
 divine-human redemption fontally in the Personal 
 Word, and herald them forth according to the teach- 
 ings of the written word as interpreted by the grow- 
 ing creeds and progressive apprehension of Chris- 
 tendom, the supreme court of last resort until Christ's 
 final coming and judgment seat is erected at the end 
 of the world — only thus will you be able to hear 
 heavenly music in the gospel and see those inspired 
 visions by which the living preacher is overshadowed, 
 tenanted, uplifted and impelled forward as a faith- 
 ful and successful ambassador of the immortal Christ, 
 
58 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 in whom alone dwelletli all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge pertaining to the redemption, and 
 essential to the completion of humanity. 
 
 But what is it to preach Christ in a strictly evan- 
 gelical or gospel sense? To preach Christ presup- 
 poses a need of Him on the part of those to whom 
 he is thus proclaimed. Such necessity must first be 
 shown before Christless men can know how great 
 their sins and miseries are. This is the teaching of 
 the written word. It is also echoed back in answer 
 to the second question of the Heidelberg Catechism. 
 The disease must be made known to the suffering 
 patient before the Great Physician can be made 
 fully welcome in the hospital of the helpless man. 
 What is thus true as applied to the individual sin- 
 ner is equally true of the community. ''Oh, Jer- 
 usalem, if thou hadst known the things that belong 
 to thy peace!" Much pulpit failure is the result 
 of defective pulpit pathology. This is one of the 
 weaknesses in much of our fashionable and popular 
 churchanity. The lold prophets "cried aloud and 
 showed the people their transgressions." It should 
 be no less so under a gospel dispensation. Indeed 
 this sombrous truth should be sounded out more 
 emphatically since "this is the condemnation that 
 light is come into the world." There is a good reason 
 to reverse the order and paraphrase the language of 
 the apostle: — "Whereas grace doth aboimd through 
 the promises of our Lord Jesus Christ, so doth sin 
 much more abound through indifference and unbe- 
 lief;" and as a consequence we often witness a com- 
 promise between the extremes of the pure and the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 59 
 
 perverted principles and practices in our religious 
 ethics. Crime is covered with palliations, and 
 chronic corruptions cured with placebos. 
 
 There is nothing in the foregoing paragraph that 
 should be construed tow^ard a conclusion that genu- 
 ine penitence for sin can be wrought in the heart of 
 a wicked man before he is confronted and challenged 
 by something or someone morally good and true and 
 beautiful. The challenge to a better life must now 
 ring out as in the days of the Baptist: — "Repent 
 for, or because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. '^' 
 By the law there is a knowledge of sin against law, 
 but only by grace can there be a knowledge of the 
 exceeding sinfulness of sin against love. 
 
 As the presence and power of light is necessary 
 to make the background of darkness appear in all 
 its ebon hue, so is the ideal picture of absolute holi- 
 ness necessary to make sin appear in the full moral 
 turpitude of its exceeding sinfulness. And as sin 
 is a concrete reality in personality, personified vir- 
 tue is required toa full exposure, by contrast with 
 the hideous mein of personal vice. This the great 
 Prince of preachers recognized and expressed in his 
 great antimortuary address: ''When the Comforter 
 is come, He will take the things of mine and show 
 them unto you," and "convince the world of sin." 
 "Now is the judgment of this world, and now is the 
 prince of this world cast out, And I, if I be lifted 
 up," on the cross, upon the mediatorial throne and 
 in the gospel sermon — "will draw all men unto me." 
 It is when confronted with the holiness of the per- 
 sonal message that "the devils fear and tremble." 
 
^0 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 We learn from Matt. 8 : 29 that they could not stand 
 before the presence and power of Christ's omnipo- 
 tent immaculacy when they recognized Him as "the 
 Son of God most high." Thus, too, on one occasion, 
 was Peter, himself, made to stand abashed with a 
 proper sense of his sinfulness, when in the presence 
 of the Holy Personal One, he exclaimed: "Depart 
 from me, for I am a sinful man." So, too, under 
 the heavenly power of Peter's great Pentecostal ser- 
 mon. It was not so much the piercing words that 
 "with wicked hands you have crucified and slain" 
 the Lord of glory, but rather the declaration that 
 that same Jesus had been raised from the dead, made 
 both Lord and Christ and exalted into heaven to 
 give repentance to Israel. 
 
 The line of reasoning followed in the last para- 
 graph would lead us logically forward toward the 
 conclusion that if the personal holiness of Christ is 
 the paramount element in the sermon that carries 
 conviction to the sinner, it is also indispensable in 
 the preacher that he in his personality be recognized 
 as one possessed and in practice of relatively holy 
 dynamic power. Without this the pulpit cannot be 
 a shining light and a full success. The raven, though 
 a foul bird, may have carried clean, acceptable and 
 nutrient food to Elijah, but "the law of the spirit 
 of life in Christ Jesus" requires that they who "bear 
 the vessels of the Lord should be holy," in order 
 to convince the world of unholiness and emancipate 
 it from "the law of sin and death." The minister 
 should, however, be holy without being sanctimon- 
 ious. Pretentious sanctity is abominable. The 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 61 
 
 preacher should be pious without being pietistic. 
 Like Caesar's wife, he must be above suspicion. Out 
 upon perfunctory pulpits with characters besmirched 
 with scandal, lives steeped in a solution of the world- 
 spirit, cheeks tinged with shame and tongues blistered 
 with the language of impropriety. The time is fast 
 coming when the Christian minister will be so in- 
 flamed with the pure and passionate love, and so 
 charged with the holy dynamics of the Master, as to 
 give unimpeachable evidence that he has ''been with 
 Jesus and learned of Him." Then will this naughty 
 world be convinced of sin, and men will be glad to 
 come and bow^ with respectful reverence before the 
 superlative power and glory of the Christian religion. 
 
-62 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 The Ministerial Message — Concluded 
 
 A brief review of the last lecture would show, in 
 summary statement, that much of the preaching of 
 the past few centuries has consisted too largely in a 
 presentation of abstract propositions, rather than 
 what the nature and necessities of the case call for — 
 a proclamation, by divine authority, of concrete 
 truths and facts in flesh and blood ; that such per- 
 version of the pulpit has been the occasion for the 
 growth of modern infidelity; that Bibleolatry is little, 
 if any, better than Mariolatry ; that, though the Bible 
 is not to be substituted for the Christ, it is and ever 
 should be held and esteemed as high above all forms 
 of mere secular literature as heaven is high above the 
 earth, and as God's thoughts are above the thoughts 
 of men; that there should be such high regard for 
 the Book, because of its source, its contents and its 
 very valuable accredited testimony of Him of whom 
 Moses in the law and the prophets did write, as the 
 summary of what Jesus began to do and to teach, 
 and the inspired record of the planting of Chris- 
 tianity in the apostolic age of the church's history; 
 that in the preaching of the gospel, according to the 
 teachings of the Bible, a clear distinction without 
 separation, is made between the written and the Per- 
 sonal Word of God; that only the sermon which con- 
 sists of a proper presentation of the personal and holy 
 Christ can carry with it the dynamic power neces- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 63 
 
 sary to convince the world of sin, of righteousness 
 and of a judgment to come ; that to be able to preach 
 such sermons the preacher must be consecrated in 
 person and consistent in his practice of evangelical 
 and ethical principles of righteousness in order to 
 be a proper medium of conduction for the Messianic 
 power of which he is the ambassadorial representa- 
 tive, and which is to bring in that auspicious millen- 
 nial mom for which prophets and sages long have 
 looked. 
 
 Continuing, we repeat the question : ' ' What shall 
 we preach f' "What shall I cry?" "All flesh is 
 as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of 
 the field?" That answer was in order in the earlier 
 ages of the world, and the more primitive periods in 
 the development of God's kingdom, but it- does not 
 meet the changed and changing requirements of these 
 latter days when the autumnal tints are on the leaves 
 of time's historic tree. The kingdom of heaven is 
 now not only at hand, but also coming under differ- 
 ent aspects of its rising spreading and prevailing 
 glory. Preaching must now, therefore, also, show 
 an advance in form upon the preaching of the past, 
 according to the advanced condition of God's king- 
 dom in the world. It has ever been thus. Even 
 Paul advanced upon the teachings of Christ, al- 
 though there was but one faith delivered to the saints. 
 This the great apostle did in such a way as to in- 
 volve no contradiction between the teachings of 
 Jesus and the preaching of his great ambassador to 
 the Gentiles. If Paul was the more philosophic, it 
 was because the teachinors of his Master involved 
 
64 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the germ principles of all true philosophy, and be- 
 cause it was a part of Paul's peculiar mission to un- 
 fold those divine principles in their philosophic 
 form, and because his audiences were more disposed 
 to look for wisdom than the people to whom Jesus 
 spoke more directly. Paul and Christ were not in 
 conflict at any point of comparison or contrast be- 
 tween their respective forms of proclaiming the ever- 
 lasting truths involved in the one and all-compre- 
 hensive economy of God's revelation to man, and 
 man's restoration to the favor of his Maker. 
 
 For the reason above stated, the chiefest of the 
 apostles, seeing the world clinging to the philosophies 
 of its erratic schools, rushed to the rescue, and 
 offered it the more divine philosophy of the Naza- 
 rine, until his wise head was severed from his weak 
 body under Nero's ax at Rome. 
 
 After Paul's missionary work had closed in that 
 tragic martyrdom, St. John was still in the field and 
 continued the work of the world's evangelization, 
 by laying more stress in his preaching upon the om- 
 nipotence of love. It was not in vain that the be- 
 loved disciple had reclined his head upon the bosom 
 of his Lord. It was not in vain that he had thus 
 felt the throbbings of that heart whose pulsations 
 are destined to cause the ethical universe to roll back 
 its echoes in responsive gratitude. Without contra- 
 diction or controversy John laid as much stress upon 
 love as Paul had placed upon faith. In doing so, he 
 doubtless saw what Paul had already preached, that 
 v faith worketh by love." 
 
 These two factors were felt to be absolutely in- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 65 
 
 separable and indispensable in the perseverance of 
 the saints, as the noble army of martyrs passed 
 through the fires of perseeution to the pearly portals 
 of the heavenly world. After the long period of 
 controversy in formulating the dogmas and doctrines 
 of the church, the Athanasian Creed began with the 
 admonition of its prologue and ended with the dam- 
 natory clause of its epilogue, and the pulpits sounded 
 out the echo : — ' ' This is the Catholic faith which, 
 except a man believe, he cannot be saved." Thus 
 arbitrary authority dominated the pulpit through all 
 medieval church history, limiting the freedom of 
 evangelical truth until the Reformation of the 16th 
 century began to raise the question, "What shall we 
 preach in order to a free and full application of the 
 old gospel truths to the new necessities of the transi- 
 tional period through which the Church is called to 
 pass in the solution of the problem assigned her by 
 the great Prince of preachers." 
 
 What did Paul preach? To the Ephesians he 
 preached "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Eph. 
 3:18). To the Corinthians he "declared the gos- 
 pel, how that Christ died for our sins, according to 
 the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he 
 rose again" (1 Cor. 15:3-4) ; and also that he "de- 
 termined to know nothing among them save Jesus 
 Christ and him crusified" (1 Cor. 2:2). Upon the 
 other hand, or in the same hand, or rather in the 
 hand of the same ministry of reconciliation, Christ 
 instructed and sent his disciples to "preach the king- 
 dom of God." How about the seeming conflict be- 
 tween the apostle to the Gentiles, and "the Apostle 
 
 5 
 
66 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 and High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ?" 
 There is no real conflict between th&tn. It is ex- 
 cluded. By what law? By the law of general in- 
 clusion. All is included in one comprehensive and 
 consistent whole. Paul preached the Ki7ig after 
 Jesus had preached and given command to preach 
 the kvngdmn. Both are included in the one whole 
 economy of human salvation. The King and the 
 kingdom, though distinct, are yet inseparable in the 
 great mystery of Godliness to be "preached unto 
 the Gentiles and believed on in the world." Neither 
 Christ nor Paul would put them asunder. True, St. 
 John did not bring the kingdom into as great promi- 
 nence as did Christ and Paul, and probably for the 
 reason that "the bird of God" with eagle eye was 
 more disposed to peer into the heavenly realm and 
 behold both the King and the kingdom "invisible 
 and full of glory." None of them, however, preached 
 a kingless kingdom or a kingdomless King. Even 
 the penitential thief upon the cross had faith enough 
 and sense enough to ask Christ for salvation, only as 
 he saw him coming in his Messianic kingdom. Let 
 theologians go and do likewise, and preachers govern 
 themselves accordingly. 
 
 The truth of the foregoing is warranted and its 
 re-statement justified by reference to our Lord's 
 teachings in their manifold forms. He charged his 
 disciples to "seek first the kingdom of God and his 
 righteousness." This direction implies that a pos- 
 session and knowledge of this kingdom which "rul- 
 eth over all" is the key that unlocks the meaning 
 and significance of all the sub-kingdoms in the whole 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 67 
 
 economy of God's great universe. Nothing can be 
 correctly and thoroughly known, except as viewed 
 from this high and commanding standpoint. Then 
 only shall wc be able to know when we as true dis- 
 ciples matriculate in this royal university and "fol- 
 low on to know the Lord" in his relation to his entire 
 creation, and the entire range of his universal gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 The importance of the kingdom in the economy 
 of redemption is recognized by our Lord in the 
 prayer which he gave to his disciples as a general 
 guide to their devotions. After the reverential ad- 
 dress to the King, it is the first petition : ' ' Thy king- 
 dom come." So in the first and eighth beatitudes 
 pronounced and promised in the Sermon on the 
 Mount. The peace-makers and those who are per- 
 secuted for righteousness' sake are to receive the 
 kingdom of heaven as their inheritance on earth. 
 And in no less than sixteen parables does Jesus make 
 them vehicles of instruction concerning the many 
 phases of the unfolding of God's kingdom on earth. 
 How frequently and familiarly it rings out from the 
 great preacher's lips: — "The kingdom of heaven is 
 like unto — "a marriage supper for the King's Son, 
 the ten virgins, a man traveling in a far country, 
 the sower of the good seed, the treasure hid in a 
 field, the grain of mustard seed, a merchantman seek- 
 ing goodly pearls, a net cast into the sea, the king 
 calling his servants to an accounting, the planting 
 of a vineyard, the great supper, the lost sheep, the 
 missing pieces of silver, and the prodigal son — all 
 vehicles of royal truth from the king to his subjects. 
 
68 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 According to these, the kingdom of God is to be 
 preached until in its full development and final victory 
 over the kingdom of darkness and death, it shall be 
 delivered up to the Father and the King "be all and 
 in all." 
 
 While the kingdom of God is to be preached as 
 having a real and objective existence in the world, 
 it must also be recognized and experienced as having 
 also a subjective dwelling place in the heart of every 
 Christian, and especially every Christian minister. 
 The truth of this assertion is warranted by the lan- 
 guage of the King himself: "The kingdom of God 
 is within you." All believers are subjects of and 
 citizens in the kingdom — they are "fellow citizens 
 with the saints" in the royal household of God. 
 They are not governed by a regal power altogether 
 above themselves. The government is in them and 
 through them as organic parts of this divine-human 
 institution on earth, for whose constant coming they 
 fervently pray. This truth is brought out so force- 
 fully and beautifully in Question 32 of the Heidel- 
 berg Confession as to justify the hope that at least 
 that part of the Catechism may not yet come to be 
 regarded by our Protestant modernists as being en- 
 tirely behind the times. It recognizes the correct 
 ecclesiastical principle of church government that 
 all who are partakers of Christ's anointing have part 
 therein. This is one of the tenets of evangelical 
 faith emphasized by all true Protestantism as over 
 against the Romish theory of church government 
 advocated and administered from without. 
 
 Young gentlemen : You Vv^ll not forget that while 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 69 
 
 it is desirable to have a proper ministerial motive, 
 important to have a classical education, orderly to 
 have a certificate of ordination, it is the conscious- 
 ness and experience of having the kingdom of God 
 within you that will give you unction to pray, inspi- 
 ration to preach, authority to act and power to per- 
 severe in such a way as to have the constant and com- 
 forting assurance that when you ministry is ended 
 on earth you may still reach your sickles forth to 
 reap the fields of heaven and pluck ripe clusters from 
 the vines of God. 
 
 The kingdom of God is, however, not to be preached 
 as though it were a separate or disjointed economy 
 in a fragmentary universe. There are other and sub- 
 kingdoms which, while they are brought into being 
 and upheld by the kingdom that ruleth over all, con- 
 stitute a series of subordinate and tributary princi- 
 palities leading and looking up to the height above. 
 From the mineral at the base to the Messianic at the 
 apex, the series ascends in beautiful gradation, cul- 
 minating according to the one plan of the ages in 
 perfect completeness around the great white throne. 
 No one of these kingdoms existeth for itself. Each 
 is for all and all is for each because all consti- 
 tute ''one stupendous whole" for Him who is 
 over all, God blessed forever more. Under no other 
 view could rational faith hear ''the mountains and 
 the hills break forth into singing," and see, "the 
 trees of the field clap their hands. ' ' This is the view 
 that Daniel seems to have taken of the matter in his 
 most wonderful vision. It also, doubtless, inspired 
 the leader of the universal oratorio as he swung his 
 
70 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 baton according to the one hundred and forty-eighth 
 Psalm. That grand chorus breaks silence "from the 
 heavens' and "in the heighth above." The voices 
 sound down in choral harmony until it wakens the 
 echo from "the mountains and all hills, fruitful trees 
 and all cedars," "beasts and all cattle, creeping 
 things and flying fowl," "fire and hail, snow and 
 vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word." Then, 
 swelling up from the sub-base, wdth all the other 
 parts of the great diatonic, it rises to reach "his 
 glory above the earth and heavens — the praise of all 
 his saints, even the children of Israel, a people near 
 unto him." Thus did the Psalmist look forward to 
 the time of the gospel ministry when "they shall 
 speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy 
 power" (Ps. 145:11). 
 
 They shall "talk" of the remedial "power" of 
 thy kingdom. At this point, it is worthy of note 
 that while the physical ills to which the human 
 family is heir are medicated by therapeutic agencies 
 from the lower kingdoms in nature, the maladies 
 which afflict the ethical and spiritual side of man's 
 complex being are successfully treated only by reme- 
 dies from the higher kingdom of grace and truth and 
 spiritual vitality. For bodily diseases the healing 
 agencies are sought, and sometimes found, in the 
 minerals of the earth, the herbs of the vegetable 
 realm or in the serums found in the animal world; 
 but the abnormal condition of the sin-afflicted soul 
 must find its only restorative and completive remedy 
 in the heavenly Gilead. Different schools of medi- 
 cine may disagree as to whether mineral, vegetable or 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 71 
 
 animal agencies should be used or held as of most 
 supreme nimportance in the therapeutic treatment of 
 bodily ills : The so-called Christian Science of Mrs. 
 Eddy, and Dowie's successors in shallow, shameful 
 sham, and all the phycho-therapeutics of the Eman- 
 uel movement in medical quackery, may contend for 
 the alleged efficiency of their respective treatments 
 of physical maladies, but a correct and thorough diag- 
 nosis of the complicated case of human suffering 
 points to the germ-principle of human sin as the 
 source of all disease, and to the "sovereign balm for 
 every wound" as found alone in the great royal 
 Physician who speaks from the throne of his remedial 
 kingdom and "healeth all our diseases." 
 
 We are, therefore, to preach the kingdom of God 
 as a remedial kingdom. A remedy implies the exist- 
 ence and presence of a malady in humanity. The 
 whole creation may groan and travail because of its 
 having been subjected to vanity, but the disease it- 
 self has its seat in the family of man — in the human 
 race as an organism, and, conseqeuntly, in all the in- 
 dividual members thereof. Sin is the cause, yea, the 
 very essence of the disease for which the kingdom 
 of God contains and provides the only and sufficient 
 healing power. As there is no other name under 
 heaven except the name of Jesus, the Divine-human 
 King, whereby men may be cured of the malady of 
 sin, so there is no other institution under heaven 
 replete with curative agencies except that kingdom 
 which we are to preach, and whose Gilead-balm we 
 are to proclaim and carry to all the diseased inmates 
 in the world's great hospital. 
 
72 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Beloved brethren : You can, therefore, never mag- 
 nify the office of the holy minister except as you 
 have a realizing sense of the fact that back of the 
 office there is an objective world of objective entities, 
 veritable realities and spiritual qualities for which 
 you stand and with which you will have to do. 
 
 An individual sent out as an ambassador from an 
 earthly kingdom invested with power to do business 
 in the negotiation of a treaty does not represent 
 himself. Neither does he preach some legislative 
 journal or congressional globe, or court docket, or an 
 abstract of statutorial law, but the government that 
 sent him, or, still better, the King back of the king- 
 dom or government, of which and for which he is 
 such duly authorized ambassador. He really and 
 authoritatively speaks for and represents a kingdom 
 or government with its king or head, its constitutional 
 forces and authority, its laws and statutes with the 
 blessings of obedience thereto attached or promised, 
 and the penalties which are to follow any violation 
 thereof. So with the preacher called and sent of 
 God. He is to represent and proclaim God's king- 
 dom with all that it involves as to its personal source, 
 its organized constitution of heavenly powers and 
 energy, its remedial agencies for diseased and dying 
 men, its promises of pardon and health to penitential 
 invalids, its consolations for the sorrowful and its 
 assurance of consequent convalescence in a realm of 
 eternal glory. In fact and in short the minister of 
 Christ is to proclaim and present the kingdom of 
 God, not only in the wholeness of its nature and mis- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 73 
 
 sion, but also as having its only full embodiment in 
 the Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 The kingdom of God is further to be preached, 
 not only as the culmination of all sub-kingdoms, but 
 also and rather as possessing remedial agencies 
 adapted to the necessities of the kingdom of humanity 
 immediately next beneath it. Well may we adopt 
 the language of the Psalmist: ''The Lord send thee 
 help out of the Sanctuary." The Lord does send 
 such help and health out of the sanctuary of the 
 Sanatarium which was opened in the royal House of 
 David for sin and luicleanness. The malady of sin 
 calls for righteousness and holiness found fontally 
 alone in the absolutely virtuous person of the King 
 imortal, and administered through the agents incor- 
 porated in His soteriological kingdom. 
 
 These cardinal facts of vital importance must be 
 preached and emphasized. Sin must be denounced 
 from the pulpit, and proclaimed as the fruitful source 
 of all unrighteous servitude and consequent sorrow. 
 The minister's very attitude toward the pest-house 
 on the one hand and the ethical sanatarium for the 
 human race upon the other should be so generally 
 known and clearly seen by the suffering public as 
 to make all his sermons homilies of health-restoring 
 virtue. He should "cry aloud and spare not" as 
 did the prophet of old. "I come not here to talk." 
 "You know too well the story of our thralldom." 
 "We are slaves. By the depravity of our nature we 
 are slaves to lusts within, unfavorable environments 
 around and satanic powers in hostile array — "slaves 
 to a hoard of petty tyrants" from which we may be 
 
74 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 emancipated only by the application of the healing 
 virtue found alone in the presence and power of 
 God's remedial kingdom of grace and truth in the 
 Church — for the world. 
 
 The question is not whether men are saved by 
 Christ, or by the Church which is the embodiment of 
 his kingdom on earth; but whether either one saves 
 without the other — whether Christ saves human in- 
 dividuals without or within the kingdom. If Christ 
 were disposed to save men without the kingdom, it 
 seems reasonable to suppose that he would not have 
 told his ministers to "preach the kingdom." If 
 Christ were pleased to save sinners by a power and 
 in accordance with laws outside the kingdom, he cer- 
 tainly would not have told them to "seek first the 
 kingdom," and that the kingdom could be seen and 
 entered only by a new birth of the water and of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Yes, young gentlemen, you are to "preach Jesus 
 Christ and him crucified," yet not a kingdomless 
 Christ, any more than a Christless Iringdom ; Neither 
 are you to preach a churehless kingdom, any more 
 than a kingdomless church. What saith the Scrip- 
 tures? Read again, Eph. 3:21. Not unto the 
 church, neither unto the kingdom, but unto God be 
 glory in the church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all 
 ages, world without end : and you can neither preach 
 Christ nor the kingdom unless you fully realize that 
 the Holy Catholic Church is the embodiment thereof. 
 That is really the true meaning of the article in the 
 Creed. Belief in the Church in such sense is some- 
 thing more and deeper than belief in the aggregation 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 75 
 
 of Christians or the sum total of all saints. The 
 Church, as answerable to its true idea, is just as really 
 possessed of a supernatural side as is Christ himself. 
 No Christless Church; no churchless Christ! 
 
 Under a correct view of God's all-comprehensive 
 Providence it may be stated that He ordinarily does 
 nothing outside of the respective kingdoms which 
 in their organic wholeness constitute the empire of 
 His expansive universe. The Rock of Ages never 
 crystalized an amethyst outside the mineral kingdom 
 in which he is the great lapidary. The Rose of 
 Sharon never painted the cheek of a flower or caused 
 it to bloom outside the vegetable kingdom to which it 
 belongs, even though that flower may be ''born to 
 blush unseen." The Lion of the tribe of Judah never 
 undertook to plant a species of the animal kingdom 
 in the strictly vegetable realm of being. Nebuchad- 
 nezzar was once obliged to try the experiment. And 
 nothing but a vegetable diet could bring him to a 
 sane understanding as to his proper place in the 
 economy of the world. That old royal monstrosity 
 w^as sent to grass where he raised eagles' feathers 
 for human hair and birds' claws for finger nails 
 until he had learned that the "heavens do rule." 
 Then was he returned to his human kingdom, per- 
 mitted to resume his human throne and sway again 
 his human scepter. He had been taught that "the 
 dominion of the Most High is an everlasting dominion 
 from generation to generation." 
 
 The true and tactful minister of the gospel, in 
 proclaiming the kingdom of God with its repleteness 
 of heavenly powers as remedial for the whole crea- 
 
76 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 tion, will also be careful to avoid the common mis- 
 take now being made in this age of excessively liberal 
 and radically progressive Christendom. That mis- 
 take is a silent or tacit assent to the assumed cor- 
 rectness of the growing popular sentiment that there 
 is some other name than the name of King Immanuel 
 whereby the kingdoms of this world may be rescued 
 from the miseries of their thraldom under the reign 
 of evil. The social maladies of unmentionable vice, 
 the sins of civic unrighteousness, the growing greed 
 of financial monopolies, the cupidity of unconse- 
 crated captial are crimes that must not be palliated 
 from the pulpit. Neither should the criminals of the 
 pew be encouraged to hope for salvation because of 
 their liberal contributions to ameliorate the poverty 
 for which they are partially responsible and the 
 paupers which they have helped to make by their 
 nefarious methods of business. 
 
 Furthermore, the minister, as he goes forth to 
 herald the will and the ways of the King, will also 
 remember that these evils cannot be cured, and these 
 evil-doers converted by abusive declamation or 
 political persecution. The kingdom of heaven may 
 suffer violence from sub-kingdoms, but it has no mis- 
 sion to do them violence. In an unpretentious and 
 unaffected manner it must go out and stoop down 
 in most manifest sympathy for the dromedaries of 
 Midian, Epah and they from Sheba before they will 
 be inclined to dump their abnormal humps in the 
 valley of Hinom, and bring themselves rather than 
 their iniquitously begotten wealth to Zion for the en- 
 largement and enrichment of God's kinsrdom. Such 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 77 
 
 manifested sympathy on the part of the Church and 
 her ministers for the world is indispensable in any 
 proper effort for the world's conversion. 
 
 In other words, and finally, the kingdom of God 
 in order to bring its helpful and completive power 
 to the kingdoms of this world, must be presented as 
 touched with the feelings of the world's infirmities 
 before it can successfully minister to their real nec- 
 essities, and make their essential substance to become 
 very elements incorporated in the one heavenly king- 
 dom which ruleth over all, and is destined to assimi- 
 late all, before that kingdom, now in its remedial 
 form, can be delivered up (1 Cor. 15:21) to God, 
 even the Father, that God may be ^'all and in all," 
 in fulfillment of all his predictive prophecies. 
 
78 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 The iDEiAL Preacher's View of the Relation Be- 
 tween God's Remedial Kingdom and the 
 other Institutions of Divine 
 Ordination 
 
 Hitherto it has been shown that the ideal minis- 
 ter's work consists principally in proclaiming with 
 emphasis to the world that the kingdom of heaven is 
 at hand; that the preaching of the kingdom of God 
 is essentially the same as to ''declare the gospel," or 
 to ' ' preach Christ and him crucified ; ' ' that the king- 
 dom of God is to be proclaimed as an established in- 
 stitution on earth, replete with heavenly powers — a 
 veritable objective economy, having its embodiment 
 in the Holy Catholic Church; that though its exist- 
 ence in time and space is not dependent for its reality 
 on faith or upon the Christian's strictly correct ap- 
 prehension thereof, it, nevertheless, has its reflective 
 side in the true believer's personal experience; that 
 the King and the kingdom and its mystical embodi- 
 ment in the church are all complemental to each 
 other; that while this Messianic kingdom's position 
 in the economy of the universe is completive of all 
 in the comprehensive plan and purpose of the Al- 
 mighty King, it is to be preached with special refer- 
 ence to the remedial virtue it contains for the redemp- 
 tion of mankind, and the restoration of individual 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 79 
 
 persons to the favor of God; that in order to be suc- 
 cessful in the accomplishment of such divine purpose, 
 it must be made manifest in the preacher's procla- 
 mation of the gospel that the King, the kingdom and 
 the heralds thereof are all touched with the feeling 
 of the fallen world's infirmities. 
 
 The foregoing recapitulation suggests an inquiry 
 as to what is the ideal preacher's full scope of ser- 
 monic activity. How far is he to treat of other 
 powers divinely ordained of God ? In what sense does 
 the family, the State and the school fall within his 
 proper pulpit range? To the great Examplar for a 
 hint in the right direction ! When our Lord sent 
 out his disciples to begin the evangelization of the 
 world, he seems to have sent them directly into the 
 homes of the people. ''Into whatsoever house or 
 household ye enter" pronounce your introductory 
 benediction of peace upon that house. This was in 
 agreement with the promise made to Abraham that 
 in his seed all the famiilies of the earth should be 
 blessed; and it was doubtless so because of the pecul- 
 iar relation of the family to the whole organic con- 
 stitution of humanity. The family is not a mere or- 
 ganization. It is the oldest and most vital institu- 
 tion in the whole natural economy of the race, 
 grounding itself in the very fountain-flow of man- 
 kind. 
 
 The family is sacred and holy in its natural con- 
 stitution, and it must always retain and exercise its 
 holy function in the development of the race, even 
 under the foreign power of sin. It originates in mar- 
 riage which is of divine origin. Under its sanction 
 
80 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the man and the woman become one flesh by virtue 
 of a supernatural and sacramental element brought 
 to it from above. The husband begets and becomes 
 a father. The wife conceives and becomes a mother. 
 Children are born and the organic sum total becomes 
 a fully fledged family. The family thus becomes the 
 cradle, the nursery and sanctuary of the terrestrial 
 paradise in the elements of mutual love and confi- 
 dence — the gem of social beauty, the Gibralter of so- 
 cial strength and the foretaste of all that heaven can 
 hold. Such is the constitution of the home, even 
 upon the plane of humanity as fallen, in consequence 
 of the great transgression. 
 
 How much more is the Christian family the minia- 
 ture of the whole social constitution in the ethical 
 universe since the powers of the supernatural world 
 raised it more approximately near to its true idea 
 as that exists only in the mind of God. When the 
 Son of God entered the bosom of our fallen humanity 
 he brought into the domestic institution a principle 
 of sanctity, in consequence of which it was elevated 
 to a plane of holy dignity that otherwise would have 
 been unattainable. Hence, for this additional reason 
 the popular practice of perpetuating the crime of 
 divorce between husband and wife, the crime of neg- 
 lecting children by the parents, and the rebellion of 
 children against parental authority, and other unmen- 
 tionable vices in the superlative degree of moral 
 turpitude are transgressions approximately near the 
 unpardonable sin. Domestic insubordination, mari- 
 tal infidelity and a growing lust for licensed and un- 
 licensed sensuality are sapping the foundation of the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 81 
 
 old home with all its constitutional endearments and 
 elements of human hopes, to such a degree as to call 
 the attention of the minister to the home as the very 
 first of the institutional powers ordained of God. 
 Gentlemen : there is no man with the wide-awake 
 vision of an intelligent seer who is unable to forecast 
 the early fulfillment of that predictive prophecy 
 which fell from the immaculate lips of Gallilee's 
 great Sage: — •"The powers of heaven shall be 
 shaken." And is not the domestic institution now 
 being shaken from the foundation thereof to the 
 rafters that support the roof of the superstructure? 
 How long, Oh, Lord^ can the present domestic deca- 
 dency continue before it produces that abomination 
 more desolate in its nature and deeper in its damna- 
 tion than any that pagan plummet ever sounded. 
 
 Yet, when the case is viewed, as it should be in 
 the light of Christendom's noon-day glare, such a 
 catastrophe as the complete overthrow of the domestic 
 institution is not to be classed among the possibilities 
 of the future. The family is not to perish from the 
 earth ; for if such were to be the case, the human race 
 itself would soon be doomed to the rude clay from 
 which it sprung, "unwept, unhonored and unsung." 
 Such a degeneration is absolutely inconceivable, be- 
 cause that whereas the sin of such domestic dissipa- 
 tion doth abound in the direction of seeming dissolu- 
 tion, the promised remedy of divine deliverance shall 
 yet much more abound through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord; and the auspicious morn of domestic deliver- 
 ance will dawn when all our churches are pastored 
 with ideal ministers; when all our bishops are hus- 
 
 6 
 
82 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 bands of ideal Christian wives, whose holiest zeal 
 shall be to raise ideal Christian households, and when 
 such ideal families shall be the ideal rally-points, out 
 from which and aroimd which shall move the powers, 
 and go forth the influences that shall serve as the 
 much needed leaven in the meal of our fallen human- 
 ity. 
 
 Not that the ideal Christian family or the ideal 
 minister's family can take the place of God's king- 
 dom in the remedial economy of the ethical universe, 
 but that it is the most receptive and the best dispen- 
 ser of the redeeming virtue which is fontally in 
 Christ and his kingdom, and which was in the mind 
 of the inspired prophet when he made a record of 
 his prayer: "The Lord send thee help out of the 
 sanctuary." Indeed, so vitally are these two insti- 
 tutions related to each other that in the New Testa- 
 ment record the inspired writer speaks of ''the church 
 in the house, or household or family," which is the 
 older of the two as to the date of its organization 
 in flesh and blood. The family was upon our planet 
 when "the groves were God's first temples," and 
 when the birds of paradise warbled their parts in 
 the service of song. It has been here for six thou- 
 sand years; it is here today and it is here to stay, in 
 all its social prominence and beauty among all the 
 ordained institutions of God. No ecclesiastical aris- 
 tocracy, no self-sufficient social democracy, no spas- 
 modic spurts of mere men's movements for the con- 
 version of the world in this generation, no periodic 
 spasm of evangelisticism, no combination or co-opera- 
 tion of denominations with all the religious orders, 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 83 
 
 clubs and leagues in our distracted Christendom can 
 ever be compared with the truly Christian family 
 in its constitutional ability to receive the germ-prin- 
 ciple of that divine leaven which was brought to our 
 world by the advent of God's kingdom, or develop 
 and apply that principle like the Christian home for 
 the purpose of assimilating the whole moral lump of 
 humanity, until it is fully restored to the image of 
 its Maker and permitted to bathe forever in the rays 
 of its great Original. 
 
 Unless the wi^iter's observations for three-fourths 
 of a century are of no value, and the carefully tabu- 
 lated religious statistics of the Christian world are 
 of no trustworthiness, and the promises of God are 
 of no effect, the great majority of ideal preachers 
 come into the gospel ministry from ideal Christian 
 homes. 
 
 Note the men who have played the most telling 
 parts upon the stage of life's great moral and relig- 
 ious reforms. See their characters standing out in 
 bold conspicuity and beautiful relief upon the bet- 
 ter, brighter pages of the world's great history. They 
 were not born in the slums of vice, neither were they 
 nursed and nurtured under the high pressure of 
 spasmodic and ephemeral religiousness. A few names 
 are sufficient to represent the whole galaxy of stars 
 in the ministerial firmament. Nevin, Schoff and 
 Kfummacher, Chalmers, Baxter and Boston, Calvin, 
 Luther and Zwingli, Ambrose, Augustine and Basil, 
 Samuel, John the Baptist and our Lord himself were 
 either cradled in pious families or nurtured by pious 
 mothers. 
 
84 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 If it be not unpardonable to refer at this point to 
 the plastic powers that entered into the construction 
 of my early life, and have since helped to mold and 
 direct, in a most helpful way, the history of my own 
 ministerial career, I will modestly refer to the indel- 
 ible impression made upon my mind and stamped 
 upon my character under the nurture and admoni- 
 tion of the Lord in my father's family. The tender- 
 ness of Mother's heart, fused with the firmness of 
 stern authority on the part of my father in family 
 government, the teachings of the supremacy of God's 
 holy word as the ground of all moral obligation, a 
 vivid sense of the binding sanctity of the Lord's day, 
 the holy atmosphere inhaled at the family altar, and 
 the pre-eminency of Christ in all things, combined to 
 form an influence over me that must run parallel 
 with my deathless being, and which will continue to 
 make me a debtor to the old domestic sanctuary for 
 any fidelity and success I may have had in the min- 
 isterial office. The present recollection of that hal- 
 lowed circle brings most vividly to mind the epitaph 
 written by Robert Burns upon the tomb-stone of his 
 friend Glenn Cairn, which, paraphrased, may read: 
 
 The monarch may forget the crown, 
 Which on his head an hour hath been ; 
 The bride-groom may forget the bride 
 Was made his wife on yestereen ; 
 The mother may forget the child 
 That smiled so sweetly on her knee 
 But I'll remember thee, old home, 
 And all that thou hast done for me. 
 
 Next to the family, the nominally Christian State 
 is held by the ideal preacher as an institution sus- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 85 
 
 taining an important and auxiliary relation to God's 
 remedial kingdom with its embodiment in the Church. 
 The State is not to be regarded as separate, but rather 
 distinct from the Church. If the family is the nurs- 
 ing mother of our infant religious hopes, the State 
 should be the foster-father of our Christian liberties. 
 This heaven-ordained relation was not clearly recog- 
 nized by either the Roman or Jewish nations at the 
 advent of our holy religion. It was different in the 
 teachings of our Lord. His tacit injunction was: — 
 ''What God hath joined together, let not man put 
 asunder," and w^hat God holds distinct, let not man 
 attempt to fuse into one. Because of prejudicial 
 blindness here, "Herod sought the young child's life 
 to destroy it," and Pilate nailed the world's hope to 
 the cross. The first ten Roman emperors compelled the 
 infant church to pass through the fire of perssecu- 
 tion. And even Constantine, the first nominal Chris- 
 tian emperor is still suspected of having been more 
 devoted to false diplomacy than true divinity. He 
 was semi-Arian in his Christology and semi-barbarian 
 in his civic methods. The church received more pro- 
 tection from his throne than benefit from his theology. 
 
 Oh Constantine ! Great Constantine ! 
 With pagan head and Christian heart. 
 What incongruities were thine 
 How inexcusable that part 
 Of thy career in which thy crown 
 Was stained with infamous renown ! 
 
 Thy star, baptized with fire and blood, 
 Like Mars, incarnadined the skies. 
 Thy throne for toleration stood 
 
86 • THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 That Christian empire might arise. 
 
 Thy banner "In hoc signo vinces" 
 
 Was crimsoned with the blood of princes. 
 
 The history of civic government from Constan- 
 tine to the present confirms the correctness of the 
 position that even the nominal Christian State does 
 little more than to guarantee to its citizens the right 
 to freedom of conscience in religion. Indeed, both 
 the family and the State are so constituted and re- 
 lated to the kingdom of God as to be divinely ordained 
 receptacles, rather than fountains of that remedial 
 virtue whose mission on earth is to bless all the 
 families and nations of the earth as to make them 
 bearers of God's full salvation in the church to the 
 whole human race. This they can do to its complete- 
 ness only in the proportion that they permit them- 
 selves to become thoroughly Christianized and fully 
 leavened by the gospel of the kingdom which is the 
 source of all and which ruleth over all. 
 
 The somewhat decadent State of the Church — 
 '^Landes Kirche" — in parts of Germany, and the 
 equally deplorable condition of the state-govern- 
 ment in England, are, at least partially, attributable 
 to an improper relation between the ecclesiastical 
 and civil powers in those two great nations of the 
 world. In Germany a fusion of the forces of State 
 and Church may be cited as at least the partial cause 
 for the alarming tendency among scholars, ration- 
 alistically inclined toward religious liberalism, the 
 trend in democracy toward atheistic socialism, and 
 the estrangement of a large portion of the working 
 class from the Church of Jesus Christ toward secu- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 87 
 
 lar societies. In England the elect clergymen are 
 exhibiting their surplice in Parliament, while the 
 crazy suffragettes are filling the metropolis of the 
 world with the hideous howls of blood and thunder 
 and petticoat politics. Any attempt to blend politics 
 with piety will lead to the development of false dip- 
 lomacy rather than to true devotion in religion. In 
 the tottering republics of South America its daily 
 production is a crop of revolutions. In Mexico the 
 false alliance has been breeding anarchy until now 
 both Church and State are in danger of perishing 
 from the earth which the Church of Rome and the 
 kingdom of Spain once saturated with Montazumian 
 blood. 
 
 The ideal minister will, therefore, see his duties 
 clearly outlined, and govern himself accordingly. 
 Anything that promises in a passive way to develop 
 and protect the family life in its purity and vigor 
 suggests a proper topic for the wide awake pulpit ; 
 and anything in the social world which threatens 
 the sanctity of the home affords a very proper theme 
 for pulpit discussion and denunciation. So, too, in 
 the pulpit's relation to the State. Anything in poli- 
 tics to which bad men and political rogues may resort 
 in order to further their nefarious schemes — any- 
 thing calculated to beguile or deceive the unsuspect- 
 ing populace, pervert evangelical principles and 
 teachings in matters of religion, and manifestly dan- 
 gerous to public morals and civic righteousness — 
 anything, in fact, that would either directly or indi- 
 rectly militate against the laws or vital forces essen- 
 tial to the Church's prosperity, falls within the com- 
 
88 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 pass of the faithful preacher's scope of sermonic 
 duties. His authority and encouragement for this 
 seeming enlargement of his homiletic horizon is found 
 in the fact that his divine Master is head over all 
 things to the Church. Indeed he would be justified 
 in such a course as a Christian patriot desirous of 
 giving to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but 
 as an ambassador of Christ he aims at what is more 
 ultimate in the line of logical consequences. With 
 Isaiah, he is thus actuated in all his ministerial ac- 
 tivities: — ''For Zion's sake I will not rest, and for 
 Jerusalem's sake I will not hold my peace." His 
 desire is to bring both Caesar and his diadem, and 
 place them in the service, and upon the once thorn- 
 crowned brow of Christ, that all the glory may be 
 "in the Church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, 
 world without end." 
 
 There is another alarming symptom in the case 
 now under diagnosis. The wide awake preacher 
 cannot easily fail to see that undue emphasis is now 
 being laid upon the Sunday School as compared with 
 the Church in her true character and commission 
 to preach the Word and administer the sacraments. 
 There is something sadly ominous in the fact that 
 the children in the Sunday School are seen going 
 out of the basement while a few parents and adults 
 are entering the auditorium of the sanctuary to scat- 
 ter themselves among the empty pews. Is there no 
 remedy for the evil of thus putting asunder what 
 God has joined together in one flock? Has the min- 
 ister no message from the good Shepherd to the 
 lambs? While this divorcement is taking place, the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 89 
 
 ordinary and the truly devotional elements of the 
 proper church service are being pushed aside by a 
 program of special entertainments in order to com- 
 pete successfully with the popular moving picture 
 attractions. Stage thunder is manufactured by the 
 perverted pulpit. Spurts of spasmodic zeal are sub- 
 stituted for the steady perseverance of the saints. 
 This state of things is alarming to the mind and sad- 
 dening to the heart of the fully consecrated and dis- 
 cerning preacher of the everlasting gospel. It should 
 be so. The spirit that now vapors in the shadows 
 of many of our Protestant modernisms will not sus- 
 tain the Church in the hour of need ; and the proceed- 
 ings of this boastful, yet decadent age, will mature a 
 crisis, such as has not yet been recorded upon the 
 pages of Zion's past history. 
 
 Another matter to which the ideal preacher gives 
 his proper and proportionate attention is the School. 
 The School is not an institutional power ordained of 
 God in the sense that the same is predicable of the 
 Family, the Church and the State. Educational in- 
 stitutions and scholastic activities are the outgrowths 
 rather of this trinity of heaven-ordained powers. It 
 is one form in which these divine-human powers logi- 
 cally impart their benefits to the human race. From 
 the foundation of the domestic kinder-garten to the 
 towering peak of the great Christian university runs 
 the scholastic thread which is spun from the vital 
 forces and sacred fibers of these three powers ordained 
 of God, and which will continue to be thus drawn out, 
 woven and interwoven into the historic woof and warp 
 and web of concrete Christian history until it en- 
 
90 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 lightens the race, enwraps the world and encircles 
 the great white throne with a holy halo of splendor, 
 reflecting the infinite intelligence of Him in whom 
 are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
 edge, and unto whom is to be all the glory. 
 
 Such being the nature and mission of the domes- 
 tic, parochial and public school system in the most 
 logical and proper onflow of Christian civilization, 
 it is not hard to see the relation of the Christian min- 
 ister to the great academia of the moral and intellec- 
 tual universe. His relation to the Church, the cen- 
 tral channel of the world's development in knowl- 
 edge, is such as to invest him with the responsibility 
 of a spokesman and leader among the people. Even 
 way back in the time of Malachi, it was enjoined that 
 ^'the priest's lips should keep knowledge." This 
 knowledge is not to be kept in a secretive sense, but 
 acquired and stored up to be imparted as information, 
 not only to those who are of the household of faith, 
 but also to all others who on the outside are in need 
 of enlightenment. The Old Testament injunction 
 was broadened and its scope enlarged in the giving 
 of the apostolic commission. "Disciple all nations 
 and teach them to observe all things whatsoever I 
 have commanded you." Full obedience to his com- 
 mand requires the preacher to be an educator — not 
 merely as a missionary among heathen nations, but 
 also as a leader in all religious and ethical enterprises 
 and activities. This relation to the great problem 
 of human enlightenment is recognized by all the great 
 scholastic institutions of the Church and world in 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 91 
 
 calling for ministers to man and manage their schools 
 for higher education. 
 
 This responsibility of the preacher does not imply 
 that he is to dabble in every movement seeking to 
 palm itself off as something in the interest of moral 
 reform, educational uplift, religious advancement or 
 church extension. If wide awake and endowed with 
 the power of discernment, he will guard against the 
 danger of cultivating a morbid desire of clerical offi- 
 ciousness and a disposition to pose conspicuously be- 
 fore the public as the bright and shining light of a 
 ministerial toad-stool. By taking heed at this point 
 he will guard against the ambition by which the 
 angels fell. God have mercy upon the preacher who 
 is eager to leap from the pulpit to the more public 
 platform under the direction of the lecture bureau 
 that he may there and then and thus exhibit himself 
 and display his eloquence before the foot-lights ! Let 
 him open his eyes and behold the danger-signal hung 
 out by an applauding audience. The competition in 
 this role is with men, many of whom will be ready 
 to crowd him from the stage upon which he has no 
 legitimate calling to serve the public. "The stars 
 in their courses fought against Sisera." Let all 
 other clerical Siseras take warning and remember 
 that the modern drift in pulpit secularism is toward 
 the final conflict in the world's great history when 
 the issue is to be fairly made and the battle fought 
 to a finish at Megiddo or Armageddon (Kev. 16 : 16 
 and 19:20). 
 
 The preacher's security against such apostate 
 drift from the path of his high calling is in his pos- 
 
92 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 sibility and power to arise out of and above the world 
 of carnal secularity and move in the higher realm 
 of freedom from the seductive temptations to center 
 in self. "If ye walk in the Spirit, ye shall not ful- 
 fill the lusts of the flesh." This spiritual state of 
 mind is an essential part of the minister's full equip- 
 ment for the work which the Father has given him 
 to do. And why should he not be expected to thus 
 qualify himself with such a heavenly endowment in 
 holy, helpful visions of the heavenly world? Is not 
 the way still open for evangelists to be " in the Spirit 
 on the Lord's day," rise above the mere records of 
 lettered historical facts, and enter into the very cur- 
 rent of the great historic mystery itself w^hich is now 
 sw^eeping onward and upward to the full consumma- 
 tion of its own reality in that great hereafter which 
 seems to be so close at hand? Why should not the 
 ministry of Jesus Christ today be enriched with more 
 St. Johns who are able to "revolve reason into intui- 
 tion and faith into sight," even though the day of 
 apostolic vision may be past. Why should there be 
 lout one 
 
 "Bird of God with heavenly flight 
 Soaring far beyond the height 
 Of the bard and prophet old; 
 Truth fulfilled and truth to be, — 
 Never purer mystery 
 Did a purer tongue unfold!" 
 
 Such preachers sustain to mere pulpit scriptor- 
 ians a relation somewhat similar to that which the 
 author of the Fourth Gospel sustained to the 
 Synoptists — not necessarily in a contradictory atti- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 9S 
 
 tude, but occupying rather a higher and more ad- 
 vanced spiritual position. This is not table-tumbling 
 spiritualism, but the most superlative degree of gen- 
 uine spirituality attainable in this life. St. John 
 did not set aside or ignore the cardinal historic facts 
 of Christianity brought out in the life of Christ, for 
 he also "saw and bare record" and averred that ''his 
 record is true." The beloved disciple, instead of 
 forgetting to remember, remembered to omit from 
 his more spiritual record much "that Jesus began to 
 do and to teach before the day in which he was taken 
 up" through the everlasting gates, because such re- 
 cord was not essential to the main purpose he had 
 in view in presenting the gospel from a more divinely 
 inspired and intuitive standpoint, and in the light of 
 a more heavenly vision of the truth that was brought 
 under the scope of his eagle-eye. Such spirituality 
 and such vision, so far as they are now attainable by 
 scholarly and fully consecrated preachers, may not 
 raise them into the inspiring and apostolic realm 
 of heavenly vision reached by the Seer of Patmos, 
 but it will equip them with a power not possessed 
 by the preacher measurably destitute of such minis- 
 terial qualification. Such a vision of the realities of 
 the heavenly w^orld, and such rare inspiration by 
 heavenly powers lift the preacher out of the delusive 
 dream of self-sufficiency into a vivid consciousness that 
 God is and his exceeding great reward. It fills his soul 
 with sober zeal, baptizes his tongue with supermun- 
 dane eloquence and enables him to make his high call- 
 ing and election sure in covering the full scope of his 
 ministerial duties. 
 
^4 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 The Supernatural Source of the Ideal Preacher ^s 
 
 Efficiency 
 
 The last lecture treated of the ideal preacher's 
 full scope of activity as an ambassador of Jesus 
 Christ, and his thorough equipment for the respon- 
 sibilities of his office. It was shown that while the 
 King and Kingdom of God are the sources of his 
 authority and power, the family, Church and State 
 are the divinely ordained recipients and bearers of 
 such authority and power in the way of ethical and 
 educational activities; that the Christian minister's 
 lips are to keep and dispense the knowledge essen- 
 tial to the enlightenment and ultimate salvation of 
 the whole human race; that such responsibility of 
 the preacher does not invest him with any right to 
 dabble officiously in matters beyond his proper realm 
 of duty; that unjustifiable intermeddling as a busy- 
 body in other men's matters is likely to lead him into 
 such entangling alliances with secular affairs as to 
 sap the foundation of his ministerial character, de- 
 stroy his influence for good, and eventually allure 
 liim by the false-glowing charms of the devil; that 
 his security against such apostate tendency is in the 
 culmination of that spiritual frame of mind and fer- 
 vor of devotion which may lift him above the unhal- 
 lowed ambition by which the angels fell; that such 
 helpful guarantee of safety and qualification for 
 duty are to be secured by so rising into the higher 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 95 
 
 altitudes of the divine life as to be able to draw aside 
 the curtain and catch visions of the heavenly world; 
 and that only when thus equipped with the whole 
 panoply of God will he become a truly ideal preacher, 
 and be fully able to make his high calling and elec- 
 tion sure by covering and cultivating the whole field 
 of his ministerial usefuhiess. 
 
 The vision of the world to come, alluded to in the 
 foregoing paragraph, is an element of the first im- 
 portance in the equipment and efficiency of the Chris- 
 tian minister. This indispensable element in the con- 
 stitution of the preacher will logically become a fac- 
 tor of force in the evangelical pulpit. It grounds 
 itself in that vital relation of the minister to the Lord 
 Jesus Christ so forcefully illustrated by the great 
 Prince of preachers under his parabolic discourse 
 upon the vine and its branches. While that simili- 
 tude teaches the vital fellowship between Christ and 
 all true believers, it is applicable with special force 
 to the relation between the Lord and his ordained 
 ministerial servants. Every man in his own order. 
 Christ first : afterwards they that are Christ 's. 
 Christ is the chief minister of the New Testament 
 ^'Tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man." 
 He is the Anointed One. Ministers of the gospel are 
 anointed by virtue of their peculiar relation to Ilim. 
 ''The anointing which ye have received of him 
 abideth in you. ' ' 1 John 2 : 27. Ministers are espe- 
 cially anointed to do ambassadorial work in his name 
 and by his authority and grace. We are to ' ' consider 
 Jesus Christ as the apostle and High Priest of our 
 profession." "Because he loved righteousness" with 
 
96 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 an eternal affection, and hated iniquity with an ever- 
 lasting aversion, ' ' he was anointed above his fellows. ' ' 
 (Heb. 1:9). 
 
 Let us grasp and hold firmly to the true idea of 
 power from Christ and the heavenly realm in which 
 he sits enthroned and from which he dispenses gifts 
 unto men. Under one view even Christ could do 
 nothing of himself except as he stood in vital rela- 
 tion to the Father and to the power and glory that 
 he had with him before the world was. And if the Son 
 of God who became the infinite Prince of preachers, 
 could do nothing of himself, as evidenced from his 
 own lips, and was therefore able to do the work which 
 the Father had given him to do only because the 
 Father was with him, and because he lived by the 
 Father, how much less are finite ministers able to ful- 
 fill their ministry without a supply of strength and 
 efficiency from the same heavenly and infinite source ? 
 
 It was the ncarnation which so brought that power 
 into humanity and organically embodied and personi- 
 fied it in the Man of Gallilee as to cause even the sea 
 and the waves to obey him ; and it is the vital relation 
 of the ideal preacher to his Lord that gives him such 
 access to a vision of and participation in the powers 
 of the heavenly world which he needs as the first and 
 most indispensable element of fitness in his official 
 self, and a factor of force in his pulpit efforts. It 
 is only under this view that the meaning of the apos- 
 tolic commission can be imderstood. ''All power is 
 given unto me; go ye THEREFORE." 
 
 It was because the adopted son of Pharaoh's 
 daughter was more religiously inclined to seek the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 97 
 
 supernatural and see the invisible that he was not 
 swept away, like his brother Aaron and sister Miriam, 
 into religious idolatry in the form of calf-worship. 
 In that crisis of his life and crucial test of his char- 
 acter Moses '^endured as seeing him who is invisible" 
 through the natural and sensuous organ of vision, 
 while Aaron and the great body of the people wavered 
 in their more sensuous type of piety until they called 
 the wrath of heaven upon their semi-idolatrous wor- 
 ship. Let modern Christendom, priests and people, 
 read, take warning and govern themselves accord- 
 ingly. Let naturalistic preachers know Christ after 
 the flesh no more, adjust the angle of their spiritual 
 vision and sweep the more heavenly realm of 
 spiritual realities. Then will they lay less stress up- 
 on the organization of new societies, attach less im- 
 portance to the contriving of now contraptions, spend 
 less time in planning new whirlwind campaigns along 
 mere humanistic lines, conjure up less schemes of 
 new religious jugglery and introduce less novelties 
 into their pulpits for the momentary entertainment 
 of their dying audiences. 
 
 Woe unto us if we preach not the gospel ! Let 
 our rationalistic and sentimenetal preachers remem- 
 ber that mere reason has never yet been able to show 
 the way to happiness and God. Let our sentimental 
 clergymen understand that mere feeling is no safe 
 guide to glory. Let our sensational preachers know 
 that political juggler, the vaudeville and the moving 
 picture shows can beat them every time in such argu- 
 mentum ad hominem appeals to passion. Let our 
 popular preachers discontinue their eating from the 
 
 7 
 
98 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 miserable flesh pots of Egyptian naturalism and 
 sample a few of the grapes of Canaan. Let them 
 cease drinking from the polluted pools of humanism 
 whose stagnant waters are dangerous with the deadly 
 microbes of the world, the flesh and the devil. Let 
 them rather drink from heaven's Pierian spring 
 whose water Christ is willing to give, if they would 
 have within them a well of weter springing up unto 
 everlasting life. The minister who fails to supply 
 his necessity from such a source will not be suspected 
 of being very closely related to St. John's evangelical 
 angel who was seen flying through the heavens hav- 
 ing the everlasting gospel to preach to every nation, 
 kindred and tongue. 
 
 Humanitarian clergymen in the garb of Christian 
 ministers, and yet in the realm of naturalism! Over 
 a half century ago, Horace Bushnell, speaking from 
 the very heart of Puritanism in his great book: 
 Nature and the Supernatural said "Like an atmo- 
 sphere, it (Naturalism) begins to envelop the common 
 mind of the religious world. We frequently detect 
 its influence in the practical difficulties of the young 
 members of the churches, who do not even suspect 
 the true cause themselves. Indeed there is nothing 
 more common than to hear arguments advanced, and 
 illustrations offered by the most evangelical preach- 
 ers, that have no force or meaning, save what they 
 get from the current naturalism of the day. We 
 have even heard a distinguished and carefully ortho- 
 dox preacher deliver a discourse, the very doctrine 
 of which was inevitable, unqualifled naturalism. Log- 
 ically taken and carried out to its proper result, Chris- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 99 
 
 tianity could have had no ground of standing left — so 
 little did the preacher himself understand the true 
 scope of his doctrine, or the mischief that was be- 
 ginning to infect his own conceptions of the Chris- 
 tion truth." 
 
 Dr. John W. Nevin, in his review of the above 
 mentioned book, in the same year of its appearance 
 from the press, described the above class of preachers 
 as follows : ' ' They profess to honor Christianity as a 
 divine revelation, take its language familiarly upon 
 their lips, persuade themselves, it may be, that they 
 continue strictly loyal to its heavenly authority; and 
 yet all the time they are false to its claims and cast 
 it down from its proper excellency, substituting for 
 it in their minds another order of thought altogether. 
 In this way we are surrounded on all sides with a 
 nominal Christianity, which is little better in truth 
 than a sort of baptized Paganism, putting us off con- 
 tinually with heathenish ideas expressed in Chris- 
 tian terms." 
 
 Without the recognition and help of supernatural 
 powers minsters cannot rise above themselves. They 
 can do little more than run as one that beateth the 
 air. They cannot transcend their sordid selves into 
 that higher plane of their better selves. Such eleva- 
 tion can only be in virtue of the coming down of a 
 higher element. This fact is realized by the ideal 
 preacher. He is presumed to have felt the presence 
 of its power and the necessity of its presence and 
 uplift. He feels and acknowledges that the super- 
 natural must work in and through the natural. If 
 he has read history correctly, he sees this truth 
 
100 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 demonstrated in the ages past. The Grecians, and 
 in fact all the nations west from Palestine believed 
 in the possibility of attaining perfection by self-ele- 
 vation, even into the sphere of the gods, having eyes 
 that see not and ears that hear not. The more an- 
 cient and oriental nations , east of Palestine, believed 
 that such elevation could be effected only by the com- 
 ing down of the gods into human nature, in such a 
 way as to become incarnations or avatars. The truth 
 between these two mythological errors was brought 
 to light in the great mystery of godliness, when the 
 Son of God in person and in power came down from 
 heaven, and in the very bosom of our natural human- 
 ity established a reservoir and order of supernatural 
 power in and with the natural, by which the whole 
 organism of the race may be elevated into union with 
 God, and all individual members thereof into fellow- 
 ship with each other. 
 
 The ideal preacher's recognition of the essential 
 presence of the supernatural in the constitution of 
 Christianity starts with a proper view of Christ's 
 theanthropic person. He is held by all such minis- 
 ters as the Alpha of the whole Christian alphabet, 
 with all its vowels and consonants. Like Peter who 
 had the first proper look behind the veil of the na- 
 tural, they see and apprehend Jesus of Nazareth as 
 the truly divine Christ of God. Not through an 
 organ of flesh and blood, but by a more spiritual 
 revelation, they properly apprehend his theanthropic 
 person and proclaim Him as the one who cometh from 
 Edom with dyed garments and from Bozrah, mighty 
 to save. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 101 
 
 The preacher who fails to have and to hold such 
 proper recognition of the Deity in the person of 
 Jesus Christ and to have his whole psychic being 
 filled with a sense of such Messianic majesty is in 
 danger of floundering and falling by the wayside, 
 because he does not have the assurance that "beneath 
 him are the everlasting arms." Like Samson, he is 
 shorn of the locks of his strength, and is at all times 
 in danger of falling into the lap of some false Delila, 
 while the uncircumcised Philistines rush in upon 
 him, gouge out his eyes and put him to grinding at 
 the mills of mere humanism. 
 
 Brethren, blow the trumpet in Zion. Let the elect 
 angels weep between the porch and the altar. There 
 is a softening sentiment now at work in Protestant 
 Christendom in its naturalistic way of holding the 
 great mystery of godliness. Dogmas that were once 
 held sacred and settled for all time to come, are now 
 obliged to run the gauntlet of either rationalism, 
 the religion of reason, or sentimentalism, the religion 
 of mere feeling. By many ministers Christ's divinity 
 is not openly and absolutely denied, yet the correlated 
 doctrine of his virgin birth is being called into ques- 
 tion as contrary to natural law. Parthenogenesis is 
 rejected because it is said to be antinomial. Sophis- 
 try ! That which is above nature is not necessarily 
 contrary to the ordinary working of nature's laws. 
 Let this antinomial rule be made the standard and 
 test of all heavenly truth, and the whole Christian 
 system would fall away, and our holy religion would 
 be proven to be the most wretched delusion ever 
 palmed off upon the trembling hopes of mankind. 
 
102 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Christianity could not stand with any essential part 
 of its organic whole surrendered to the rationalistic 
 sappers and miners that are now encompassing and 
 entering Zion. What God hath joined together, no 
 ideal minister will attempt to put asunder. He 
 vainly tries to save any organic part who lacks the 
 courage and consistency to contend for the whole. 
 
 Indeed the whole remedial order of divine redemp- 
 tion from the mystery of Bethlehem to the equally 
 great mystery in which we shall all be changed in a 
 moment at the sounding of the last trumpet, is noth- 
 ing less than one concrete economy replete with super- 
 natural elements incarnated in the natural. It is not 
 an order of heavenly powers starting in the spirit to 
 end in the flesh. A sound Christology must be fol- 
 lowed most logically and organically by a sound 
 ecclesiology. The ideal preacher will apprehend, and 
 the ideal sermon will comprehend it as such. The 
 holy Catholic Church is not only consequential, but 
 also sequential to a holy Catholic Christ — and both 
 are objects of faith. This supernatural order of 
 being was thus conceived in the eternal purpose of 
 God, incorporated in the primitive constitution of 
 concrete Christianity, apprehended by the Church 
 Fathers, formulated in the early and all other ecu- 
 menical creeds of Christendom, publicly and almost 
 universally professed as the Christian centuries 
 rolled by, from Nicea down the ages to the more recent 
 opening of the flood-gates of religious rationalism. 
 Even though the Romish communion did lay undue 
 stress upon the Church as over against its pre-emi- 
 nently divine Head, its perversion of the truth did 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 103 
 
 not make the faith of God of none effect. Protes- 
 tantism undertook to correct the false trend that 
 started in the dawn of the dark ages. It has done 
 much in the right direction, but down to date it has 
 not yet made entirely good. Much of its tendency 
 is now alarmingly in the other direction. Too many 
 preachers and too many religious movements, while 
 trying to bring forth the royal diadem to crown 
 Immanuel Lord of all, are only putting another crown 
 of thorns upon his head. They so strip his bride of 
 her supernatural jewels that she is unprepared to 
 meet her heavenly husband at the coming marriage 
 supper of the Lamb. 
 
 It is not implied in the foregoing paragraph, 
 neither should it be inferred therefrom that the ideal 
 preacher preaches supernaturalism from his pulpit 
 or that he is expected to soar through the transcen- 
 dental heavens like a blading comet. He, however, 
 has within him the inwrought consciousness that he 
 is permeated with the powers of the heavenly world, 
 overshadowed by supernatural realities, and uplifted 
 by the eternal arms. His Christology is such as to 
 beget a correspondingly divine ecclesiology, and this 
 again necessitates a soteriology with supernatural 
 elements and forces. To deny the presence and power 
 of the supernatural in the preaching of the Word, 
 and the proper administering and use of the sacra- 
 ments is' nothing less than religious infidelity, and to 
 substitute something else therefor is nothing less than 
 an attempt to build the temple of God with untemp- 
 ered mud. This is just what much of our American 
 Protestantism is now trying to do. Modern methods. 
 
104 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 some of them good and commendable, are unconsci- 
 ously substituted for the ancient ''faith once for all 
 delivered to the saints." Human contrivances and 
 contraptions are blocking the King's highway to an 
 earlier dawn of the millennial day. 
 
 Finally, if, as we have just seen, the entire range 
 of objective faith once delivered to the saints is filled 
 and made efficient unto salvation, by virtue of its 
 supernatural realities, it logically follows that the 
 subjective faith by which these realities are appre- 
 hended and appropriated must also necessarily have 
 supernatural contents wrought therein by superna- 
 tural agencies. In other words, genuine faith from 
 the very nature of the case, must be itself superna- 
 tural. It must be the power of passing beyond na- 
 ture, so as to "lay hold of things heavenly and divine 
 in their own higher order and sphere." (Nevin) 
 "The Holy Ghost works such faith in the believer's 
 heart by the preaching of the gospel, and confirms it 
 in the proper use of the sacraments." This truth 
 the ideal preacher also recognizes. Spiritual things 
 must be spiritually discerned. The general law of 
 corollaries requires it. For want of such correla- 
 tion some men's faith is in vain, and they are yet in 
 their sins. Men cannot see through the ears or hear 
 through the olfactory nerve. There must be a recip- 
 rocal relation between the object of vision and the 
 organ of vision. When not so correlated, there is no 
 evidence of things unseen. Mere intelligent judg- 
 ment is not faith. Neither can faith subsist upon it- 
 self. There is too much of this circular syllogistic- 
 ism in matters religious. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 105 
 
 In the early part of my mystery, in Westmoreland 
 County, Pennsylvania, I was called to visit an old 
 gentleman in his last sickness. My spiritual counsel 
 with him at the bedside unexpectedly drcAV out the 
 following from his pallid lips: "Preacher, I have 
 great faith in belief." He had sadly misunderstood 
 Luther's great peripheral doctrine of justification 
 through faith, and substituted for it justification for 
 faith. He could not see those objective realities in 
 Christianity which must always remain invisible to 
 men who are spiritually blind, neither could his 
 "faith in belief" draw any nutrient principle of spir- 
 itual life by the attempt that it was making to feed 
 upon a meager diet of self. 
 
 That clinical experience reminded me of a ridicu- 
 lous sight I witnessed when a boy. One of my 
 father's cows had twin calves. During the day the 
 cow was turned out to pasture, and the calves were 
 left in the stable to await her return in the evening. 
 In their mother's absence they became hungry, and 
 began to suck each other's ears. Even to a boy the 
 performance seemed superlatively ludicrous. There 
 was not much milk in their diet, neither was there 
 much increase of veal in their calfish vanity. So in 
 much of our emotional religion and so-called church- 
 work. There is more saliva than salvation. Fun? 
 Not a bit of it. That which can not be reasoned out 
 of a false position should be laughed out of coun- 
 tenance. Even the ideal minister may be pardoned 
 for wearing an occasional smile. The grapes of the 
 promised land cannot be gathered from the thorns of 
 nature. Let all preachers arise in the energy of their 
 
106 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 supernatural endowments, and in the might of their 
 heavenly calling, and like Moses, show their endur- 
 ance and their genuine success in the gospel ministry 
 by so adjusting the angle of their spiritual vision as 
 to see the otherwise invisible realities in the great 
 mystery of godliness. When logic is dumb and rea- 
 son fails to give an adequate answer to the inquiries 
 of the yearning heart, the regenerated soul's power 
 to evidence the realities of things unseen may yet shed 
 the radiance of its incandescent light upon the high- 
 way that leads to the great white throne. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 107 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 The Ideal Preacher as a Christian Philosopher 
 
 We have already seen that the vision of the world 
 to come is essential to the full equipment and efficiency 
 of the Christian minister ; that such vision is possible 
 only when he sustains that vital relation to Christ 
 indicated in his parabolic teaching under the simili- 
 tude of the vine and the branches, and when the 
 official anointing he has recceived in ordination 
 abideth in him (1 elohn 2:27) ; that such full min- 
 isterial efficiency implies a supernatural realm of 
 power in virtue of the coming of the Son of God into 
 humanity for us and for our salvation; that wide 
 awake preachers so adjust the angle of their spiritual 
 vision as to transcend the merely natural, and sweep 
 the more heavenly realm of supermundane realities; 
 that when the minister so arises into the realm of 
 heavenly power whatever is contrary to nature will 
 find its corrective in the remedial powers of the 
 heavenly world, and the preacher will find himself 
 in an element really natural to himself ; that when the 
 minister so arises, through his regeneration and ordina- 
 tion, as to have his citizenship and conversation in 
 heaven fPhil. 3:20) he becomes so really and truly 
 a naturalized citizen in his newly adopted and 
 heavenly country as to spurn the popular and ephem- 
 eral spurts of spasmodic religiousness; that this min- 
 isterial grasp of the supernatural starts with the 
 proper recognition of Christ's person, continues logi- 
 
108 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 cally through a corresponding ecclesiology and soter- 
 iology, on to the closing chapter of eschatology when 
 we shall be supernaturally changed in the twink- 
 ling of an eye. 
 
 Preaching the gospel, though primarily a procla- 
 mation of evangelical truth, should be the delivery 
 of a message of such character and contents as to 
 enable the people to see the most reasonable service 
 to which they are called in the presentation and hear- 
 ing of such message. True, there may be many who for 
 want of mental capacity are unable to follow the min- 
 ister with a philosophical turn of mind in his presen- 
 tation of the truth or truths which he publicly pro- 
 claims; and yet the truth, "like many a gem of purest 
 ray serene," always involves in its very essence rea- 
 sons that may not always sparkle out obviously upon 
 the surface. Probably it was for this reason that the 
 great Prince of preachers announced ''I have many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot receive them 
 now. ' ' 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding man's incapacity to receive 
 all that is in the mind of the great Teacher sent from 
 God, and his corresponding inability to understand it, 
 the real preacher is, nevertheless, strong in the clear 
 consciousness and full assurance that Christianity, 
 as a concrete force element present in the world, has 
 its tap-root deep down in the philosophy of things, 
 as well as in the person of its divine Founder. Jesus 
 Christ was and is not only the great Saviour, but the 
 Man of Galilee was and is also the greatest philos- 
 opher in the history of the world. The principles 
 of true philosophy are grounded in the hypostatic 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 109 
 
 constitution of this wonderful being, applied in his 
 atonement, promulgated in his teachings and pro- 
 claimed in the preachings of his ambassadors. Philo- 
 sophia the love of wisdom, the love of life and the 
 life of love all poise and perpetuate themselves in 
 'Hhe Science of the Absolute," which is the source of 
 all other sciences. It rocked the cradle at Bethlehem, 
 sparkled out in the miracles of the Messiah, suffered 
 the contradiction of sinners, wove the crown of thorns 
 and endured the tragedy of the cross in the crimson 
 crisis of the atonement upon the bloody tree until it 
 accompanied its divine human apostle back through 
 the everlajsting doors to the arcanum of its native 
 realm beyond the stars. 
 
 Preachers who feel the flowing of this divine 
 philosophic under current in the depths of the great 
 mystery of Godliness, and who are consequently in- 
 spired by a heaven-born intuition, sustain to mere 
 pulpit scriptorians a relation somewhat similar to 
 that which the author of the Fourth Gospel sustains 
 to the synoptists — not necessarilly in a contradictory 
 attitude, but occupying, rather, a higher and more 
 advanced spiritual position. This is not table- 
 tumbling Spiritualism, but the most superltaive 
 degree of genuine spirituality attainable in this 
 present section of human life. St. John did not 
 set aside or ignore the historic facts of Christ- 
 ianity, he also "saw and bare record," and averred 
 that his ' ' record is true. ' ' The beloved disciple instead 
 of forgetting to remember, remembered to omit from 
 his record of much that Jesus began to do and to 
 teach, because such statement of historic facts was 
 
no THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 not essential to the purpose he had in view in his 
 presentation of the gospel from a more divinely in- 
 spired, philosophic and intuitive point of view; and 
 in the light of a more heavenly vision of the truth 
 as surveyed by his eagle-eye, and seized by his more 
 penetrative exploration of the spiritual world. Such 
 spirituality, to the extent that it is now attainable by 
 scholarly and fully consecrated preachers may not 
 raise them into the same apostolic rank and philos- 
 ophic realm of heavenly vision reached by the seer of 
 Patmos, but it will equip them with a power not 
 possesed by the minister measurably destitute of such 
 qualifications. Such vision of the realities of the 
 heavenly realm, and such inspiration by heavenly 
 powers lift the minister out of the delusive dream of 
 self-sufficiency into a vivid consciousness that God is 
 his all-sufficiency, and his exceeding great reward. It 
 fills his soul with sober zeal and baptizes his tongue 
 with supermundane eloquence as he takes to his 
 philosophic diving-bell and plunges into the deep' 
 ocean of everlasting truth, and brings to the surface 
 those sparkling gems which are never found floating 
 upon the surface of shallow waters. 
 
 Man's relation to his God, as the relation of the 
 image to the original, justified the invitation from the 
 Infinite One : ' ' Come now and let us reason together ; ' ' 
 and because humanity is intoned mth divinity the insa- 
 tiable longings of the human intellect to penetrate the 
 Infinite seem to presuppose that there is an infinite 
 field for exploration in the person of the Deity. This 
 insatiable yearning was not entirely unknown to the 
 ancients. Although the philosopher of Uz despaired 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 111 
 
 of finding out God, and of knowing ''the Almighty 
 to perfection/' yet he resolved to "go even unto his 
 seat with his mouth full of arguments," and thus 
 he was persistent in his pursuit: — "I know that my 
 Vindicator liveth and that he shall stand in the latter 
 day upon the earth, and that I shall see him in my 
 flesh." 
 
 So too with the psalmist David. While he observed 
 that there was darkness round about Jehovah's throne, 
 his eye of philosophic faith could yet penetrate the 
 sombrous veil as to see Him so pavillioned in splendor 
 as to draw out the logical thread of the most comfort- 
 ing conclusion that in "His presence there is fullness of 
 joy, and at His right hand there are pleasures for 
 evermore. ' ' 
 
 Philosophy is that which evokes and justifies 
 thought in matters that lie beneath the surface of 
 things. Such thought was challenged and justified 
 by the Lord himself when he asked Peter; "What 
 think ye of Christ?" Men will think of somebody 
 or something — men 7mist think of Christ in order to 
 know him unto life eternal ; and ministers must think 
 profoundly and broadly in order to make him known 
 unto the salvation of others. In religion, thought may 
 not be able to scale the attitude attainable by faith, 
 yet when a man quits thinking his faith either becomes 
 superstitious or passes from the earth. Jesus Christ 
 was the greatest thinker that ever stepped into the 
 arena of thought or moved in the realm of intellect- 
 uality. His religion has provoked more stalwart 
 ratiocination than all the lyceums, printing presses 
 and propagandists of the world. Such mental inquiry 
 
112 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 lies along the line of the investigation that leads up 
 to the knowlege of Him whom Christ came to reveal. 
 It met the case of Thomas the skeptic, and when 
 Jesus accompanied him in his philosophic re- 
 quest, "Show us the Father and it will satisfy us," 
 the most accommodating and philosophic answer came 
 back : " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. ' ' 
 
 To this fact the history of the world can testify. 
 It is just what the ancient civilizations tried to do, 
 but the chronic effort was signally futile because it 
 failed to embrace and retain God in its knowledge. 
 Hence its inevitable drift to the ultimate necessity 
 of erecting its altar "#o the Unknown God/' 
 
 Just at that time a supernatural light flashed from 
 the skies of Damascus. That flash was brighter and 
 sharper than a Damascus blade. God 's chosen ' ' vessel 
 to the Gentiles" was "not disobedient unto the 
 heavenly vision. ' ' Following the new revelation from 
 heaven, St. Paul stepped from Asia into Europe 
 to find that the world's most vigorous form of think- 
 ing had reached its highest acme to fall to its lowest 
 depths of disappointment in the collapse of the Par- 
 thenon. A man of greater endowments than Plato 
 climbed the bloody summit of Mars Hill, escaped the 
 speculative superstition of Grecian philosophy and 
 proclaimed the higher philosophy or wisdom of God in 
 the mystery of the incarnation of the Absolute Philos- 
 opher, even in the hitherto ' ' hidden wisdom " in a mys- 
 tery ' ' which none of the princes of the world knew, for 
 had they known it, they would not have crucified the 
 Lord of glory. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 113 
 
 Besides the transition from the traditional teaching 
 of the Pharisees under Philo and other founders 
 of the Alexandrine school of Christian thought 
 toward the doctrine of the Logos as taken up and 
 advanced by the author of the Fourth Gospel, and 
 the apocalyptic soaring of St. John to the highest 
 grade of Christian knowlege then attainable within 
 the ecstatic realm of religious mysticism, and the 
 philosophic cast of thinking by St. Paul, the early 
 age of Christianity was not primarily productive of 
 theological and Christological reasoning. Christians 
 were intuitively such in the element of love It was 
 only when the new religion was assailed by heretics 
 that religious reasoning entered the arena to contend 
 for the faith and wage battle for the truth as it had 
 been revealed through Jesus Christ and set forth in the 
 sacred manuscripts of the inspired writers. Persecu- 
 tion kept the fires of philosophic polemics from burst- 
 ing forth into flames of heated discussion. Martyrdom 
 was at a premiun and metaphysics at a discount. 
 
 But the state of things in the primitive church 
 could not continue in and through the full necessary 
 development of what was involved in the Kingdom 
 of God planted upon the earth at the beginning of 
 Christian history; and those religious mummies who 
 do not think vainly hope to develop themselves to the 
 stature of men in the fullness of symmetrical matur- 
 ity. Hence the necessity for theology which has to do 
 with the philosophy of the divine manifestations of the 
 Deity and their application to the economy of that 
 part of the moral universe so far as it is located upon 
 this sin-disturbed planet. 
 
 8 
 
114 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Justin Martyr is looked upoD as the first Christian 
 theologian. From Justin's time the philosophy of 
 the Divine Person and divine things began to arise 
 and move toward its highest attainable point for that 
 age under Athanasius, the great champion of the 
 Catholic faith as formulated in the theology or rather 
 the Christology of the ancient creeds. Then, even 
 before the Athanasian Creed was fully flung to the 
 breeze of Christendom, the current of real thoughtful 
 realization began to recede before the dismal dawn of 
 the dark ages and the decadency of healthful and 
 helpful inquiry into the nature of divine realities. 
 About the time that Mohammedanism began to arise 
 with its bloody passion for the conquest of the world 
 under the Crescent, Rome started forward to follow 
 the star of her semicarnel ambition toward the setting 
 sun. Instead of using genuine philosophy to sway the 
 world by the power of concentrated reason and evan- 
 gelical faith, she sought to spread her own unphilos- 
 ophical empire by the artful diplomacy of the Romish 
 See, the dominancy of the Romish hierarchy and the 
 miserable mummeries of monastic superstition. 
 
 In that polluted pool of stagnant thought Christian 
 philosophy was not surrounded with environments 
 favorable to its fair development. As the sholastic 
 age of reasoning dawned upon the church, dialective 
 religiousness was substituted for the rational faith. The 
 human mind became so adventurous in its aimless 
 soarings as to seemingly presume that the objective 
 existence of Christianity depended largely upon the 
 logic of the schools. Magnus Albertus, more vesatile 
 than profound as a thinker, poured his compilation of 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 115 
 
 the world's erudition into the seething caldron of 
 sholastic agitation. Thomas Aquinas became his pupil, 
 and such was his intellectual acuteness that he soon 
 excelled his teacher, and became Doctor Angelicus of 
 Italy. Aquinas amd Duns Scotus entered the arena of 
 a dialectic conflict which made the pages of its record 
 memorable in medieval history. The Thomists and the 
 Scotists were arrayed against each other with a 
 bitterness unworthy of the church, and a valor worthy 
 of a better cause. This controversy was intensified by 
 the fact that these two leading apostles represented the 
 competing Orders of their time — the Dominicans and 
 the Franciscans — which, again, represented respec- 
 tively, the Aristotelean and the Platonic methods of 
 ratiocination — and the oscinations were at times very 
 ratty. These chronic discussions showed that philos- 
 ophy had been taught to look upon Biblical theology 
 with contempt, while theology drew its ecclesiastical 
 drapery about itself and went to sleep in the arms of 
 the pope, 
 
 Yet the church had life enough left in her shriveled 
 form to get out of patience with the fruitless con- 
 troversies so long fostered in her distracted bosom. 
 Reconciliation and compromise between dialectics and 
 mystics became the unconscious demands of the age. 
 There was truth in scholasticism and elements of 
 worth in mysticism to which they were driven by the 
 unsatisfactory religion of dry disputation. These could 
 not be abandoned in the settlement of the questions 
 at issue. The times were waiting for competent leader- 
 ship to solve or dissolve the problem and save the more 
 valuable fragments. That leader came to the front 
 
116 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 in the person of Bonaventura, assisted by such coop- 
 erators as Anselm, Hugo, and Rupert. The task was 
 undertaken and partially performed by the revival of 
 genuine philosophic reasoning, evangelical faith and 
 personal consecration in religious mysticism. This was 
 the beginning of the end of a fruitless yet fruitful frit- 
 tering away of philosophy vainly so called, and frigid 
 intellectuality. The curtain began to fall before that 
 old stage of medieval attempt to substitute reason for 
 faith, and the Scholastic age of the Christian church 
 went out with the thirteenth century of the Christian 
 Era. 
 
 The Sholastic mode of thinking having filled its 
 mission and passed away with the midnight of the 
 dark ages, the fullnes of the time for a logical reaction 
 began to dawn upon the hazy horizon of the world. 
 The Renaissance followed in the comprehensive his- 
 toric course of a well-ordered providence. The Refor- 
 mation of the sixteenth century was not primarily a 
 movement in philosophy, but of doctrine and Christian 
 morals. It was also a mammoth demonstration of the 
 philosophy of Christian history. Among other things 
 it demonstrated the fact that one extreme tendency 
 begets another in the world's onflow. Action begets 
 counteraction. The pendulum had swung for cen- 
 turies in the direction of arbitrary authority over 
 men, and the corrective remedy applied thereto sent 
 the reverse movement in the direction of arbitrary 
 freedom in men until religious liberty ran rampant to 
 ward our modem sect system in which there is neither 
 sane religion nor sound philosophy. 
 
 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 117 
 
 rather reproductive of traditionalism in religion than 
 productive of Christological theology and philosphical 
 ecclesiology. Indeed the atmosphere was rather filled 
 mth more of the odors of eschatology than fragrance 
 from the Rose of Sharon. The world was active : the 
 church measurably passive. It was the dawning of 
 the golden age of literature. Shakespeare flung his 
 tragedies and his comedies into the playhouse of 
 Europe, Milton lost and regained his paradise, and 
 Bacon incubated his Ovum Organum. Yet it remained 
 for the semireligious champions of a questionable 
 orthodoxy, like Lessing, Schiller, Kant and Hegel 
 to startle Germany and the world with their philos- 
 ophic Wissensckaft. 
 
 It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century that the devout spirit of Christian philosphy 
 was again revived and revealed with anything like 
 an earnest effort to peer into the mystery of Godli- 
 ness with an attempt to draw its secrets to the surface 
 of the world's lifestream which had been muddled 
 and puddled for a thousand years. Futile attempts 
 had been made to emancipate the mind of man from 
 the thalldom of traditional error. The world was 
 seemingly ripe for a great philosophic movement, 
 and was standing on tiptoe of anxiety and expectation 
 to see the star of hope twinkling above the hazy hori- 
 zon of a new Bethlehem. 
 
 In North America, Jonathan Edwards and others 
 stirred the philosophic pool into such a seething con- 
 dition that even the head of New England Puri- 
 tanism began to reel with sheer dizziness in its conges- 
 
118 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 tion of speculative thought, and the chalky formation 
 of Plymouth Rock began to crumble into the sea. 
 
 In old England, theology, under the reign of 
 empirical philosophy, together with the skepticism of 
 Hume, and the infidelity of Gibbon and Bolingbroke, 
 helped to bring out the tractarian movement and ripen 
 the crisis, until Dr. Newman, representing a large 
 sentment, wrote the popular funeral march: ''Lead 
 kindly light, the night is dark, and we are far from 
 home." That vague, yet persistent yearning of the 
 human heart which is always seeking redress from 
 the miseries of disquietude continued to become more 
 intense in the proportion that the head became con- 
 gested and bemuddled with semi-Christian religious- 
 ness. 
 
 In Germany there was, if possible, more intense 
 restlessness, especially among the scholarly classes of 
 people. The questionable monads of Leibnitz, the pan- 
 theistic price which Spinoza was willing to pay for 
 the theoretic overthrow of the old heresy of Dualism 
 led on to the plausible yet untenable position of Wolf 
 and ripened the field of rationalistic and dogmatic 
 darnell until Schleiermacher appeared upon the stage. 
 As that great philosopher and theologian stepped to 
 the front of the flickering footlights, he reflected the 
 incipieucy of a radically new apprehension of the truth 
 whose goings forth had been of old and from ever- 
 lasting. It was the coming of a new system of relig- 
 ious thinking for the church and for the world. He pro- 
 claimed no new light for the dispersion of the world's 
 moral and mental darkness, but announced a new 
 apprehension of the old Sun of righteousness with 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 119 
 
 a more i^hilosophic healing in his wings. His religious 
 philosophy, as seen from the viewpoint of. some of his 
 disciples, was incarnated in an organic constitution 
 of divine-human life and truth centering in and 
 coming from the person of Christ, unfolding itself 
 in a historic way and in such a manner as to conserve 
 all that is valuable in the past, vital in the present and 
 essential to the victorious completion of the great 
 mystery of Godliness, to the glory of God in the 
 redemption of fallen man. 
 
 The secret of Schleiermacher's success in awak- 
 ening the most vigorous thought of which the w^orld 
 is capable in two Christian continents, and in gather- 
 ing disciples around his newly erected theological 
 standard was in the fact that he, more than any 
 philosopher going before him, combined the outer 
 observances of his philosophical investigations with 
 the testimony of his inner psychological consciousness 
 of the truth of the system which he announced to the 
 world. In his wonderful constitution the subjective 
 and the objective were counterparts in harmonious 
 action. The experimental religious feeling of his re- 
 generated soul moved forward on a line parallel wdth 
 the deductive activitj' of his scientific reasoning, the 
 facts of history and the observed phenomena of the 
 external world until the two were justified and glo- 
 rified together in the most incisive system of theolog- 
 ical thought ever wrought out in the laboratory of 
 a gigantic brain, and projected out upon the world. 
 Because he was fully convinced and alive to the con- 
 sciousness of his Christian transformation by "the 
 renewing of his mind" he was able to so receive the 
 
120 THE IDEAL PREACHER • 
 
 evidence of the outer court in the case as "to prove 
 what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of 
 God" as revealed in the panoramic onflow of the 
 outer world's great history. Thus it was that the 
 Spirit of God, speaking through the Bible and the 
 right understanding of history, bare such testimony 
 to his spirit as to make him a giant and a leader 
 among all the religious philosophers of Germany, and 
 ^ pioneer in a Christocentric system of thought that 
 will help to mold the religious faith of the world 
 until the leaves of the judgement-book unfold. 
 
 The logic of Schleiermacher starts with the assump- 
 tion that history is a divine force in concrete form, 
 whose voice is heard and heeded by all who are in 
 real earnest in their efforts to know the will and the 
 way of God in the onflow of the world. His reasoning 
 starts with a sound Christology and continues in a 
 sane Ecclesiology. If history is God's way in the 
 world, church-history is Christ's manner of manifest- 
 ing his life and revealing the truth "throughout all 
 ages, world without end." His idea of the church 
 seems to have been not entirely dissimilar from the 
 view of the New Jerusalem described by St. John as 
 "coming down from God out of heaven." She that 
 descends is also the same that ascends, or progresses 
 toward the ultimate goal of her mission and the 
 development of her real character, until the coming 
 of the Bridegroom. This view was taken up and dis- 
 cussed, seventy years ago, by Dr. Philip Schaff and 
 others as Historic Development, peculiar to the true 
 genuis, distinguishing feature and manifest mission 
 of Protestantism, as over against the Romish concep- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 121 
 
 tion of the church and the finished ecclesiology of 
 Puritanism. Historic development of the church 
 means nothing more or less than the fact that she 
 unfolds herself in the world in a manner peculiar to 
 the order of life which she received from her divine 
 Head and by which she is animated and actuated in 
 performing her central part in carrying out the plan 
 of the ages. It means ecclesiastical evolution and 
 something very different, not only from Sweden- 
 borg's conception of his New Jerusalem church, but 
 also an evolution different from that of Darwin's 
 beautiful scientific rdream, in which he started with 
 a tadpole, continued from natural selection and ended 
 at a terminal point of uncertainty. 
 
 The foregoing paragraph indicates in only a gen- 
 eral way the position of the German theologian, the 
 central principle of his system, the logical trend of 
 his reasoning and the conclusions reached in the ap- 
 plication made of his Christological postulate. His 
 announced tenets of rational faith and their vigorous 
 advocacy along a radically new line of defense made 
 him popular with scholarly orthodoxy, notwithstand- 
 ing the fact that he was suspected of being tinctured 
 with some disguised sentiments of Spinozian pan- 
 theism, and with unwarranted tinkering with the old 
 doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in the Nicean 
 age. Yet such was the character as a man, his repu- 
 tation as a Christian and his high standing as a 
 scholarly investigator in search for the truth, that 
 the announced philosophy of his Christology and eccle- 
 siology caused the broad mantle of charity to be 
 thrown over a multitude of his theoretical sins. 
 
122 THE IDEAL PREACHER , 
 
 It is not so easy to analyze Scheiermacher's new 
 cast of theology in such a way as to show the organic 
 and logical relation of each part to each other and to 
 the whole as it is to mention some or all of its 
 several parts. Standing out, prominently, and under 
 emphasis, he claimed that Christianity, as to its most 
 essential substance, is life — not a mere perfected 
 human life, neither a life made divine by development 
 or ethical refinement, but rather a divine-human order 
 of life with its fountain-head in the incarnate Logos, 
 the Christ, and its onflow in the church which is His 
 mystical body, and the embodiment of His kingdom 
 in the world — that Christianity perpetuates itself in 
 the world to the end of time by virtue of the fact 
 that it flows perennially from and is kept constantly 
 in organic touch with Christ as the deathless source 
 of power to perpetuate itself in the world and with- 
 stand the gates of hell — that this vital connection is 
 not primarily through doctrine held and heralded in 
 an abstract or promulgatory way, but through substan- 
 tial life and grace and truth as an essence absolutely 
 inseparable from the being of God himself — concretely 
 subsistent and persistent to the goal of its mission — 
 that Christianity in its proper Protestant form is 
 historic in its development, both as to the inner life of 
 the Christian individual and its outerworld progess 
 in the course of time. Thus Scheiermacher's philos- 
 ophic theology, like Luther's part in the great Reform- 
 ation movement of the sixteenth century, began and 
 wrought itself out largely in his own personal exper- 
 ience. Hence the stress laid upon the subjective 
 or inner life of the Christian. His sense of experi- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 123 
 
 mental religion was, however, something else and more 
 than an experimential gush and rush of mere feeling ; 
 neither did it consist in throwing an inkstand at an 
 imaginary devil. His piety was experimental without 
 being empirical and mystical without being magical. 
 His idea of religious growth, whether in its microcosm 
 or macrocosm, was that the enlargement was acquired, 
 not so much by accretion as by evolution, not so much 
 by aggression as by progression. 
 
 This philosophy of the church was brought to 
 America by Dr. Agustus Rouch and Dr. Philip Schaff , 
 about three-quarters of a century ago, planted in 
 American soil and cultivated under the name of 
 Mercerburg Theology. Dr. John Williamson Nevin 
 was among the first to welcome it to our shores and 
 echo it out toward the many points of the Puritanic 
 and traditional points of the compass. Under his lead- 
 ership such men as Gerhart, Higbee, Moses Kieff er and 
 Dr. Thomas G. Appel fostered the principle and favor- 
 ed the movement until much of the current ecelesiology 
 of the country had been transformed by its renewing 
 power, and started forward in a new trend of thought 
 among the open-minded theologians of the nineteenth 
 century. There were giants in those days. Where 
 now are the ministers to wear their mantles with 
 shoulders broad enough to keep the wrinkles out? 
 
 Young Gentlemen of the Seminary : You are now 
 within the walls that still echo to their mighty tread. 
 What an incentive you have to expand your Christ- 
 ological lungs and your ecclesiological chests ! May 
 the expansion be commensurate wdth the responsibil- 
 ities that are about to settle down on you in your 
 
124 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 battling for the truth. The philosophy of the church 
 question has not yet been glorified in its final settle- 
 ment. It is still calling for stalwart consideration 
 and full solution. It is only the philosophic solution 
 of this problem in the light of the evangelical truth 
 that can eliminate from many of our religious en- 
 tanglements the contradictions and incongruities that 
 are now keeping the millennial dawn in the distant fut- 
 ure. Such solution will show that there is no less neces- 
 ity for the transforming creeds into deeds than there is 
 for logical development of the root principle of evan- 
 gelical truth until the vital embryonic substance there- 
 of passes on and up through the unfolding of the plant, 
 to the full ripe corn in the ear at the last harvest day. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 125 
 
 LECTURE IX . 
 
 The Ideal Preacher ^s Sermonic Use of Divine 
 Revelation 
 
 Lecture VIII treated of the philosophic element in 
 the sermon. It was shown that the great Prince of 
 Preachers challenged and taught and encouraged men 
 to think; that St. John, the apostle of love, as a bird 
 with pinions fleet and plumage fair, soared beyond 
 the ordinary flights of prophetic vision, and that St. 
 Paul, the philosopher of faith, wove many golden 
 threads of philosophic thought into the fine fabrics 
 of his truly evangelical epistles and sermons; that 
 though the early Christian ministers laid compar- 
 itively little stress upon the importance of rational 
 inquiry into the nature of divine things, it was largely 
 because they were measurably absorbed in brotherly 
 affection; that not until heretics began to assail the 
 doctrines of Christianity, as set forth in the inspired 
 manuscripts and as received through tradition, did 
 the primitive Christians begin to teach themselves 
 and others to do some profound thinking in matters 
 involved in religion; that before the days of Justin 
 Martyr the rising science of theology played a compar- 
 tively small part upon the ante-Nicean stage; that 
 starting properly with Justin, it reached the zenith 
 of its inquiry and combative power in the full per- 
 sonal consecration, nervous vigor, indomitable energy 
 and ardent rhetoric of Athanasius; that when the 
 ancient creeds began to embalm themselves in relig- 
 
126 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ious decadency, and when Mohammedanism arose 
 in the Orient, the carnal ambition of the popes began 
 to prepare the way for the lull of the incoming age 
 of ecclesiactical darkness and the rise of didactive 
 scholasticism; that with the rise of the renaissance 
 in the fifteenth century and the dawn of the Reforma- 
 tion in the opening of the sixteenth century, there 
 was such a revival of earnest inquiry into the nature 
 of things ethical and divine as to carry the movement 
 so far afield as to awaken in the fallen human intel- 
 lect and a settling back into Prostant traditionlism 
 of the two succeeding centuries a false freedom little 
 better than that which had clogged the wheels of 
 the church's progress during the Mediaeval period 
 of her history; and from which she had sought to 
 emancipate herself in the Reformation; that the real 
 beginning of such ecclesiastical emancipation was 
 started by Schleiermacher when he proclaimed and 
 emphasized the fact that the incarnation of the Son 
 of God brought a new order of life into the organism 
 of humanity — an order of supernatural and viviiic 
 power which is destined to work itself out in the 
 church by continuous historic development, until all 
 that is germinal in Christianity has fully unfolded 
 itself, and all that is assimilable in the human race is 
 so leavened as to be saved from sin and lifted up 
 to be glorified in the heavenly realm. 
 
 While it is important that the philosophy or 
 reasonableness of things should appear in the sermon 
 and be made transiparent to the audience, the ideal 
 or truly evangelical preacher will always bear in mind 
 that it is more important to have the sermon well 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 127 
 
 buttressed with the direct teachings of God's word, 
 which is "perfect, converting the soul, and pure, 
 making wise the simple." The revealed word of God 
 is the authorized word of prophecy whereunto both 
 the pulpit and the pew do well to take heed as unto 
 the light of a lamp let down from heaven to shine 
 upon the straight and narrow path of pilgrims to 
 their home above the stars. There is a great difference 
 between the teachings of God's oracles and the best 
 philosophic abstract utterness of learned mortals. One 
 ounce of divine verbal authority is worth a pound 
 of stammering from the most eloquent of human 
 tongues. The word of God is always mightier than 
 any two-edged sword. It caused the turbulent stream 
 of Palestine to roll back and pile its waters high above 
 the fords of Jordan, before the omnipotent Shekinah 
 of the tabernacle as the emblem or symbol of Jehovah's 
 presence and power was borne by the priests across to 
 the Promise-land. Deposisted in the Ark of the 
 Covenent it blessed the house of Obededom, and caused 
 the inconsiderate Uzzah to expire as a penalty for 
 his unintentional sacrilege before its offended majesty. 
 "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, 
 and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth, ' ' 
 and by the same word is the earth to be remade and 
 all the assimilable inhabitants thereupon. 
 
 The prophtes of old derived their message and 
 delivered them to the people intermixed with many 
 a "thus saith the Lord," even before these divinely 
 authoritative sayings were committed to manuscripts, 
 sealed up in the scroll of the book, stored away in 
 the ark of the testimony and placed under the out- 
 
128 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 spread wings of the cherubim. The apostolic preachers 
 enriched and enforced their doctrinal and hortatory 
 addresses to their readers and hearers with many a 
 "thus it is written." St. Paul never grew tired in 
 his frequent quotations from the Old Testament 
 writings and in applying them for the strengthening 
 of his New Testament position. The other inspired 
 evangelists buttressed their sermonic work as they 
 kindled the fires of their daily sacrifices with a live 
 coal from the heavenly altar. The altars themselves 
 were always built with lively stones quarried from 
 the Rock of Ages. And the many valuable books 
 of Christian homilies from the pens of the world's 
 greatest preachers ever since the dawn of Christianity, 
 and now found in our religious libraries, are in 
 evidence that those immortal ministers knew the 
 source of their effiicieney and the secret of their success 
 to be in the revealed and written word of God. When 
 this method of evangelizing the world and confirming 
 the faith of the church was departed from in the dark 
 ages, and when in consequence of such ruinous de- 
 parture there was neither Bible, sermon nor pulpit 
 in the sanctuary — then it was that 
 
 Nations either lost their breath 
 Or lingered in the dance of death. 
 
 Indeed the whole history of the sacred rostrum is 
 in evidence that there was but one preacher who could 
 get up before an audience and say, without good 
 reason to blush, "The words that / speak unto you, 
 they are the spirit and they are life." And He was 
 the one who "spake as never man spake." He was 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 129 
 
 the personal revelation of God — the one in whom dwelt 
 all the fullness of the God-head bodily, and in whom 
 were hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
 edge. Yet even he had such high appreciation of 
 what had been authoritatively revealed before his 
 coming into the world that he chose to confirm his 
 own unimpeachable sayings with numerous references 
 to and quotations from the prophetic books of the Old 
 Testament and from the law which he declared should 
 never pass away only as it passed up into a higher 
 form of progressive revelation to be completed at the 
 goal of human history, and the final restitution of 
 all things. 
 
 If, then, the prophets, the apostles, inspired evan- 
 gelists and the world's greatest homilists grounded 
 their messages and pulpit efforts in the rock of author- 
 itative truth revealed from heaven, how much more 
 should the preachers upon whom the ends of the ages 
 have come, feel the importance of equipping them- 
 selves from the same ' ' armory of David in which there 
 hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." 
 
 When the Spirit called up the prophet and qual- 
 ified him to preach in the Babylon of his age, the obe- 
 dient old seer ''heard the voice behind him" saying 
 "Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place" 
 (Ezekiel 3 : 12) . It was the voice from '^ 'behind him" 
 that gave the prophet authority and encouragement 
 in the execution of his important mission. Supported 
 by the consciousness that he was to be sustained by a 
 powder behind the throne, he delivered his heaven-given 
 message to th people before him, and for the benefit 
 
 9 
 
130 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 of all the ages yet to come and roll away in one con- 
 tinuous onflow of historic revelation. And every ideal 
 preacher of the one great glorious gospel of God's 
 good will to men may regard himself as an organic 
 link in the one continuous chain or medium through 
 which the revelation of the divine will is being made 
 to man, reaching from the closing of the garden gate 
 of Eden to the final opening of the pearly gates of 
 the New Jerusalem which is now "coming down 
 from God out of heaven" to meet "the ransomed of 
 the Lord" in their triumphal ingression through the 
 everlasting doors. 
 
 This view of the sufficient authority of the Bible 
 for the purpose it was intended to serve at the 
 beginning and in the formative ages of the church, 
 with a revelation which is now being continued on to 
 the end of all the ages is not one that would make 
 void the law and discount the prophecies of old. It 
 rather magnifies the Messiaship and mission of Him 
 of whom ]\Ioses, in the law, and the prophets did 
 write. It also properly magnifies the office of the 
 Christian minister by viewing him in his proper rela- 
 tion to the continuity of apostolic succession, or rather 
 procession, which is designed by Christ to carry for- 
 ward the purposes of his grace and truth upon the 
 earth to the end of time. 
 
 Indeed, what is revelation, whether in its special 
 form by law and prophecy and gospel, or by its uncon- 
 scious and quiet enunciations in nature, but one his- 
 toric syllogism of concrete argument in which God 
 is always reasoning with man to hear and heed the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 131 
 
 divine voice, to the end that he may be glorified in 
 his own image, and that man, the likeness of liis 
 Maker may be redeemed, completed and happified 
 in the true knowledge of his divine original; and 
 that thus "in the dispensation of the fullness of the 
 times God might gather together in one all things in 
 Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on 
 earth. ' ' This reasoning grounds itself in the assump- 
 tion that the divine and the human belong together, 
 and that the two are so correlated as to be inseparable 
 in the one eternal purpose, "according to the good 
 pleasure which he hath purposed in himself." Thus 
 starting in the sound premises of the past, the logic 
 of the divine purpose and plan of the ages moves 
 forward through all the major and minor proposi- 
 tions of the one living Syllogism of all time until 
 its final conclusion is reached at the end of "the path 
 of the just which shineth more and more unto the 
 perfect day." 
 
 The ideal preacher's attitude in addressing an au- 
 dience from the pulpit in the church or from any 
 other public platform is not essentially dissimilar at 
 every point from the attitude of the barrister in ad- 
 dressing the jury in court. As an attorney at law, in 
 addressing the jurymen whom he expects to move into 
 favor with his client, or before whom he expects to 
 vindicate the majesty of the law, prefaces his plead- 
 ings with those carefully selected sections of the stat- 
 utes necessary to fortify his position and justify the 
 assumed righteousness of his pleadings in the case, 
 so does the minister, as an ambassador of Christ, 
 while pleading with an alien world to become recon- 
 
132 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ciled to God, buttress his position, not merely by his 
 annunciation of a single text, but by a number of 
 carefully chosen passages or sections or selections from 
 the book of the record of divine revelation. This 
 he does that his audience may be made to feel that 
 his message is from God, and that for them the path 
 of obedience is the only way of safety and full sal- 
 vation. Without such recognition of divine author- 
 ity uttering its voice through the sermon, the human 
 heart will not be pierced with the sword of the Spirit, 
 neither will the human mind be so swayed by a truly 
 evangelical power as to move the ^vill to choose God 
 as the supreme good, and obedience to his mandates 
 as man's most reasonable service. All other pulpit 
 efforts must prove to be abortive. Mere intellec- 
 tualism and culture have no power to open the king- 
 dom of heaven. Mere pulpit sensationalism has 
 nothing but a placebo for moral invalids. Scientific, 
 philosophic and socialistic harangues, unmixed with 
 God's Avord, have no potency, to translate an audience 
 into the realm of the Spirit. The tongue of mere 
 human oratory, though baptized with the flow of com- 
 manding eloquence, cannot move the people from their 
 foundation of self-sufficiency and sinking sand, and 
 place them upon the everlasting Rock of Ages. 
 
 Therefore, Young Gentlemen, 
 
 Go teach the law to Adam's race, 
 Till man shall own it just and good, 
 Then sound the messages of grace. 
 Sealed with the sacraments of blood, 
 
 Thus raise Immanuel's banner high, 
 
 Till all enlist and "do or die." 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 133 
 
 Let Calvary's suffering- Prince be shown 
 In Bozrah's garments dyed in blood, 
 Until an alien world shall own 
 The Christ who reconciles to God : 
 In His great name, by His great might 
 Dethrone the wrong, enthrone the right. 
 
 In announcing his text, if indeed it be necessary 
 for him to have a text in order to deliver a message 
 from God, and in quoting passages of scripture as 
 sources of his authority, it is not usually considered 
 wise and prudent to advertise that such scripture 
 passages are susceptible of different or opposite trans- 
 lations or interpretations. Such a questionable preface 
 does not prepare the audience to receive with benfit, 
 the w^ord of God which is "forever settled in the 
 heavens." While such a course may be proper and 
 of imperative necessity among expert exegetes and in 
 our theological seminaries, it can not, as a rule, have 
 any other effect upon the unlearned and skeptical 
 parts of the audience than to encourage doubt and 
 unsettle a wavering faith. Commonly no result can 
 follow such pulpit exploits in superficial exegesis 
 except to display the preacher's linguistic pride, and 
 his agility in pulpit polemics. Let the preacher rather 
 follow his enunciation of scripture passages if they 
 involve mooted points of meaning, by the incontro- 
 versial statement as to how the sections thus quoted 
 have been rendered and long since settled in the ecu- 
 menical creeds of past ages, and as now held in the 
 general concensus of the combined judgment of a 
 progressive Christendom. This course he would be 
 justified in taking, because it is the prerogative of the 
 
134 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Holy Catholic Church, as the supreme court, to render 
 the meaning of scripture in all moot cases. 
 
 In following this course, the preacher aims to 
 avoid unprofitable controversy, seeks to have his 
 hearers apprehend the truth in the light of past and 
 progressive wisdom, keeps himself in the communion 
 and fellowship with all saints, strives for a greater 
 unity of faith until we all come to comprehend with 
 all believers what is the fair and full meaning of 
 the mighty mystery now being revealed in the unfold- 
 ing of the cycles of time. Furthermore, in so doing, 
 the preacher proceeds along a line parallel with what 
 is the established order in the administration of just- 
 ice under civil law since the time of Runneymede. 
 The attorney at law does not rest his case upon his 
 own private interpretation of the statutes as quoted, 
 but points to the decision and rendering of the supreme 
 court of the commonwealth in some case similar to 
 the one then being heard and laid before the jury. 
 The barrister by himself with the case in hand on 
 behalf of his client, is not to interpret the law to 
 settle a disputeed point, the jury is confined to the 
 evidence in the case, the prisoner at the bar has had 
 his lips sealed by the charge laid against him in the 
 indictment. It therefore remains for the judge to 
 interpret the law pointed out or cited by the attorney, 
 and even his decision is subject to being overruled 
 by an appellate or superior court. So, even more so, 
 is it in settling a mooted point in scripture. No such 
 scripture is for private interpretation as to the finality 
 of its rendering. It is subject to the proper expression 
 of judgment by the highest court of Christendom as 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 135 
 
 rendered by the ecumenical creeds of the past, and 
 even such rendering- is subject to a progressive inter- 
 pretation of a progressive revelation in a progressive 
 cliurch. 
 
 In mooted cases the preacher does not enter the 
 polemical arena to match his private judgment against 
 that of the individual members of his audience as 
 though they had fully surrendered to the priest their 
 evangelical right to read the word of God for them- 
 selves. No; like the Christians at Berea, they still 
 retain their nobility in the privilege which is theirs 
 by common inheritance, to search the scriptures daily. 
 In plunging his pulpit into the disputations of such 
 character, the minister Avould do little more than to 
 begin and prolong unprofitable wrangling and endless 
 controversy. With his enunciation of mooted scriptures 
 to support his position, he follows up his ' ' Thus saith 
 the Lord" with a "thus saith the church" as to the 
 meaning of the passage or section quoted and applied. 
 Away with all pulpit polemics over such points ! If 
 skeptical men will not hear the word of God and what 
 the Spirit hath said and is now saying unto the 
 churches, let them, as in a case of trespassing against 
 their brethren, be as heathen and 'publicans (Matt. 
 18:17). The preacher has no authority under his 
 apostolic commission or otherwise, to impose his 
 private judgment against the private judgment of 
 other individuals in different and mooted points, even 
 though he be thoroughly versed in all those branches 
 of Christian learning crystalized in Philology, Exeget- 
 ics, Hermeneutics and Homiletics. 
 
136 THE IDEAL PREACHER ^ 
 
 If homiletics has any more important mission than 
 to keep the preacher out of trouble in his sermons, 
 it is to help him to hold the Old and the New Testa- 
 ment scriptures in such proper relation with each 
 other and to the revelation from God to man, of which 
 the Bible is the authenticated record, in the contin- 
 uous or supplemental revelation now being made in 
 the way of a future historic development in the Holy 
 Catholic Church. This can be done only as they, in 
 one organic whole, are held in proper relation to 
 Jesus Christ. If he, as he announced himself, hath 
 the keys of death and hell, much more hath he the 
 key that unlocks the mystery of life and heaven. 
 "AVithout me ye can do nothing." He is the end of 
 the law for righteousness to every one who believeth, 
 the fulfillment of all that the prophets did write, 
 and the Alpha and the Omega of the whole Christian 
 alphabet with all its vowels and consonants. He 
 speaks through the entire volume of the scroll as it 
 began to unseal on the day of Pentecost, and as 
 it is now still being unrolled to the last cycle of time. 
 As of old, he is still saying, "Lo I come to do or reveal 
 thy will, Oh, God." 
 
 This great revealer of God to men is the archetype 
 of the ideal Christian sermon. As he combined in 
 his person the key that gives the solution of the rela- 
 tion between the divine and human, as the Church, 
 his body has both a divine and a human side, as the 
 Bible contains both divine and human elements, 
 and as the sacraments are constituted of divine and 
 human factors, so is the sermon both defective and 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 137 
 
 incomplete until it holds all of the first principles 
 and parts of our holy religion in right relation to each 
 other and to the purpose they are designed to serve. 
 The sermon of a real master-builder in the up- 
 going temples and on-going revelation of the Lord 
 is not a mere throwing together of a collection of 
 revealed facts and religious truths delivered in a 
 seemingly harmonious order. Its parts are not mech- 
 anically and outwardly related, like a basket of chips, 
 but organically interrelated and interwoven in such 
 a way as to constitute one living and life-giving whole, 
 compacted together by that spiritual synovia which 
 every joint supplieth, in such manner as to make it 
 the utterance of a heaven-appointed oracle and a 
 quickening voice of one crying in the wilderness, pre- 
 pare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight 
 — even the voice of the one whose shoe's latchet the 
 minister, by comparison with whom, is not worthy to 
 untie. ''For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit 
 of the Father, he speaketh in you and through you." 
 (John 10:20). And yet, while it is true that the 
 Spirit, as the giver of life and the source of authority 
 and efficiency, speaks in and through the minister, 
 it is equally true that the minister also speaks as an 
 ambassadorial medium of conduction of truth and 
 authority to those who are addressed in the heavenly 
 message. To do this the minister must not only be, 
 but also feel himself to be so charged and permeated 
 with heavenly powers as to cause his whole consecrated 
 being to thrill with a vivid sense of his divine commis- 
 sion. The Christian pulpit calls for powder behind 
 
138 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the projectile, holy vim and vigor behind the voice 
 and a man of God behind the gospel gun. When such 
 is the case, and when the minister himself becomes 
 personally absorbed in the sermon, and so absorbs 
 the sermon in himself as to be able to electrify his 
 audience with a charge of heavenly dynamic, then 
 may he feel the corresponding vibration that echoes 
 back the minstrelsy in the choir-loft of the upper 
 sanctuary. 
 
 The foregoing is not intended to imply that the 
 union of the divine and human factors should be 
 united or fused in the sense of the Eutichian heresy, 
 condemned at Ephesus in 431. It was rather intended 
 to avoid the Nestorian heresy placed under similar 
 ecclesiastical ban in 451 at Chalcedon. and yet 
 Nestorianism is still alive. In too many pulpits the 
 minister and the message are held too far apart. If 
 either one should be affected with a dangerous disease, 
 the other would not need to be segregated out of 
 quarantine to be immune. There should be more 
 coalescence between the two without destroying the 
 identity of either. What God hath joined together 
 should not be put asunder. The preacher and his 
 message are inseparable in the ideal pulpit. Without 
 a living man behind the message and within a living 
 voice speaking through its delivery the sermon can 
 be little more than a literary or religious skeleton; 
 and without a properly received and prepared message 
 and a vital relation thereto, the preacher is but a mech- 
 anical declaimer or perfunctory playwright. 
 
 Young Gentlemen : Take that skeleton out of your 
 closets, animate it by bringing it into more vital 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 139 
 
 touch with your own more fully consecrated person- 
 alities, charged with heavenly dynamics. Articulate 
 the parts of the grinning monster, put flesh upon the 
 bones, arteries in the flesh, blood in the arteries, cor- 
 puscles in the blood, life in the corpuscles, power in 
 the life, and the hope of glory in the power, even 
 the life and power and glory of Mary's first born 
 Son, the eternal Son of God. 
 
 It may be assumed and conceded that the eternal 
 Word, the divine Logos spake at times in and through 
 some of the philosophers ; yet it must be tenaciously 
 insisted upon that the old heathen sages never taught 
 as did the man of Galilee, who spake as never mere 
 man spal^e. He was unique as a teacher of the truth 
 because he was and is the way, the truth and the life. 
 Plato was opaque because his relation to the eternal 
 mind involved no incarnation of the Deity. Socrates 
 the son of Sophroniscus, lived and taught and died 
 like a sage, but Jesus, the Son of Mary, lived and 
 taught and died as the incarnate God. Aristotle 
 startled the world to move in stalwart and logical 
 thought, but the wisdom he taught w^as foolishness 
 with God; Jesus preached in the words that were 
 spirit and life because his own person w^as the mes- 
 sianic fountain of truth and knowledge. Because the 
 Grecian philosophers were themselves helplessly under 
 the power of death, they could neither raise the dead 
 nor cause disease to flee away. Because the life of 
 the Deity dwelt in the person of Jesus, his voice could 
 penetrate the realm of death and cause its dolorous 
 portals to unfold before the sweep of his incarnate 
 omnipotence. 
 
140 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Now, just as there was a difference between those 
 old philosophers and Jesus Christ, as teachers, by 
 virtue of the dift'erence between their respective rela- 
 tions to the doctrines which they proclaimed and 
 aimed to propagate, so there is a corresponding differ- 
 ence between the perfunctory preacher who holds the 
 truth outside of himself, and the truly unctuous min- 
 ister of the Word, in whom the message and the mess- 
 enger are interrelated by the power of a common 
 heavenly life. ^Ministers are not Messiahs, but, yet, 
 as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heaven- 
 ly; ''Christ first, afterwards they that are Christ's" 
 at this coming; and he is noAV coming. And greater 
 works than he did shall ye be able to do, because he 
 went to the Father to send a perpetual Pentecost upon 
 the living and progressive church. When the preach- 
 er is fairly and lully alive to these concrete truths, 
 he is so married to his message as to make the two 
 one living flesh. The new wine is too often poured 
 into old goat-skins. Hence pulpit declamations and 
 parrot performances are mechanically substituted for 
 real living proclamations of the truth from the heaven- 
 ly world. 
 
 When the revelator, St. John, was about to be sent 
 from the isle of Patmos to "prophesy again before 
 many peoples and nations and tongues and kings," 
 the seventh angel gave him a "little book" with the 
 command that he should "eat it up." If that com- 
 mand indicated anything, it was that the revelation 
 which God had given and is continuously giving man, 
 is to be so thoroughly studied and digested by students 
 of theology and preachers of the gospel as to make it 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 141 
 
 their own, and consequently so relished as to become 
 as ''sweet as honey" in their evangelical mouths. 
 ' ' The little book ' ' stands for the revelation of which it 
 is the inspired record. The revelation from God is 
 to be so .studied as to awaken the faculty of discovery 
 on the part of man, and the truth so discovered is to 
 be so received as to carry all devout recipients for- 
 Avard and upward until they ''see light in God's 
 light." And only when such is the relation of the 
 minister to ' ' the little book ' ' and the revelation which 
 he digests will the preacher's palate be made satis- 
 factory and successfully sweet in the preaching of 
 the everlasting gospel. 
 
 This attainment is usually the fruit of great and 
 laborious effort on the part of the ideal preacher. It 
 even caused great bitterness in the belly of St. John. 
 No wonder that some theological students wish to 
 abbreviate the curriculum of the theological seminary ! 
 Just think of the bitterness — the mental agony — expe- 
 rienced in the declension of Latin nouns, the conjuga- 
 tion of Greek verbs and the digging outof Hebrew 
 roots. Just think of the worm-wood and the gall in 
 the efforts necessary to acquire a knowledge of an- 
 cient philology. 
 
 Perhaps the best digest of the Bible or "little 
 book ' ' ever given to the world was made by the church 
 in the fervor of her first love, and in the century or 
 more of years between Nicea and Chalcedon. This was 
 accomplished in the experience of polemical bitterness 
 and in conflict with Arius and Nestorius and other 
 arch heretics, all of which was wrought out in the 
 congested abdominal viscera of early Christendom. 
 
142 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 The Catholic creeds produced by such early digest 
 of "the little book" are now the proper subjects for 
 redigestion when taken up for re\asion and necessarily 
 new phrasings in the old teachings of the same ' ' little 
 book," which must ever be held as the most authentic 
 oracle, and of -which those old creeds are the best ap- 
 prehension by the age that gave them their symbolical 
 birth. Indeed it is the duty of and the privilege of 
 modern Christendom, not to repudiate, but to redigest 
 the ancient creeds and reproduce their essential sub- 
 stance so as to bring them into greater harmony with 
 the more comprehensive scope of God's will to the 
 world, as evidenced in an over-growing revelation of 
 the divine mind. 
 
 Now this is the position occupied by the ideal 
 preacher. He modestly takes his place at the foot of a 
 long table at the gospel feast that he may be able to 
 "comprehend with all saints" what is the full measure 
 of the mystery whose revelation started way back in 
 the eternal council-chamber of heaven and continues 
 with unbroken historic continuity to the end of time. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the reasonableness of 
 this position. Would a considerate earthly father 
 immediately after the birth of a child attempt to reveal 
 to his offspring a knowledge of, or facts concerning 
 its advent into the world, its nature, its duty and 
 its ultimate destiny, beyond the measure of its capac- 
 ity and necessity? Would not such a parent rather 
 deliver such knowledge in kind and in degree according 
 as the child enlarges its capacity by growth beyond 
 the infant and adolecent periods of its life, and 
 advances into the pubertive period and on to and 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 143 
 
 through the period of proper procreation, to that 
 point where the power of discovery awakens with 
 a sense of responsibility to the law and duty of propa- 
 gation ? Thus these two sources of information along 
 parallel lines of least resistance are glorified together 
 in the full evolution of properly developed manhood. 
 And why should the Heavenly Father be less con- 
 siderate in revealing himself to the church which in 
 her nature and mission is historic in the unfolding 
 of her wonderful constitution? He is not. ''Like as 
 a father pitieth or dealeth with his children," so the 
 Lord accomodates himself to the growing church by 
 giving it a revelation on a line parallel with its enlarg- 
 ing capacity for truth and growing necessity for 
 knowledge. 
 
 Do we then make void the revelation given us in 
 the Law and the gospel as recorded in the Old and 
 New Testament Scriptures, because forsooth we believe 
 in and teach a continued revelation running through 
 the ages, parallel with the unfolding of God's purpose 
 in the development of the race and the church to the 
 end of all ages? Not at all. And we insist that in 
 such manner the Infinite Father of all shows his con- 
 siderate wdsdom, as well as his superlative goodness. 
 
 Assuming the correctness of the views expressed 
 in the last foregoing paragraphs, it now follows that 
 the proper and thorough study of church-history is 
 one of the most important parts in the curriculum of 
 our theological seminaries. Church-history shows the 
 way of the Messiah in his onward march to final con- 
 quest and consequent glory. There is more genuine 
 Christology to be learned in this preparatory part of 
 
144 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the preacher's equipment than in all the abstract 
 doctrines and moss covered dogmas of a thousand 
 years. 
 
 To be of such beneficial service, church-history 
 must be recognized and studied as the manifestation 
 of Christ's life in humanity. Such historic manifesta- 
 tion must be seen as involving, affecting and redeeming 
 the life of the world; and further, that the forces of 
 the heavenly realm asserting themselves in the person 
 and kingdom of Immanuel, are in a measure in co- 
 operation with the normal forces and essential el- 
 ements of the world, and should always be in absolute 
 conflict with the sin-breeding and death-dealing forces 
 fortressecl and sometimes disguised in the fallen world 
 with its vain pomp and glory, and the flesh with all 
 its sinful desires, as well as with the devil ^vith all 
 his ways and works. 
 
 The student of church-history may need a printed 
 text book to guide him along the current of its con- 
 stant flow, but such history is itself the concrete and 
 illustrated book in which and from which may be 
 learned as nowhere else that our God is marching on. 
 Let the devout and diligent student for the holy 
 ministry read and study that book accordingly. Then 
 will he learn that the rumblings of Immanuel 's char- 
 iot wheels are growing more and more distinct as the 
 years roll by. Then too will he learn to hear that the 
 mountains and the hills, the valleys and the rills 
 are breaking forth into singing, until every ear shall 
 speak it back again; '^Lo this is our God, we have 
 waited for him ! ' ' 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 145 
 
 LECTURE X 
 
 The Ideal Preacher ^s Sermonic Use of the Bible 
 AND THE Periscopes 
 
 The discussion of the subject-matter under con- 
 sideration in our last lecture led us to lay great stress 
 upon the importance of incorporating the teachings 
 of divine revelation with the utterances of the evan- 
 gelical pulpit. The contention was that an ounce of 
 a "thus saith the Lord" is worth the whole 
 avoirdupois of "thus saith the mere human preach- 
 er;" that there is both a primary source and a flowing 
 stream of the full revelation of God to man; that 
 the two must be held in their proper relation to each 
 other in order to make glad the city of our God, the 
 habitation of the Most High; that the authoritative 
 record of the former is found in the canonical volume 
 of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, and that 
 the latter is observed as now making its record 
 in the concrete teachings of church-history; that, in 
 other phrasings, revelation is continuous in time on 
 a line parallel with the development of the historic 
 church; that such continuity and ecclesiastical un- 
 folding, by degrees, of the divine will to man, is 
 nothing more or less than what a rational faith would 
 look for on the part of an Infinite Father who is as 
 considerate in his wisdom as he is supreme in goodness 
 and transcendent in glory; that such view of a con- 
 stant and progressive revelation is the only one con- 
 sistent with a genuine faith in the logical fulfillment 
 
 10 
 
146 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 of the Law and the Prophecies as more especially 
 and predictivelv revealed before the birthday of the 
 church on the day of Pentecost, and that the student 
 of church-history can so read the signs of the times 
 as to recognize such a living book of ecclesiastical 
 chronicles showing God's way in Zion as to hear the 
 trees of the woods clapping their hands and echoing 
 back the exultant shout of heaven; Lo, this is our 
 God in the victorious majesty of his kingdom and 
 power and glory. 
 
 We now continue our consideration of the general 
 subject with the inquiry: Wliat use should be made 
 of the Bible in the preacher's study and pulpit? It 
 is a very serious and important queston. The abuse 
 and misuse of the sacred Book is the sacrilegious 
 sin of the post-Reformation age, and the abomin- 
 ible religious travesty of a nominal Christendom. 
 There has been nothing like it since Jacob sojourned 
 in the land of Ham. The holy volume has been assailed 
 by edicts from the throne, ribaldry from the rostrum, 
 ridicule from profane baboons and thunders from the 
 batteries of infidelity, but it has been abused in the 
 pulpit more than anywhere else. It has suffered less 
 from the attacks of its avowed enemies, such as Celsus, 
 Gibbon, Payne and Ingersoll, than at the hands of 
 its half witted, half educated and half Christianized 
 friends. Instead of being the Gibraltar of its defense, 
 the pulpit frequently surrenders the book to itis 
 enemies. This is done upon false religious issues, or in 
 vain attempts to support narrow religious opinions 
 not authorized by its obvious teachings when the 
 divine oracle is properly understood. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 147 
 
 The Bible is abused when the book itself is re- 
 garded as being the revelation from God to man 
 instead of being reverently held as the authorized rec- 
 ord of such revelation. ''This is the record that God 
 hath given us eternal life, and that this life is in 
 his Son." It is misrepresented in the denial that it 
 has a human and fallible as well as a divine and 
 inerrant side in the unity of its unique constitution. 
 Its lips are measurably sealed when it is obliged to 
 speak and yet not permitted to deliver its message in 
 the purity of its original tongue. It is placed at a 
 disadvantage when called and forced to give testimony 
 in a court not in sympathy with its proper mission 
 in the world. The interpreter makes a false use of 
 the Bible when he injects his own opinion into the 
 book for the purpose of drawing it out again through 
 the narrow pipe-stem of his own individual judgment 
 under the false appearance of divine authority. 
 Therefore, let the fair, competent and unprejudiced 
 teacher take notice of the above announcement of 
 the possibilities of abuses of the Bible and govern 
 himself accordingly. 
 
 The model preacher regards it as only a part of 
 his duty to correct these abuses and misuses of the 
 sacred oracle. As shown in the preceding lecture 
 touching the manner of treating moot cases in the 
 revealed word, it may be stated also in the matter 
 of false uses of the scriptures, that it is not always best 
 for a preacher to advertise evils for the purpose of 
 making an exhibition of his own adroitness in batter- 
 ing down an imaginary enemy of his own creation. 
 
148 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 Beside such men of straw, there are real difficul- 
 ties to be encountered in the human side of the Bible, 
 as well as profound mysteries impenetrable, in the 
 subject matter of revelation itself. These difficulties 
 frequently appear in the written word as seemingly 
 paradoxical statements into which the competent 
 minister does well to take heed in his pulpit min- 
 istrations. Such seeming* contradictions of obvious 
 truths are met with in various portions of the Bible, 
 one of which may be passingly alluded to in this 
 connection ; and the elimination of the seeming absurd- 
 ity therein may serve also to illustrate the spirit of 
 the ideal preacher in handling such and somewhat 
 similar cases. 
 
 A sample selection is recorded in Luke 14 : 11. 
 In disposing of this case it may, first of all, be stated 
 that it does not necessarily involve an insuperable 
 paradox: ''For whosoever exalteth himself shall be 
 abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be ex- 
 alted." This is not a paradox. To those who have 
 eyes to see, it contains neither a real nor a seeming 
 absurdity. Our Lord had "put forth a parable," or 
 rather had delivered a parabolic address to those whose 
 false views of dignity had led them to choose out 
 the chief seats at the wedding feast. The sentence 
 quoted is expressive of the moral lesson he intended 
 to teach. The construction of the sentence is some- 
 what after the peculiar style of much Hebrew poetry. 
 Here, however, the poetic parallelism is reversed. The 
 declaration is made to sound back upon itself as an 
 antiphon. As a whole, it is a practical application 
 of the truth taught in the parable. The lesson 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 149 
 
 taug-lit is intended to bring out the principles of 
 true dignity — a truth not visible in the hemisphere 
 of a world alienated from God, and consequently 
 in the darkness of its own shadow. The lesson does 
 not conflict with the truth that dignity and honor 
 are desirable elements and lawful acquirement in 
 human life. This truth, however, is always to be seen 
 in its proper connection with its complemental fact 
 that 
 
 "The Almighty from His throne surveys 
 Naught greater than an honest humble heart." 
 
 Our Lord's method of reaching such ministerial 
 dignity as well as attaining to common Christian 
 honor, as the essence and crown of man's moral 
 nature, is the very reverse of the world's methods. 
 Hence the almost paradoxical nature of the divine 
 lesson. Seeking exaltation for itself alone is dishonor- 
 able to preachers of the gospel. It is a blunder and 
 a folly to be classed among the sins by which the 
 angels fell. If thus attained, it is a false honor 
 which dishonors the man who is heir apparent 
 to the throne of lawful promotion. Even self, to be 
 true to itself, must look beyond self. This kind of 
 ethics is contrary to the fallen world's conception of 
 morals, and out of accord with its prevailing senti- 
 ment. Hence the world looks up to such things as 
 paradoxical. The world is too blind to see the unseen 
 excellency of exalting humilty. It therefore remains 
 ignorant of the invisible force and fudamental law 
 of Christ's kingdom at hand in the world, and yet 
 above the world. Self seeking after self exaltation 
 
150 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 is the religion of the world, and its history is writ- 
 ten in abasement and blood. Only the opposite course 
 can lead to full realization of humanity's golden 
 dream of honor and glory. Self-humiliation must, 
 however, not have exaltation as the leading ulterior 
 motive. Like the great Prince, the ideal preacher 
 humbles himself in the element of true dignity for 
 the joy that is set for him in the hope of making 
 others truly noble and happy. Virtue is its own re- 
 ward. Let no man deceive himself. The monster 
 who would prostitute the pulpit for the purpose of 
 making a pitiable display of his pretentious powers 
 in religious polemics should be sent to the North 
 Pole and kept there in cold storage, until all the 
 microbes of his unpardonable vanity have been exter- 
 minated by thorough congealment. Pietistic simula- 
 tion is the most abominable of all hypocrisy. On 
 the other hand, the unpretentious Christian minister 
 is the gem of all ethical beauty; his character is 
 the Gibraltar of ethical strength and his unassuming 
 modesty is the germ of all ethical glory; 
 
 "From ostentation, affectation free, 
 He stands, like the cerulean arch we see, 
 Majestic in his own simplicity." 
 
 Saint Paul covers the entire case under consider- 
 ation. II Cor. 4 : 2. He doubtless included all forms 
 of pulpit perverseness when he wrote : ' ' Having this 
 ministry," he "renounced the hidden things of dis- 
 honesty, craftiness and handling the word of God 
 deceitfidly." Either consciously or otherwise, the 
 word of God is too generally handled with deceit in 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 151 
 
 which abstracted scripture may be used to prove 
 many of our popular pulpits. There is a way in 
 which Scripture may be used to prove, or disprove 
 anything desired by the audience with itching 
 ears. This is done by applying the quotation 
 independent of the connection in which it stands, 
 and with no regard to the time or place or conditions 
 under which the passage was breathed into the 
 Bible in its proper relation to the wiiole organic 
 unity of the purpose running through the one revel- 
 ation of the divine will to man and its subsequent 
 enshrinement in the sacred book. This manner and 
 habit of ''handling the Word of God deceitfully" 
 was doubtless recognized in the early ages of the 
 church, and vigilantly guarded against in all the 
 ages that followed down to the present time. The 
 provision was made in that general directory of wor- 
 ship which at least suggests an order for the altar 
 and the chancel, the pulpit and the pew. And a 
 due observance of the pericopes will protect the pul- 
 pit against false preachers, as well as the altar from 
 false priests. From perversity in the pulpit and 
 travesty at the altar: Good Lord, deliver us. 
 
 The model minister is not entirely ignorant of 
 the fact that the order of the pericopes implies and in- 
 volves a service at the altar as well as a sermon from 
 the pulpit, and that these two are joined together 
 in holy w^edlock by a devout use of the collect for the 
 day. It furthermore implies a reciprocal relation 
 between liturgies and homiletics. Although the two 
 at certain points interpenetrate and overlap, they are, 
 nevertheless, distinct, and primarily belong to differ- 
 
152 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ent portions of the general and fully comprehensive 
 service of the sanctuary. Liturgies may include the 
 sermon as an essential part of public worship; hom- 
 iletics must enmbrace a devout and prayerful spirit 
 in order to successful sermonic preparation and de- 
 livery. Homiletics pertains to preaching; liturgies 
 primarily to prayer. Preaching is for the instruc- 
 tion of the people; praise is for the honor of God. 
 Eloquence belongs properly to the pulpit of the sanct- 
 uary : around the altar in the sanctuary are exercised 
 those moral emotions with the more devout activities 
 of the human soul when aroused by the truth of God 
 as proclaimed in the message delivered from the pul- 
 pit. Owing to the poverty of the English language 
 we have no word sufficiently deep and broad where- 
 by to express just what, only what, and all of what 
 we need to give and receive, when we as God's child- 
 ren enter into his covenant gates with thanksgiving 
 and fill his courts with praise in such a way as to 
 receive a blessing from the God of our salvation. 
 We use, therefore, a word not yet fully at home in 
 English literature. That word is "cultus." The 
 term expresses the full idea of Christian worship. 
 Heathens, Jews and Mohammedans worship in a way, 
 but their worship is not cultus. Cultus includes that 
 worship which is made possible by, and in which the 
 soul of the Christian co-operates with those heavenly 
 powers which, through the incarnation of Christ and 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost, are brought unto him 
 and into him, and made to surround him in the coven- 
 ant of grace. This, of course, implies an order of 
 life with the factors and forces not found in the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 153 
 
 world as naturally constituted. Whether we call 
 it the kingdom, the covenant or the church of God, 
 it is the real community with members, means and 
 powers at hand for the accomplishment of the purpose 
 for which it was ordained. 
 
 This order of life includes all time, and, with 
 expanding portals, makes room for every age, as well 
 as for all the proper relations of the Christian family, 
 the Christian school and the Christian church. Chris- 
 tian cultus expresses not only what we do for God 
 in our acts of worship, but also what God does for 
 us in and throught those very acts. ''We worship 
 not alone that we may bring an offering, but yet 
 more and rather that we may receive help in time 
 of need. All worship aims at giving and getting. 
 We give prayer and get what prayer asks for, unless 
 we ask amiss. We give praise because we have already 
 received that which prompts us to pray. We give 
 confession; we get remission." 
 
 All of these elements and much more is embraced 
 in what Dr. Henry Harbaugh felicitously called the 
 ' ' sanctification of time" — the coming of the infinite 
 into the finite realm, the condescension of the absolute 
 into the conditioned; the bowing down of heaven to 
 earth; the reaching of eternity into time. Time is 
 brought into consecrated relation to the iniinite and 
 the eternal. This includes the division of time, the 
 various divinely ordained sections of time and the 
 entire fullness of time, from the shutting of the garden 
 gates of Eden to the closing of the pearly portals of 
 the New Jerusalem, when time shall be no more. 
 
 We have learned from our study of sacred chro- 
 
154 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 nology that already among the Jews God authorized 
 and sanctioned a division of time into cycles of days, 
 weeks, months, years, weeks of years, multiplied Aveeks 
 of years and millenniums. All these find their key 
 of meaning in the Sabbatic idea. This Sabbatic 
 idea was incarnated in an actual fact which is found 
 standing at the very threshold of all history. God 
 rested and made provision for man to rest. God 
 rests in his sanctuary. Hence the Psalmist says: 
 "For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it 
 for his habitation. This is my rest forever; here I 
 will dwell, for I have desired it." Yes, God rests 
 with man in the worship of the sanctuary, thus open- 
 ing the way for man to rest with God in that eternal 
 habitation where congregations never break up and 
 where the heavenly Sabbath will know no setting sun. 
 This brings us to consider the Sabbatic idea as more 
 fully realized in the New Testament and under the 
 the Christian dispensation. The ideal preacher when- 
 ever he is conscious of his high calling from bondage 
 to liberty, never confounds the Lord's Day with the 
 Jewish Sabbath. It was at the end of the Old Test- 
 ament Sabbath, when it began to dawn toward the 
 first day of the week, and it was on the first day in 
 the new and newly consecrated order and section of 
 time, that Jesus Christ introduced a new calendar 
 by his glorious resurrection. Like Isaiah's bed, the 
 Jewish Sabbath was too short to serve the broad, 
 thorough and comprehensive purpose of Christian 
 cultus. We would not have something less, but 
 vastly more and better than was signified by the Sab- 
 bath of the Old Testament. That day, like everything 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 155 
 
 else under Moses failed to make the comers there- 
 unto perfect. As well attempt to carry forward 
 the work of the Jewish high priest into the adminis- 
 trations of the Christian ministry. The Jewish idea 
 of the Sabbath passed away with Judaism; the 
 Christian conception of reconsecrated and recon- 
 structed time was installed in its stead when, in the 
 resurrection of Christ, redeemed humanity burst the 
 bands of the old, and triumphantly passed into a 
 higher realm of being and a higher order of commun- 
 ion with God. The resurrection of our Lord and the 
 consequent institution of the Christian Sabbath mark 
 the ending of the old and the beginning of all that is 
 newly true and truly new in the onflow of the world 's 
 great history. Each Lord's day is an Easter day — 
 a repetition of that moveable festival which helps 
 to regulate the sacred calendar of the church year. 
 
 The intelligent minister needs not to be informed 
 that the worship of God in connection with or in- 
 cluding the reading of certain select portions of 
 Scripture chosen according to previous arrange- 
 ment and custom, seems to have prevailed in early 
 times. Scriptural readings — not merely the reading 
 of Scripture by haphazard selection — were used in the 
 church of the apostolic age. These, of course, were 
 from the Old Testament, before the New Testament 
 canon was organized. The method common among the 
 Jews was to read from the Law (perashim) and from 
 the prophets (haphtarim). Thus we read, Acts 13: 15: 
 ''They went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, 
 and after the reading of the Law and the Prophets" 
 they did certain other things. 
 
156 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 At a later date, under a more advanced state of the 
 church, selections included readings from the New 
 Testament Scriptures. The pericopes, like the creed 
 and like the various forms of church government, grew 
 out of the life and freedom of the church. We have no 
 authority in the form of scriptural precept for either. 
 Where the spirit of Christ is, there is liberty. Ignor- 
 ing this rule and form of direction, we would have no 
 authority for observing the first day of the week as 
 the Christian Sabbath. 
 
 These forms of development all meet us as a legiti- 
 mate and organic outfllow and onflow of the life of the 
 early church. Vainly have attempts been made to 
 fix the date of the incipiency of the pericopes. Some 
 have held that they were in existence in the age of 
 the apostles. Others have maintained that they were 
 introduced by Constantine the Great. Still others con- 
 tend that Musaeus, Presbyter at Marseilles, first col- 
 lected or compiled the Lectionary in 458. It may 
 suffice to say that the authority is found in the practice 
 of the church dating back to an early period. Through 
 this practice, continued in its imperfect form, the 
 general system of the Church-Year was gradually 
 organized, bringing another arrangement of time into 
 the service of a more expanded Christian cultus. 
 
 The church year finds its miniature picture and 
 fundamental principle in the life of Christ as he 
 journeyed on the earth and passed by the way of his 
 passion and triumph through the everlasting gates 
 to glory. If Christianity is the glorified life of Christ 
 manifesting- itself in the world, Christian cultus must 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 157 
 
 lay hold of the divinely ordained element of time with 
 its succession of events, facts and factors in the his- 
 tory of the world's Redeemer. It has been truly said 
 that "the church year reproduces the life of Christ." 
 It brings before us all that has been done for us in 
 the past, and enables us to anticipate the successive 
 stages and ages of glory awaiting us in the future. 
 It associates the Christian's sublimest conceptions 
 with the flight of time^ It brings before us, in its 
 sacred circle, the birth, epiphany, temptation, sor- 
 rows, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of 
 Him who is the author and finisher of our faith; 
 all of which, opened the way for the outpouring of 
 the Holy Ghost and the constant coming of the saving 
 powers of the heavenly world . This series of objec- 
 tive manifestations of God to man culminates in 
 Trinity Sunday. Then the responsive notes of grati- 
 tude roll back through all the Sundays and weeks 
 after Trinity. Thus we have the great facts which 
 underlie doctrine, and the reasonable service obliga- 
 tory on our part. The chronological order is first, 
 Christ to usward, and then we Christward. 
 
 In a foregoing paragraph we said that the peri- 
 copes, like the observance of the first day of the 
 week as the Lord's Day, were not introduced into 
 the cultus of the church by any precept or command, 
 but as an essential in-growth of the church itself, 
 as the embodiment of the great mystery of godliness — 
 God manifest in the flesh. Acts of worship in the 
 Christian congregation, as organic parts of a com- 
 prehensive cultus, though they should include doctri- 
 nal apprehensions and theological knowledge, are. 
 
158 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 primarily, exercisings of faith. As such, they must 
 start with the Author and Finisher of faith, and 
 move forward in the order of the creed, the church 
 year and directory of worship. It is, indeed, intend- 
 ed to repeat annually, for Christian edification, the 
 successive events, facts and factors in the history 
 of the world's Redeemer; but it means vastly more 
 than to parade these panoramically before the Chris- 
 tian assembly in the order of divine solemnities. It 
 is not primarily designed to enable us to know Christ 
 after the flesh, since the system in which it stands 
 aims to emphasi^^e the importance of knowing him as 
 a very present Saviour after the power of an endless 
 life. It implies that the sacrifice of Christ is not 
 only "once for all," but also "of force always." 
 His mediatorial work does not hold its existence in 
 memory simply of the past. In his death and resur- 
 rection he passed into a new order of existence. 
 That new order is perpetual in the church, and the 
 purpose of the pericopes in Christian worship, accord- 
 ing to the order of the church year, is to have and 
 to hold and herald the ever-present mystery of god- 
 liness, in all its parts, in all their organic relations 
 and with all its perennial power to the end of time. 
 Now all this, we maintain, as something actually 
 practiced in the church before the Reformation, was 
 not the work of some gifted individal living in some 
 prolific age, neither was it the production of some 
 ambitious theologian following his own private impulse 
 and judgment, but a gradual yet actual outgrowth 
 of the faith of the church itself. Neither are w^e to 
 do ourselves the great wrong to suppose that the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 159 
 
 church calendar comes down to us as a mere form, 
 to be tolerated because of its sacred associations. 
 It was not a cobweb of popery; not a remnant of a 
 Romish fossil. That it was perverted by the church 
 before the Reformation we concede. We also admit 
 that it Ls even now used in a mechanical and tread- 
 mill way, by some portions of the church. But, like 
 many other things which have been abused, it is good 
 in itself. It ha^ the advantage of systematic, chron- 
 ological and logical order in Christian cultus. 
 
 I urge you, therefore, young gentlemen, not to 
 ignore the Christian custom of past ages in your 
 ministerial work. Its free observance will save you 
 from vain repetitions in your public ministrations, and 
 supply you with valuable suggestions as to what is 
 seasonable and reasonable in each and every portion 
 of the sacred year. It will prevent you from dancing 
 to the dolorous tone of the devil's horn-pipe with its 
 ten thousand variations. It will keep you from the 
 folly of yeilding to the temptations to plunge into 
 spectacular pulpit performances. It will protect 
 you from incongruities, inconsistencies and incoher- 
 encies of haphazard homilies. It will lead you from 
 the constant succession of allurements to substitute 
 self-explotiation, sentimentalism, sensationalism and 
 mere socialism for the ministrations of the perennial 
 and everlasting gospel. It will help you to lead your 
 people into green pastures and by the side of living wa- 
 ters; and at the same time into that communion of 
 Christian worship implied by a genuine communion of 
 saints. It will enable you to cover every essential part 
 and emphasize every cardinal point in the compass of 
 
160 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the whole gospel. And in so doing, your people will be 
 given a continuous opportunity to cultivate symmetry 
 and beauty in the formation of Christian characters 
 that will outlive the stars in age and outshine the 
 sun in all the glory of his meridian blaze. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 161 
 
 LECTURE XI 
 
 Art as an Element in the Ideal. Preacher's Sermon 
 AND ITS Delivery 
 
 In the last lecture much emphasis was placed on 
 the importance of making a lawful use of the Bible 
 in the truly evangelical sermon. It was contended 
 that the Book of God is the most abused of all the 
 volumes in the world's great library; that it suffers 
 more at the hands of its half-educated and half- 
 Christianized friends than under the open assaults 
 of its vowed enemies; that such is the case because 
 of the ignorance that abounds respecting the nature 
 and mission of the sacred book in the world; that 
 there are false interpretations of the Bible because 
 of the want of a proper knowledge of Hermeneutics ; 
 that for the want of such knowledge of the laws of 
 correct interpretation the pulpit is frequently full 
 of blunders, and the worship at the altar full of 
 devout travesty; that the early church seems to have 
 recognized the trend toward such dangerous travesty 
 in Christendom, and wisely provided a general order 
 of worship for the service of the sanctuary, includ- 
 ing scriptural selections arranged in the order of 
 the Christian calendar or church year, and that the 
 truly devout, intelligent and modest minister of the 
 gospel gives ear and heed to what the Spirit is thus 
 saying to the churches, and so conducts his services 
 in the sanctuary as to assist his people in a communion 
 
 11 
 
162 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 of doctrine, as well as in a communion of saints in 
 the individual fellowship of the gospel. 
 
 In the continuation of this course of lectures, it 
 is assumed that art is an essential element in the con- 
 struction of a model sermon, as well as in the manner 
 of its proper delivery. Art is defined by recog- 
 nized authority as "a means for the attainment of 
 an end or for the accomplishment of a purpose.'^ 
 If it be employed in the construction of a mere 
 mechanical sermon, whose parts are thrown together 
 from without, or in a desultory delivery of such 
 discourse, it should be classified with the mechanical 
 arts. If used to fill the sermonic composition with 
 a redundancy of rhetorical platitudes, or the delivery 
 of the same with a superabundance of studied gestic- 
 ulation, it may be classed with the liheral arts. If 
 used for the primary purpose of attaining Addisonian 
 elegance in composition, it may be denominated as 
 one of the elegant arts. If employed in painting 
 pulpit rainbows on the canvas of an imaginary sky, 
 it may be placed under the enlarged category of 
 fine arts. If applied in arranging the proper material 
 in the construction of a truly evangelical sermon, 
 and in the successful delivery thereof, for the purpose 
 of converting sinners from the error of their ways, 
 and confirming believers in the blessed hope of the 
 gospel, it may be very properly be classed with the 
 useful arts. 
 
 Art, as used in the interest of the public press, or 
 upon the public platform, has been most felicit- 
 ously defined as ''The ideal expression of a thought, 
 a sentiment or a purpose." Such ideal expression 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 163 
 
 presupposes that such thought or sentiment or pur- 
 pose stands in proper relation to itself, its origin 
 and all of its environments. It is only when thus 
 related that "a word fitly spoken is an apple of gold 
 in a picture of silver." Prov. 25 : 11. It is therefore 
 the mission of art, as thus applied, to see that there 
 is proper correspondence between the thought to be 
 expressed and the expression in which that thought 
 is to be thus clothed. This rule is applicable to all 
 mediums of rhetorical expression, whether at the 
 point of a pen or through the power of the tongue. 
 A masculine or stalwart thought cannot be properly 
 expressed in effeminate or feeble language ; neither 
 can a strong and clear sentiment find adequate utter- 
 ance in ambiguous terms. The contents of phrases, 
 sentences and paragraphs should also bear such re- 
 lation to each other as to make the whole composition 
 clear, forcible and convincive to the audience. It 
 was becauce of such symmetrical and logical arrange- 
 ment between the parts, as much as the consequence 
 of his ideal manner of speech that St. Paul in his 
 delivery of his discourse as a court preacher was 
 able to almost persuade King Agrippa to become a 
 Christian. Indeed, such was Paul's arrangement of 
 thought and sentiment, and such their correspondence 
 with the manner of his delivery that the Lystrians 
 were so convinced as to call him Mercury because 
 he was the chief speaker. 
 
 As the science of exegesis is important in drawing 
 out the true meaning of the sacred text, and as the 
 science of hermeneutics is equally important in the 
 true interpretation thereof, so is it of no less import- 
 
164 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ance in homiletics to supply the art of methodically 
 arranging the results of all such inquiry and investi- 
 gation in the most logical and chronological order. 
 To illustrate, let us select two simple texts; the one 
 from the Old Testament Scriptures (Prov. 14:9) 
 which deals with negative elements of truth and 
 the other from the New Testament (Matt. 5:8) 
 which presents positive ethical verities for sermonic 
 consideration. 
 
 The first text is: "Fools make a mock at sin.'' 
 True homiletic art would seem to suggest something 
 like the following as a natural, logical and helpful 
 arrangement of distinct, yet inseparable questions: 
 
 I. What is sin? 
 II. What is it to mock sin? 
 III. In what consists the folly of such mockery? 
 
 The second text: "Blessed are the pure in heart 
 for they shall see God.'' This text may suggest the 
 following questions to the mind of the apt homilist: 
 
 I. What is purity of heart? 
 II. What is meant by seeing God ? 
 III. In what consists the blessedness of such 
 purity and such consequent vision ? 
 
 It is constantly kept in mind by the ideal minister 
 that the most systematically arranged sermon is out 
 of correspondence with its surroundings when unac- 
 companied in the general worship of the sanctuary by 
 a devout service at the altar of equal strength and 
 beauty. A good sermon without an altar service to 
 match is like a gem without its proper setting, while a 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 165 
 
 sermon hidden behind a superlatively gorgeous display 
 of art in devotion is like a calf looking through a 
 rose bush. 
 
 Just how far art is to be employed or incorporated 
 in the service of the Christian sanctuary is still an 
 unsolved problem. There is a bald theory of religion 
 which gives it no room whatever. It is regarded as 
 absolutely opposed to that order of devotion which 
 professes to worship God in the spirit and in truth ; it 
 is looked upon as something that mars the beauty 
 of holiness. According to such a theory, nothing is 
 spiritual except that which has no body, and nothing 
 beautiful except that which is naked. With this 
 theory we take direct issue. True worship, while 
 it is spiritual, does not seek to be unclothed but clothed 
 upon with the habiliment which is from nature. And 
 what is art but the power that brings out nature and 
 makes it serviceable in the various spheres and for 
 the various objects of legitimate human activity! If 
 art has its mission in mechanics, architecture, civil 
 engineering, sculpture, painting, poetry and music, 
 why should it not be conceded its central and highest 
 sphere in religion? Just as really as the Son of God 
 by his incarnation aimed to bring out and up to glory 
 the essential constituents of humanity at the head 
 of nature, so does true art aim to bring out the 
 essentials of the natural world and place them in the 
 service of the Most High God. Yes, more. Art 
 reaches after that which intones nature, that divine 
 something which overshadows and underlies nature. 
 It seeks to enter the sanctuary of the divine thought 
 and to reveal that which is divinely beautiful. And 
 
166 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 when this effort to read the thoughts of God as he 
 has expressed them in his stupendous handiwork is 
 carried by faith into the sanctuary, then may the 
 Christian artist and the Christian congregation con- 
 sistently pray: "Let the beauty of the Lord our 
 God be upon us, yes, the work of our hands estab- 
 lish thou it." 
 
 The master workman in the house of the Lord 
 seeks to cultivate a taste for moderate and modest 
 use for music as one of the fine arts in worship, 
 and is awake to the fact that this has more room in 
 the liturgical than the homiletical parts of divine 
 service. He, therefore, seeks to lead and encourage 
 his people to desire a responsive part in worship. The 
 antiphon is made majestic by its power to uplift the 
 audience. It has always been thus. For example take 
 the 148th Psalm as one of the finest antiphonal con- 
 tributions ever added to the volume of sacred litera- 
 ture, human or divine. So in the early or ancient 
 Christian church, the responses and simple, though 
 somewhat monotonous chants, meet us at every turn 
 in full relief. The Ambrosian and Gregorian Chants 
 come echoeing down the historic aisle of the Middle 
 Ages. One great defect in the Roman Catholic 
 church before the Reformation, and one great need 
 for the Reformation, was that the people had little 
 or no part in the worship of the sanctuary. They 
 were made and kept as dumb and as silent as the 
 rider of Balaam's ass. The Reformation began the 
 restoration of the rights of the laity. When evan- 
 gelical truth re-opened her mighty thunders from the 
 upper clouds, the emancipated children of the truth 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 167 
 
 — the laity of the chrch — opened their ears, and 
 untied the strings of their tonnes, with a new song 
 in their mouths. Since then responsive service has 
 been the rule in all symmetrical Protestant worship. 
 Of course, it often ran away like parrot-chattering, 
 as in much of the ritualistic formality of the Episco- 
 pal church. There is, however, no necessity for such 
 a drift into perversion. Let all the people praise 
 thee, God; let all the people praise thee. Let them 
 throw their rosaries of idleness away and audibly 
 engage in the worship of God. Let them audibly join 
 in the confession of their faith. Allow them their 
 antiphons in the reading of God's Word. Make room 
 for their "Amens" at the close of the collects and of 
 the prayer, and never excuse them for not joining 
 audibly in the use of the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 Like St. Paul, the Christian minister is ordained 
 ''for the defence of the gospel" and all that pertains 
 to its proper mission in the world. He is not only 
 to protect that which is obviously right and correct 
 that which is manifestly wrong but also to detect 
 whatever is suspected of disg-uising itself in false 
 attire. Of this last there is much in the Christian 
 sanctuary. Fine arts, w^hen perverted, become faise 
 arts, or fine arts falsely applied; and false arts, like 
 true charity, ''cover a multitude of sins." Such 
 possibility of perversion inheres in the ethical universe 
 as now constituted and it can never be entirely elim- 
 inated except by the thorough regeneration of man- 
 kind. Just as we have science falsely so called and 
 falsely applied to everything from the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy to the atheistic theory of evolution: just 
 
168 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 as we have false philosophy running like rotten threads 
 through all the warp and woof of our imperfect 
 theories of religion, so there is a false art displaying 
 itself everywhere in all the works of man. In the 
 old heathen world phantasy produced the myth, and 
 mythology helped to seduce the nations. Even the 
 phantasy and art of the Middle Ages of Christianity 
 were still held in bondage by fragments of that old 
 mythological slavery which had been transferred to 
 the church by the barbaric elements of the nations 
 which the church incorporated in an outward way. 
 Even at the time of the Reformation the false use 
 of images and paintings in the churches did more to 
 pervert the divine teaching, and to obscure the divine 
 thought and misrepresent the divine will than to 
 bring them out in beautiful relief for the perfection 
 of Christian cultus, and the assistance of the Christian 
 worshiper. And although the Reformation, and the 
 salutary forces put into operation by that great move- 
 ment have accomplished much in the develop- 
 ment of Christian art, and in the application of its 
 principles and achievements to the enlargement and 
 perfection of Christian worship, there is still very 
 much that needs correction, and must be corrected 
 before the service of the sanctuary can be rounded 
 out in full realization of its true idea. There is a 
 false application of art when the church is erected as 
 an ostentatious monument of human vanity. There 
 is a false application of art wherever there is a 
 want of correspondence between the house of worship 
 and the worship therein. There is false application 
 of art when the sanctuary and the paintings in the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 169 
 
 church fail to instruct the worshiper by suggesting 
 holy memories worthy of the place, worthy of the ser- 
 vice, and worthy of the God who is professedly held 
 in adoration. There is a false application of art when 
 the minister officiates in an unknown tongue. There 
 is a false application of art when the minister strains 
 his inventive genius to produce the most eloquent 
 prayer ever delivered to a Bostonian audience. There 
 is a false application of art when, in the use and 
 abuse thereof, the choir runs away from the congre- 
 gation by soaring off^ into the performance of some 
 religious jigameree. 
 
 Wonder if the inspired composer of the 84th Psalm 
 were to visit our planet at this time, look through the 
 back window^ into the modern sanctuary, see some 
 wretched travesty behind the chancel-rail and in the 
 choir-loft, and then watch the imposing pageantry 
 of dress parade in flowing gowns — wonder if he would 
 exclaim, as of old, "How amiable are thy tabernacles, 
 0, Lord of hosts." Would he still think it a desir- 
 able place for the sparrow to find a house, and the 
 swallow a nest for herself where she could lay her 
 young, even thine altars ? Or would he think it a more 
 proper place for the foul birds of prey? "Where 
 the carcass is, there the feathered scavengers are 
 gathered together." 
 
 "St7'ength and beauty are in his sanctuary." These 
 two elements are complement al in the constitution of 
 sane and sound Christian cultus. Beauty is a garland 
 peculiar to the altar and that which it represents in 
 worship, although more loveliness should grace the 
 entire sanctuary service. Strength is rather predic- 
 
170 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 able as an attribute of the evangelical pulpit. Indeed, 
 as already said in this course of lectures, the pulpit 
 is the Gibraltar of genuine Protestantism. This is 
 realized by the ideal preacher in the proportion that 
 he recognizes the fact that the Christian ministry 
 is instituted by divine authority, and the minister 
 is made efficient by supernatural strength. ' ' The Lord 
 send thee help out of the sanctuary." It is there- 
 fore the primary duty of the preacher to feel the 
 force of the fact that his calling is above all others. 
 
 "All other men, what name 
 So'er they bore, whatever office held 
 If lawful held — the magistrate supreme. 
 Or else subordinate, — were chosen by men, 
 Their fellows, and from men derived their power. 
 And were accountable for all they did 
 To men, but he, alone, his office held 
 Immediately from God, from God received 
 Authority, and was to none but God 
 
 Amenable." 
 
 Young Gentlemen : Would you test the degree of 
 strength that God is willing to put into your pulpits, 
 be sure that you step upon the sacred rostrum in 
 right attitude to the power behind the scene and in 
 expectancy from the "Lamb in the midst of the 
 heavenly throne" (Rev. 4:6). As Moses did, you 
 may also consistently say to God in your prepara- 
 tory prayer, ''Except thy presence go with me, carry 
 us not up thence." He will go with you. It 
 was at that point in the history of the great law- 
 giver that God really began to ' ' make known his ways 
 unto Moses, and his acts unto the children of Israel." 
 Follow that example given by the adopted son of 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 171 
 
 Pharaoh's daugher. Exhaust the means for your full 
 equipment to the utmost limit of your possibilities. 
 Keep your baptismal engagement in mind. Let your 
 confirmation vows remain fresh in your memory. 
 Your certificates of licensure and ordination will 
 remind you of your authority from the church, and 
 from the heavenly world, to execute your apostolic 
 commission. In order that you may be constantly 
 panoplied for your conflict with the powers of dark- 
 ness, let the door between your closet of devotion 
 and your study swing on easy hinges. The Father 
 who heareth you in secret and helps you to equip 
 yourself in the armory of David will reward you 
 openly when you step upon the public platform. 
 
 Such relation to your heavenly base of supplies 
 will help you to open up all the avenues of nature 
 for homiletical material with which to amplify your 
 sermons. No narrow limitations will then be able to 
 contract your powers. Remember that the earth 
 is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; that Jesus 
 Christ is the head over all things to the church, and 
 that the river of life, clear as crystal, proceeding 
 from the throne of God and of the Lamb, receives 
 supplies from many terrestrial tributaries, as it flows 
 on to make glad the City of God. Indeed, nature 
 can have no higher mission than that of subserving 
 the ends of the gospel; and when the great day of 
 restitution shows the completeness of God's wise and 
 gracious plan of the world's redemption, it will doubt- 
 less appear to the glorified hosts of heaven that there 
 was no superfluous factor or element in the monu- 
 ment that the Redeemer is now rearing to his ever- 
 
172 THE IDEAL PREACHER • 
 
 lasting praise. Go, therefore, to the great storehouse 
 of nature in all her departments and draw out her 
 multiplied and multiform revenues for the enrich- 
 ment and advancement of the work which God has 
 given you to do. Watch ye for openings and oppor- 
 tunities. Stand fast in faith, quit you like men, be 
 strong. The ministry has enough surface skimmers 
 and skippers. Neither does it greatly need the man, 
 *^deep versed in books, yet shallow in himself." Be 
 Christian scientists and scientific Christians. 
 
 "Take room ; think vastly ; meditate intensely ; 
 Reason profoundly; send conjecture forth; 
 Let fancy fly ; stoop down ; ascend ; 
 All length, all breadth explore." 
 
 In so doing you will be able not only to perform 
 the positive and whole work of an evangelist, but 
 also develop your manhood by enabling your inven- 
 tive genius to become more boundless in its resources, 
 your imagination more creative in elegant arts, and 
 your thoughts more profound and prolific in your 
 thorough study of nature's lessons for the secrets 
 of nature's God. 
 
 With natural abilities and fair scholastic attain- 
 ments, the equipments indicated in the foregoing para- 
 graphs should be enough to give the minister proper 
 freedom and force in the pulpit. Too much art may 
 lead the skeptical hearer to suspect affectation. Like 
 foreign color in butter, it may be taken for adultera- 
 tion, and thus become an abomination. The best art in 
 a public speaker is artless simplicity. "It pleased 
 God through the foolishness or simplicity of preach- 
 ing to save them that believe." The pulpit calls 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 173 
 
 for the natural rather than the artificial man, when 
 the artificial makes the man unnatural. When Paul 
 said that "the natural man receiveth not the things 
 of the Spirit for they are foolishness to him," he 
 did not use the term ''natural" as now understood 
 in the light of modem psychology. Sin has caused 
 the natural man to become the unnatural man. The 
 little child is the orator of the family, and more 
 convincive in its unpretentious eloquence, because 
 it has not yet learned the false art of affectation. 
 Young gentlemen, unless you become as little chil- 
 dren in this respect you should not attempt to enter 
 the pulpit. The soul-stirring appeals of the little 
 child, free from affectation and without any acquired 
 art, carries conviction where Cicero and Demosthenes 
 would fail. If you would imitate anybody in oratory, 
 let your model be the little child. 
 
 Let pathos, with its pearly tear, 
 Vibrate the soul with all its chords. 
 
 Let modulation charm the ear 
 By fitly-spoken, fervent words. 
 
 Thus let truth's banner be unfurled ; 
 
 A living Christ for a dying world. 
 
 Without such qualifications for the ministry young 
 licentiates become either timid weaklings or mere 
 presumptuous talkers along the firing line of Zion's 
 embannered hosts. It is often the case in the gen- 
 eral realm of causation that different and differing 
 effects follow from the same common cause or source. 
 The same sun that hardens the clay softens the wax 
 and thaws the ice. In the rational and human 
 realm the difference may be accounted for on the 
 
174 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 ccrouud of differing idiosjTierasies in the psycholog- 
 ical constitutions of one-sided or lop-sided men. Of 
 these two sorts of opposite characters the most danger- 
 ous bull of Bashan in the garden of the Lord's house 
 is the preacher superlatively endowed with the dis- 
 position to rush himself to the front for the primary 
 purpose of self exhibition. He is fearfully and won- 
 derfully made — with the gift of gab. With him 
 egoism is eloquence and verbosity is equivalent to 
 oratory. He can talk upon any topic, and the less 
 he knows the more he is likely to prate. It is his com- 
 fort in life or death to become a popular preacher 
 in order that great numbers may hang upon his 
 empty words entranced, and blow him into notoriety 
 through the bugle-horn of applauding fools. For this 
 purpose he advertises his sensational themes. In his 
 opinion the gospel itself has no attraction. He must 
 become the magnet. Hence the newspapers are called 
 upon to stand heavenly gates ajar that light celest- 
 ial from the great white throne may come streaming 
 down into his heterogeneous audience. The coming 
 of the Sun of Righteousness must be announced by 
 the sable fluid of the printing press, that the world 
 may have the opportunity to behold Immanuers 
 superlative splendor in the sombrous haze of the 
 pretentious preacher's little tallow dip. 
 
 Such personified presumption and loquacity find 
 their clerical antipode in the poorly equipped min- 
 ister who relies largely on his manuscript without 
 the ability to make his heart palpitate on paper. He 
 is characterized more by literary pride than by ex- 
 cessive verbosity. He has great admiration for fine 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 175 
 
 platitudes and finely rounded sentences. Instead of 
 using his Addisionian periods to feather the arrows 
 of conviction that should be made to speed their way 
 to the penitent heart, they are employed rather to 
 feather his own personal plume as a knight of oratory. 
 He is not unwilling to allow the impression go forth 
 that he has a smattering of learning, as a linguist, 
 a philosopher, a scientist, a logician and a rhetori- 
 cian. 
 
 But let us clearly understand ourselves at this 
 point. The ideal preacher is not averse to anything 
 evangelically valuable, whether in scholarly ability, 
 pulpit polish or floridity of speech. He would utilize 
 them all by bringing them into the service of the 
 Master for the proclamation of the truth, in order 
 to bring out both the profundity and simplicity 
 of the truth. He aims to combine both the meekness 
 and the method of Moses in his slowness of speech, 
 and the loquacious speaking ability of Aaron with 
 the more versatile talent of Joshua, who was better 
 qualified than either of them to lead the people out 
 of the wilderness to the promise-land, Moses was a 
 writer and Aaron was a speaker, and both of them 
 had elements of weaknesses which made themselves 
 manifest in certain crucial tests of their respective 
 characters. Joshua was a more ideal minister in 
 Israel. His character not only embraced all essen- 
 tial parts of a complete w^hole, but also all the parts 
 in proper proportion. He was a writer, a fluent 
 speaker, a brave soldier, a considerate organizer, a 
 great reformer, a virtuous judge in Isreal, an impar- 
 tial distributor of Isreal's inheritance, and also, and 
 
17b THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 best of all, firm in his personal and domestic piety. 
 ''As for me and my house we will serve the Lord" 
 (Josh. 24: 15). Let leaders in God's New Testament 
 Israel note this combination of excellencies in that 
 model character, and govern themselves accordingly. 
 
 He is approximately an ideal preacher who com- 
 bines in proper proportion all of the aforementioned 
 traits of symmetrical ministerial character. Super- 
 lative endowments at one point can never make 
 entirely good for deficiencies in other parts. The 
 character which is firm in its foundation must be 
 equally fair in its proportions in order to be endur- 
 ing in age and successful in meeting the responsibil- 
 ities of life. The one-sided giant with his ephemeral 
 flashes of genius is likely to prove an abortion. The 
 study of the pulpit, the preparation and the perform- 
 ance, the sow^ing of the seed, the cultivation of the 
 growing crop and the reaping of the harvest are 
 parts of one comprehensive whole in the exercise of 
 all the functions of the ministerial office. 
 
 Omitting from our present consideration those 
 functions which belong more properly to pastoral 
 oversight and care of the flock, we come now to 
 inquire after the minister 's duty as a preacher. These 
 consist in the preparation and proclamation of the 
 message from God to man. With more grace and less 
 guile the preacher may say to his people in the lan- 
 guage of Ehud to Eglon: (Judges 3:20) ''I have a 
 message from God unto thee. ' ' The substance of his 
 message is in the Bible, the specific preparation is in 
 the closet and the library, the proclamation is in the 
 pulpit, and, sad to relate, the terminal point of its 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 177 
 
 power is too generally in the pew rather than in the 
 fruits of repentance, unfeigned faith, holy hearts, 
 happy homes and a blessed immortality running 
 parallel with the unfolding cycles of eternity. 
 
 There are several reasons why a minister's prep- 
 aration in his study should be made and preserved 
 in manuscript form. It helps him to become precise 
 in his public utterances, and will serve to remind 
 him in after years how little he knew in the earlier 
 periods of his ministery. The wisdom of reading 
 sermons from the pulpit is, however, a mooted and 
 unsettled question. It will be different with you 
 when you become professors of theology, for then 
 you will be confronted with infallible critics; but 
 reading sermons is not the ideal manner of pro- 
 claiming the gospel to an audience of dying men. 
 It limits the proper freedom of the messenger, and 
 puts the audience beyond the piercing power of the 
 orator's eye. It handicaps his free gesticulation and 
 makes him appear 
 
 "Like a bird with beauties half concealed 
 Till mounted on the wing, its glossy plume expands." 
 
 Young Gentlemen : Would you become ideal 
 preachers with power to convince an audience of sin, 
 of righteousness and a judgment to come, write your 
 sermons at the beginning of your ministery, but 
 gradually do away with that method of preparation 
 as you find yourselves able to think while standing 
 upon your feet before an audience — even in the pres- 
 ence of the world's great potentates. It shall be told 
 you in that same hour what ye ought to speak. God 
 
 12 
 
178 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 will be your sufficiency and your exceeding great 
 reward in the exact proportion that you put yourself 
 in right relation to him and to everything within the 
 proper compass of your ministerial environments. 
 Therefore "quit you like men." "Be strong in the 
 Lord and in the power of his might." 
 
 Such pulpit strength cannot be dissociated from 
 proper gravity. Hear and heed the exhortation of 
 St. Paul to Timothy: A bishop, like the deacons, 
 should be blameless, sober and grave. The sacred 
 rostrum is not the proper place for wit. If the preach- 
 er should be so unfortunate as to have such a spasm, 
 let it be, like the itch, the result of spontaneous 
 eruption. And don't forget that each minister should 
 become the husband of one wife — soon after his grad- 
 uation from the seminary. Cultivate a reverential 
 intimacy with heaven, and a familiarity with the 
 forces and laws of the heavenly world. Remember 
 that though you have this treasure in earthen vessels, 
 the power of God unto salvation is in the gospel 
 itself, rather than in any of its necessary accompani- 
 ments. Yet do not depend upon the gospel to do 
 marvelous things unless it be properly proclaimed 
 in due manner, with its heaven-ordained means. Even 
 earthen pitchers may be used for the overthrow of 
 the Midianites when such pitchers have within them 
 the torches of everlasting truth. All must be kept 
 in subordination to God's will and in subserviency 
 to his cause. With such assuring confidence in God, 
 and such determination to recognize Christ as all in 
 all, you may go to battle with the whole array of evil 
 principalities and powers under the New Testament 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 179 
 
 watchword: ''The sword of the Lord and of Gideon." 
 Halleluiah ! ' ' The Lord God, omnipotent reigneth. ' ' 
 Paul could never have made Felix tremble if he had 
 been fortified behind a quire of foolscap. Stand out in 
 the open. Dash your empty pitchers to pieces; cast 
 the fragments to the junk pile ; toss your manuscripts 
 into the waste basket, and fill yourselves with light 
 from the upper clouds. Then let the pealing thun- 
 ders roll, with lightning flashes from your soul. 
 
180 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 LECTURE XII 
 
 The Ideal Undershepherd 's Relation to the 
 Lambs of the Flock 
 
 In this course of lectures now about to be brought 
 to a close, it was intended to set forth the ideal min- 
 ister of the gospel in all his essential relations to 
 God and to the work which the Father had given him 
 to do. The last discourse treated of the proper or 
 artful manner of expressing his thoughts, his senti- 
 ments and his purpose in the exercise of his minister- 
 ial functions ; that art is not something to be added to 
 the gospel, as to its real essence, but one of the means 
 by which the gospel may have free course and be 
 glorified as the power of God unto salvation ; that 
 its mission is to wreath the altar of the Most High 
 with garlands of ethical beauty, and to give the pul- 
 pit of the sanctuary its own proper setting in the 
 strength of symmetry; that while it is proper and 
 imperative for young ministers to cultivate literary 
 precision of expression by writing their sermons before 
 going to the pulpit, it is not advisable for them to con- 
 tinue in this manner of sermonic preparation ; that in 
 the delivery of the sermon, a few natural and spon- 
 taneous gesticulations should banish all studied man- 
 nerisms from the sacred rostrum. 
 
 Next to the duty of evangelical teaching is the 
 exercising of the pastoral function in the ministerial 
 office. This function is one that may not be over- 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 181 
 
 looked or surrendered entirely to others, by those 
 who have the oversight of the entire flock. When 
 the Great Shepherd of the sheep ascended up on high 
 "that he might fill all things, he gave some pastors" 
 as well as "teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, 
 for the work of the ministry, for the sanctifying of 
 the (whole) body of Christ, until we all come to the 
 unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of 
 God, unto a perfect man, and the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of Christ. That was a sad inter- 
 callary day in the history of American Protestantism 
 when the parochial school system and the catechisms 
 were measurably tossed aside for the Y. P. S. C. E.'s 
 half fledged Boys' Brigades, religious leagues, social 
 clubs and the cradle roll — with empty cradles. 
 
 With that seemingly inconsiderate turn in the 
 methods of nurture and admonition of the Lord, the 
 time-tried and more systematic study of God's word 
 as set forth in the ecumenical catechisms, by all the 
 properly historic churches of Christendom have been 
 set aside, or their use practically neglected, to make 
 room for modern evangelism and the International 
 Committee on Sunday Schools, to skim over the sur- 
 face of the Bible and serve a cold lunch and light 
 refreshments to the lambs of the flock and the poor 
 pitiable little kids on the outside of the fold. 
 
 Can any intelligent pastor give his unqualified 
 approval to such a radical change in the manner of 
 Christian nurture under the plea of modern methods? 
 Can the spirit of modernism that exploits itself in 
 seemingly sincere pretentions, and that now vapors 
 within the walls of our half-emptied sanctuaries 
 
.182 THE IDEAL PREACHER , 
 
 sustain itself in the coming hour of need ? Is this what 
 Paul meant by feeding the babes on the sincere milk of 
 the word? Is this the present method of imparting 
 religious instruction in haphazard fragments of script- 
 ural knowledge equivalent to what Paul meant when 
 he told Timothy to "feed the flock of God?" Is 
 such service in fair and full response to the command 
 of the Good Shepherd and the bishop of souls when 
 he told Peter, as a test of his love, to feed his 
 "sheep," his "lambs" and his "sheeplets?" Did 
 he not address Peter in some sense as the represen- 
 tative of the church in her maternal character for 
 all the years of grace to follow ? Is not the food for 
 mother and children in substance the same! Does 
 not the Word as meat for the mother become by 
 thorough digestion the sincere milk for the babe? 
 Is not the babe in the family and fed before its birth f 
 Does not such period of gestation lead on and up to 
 the reality of birth and to the distinct individuality 
 of the newly born child? Should not such child of 
 the church be permitted to subsist upon the sincere 
 nutriment necessary to its sufficient development up 
 to the awakening of its consciousness as a distinct 
 individual Christian upon its personal confession of 
 Christ as its Saviour at the altar of confirmation? 
 Is it not the imperative duty of the pastor to see to it 
 that the chidren of the church are permitted and 
 so directed to come into such full inheritance of their 
 spirtiual birthright instead of being tempted to 
 barter it away, as did Esau, for a mere humanistic or 
 socialistic bowl of abominable bean-soup? Out upon 
 such treason to the truth, and travesty in holy things ! 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 183 
 
 Grape juice piety may do for a jellyfish people; 
 but the church needs a little spiritual wine for its 
 often infirmities, in order to develop essential muscle, 
 sinew and vertebra all along the spinal column. In 
 our day of self glorified modern methods the radical 
 mistake in the teaching and general treatment of 
 the chiMren of the church is the substitution of what 
 is largely a mere training for feeding. 
 
 The great stress that is now being laid upon the 
 benefits derived from our common school system, 
 the growing emphasis now settling down upon our 
 plausible Sunday School work and the popular relig- 
 ious craziness of our Christian Endeavor Societies 
 would seem to justify the discussion of the topic 
 now under consideration before this theological stu- 
 dent body, in order that healing streams of influence 
 may go forth to correct the wrong and confirm the 
 right in matters pretaining to the proper education of 
 the young. 
 
 It is assumed that children are capable of being 
 trained or taught, and that they need some mental 
 or moral discipline and nutriment in order to the 
 attainment of the true dignity involved in their essent- 
 ial nature, and the possibility of the high and noble 
 destiny awaiting them in their great hereafter ; in 
 other words, that there is in children according to 
 the degree of their ethical development, either an 
 unconscious or an aching void which this world can 
 never fill. 
 
 The thorough discussion of this topic raises the 
 question as to whether children are properly trained 
 
184 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 or cultured in nature or in grace; in the wilderness of 
 a world alienated from God, or in the garden of the 
 Lord's house; in the family of the first Adam, who 
 is of the earth earthy, or in the covenant of 
 the second Adam "the Lord from heaven, and the 
 quickening spirit"? 
 
 The proper consideration and adequate discussion 
 of this subject involves also the inquiry as to whether 
 there are any differences between the unconverted 
 children of the world, and the consecrated children 
 of the church; whether there be any difference in 
 attitude between those children who are branches of 
 the wild olive tree, and those who by some ceremon- 
 ial or sacramental transaction have been planted in 
 the house of the Lord making it possible for them to 
 flourish in the courts of our God (Ps. 92: 13). 
 
 In the discussion of this subject, we should not be 
 unmindful that we are stepping upon debatable 
 ground. But are we not pardonable for this ven- 
 ture if we leave behind us the sandals of carnal 
 presumption, and with the torch of scriptural truth 
 proceed to light up and traverse the field that opens 
 to our reverential tread and raptured vision? Have 
 we not something to do with the supernatural ele- 
 ments of the heavenly world and the supernatural 
 side of the agencies in the economy of human redemp- 
 tion ? 
 
 To change the question and bring it more directly 
 home to ourselves as ministers and as candidates for 
 the holy ministry, do we with St. Paul account our- 
 selves as stewards of the mysteries of God? Do not 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 185 
 
 the sacraments which we are authorized to administer 
 involve mysterious elements from the supernatural 
 world or rather of the supernatural realm in which 
 we have and excerice our ministry! Or do the de- 
 mands in this age of boastful religious humanism 
 place padlocks upon our lips in the discussion of a 
 subject which, in our judgment, stands in logical rela- 
 tion to the sacrament of holy baptism ? If so, let any 
 one speak, for him have I offended. None? Then 
 none have I offended. 
 
 Can there be any real Christian training of the 
 child, in the sense of Christian nurture, entirely out- 
 side of God's kingdom as embodied in the church 
 which is Christ's body, the fullness of him that filleth 
 all in all? Does not consistency require of us who 
 administer baptism to teach and insist that in some 
 sense that implies a transition or change of the sub- 
 ject thereof or of the relation thereof from one realm 
 or condition of the baptized to another realm or con- 
 dition? Is there not a growing dis-position to ignore 
 the obvious teaching of scripture, and the command 
 of our Lord in the apostolic commission, and to part 
 company with the good and the great of all past 
 Christian ages? 
 
 The question is what is the child's natural rela- 
 tion to Jesus Christ, and how can it be brought into 
 such gracious relation to him as to make possible its 
 training in the nurture and adominition of the Lord ? 
 Is it a Christian by natural birth? Let St. Augus- 
 tine again arise and answer the pellagianism of the 
 British T^Ionk. That which is bom of the flesh is 
 flesh. Only that which is born of the Spirit is sipirit 
 
186 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 in sueli a sense as to enable it to see the kingdom of 
 God. Except a man be born of the water and of the 
 Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 
 But it may be claimed that an infant cannot be born 
 again because it is not a "man," then neither can 
 a woman be born again because she is not a man. Is 
 there controversy here ? Then let it be with Him whom 
 even Nicodemus recognized as a great teacher sent 
 from God. Nicodemus could not understand how 
 a man could be born when he is old. Some masters 
 in Israel now^adays cannot understand how a child 
 can be born again when it is young. 
 
 What is birth but the rising of an undeveloped 
 person from a lower state of being into a higher realm 
 of continued existence? What is natural birth but 
 a passive transition from the state of gestation into a 
 state of action in the family? And what is the birth 
 of "water and Spirit" but an equally real transi- 
 tion into a higher realm of ethical or religious being? 
 In either case it involves the severing of an umbilic 
 cord that had hitherto bound the child to the lower 
 realm of its existence and its subsequent connection 
 with the higher realm of being by more vital and 
 enduring ligaments. 
 
 The terms "regeneration" and "conversion" are 
 frequently used interchangably by the common Chris- 
 tian mind, with very little proper conception of the 
 meaning or significance of either. My conception of 
 the new birth or regeneration is that it is that act 
 of God in which a human being is born or transplanted 
 into a new or higher realm of being ; while conversion 
 is more really a change of mind with reference to 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 187 
 
 God and the realities and requirements of religion 
 and the heavenly world. 
 
 If I was ever regenerated at all, it was when I 
 was ingrafted into Christ in baptism, which was 
 administered by a Presbyterian minister, and which 
 the qreat apostle of Methodism, John AVesley, called 
 the laver of regeneration, and which the Scriptures 
 call the Avashing of regeneration. And if I have ever 
 been converted to God, it was when and as the truth 
 in Jesus led me from error or the carnal way of think- 
 ing, to choose Christ as my Supreme Good. Regenera- 
 tion was God's act — an act in which I was rather pas- 
 sive than active. Conversion was more really my own 
 act of turning to him, though not without the influ- 
 ence of the heavenly world which was brought to 
 bear upon me. 
 
 "Conversion" is a term now being juggled with 
 more than any other word in the religious vocabulary. 
 It is used by surface-skimmers in pietism to mean 
 anything, everything and nothing. It frequentlj^ 
 means nothing more than the act of passing down the 
 saw-dust trail to the front of the chancel-rail, to 
 shake hands with some popular evangelist ; and oh, 
 what a thrill of questionable experience such "con- 
 version" must send through the electrified anatomy 
 of the convert, clear up to the roof of his imagination ! 
 
 In the full process of redemption of the person, 
 so far as such redemption can become an actaality 
 before the resurrection at the last day, there are 
 four distinct, yet inseparable parts arranging them- 
 selves in different orders of time according to age 
 
188 THE IDEAL PREACHER . 
 
 and various circumstances. Sometimes they overiap 
 each other, or intermingle their complemental ele- 
 ments like the seven hues of the rainbow in order 
 to constitute one grand masterpiece of heavenly art 
 in water colors on the sky. 
 
 One order in the arrangement of these several 
 elements according to time, and especially applicable 
 to infants, is as follows: Regeneration, conversion, 
 justification and sanctification, and these are alwys 
 to be considered with each other. I believe that in 
 my own case regeneration preceded conversion. In 
 the case of Saul of Tarsus it was probably the reverse, 
 as he was both an intelligent and ignorant persecutor 
 of God's people, and was to become an especially 
 chosen vessel to bear the gospel to the Gentiles. He 
 was converted on his way to Damascus, when, under 
 the rays of supernatural light revealed from the 
 heavenly world, the scales fell from his blinded 
 eyes and more bigoted intellect. He was subsequently 
 regenerated when in obedience to the heavenly vision 
 and the command of the minister in charge, he arose 
 and was baptized and washed away his sins. 
 
 Paul could never forget that in that sacramental 
 transaction he received the sign and seal of his birth 
 into the family of God. He did not forget it when 
 he wrote to the Galatians (3:27, "For as many of 
 you as have been baptized into Christ have put on 
 Christ." He was mindful of it when he addressed 
 the Christians at Rome, (Rom. 6:3, 4) "Know ye 
 not that so many of us have been baptized into Jesus 
 Christ were batptized into his death? Therefore, we 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 189 
 
 are buried with Christ by baptism into death; that 
 like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory 
 of the Father, even so we also should walk in the new- 
 ness of life." He remembered it when he wrote to 
 Titus, (3:5) "According to his mercy he saved us 
 by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of 
 the Holy Ghost." So with St. Peter in Chapter 3:21: 
 "The like figure whereunto, even baptism doth also 
 now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." 
 So does Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger, on the Regeneration 
 of Infants, page 180: "The Lord chooses to connect 
 with the sacrament of baptism, properly administered, 
 the formal official washing away of the stain of 
 original sin from the infant heart. " . . . . ' ' The 
 germ of a new life is thus planted in the soul of the 
 child." It was not forgotten by the Reformed 
 Church in the U. S. when it adopted its Directory of 
 Worship, as on page 103, it encourages Christian par- 
 ents to "believe that their Heavenly Father, in the 
 sacrament of baptism, receives their children, and 
 seals to them the remission of sins, and the gift of 
 a new and spiritual life." 
 
 Justification and sanctification are as logically 
 related to each other as regeneration and conversion 
 are inseparable, while all of them are distinct parts 
 of an organic whole. God has joined them together. 
 No good theologian — no ideal preacher will put them 
 asunder. If we are either regenerated or converted, 
 the complemental part will in due time appear, except 
 where there is a miscarriage. So too, "if we con- 
 fess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us 
 our sins, and to cleame us from unrighteousness." 
 
190 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 There can be no genuine, forensic absolution absolute- 
 ly unaccompanied with an ablution. 
 
 These four parts, while thus correlated with each 
 other must also stand vitally related to Jesus Christ 
 the foundation stone of man's salvation, and the 
 keystone in the arch of his everlasting hope. ' ' With- 
 out me ye can do nothing." Speaking more specific- 
 ally, regeneration grounds itself in the life of Christ. 
 ' ' If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God 
 by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled 
 we shall be saved by his life. " "He that hath the Son 
 hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life." 
 Justification rests in an impartation to us of the right- 
 eoiiness of Christ. "The Lord our righteousness." 
 Santification comes to us from the lioliness of Christ. 
 Paul says that he is "made unto us sanctification. " 
 So also our conversion is consequent upon the tyuth 
 of Christ. He proclaims himself the truth, and that 
 whomsoever the truth maketh free from error and 
 from self shall be free indeed. 
 
 Truth, however, in the gospel sense is more than 
 the correctness of an abstract proposition. It is a 
 concrete essence in the incarnate God, and in such 
 relation to his person that no one can possess and be 
 saved thereby without a vital relation to the Fountain 
 thereof. It is identical with the Word made flesh. 
 "Thy word is the truth." "The words that I speak 
 unto you," said Christ, "they are Spirit and they 
 are life." 
 
 A living church has very little to do with the truth 
 in the abstract, but rather with the truth incarnate 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 191 
 
 and concrete. The mathematician must deal with ab- 
 stract truths until he comes to teach applied mathe- 
 matics, but ministers of the gospel must study, acquire, 
 incorporate and proclaim the truth as clothed upon in 
 the incarnate mystery of Bethlehem and Calvary. 
 No mere doctrinal body of divinity will meet the 
 case in Soteriology. In the body of Christ all the 
 bones articulate themselves with the synovia which 
 every joint supplieth, with flesh upon the bones, arter- 
 ies in the flesh, blood in the arteries, corpuscles in the 
 blood, life in the corpuscles, power in the life, and 
 glory in the power, even the life and power and glory 
 of Mary's first born Son the eternal Son of God. 
 
 This brings us to our subject proper — The Train- 
 ing and Feeding of Children. First of all, the child 
 needs more than training. A dog can be trained, yet 
 even he seeks the crumbs that fall from the master's 
 table. The ox can be trained, yet even he seeks an 
 acquaintance with the master's crib. The child needs 
 more. It needs to be fed. It needs to be nourished 
 upon the nutrient principle of the divine Word. 
 *'Feed my lambs." said the great Shepherd. You 
 cannot change the child's nature by mere training; 
 and if you could thus change its nature, you could 
 not thus nourish it into everlasting life as it passes 
 beyond the period of adolescence. You cannot train 
 a toad to become a proper associate for your children. 
 Brethern ; Let us not forget the language of our 
 commission. The promise is unto us and to our 
 children. 
 
 But we are rightly to divide the word between 
 the two great general classes to whom we have to 
 
192 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 minister. We may not liken the children in Chris- 
 tian civilization, yet out of the covenent, as our Lord 
 did the heathen, to dogs, although we may distinguish 
 between the lambs and the kids. The one class may 
 be likened to Simeon and Anna, waiting, watching 
 and worshiping in the temple for the coming of the 
 Lord's Christ. These represent the children in the 
 church who have been planted by baptism in the 
 house of the Lord making it more easy for them to 
 ''flourish in the courts of our God." The other class 
 is represented by those aliens from the common- 
 wealth of Israel, who upon seeing the Star of Beth- 
 lehem in the hazy distance, came to Jerusalem saying, 
 "Where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we 
 have come to worship him." 
 
 These two classes, whether old or young, should 
 be fed, should all be fed on the Word, according to 
 their respective relations to the Personal Fountain 
 of all truth. This proper distinction is not invid- 
 ious. In the covenent of God there are some things 
 too hoi}/ to be cast unto those who are on the outside. 
 For this reason the impartation of knowledge, as is 
 sometimes the case in our Sunday Schools, is more 
 hurtful than helpful. A general and indiscriminate 
 scattering and smattering of irrelevent knowledge is 
 the fruitful source of genuine ignorance in matters 
 that pertain to God 's kingdom in the world. 
 
 True, the uncovenanted children of our heathen 
 near our sanctuaries, and the children of the church 
 may be tought or trained to a certain extent in the 
 same way, upon the same gospel truth, provided there 
 is that proper distinction and discernment on the 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 193 
 
 part of the teacher who so divides the Word in such 
 a way as to adapt it to each one's peculiar necessities, 
 and by so doing prove himself a workman that needeth 
 not to be ashamed of his workmanship before God. 
 
 But who are to teach and to train the children ? In 
 what school are they to be disciplined in order that 
 they may round out their ransomed personalities in 
 the strength and beauty of symmetrical wholeness, 
 graduate in God's great ethical university and receive 
 their diplomas from the hand of the great Teacher 
 sent for God? Dr. Schaff said that the curriculm 
 should run all the way through the family, the school 
 and the church. 
 
 First of all the family should do the training. 
 This is the child's native element and ought to be its 
 most fertile soil; and here ought to find its most 
 salubrious atmosphere. In the families such expec- 
 tations do not perish from the earth. Such homes are 
 the germs of Christian^ beauty, the cradles of Christian 
 virtue and the foretastes of all that heaven can hold. 
 From the training received in such domestic sanctu- 
 aries come those strong and influential characters 
 which make their beneficial impress upon the world 
 and help the children of the world to come into the 
 church, and thus reach their home beyond the stars. 
 
 But what is the average family now doing in the 
 way of such training of the children and bringing 
 them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? 
 Many of them glorify the Sunday School cradle-roll 
 while they have no cradles at home, and consequently 
 no children to train. Instead of babes, false mothers 
 are pressing poodles to their throbbing hearts, and 
 
 13 
 
194 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 many fathers are so constantly engaged in business 
 as to have no time for the exeercise of the duties 
 which are included in their bill of chartered rights 
 by virtue of their domestic priesthood. 
 
 Besides, we are living in an age of masculine 
 femininity and effeminate masculinity. Many mothers 
 are away from home in the leagues trying to legis- 
 late for the rescue of other people's children, while 
 their own are negelected, and permitted and obliged 
 to grow up in the world — as many of them manage 
 to get into the world — by accident. Pleasure seeking 
 is the passion-play of the social stage. Progressive 
 pedro and retogressive religion are moving hand in 
 hand. Great heavens ! Is the kingdom of God coming 
 in hobble skirts? 
 
 No wonder that some of our old-fashioned Chris- 
 tians are falling upon their rustic knees in despond- 
 ency, while their tears fall down their prayers go up to 
 heaven : 
 
 When wilt thou save the children, O God of mercy when, 
 From crime and filth and vagrancy in homes of godless men? 
 Shall hell breed vice forever, and misery prolong 
 While mothers gay, for boobies play, and sing their siren song? 
 
 No say the mountains. No, the skies 
 
 A cloudless sun shall yet arise 
 
 And shouts ascend instead of sighs — 
 When mothers train their children well 
 In homes where Christ is pleased to dwell. 
 
 The Sunday School as now constituted and oper- 
 ated, though it may not be discarded, cannot be de- 
 pended upon to do the work of training the children 
 in such a way as to equip them to solve the problem of 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 195 
 
 human life here and hereafter. Why? Because the 
 Sunday School cannot arise above the religious level 
 of the families from which it is supplied with teachers. 
 The qualifications of these teachers are too generally 
 inadequate. Charitably conceding that in moral char- 
 acter they are above reproach, they are nevertheless, 
 too generally deficient in an adequate knowledge of 
 the Bible and the fundamental principles of the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 We ministers of the gospel are required by our 
 respective churches to spend three years in college 
 and a number of years in the Theological Seminary 
 and then undergo a rigid examination before we are 
 licensed and ordained to preach the gospel to a 
 dying world; and even then we are required to go 
 to the classes annually and have our work attested 
 and our characters vouched for. Yet in the Sunday 
 School the children and the training of the children 
 are placed in the care of teachers who are too often 
 incompetent and unqualified for the responsible posi- 
 tions. They have never read the Bible through, they 
 have no proper conception of the Christian system, 
 they do not know the ten commandments. Besides 
 the order of Bible study is unsystematic and without 
 any reference to the pericopes or church year as it 
 has been observed through all past ages, and as it 
 is yet observed in all the more historic churches of 
 Christendom. If our public schools were conducted 
 with as little regard for order and system in study, 
 the whole scholastic monstrosity would be laughed out 
 of ountenance. Science is knowledge systematized, and 
 the natural sciences must be taught in a methodical 
 
196 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 way; yet Christianity, the queen of all sciences when 
 properly apprehended, is too generally taught in our 
 Sunday Schools in a haphazard way ; and still we 
 expect the children so taught to come into our 
 churches as symmetrical Christians. Out upon such 
 travesty ! No wonder that they are liable to be blown 
 about by every wind of doctrine, and every doctrine 
 of wdnd, whether blown by Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Blavat- 
 sky, John A. Dowie, the Millennial Dawm, the specu- 
 lar nonsense of modern pulpit jumping jacks, the 
 ephemeral sensation alism of self constituted evangel- 
 ists, helpless humanism or the popular counterfeit of 
 Christianity known as mere social religiousness. 
 
 Yet, brethern, there is a brighter side to this im- 
 portant question. Therefore 
 
 We pause and take a rosier view, 
 
 Well justified by faith and facts, 
 
 By loyal hearts, all good and true, 
 
 By kindness well embalmed in acts, 
 By mute and modest charity 
 And unproclaimed philanthropy. 
 
 Yes we behold, and even now. 
 
 Millions who'd take the thorny crown 
 
 From off the great Messiah's brow 
 
 And let it lacerate their own. 
 Alen of Gyrene, though suffering loss. 
 Would bear for Him His heavy cross ; 
 
 Marys, who worship at his feet 
 And choose Him as their better part ; 
 Marthas who serve to give Him meat 
 And serve Him with unfeigned heart, 
 
 Great deeds perform with small regard 
 
 To their most logical reward. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 197 
 
 There're saints enough in Sodom's vale 
 To save the world from early doom ; 
 And if their alms and prayers prevail, 
 Thej^'ll cause the wilderness to bloom 
 
 More beautiful than Eden's bowers, 
 
 More fragrant than its rarest flowers. 
 
 Children, there are, like David's Son 
 
 Who seek to hear a Father's word. 
 
 And Samuel whose young life begun 
 
 Inquiring for a mother's Lord. 
 Children in Christian nurture found 
 To be through grace in glory crowned. 
 
 Then let us back with them to the more plain 
 and pure and primitive piety — Back to Christ and 
 his old wooden cross — Back to the spirit of early 
 martyrdom — Back to the more faithful teaching of 
 the Word — Back, if necessary to the parochial school 
 system — Back to catechization — Back to the pulpits 
 of Basil, Chrysostom, Savanarola, Luther, Zwingli and 
 John Wesley. The sacraments must be held, as insti- 
 tuted, to sign and seal covenant grace, and the pulpit 
 as the Gibraltar of Protestant and positive truth. 
 Therefore, let us insist upon it that the space behind 
 the chancel rail is too sacred to be occupied by the 
 presence of the pietistic and popular clown. They 
 should be intelligent, reverent and holy who bear the 
 vessels of the Lord. With such pastors in our parishes 
 and such preachers in our pulpits, our people will 
 no longer be fed on a feast of empty generalities, 
 and our children starved to death by cowardly 
 evasions of sacramental truth. 
 
 Then, and not until then shall we be able to give 
 our children their first valuable lessons in religious 
 
198 . THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 training and teach them to come with reverence and 
 humilty to the throne of grace, and also teach this 
 naughty world to bow with more reverence and re- 
 spect before the superlative majesty of the Christian 
 church. 
 
 As shepherds kept their watch of old, 
 While angels warbled on the wing, 
 And chanted God's good will to man, 
 So let them now their vigils hold. 
 And feed the flock, and guard the fold, 
 And Gloria in Excelsis sing. 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 199 
 
 LECTURE XIII 
 
 The Ideal Preacher as an Evangelist 
 
 Hitherto, in the volume of this book, we have 
 considered the minister of the Gospel in his more 
 immediate and intimate relation to the church in 
 which he has been set apart from the more secular 
 side of the world, by the Holy Ghost and the laying 
 on of the hands of the presbytery, as an under Shep- 
 herd and overseer in the office of a bishop. We have 
 seen him in that class of called and consecrated men 
 to whom have been committed the oracles of God, 
 the administers of the sacraments, the living direct- 
 ories of Christian worship, and, under Christ, having 
 charge and general "care of all the churches." We 
 have noted his authority as from above; we have 
 examined his motive as that incentive which moves 
 him to choice and action from w4thin; we have in- 
 quired after the nature of his message; we have 
 glanced at the scope and limitations of his mission; 
 we have traversed the field of his proper ministerial 
 activity; we have heard him sound the central key- 
 note of his theme that the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand; we have watched him buttress his position 
 with quotations from the word of God which endureth 
 forever; we have admired him as a Christian philos- 
 opher; we have approved of his course in the use 
 of the pericopes, and in his free observance of the 
 church year ; we have tried to imitate him as he sought 
 to catch a heavenly vision; we have admired his 
 
200 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 loyalty and obedience to the Chief Shepherd in feed- 
 ing the whole flock of God. 
 
 We come now to consider the Christian minister 
 in the character of an evangelist, and the duties he 
 is expected to discharge in the exercise of that dis- 
 tinct yet inseparable function of his holy office. An 
 evangelist is not necessarily a preacher or teacher 
 separate, distinct and essentially different from an 
 apostle, a prophet, a pastor or an ambassador of 
 Christ, given by the ascended Lord for the "perfect- 
 ing of the saints, for the work of the ministry and 
 for the edifying of the body of Christ." When Tim- 
 othy was ordained and qualified for the Christian 
 ministry, by the laying on of the hands of the presby- 
 tery he was invested and enriched with all the 
 charisma, gifts or functions of a fully authorized pres- 
 byter or bishop. Hence Paul charged him to ''do the 
 work of an evangelist. ' ' The function or calling of an 
 evangelist is ordinarily included in the general office 
 of one ordained to be a steward of the mysteries of 
 God. Such authority or power does not come to a 
 preacher as something ah extra or different in kind, 
 although some men may have peculiar talents above 
 others for the exercising of certain functions of the 
 holy ministery. 
 
 The modern mind, in its dizzy whirl of super- 
 lative religiousness, seems to be somewhat out of 
 agreement with itself as to just what constitutes an 
 evangelist. Much depends upon the view-point from 
 which he is seen and sized up — or down. It is possible 
 that the contending progressives and conservatives 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 201 
 
 may look upon and magnify different sides of his 
 multiform character. Upon one point, however, all 
 devout study of Church history must come to an 
 agreement. Every age of Christendom has had evan- 
 gelists. From the day of the great Prince of Peachers 
 doT\Ti to the present time the world has been chal- 
 lenged with written and spoken proclamations of 
 evangelic truth. The writers of the New Testament 
 record of revelation were Evangelists. Phillip was 
 an evangelist riding in the Ethiopean's touring char- 
 iot. Saint Basil and Savonarola were evangelists 
 Luther. Zwingli, Calvin and Whitefield were evan- 
 gelists. Every true preacher of the Gospel is an 
 evangelist. They are all ''accounted as ministers of 
 Christ" (Cor. 4:1). 
 
 The present day religious specialist is not so easily 
 detined. In the grammar of modern parlance and 
 faL^e syntax he is parsed as a very popular, perpen- 
 dicular pronoun, of the very fii^t person, a very sing- 
 ular number, uncommon gender and a quite question- 
 able case, capitalized, commercialized, apotheosized 
 and idolized — by every lazy preacher and many spas- 
 modic religionists. 
 
 The state of religion in the first few decades of 
 the twentieth century is such as to cause great ' ' per- 
 plexity of nations" and individuals in Christendom 
 This painful agitation of mind is most distracting 
 and distressing in Christian men and women who 
 are constitutionally averse to floating with the pop- 
 ular current of superfical thoughtlessness. For some 
 reason, however, there are some men and women in 
 
202 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the church whose faith, intelligence and loyalty to the 
 eternal tenents of the absolute religion as not to be 
 blown about by every wind of doctrine and every 
 doctrine of wind. They are disposed to indulge in 
 a little sober reflection, pious meditation and thought- 
 ful deliberation before they are ready to make a rad- 
 ical departure from the creeds and customs of the 
 past. They are more anxious to prove old things 
 anew than they are to accredit some new things 
 as true. Hence they are impelled to take to their 
 spiritual intellectual diving bells and plunge toward 
 the bottom of the great ocean of God's revelation to 
 man, and bring up those deep and unchangeable 
 principles and facts of our whole religion which are 
 never found floating upon the surface of shallow 
 religious mud-puddles. 
 
 This class of meditative Christians are now having 
 their faith severely tested. They wish to be up-to- 
 date, but are not really sure that the date is alto- 
 gether right. They desire to be in the procession of 
 "Animated progressives," but a little uncertain 
 as to the anima of their movement. ''The voice is 
 Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." 
 They are anxious that the blessing should be properly 
 bestowed that they may stand in the proper line of in- 
 heritance, and to win souls for Christ, but they would 
 not sacrifice a principle to save a soul, since principles 
 are eternal, while souls are only immortal. With 
 Paul they are willing to be all things for all men and 
 yet for the same reason they desire to see all things 
 done decently and in order, ''as in all the Churches 
 of the Saints." 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 203 
 
 In his ''straight between two" what is the eon- 
 sertive, conscientious and consistent minister to do? 
 Is he justified in holding' that distinction between 
 old principles and modern paths old Creeds and mod- 
 ern customs is so narrow and unreal as to abandon the 
 old with all their sacred associations, and adopt the 
 new meandering paths of modern methods and miser- 
 able religious mummeries? Will his conscience give 
 him rest if he should conclude to eliminate the element 
 of perplexity from the problem and undertake its 
 solution in an attitude of indifference toward the 
 tremendous question with which he finds himself con- 
 fronted? May he, like Pilate the great example of 
 ethical cowardice, wash his hands in the lavatory of 
 affected innocence? Is he to proclaim two Evangels 
 of glad tidings, the one for the Church of highly 
 polished religious decorum and the other in the tab- 
 ernacle of unconventional utterance, and pitable 
 buffoonery ? The writer cannot answer all these ques- 
 tions to his own entire satisfaction, and it would be 
 unpardonable presumption for him to undertake and 
 answer for others. With Saul of Tarsus he can only 
 pray: "Lord what wilt Thou have me to do?" There 
 is at present but one thing distinctly clear to his 
 mind. The harvest of the Earth is getting ripe, and 
 the ideal preacher will in some place and manner 
 reach forth his sickel to reap the whitening fields. 
 
 Even though Christendom should become a bed- 
 lam of conflict and confusion. Such a state of things 
 would rather emphasize the authority of the apostolic 
 commission. '^Go ye therefore' ' would be accentuated 
 with a renewed imperative. The conflict can not 
 
204 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 be more than a temporary squall upon the troubled 
 waters of the Mititiant Church. What is the ambas- 
 sador of Christ for if it is not his calling to be a 
 co-worker with him in calming the storms on the 
 world's troubled Galilee? While we are engaged 
 with Christ in our co-operative efforts to calm the 
 tempest we will find the tempest itself an occasion 
 to gather new schools of fish from the turbulant 
 waters. Much depends upon a disposition to ' ' cast the 
 net on the right side of the ship. We need not stultify 
 ourselves or compromise our orthodoxy. We may 
 make straight paths for our feet without putting a 
 straight- jacket upon our unreasonable narrow con- 
 servatism. The old Ship Zion was chartered once 
 and once for all for the rescue of all in this perishing 
 world. If questionable modern methods and modern 
 religious travesties have no other elements of value, 
 they at least signify the indisputable fact that the 
 world is beginning to realize its condition of helpless- 
 ness and hopelessness without the Christian religion. 
 The social problem of the world is now knocking 
 at the door of the church and the doors of all Chris- 
 tian ministers. As never before, the religious and 
 irreligious of fallen humanity are calling in the dark 
 for help from the inmost sanctuary of Christendom. 
 The call carries with it a tacit acknowledgement that 
 permanent help can come only from Christianity — 
 the Absolute religion, the highest form of humanity 
 and the only source of adequate remedial power for 
 all the ills now afflicting the family of man. That 
 call from the world for the solution of its social prob- 
 lem and the healing of its social infirmities is such 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 205 
 
 as to demand attention. It may not be ignored. The 
 answer must be in a soverign balm sufficiently cura- 
 tive and tonic to enable humanity to attain its true 
 dignity and reach its proper destiny. Though perhaps 
 only partially conscious of the deep necessities in the 
 case its appeal is for help from the church. The 
 ministry of Christ is ordained to occupy the highest 
 and most favorable position upon the watch-tower 
 of Zion, to flash the light of hope and Salvation to 
 the bewildered masses that now throng the dark and 
 dangerous pathways of Mount Seir. True ministers 
 of the Gospel will hear the earnest call from the 
 World 's dismal Dumah and govern themselves accord- 
 ingly. Others had better surrender their false cre- 
 dentials of authority. 
 
 The ideal preacher's calling is to ''do good to all 
 men/' even though the requirement is especially 
 applicable to "the household of faith." He is to 
 have a message for the multitude, as well as food for 
 the little flock. He is to extend the invitation to all 
 who are afar off, and to lay the challenge of sovereign 
 grace at the door of every son and daughter of 
 exiled Adam. His churchly dignity will not hin- 
 der him from giving proper heed to these Macedonian 
 cries. He can do so without any compromise of his 
 ministerial honor. He need not fly off the handle of 
 his Apostolic Commission under the whirling of cen- 
 trifugal and eccentric forces so much in evidence in 
 the wild religious and humanitarian movements of the 
 present age. And while he is giving proper attention 
 to these calls from the perishing multitude he need not 
 fail to "behave himself in the house of God which is 
 
206 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 the church of the living God, the ground and pillar 
 of the truth." 
 
 For these reasons the well balanced minister is 
 not ambitious to rush inconsiderately into every move- 
 ment in questionable politics, moral reform and pre- 
 tentious evangelism, sprung by semi-religionists and 
 agitated by the weak minded men and silly women 
 who have never learned the first principles of the 
 doctrines of Christ. He keeps in mind that there 
 is a line of proper demarkation between the Spirit 
 and the flesh, and the divine and the human, the 
 sacred and the secular. With St. John, he is disposed 
 to ' ' try the spirits whether they are of God. ' ' He rec- 
 ognizes also the additional fact that though he is in the 
 world, he is not of the world. His conversation or citi- 
 zenship is in heaven. Like Joseph's fruitful vine his 
 ministerial influence reaches over the wall, and bears 
 its rich clusters on the outside of the vineyard, while 
 he continues to stand like a vestal virgin close to his 
 consecrated altar to keep the true fires from going out, 
 and the false fires from coming in. His apostolic 
 commission invests him with neither brains, author- 
 ity nor desire to leap into every seething caldron 
 of popular commotion. He reads his credentials as 
 calling him to a narrower, nobler, higher, holier sphere 
 of action. With Paul, he recognizes proper limit- 
 ations to the scope of his ministerial activity, and 
 with the primitive apostolate in general, he believes 
 that it is not ' ' mete that he should leave the Word of 
 God and serve tables. ' ' He distinguishes between the 
 world's broad field of action and the more specific 
 realm of an ordained ambassador of Christ. He 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 207 
 
 does not forget the injunction of the great apostle 
 to the Gentiles, given directly to Timothy, and neglects 
 not to stir up the special gift that is within him, and 
 which he receives by prophecy and the laying on 
 of the hands of the presbytery, and therefore gives 
 himself exclusively to the duties thus assigned him. 
 
 Not that the Christian ministry is apt to under- 
 take more work in the ^Master's vineyard than what 
 was nominated in the bond of its apostolic commis- 
 sion; or that the Church is in danger of covering 
 too much territory, geographically, socially, or ethi- 
 cally considered. The field is the world, and the whole 
 w^orld is included in the field to be sown with the 
 unadulterated seed of the Word, and cultivated for 
 the comming great harvest of redeemed humanity. 
 The danger lies either in the sowing of darnel for 
 the wheat of the Kingdom, or of permitting the 
 plants of the good seed to be hybridized by 
 mixing with the tares of the merely nominal Christian 
 world. This is really the danger point in the history 
 of the development of our Protestantism under the 
 high pressure and rapid speed methods of modern 
 religiousness. Let the danger be sounded out in every 
 trumpet blast ! 
 
 A somewhat similar condition of things jeopard- 
 ized the safety of the Jewish nation for three-quar- 
 ters of a millennium before the Lord's first advent. 
 Abraham's descendants were commanded and warned 
 not to adulterate their life-stream with the degenerate 
 blood of surrounding and uncircumcised nations, and 
 thus fuse their faith with the religious abminations 
 of the heathen. The commandment was disobeyed 
 
208 THE IDEAL PREACHER , 
 
 and the warning passed unheeded. The cults of Ash- 
 dod, Ashtaroth and Baal were incorporated into the 
 religion of God's peculiar people, and the result was 
 a mongrel race. Unless these days of popular com- 
 pounding and confounding of Christianity with 
 humanism be shortened for the elect 's sake, something 
 similar is likely to become the baneful inheritance 
 of God's New Testament people. At present it is 
 very hard to draw the line of clear distinction between 
 the Church and the world. He is an ideal preacher, 
 indeed, who can properly discern the signs of the 
 times. Superficial skimming over the surface is substi- 
 tuted for profouund and stalwart thought in theology, 
 and undue stress is laid upon the social element that 
 should enter only as an essential ingredient into the 
 truly Christian community. 
 
 My Dear Young Brethren of the Theological Sem- 
 inary : This may be my farewell address to you. By 
 virtue of virile and vigorous blood transmitted 
 through and from a noble, Scotch and Swish ancestry, 
 by good Christian morals, by plain and regular habits 
 of living, by human industry, hard work and divine 
 grace, I have been able to reach and pass over the 
 summit of a long and strenuous life. I know 
 not how long I may continue to endure. The proba- 
 bility is that the great hereafter is close at hand for 
 me. Neither is it impossible that the full consumation 
 of this present order of terrestrial affairs is very far 
 in the distant future. If already 1900 years ago the 
 Seer of Patmos heard the heavenly announcement 
 that the Lord would '^qiiicMy come," how much 
 nearer now must be that final advent? 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 209 
 
 Let us not fail to discover the signs of the times. 
 The powers of the world to come are asserting them- 
 selves, and the seething caldron of this present evil 
 world is full of predictive prophecy. Let him that 
 runneth read and reflect. Christian scholarship 
 should study the significance of the past. Christian 
 meditation should help to disclose the signs of the 
 present and Christian faith should be able to hear 
 the rumblings of Immanuel's chariot wheels. 
 
 Modern history is full of lessons for the devout 
 student. Restlessness is disturbing the planet from 
 Cancer to Capricorn. Men's hearts are beginning 
 to fail them on account of those things which are to 
 come upon the earth. All the ordained powers of 
 — Heaven — the family, the State and the Church — 
 are being shaken from the center to circumference. 
 We are evidently nearing the culminating Crisis in 
 the history of the world. Men are running to and 
 fro. They know not what they want. They only sus- 
 pect that they need a saving knowledge of the un- 
 known God. In their restlessness and disquietude 
 they are sighing and therefore seeking and searching 
 for something to redress the miseries of the present 
 and give a more golden glow to their dark forebodings 
 and gloomy anticipations of the future. 
 
 Look over the field of the world 's false diplomacy 
 and international confusion. Perplexity befuddles 
 the croA^Ti, befogs the court and bedamns the camp. 
 The armies of Europe appall the world. Their millions 
 of embannered battalions throw the fabled hosts of 
 Xerxes into the diminutive compass of the Corporal's 
 guard, and cause them to vanish away behind the 
 
 14 
 
210 THE IDEAL PREACHER 
 
 sombrous shades of a benighted antiquity. They 
 march and countermarch under the commandaries 
 of Earth's petty potentates, while they unconsciously 
 obey the orders of Him who is God of battles and 
 the giver of victories. 
 
 Who knows the exact significance of the Chapter 
 that the word is now writing in characters of blood? 
 Who can fully understand the full meaning of a 
 planet incarnadined in crimson hue? "Such knowe- 
 edge is too wonderful for me. I cannot attain there- 
 to. " Neither do the angels clearly understand the 
 stately steppings of God in history. This much, 
 however, we may know: the unprecedented world 
 movements stand prophetically related to the impend- 
 ing crisis of all the ages. That final crisis is maturing. 
 In that general Armageddon we shall all have apart. 
 "Before Him shall be gathered all nations." We 
 have all been called to the colors. "There is no 
 escape in this war." The armies of Anti-Christ 
 are marshalling on every plain and storming the 
 Thermopylaes of every mountain pass, while the sac- 
 ramental hosts of God's redeemed, elect are emban- 
 nering themselves on Zion's holy hill. 
 
 True ministers of the Gospel are expected to be 
 at the front and on the firing line. There is nothing 
 in their Apostalic commission that should prevent 
 them from adapting themselves to the work which the 
 Father has given them to do. This work they can and 
 should do without playing the babboon for an effect- 
 upon the fools in the gallery. Stage thunder is 
 something very different from that pulpit lightning 
 which is generated in the upper clouds of Celestial 
 
THE IDEAL PREACHER 211 
 
 magnetism. Neither need the work be attempted by 
 any of the modern methods of carnal might and 
 power, but "by my Spirit saith the Lord." 
 
 Young Gentlemen: put on the whole armor of 
 God. Doff the armor of babboonish darkness. Un- 
 sheath, as never before, ''the Sword of the Spirit 
 which is the work of God." Cultivate more faith in 
 the Gospel, and put less confidence in the carnal 
 contraptions of men. Man's extremity is God's oppor- 
 tunity. God's opportunity is your opportunity. It 
 is a great opportunity. Abraham never had such an 
 opportunity. He would have rejoiced to have seen 
 your day, but it never dawned upon his patriarchal 
 vision. God is expecting greater things frf>m you 
 than Abraham ever accomplished. Therefor, 
 
 Perform your part on life's great stage, 
 Perform it well from youth to age. 
 
 And may the lengthening shadows of your well- 
 spent years bring you the confirming and consoling 
 consciousness of 
 
 Life's race well run, 
 Life's work well done, 
 Life's victory well won. 
 
 Then may you reach your sickels forth to the 
 fields of heaven, and with your hands immortal, 
 pluck ripe clusters from the vines of God. 
 
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