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 The art of preaching 
 
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THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 
 
 DEAN OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE FORTY-EIGHTH SERIES 
 
 OF LYMAN BEECHER LECTURES ON PREACHING 
 
 IN YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1922, 
 
 bt the macmillan company 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1922. 
 
 VSVaiSD IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEBIOA 
 
To 
 Geoege a. Gordon 
 
 Whose Preaching Kindled My Own Heart with 
 Fresh Impulse During My Three Years in the 
 Seminary; Who Has Nobly Maintained the In- 
 tellectual Dignity of the Ministry in Times of 
 Stress; Who for Well-nigh Forty Years Has 
 Made the Pulpit of the Old South Church, 
 Boston, a Place of Power and of Spiritual 
 Impartation, I Dedicate This Book in Grateful 
 'Appreciation. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 When my honored colleagues in the Faculty of the 
 Yale Divinity School first asked me to give the Lyman 
 Beecher Lectures for the year 1922-23 I declined their 
 generous invitation. I did this on the ground that I had 
 already given a course of Lyman Beecher Lectures sixteen 
 years ago on "The Social Message of the Modem Pulpit ;" 
 and for the further reason that it seemed to me inap- 
 propriate for one of our own Faculty to perform this 
 office on the occasion of the celebration of the One Hun- 
 dredth Anniversary of the founding of the School. These 
 objections however did not appear to them important, and 
 when the invitation was cordially renewed two months 
 later it seemed best for me to undertake this service. 
 
 We have had in recent years several notable Courses 
 of Lyman Beecher Lectures discussing the relation of the 
 pulpit to the Great War and to the vast and intricate 
 problems which it created. Dr. John Kelman lectured 
 on "The War and Preaching;" Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin 
 considered the issues involved "In a Day of Social Re- 
 building." Dr. William P. Merrill considered "The 
 Freedom of the Preacher" as affected by recent develop- 
 ments. We have had other courses dealing particularly 
 with the theological, the educational, the social phases of 
 the minister's vocation in these grave times upon which 
 we have fallen. 
 
viii FOREWOED 
 
 We have not had for thirty years a series of Lyman 
 Beecher Lectures dealing directly with the technique of 
 preaching. It has seemed fitting therefore that as a 
 teacher of homiletics and as one whose main office for 
 many years has been that of preaching, I should take up 
 in a more intimate way the making of a sermon. 
 
 I have not attempted anything so ambitious as a 
 thoroughgoing treatise on homiletics. This book contains 
 a series of lectures filled mainly with practical sugges- 
 tions as to "the art of preaching." I have retained the 
 form of direct personal address as best suited to the pur- 
 pose in mind. The expressions which have come from 
 the students who heard the lectures have encouraged me 
 to hope that these words may have value for some of my 
 brother ministers in active service who are sharing in 
 the heat and burden of a day made difficult to all of us 
 as preachers by the tense and troubled conditions of our 
 modern life. 
 
 The reluctance of multitudes of thoughtful people to 
 "sit under our preaching" after the manner of their more 
 patient forefathers, becomes a kind of challenge to do our 
 bit in a more interesting and a more effective way. How 
 difficult a task it is I have learned full well by oft- 
 re23eated, humbling experiences. Yet in the face of 
 everything, I still believe with all my heart (as I believed 
 thirty-three years ago when I was first ordained) that 
 to preach the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the 
 highest office and the most alluring interest to which any 
 human being can be called. 
 
 Chas. R. Bkown. 
 
 Yale University, 
 October 1, 1922. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAOa 
 
 I The Significance of the Sermon . . 1 
 
 II The Basis of the Sermon ... 32 
 
 III The Content of the Sermon . . 62 
 
 IV The Measure of the Sermon ... 94 
 V The Lighter Elements of the Sermon 123 
 
 VI The Delivery of the Sermon . . . 155^ 
 
 VII The Setting of the Sermon . . • 188 
 
 VIII The Soul of the Sermon . . • 222 
 
 ix 
 
THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 THE SIGNirtCANCE OF THE SEEMON 
 
 THE poor sermon is everywhere spoken against. 
 "Dull as a sermon !" "Prosy as a preacher !" "He 
 has the homiletic habit!" "Whatever you do, 
 don't preach !" "His book is as lifeless as an old volume 
 of sermons." 
 
 In these familiar phrases, caught up at random from 
 the swiftly flowing currents of popular speech, we find the 
 common appraisal set upon the sermon. It is a dull day 
 when some light-hearted newspaper man does not make 
 merry over the unpopularity and the futility of the un- 
 happy sermon. In many a quarter the conventional ser- 
 mon has fallen so low that none shall count himself so 
 poor as to do it reverence. 
 
 Yet in the very teeth of this easy and widespread de- 
 traction of that form of address, I am here to maintain 
 against all comers that the sermon is by right, and may 
 well be in fact, the most august expression of mind, heart 
 and will to be heard anywhere in human society. I would 
 agree most heartily with the estimate placed upon it by 
 one who was himself possessed of fine literary skill, by one 
 whose little books are read from the rising of the sun to 
 
2 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 the going down of the same. It was Ian Maclaren, the 
 author of "The Bonnie Brier Bush," who said, "The most 
 critical and influential event in the religious week is the 
 sermon." 
 
 In the preaching of a real sermon the whole man is 
 acting and reacting under the stimulus offered by the 
 spiritual needs of a body of people. The preacher's face 
 and bearing, his voice and his eye, all his mental faculties, 
 — reason, judgment, insight, imagination and the rest, — 
 all his spiritual faculties, sympathy, aspiration, high re- 
 solve, faith, hope, and love — all these are engaged in a 
 concerted movement upon the minds and hearts of those 
 listeners. And furthermore, this putting forth of energy 
 has in view certain high spiritual ends. The preacher is 
 intent upon manifesting to those people the truth in 
 action, in terms of experience, so that by the power of his 
 message they may be lifted to higher levels of being. 
 And the very fact that a really live sermon is an exercise 
 of this sort clothes it with an august character. 
 ''" The high office of the sermon is the creation, the nur- 
 ture and the direction of Christian impulse. When you 
 undertake to preach a sermon you set yourself the task 
 of convincing the judgment, of kindling the imagination, 
 of moving the feelings, and of giving such a powerful 
 impulse to the will that this finer quality of being may 
 find expression in finer forms of action. And we know 
 from experience that in securing this high end the divine 
 energy operates habitually and most powerfully through 
 those vital truths which bear upon the development of 
 spiritual life. The sermon embodying in living form 
 some important portion of this truth is therefore de- 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 3 
 
 signed to make men feel, and feel so deeply that they will 
 resolve. 'It is designed to make men resolve and resolve 
 so strongly that they will act." And the impulse which 
 thus issues in action is directly begotten under the com- 
 pelling influence of the truth by the immediate operation 
 of the Spirit of Truth, who is the Holy Spirit, moving 
 upon the moral nature of the hearer. 
 
 We sometimes hear light-hearted and light-headed peo- 
 ple who have not learned their way about, remarking in 
 this strain, "We do not want our preachers to give us 
 theology — let them give us the simple gospel." But ''the 
 simple gospel," as men sometimes call it, not knowing 
 what they say, is brimful of theology. It is a presenta- 
 tion of truths, deep, broad, high, stretching on endlessly 
 in their abiding significance. The impulse which caused 
 that young man in the far country to rise and move out 
 along a better line of life was not born directly of his 
 physical discomfort. He was "in want and no man gave 
 unto him." He felt a keen sense of disgust arising from 
 his disappointing association with the harlots and with 
 the hogs. 
 
 But the compelling impulse which brought him to his 
 feet and caused him to orient himself aright was born of 
 his vision of a deeper truth. He remembered that he 
 had a father. He knew that in that father's house, far 
 distant though it was, there was bread enough and to 
 spare. He knew that action on his own part would bring 
 him again to his father's house with an open chance of 
 adequate support in the position at least of a hired 
 servant. And the compelling force of those considera- 
 tions, all of them having to do with realities far removed 
 
4 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 from the field of his immediate personal experience, 
 created within him the impulse which changed his whole 
 career and set him in that line of advance which meant 
 forgiveness, restoration, peace, joy and honor. 
 
 The young man was saved, not by those plain ethical 
 considerations there within arm's length as he faced the 
 field of swine. He was saved in a word "by faith," by 
 following out the plain implications of his theology — by 
 his sense of a Father's undestroyed interest in him and 
 by that whole system of values made effective by the 
 exercise of faith. 
 
 "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you 
 free." It is both a promise and a command, a privilege 
 and a duty. It was to be through that keen, immediate 
 sense of realities, unseen indeed but vital and eternal, 
 that men were to be freed from all that hurts or hinders 
 life in the high advance for which it is designed. Where 
 the heart of some individual seems devoid of Christian 
 impulse we look to some effective presentation of the 
 truth in compelling form to work the needed change. 
 The august sanctions which attach to righteousness, the 
 deterrent considerations which can be brought to buttress 
 the will against the onslaughts of evil, the uncovering of 
 the profounder sources of motive and stimulus bringing 
 up moral supplies from a deeper level of being, the cloth- 
 ing of the life of uprightness and of service with all its 
 appropriate glory until it becomes a privilege, interesting, 
 dynamic, resplendent, — all these aspects of religious truth 
 bear directly and vitally upon the unfolding life of the 
 spirit. 
 
 You will recall the familiar word of Augustine, 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 5 
 
 "Veritas pateat, Veritas placeat, Veritas moveat." "Make 
 the truth plain ! make the truth pleasing ! make the truth 
 moving." 
 
 The proper nurture of that Christian impulse thus 
 created as it shall move from blade to ear and from the 
 ear on toward the full com issuing at last in a rewarding 
 harvest, is also to he achieved mainly by the operation of 
 the divine spirit through those forms of truth which relate 
 themselves in vital fashion to the mental and spiritual 
 processes having to do with the maturing of wholesome 
 character. 
 
 And to complete the cycle, the well ordered and efficient 
 ^expression of that Christian impulse, once awakened and 
 then genuinely ripened, in terms of useful service makes 
 a similar requisition upon the values attendant upon the 
 presentation of the truth in its most dynamic form 
 through preaching. (The high office of the sermon then 
 is to aid in the creation, the nurture and the direction 
 of Christian impulse.;> 
 
 ^Your business as preachers is not to lecture on botany 
 but to raise flowers.^ Your thorough knowledge of botany 
 will help. It is impossible to raise successfully a full 
 measure of the finest flowers without a knowledge of 
 botany. But in his use of that knowledge the eyes of 
 the wise gardener are constantly upon the results to be 
 achieved in the realm of life. You in like manner will 
 employ the entire results of your study in philosophy, in 
 theology, in Biblical criticism and in church history to 
 promote religious life in the people who may be brought 
 within the range of your influence. You will be saying 
 to your hearers, "This know and thou shalt live." 
 
6 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 In my own ministry I have steadily emphasized the 
 value of personal visitation. It was my custom for twenty 
 odd years to make at least one thousand pastoral calls in 
 every twelve months — this was the minimum with as 
 many more added as time might allow. The process of 
 using up the gray matter of the brain in the preparation 
 of sermons should in my judgment be paralleled by a 
 similar process of wearing out shoe leather and bicycle 
 tires or a modest Ford in moving about one's parish. 
 
 It was a most essential part of this visitation that it 
 enabled me to carry on a continual work of personal 
 evangelism. The years which showed the best returns in 
 the enlistment of men and women in Christian life were 
 the years when I gave the largest amount of time to the 
 filling of my basket with hand-picked fruit through per- 
 sonal visitation rather than in shaking the tree by a more 
 general and miscellaneous effort at evangelism. 
 
 I have also in my ministry emphasized the vital im- 
 portance of social effort. The value of making applica- 
 tion of Christian principles to the industrial and political 
 problems of men bulks large in my own trial balance.. 
 We are not sent to save individuals out of a world which 
 is to be left to its own fateful ruin. We are sent to save 
 individuals in this world and to cooperate with them in 
 the saving of the world itself as an object of the divine 
 interest and the subject of an actual redemption. Men 
 will not be saved by sermons and sacraments on Sunday 
 unless they are also being saved on all the other six days 
 by the work they do, by the conditions under which they 
 do it and by the spirit they put into it. 
 
 And I would record my own feeling in passing, that 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 7 
 
 no man needs to leave the pastorate to find the largest 
 sort of opportunity for social effort. Standing at the 
 head of an active, useful church he occupies a position of 
 unique importance in rendering personal service and in 
 furnishing leadership for those organized efforts which 
 have to do with the better administration of what is called 
 "charity," with the introduction of a more democratic 
 and Christian spirit in the control of industry, with the 
 moralization of those commercial activities which consume 
 the bulk of hviman time and strength and with the en- 
 nobling of our civic life until "the powers that be" shall 
 indeed be "ordained of God" to high ends. The wise and 
 efficient pastor may, in no perfunctory or official fashion 
 but in genuine everyday usefulness, sit upon one of those 
 "twelve thrones" which are to "judge the tribes of Israel." 
 
 But with all these interests of the minister of Christ 
 fully and clearly in view, I would say without a moment's 
 hesitation that the making and delivery of an effective \ 
 sermon is not only the most conspicuous but the most 
 influential single service the minister is privileged to 
 render in the whole round of the week's activity. There 
 are any number of men and women in your parish who 
 are both competent and willing to give attention to civic 
 and charitable interests. They stand prepared and ready 
 for those lines of action which have to do with social and , 
 industrial betterment. The layman in his particular field 
 of interest is oftentimes more competent for this form 
 of service than is the minister. 
 
 But unless you are in a large city church where there 
 is a staff of clergymen, you are the one and only man in 
 that church who can stand in the pulpit, dealing with 
 
8 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 truth in the large, and with people in the large as an 
 effective preacher of a divine gospel. Your pulpit is 
 therefore your throne where you exercise an undisputed 
 prerogative. You may well ascend it as a king, possessed 
 alike with the sense of royal privilege and of an exacting 
 responsibility. 
 
 The significance of the sermon is further heightened by 
 the fact that in the preaching of it you are taking from 
 the people a vast amount of valuable time. To what other 
 man in the community are five hundred or a thousand 
 people ready to give a half hour of their time, week after 
 week, simply that he may talk to them ? Suppose you are 
 preaching for half an hour to only two hundred people, 
 which is a congregation of very modest size. Here you 
 have consumed one hundred hours of their time ! You 
 have taken a measure of time which in the mass amounts 
 to more than twelve days of eight hours each for an indi- 
 vidual. Have you that material in your sermon which is 
 of such moment that it would warrant you in going to 
 any one man or woman in that congregation and saying, 
 '*I would like to have two whole weeks of your time to 
 impart to you certain values which I have here in this 
 discourse." If the congregation has in it five hundred or 
 a thousand people then the responsibility of asking for 
 that amount of time, for that measure of human atten- 
 tion, for that quantity of human life, that you may deal 
 with it as you will, that you may summon it to give heed 
 to what you have brought, is multiplied until the very 
 thought of making such a demand upon one's fellow 
 beings becomes in turn alarming, humbling and inspiring. 
 There is unfortunately a certain sinful readiness on the 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 9 
 
 part of some ministers to presume upon human forbear- 
 ance because massed together the patient people will listen 
 to and tolerate that which any one of them taken alone 
 would either openly resent or quickly escape from. The 
 minister who is dealing out the same old thing, Sunday 
 after Sunday, pious platitudes which have been heard by 
 these very people a thousand times, with nothing fresh, 
 nothing stimulating, nothing creative about it, would 
 never dare to inflict such stale stuff on any one intelligent 
 person in that group taken apart and alone. The man 
 guilty of a flow of pious twaddle, weak, thin, greasy, 
 would be shamed out of it if he would only picture to 
 himself the look of consternation which would come over 
 the face of any intelligent man in that congregation to 
 whom he might offer such an output in personal conver- 
 sation. And all those futile, pointless, attenuated exhorta- 
 tions, to which no response is really expected, would like- 
 wise become impossible if the individual hearer were con- 
 sidered in detachment from the patient mass. If the 
 preacher would add up the full measure of time which 
 he is taking, by computing the separate contribution made 
 by each one in the congregation who yields his presence 
 for the half hour, and would then separate each one of 
 those minds from the mass, thus studiously avoiding the 
 unworthy habit of presuming upon the principle of group- 
 patience, he would be moved to fight shy of all that dilly- 
 dallying. He would strive to pack his sentences with 
 meaning. He would endeavor so to condense and to con- 
 centrate his thought as to make it worthy of presentation 
 to the people before him. 
 
 The sermon gathers further significance from the fact L- 
 
10 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 that it is, or should be, the flowering forth of the best 
 there is in the man who preaches it. When you stand up 
 in your pulpit you are saying in effect, "Here is my 
 ripest judgment on this matter in hand. Here is my 
 profoundest thought touching the interests we are con- 
 sidering. Here is the best I can do as a result of all my 
 training and effort in giving that thought worthy literary 
 expression. Here is the fullest outbreathing of my sym- 
 pathy as I reach for your attention. Here is the holiest 
 aspiration of my soul as I look Godward for His help in 
 making my message effective. Here is the utmost vigor 
 of my personality in action on the highest levels open to 
 me as I seek to lodge this truth permanently in your 
 inmost soul." If the sermon is a sermon, it is just that, 
 and it is all that. 
 
 The sermon is the highest output of which a man 
 trained and devoted to this end is capable at his best. 
 How clear this was in the preaching of our Lord ! How 
 we feel the revealings of his power in that Sermon on the 
 Mount ! "Seeing the multitudes. He went up into a moun- 
 tain, and opened his mouth, and taught them." When 
 He saw the people He felt the tug and pull of their need 
 upon his mind and heart — He opened His mouth, and out 
 came the Sermon on the Mount in all its beauty and 
 power ! 
 
 "Seeing the multitudes" — his message was called out 
 by the appeal of life. It was shaped up in the immediate 
 presence of life. In every line it bore directly upon some 
 one of the fundamental needs of life. It was the out- 
 breathing of One who counted it not a prize to be on an 
 equality with God, standing here in the very act of re- 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 11 
 
 lating his own dearest possessions to human necessity. 
 To feel the challenge of all that human need, and then 
 to meet it with the very best one can bring, is to preach. 
 
 The man who can stand before a waiting congregation 
 of expectant people and not feel in a measure almost over- 
 powering the tug and pull of their need upon his own 
 moral reserves, summoning him into the highest action of 
 which he is capable, is altogether too wooden to be in 
 the ministry for a single hour. Such a man might use- 
 fully serve his day and generation by becoming one of 
 those patient figures representing a rapidly vanishing race 
 standing out in front of a cigar store to invite custom. 
 But such a wooden Indian cannot preach. If any man 
 would preach he must have that spiritual susceptibility 
 which at the very sight of a waiting congregation, causes 
 him to kindle and burn like a steel wire ignited in pure 
 oxygen. 
 
 "Here am I," the real preacher says, "not to put in 
 thirty minutes with some sort of pious talk because it is 
 the custom ! Here am I, not to create a wonderful im- 
 pression by making what the sinful and wayfaring man 
 sometimes calls 'one of my greatest efforts.' Here am 
 I, not merely to give an audience a pleasant half hour! 
 Here am I, to allow the best I have in mind and soul, in 
 brotherly sympathy and in spiritual effectiveness to find 
 expression and lodge something of permanent worth in 
 the lives of these people !" 
 
 You can see at once how this conception of the sermon 
 lifts it entirely out of the category of clever and skillful 
 performances. If the clown in the circus has made the 
 people laugh and has enabled them to enjoy the hour, he 
 
12 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 has discharged his duty — he is not responsible for any- 
 thing more. If the clever acrobat or the trained singer 
 or the popular lecturer has met his assignment in a man- 
 ner acceptable to those who have paid their money for the 
 performance, his obligation has been entirely fulfilled. 
 What these men have done or said or sung, may lie quite 
 apart from their personal interest — they may have been 
 doing it all merely to earn their wages. They are not to 
 be censured if this is the fact. 
 
 Not so the preacher! The preacher is never content 
 unless the best in his own life has uttered itself in such 
 fashion as to find and aid the best in all those other lives 
 to whom he would minister in spiritual things. 
 
 In the preaching of a single sermon the minister may 
 be meeting an actual moral crisis in the lives of any 
 number of the people before him. He may be aware of 
 some of these but the larger portion of them are hidden 
 away in the depths of those human hearts. Here are 
 those who have just passed under the shadow of some 
 great sorrow which blotted out all the stars in the sky! 
 Here is a man who is still staggering under the heavy 
 load of some bitter disappointment ! Here are those who 
 have gradually awakened to the life-long tragedy of an 
 ill-advised marriage! Here are those who can scarcely 
 sit in their pews because of the rasping load of anxieties 
 they bear! Here are fathers and mothers breaking their 
 hearts over sons who are going wrong! 
 
 If by some sort of spiritual X-ray the preacher could 
 pierce through the concealment of ordinary conventions 
 and behold the moral crises, the spiritual famines and the 
 personal tragedies to which he is called to minister, the 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 13 
 
 very sight of it all would stir up the dullest man who was 
 ever ordained into something of the eagerness and effec- 
 tiveness of real preaching. It would shame him out of 
 the listlessness, the perfunctoriness, the dullness which 
 cast their blight upon many a pulpit, stinging him into 
 something that would at least bear the semblance of life. 
 
 The preacher is also preaching to people who are near- 
 ing some great crisis just around the next bend in the 
 road. Here is a man whose wife will die before another 
 Sunday! Here are parents who may have a child killed 
 by an automobile before the week is gone! Here is a 
 woman who may discover within the next six days the 
 infidelity of her husband, blotting out all her joy and all 
 her confidence in human affection ! 
 
 Here are those who are rapidly approaching some 
 frightful, overwhelming calamity ! Those of us who were 
 preaching in the cities bordering on San Francisco Bay 
 on Easter Sunday, in the year of our Lord, 1906, deliv- 
 ered our messages to crowded churches. On the following 
 "Wednesday at a quarter past five o'clock in the morning 
 came the earthquake. 
 
 It left a mighty, joyous city in ruins and ashes. The 
 fire occasioned by the earthquake and made irresistible 
 by the breaking of the water mains, turned three hundred 
 thousand people into the streets, homeless, foodless, with 
 no clothing save what they wore on their backs. There 
 were thousands of people who retired the night before 
 prosperous, only to be rudely awakened from their sleep 
 to find themselves all but penniless. I suppose every 
 minister in that part of California asked himself with 
 searchings of heart during those solemn days which fol- 
 
14 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 lowed, "What kind of a sermon did I give my people 
 the Sunday before to fit them for the facing of that 
 ordeal." 
 
 Watch therefore this high task of ministering in God's 
 name to men's souls, for you know not what a day nor an 
 hour may bring! If the good man in the pulpit had 
 known what awful experiences were to break through and 
 steal the courage, the hope and the trust of his people, he 
 would have watched. He would have striven with all his 
 might to buttress them more strongly against the attacks 
 which were even then at the door. 
 
 I was preaching one Sunday night on "Mercy," human 
 and divine. At the close of the service a young man who 
 was the cashier of one of the manufacturing concerns in 
 the city came to me and in the secrecy and confidence of 
 my study he confessed to me that he had stolen twenty- 
 eight hundred dollars from the corporation where he was 
 employed and that the day of reckoning when the shortage 
 would be discovered and his dishonesty exposed, was near 
 at hand. He had been meditating either flight or suicide 
 rather than face the disgrace and punishment which 
 seemed inevitable. I discussed the situation with him 
 until midnight. Then growing out of that long and 
 serious conference we devised and carried out a plan 
 which led to the confession of his wrongdoing to his supe- 
 riors, to his retention in their employ, to the restitution 
 of the stolen money through several years of self-sacrifice, 
 and at last to the entire recovery of his own honest man- 
 hood. 
 
 Suppose that I had been trifling with some fringe of 
 the truth that night! Suppose that owing to a lack of 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 15 
 
 preparation or to a lack of genuine feeling I had been 
 unable to make the quality of mercy, human and divine, 
 shine as a thing resplendent in the dark sky which over- 
 arched that troubled, guilty soul! I should have been 
 smitten to the heart with shame. I should have merited, 
 and in some form I should have received, condign punish- 
 ment for neglect of duty. It was my business to be there 
 with a message of help. I did not know that the dis- 
 honest man was there while I was preaching but he is 
 likely to be there in any city congregation the preacher 
 faces! You can always count upon the presence of a 
 thief or two in almost any evening congregation. You 
 can always count upon the presence of some soul in a 
 crisis, crying out hungrily for the best you can give. The 
 man who dawdles in the face of the possible need in any 
 congregation should be unfrocked for malfeasance in office. 
 You may be thoroughly sure that in any congregation 
 you face there are men and women fighting more devils 
 than were ever cast out of Mary Magdalene. They need 
 the best you have for them as a make-weight on the side of 
 moral victory. You may be sure that in any congregation 
 there are men and women sitting quietly in their pews 
 who can scarcely keep the tears back as they reflect upon 
 the bitter experiences through which they have been pass- 
 ing. They need to have some man preach to them until 
 the heavens open and the angels of comfort are seen ascend- i 
 ing and descending for the help of the sons of men. You 
 may be sure that in any congregation there are moral na- 
 tures getting ready to flinch in the presence of some hard 
 duty. They need beyond all else the gripping power of 
 some mighty truth which will nerve them for the struggle 
 
16 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 and enable them not to turn their backs but march breast 
 forward. The very thought of the spiritual possibilities 
 dormant in any congregation of human beings is enough 
 to shame any minister out of preaching a dull, cold, life- 
 less sermon, if by any measure of preparation and prayer 
 he can do otherwise. 
 
 Let the minister visualize his congregation in advance 
 if he would feel the full significance of a sermon! Let 
 him do this while he is at work in the quiet security of his 
 study preparing the sermon. Let him use his spiritual 
 imagination as he thinks and writes ! Without becoming 
 for one moment wild or fanciful, he may know of a truth 
 that any ten or twenty of a hundred different forms of 
 moral crisis and spiritual tragedy will be there looking up 
 in mute appeal when he stands behind his pulpit. He will 
 learn enough in his pastoral visitation and in the office 
 practice which comes to him as burdened hearts seek him 
 out in their quest for relief, to be able to supply the miss- 
 ing segments and to make out a full-orbed circle of human 
 necessity which will pull upon his sympathies like the tug 
 of a planet. 
 
 The significance of the sermon is further increased by 
 the fact that able, effective preaching sheds its strength 
 into everything else the minister is called to do. You can 
 enter habitually into exalted and helpful fellowship with 
 your people by your preaching. Then as you are called 
 to render for them other forms of service the memory of 
 those high hours, the sense of them, the. power of them will 
 be constantly present in your heart and in theirs. 
 
 When you set forth in pastoral visitation, the people 
 are saying not in so many words but in terms of personal 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 17 
 
 consciousness, "This man who is entering our home, sit- 
 ting at our tahle, engaging in pleasant converse with our 
 children, is the same man who has been causing us to see 
 visions and dream dreams by his preaching." You are 
 not in their eyes just so many feet and inches or so many 
 pounds avoirdupois of flesh and blood — you are a divinely 
 accredited messenger who for months together has been 
 declaring to them a wonderful gospel. The full strength 
 and the entire inspiration of all your past preaching is 
 there as military men say "in force" multiplying by ten 
 the good effects of your personal, intimate touch upon 
 those lives. 
 
 You go to sit at the bed side of one who is ill — sick 
 unto death as the event proves. The very fact that in the 
 days of his strength you preached to him in the full energy 
 and joy of the spiritual impartation of your best makes 
 it unnecessary and inappropriate for you to utter any of 
 the usual commonplaces. If you just sit there, silent, sym- 
 pathetic, prayerful, looking into that wasting face with the 
 interest you truly feel, you will bring out of a world un- 
 seen bread enough and to spare. His soul will be fed. 
 His whole inner being will be renewed by just seeing you 
 there. 
 
 I should say that most of the best "sick calls" I ever 
 made as a pastor were those where I said nothing at all 
 beyond the quiet utterance of a few texts of scripture 
 (not read from a book but spoken out of a full heart) with 
 perhaps three or four sentences of prayer breathed out 
 softly — breathed out as I sat in my chair, it might be, for 
 the Almighty is no respecter of postures. It was enough. 
 It was vastly better than many of the wearisome, alarming. 
 
18 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 exhausting visits, not to say "visitations," of clumsy min- 
 istrants wlio know not what manner of men they are. 
 
 You drop into some man's place of business for just a 
 passing word of greeting — it is touch and go, but you bear 
 with you the atmosphere of all those noble and hallowed 
 ideals of integrity, of commercial honor, of highminded 
 consideration for the human values at stake in the marts 
 of manufacture and trade which he has heard you pro- 
 claim. And because you bear with you the sense of all 
 this your touch is a touch of healing. 
 
 You appear in the City Hall at a public hearing on 
 some question of vital civic interest — and to all those who 
 are present, publicans and sinners though many of them 
 may be, the place you have won for yourself by minister- 
 ing steadily and effectively to the higher life of that com- 
 munity by your able sermons, a hundred of them a year 
 for years together, speaks for you in that hour far beyond 
 any words you may utter. 
 
 The spiritual aroma which clings to the life of a man 
 who has for years been working in some community as a 
 strong, vital, helpful preacher of the eternal Evangel is 
 an all-pervasive thing. We may say of it (not irrever- 
 ently I trust), that if he ascends up among the saints it is 
 there; and if he goes down to make his fight among the 
 sinners it is there. If he takes the wings of a motor car 
 and goes to the uttermost parts of his parish and beyond, 
 even there the right hand of an influence thus gained will 
 lead and empower him. If he says, "Surely the darkness 
 of some untoward situation will hide my power," even 
 there, the honest work he has done for years in his pulpit 
 will cause that place to be light about him. Such influence 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 19 
 
 is too wonderful for the unrenewed man. He cannot at- 
 tain unto it. And for us all it is high. But by the em- 
 powering of the divine Spirit in this noblest of all human 
 tasks, we can attain unto it. / 
 
 Then the very habit of preaching sermons surcharged^ 
 with spiritual tonic and fronting ever on the great themes 
 and interests will incidentally save you from a world of 
 petty annoyances which have infested all the parishes of 
 which we have any record since the day when Euodias 
 and Syiityche somehow failed to be of the same mind in 
 the Lord. The petty retailer of small wares from his pul- 
 pit is constantly imperiled by every fluctuation of feeling 
 in his parish. The timid fisher for higher values, who 
 hugs the shore with his little boat and assays only the shal- 
 lows in taking the small minnows which compass the range 
 of his interest, may be capsized or stranded on a reef by 
 the slightest adverse breeze. But the man who boldly 
 launches out into the deep, intent on doing business in the 
 great waters of spiritual effort, will be rewarded for his 
 valor and his venture in that multiplied power which he 
 will gain over the hearts of all those he would win to the 
 service of the highest ideals. 
 
 The fate of our Protestant Christianity is in my judg- 
 ment bound up in large measure with the rise and fall 
 of effective preaching. If you will read your church his- 
 tory, reading between the lines as well as along them, you 
 will find it so. There have been countries where the min- 
 isters of worship have been privileged to use the best to 
 be found on the surface of the earth in the stately archi- 
 tecture of their church edifices; they have been able to 
 develop and maintain the most ornate and impressive 
 
20 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 forms of liturgy ever devised by the minds of men; they 
 have been privileged to use the highest expressions of art, 
 having for their altar pieces those paintings which are 
 masterpieces and for the adornment of the niches in their 
 temples, marble statues so nobly wrought by the sculptor's 
 hand that they all but spoke ; they have been able to levy 
 tribute upon the best there is in music rendered by won- 
 derful organs and heavenly choirs for the inspiration of 
 listening congregations. And yet, if there was lacking in 
 all this the living voice of a living man speaking in the 
 name and under the power of the living God, there came a 
 steady irresistible decline in the religious life of that land, 
 ''Religion renews its life" as one of our leading Professors 
 of Philosophy said recently "in great bursts of impulse 
 which emanate from rarely impressive personalities capa- 
 ble of inspiring exalted and passionate devotion in their 
 friends and followers." 
 
 And contrarywise, there have been countries where all 
 the appointments of public worship and the whole quality 
 of the spiritual cultus were as cold and as bare as the typi- 
 cal N^ew England Meeting House, set on a bleak hill, 
 painted white, with green shutters and window panes of 
 clear glass cut eight by ten. Yet in the very face of such 
 aesthetic disadvantage, the religious life of that land rose 
 into power and splendor and steadfast devotion through 
 the vitalizing influence of great preaching. 
 
 "N"ow when the day of Pentecost was fully come" the 
 early Christians were all with one accord in one place., 
 "And suddenly," not in response to the appeal of stately 
 architecture or of moving symbols graven and painted by 
 man's device, not in answer to the tasteful movements of 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 21 
 
 an ornate liturgy or the beseeching energy of melodies 
 which were like the music of the spheres, but in response 
 to "continued prayer and supplication," there came a 
 sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind. And 
 there appeared tongues — "glossal" in the Greek Testa- 
 ment, "linguae" in the Vulgate, "tongues" in Anglo-Saxon 
 — the organ of instruction, persuasion, moral appeal, 
 tongues like as of fire; and they were all filled with the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 Then Peter stood up in that atmosphere charged with 
 spiritual dynamic. He stood up not to conduct some 
 highly embellished ritualistic service but to preach. And 
 he preached — he preached them a sermon which gave ut- 
 terance to the best that was in him at his best and three 
 thousand of those who were in process of being saved were 
 that day added to the Christian Church. 
 
 You may study the effect of this highest form of effort 
 not merely in some local church but in a city, or in a na- 
 tion, or in the whole wide world if you will, and you will 
 find corroboration abundant for my contention as to the 
 unique significance of the sermon. Where preaching is 
 cultivated and developed, exalted and honored, to the high- 
 est extent possible to human intelligence and devotion thus 
 reenforced from above, the religious life of that city or of 
 that nation waxes strong. And conversely, where the com- 
 munication of truth from God to men through the best 
 type of personality to be secured, is neglected, the religious 
 life is enfeebled. It is not too much to say then, that 
 until the psychological and moral facts of this human 
 nature of ours are changed most radically, the fate of 
 our Protestant Christianity is bound up with the main- 
 
22 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 tenance of strong, sensible, sympathetic and scriptural 
 preaching. 
 
 The real significance of the sermon may be sadly dis- 
 torted where it comes to be viewed as an end in itself. 
 There are ministers who seem to have forgotten that first 
 question in the Westminster Catechism. When they are 
 asked, "What is the chief end of man ?' ' they reply, "Eor 
 ministers, the chief end of man is to produce two great 
 sermons for next Sunday and t "^( i lore still greater ones 
 for the Sunday following." Those two sermons become to 
 this unhappy minister a veritable bugbear. 
 
 The two sermons for next Sunday may become as some 
 one has wittily expressed.it, "a p.'i^ of white elephants on 
 the minister's hands." He as to irry water for them 
 through the whole we 3k, s b ? do len the circus comes 
 to town. He has to be forever rubbing them down so that 
 they may make a better appearance. He must be forever 
 foraging to get enough of material for those two big ani- 
 mals to eat, for their hunger knows no rest and the capacity 
 of their huge stomachs is apparently limitless. He is com- 
 pelled to scurry around and secure new blankets to put 
 on them for the Sunday parade. It is a frightful respon- 
 sibility to dance attendance on two such voracious and ex- 
 acting beasts. The poor preacher oftentimes becomes des- 
 perate and all but decides to go out of the show business 
 altogether. 
 
 All this comes from making the sermon an end in itself 
 in place of making it a means to an end. We are not set 
 to produce great sermons, or to become "great preachers," 
 as the saying of some is, — we are commissioned to produce 
 by our work as preachers some great Christians. 
 
ilM^^ 
 
 /^/.^HE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 23 
 
 ' The l eaves of the sermon are for the healing of the 
 people. The eyes of yonr head may be upon your pulpit 
 and upon your paper, if you are a manuscript preacher, 
 but the eyes of your mind and the attention of your heart 
 must be upon those plain and needy people there in the 
 pews. Not here behind the sacred desk nor upon it where 
 your homiletic work of art lies in all its learned beauty, 
 but out there among the lives of men, tempted, struggling, 
 doubting, sorrowing, failing, is the place of your supreme 
 concern. 
 
 We can imagine the Lord before whom we stand asking 
 each one of us in searching fashion, "Have you been 
 preaching good sermons ?" In case we really know what 
 we are about the appropriate reply will not be "Look at 
 my barrel." The appropriate reply will be "Look at my 
 people." Look at the size of them measured in terms of 
 spiritual dimension ! Look at the quality of them ! Look 
 at the splendid usefulness they show in those lives of serv- 
 ice to which they have here been inspired ! 
 
 When the day of judgment comes, the Son of Man sit- 
 ting upon the throne of His glory and separating ministers 
 on his right hand or on the left as a shepherd divideth his 
 sheep from the goats, will not look at our barrels. Our 
 barrels will not be there. The contents of those barrels will 
 all have been rolled up like a scroll and consumed with 
 fervent heat. But the people to whom we have preached 
 will be there. Some of them on the right hand, and, alas 
 for us ! some of them on the left ! And that will be the ter- 
 rible and searching test applied to our work as preachers. 
 The type of character we have produced, or have failed to 
 produce, as we have done our work with fidelity and effi- 
 
24 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 ciencj or as we have scamped it with slovenly or chilly 
 indifference — that will be the test applied to determine 
 whether we ourselves shall be found upon His right hand 
 or upon the left. The final significance of every sermon 
 is to be manifested at last not in the profun dity of its 
 thought or in the grace of its literary finish but in the 
 spiritual results which it achieves. 
 
 It is of primary importance then that we have this 
 fact in mind in the fixing and the concentration of our 
 attention as preachers. The man who is out hunting does 
 not look steadfastly at the trigger he is to pull. He is 
 naturally desirous of carrying with him the best sort of 
 gun he can command, but once in the field his eyes are 
 not upon the weapon he carries but upon the game. His 
 eyes are sweeping the sky and the field. He looks at the 
 wild duck he is to bring down by his well directed shot. 
 He looks at the big menacing head of that bull moose as 
 it emerges from the brush. 
 
 In this great work of preaching then, eyes front ! In- 
 terest front ! The sermon is to be sent forth to convince 
 the judgment, to fire the heart with new impulses, to 
 arouse and direct the action of the will. The sermon, how- 
 ever profound its thought may be or however beautiful 
 it may be in literary style, is a failure unless it accom- 
 plishes some definite result along that line. 
 
 There was once a discouraged young preacher who 
 seemed to have failed utterly in awakening any spiritual 
 interest in the congregation to which he ministered. In 
 his desperation he secured the services of an older and 
 more effective minister for a single Sunday. The two men 
 sat together in the pulpit. When the lessons had been 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 25 
 
 read, the prayers offered, and the hymns sung, the ohler 
 man was ready to preach. The discouraged pastor of the 
 church, who knew his John Ruskin, then whispered to him ^ . 
 as a grim sort of joke, "Now you have thirty minutes in 
 which to raise the dead." 
 
 He might well have uttered his challenge seriously. We 
 are sent to do just that. It may not be, in all probability 
 it will not be, an instantaneous process. We are not com- 
 missioned nor empowered to call the dead forth instantly 
 and simultaneously as with a blast from Gabriel's trumpet. 
 But in a progressive way, by a ceaseless process of spiritual 
 recovery we are to proclaim our good news in such fashion 
 that we shall actually see dead men coming to life. They 
 may come to life gradually, in spots, as it were, small 
 areas at first and then larger areas of their natures show- 
 ing the quickening touch of the Spirit. Their unfolding 
 and ascending wants, desires, outreaches, will proclaim 
 the fact that whereas they were lost, now they are finding 
 themselves ; whereas they were dead, they are now becom- 
 ing alive again. 
 
 Art thou the type of preacher that should come or do we 
 look for another ? Show the one who makes that inquiry, 
 those things which men do hear and see. The blind re- 
 ceive sight, the deaf hear, the sinners are cleansed, the 
 poor have good tidings preached to them and the dead 
 are raised. The sermon leaps from the preacher's lips 
 that the people may have life and have it in abundance. 
 He is intent upon seeing them alive, alive at more points, 
 alive on higher levels, alive in more honorable and effec- 
 tive ways. The sermon is to aid them in having life which 
 is life indeed. 
 
26 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 \-^^ The sermon gains further significance from the fact that 
 it undertakes to restate the truths of scripture in terms 
 of modern life; to separate that which is local and tem- 
 porary from that which is universal and abiding, thus 
 rightly dividing the word of truth; to relate to modern 
 need in effective fashion those vital elements of truth 
 which God has made known to us by the mouths of the 
 holy prophets and apostles; and to interpret that whole 
 literature so that people shall see the love of God and the 
 clear prospect of life eternal for his children shining 
 through it like the sun in its strength. And if the 
 preacher can accomplish that high task, his sermons will 
 be steadily making this Bible loved, operative and efficient 
 in the lives of the people. 
 
 The sermon undertakes to interpret all the relations of 
 daily life on their higher, their heavenly side, so that they 
 may manifest his glory and the people be led to believe on 
 Him. It undertakes to bring out the unsuspected possibil- 
 ities of spiritual culture and expression in all these legit- 
 imate callings of men which eat up the bulk of their time 
 and strength. It undertakes to set the whole life in such 
 relation to an enfolding spiritual order, that whether men 
 buy or sell, heal or plead, build or teach, or whatever they 
 do, they may always and everywhere be engaged in their 
 Father's business, carrying on an august and growing 
 trafiic in those values which transcend all human ap- 
 praisal. 
 
 The sermon is to be "the communication of truth 
 through personality," as Phillips Brooks put it. And by 
 virtue of this function thus accurately defined it has pos- 
 sibilities of exalted usefulness not shared by any other 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 27 
 
 form of human expression. The printed page of the 
 author may easily become cokl, remote, abstract. The 
 painted canvas of the artist may have no more heart in 
 it, beautiful though it be, than a wall. The sound of the 
 many instruments in a splendid orchestra used by some 
 great composer to convey his message, still lacks that which 
 may be gloriously present in the real sermon. 
 
 Here in the preaching of a sermon, the face, the bear- 
 ing, and the voice, the mind, the heart and the soul of a 
 living man, living at his best in the act of preaching to 
 living men there present the gospel of the living God who 
 lives and speaks through his servant in that high exercise 
 of his best powers — all this has possibilities of self-ex- 
 pression and of self-impartation unequaled elsewhere. 
 
 But it goes even beyond that. The preacher's function 
 is a transmissive function like that of Jesus. "The glory 
 which thou gavest me, I have given them." The minister 
 stands midway between all the truths which may properly 
 be utilized in preaching and the hungry hearts of a mul- 
 titude. He stands midway between that Inexhaustible 
 Storehouse of spiritual dynamic and the depleted lives of 
 the people. He becomes in no flippant sense but in sober 
 tnitli "a live wire" ch:irged from on high to transmit light 
 and power and warmth to those who walk in darkness, in 
 weakness, and in the chill of spiritual neglect. "' "■ 
 
 Here is a man preaching a sermon — if he is really 
 preaching you hear him, you see him, you feel him ! All 
 the strength, the warmth and the richness of his person- 
 ality as well as his uttered words are steadily counting 
 toward the securing of a certain result. The subtle spir- 
 itual contagion of his own soul on fire with its sense of 
 
28 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 fellowsliip with the divine Spirit is at work. The eager 
 outreach of his sympathies as he loves men and lifts on 
 them, becomes a factor in the determination of the result. 
 If he is merely reading a dainty little essay or giving vent 
 to a lot of noisy, thoughtless exhortation, or merely im- 
 parting a bit of ethical frappe it is not so. But if he is 
 actually preaching the gospel of the Living God there is 
 nothing on earth like it. If you will make the communi- 
 cation of truth and power through personality your su- 
 preme aim, your job is safe — there is no one else working 
 at it ; there is no one who can work at it, as you are priv- 
 ileged to do. 
 
 The preparation of a sermon then is really the prepara- 
 tion of a man who prepares and preaches sermons as the 
 highest exercise of his functions. You will prepare a 
 great many sermons — it will be one of the main tasks to 
 which you will address yourself — but you will be all the 
 while doing that more fundamental and vital thing, pre- 
 paring a man who can take those sermons and preach 
 them so that they will communicate spiritual life. 
 
 In view of the great significance of preaching, in the 
 face of the high and lasting value which may attach to 
 any single sermon, we cannot afford to lower our stand- 
 ards or to cheapen our line of goods by jesting about them. 
 We cannot afford to allow others to jest about them. Let 
 the minister of Christ resent all flippant references to the 
 barrel of sermons as a collect ioiT of "dried tongue." All 
 those venerable and feeble jokes have long since deserved 
 respectful interment with their superannuated contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 When the minister himself falls to the level of such poor 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 29 
 
 wit every honest heart feels the sting of pain. I do not 
 wish to hear the surgeon jesting about "keeping his knives 
 sharp for operations" because operations bring him his 
 largest fees. I do not want to hear from him any flippant 
 remark about "gradually filling up his section in the ceme- 
 tery" as a result of his practice of medicine — not if he is 
 about to operate on my wife or if he is engaged to care for 
 my child through some critical illness. The newspapers 
 may, if they choose, indulge in such cheap and easy forms 
 of humor at the expense of preachers and of doctors, but 
 the men themselves knowing the dignity of their high 
 callings and the issues which turn upon knowledge, 
 skill and honest attention to detail, will scorn all such 
 flippancy. 
 
 I shall never forget the sense of awe and of reverence 
 with which I prepared and preached my first sermon. I 
 can feel the tingle of it yet. I chose for my text, "Believe 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." My 
 knowledge of Biblical criticism and of scriptural exegesis 
 was meager to the last degree but I felt that I did know in 
 my heart something about the meaning of that one text. 
 I wrote, as I was to speak, mainly out of my own religious 
 experience. 
 
 The sermon was delivered in a rather shabby little 
 Mission in the North End of Boston. It was a section of 
 the city where Satan had his seat at that time. The Mis- 
 sion was surrounded by rum shops and dance halls, by 
 sailors' dives and gambling dens, by all the principalities 
 and powers of evil, by the rulers of darkness and the de- 
 mons of wickedness. The people in the congregation 
 showed in their very faces that they knew more about sin 
 
30 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 and its retribution than all my Seminary professors put 
 together. 
 
 I stood up and preached to them that poor first sermon 
 of mine. It would not have made much of a showing in 
 a class on homiletics but it was the outbreathing of mj 
 very soul as I longed to help those people by some spoken 
 word. And when at the end of the sermon the invitation 
 was given to those who wanted to begin the Christian life 
 to come forward and kneel at the altar as the custom was 
 in that place, there was a response. And as I knelt with 
 those who came and talked with them and prayed with 
 them, conscious as they were of their moral failure and 
 feeling after help if haply they might find it, my heart 
 overflowed with a deep sense of holy privilege. And when 
 it was all over, I cried all the way home for very joy that 
 God had called me to be a minister of Jesus Christ. 
 
 I never want to lose out of my consciousness that fresh, 
 vital sense of the high significance of it all. It was thirty- 
 three years ago in September since I was ordained to the 
 Christian ministry and I have been preaching steadily 
 during all that time. I have preached thousands of ser- 
 mons since that first one and I hope that I have learned 
 something about the general method of preaching which 
 enables me to do better work. But if I should ever get 
 so used to it all that I could mount into a pulpit and 
 preach a sermon without trembling, without feeling again 
 something of that same sense of awe and of holy privilege 
 which attended my first sermon, I should know of a surety 
 that the time had come for me to quit. We cannot tolerate 
 in this work of ours the least bit of affected seriousness! 
 All pretense or bombast or make-believe intensity is the 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SERMON 31 
 
 profanation of a holy place and of a holy calling. But in 
 honest, manly fashion we do want to exalt onr preaching 
 steadily by our own sense of the deep and precious signifi- 
 cance which attaches to it. 
 
 We prepare ourselves assiduously for the great occa- 
 sions. Nothing can be too good for the N^ational Council, 
 or for the General Assembly, or for the General Confer- 
 ence, if by reason of strength any one of us should be desig- 
 nated to preach the sermon in the presence of such an 
 august company. But every occasion is a great occasion. 
 You are constantly dealing with great themes : great inter- 
 ests are always at stake: great issues may turn upon the 
 quality of any one of your messages. You can say on 
 any day of the year and on every day of the year "This 
 is the day which the Lord hath made — let us rejoice and 
 be glad in it." 
 
 The hidden possibilities in any congregation to which 
 you may be privileged to preach become therefore a chal- 
 lenge to your best powers. You are there to lodge if you 
 can in every one of those lives something that will make 
 for Christian character. You are there to lift each one of 
 those lives into a sense of fellowship with the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are there to write 
 not upon tables of stone or upon pages of paper; you are 
 there to write upon the enduring tablets of those human 
 hearts something that will be read to their honor and to 
 yours in the day of Judgment. If by the exercise of spir- 
 itual imagination you can see the latent possibilities hid- 
 den there you will know of a truth that "the most critical 
 and influential event in the religious week is the sermon." 
 
n 
 
 THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 
 
 THE sermon should undoubtedly be a work of art. 
 It should be a work of art in these three regards. 
 1. It is to be finely conceived so that it may 
 contain and express some one great idea, standing out 
 clear and distinct from the various surrounding truths. 
 
 2. It is to be well wrought out, the vision of the 
 preacher passing over into achievement as he declares in 
 the finest literary form he can command w h^tjiehas seen 
 and felt in connection with that one great truth. 
 
 3. It is to be a work rounded out, finished, and com- 
 plete, so that i t finally stops of itself because i tj^^d one — 
 this last characteristic especially is held in high regard by 
 the laymen. 
 
 And yet having said that, I feel almost ready to take it 
 all back. The well-prepared and well-delivered sermon is 
 indeed a work of art, yet it remains throughout a mere 
 .^ool. It is only an instrument to be held in the hand or 
 in the mind of the preacher as he goes about his work. It 
 must never be made an end in itself. The sermon at its 
 best is only a brush. It is a brush rather than a painting 
 — the Christians you make by your preaching are your 
 paintings ; they are your masterpieces. You are there by 
 your preaching to paint the image of Grod upon the souls 
 
 32 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 33 
 
 of those people. The fine sermons you preach are merely 
 the brushes you use to achieve that superb result. 
 
 The artist's picture may or may not tell a story; it 
 may or may not enforce a lesson — if it is in itself su- 
 premely beautiful we are ready to hang it upon the walls 
 of the gallery. It has won its right to be thero by its 
 inherent beauty. But your aim is quite otherwise and al- 
 together higher. You do not want your people to sit there 
 in their pews admiring your sermons. "Me genoito," as 
 Paul would say — "Godforbid!" You want your people 
 to listen and to make response and then go forth to live 
 Christian lives and to render Christian service. When 
 
 Aeschinesspoke the people went away saying, "What a 
 magnificent oration that was !" When Demosthenes spoke 
 they said, "Let us march against Philip." That is the real 
 test of effective speech to-day as it was in the days of an- 
 cient Greece. You are there to set your people to march- 
 ing against Macedon. 
 
 If then you are honest and reliable men, worthy to stand 
 in Christian pulpits, you will never allow yourselves to 
 fall down and worship your own sermons. This would be 
 the worst sort of idolatry. Thou shalt not make unto thee 
 any written image or any likeness of anything that is in 
 Henry Ward Beecher or in Phillips Brooks or in Fred- 
 erick W. Robertson — thou shalt not bow down thyself to 
 such aspirations nor serve them for a single hour. 
 
 You will not allow yourself to make your sermon so 
 fine that you would feel reluctant to introduce into it that 
 homely, helpful and effective thing that ought to be said. 
 This would be, as one great preacher puts it, "like a man 
 making his chair so fine that he would not dare to sit 
 
34 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 down in it." Chairs are to sit in rather than to be ad- 
 mired. Sermons likewise are to be constructed so that 
 they will help people to live. 
 
 Where some young minister starts in on his sermon after 
 the style of Pericles, it may seem altogether too much of 
 a "come-down" to utter those direct and homely words of 
 sympathy which might make it a bit easier for some man 
 sitting in the congregation to bear the sorrow and disap- 
 pointment that has fallen into his life. It might seem an 
 unfortunate break in his flow of eloquence if he were to 
 speak that clear-cut word of moral appeal calculated to 
 enlist the interest and win the attachment to Christian 
 ideals of some growing boy. In every such case it is best 
 to let !^ericles go and move straight for the hoj. The ser- 
 mon was made for the boy and not the boy for the sermon. 
 
 "Pulpit orators/' as they are sometimes called by the 
 ungodly, are scarce at best. I suppose there are not 
 more than a hundred and fifty real "pulpit orators" in 
 this room at this moment. But of men who can speak in 
 simple straightforward fashion to the needs of their fel- 
 lows there are many. Keep in mind then that the sermon 
 is not a work of art in the sense of being an end in itself — 
 it is the tool of our trade. 
 
 With these wholesome precautions in mind, however, 
 I would urge every young preacher to make the very best 
 sermons of which he is capable and every year still better 
 ones and ever and ever better ones. And in this lecture 
 I wish to speak more particularly of the real basis of the 
 sermon. 
 
 The habit of taking texts is more than a mere conven- 
 tion. In my judgment the best sermons grow directly out 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 35 
 
 of texts. The best sermou themes are suggested mainlj 
 by the habitual, thoughtful, devotional reading of the 
 Scriptures. The varied literature of the Bible covers a 
 wide range of human need and privilege. The Bible is 
 like a broad, thick slice of human experience which has 
 found expression here in superb literary form. All the 
 sins men commit are there; all the virtues, all the vital 
 interests, all the high opportunities for fellowship with 
 the Eternal are there wrought out in terms of life and in 
 words that glow with meaning. They are all there in 
 principle if not in detail because the spirit of all the 
 duties in the calendar is there, even though the letter of 
 exact direction may in some cases be lacking. 
 
 The Bible also covers the whole range of divine help. 
 You may say of it, that its going forth is from one end 
 of the heaven and its circuit unto the other end of it and 
 there is nothing in the shape of human need hid from the 
 help thereof. There is somewhere within this book an 
 open promise of spiritual supply for every conceivable 
 form of need. The Bible impinges upon these lives of 
 ours at every possible point of contact. There is comfort 
 and cheer for times of sorrow and depression; there is 
 warning and rebuke for those who are off the path ; there 
 is confirmation and guidance for those who are faced 
 aright. The moral interest and compassion of the Eternal 
 Father expressed here fits in close around the needs of 
 the child like some well made garment. 
 
 The sermon, therefore, may well grow directly out of 
 the Scriptures. The habit of taking texts and of utilizing 
 the many collateral passages of Scripture bearing upon the 
 same truth, ties up our utterance to a book in common use 
 
36 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 which has become the great classic of religious expression. 
 The scriptural basis of the sermon thus gives it the added 
 validity and power which comes from that precious asso- 
 ciation. ''Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might 
 not sin against God." You cannot be better employed in 
 your pulpit than in steadily hiding these words of the 
 Lord with their deeper meaning revealed, with their fuller 
 implications finely wrought out, deep down in the hearts 
 of the people, that they too may not sin against God. 
 
 This literature is so rich in homiletic material that the 
 Biblical preacher need never run dry. He always hag 
 something to preach about next Sunday. He has some- 
 thing worthy and vital to preach about. The sensational 
 ^preachers are forever running dry. The frantic efforts 
 and the loud screeches which sometimes emanate from the 
 pulpits of such men are like the unhappy sounds which 
 come from some old fashioned pump in the country where 
 the water in the well is so low that the pump will not draw. 
 It has to be "primed" by the pouring in of a sufficient 
 supply of water from outside the well to start it. These 
 preachers who draw their homiletic supplies from the pud- 
 dles of current events rather than from the well that is 
 deep often find themselves similarly embarrassed. 
 
 There are not sensations enough in any one year to go 
 around. It would be a remarkable year which furnished 
 one hundred and four startling sensations to be used by 
 the preacher with an itching ear for striking themes. The 
 men, therefore, whose eyes are ever upon those newspapers 
 which show the largest headlines and the most red ink 
 for the securing of their themes are doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. But in the Scriptures we shall find flour enough 
 
^^^.y^YTH 
 
 THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 37 
 
 and to spare, ground out of the finest of the wheat and 
 worthy to furnish in adequate measure that bread which 
 comes down from above to give life unto the world. 
 
 The better way to secure this Biblical basis for one's 
 sermons is not to go to the Bible habitually on the hunt 
 for texts. This attitude would breed an exclusively homi- 
 letic habit of mind in reading the Bible ! Ministers more 
 than most men need to read their Bibles, not as preachers 
 keen on the scent of likely texts, but as human beings in 
 sfMvch of food for their own souls. 
 
 Let the texts hunt you ! They will find you out if you q 
 arc really worth finding. You may properly go where 
 thiy are. You may give them a reasonable chance to find 
 ;)(tu. Then as you move along through Scripture intent 
 upon knowing and feeling as much of its contents for the 
 enrichment of your own inner life as it is possible for a 
 -.man of your size to know and feel, the texts which match 
 your mood, the texts which fit into your personal capabil- 
 ities as a preacher and the texts which will best meet the 
 needs of the people whom you are bearing sympathetically 
 upon your heart, will fly like doves to your windows. 
 
 Get your texts as rightminded young women get their 
 lovers. The right sort of maiden does not go forth in pur- 
 suit of them — she goes straight along about her business 
 and lets the lovers come if they want to. And if the girl 
 in question is any kind of a girl the lovers will come. She 
 will by that method — a method as old as the days when 
 Euth gleaned after the reapers in the fields of Boaz with 
 one eye on the stray bunches of wheat and the other, quite 
 casually of course, on the kind-hearted well-to-do gentle- 
 man who owned the field — she will by that time-honored 
 
38 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 metliod have more lovers in her wake than she would if 
 she made a business of going after them. It might be 
 said in passing that the young ladies are usually merciful 
 enough to move along the main traveled roads where the 
 young men are and so the men do succeed in finding them. 
 And if you in similar fashion will travel thoughtfully, 
 meditatively, expectantly, along the main traveled roads 
 and through the by-paths of your Bibles, the right texts 
 will find you. And the texts which come after that man- 
 ner are the ones which will be found fresh, vital, and in- 
 teresting, beyond all others. 
 
 I was passing somewhat cursorily one evening through 
 those chapters of Genesis which come along between the 
 splendid passages about the creation and the Garden of 
 Eden, and the later story of the deluge. Those chapters 
 are not especially rewarding. They are made up chiefly 
 of the unfamiliar names of those old chaps who are said 
 to have lived so long. But my eye suddenly fell upon 
 this text — "And Methuselah begat sons and daughters 
 and he lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years and he 
 died." That is all that is said about him — that is all 
 there was to say, apparently. Instantly there came the 
 thought of that meager Hf e. He lived nine hundred and 
 sixty-nine years and he died. His life was a life of one 
 dimension, namely length.^ No breadth of interest or wide 
 range of sympathy to be recorded ! No depth of convic- 
 tion! No height of aspiration to place another worthy 
 ideal in the sky of human desire! Nothing but lengt h. 
 He lived a long, narrow, uneventful, uninteresting life 
 of one dimension. The modern scholars tell us that the 
 names of these worthies who are said to have lived so long 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 39 
 
 are the names of tribes rather than of individuals. How- 
 ever that may be, Methuselah will serve as well for the 
 purpose of illustration. 
 
 Contrast that life with the life of Jesus of ISTazareth. 
 How long did he live ? I^ot long, speaking after the man- 
 ner of men! He was only thirty-three years old when 
 they put him to death upon the cross. Methuselah lived 
 thirty times as long as that. And Jesus spent thirty of 
 those thirty-three years in preparation. Ten years of 
 training and spiritual discipline for one year of service! 
 Ten days of thought and prayer for one day of redemptive 
 action! Ten hours of silence before God for one hour 
 of speech in the ears of men ! How much he packed into 
 those three short years, of ministry to human need, of 
 contribution to human well being, of holy and permanent 
 influence upon the unfolding life of the race! His life 
 was not a life of one dimension — it had breadth and height 
 and depth. And that life has become the light of men. 
 
 I had never heard nor read a sermon on Methuselah, 
 but the moment I saw that text I was impatient for the 
 hour to come when I could work out that idea of a life 
 of one dimension as contrasted with the life which stands 
 foursquare, possessing the symmetry which belongs to the 
 soul where length and breadth and height and depth are 
 all combined in that building of God, that house not made 
 with hands, that spiritual edifice eternal in the heavens 
 which represents each man's moral achievement. The 
 moment my eye fell upon Methuselah and then ran ahead 
 to the brief but potent life of the Master here on earth, 
 I had my sermon. 
 
 If any man will read his Bible regularly in a brood- 
 
40 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 ing, leisurely, reflective sort of way, pondering the depths 
 which lie concealed, noting the points of contact between 
 Scripture and his own heart, marking the lines of ap- 
 proach which the Scriptures make to the needs of his 
 people, he will find that rewarding texts, stimulating 
 ideals, great vital truths will rise up to meet him as the 
 angels of God met Jacob at Mahanaim. They will come 
 forth to wrestle with him, all night if need be, until they 
 have blessed him. They will tell him their names and 
 make a new man of him. 
 
 The land of Scripture is a good land. It is a land of 
 hills and valleys that drinketh water of the rain of heaven. 
 And it is a land of endless variety. It is a land of wheat 
 and barley, of vines and fig trees, and pomegranates, a 
 land of olive oil and honey; a land where thou mayest 
 eat bread without scarceness and not lack any good thing. 
 You enter a region of plenty and of variety when you 
 pass within the confines of holy writ. Reading the Bible 
 broadly, passing through the length and the breadth of 
 its wide areas, year by year with some sort of system, you 
 will get the strength of its products, the sweep and range 
 of its outlooks, and the genuine power of its insights into 
 your very blood. 
 
 The man who bases his preaching in this broad way 
 iipon the teaching of Scripture is also saved from overspe- 
 cialization. These single-barreled preachers who are always 
 urging some one aspect of the manysided truth of God 
 become in time like Jewsharps, to change the figure 
 abruptly. Their harping is all done on one solitary reed 
 with only slight variations of pitch according to the way 
 they pucker their mouths. While on the other hand, the 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 41 
 
 man who allows the larger aspects of truth contained in 
 the Scriptures to play freely into his preaching is in line 
 to become a regular church organ with pipes innumerable. 
 He becomes capable of uttering the deep rich diapason 
 tones. He can upon occasion use the harsh strident sum- 
 mons of the trombone in denouncing some crying evil or 
 in uttering a call to battle. He has at his command the 
 softer string and reed stops, the flute and the viola, the 
 clarionet and the oboe. He may indeed by his skillful 
 use of the vox humana weep with those that weep — this 
 -however sparingly and with great good judgment espe- 
 cially if by temperament he leans to the tearful class of 
 ministers. But the broader study of Scripture gives him 
 these many lines of approach and protects him from the 
 narrow futility of the man who makes a hobby of one 
 idea and rides it in season and out of season to the weari- 
 ness of all hands. 
 
 I am a firm believer in the value of expository preach- 
 ing. There is a good deal of counterfeit money in circu- 
 lation at this point. There is that which is called "ex- 
 pository preaching" but in reality it is another sort of 
 thing altogether; and the discredit which attaches to the 
 spurious article has shaken the faith of many preachers 
 in the utility of expository sermons. It has also repelled 
 the interest of the people in advance of any fair trial of 
 its merits. 
 
 By expository preaching, I do not mean a running, skit- 
 tering comment, suited to a Sunday School class. The 
 man who lumps out on his congregation a lot of undigested 
 information as to the history and geography suggested 
 in a certain chapter, with some careless interpretation of 
 
42 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 it, and with "the drawing of lessons," apt and inapt, is 
 not in any sense an expository preacher. He has no unity 
 in his message, no sense of progress, no real organization 
 of his material, no definite aiming at a particular goal, to 
 confer upon his effort the honor of being a sermon. He 
 does not bring up anywhere — there is no reason why he 
 should not go on in that hit or miss fashion verse after 
 verse for two hours, or even for the twenty-four hours — 
 and the patient people are sometimes afraid that he will. 
 A congregation of sensible people will not stand for that, 
 and they ought not to stand for it. 
 
 By expository preaching I do not mean a prayer meet- 
 ing style of comment, full of pious homily, and with a 
 certain amount of exegesis of a loose type. The exposi- 
 tory sermon is a product of exegesis, but not an exhibition 
 of it. It is altogether wise to dig beforehand with your 
 Greek spade and your Hebrew shovel but not to be dig- 
 ging while you are preaching. The slovenly comments 
 on some passage which become "a kind of weak and 
 watery paraphrase of the original" is not expository 
 preaching — it is just an exhibition of plain unregenerate 
 laziness, on the part of a man who had not energy enough 
 to prepare a real sermon. 
 
 The expository preacher organizes the material in his 
 passage so that he secures the sense of unity and of 
 progress. He also aims at and arrives at some definite 
 goal. He simply deals with the Scriptures in larger 
 chunks than does the textual preacher. The best results 
 in my judgment can be secured by the connected, sys- 
 tematic exposition of some one book in th# Bible for 
 weeks or for months together. There is commonly some 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 43 
 
 unifying idea in each book, around which a series of ten 
 or twenty or thirty sermons may well be built. 
 
 The advantages of this t;^'pe of preaching are many. 
 It has the historic warrant of being apostolic. The early 
 fathers utilized it. The Apostles in their preaching fre- 
 quently expounded some passage from the Old Testament 
 Scriptures. The Master in his opening address at 
 Nazareth chose a passage from Isaiah, interpreted it, and 
 assured his hearers that this Scripture was being fulfilled 
 before their eyes. '^heSermon on the Mount, in larg e 
 measu re, is a criticism, an interpretation and a logica l 
 dgvgjo pment of thr- law of the Jewish Church as containe d 
 ^_TTi thp Old TpstflTT)fint. 
 
 The expository method of preaching insures a more 
 thorough knowledge of the Bible on the part of the 
 preacher himself. He does not now snatch out one stray 
 text as a dog might pick up a likely-looking bone for 
 temporary use — he takes a considerable section of this 
 body of truth, as a farmer might hang up in his meat- 
 house in the fall of the year a whole quarter of beef, with 
 its layers of fat and tenderloin, intending to cut off from 
 time to time such steaks and roasts as might be served 
 up to meet the needs of his family. 
 
 The expository preacher sets out by a course of sys- 
 tematic study to master the contents of some considerable 
 section of Scripture with the same generous intent. He 
 means to feed his people from that body of truth as upon 
 the meat that perisheth not, but endures unto everlasting 
 life. 
 
 This method of preaching also develops a more thor- 
 ough knowledge of the Bible on the part of the people. 
 
44 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 They can be induced to read a certain book, methodically 
 and repeatedly, during those months while their minister 
 is preaching from it. They will talk about it to their 
 children and to their friends when they are sitting in 
 their houses and when they are walking by the way. 
 They will write its finest passages upon the doorposts of 
 their minds. They will have its deeper meanings as 
 frontlets before their eyes. They may be led to purchase 
 and to use simple, popular commentaries upon it, thus 
 enabling them to enter more profoundly into its full 
 significance. 
 
 The expository form of preaching gradually develops 
 both in the pulpit and in the pew the Scriptural point of 
 view, than which there is none better. By using the 
 Scripture in this larger way, all the great doctrines of 
 faith and prayer, of atonement, of regeneration, of in- 
 spiration, and all the great moral problems as well, are 
 viewed in the light of Scripture taken in the large. The 
 people are delivered from the whole habit of judging the 
 Bible by some stray sentence in it. The peddling, pelting 
 use of texts is banished by this better method. The people 
 are encouraged to put their trust in the general trend 
 and drift of the -Bible's teaching, to shape their belief 
 and conduct by the main conclusions to which it brings 
 them, and to develop their attitudes by the whole j)oint 
 of view which it gradually induces. r 
 
 The man who would paint good pictures goes to France 
 or to Italy that he may spend days and weeks and months 
 in the Louvre at Paris or in the Pitti and the Ufiizi Gal- 
 leries at Florence. He stays there in the presence of 
 Rembrandt and Raphael, Rubens and Titian until his 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 45 
 
 canons of taste are finely and firmly established so that 
 only the beautiful things seem beautiful. The amateur 
 musician lives where he hears Beethoven and Wagner, 
 Schubert and Brahms, until ragtime and jazz and all the 
 other musical ores of low grade have become an offense 
 to his ear. Only the nobler melodies and harmonies are 
 now acceptable to his cultivated taste. In similar fashion 
 the people in a congregation accustomed to live in the 
 presence of the sublime truths of Scripture become trained 
 in eye and in ear, in moral judgment and in conscience. 
 They form their taste and they shape their action with 
 reference to the classical ideals and principles of the 
 Bible. 
 
 This wider use of Scripture also induces a more honest 
 use of the Bible. The various texts are by the method 
 of expository preaching taken in their setting as part of 
 a general presentation of truth. The varying texts are 
 made to correct and to supplement each other. The men 
 who wrote the Bible did not undertake to say everything 
 at once and the separate statement standing alone often 
 becomes misleading and dangerous. The bigot and the 
 fanatic are commonly developed by taking some single 
 Scriptural truth out of its connection. The small man 
 like the small boat is completely capsized by having one 
 big truth suddenly plumped upon him without the balanc- 
 ing and steadying influence of other truths laid upon the 
 further side of his moral nature. His moral nature would 
 be made to trim more surely if he had some other impor- 
 tant truths aboard. The larger use of Scripture has a 
 tendency to develop the well-rounded habit of mind and 
 the moral nature possessed of poise. 
 
46 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 The systematic exposition of book after book of the 
 Bible gives also the advantage of order. There are few 
 forms of serious effort which are carried on in such 
 slap-dash, hit-or-miss, go-as-you-please, catch-as-catch-can 
 fashion as the work of preaching. On Tuesday morning 
 the average minister becomes painfully aware that next 
 Sunday is coming. While he was attending the Min- 
 isters' Meeting the day before, or otherwise beguiling the 
 time, it has actually gained on him one of the six short 
 laps which lie between him and the day of reckoning. 
 ''What shall I preach on next Sunday?" he asks himself. 
 He may feel free to preach on anything in heaven above 
 or on the earth beneath or in that other place, lying some- 
 where "darkly between." 
 
 He may, if he chooses, wait for some brand new truth 
 which shall come to him through his reading during the 
 week. He may simply consult his own dominant mood, 
 a habit which is liable to over-specialize his utterance. 
 He may, indeed, if he be a clerical opportunist, wait to 
 see what the ravens, that is to say the black-coated news- 
 papers, may bring him in the shape of a first-class sensa- 
 tion with headlines and pictures which he can warm over 
 on Sunday morning into a make-believe sermon to min- 
 ister to an already over-stimulated and jaded public. 
 
 The expository preacher is saved from all this solici- 
 tude and indecision. He has a certain program already 
 laid out for him. He is in process of developing the truth 
 of some one of the great books of the Bible. He wastes 
 no time, therefore, in making his decision, but sets to 
 work at once upon the task in hand. If the passage just 
 ahead should be the account of Solomon sending up to 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 47 
 
 Hiram, King of Tyre, for cedar trees to build the temple, 
 the minister gets down to business at once and pegs away 
 on those cedar trees until something has to come. 
 
 This method need never become a bondage. ITo fixed 
 schedule of topics need be announced m advance. The 
 minister may make his own program as he goes along. 
 He may even use upon occasion the given passage for 
 the evening rather than for the morning congregation 
 should such a change seem wise. He can drop it alto- 
 gether on any particular Sunday to make room for a 
 Christmas or an Easter sermon, or for an appeal in con- 
 nection with the taking of a missionary collection. 
 
 He will sometimes use a whole chapter of Scripture as 
 the basis for his sermon, sometimes two chapters, some- 
 times only a half or a third of a chapter as may best serve 
 his purpose, having regard always to a certain unity of 
 impression. He can use the other service on Sunday as a 
 kind of free-for-all, guerrilla sort of war against the 
 world, the flesh and the devil, but by following up the 
 plan of expository preaching at one of his services he will 
 ensure to his people a large measure of solid, systematic, 
 Scriptural instruction in the course of every year. 
 
 This style of preaching also brings a man naturally 
 and inevitably to some of those difficult themes which the 
 minister left to his own miscellaneous, extemporaneous 
 choices from Sunday to Sunday might avoid. The people 
 may sorely need instruction and moral appeal along some 
 particular line, but the minister may feel that it would 
 be very pointed and perhaps a bit strained for him sud- 
 denly to break out on some delicate question. 
 
 Take the matter of divorce ! The present domestic in- 
 
48 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 stability, the high percentage of divorces in this country 
 as compared with the record of other Protestant coun- 
 tries, the light and flippant way in which the whole ques- 
 tion of marital fidelity is oftentimes treated in the press 
 and on the stage, make it imperative that the minister of 
 the higher values should have something to say touching 
 our fundamental social institution, the home. He will in 
 all probability have people in his own congregation who 
 have been divorced and remarried — and their sensibili- 
 ties on this point will be like so many sore thumbs, always 
 obtruding and in the way, and forever getting hurt by the 
 careless contacts of everyday life. 
 
 Now if the minister is preaching a series of expository 
 sermons on the Gospel of Matthew he will come naturally 
 and inevitably to that passage which says, "Moses gave 
 you that writing of divorcement because of the hardness 
 of your hearts, but from the beginning it was not so. I 
 say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife 
 (except it be for the cause of fornication) and shall marry 
 another, committeth adultery; and whosoever shall marry 
 her that is put away committeth adultery." 
 
 Here is the teaching of our Lord, the minister may well 
 say! And he may then with entire frankness and with- 
 out the least suspicion of having gone out of his way to 
 make a personal attack upon a few of the people there be- 
 fore him indicate the direct bearing of that teaching upon 
 some of the practices of modem life. 
 
 "I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole 
 counsel of God," the apostle said. He had not selected 
 his themes with delicate consideration for those itching 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 49 
 
 ears which would welcome onlj that which matched their 
 own spiritual sloth. And because he had declared the 
 whole counsel of God, he was able to count himself "pure 
 from the blood" of those who might fall under the divine 
 condemnation. 
 
 If a man is preaching on the Gospel of Luke, the search- 
 ing and rigorous teachings of Jesus as to the perils and 
 the obligations of wealth can be brought out with tre- 
 mendous effect and with no suspicion whatever that the 
 minister in any partisan spirit is singling out one par- 
 ticular class of his hearers for personal attack. 
 
 If he is preaching on the Book of Judges the parable 
 of Jotham will naturally come in for an orderly exposi- 
 tion. Its direct bearing on the political carelessness 
 and the apathy of many of our good citizens who pay 
 their pew rent regularly and are pillars in the temple of 
 God, may be most effectively brought out. The trees, you 
 remember, were engaged in the election of a king. The 
 olive tree was nominated. But it pleaded that it could 
 not leave the fatness of its occupation in producing olive 
 oil in order to hold political office. The fig tree was 
 nominated. But it insisted that it could not leave the 
 sweetness of its particular occupation in furnishing the 
 world with figs in order to enter upon a political cam- 
 paign. The vine was nominated. But the vine was 
 strongly determined not to leave its wine which gladdened 
 the hearts of men for a paltry political position. And 
 thus in the default of all of these reputable citizens of 
 the tree kingdom, the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine, 
 there came forward an old, worthless bramble. And this i^"^ 
 
50 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 good-for-nothing bramble suggested that if the office of 
 king was going begging he would be willing to stand. 
 And so the bramble became king over the trees. 
 
 It will be good for your bankers and your merchants, 
 your manufacturers and your college professors to hear 
 this word of the Lord in the day when they are so occu- 
 pied with the fatness and the sweetness of their callings, 
 in the day when they are so in love with all those things 
 which make glad the hearts of men, as to allow the po- 
 litical brambles of the city oftentimes to take to them- 
 selves the high responsibility of administering the civic 
 affairs. 
 
 If the pastor is resolved to declare his bottom thought, 
 his most serious and intense conviction touching the fate 
 of continued disobedience to the word of Christ, of per- 
 sistent opposition to the will of God, he need not an- 
 nounce some sensational sermon on "Hell, its location, 
 duration and probable population" after the manner of 
 some, — a manner repellent to men of serious mind in the 
 pulpit and in the pew. He will in the natural order of 
 his exposition come to those searching parables of the 
 Talents and of the Ten Virgins and to that solemn judg- 
 ment scene in Matthew or to the parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke. And this treatment of 
 difficult themes in the course of an orderly unfolding of 
 the full contents of some particular book of Scripture is 
 far and away the most effective way to use them. 
 
 There is commonly some one great idea which runs 
 through each book ready and able to bind an entire series 
 of expository sermons into a certain unity. The sermons 
 on Genesis as the book of beginnings, the beginning of 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 51 
 
 the world, of human life, of evil, of sacrifice, of crime, 
 of visible judgments upon evil, of covenants, of diversity 
 of interest, of the Hebrew race and all the rest ! The 
 book of Exodus as the book of deliverance — the deliver- 
 ance from Egypt, from industrial bondage, from political 
 slavery, from the weight of foolish and debasing super- 
 stitions, from inadequate moral standards, from the whole 
 list of evils which differentiated the old life in Egypt 
 from the new life to be lived in the land of promise ! 
 
 The Gospel of Matthew is the Gospel of the kingdom, 
 compiled by a Hebrew for Hebrews. It has as its char- 
 acteristic phrase, these words "that it might be fulfilled." 
 It has to do with the spiritualizing of the old law. It 
 holds more quotations from the Old Testament than any 
 other Gospel, and it supplies most fully the nexus, between 
 the preparatory experiences of those Hebrews and those 
 richer experiences wherein the highest hopes of the nation 
 had their clear chance of fulfillment. These peculiar char- 
 acteristics of the first Gospel will give to a course of ser- 
 mons on Matthew a certain sense of unity. 
 
 The Gospel of Mark is the Gospel of action, having in 
 it none of the longer discourses of Jesus, no Sermon on 
 the Mount, no addresses in the Upper Room, fewer of 
 the parables than either of the other Gospels, but packed 
 with narratives of the deeds of Jesus — its characteristic 
 word, "straightway!" From start to finish it travels in 
 marching order the high road of action. 
 
 The Gospel of Luke is the Gospel of the Son of Man, 
 written by a physician with a strong humanitarian in- 
 istinct, filled with sympathy for the under man, for the 
 publican, for the Samaritan, for the lost sheep, the lost 
 
52 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 coin, the lost boy, for the poor woman who was a sinner 
 in Simon's house and for the rich man Zaccheus who was 
 a sinner in his own house, for the sufferer on the Jericho 
 road relieved by a hated, heretical Samaritan whose only 
 title to recognition was his kind heart, and for the peni- 
 tent thief on the cross carried along by the sympathy and 
 mercy of Jesus into paradise — all these touches peculiar 
 to Luke give it that distinctive quality of the Gospel of 
 the Son of Man with its intense humanitarian feeling. 
 
 The Gospel of John is the Gospel of the Son of God. 
 It portrays our Lord mainly in his relation to the indi- 
 vidual soul. It has next to nothing in it about the King- 
 dom of God or about those problems of social organiza- 
 tion which stand in the way of the realization of the 
 kingdom. This Gospel is made up in large measure of 
 personal conversations between Jesus and some individual, 
 — conversations with his mother at the wedding in Cana 
 of Galilee, with Nicodemus a master in Israel, with the 
 woman of Samaria at Jacob's well, with the sufferer lame 
 for thirty-eight years at the pool of Bethesda, with the 
 man who was blind from his birth, and so on ! Here is 
 the Good Shepherd calling his own sheep by name. He 
 deals with them in that intimate personal contact which 
 is characteristic of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 You can see at once how this method of expository 
 preaching may therefore not only make possible ihose de- 
 sirable qualities of unity, progress and a goal in each 
 sermon — you may so build your course of sermons around 
 some great cardinal principle as to bestow those three 
 desirable qualities upon the whole series based as they are 
 upon some one book of the Bible. And the orderly, sys- 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 53 
 
 tematic, well-rounded instruction which results from such 
 a method has the highest sort of value for congregations 
 made up of people who, owing to the hurry and the stress 
 of modern life, do not read their Bibles for themselves 
 as did their elders and betters two generations ago. 
 
 I have practiced what I preach in this matter. If I 
 had not done so I should never have had the face to stand 
 here and urge this method of preaching upon you as fur- 
 nishing the best possible basis for the staple articles of 
 spiritual commerce which we undertake to offer in our 
 sermons. In the last church I served, the First Congre- 
 gational Church of Oakland, California, where I was 
 pastor for nearly fifteen years, I find from an examina- 
 tion of my record book that during those years, I preached 
 courses of expository sermons to that one congregation 
 as follows: — From the Old Testament, six months on 
 Genesis, three months on Exodus, three months on Joshua, 
 three months on Judges, two months on the life of Elijah 
 as recorded in Kings, two months on Job, six months on 
 Isaiah, two months on the minor prophets. And I had 
 in preparation a six months' course of sermons on first 
 and second Samuel. 
 
 In the New Testament, I preached for six months on 
 Matthew, six months on Mark, twelve months on Luke, 
 which to me is the greatest and dearest book in all the 
 Bible, six months on John, six months on Acts, two 
 months on • Romans, three months on first and second 
 Corinthians, and two months on the Book of Revelation. 
 When this is added up it means that there was some 
 course of expository sermons in process of delivery for 
 six entire years of my pastorate there. And I believe 
 
54 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 that the testimony of at least two-thirds of the people in 
 that church would confirm my own belief that this was 
 the most profitable portion of my preaching from that 
 pulpit. 
 
 Some people will take to this method of preaching 
 straight off. Many others can be speedily taught to like 
 it. And those who do not like it may have their needs 
 attended to at the other service or by the church across 
 the way. It was never meant that any one preacher 
 should preach with equal acceptance to all creation. It 
 would be sure to spoil him with spiritual conceit and it 
 would be hard on his brother ministers besides. By this 
 mode of preaching if you will only strive to make it in- 
 teresting and effective you can readily enlist the attend- 
 ance of as many people as you really deserve. 
 
 This systematic use of Scripture as the basis of our 
 preaching will enable us in the most natural way in the 
 world to bring out the methods and the main findings of 
 modern Biblical scholarship. In stating this point you 
 will notice that I purposely avoid the use of the phrase 
 "Higher Criticism." The very sound of those familiar 
 words is irritating to certain minds in many of our 
 churches. We may feel that this is an altogether un- 
 reasonable prejudice but there it is, a thing to be reck- 
 oned with. The flocks to which we are called to minister 
 as good shepherds are not made up entirely of teachable 
 and lovable lambs — ^we shall find there also the more 
 mature rams with stiff necks and horns. 
 
 And some of these full grown rams have tremendous 
 convictions about this question of higher criticism. 
 They construe the word "criticism" negatively always — 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 55 
 
 not at all as we do, as indicating the exercise of discrimi- 
 nation in order to bring out into clearer relief the more 
 valued portions of Scripture bj that process of criticism. 
 They think of the critic as a dyspeptic sort of individual 
 picking and mincing over his food. When a good thick 
 wholesome slice of Scripture is laid before him, instead 
 of eating it for his soul's good (asking no questions for 
 scholarship's sake), he begins at once to pick it to pieces. 
 He separates what he regards as the dark meat from the 
 light. He makes little piles of J, E, D, and P on his 
 plate. He becomes by virtue of his scholarship a fas- 
 tidious and dyspeptic critic of the heavenly manna in the 
 Bible. 
 
 Then when the word "higher" is added to the word 
 "critic" there comes that further touch of supercilious- 
 ness in his attitude which makes him altogether unbear- 
 able. He becomes in the minds of many what the late 
 Theodore Roosevelt would have called "an undesirable 
 citizen." The minister will do well to leave that objec- 
 tionable phrase "the higher criticism" in his study along 
 with all the other theological patois which was never in- 
 tended for unordained human nature's daily food. 
 
 The results of the higher criticism are not all final — 
 many of them are still mere tentative hypotheses. The 
 colors in the Polychrome Bible are not all fast — some of 
 these radiant and beautiful tints will probably change 
 with time and further study — but the method is here to 
 stay. !N'ever again will thoughtful people generally study 
 the Bible as if it were all one solid block of equally in- 
 spired and equally authoritative truth. They will not 
 deal with it in the mass, Luke or Leviticus, John or 
 
56 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 Judges, every part to be esteemed alike and applied alike 
 to human need. The general method of modern Biblical 
 scholarship is here to stay and it is for us gradually to 
 acquaint our people with that method and with those find- 
 ings which may be regarded as fairly established. 
 
 It will be much better not to label such instruction, 
 either as "Higher Criticism" or as "modem Biblical 
 scholarship," The wise parent does not approach his 
 child saying, "Now this bottle contains castor oil. You 
 will not like it. Children never have liked it. It has a 
 very disagreeable taste until you get used to it. But it 
 will be good for you, and it will remove certain things 
 from your system which you are better off without. And 
 whether you like it or not I propose to give you a good big 
 dose of it." Such a parent would need to study the psy- 
 chology of the child mind for at least another semester. 
 He need not tell the child that the castor oil is ice cream, 
 but he can employ a wiser method of administering his 
 treatment. The new truth about the Bible had better be 
 offered as a natural part of the instruction we bring with- 
 out any label on it — let it be put forth simply for what 
 it is worth. 
 
 It is just as well also for the young minister in a new 
 parish not to be in too great a hurry about promulgating 
 the very latest views which he picked up at the Divinity 
 School or gained in his last weeks' reading of the Hibhert 
 Journal. There is nothing dishonest or cowardly in hav- 
 ing some regard to the principle of reserve. The young 
 man cannot possibly tell the people all he knows in the 
 first three months of his pastorate. He cannot do it 
 simply because he knows so much. It will take him at 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 57 
 
 least six months to tell them all he knows. It becomes a 
 question therefore as to what shall come first and what 
 second and what third. 
 
 And it is not imperative that the more belated minds 
 in that parish which may be located somewhat off the 
 turnpike of modern thought, should all be set right in 
 their views as to the composite character of the Pentateuch 
 or the dual authorship of Isaiah, or the late date of 
 Daniel, or the problem of the Fourth Gospel, without the 
 least delay. When the people have come to know their 
 minister and to trust him and to love him as a result of 
 his helpful constructive preaching, they will be in a mood 
 to allow him a much larger latitude in the inculcation of 
 these new views which might at first seem to be revolu- 
 tionary. They will let him have his two Isaiahs if he 
 wants them, — they would let him have twenty Isaiahs if 
 they thought that he would feel easier in his mind 
 about it. 
 
 Milk for babes and strong meat for men ! You are not 
 acting dishonorably toward the baby or showing yourself 
 cowardly or insincere if you offer him a bottle of milk 
 or even a satisfying meal of Mellen's food, knowing all 
 the while that you have a big rich porterhouse steak 
 there in the refrigerator. You know full well the 
 splendid nutritive values of good steak, but you know 
 also that so far as the baby is concerned the hour for 
 porterhouse has not yet come. The same wise principles 
 of orderly adaptation are to be regarded in feeding con- 
 gregations upon the results of the latest Biblical scholar- 
 ship. 
 
 When the better methods of Bible study are thus in- 
 
58 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 troduced to a congregation in connection with courses of 
 positive helpful sermons on the books whose date and 
 authorship and component parts naturally come up for 
 consideration, the people receive the new views according 
 to the scriptural method. It is here a little, there a little, 
 line upon line, precept upon precept, instead of having 
 a whole chapter of Driver or Moffatt flung at them all at 
 once. By this gradual method the needed operation is 
 performed without nervous shock or much loss of blood. 
 The swollen and noxious tumors of ignorance and preju- 
 dice are gradually removed. And the people, scarcely 
 realizing what radical changes have taken place in their 
 thinking, find themselves mentally and spiritually con- 
 valescent. 
 
 And when the preacher is inculcating these newer views 
 in this incidental manner, he is the more likely to do it 
 in a way that is clear, sweet and reasonable, because it 
 is part and parcel of a set of sermons possessed by a very 
 direct spiritual purpose. It is just as easy to be opinion- 
 ated and disagreeable on the liberal side of the fence as 
 it is on the conservative side. It is just as easy for the 
 off horse to be stiff-necked and hard in the mouth, to be 
 narrow and dogmatic, as it is for the near horse, if he 
 happens to be that kind of a horse. The least note of in- 
 tellectual contempt for so-called "old fogies" or mental 
 scorn for those who may not be ready to accept his newer 
 and indeed more valid conceptions of the Bible, will at 
 once vitiate all the good influence of the more competent 
 instruction. "The wisdom that is from above is first 
 pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full 
 of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 59 
 
 hypocrisy." And such sound knowledge makes men wise 
 unto salvation and prepares them for good work. 
 
 It were better for the man who is to preach upon the 
 findings of the higher criticism to weigh at least one 
 hundred and sixty pounds, to possess a mellow baritone 
 voice, to be a man able to digest his meals without con- 
 scious efiFort and to sleep soundly at night. The man with 
 dyspeptic tendencies or of nervous, irritable habit, with 
 a harsh, rasping voice, might well leave the task of un- 
 folding the more radical views advanced by modem Bib- 
 lical scholarship to his brethren who possess that more 
 fortunate build. 
 
 But where this work of thorough, competent scriptural 
 instruction is carried on in the light of the best that 
 genuine scholarship has brought us and in a mood at once 
 sympathetic and constructive, the outcome will have price- 
 less value. It will help to make this ancient literature 
 habitable and ministrant to the modern mind. It will 
 help to recover it as a mighty spiritual weapon to the 
 hands of those who have felt themselves impelled by im- 
 possible views of the Bible to lay it down. There are in 
 all our congregations teachers, lawyers, cultured business 
 men, fathers and mothers, who have found themselves 
 unable to use the Bible in the old mechanical way with 
 any sense of intellectual honesty. They will hail with 
 delight the day when they can use it again in this more 
 vital fashion made possible by a better understanding of 
 the methods of its production and by a truer appreciation 
 of its abiding and classical worth as a means of spiritual 
 ministry. 
 
 This work well done will also save from shipwreck of 
 
60 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 faith thousands of our young people as they go up to col- 
 lege. When they begin to walk in the light of profounder 
 study in philosophy, and in science, in history and in lit- 
 erature, the light of faith which is in them will not sud- 
 denly prove to be darkness. The badly taught youth fur- 
 nish the major part of those who are said to lose their 
 religious faith as a result of their study at college. There 
 are many more young men and young women falling over 
 the cliff of unbelief in reacting from erroneous views 
 which become impossible by reason of more thorough 
 study than are thus precipitated through their acquaint- 
 ance with the more modern and more tenable views of 
 Scripture. 
 
 ''He had in his hand a little book, open." Here was 
 the main instrument of his power when that mighty angel 
 appeared in the vision of the seer as recorded in the book 
 of Revelation. He was clothed with a cloud. He wore 
 a rainbow on his head. His face was shining like the 
 sun because he was a light bearer. He stood, ready for 
 the widest usefulness, his right foot upon the land and 
 his left foot upon the sea. And in his hand as the main 
 instrument of his power he held "a. little book open." 
 
 He refused the sword of military conquest; he did not 
 take up the coin of a far-reaching commerce; he showed 
 himself indifferent to the swinging censer of some more 
 potent ecclesiasticism casting its spell upon the hearts of 
 men. He held in his hand the little book because his 
 main reliance was to be upon the powerful influence of 
 instruction and persuasion, of moral appeal and spiritual 
 entreaty. 
 
 We do not know what book it was. We may feel rea- 
 
THE BASIS OF THE SERMON 61 
 
 sonably sure, however, that it was not a trigonometry. It 
 was probably the best book on which the angel could lay 
 his hand. And it was a little book — not a ponderous tome 
 of theological lore; it was not even an elaborate leather- 
 bound octavo family Bible large enough to contain all the 
 canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and 
 weighing some fourteen pounds. It was a little book con- 
 cise and usable. It was perhaps a compact statement of 
 those essential spiritual verities freed from the inevitable 
 deposits left by the ruder practices of antiquity, freed 
 also from those local and temporary elements which must 
 of necessity recede in interest by the gradual cancellation 
 wrought by the process of spiritual development. We may 
 not go astray in thinking of the little book which God's 
 messenger held in his hand open, as containing the net 
 result of wise, patient, discriminating study, setting forth 
 in briefer compass and in clearer phrase those divine es- 
 sentials in our Bible which are able to make men wise 
 unto salvation and to furnish them thoroughly for all good 
 work. 
 
 Here then is our task — we are to put the contents of 
 that little book into the minds and into the hearts of those 
 who hear, with all the saving power which inheres in those 
 sublime truths. And because this vital portion of the 
 Scriptures does furnish us "a book of final values for all 
 who would live nobly," we make it the sufficient and en- 
 during basis of our preaching. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 
 
 IN" the previous lecture I sought to indicate that the 
 basis of the sermon was to be found in the teaching 
 of Scripture. The topical or textual sermon will 
 grow naturally out of some one statement of Scripture. 
 The expository sermon will come from the more extended 
 and systematic interpretation of a larger portion of Scrip- 
 ture. There will be added a certain power and authority 
 to our preaching by the very fact that it does root down 
 into this literature which now holds, and in my judgment, 
 will continue to hold, a central and commanding place in 
 the religious life of the world. 
 
 But in order that the sermon should find its points of 
 contact with modern life, there will come of necessity the 
 importation of material from many other sources. I wish, 
 therefore, in this lecture to speak on the assembling of 
 the material which will make up the body of the sermon. 
 
 In the order of time, I believe the material should be 
 gathered before the plan is definitely made. If you were 
 building a house you would have the blue prints first. 
 Then you would fare forth to assemble the requisite quan- 
 tities of stone, boards, bricks, mortar, glass and all the 
 rest to carry out your plan. 
 V But the making of a sermon is not carpenter work — 
 it is a much more vital process. The best sermons grow. 
 They grow mainly out of a man's interiors. The sermon 
 
 62 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 63 
 
 is the showing forth, the manifestation of the man him- 
 self. And because sermons do thus grow, the best plans 
 are conceived and developed in the immediate presence 
 of the material- to be utilized and with a clear vision of 
 the end to be sought in the preparation and the preaching 
 of that particular sermon. 
 
 When jou are ready to assemble your material for the 
 sermon, enter into your closet with your text and shut the 
 door. Shut out, for the time being, all the commentaries, 
 shut out the Bible dictionary, and the religious encyclo- 
 pedia. Shut out all the books of sermons and of illus- 
 tration, upon which you might be tempted to lay your 
 hands. Sit down there with your subject before the Fa- 
 ther who seeth in secret. By the exercise of your own 
 unaided strength compel that text to give you, alone and 
 single-handed, a fuller measure of its deeper meaning. 
 It was Richter who said, "Do not read until you have 
 thought yourself hungry. Do not write until you have 
 read yourself full." 
 
 Brood over your text and your topic. Brood over them 
 until they become mellow and responsive. You will hatch 
 out of them a whole flock of promising ideas as you cause 
 the tiny germs of life there contained to expand and 
 develop. 
 
 Then in a more strenuous mood wrestle with your theme 
 as Jacob wrestled with the angel. Say to it as you hold 
 it off at arm's length, "Tell me thy name. Show me thy 
 nature. I will not let thee go except thou bless me." 
 
 It will be all the better if this process can go on for a 
 long time and not be postponed until Saturday forenoon 
 when you are actually making your final preparation for 
 
64 THE AET OF PREACHING *^ 
 
 next Sunday. If a minister can hold a certain truth in 
 his mind for a month, for six months perhaps, for a year 
 it may be, before he preaches on it he will find new ideas 
 perpetually sprouting out of it, until it shows an abun- 
 dant growth. He may meditate on it as he walks the 
 streets, or as he spends some hours on a train, when his 
 eyes are too tired to read. 
 
 He may indeed brood upon it in the night-time. It is 
 better for the minister not to take his church or his sermon 
 to bed with him habitually — a pulpit is a splendid thing 
 to preach from, but it is not a good bed-fellow. Yet, for 
 all that, I have gotten some of my own best sermons at 
 night. I have sometimes gotten out of bed in the middle 
 of the night to put down the thoughts which came to me, 
 for fear I might forget them before morning. But how- 
 ever and whenever it is done, your final work of prepara- 
 tion will be made more expeditious and effective when 
 you actually settle down to put the sermon in shape for 
 the following Sunday, if there has been a fruitful period 
 of preliminary brooding. 
 
 When you are actually engaged in assembling the ma- 
 terial for a particular sermon, write down everything that 
 comes to you bearing upon that text and topic. Write 
 down what you saw in the text when you first chose it. 
 Write down all the associated ideas which now occur to 
 you. You may not use them all but it is well to put them 
 down. 
 
 Write down the main outstanding ideas which that 
 topic suggests, of course, and the lesser ones as well. You 
 want the whole family, big and little, in plain sight when 
 you come to shape up your message. Write down any 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 65 
 
 fact in history, or any bit of poetry, or any useful appli- 
 cation, or any valuable illuminating illustration, or any 
 coordinate passage of Scripture which occurs to you as 
 suitable for your use. 
 
 Some great big thoughts will come — regular sequoia 
 trees like the ones in California. You have no business 
 to preach if ideas do not come to you at times so big and 
 so inspiring that they set you walking the floor and talk- 
 ing to yourself out loud through sheer joy of mental pos- 
 session and of spiritual discovery. And some quite ordi- 
 nary thoughts will come, not sequoias at all but oaks and 
 elms, with good material in them — put them all down. 
 And some little spindling thoughts will come, mere sap- 
 lings, small white birches scarcely large enough for hoop 
 poles or for lath, mere underbrush in the forests of 
 thought — put them down, too. They may grow while you 
 are getting your sermon into shape and prove valuable 
 after all. 
 
 Put all these ideas of yours down in writing, just a 
 few words, enough to fix the idea, and keep your mind 
 reaching for more all the time as if it were never to see 
 another book as long as it lived. This is the way to train 
 the mind in productiveness. You will by this method 
 keep your own mental processes fresh, original, creative. 
 If you swamp the mind right at the start by emptying 
 into it three or four barrels of ideas from the commen- 
 taries and another bucket full out of Hastings' Dictionary, 
 and then sprinkle it copiously with what you have dipped 
 out of some encyclopedia of illustration, or of "poetry 
 and song," your mental powers will be almost sure to loaf 
 on you. These mental faculties of ours are touchy in the 
 
66 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 extreme at this point. You have no idea how sensitive 
 they are until you have had it out with them a few times. 
 If you load your mind up from the outside, right at the 
 start without giving it a chance to think, it will turn upon 
 you in a fine state of pout. It will arch its neck and say 
 to you in haughty fashion, "Very well, if you think I 
 don't know anything and can't produce anything of my 
 very own, then I will take my doll and go home." 
 
 Put down all of those ideas which you have brought 
 to the birth yourself, unaided. They are more precious 
 for your mental unfolding than rubies and diamonds and 
 much fine gold. Put them down, preferably on scraps of 
 paper, backs of old letters, fragments of envelopes, waste 
 paper, anything which comes to your hand. This is much 
 better every way than to use nice, long, clean sheets of 
 foolscap. It is not a mere matter of economy, — you will 
 find it easier to arrange and organize these loose bits 
 when you come to set your material in order. 
 
 Keep on putting down all the ideas which come to your 
 mind, thinking hard all the while. You need not hurry 
 this process. It is one of the most important mental trans- 
 actions in which you will be privileged to engage. It is 
 this method which causes the mind to grow in real pro- 
 ductive power. 
 
 Q Wait for ideas ! "Wait patiently for them, but not pas- 
 sively nor sleepily. Let your mind all the while be alert 
 and alive. The mouth of your mind should at such times 
 fairly water for ideas. Wait for them as a girl waits for 
 her lover, eagerly, hungrily, wistfully. Wait for them 
 as a mother waits for the sound of her child's voice when 
 he comes home from his first day of school, or from his 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 67 
 
 first evening out at a party. Wait in that sort of active 
 expectation and your very attitude will hurry the coming 
 of those ideas. The very thought of the maiden, waiting 
 in all her loveliness and impatient for his coming, quick- 
 ens the feet of every lover who has any red blood in his 
 veins. The latent ideas in your own brain and the ideas 
 which are out yonder in waiting will in like manner feel 
 the tug and pull of the earnest expectation you are exer- 
 cising, and that will quicken their coming. 
 
 While you are doing this, open all the front doors of 
 your mind, and all the back doors, and the side doors, 
 and the windows. Be just as approachable and inviting as 
 you know how to be. Memory will be bringing back what 
 you have read and seen and felt. The association of ideas 
 will bring forward the first cousins and the second and 
 third cousins of those ideas which you have already put 
 down, together with their uncles and their aunts. You 
 will presently gather in all the more distant relatives of 
 your text in the cognate truths which will come to you 
 imtil you will have a great family of thoughts. They will 
 outnumber the household of Brigham Young and will be 
 possessed of a spiritual quality infinitely superior. 
 
 You will find also as you linger in this process that 
 entirely new ideas will come to the birth. You will see 
 aspects of the truth which never rose upon your vision 
 before. Some days the material for your sermon will 
 come in a regular down-pour. Other days there will be 
 a nice gentle rain of refreshing ideas and other days only 
 a thin sprinkle and drizzle of thought. This will depend 
 in considerable measure upon what you ate the night be- 
 fore and on how well you slept and on how the baby be- 
 
68 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 haved through the wee, small hours. It will depend also 
 upon what subject you have in hand, and on how well 
 you warm up to that particular line of effort. But do it 
 nevertheless — I would almost say that this will be the 
 most profitable time you will spend in the preparation of 
 the sermon and in the development of your own mental 
 powers. 
 
 We need to use every possible resource to make our 
 preaching fresh, interesting, vital. People get dreadfully 
 used to us at best, when we have preached to them for 
 ten or fifteen or twenty years from the same pulpit. And 
 dullness, pokiness, monotony, "make the word of God of 
 no effect" as we preach it quite as surely as all the deadly 
 heresies condemned by the Councils of the Church. It 
 was Prof. Ernest Hocking of Harvard University who 
 said, "A theory is false if it is not interesting. A propo- 
 sition which falls on the mind so dully as to excite no 
 enthusiasm has not attained to the level of truth. Though 
 the words be accurate, the import has leaked away from 
 them and the meaning is not conveyed. Whatever doc- 
 trine tends to leave men unstrung, content, complacent, 
 and at ease, is a treachery and a deceit. We have to re- 
 quire of our faith not what is agreeable to the indolent 
 spirit but what is at once a spur and a promise." 
 
 You must therefore produce something that people will 
 listen to with interest — if they will not listen, it is just 
 the same as if you did not say anything at all. No matter 
 how good your medicine is under competent analysis, if 
 you cannot induce the people to take it, it will not do 
 them any good. The element of freshness and variety 
 is an element of power. "He spake, not as the Scribes" 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 69 
 
 — their speech was filled to the brim with dull moral 
 platitudes. The people were bored beyond measure by 
 the utterances of the Scribes. But His utterance, in the 
 very style of it as well as in the substance of it, was as 
 fresh as a bunch of roses with the dew of heaven still 
 upon them. 
 
 When you are assembling the material for a sermon 
 allow a very free immigration of all sorts of material into 
 your mind for the time being ! Let the bars down ! Have 
 no strict Ellis Island regulations to keep out ideas. Let 
 them all in whether they come first cabin or steerage,' — 
 you can sort them out later. You can reject the unsuit- 
 able material when you come to the immediate work of 
 preparing your sermon. You can also lay aside those 
 ideas which are not germane to your immediate purpose 
 to be used in some later sermon. If you are planning 
 to preach on the N^orth Pole, you may think of something 
 very brilliant and helpful to be said about the South 
 Pole. Put it down immediately on one of those scraps 
 of paper — ^you cannot use it now, but the day will come 
 when you may want to preach on the South Pole. 
 
 When you have gotten your material all together, then 
 grind it all down with a genuinely Christian purpose, 
 serious and vital. You will find that you can use a great 
 variety of material if you only lay hold of it in that de- 
 termined thorough-going fashion. The hen eats all sorts 
 of things, nice, clean corn and barley, bugs and worms, 
 scraps from the table, bits of bone and gravel, old, odd 
 ends of almost anything that can be swallowed. And it 
 all reappears in the general make-up of the hen as light 
 meat and dark meat and as good fresh eggs. The hen 
 
70 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 has strong digestive and assimilative powers. Pretty 
 much anything is good grist which comes to her mill. 
 You also need something corresponding to an intellectual 
 gizzard to deal in similar fashion with your varied mate- 
 rial as you come to shape it into useful sermons. 
 
 In the earlier years of one's ministry it is well to spend 
 a great deal of time in doing what I have been here 
 describing at some length. It stretches the mind. It de- 
 velops in it reach and grasp. It exercises its genuine 
 creative capacity. It keeps it from becoming soft, fat, 
 lazy, as all those parasites are which feed perpetually 
 upon the vitality of other beings. It increases a man's 
 originality and individuality as a preacher. You cannot 
 prepare a sermon at all unless you have something to say 
 — something of your very own. It is tragic where this 
 stinging comment is made upon some lazy minister's ser- 
 mon — "He had nothing to say and he said it." 
 
 You will not feel like leaving the ministry and going 
 into the life insurance business if your mind does not 
 show itself as full of ideas as the Britannica Encyclo- 
 pedia is of information, right off. Your general content 
 and your own personal productiveness will grow. They 
 will grow by hard study in your own chosen line; they 
 will grow by your general reading in history, biography, 
 poetry, essays, fiction, and all the rest — the highest office 
 of reading is to be found in the way it gives mental 
 stimulus, thus developing productiveness in the mind of 
 the reader. I care much less for a book which is full of 
 thoughts, laid in neat rows along its pages, than I do for 
 one which by its own rugged, stimulating challenge causes 
 me to think thoughts of my own. 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 71 
 
 You will grow bj your own independent observation 
 and reflection. You will grow by trayel, in your own 
 land, and, I trust, in other lands. You will grow by the 
 experiences of life and death, by the sins and sorrows, the 
 struggles and the defeats, the triumphs and the glories in 
 which you will either personally participate or sympa- 
 thetically share. The rightly used mind will perpetually 
 become more and more productive by this process. 
 
 When you have taken a thousand sermons out of your 
 mind you will feel much better able to take out another 
 thousand than you sometimes feel now in taking out one 
 more after you have preached a dozen or so to the same 
 congregation. I know this by personal experience at once 
 painful and blessed. In my first church, after I had 
 preached about three months, I felt that I had told the 
 people all that I knew or was ever likely to know, three 
 times over. I looked at those Sundays stretching away 
 into the future interminably with such dismay as would 
 have sent me out of the ministry had I not been ashamed 
 to confess failure at the end of so short a period of trial. 
 
 But I have been preaching now for thirty-three years 
 and in round numbers about a hundred sermons a year. 
 And I never felt so sure as I do right now that I could 
 keep on indefinitely, taking sermons out of my mind 
 Sunday after Sunday with some measure of freshness and 
 of worth in each one. And this has resulted from inces- 
 sant drill and training, stretching out for a full third 
 of a century. 
 
 You will find that the sermons you enjoy preaching the O 
 most and the ones which actually accomplish the most 
 good in the lives of your people will be those sermons 
 
72 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 whicli you take most largely out of your own interiors. 
 They are bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, the chil- 
 dren of your own mental labor, the output of your own 
 creative energy. The sermons which are garbled and com- 
 piled will always have a kind of second-hand, warmed- 
 over flavor about them. The sermons which live and 
 move and enter into the temple, walking and leaping and 
 praising God, the sermons which enter into the hearts of 
 men causing them to mount up with wings like eagles 
 and to walk in the way of duty and not faint — these real 
 sermons are the ones which are actually born from the 
 vital energies of the man who utters them. 
 
 'Now, after you have conscientiously and resolutely put 
 forth all that independent, unaided effort, you are ready 
 for the books. The commentaries will not do you any 
 harm now if they desire to have a word with you. If 
 you had resorted to them at first you might have been 
 tempted to steal most of your ideas. You find now that 
 you have already dug out some of the best things which 
 the commentaries contain — they are yours. They are 
 yours by the right of discovery. You will feel glad of 
 course and humbly grateful that Driver and Sanday, 
 George Adam Smith, and George F. Moore have shown 
 themselves equally wise and competent in advancing some 
 of the very same interpretations which have occurred to 
 you. You will not now be swamped nor hurt by the sug- 
 gestions made to you by those gentlemen possessed as they 
 are of thorough scholarship and of remarkable insight. 
 
 Let me say (to the younger ministers especially) for 
 your own highest development, that it would be well to 
 avoid the purely homiletic commentaries. Matthew; 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 73 
 
 Henry, for example, was a learned and devout man in his 
 day and generation. His mind was full of beautiful 
 thoughts. But his commentaries are a delusion and a 
 snare to every young minister. I had a set of them given 
 to me in my early ministry and I used them for about 
 two years. I found that they were not to my profit and 
 I gave them away. They were the declared enemies of 
 independent study and of original thinking. I also had 
 a feeling that I might lose my own soul if I kept myself 
 surrounded with such books. So I unselfishly gave them 
 to a home missionary — to imperil his soul perhaps. 
 
 The commentaries of the homiletic type develop bad 
 intellectual habits. You will be tempted to pick out 
 ready-made sermons with introductions and divisions, 
 with applications and exhortations all cut and dried — • 
 especially dried — and ready to use. The clothes which 
 are made to order always fit better than the ready-mades ; 
 and the sermons which are cut out and put together espe- 
 cially for the congregation which is to hear them, are 
 always better than the ready-made articles, even when the 
 ready-mades are found in such respectable stores as those 
 kept by Lange and Matthew Henry. 
 
 I would also cast out all those tempting encyclopedias 
 of illustration. There are volumes on sale which contain 
 vast collections of illustrations and stories applicable to 
 every situation in life. They are all there arranged in 
 alphabetical order and "ready to serve," like the soups 
 and the spaghetti advertised in the street cars, only not 
 nearly so appetizing. But the man who preceded you 
 may have used the same encyclopedia of illustration. The 
 people in the congregation may have already eaten all of 
 
74 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 those "fifty-seven varieties" of canned goods several times 
 over. Your predecessor in that pnlpit may indeed have 
 so far forgotten himself — even ordained flesh sometimes 
 shows itself weak at this point, though the spirit be will- 
 ing — as to tell some of those thrilling stories as experi- 
 ences of his own. If you begin to tell them all over again, 
 as personal experiences which have come to you, your 
 people will have thoughts in their hearts. 
 
 The imported article, especially where a man gets it in 
 such large invoices as are found in those encyclopedias of 
 illustration, is never quite equal in flavor or in effective- 
 ness to the home grown. Eschew these shipments of 
 manufactured illustrations and keep a sharp eye out all 
 the while for suitable illustrations growing in your own 
 familiar fields — there are no others so good. 
 
 In a second-hand book store in Boston I once saw dis- 
 played three big fat volumes entitled "Thirty Thousand 
 Thoughts," — marked down to $10,00. This was reason- 
 fable, surely. It meant thirty thoughts for a cent. I do 
 not know whether the tariff enacted by the Democratic 
 Congress during that winter increasing the number of 
 commodities on the free list had aided in this direction 
 or not. It assured me at any rate that the high cost of 
 living had not seriously affected the price of thought. 
 
 In these bargain counter volumes were collections of 
 ideas on faith, hope, love, prayer, the Bible, the church, 
 — on everything in fact from Adenoids to Zaccheus, ar- 
 ranged in alphabetical order. We may well shun all such 
 collections as being a menace to any wholesome develop- 
 ment of one's own mental powers. You do not want 
 thoughts which can be sold at the street corners thirty 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 75 
 
 of them for a cent. They are altogether too cheap to be 
 thrown out upon a congregation of thoughtful people who 
 honor you by their presence in your sanctuary. You want 
 those thoughts which come forth as a result of your own 
 intellectual travail and labor. 
 
 I have grave doubts also as to the value of those elabo- 
 rate scrap cabinets for filing newspaper clippings. If 
 one takes a goodly number of religious and secular papers 
 and makes generous use of his scissors, he may in a short 
 time have a very considerable accumulation of material. 
 But the material is liable to become stale before you are 
 ready to use it. It is something like putting aside a few 
 crackers with some bits of cheese and bologna sausage in 
 the expectation that you may possibly want them for the 
 picnic sometime next summer. If your eyes are open and 
 your mind is alert, you will gather as you go along all 
 the fresh material of that sort which you will really need 
 in the work of preaching. 
 
 You can see at once the advantage of doing this work 
 in the assembling of your material for the body of your 
 sermon before you touch a book. You will already have 
 gotten many of the very things which you will find in the 
 books. You will not feel any sense of intellectual dis- 
 honesty now in using them. On the contrary, you will 
 have a free, independent joy arising legitimately from 
 your own discoveries. You will not smother your own 
 intellectual impulse, your own creative ability, by dump- 
 ing in a lot of reading matter at the start before your 
 mind has had a reasonable opportunity to show what it 
 can do. 
 
 You will also learn better how to read when the time 
 
76 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 comes for reading. After you have been thinking long 
 and seriously upon some text or upon some more extended 
 passage of Scripture, you will be ready to use your com- 
 mentaries with more intelligence and discrimination, 
 o You will know where to pause and rest the whole weight 
 of your interest and where you may pass lightly with a 
 kind of hop, skip and jump. The work you have already 
 done will be a preparation for the better utilization of 
 other men's investigations. And you will constantly in- 
 crease your own power of productiveness, whereas the 
 other method tends always to stifle it. When any man by 
 his attitudes and methods indicates to his own mind that 
 he is relying upon it, the mind has a way of reacting 
 under the power of that expectation and of showing itself 
 surprisingly competent. 
 
 It is well for the young preacher especially to avoid 
 sameness in his sermon plans. He will greatly weaken 
 his power if he undertakes to pour all the refined silver 
 and gold of the Bible into one or two narrow sets of molds. 
 He had better vary the pattern as he mints the unsearch- 
 able riches into coins which will serve as a circulating 
 medium in the King's business. 
 
 We had a man in the Divinity School in my day who 
 came in one Monday morning from his amateur Sunday 
 preaching in great glee. He told us what an interesting 
 and moving discourse he had preached the day before 
 from this text, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that 
 I might not sin against Thee." He made three bites of 
 it. 1. The thing hidden — "the word of God," which gave 
 him opportunity to expatiate at length upon the Bible. 
 2. The place hidden, "the heart" — this hiding of the 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 7V 
 
 word of the Lord was to be no mere intellectual process 
 but a genuine heart experience. 3. The purpose for which 
 it was hidden there — that "I might not sin against Thee." 
 The whole process was to result in renewed character, 
 
 N^ow that is a clear and useful sort of outline. He had 
 good reason for the joy that was in him. But the follow- 
 ing Monday he came in again in exultant mood. He 
 blandly announced to his fellow students that it was a 
 rich lead he had struck and that he proposed to follow it 
 up. He had preached the day before on this fine text, — 
 "I have graven Thee on the palms of my hands." 1. The 
 thing graven, 2. The place graven, 3. The purpose for 
 which it was graven. And he may be going on yet for 
 all I know, along that same narrow line, singing all his 
 tunes in the same key, on the same pitch, with no varia- 
 tion whatever except the substitution of a new set of 
 words from time to time. He has belonged to the 
 "itinerancy" I know and has enjoyed to the full the privi- 
 leges of that transient relation. And it may be that the 
 monotonous use of a particular style of outline has had 
 its share in rendering his pastorates many and brief. 
 
 Let your plan be your own — strictly, exclusively, pre- 
 eminently, your own. The sermon plan should be a thing 
 as personal as a toothbrush. You will consult your own 
 interest if you shun, as you would shun the plague, all 
 those books of "sermon plans" wherein skeletons long 
 since lifeless are steadily grinning at the foolish men 
 who have been beguiled into walking in that graveyard 
 in quest of outlines. Those books are known among the 
 ungodly as "First Aids to the Lazy." 
 
 Those plans are not yours simply because you have 
 
78 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 purchased the book which contains them, any more than 
 the plays of Shakespeare are yours to utter as your own 
 simply because you have possessed yourself of a copy of 
 Shakespeare. "The quality of mercy is not strained," but 
 it is by no means elastic enough to be stretched out and 
 made to cover such intellectual theft as that. 
 e> You may gather material from all sorts of sources. 
 You will openly quote in some cases. You will digest 
 and assimilate other material until the result of your 
 reading reappears in that which has the full taste and 
 quality of your own intellectual life in it. But your 
 sermon plan should be every time the fruit of your own 
 intellectual loins. We cannot afford to have any adopted 
 children wearing our names at this point. An awkward 
 outline of your own will be ten times more effective than 
 some splendid one which you have cribbed from Fred- 
 erick W. Robertson or from Alexander Maclaren. 
 
 It is wise not to have any such book of skeletons in your 
 library. In some moment of weakness or of weariness, 
 or in some unusually crowded week you might be tempted 
 to use it as a makeshift. The wretched thing might climb 
 down off the shelf and overthrow your integrity. If any 
 student here now owns such a book, I will gladly excuse 
 him if he will go at once to his room and burn it. When 
 the flames lick up the pages of such a book of "Sermon 
 Plans" it will be a worthy and an acceptable burnt offer- 
 ing to the Lord. 
 
 When you have assembled an abundance of good mate- 
 rial in this way and have put it into effective shape by a 
 proper arrangement of it, you can learn, if you will, to 
 preach without manuscript. It is far and away the hap- 
 
THE CONTENT OP THE SERMON 79 
 
 piest and the most effective method of preaching. It is 
 the man and not the manuscript which makes the spiritual 
 impression. The man may indeed write and read, but 
 even then it is the personality of the man who did the 
 writing and does the reading, rather than the paper thing 
 lying there on the desk, which brings results. 
 
 The method of preaching without manuscript demands 
 a more generous stock of ideas. The somewhat meager 
 accumulation of thought cannot by this method be made 
 to go as far as would be possible by the skillful use of 
 literary attenuation in a carefully prepared manuscript. 
 The method of preaching without manuscript also takes 
 it out of a man by its more exacting demands upon one's 
 nervous force as the other method does not. But it is 
 worth all it costs, to the preacher himself and to the people 
 who do the listening. 
 
 - In my judgment it is the ideal way to preach and every 
 young man may well strive with all his might to achieve 
 success in it. N^o man should be willing to give it up 
 and fall back upon the crutches of a fully written manu- 
 script which has to be read leaf by leaf, until he has 
 fought a good fight to attain to the other method and has 
 been driven back by the sense of his own failure to the 
 very last ditch. 
 
 In saying this I am well aware that the written sermon 
 has certain advantages. 
 
 1. It is the easier way to preach — the labor of writing 
 a sermon in full to be read from manuscript is nothing 
 when compared with the real work of preparing and de- 
 livering a sermon without manuscript. 
 
 2. The fully written sermon requires less material, for 
 
80 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 the ideas may be elaborated and worked out in all their 
 implications in a manner that is practically impossible 
 for a man speaking without manuscript. 
 
 3. The written sermon takes much less vitality in 
 actual delivery, for the manuscript preacher is entirely 
 freed from the anxiety which the other preacher must of 
 necessity suffer for several hours before entering his 
 pulpit and perhaps during the entire time spent in de- 
 livery. The man who preaches without a manuscript will 
 now and then suffer a complete breakdown which will 
 keep him scared and anxious for the next two or three 
 years. The manuscript preacher has it all there in black 
 and white, and nothing but a San Francisco earthquake 
 or some other untoward calamity can interfere with the 
 delivery of his message as he has planned it. 
 
 4. The written sermon is almost sure to exhibit a more 
 finished literary style and to make possible those niceties 
 of expression, those more delicate shades of meaning, 
 which the speaker without manuscript must sacrifice. 
 The man who cuts loose from a manuscript will almost 
 inevitably paint with a larger brush and find himself 
 unable to put into his pictures some of the more delicate 
 lines. 
 
 5. The manuscript preacher is in a better position to 
 preserve permanently the results of his work and have it 
 as a basis for the expenditure of further effort. He can 
 take an old sermon and with no loss in its former value 
 rewrite it in such a way as to add fifty per cent to its 
 interest and effectiveness. 
 
 6. The manuscript preacher is likely also to be more 
 accurate in his statements. It is always easier to tell the 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 81 
 
 tnith in a small room like the pastor's study where the 
 sermon is written than it is in a large auditorium, seating 
 a thousand people perhaps, where the sermon is delivered. 
 The power of seeing things as they are and of reporting 
 upon them accurately often varies inversely as the num- 
 ber of square yards in the room where the process is car- 
 ried on. 
 
 I may possibly be making out such a strong case in 
 favor of manuscript preaching as not to be able to say 
 anything convincing against it. But being myself a 
 preacher without manuscript I feel that it would be un- 
 just not to give the other method its dues. All this can 
 be said and said heartily in favor of manuscript preach- 
 ing. But there are great disadvantages to be charged up 
 against it — more than enough I believe to leave a good 
 sized credit on the other side of the column when the trial 
 balance is finally struck. These four counts at least can 
 be made against it. 
 
 1. N^ine people out of every ten, outside of purely 
 academic circles, are strongly prejudiced against it. They 
 may possibly be trained to like it or to endure it just as 
 a certain percentage of the population can be taught to 
 like tripe. But it is always a cultivated taste. The great 
 majority of the people never come to think of the manu- 
 script sermon as one of the staple articles of diet to which 
 their appetites instinctively turn with relish. 
 
 2. There is no other calling where a man in making 
 a popular appeal would trust for his results to a carefully 
 read paper. The lawyer does not stand before his jury 
 with a paper, even though it might have been written in 
 a style which combined all the excellences of Blackstone 
 
82 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 and of Edmund Burke. He speaks to them directly, 
 studying all the while their attitudes, their faces, their 
 eyes. If he had some kind of an X-ray which would 
 make plain to him the operations of their minds and the 
 articulations of their respective wills, he would want that 
 turned on so that he might watch for results, as they that 
 watch for the morning. 
 
 The political orator campaigning for votes would not 
 mount the hustings with a paper to be read, even though 
 the address were written in Addison's best English and 
 the thought as profound as that in Plato's Republic. 
 Jfone of these men would insulate himself by a thick pile 
 of paper from those with whom he would make connec- 
 tions and to whom he would impart himself as by some 
 mysterious electric current. 
 
 The actor on the stage does not appear before a popular 
 audience reading his lines from a well-thumbed volume 
 or from a typewritten manuscript. Imagine Edwin Booth 
 as he took the part of Brutus, the noblest Roman of them 
 all in the play of Julius Csesar, or Henry Irving as he 
 portrayed before our eyes the devilishness of Mephisto- 
 pheles in Goethe's Faust or Forbes Robertson delineating 
 in his own delicate exquisite fashion, the strange character 
 of Hamlet — imagine any one of those men reading from 
 paper those words which live and move and burn. It is 
 unthinkable. And they attempt this harder task of utter- 
 ing their words without manuscript merely to obtain a 
 corruptible crown. 
 
 3. In many cases also the use of a manuscript develops 
 a bad style of elocution. By the very act of reading the 
 head is often held in an unnatural position. The eyes 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 83 
 
 are taken away from those to whom the words are actually 
 addressed and are fixed upon paper. The mood of intel- 
 lectual abstraction is frequently induced by the very at- 
 tention given to the manuscript itself. All this tends to 
 rob one^s speech of that sympathetic quality which in- 
 sures effective delivery. When men say in unstudied 
 fashion exactly what they feel at the moment, they are 
 likely to get their inflections right and to have their 
 rhetorical pauses and all the rest of it straight. 
 
 4. The use of the manuscript permits and even en- 
 courages an ornate and somewhat remote literary style 
 which no one would use were he looking steadily into the 
 faces of the men to whom his message is to be delivered. 
 
 You may feel that in this criticism of the sermon read 
 from a manuscript I am putting it strongly. I am 
 indeed laying it on with a trowel, but I feel that in some 
 measure I have earned the right to speak out boldly on 
 this point. I earned that right by the sweat of my brow 
 and of my brain. I have learned whatever effectiveness 
 I may possess in public address by the things that I have 
 suffered. I am constitutionally nervous. In early life I 
 had to undergo the worst sort of embarrassment when I 
 had to do anything in public. The delivery of a five- 
 minute declamation in the Academy before my fellow 
 students put me into a cold sweat. And I often find 
 myself now all in a tremble when I am about to face an 
 audience. I still have to go apart at times and put myself 
 through a set of deep breathing exercises in order to gain 
 poise and self-control before speaking. 
 
 In addition to this physical disqualification for public 
 speaking, I had very little natural facility in expression. 
 
84 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 When I was on my feet, the right words would not come. 
 I knew what they were — I could have spelled them cor- 
 rectly in a written examination. But when I was in the 
 act of speaking I could not drag them out of their hiding 
 places. Whatever command of language I have attained 
 has come through a long period of hard, serious discipline? 
 both in writing and in speaking. 
 
 I began as a manuscript preacher. For several years 
 in my earlier ministry I wrote each sermon out in full 
 on a Remington typewriter and took it into the pulpit to 
 be read as best I could. And when I broke away from 
 that method and undertook to learn to preach without a 
 manuscript, I was beaten with rods of mortification. 
 Again and again I suffered shipwreck. By day and by 
 night I have been in the deep, right in my own pulpit. 
 I floundered around for many a bad half hour where I 
 knew the water was over my head and was painfully aware; 
 of the fact that I had not learned to swim. 
 
 In weariness and in painfulness, with backache on 
 Sunday night and headache on Monday morning, in cold 
 chills and in mental nakedness, I have labored at it be- 
 cause I believed that the spoken word could be made more 
 effective than the word read from manuscript. And be- 
 cause of my own struggles and because of the greater joy 
 and usefulness which I have found in the other mode of 
 preaching, I am here to say that almost any man, almost 
 any man, can learn to do it, if he is willing to pay the 
 price. 
 
 When I was making my earliest attempts along this 
 line I used to take long texts always, so that somewhere 
 within the confines of that section of Scripture I might 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 85 
 
 find ideas enough to insure my not running out of mate- 
 rial. I was preaching one Sunday night in the first 
 church I served in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, from 
 these words — "Wherefore seeing we also are encompassed 
 about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside 
 every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, 
 and let us run with patience the race that is set before 
 us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our 
 faith." I took the whole statement for my text, for I 
 felt that I had need of every bit of suggestive Scripture 
 anywhere in sight. After preaching that night for exactly 
 eleven minutes, I ran completely out of ideas. I could 
 not think of anything more that could be said on that 
 particular text or upon the general subject of the Chris- 
 tian religion. I was ashamed to stop so soon but I was 
 still more ashamed to keep my mouth going when I had 
 nothing to put into it. I therefore stopped, announced 
 the last hymn and pronounced the benediction wishing 
 that there was a back door in the church or some stately 
 formal recessional which would get me out of sight by 
 some short cut without having to see anybody. 
 
 The officers of the church thought that I must have 
 been taken suddenly ill. They came up to the altar to 
 inquire after my health and to express their solicitude 
 with a beautiful sympathy which became to me a thing 
 grievous to be borne. I was ashamed to tell them what 
 had actually happened. But the next day I did go to the 
 principal man in my church and I told him exactly what 
 had occurred. He was a lawyer and he leaned back in 
 his chair and laughed until he almost shook the huge 
 desk in front of him. I can still feel the quiver of the 
 
86 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 unseemly merriment which my recital produced in him. 
 But when he recovered himself, he said, "Keep right on ! 
 Keep right on, Parson — we would rather have eleven 
 minutes of that sort of preaching than half an hour of 
 the other. I would never risk one of my cases in court 
 by taking in a carefully prepared manuscript to be read 
 to the jury. You are pleading for a verdict and for a 
 much more important verdict than it is ever my lot to 
 secure. Keep your eyes on the jury and talk right at 
 them." 
 
 This was comforting and encouraging. And with the 
 hearty approval and the sustaining patience of the officers 
 of my church, I stuck to it until I learned to do it after 
 a fashion. And such as it is, conscious as I am that 
 every such preacher must sacrifice a great deal in literary 
 finish, in carefully balanced and delicately wrought out 
 sentences, I know beyond a perad venture that it has made 
 my own work in the pulpit more acceptable and more 
 useful than my manuscript preaching could ever have 
 been. 
 
 The people are patient and sympathetic with the man 
 who is striving to learn to speak in that direct way. They 
 like the courage of it — not many of them would ever 
 attempt such a thing. They would not hazard it even for 
 a single address of half an hour or of fifteen minutes to 
 say nothing of speaking steadily from the same pulpit 
 year in and year out without a manuscript. They like 
 to see a man standing right up before the target, able to 
 shoot without a rest. 
 
 I do not use the term "extemporaneous preaching," you 
 notice. There is no such thing. There is extemporaneous 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 87 
 
 twaddle and extemporaneous prattle and gabble, often- 
 times loud and unctuous and greasy. But real preaching 
 is never extemporaneous. The man who rushes into the 
 pulpit with no preparation beyond the possession of a 
 few scattering ideas (to which his title may be anything 
 but clear), trusting to the inspiration of the occasion and 
 the big physical "rousements" he intends to put in, to do 
 the rest, is not an extemporaneous preacher — he is an 
 extemporaneous rascal and an unmitigated nuisance. He 
 ought to be put down with a strong hand and an out- 
 stretched arm — and I should like to be the Presiding 
 Elder called upon to do the job. 
 
 The man who preaches without manuscript reaches 
 levels of joy in his preaching which I am sure the 
 preacher from manuscript knows not of. He has more 
 of the sense of high privilege ; he gains a larger measure 
 of that sense of response from the eyes and the minds and 
 the hearts of the people whom he is steadily watching: 
 he has more even of the sense of openness to God because 
 of his more daring reliance upon the aid of the Spirit 
 who works within us to will and to perform his good 
 pleasure in those moments when we are working out our 
 own salvation as efficient preachers of his Gospel. 
 
 It is all the better if the speaker can stand out free 
 and clear before his congregation with no wooden breast- 
 works acting as a hindering barrier. He will more 
 readily swing clear as he feels that he is there unimpeded, 
 with his truth and with the Lord of truth, to minister in 
 direct fashion to the appealing needs which are spread 
 out before him in those eyes which are looking into his 
 own. And the very doing of it with any measure of suc- 
 
 O 
 
88 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 cess will put a look of radiant joy into the homeliest face 
 any minister ever wore, causing it to shine. 
 
 It is like the difference between swimming with a 
 board or with a set of bladders tied under one's arms, and 
 real swimming. When a man launches out into the deep, 
 leaping in with nothing but his own powers to rely upon, 
 trusting to the water to take care of his venture, he finds, 
 if he has learned to swim, that the buoyant energy of the 
 water is able to keep and to float that which is committed 
 unto it. Then he knows the joy of swimming. And the 
 method of preaching withovit manuscript is like unto it. 
 
 This method of preaching opens the door for those fresh 
 visions of truth which come when a man is most thor- 
 oughly alive. You will see those old truths in new rela- 
 tions. You will see farther into their hidden meanings, 
 their implications and their applications. And under the 
 power of the inspiration which comes by such high effort 
 there will come to your mind ever and anon some great 
 new thought so precious that you will be well nigh beside 
 yourself in the joy of possessing it in your own right., 
 There are beautiful and helpful ideas which we strike out 
 in the quiet of our studies and there are also ideas, fairly 
 dynamic in their quality of spiritual stimulus, which are 
 struck out at white heat when the man stands before his 
 people possessed from head to foot with the keen joy of 
 self-impartation in things spiritual. 
 
 I have dwelt on this method of preaching because I 
 believe that by the use of it you can steadily add to the 
 really vital elements in your sermons. It enables you to 
 use your congregations and compel them to preach with 
 you as you look into their eyes and through their eyes 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 89 
 
 into their souls. You are sharing with them your best, 
 reaching all the while for something still better and by 
 the reaction which comes as you watch them and work 
 with them, they aid you in grasping that more complete 
 vision of the truth. 
 
 You can also add to your own stock of deep feeling by 
 feeling what they feel as it comes back to you. You can 
 draw them up to your own heart reenforcing your stock 
 of spiritual impulse by that which beats and throbs in 
 them. You can use your own sensibilities and theirs in 
 developing that full measure of enthusiasm and devotion 
 to which we must finally look for the abiding results of 
 successful preaching. 
 
 In order to do this most effectively you will need to 
 master your prepared material in advance and to master 
 it thoroughly. In the preparation of an outline it is well 
 for each man to prepare only as much as he can really 
 command and use, without too much reference to it while 
 he is in the act of speaking. The man who prepares a 
 very elaborate outline, with whole paragraphs of excep- 
 tional beauty written into it, with illustrations wrought 
 out in exquisite detail, with lovely quotations of poetry 
 which he must turn back to his outline to read, is handi- 
 capped from the start. He misses the real points of 
 strength in both styles of preaching. He is forever be- 
 tween the saddle and the ground. He would be all right 
 if he were either walking or riding, but now in his con- 
 stant recurrence to that elaborate outline, he has one foot 
 in the stirrup with the other hopping along on the ground 
 or waving up and dowTi along the flanks of the horse. 
 He has neither the security of a firm seat in the saddle 
 
90 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 nor the humbler satisfaction of standing with both feet 
 firmly on mother earth. 
 
 How much outline any man can use to advantage de- 
 pends upon these two things: (1) Upon the retentive 
 quality of his mind and (2) upon how well the outline 
 is built. Have only so much outline as you can master 
 and use. 
 
 If your elaborately prepared outline with its load of 
 detail causes you to stumble in the delivery of your mes- 
 sage, cut it off and cast it from thee. It is better to enter 
 into life maimed, than having two hands and two feet, 
 four heads and sixteen subheads to stumble along in in- 
 effectiveness. There are sermons which would add sev- 
 eral cubits to their stature by having a capital surgical 
 operation performed upon them in advance. 
 
 When you assemble the material of your sermon largely 
 out of your own interiors, when you brood over it lovingly 
 and meditatively in advance, and when you discover new 
 meanings and glories in it, as you stand up to deliver it 
 in such fashion as to cause men's hearts to burn within 
 them, you will inevitably enter into the mood of your 
 theme. This is absolutely imperative. You have heard 
 sermons where the content of the sermon was in one key 
 and the content of the man was in quite another — and 
 inevitably the spiritual discord was something horrible. 
 
 If a man is to preach on some great theme he must- soak 
 in it until every fiber of his being is saturated with it. 
 He must feel it himself, if he is to make other men feel 
 it to the point of acting upon it. The man who is sour, 
 or harsh, or wooden, cannot in the very nature of the case 
 preach on the divine compassion for men or upon the sac- 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 91 
 
 rifice of Christ or upon the high office of human sym- 
 pathy. He cannot in that mood touch any one of these 
 themes with any sense of reality. He does not speak the 
 language in which they were born. It matters not what 
 words he may use, the life of the theme is wanting and 
 the whole utterance is a performance as dead as the move- 
 ments of some automaton wound up to do its stunt of 
 antics on the stage. You could never say of that man's 
 words, they are spirit and they are life. His preaching 
 will be vain. 
 
 If the minister is to preach on some difficult theme the 
 need for this preliminary brooding is all the greater, N^o 
 man is competent to preach on future punishment until 
 it almost breaks his heart to declare what he solemnly 
 believes to be the avrful fate of continued resistance to 
 the divine will. If a man is accustomed to pray for half 
 an hour over his sermon when he preaches on the love 
 of God, he had better pray for an hour and a half when 
 he is to preach on the fate of the wicked. 
 
 The glib, raw, fierce way in which some preachers have 
 preached about "hell" has been like the unpardonable 
 sin against the Holy Spirit. There is a certain popular 
 evangelist to-day of much renown who preaches about the 
 doom of sinful men with a style of invective and a tone 
 of voice that would take the bark off the trees if there 
 were any trees within reach. And we may be certain that 
 such rough work does scratch and wound and repel the 
 sensitive souls of many who fall under the dire influence 
 of such a presentation. 
 
 The Master arraigned the Pharisees in that twenty- 
 third chapter of Matthew in words so piercing that it is 
 
92 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 almost impossible for us to read them aloud. They fairly 
 scorch our lips, they are so terrible. But I am confident 
 that his tone, his look and his manner were not in any 
 sense harsh or fierce. I should say that those a\vful words 
 were uttered in a mood of solemn tenderness. His mood 
 was one of infinite disappointment over the moral tragedy 
 wrought out under the false leadership of those Pharisees 
 in the nation which he loved supremely because it was 
 his own. 
 
 I am strengthened in this conviction by the fact that 
 the awful arraignment comes to its climax in that heart- 
 break which uttered itself in those words of tenderness. 
 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often would I have 
 gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings. And ye would not !" How 
 often would I — but ye would not! "Your house is left 
 unto you desolate!" And his own great heart in that 
 hour when he mourned over them, was likewise deso- 
 late. 
 
 This brooding over your material until you are fully 
 in the mood of the message you wish to convey will help 
 you to create the atmosphere demanded for effective 
 preaching. People cannot hear anything in a vacuum — 
 there is no sustaining medium on which the sound waves 
 may be carried to the listening ear. And the people can- 
 not hear very much of a church service in an atmosphere 
 where there is nothing but oxygen and nitrogen. They 
 might hear a brass band playing. They might hear the 
 vigorous yelling of a set of college boys at a football game 
 or the roar of a stamp mill grinding out the gold from 
 the quartz. But in an atmosphere where there is only 
 
THE CONTENT OF THE SERMON 93 
 
 oxygen and nitrogen they will not hear very much of a 
 church service. 
 
 If they are to hear the softer and more intensive notes 
 in the message you hring, there must be that atmosphere 
 where spiritual sound waves will carry. There must be 
 a suitable sustaining medium so that your words and your 
 purpose and your feeling may indeed reach the hearts of 
 those for whom the message is intended. Your own high 
 mood of devotion as people see it in your face, as they 
 hear it in the deeper undertones of your voice, as it finds 
 expression in your reading of the Scripture lesson and 
 in your prayer, that mood of devotion will, if it be full 
 and strong, create and maintain that atmosphere where 
 the voice of the Spirit as He speaks through you will 
 reach and find the attentive souls of those who hear. 
 
 In these days of wireless, the ships whisper to each 
 other across the wide stretches of open sea. Any one 
 watching the process from the outside would see nothing, 
 hear nothing, feel nothing of what was taking place. The 
 receiver has to be adjusted and attuned to the precise 
 wave lengths created by the transmitter where the mes- 
 sage is being sent forth. 
 
 Hear then the parable of the wireless! By your own 
 worshipful mood and by your ability to lead the thoughts 
 of your people heavenward, it is your high office to adjust 
 the receiving capacity of all those waiting hearts until 
 every one of them will hear and heed the whispers of the 
 Divine Spirit. 
 
IV 
 
 THE MEASURE OF THE SEEMON 
 
 YOU will all agree with me that the sermon has 
 dimensions. It has length, we all know. The 
 people who do the listening are sometimes pain- 
 fully aware that it has length. And there are unhappily 
 some sermons which seem to have little else — they are 
 sermons mainly of one dimension. 
 
 These sermons have length and they have it more abun- 
 dantly than the hearers would desire. But they are lack- 
 ing in breadth, in any wide range of sympathy, in any 
 broad vision of the Kingdom, in points of contact with the 
 everyday lives of those to whom they are addressed. 
 They are lacking in depth, in depth of conviction, in any 
 firm grasp of the fundamental principles which underlie 
 all personal well-being and all social advance. They are 
 lacking in height, in height of aspiration, in that outward, 
 upward, Godward reach of faith which carries the real 
 sermon above the dead level of the commonplace mo- 
 ralities. 
 
 However it may be in mathematics there is always a 
 fourth dimension in sermons. If the sermon is broad in 
 its sympathies, in the range of its interest, and in the 
 scope of its outlook upon the needs of the world; if it is 
 deep in its grasp of those fundamental, underlying prin- 
 ciples and verities which worthily sustain it; and if it is 
 
 94 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 95 
 
 high, not merely in the level of its actual achievement 
 hut in the upward reach of its aspiration, then it adds to 
 its appropriate length the necessary qualities of breadth 
 and height and depth. And by this needed extension it 
 comes to be a well built, symmetrical sermon. The length 
 and the breadth and the height of every sermonic struc- 
 ture should be approximately equal. 
 
 But here in this lecture I desire to give more particular 
 attention to one special dimension — let me speak as 
 strongly as I can about the length of the sermon. If any 
 man in the uninstructed goodness of his heart is inclined 
 to look upon this as an unimportant matter, let him ask 
 his laymen. They will give him wisdom liberally and 
 upbraid him besides if he fails to give heed to their well 
 matured judgment. Their minds are all made up on this 
 point. They have convictions as robust as the opinions 
 of John Calvin. And these resolute laymen are all of 
 them opposed, firstly, secondly, thirdly, lastly and all the 
 time to long sermons. And I may say, just in passing, 
 that my own personal sympathies are entirely with the 
 laymen in their fundamental contention. 
 
 There is no reason in the nature of the case why a ser- 
 mon should be just so long. Why should a sermon be just 
 thirty minutes, or forty minutes, or if by reason of un- 
 usual powers of endurance and of attenuation, sixty min- 
 utes in length? There is no more reason that a man's 
 sermon should be just so long, than there is that a man's 
 trousers should be just so long. It all depends on the 
 length of the man. In one case it depends upon the length 
 of the man's legs, and in the other case it depends on the 
 length of the man's mind. 
 
96 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 The proper length of any sermon must be determined 
 in the light of the reach and power of the man's mental 
 grasp, in the light of his capacity to hold, to interest and 
 to profit a body of hearers by his presentation of the truth. 
 And you will all agree with me, I am sure, that there are 
 men abroad in the land, who would make a much better 
 appearance and would accomplish more good by their 
 preaching, if they selected their trousers and determined 
 the length of their sermons with a more accurate reference 
 to their own particular sizes. 
 
 The sermon always is nothing more nor less than a tool ! 
 What size should a tool be ? How long should a scythe be ? 
 How heavy should an axe be ? This cannot be determined 
 by certain fixed presuppositions or by any a priori prin- 
 ciples about the formation of tools. It is to be determined 
 altogether by the demands of the task to which this par- 
 ticular tool is to be applied. A man will mow more grass 
 with a scythe of reasonable length than he would with a 
 scythe twenty feet long. He will cut more wood with a 
 five pound axe than he could with one weighing twenty 
 pounds. The sermon also is a tool and its length is to be 
 determined entirely by those considerations which indicate 
 its fitness or its unfitness to accomplish a desired spiritual 
 result. 
 
 We may therefore lay aside at the very start all our 
 predilections in favor of a thirty or a forty minute sermon 
 as having some divinely imposed sanction. There are no 
 promises made in the Bible to the effect that people will 
 be richly blessed and finally rewarded by being taken to 
 heaven when they die, for having listened patiently to 
 fifty-two unduly prolonged sermons in each of the years 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 97 
 
 of their earthly pilgrimage. The question of length is a 
 practical question altogether and it is to be answered by 
 the application of the pragmatic test. What length of 
 sermon works best ? What length of sermon accomplishes 
 most in creating, nurturing and directing Christian im- 
 pulse ? If that can be determined, we shall have the 
 proper length of discourse indicated. Whatever brand of 
 philosophy you may prefer touching other vital interests, 
 in determining the length of your sermon, you would better 
 all be pragmatists. The length of sermon that works best 
 in producing spiritual results is the right length. 
 
 With that general principle firmly in mind let me hasten 
 to say that the clock has nothing to do with the length of 
 a sermon. ^Nothing whatever ! Clocks know nothing about 
 the matter: clocks are in no wise competent to pass upon 
 the proportions of a sermon. A long sermon is a sermon 
 that seems long. It may have lasted an hour or it may 
 have lasted but fifteen minutes. If it seems long, it is 
 long — it is too long. And the short sermon is one that 
 ends while people are still wishing for more. It may 
 have lasted only twenty minutes or it may have lasted for 
 an hour and a half. If it leaves the people wishing for 
 more, they do not know nor care what the clock said about 
 the length of it. 
 
 You cannot tell, therefore, how long a sermon is by 
 watching the hands of a clock — watch the people. See 
 where their hands are. If the hands of the men are for 
 the most part in their vest pockets pulling out their 
 watches to note again how long you have been at it, this 
 is ominous. See where their ejes are ! See where their 
 minds are, then you will know exactly what time of day 
 
98 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 it is for that particular sermon. It may be high time for 
 it to come to an end. 
 
 If a man is unconscious, either because he is asleep or 
 because he is already numb through the painful effort of 
 listening: or if a man is unconscious because he is inter- 
 ested beyond measure, and lifted into such a sense of the 
 immensities and the eternities of a higher experience as 
 not to know whether he is in the body or out, he is entirely 
 oblivious of clocks. A thousand minutes are to him as one, 
 and one minute as a thousand. Time is no more. He 
 has already entered into life eternal. He is actually living 
 in a world unseen with no sense whatever of the lapse of 
 what we call time. He may never have heard of the man 
 named Einstein but he will have experienced to the full 
 the truth contained in the doctrine of relativity. 
 
 There was that woman of Samaria ! The day was hot 
 and she was thirsty. She came forth to Jacob's well to 
 get a pitcher of water. She found sitting by the well a 
 mysterious stranger. The possibility of any sympathetic 
 contact of his interests with hers seemed remote. He was 
 a man, she was a woman — and in the Orient that means 
 a gulf fixed. He was a Jew, she was a Samaritan — and 
 the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. Race 
 prejudice and religious bigotry had dug that giilf still 
 deeper. He was the sinless Son of God and she was a 
 woman morally bankrupt, living at that hour with a man 
 who was not her husband. Her own wrong doing had 
 widened that gulf into a chasm of separation. 
 
 The only thing they seemed to have in common was the 
 fact that they were both thirsty. The Master began on 
 that narrow bit of common ground. Wlien he saw the 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 99 
 
 woman filling her water pot he said to her, "Give me a 
 drink." And presently growing directly out of their con- 
 versation touching that simple interest of thirst, he was 
 speaking to her of "living water" which would not leave 
 whole sections of her nature still athirst. He was speaking 
 of a worship which was not limited to "this mountain" 
 nor to "Jerusalem," a worship universal in its scope he- 
 cause it was offered "in spirit and in truth." He was 
 fixing her eyes not upon her sin, nor upon her sect, but 
 upon her God. He was revealing to her One who could 
 lift her out of her sins. 
 
 In this high exercise of faculty the woman forgot all 
 about her thirst. She forgot the errand which had brought 
 her out to Jacob's well. "She left her water pot," the 
 record says, and went to the city entreating all she met to 
 come and see One who had revealed her to herself. He 
 had spoken to her as if he might have known all the things 
 that ever she had done. And Jesus also forgot his hunger. 
 When his disciples who had gone to the village to buy 
 food returned and prayed him to eat, he said to them, "I 
 am not hungry." And when they whispered among them- 
 selves, "Hath any man brought him aught to eat," He said 
 to them, with a smile, "I have meat to eat, that ye know 
 not of." 
 
 Here was that utter absorption in higher interests which 
 causes men and women alike to forget the claims of the 
 body as expressed in hunger and thirst ! Here was an 
 effective tribute to the power of great ideas ! And when 
 congregations are eating that meat which the thoughtless 
 know not of, and drinking that "living water" which be- 
 comes a veritable well of satisfaction in each heart spring- 
 
100 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 ing up with an everlasting life, all sense of time relations 
 vanishes. The duration of any sermon is therefore to be 
 indicated in terms of consciousness or of unconsciousness 
 rather than by those figures which have to do with hours, 
 and minutes, and seconds. 
 
 There are some things, however, which tend to make any 
 sermon seem long. The long text may do it even before 
 you have really begun. If the minister reads for his text 
 three or four difficult, intricate verses from one of the 
 minor prophets or even from the close knit letters of Paul, 
 the people are apt to feel that they are in for a good deal 
 even though the sermon in store for them may last only 
 twenty minutes. The text should never be too long to be 
 uttered easily in a single breath. We get better results 
 always when we cut up the children's meat into conven- 
 iently sized mouthfuls. 
 
 One entire sentence of Scripture may be entirely too 
 long for a useful text. The sentence which is really suit' 
 able for a text allows the voice to fall some time before it 
 is ready to drop from sheer exhaustion. The second sen- 
 tence in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, for example, con- 
 tains by actual count two hundred and sixty-seven words. 
 It is like one of those involved German sentences in which 
 Mark Twain said a man could travel all day without 
 changing cars. This one sentence from Ephesians with 
 its two hundred and sixty-seven words has in it entirely 
 too many words for a suitable text — about two hundred 
 and fifty too many. 
 
 The length of many of the apostle's sentences indeed, 
 as well as the intricacy of their construction, was one 
 reason perhaps why Peter felt moved to say on one occa- 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 101 
 
 sion that "in the epistles of our beloved brother Paul there 
 are some things hard to be understood." In our critical 
 study of the Pauline epistles we have all had a fellow feel- 
 ing with the frank outspoken Peter. If the apostle to 
 the Gentiles had cultivated the habit of coming more read- 
 ily to a full stop, allowing his voice to fall a bit sooner, 
 he might not have suffered this adverse comment from the 
 apostle to the circumcision. One clear, definite statement 
 from Scripture, brief enough to be uttered readily and 
 easy to remember when used as a text, gives the sermon a 
 much more promising start. 
 
 It may be that less than an entire sentence, where the 
 sense is not destroyed nor distorted, will furnish a most 
 suggestive and helpful text for a sermon. Here are some 
 good examples! "There is a lad here." "I was afraid 
 and I went and hid." "In the year that King Uzziah 
 died, I saw the Lord." "As much as in me is, I am 
 ready." "Sell and give." 
 
 When you begin to read the verse the people will ex- 
 pect to hear the whole of it. Your action in taking but 
 that part of it which suggests in vivid fashion some vital 
 truth will at once arrest attention. Doctor John Henry 
 Jowett has a most effective sermon on prayer from this 
 text, "When ye pray, say, Our." The unwonted use of a 
 portion of a most familiar verse of Scripture will aid you 
 in promptly enlisting the interest of a congregation. 
 
 The same criticism holds against the long, intricate sen- 
 tences sometimes perpetrated by the preachers themselves 
 upon their people. If it is a full Sabbath day's journey 
 from a man's nominative case to his leading verb, there 
 are a great many tired, reluctant minds in any congrega- 
 
102 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 tiou which will decline to make the trip. The sentence 
 which moves straight from start to finish like an arrow 
 shot from the bowstring to the target, without being too 
 long about it, is always the more effective. 
 
 The literary style of the Sermon on the Mount is limpid 
 as a pool. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart 
 be. JSTo man can serve two masters. Seek first the king- 
 dom of God. Ask, and it shall be given you. Whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. 
 By their fruits ye shall know them. Blessed are the pure 
 in heart, for they shall see God." Monosyllables for the 
 most part — in the sentences I have just quoted there are 
 sixty-one words and all but six of them words of one syl- 
 lable. Sentences brief and straight! The style as clear 
 as the water of a running brook ! The depth of those state- 
 ments is fathomless but in their literary form they are 
 clear as crystal. It was of the manner and the style of 
 Christ's speech as well as of the substance, that m.en said 
 and have been saying for two thousand years and will 
 continue to say forever more, "He spake as never man 
 spake." The long involved sentences will cause any man 
 to stumble in his delivery thereby making his sermon less 
 effective — cut them off and cast them from thee. It is 
 better to enter into life maimed than having pious sen- 
 tences as long as from Dan to Beersheba to fall into the pit 
 of dullness. 
 
 A long introduction will make a sermon seem long. 
 When one man is introduced to another, the two parties 
 to the transaction desire to be made acquainted with their 
 respective names. It may also be well for them to have 
 some interesting fact regarding each man briefly sug- 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 103 
 
 gested. It helps tlieni in starting' their conversation 
 to know something about each other. But they do not 
 care to know all the past history in each case, or even 
 so much of it as might be found in "Who's Who." When 
 the brief necessary words of introduction have been ut- 
 tered, then the two men can best shift for themselves. 
 
 It is so with all introductions — particularly with those 
 which undertake to put a theme and a congregation on 
 such pleasant and intimate terms with each other as to 
 enable them at once to spend a profitable half hour to- 
 gether. Not in these words naturally, but after this man- 
 ner introduce ye : Ladies and gentlemen, my theme ! My 
 theme, this is my congregation ! Then allow them to enter 
 at once upon that intimate and profitable contact for which 
 the half hour is set apart. There is no better way of get- 
 ting the attention of a congregation than by giving them 
 as promptly as possible something worth attending to. 
 
 The man who cannot preach from the E^ew Testament 
 without beginning at the Babylonian Captivity in order 
 to get a good running start, or from the Old Testament 
 without giving a complete sketch of the history of the Jews 
 from the days when the morning stars sang together and 
 all the sons of God shouted for joy, needs to study more 
 fully the nature of an introduction. 
 
 There are men who consume such an amount of time 
 in putting on the tablecloth and distributing the knives 
 and forks, that the people begin to wonder whether or not 
 they are to have anything to eat. If the poor man only 
 knew it, his hearers are all impatiently saying to him, 
 "Get on, man, get on, and give us a chance at your sub- 
 ject !" 
 
104 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 The lack of arrangement also tends to make any sermon 
 seem long. There was once an uneducated Irishman who 
 picked up a pocket dictionary and started in to read it 
 through. He said afterward that the book seemed to be 
 full of valuable information, but for the life of him, he 
 could not get "the thread of the discourse." There are 
 sermons which have a lot of good stuff in them, but the 
 material is not arranged in any sort of order. The points 
 do not come in logical fashion, 1, 2, 3, 4, — they come like 
 the signals at a football game, 7, 2, 19, 23, 45, 11. The 
 signals in the football game are purposely introduced in 
 that confusing fashion so that they may not be understood 
 by the players on the opposite side. The lack of order in 
 the arrangement of sermon material works out a similar 
 uncertainty and confusion in the minds of the people in 
 the pews and to that extent it makes directly against the 
 winning of the game by the minister who has not learned 
 to count. 
 
 The dinner is always enjoyed the more, and, according 
 to the best physiologists, it contributes more directly to- 
 ward physical well-being, where the courses are arranged 
 in some rational order. If we had the ice-cream served 
 first, with the soup, the fish, the roast and the salad scat- 
 tered about in any sort of hit-or-miss fashion as might 
 happen, the dinner would be much less enjoyable and 
 much less nourishing. 
 
 There is a strong prejudice in the minds of many peo- 
 ple, and in the minds of some ill-advised ministers, against 
 the use of a skeleton in the sermon. It is unfortunate if 
 the appearance of the sermon is bony. And there are a 
 great many sermons which would make a much better 
 
TPIE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 105 
 
 appearance if they had eaten more meat before they en- 
 tered the pulpit. But it ought to be remembered that 
 while pink and white flesh is ever so much more beautiful 
 to look at than the skeleton in the surgeon's closet, the 
 pink and white flesh would be without either grace or 
 utility if there were no bones hidden away somewhere 
 within that graceful contour. And there are just as many 
 bones in the lovely young woman, whose appearance is so 
 entirely satisfactory, as there are in the skeleton hanging 
 in the closet. 
 
 The bony appearance of the sermon is to be avoided, 
 not by building it without any particular plan, but by 
 clothing the outline with living tissue. It is written in 
 the book of life that the mollusk can never do the work 
 of the vertebrate. The mollusk sermon may have plenty 
 of good soft thought in it, furnishing in abundance edible 
 material which could be used in making a homiletic chow- 
 der. But if the sermon can neither "sit nor stand," to 
 say nothing of being able to "rise and go," it will fail in 
 its effectiveness. 
 
 The skeleton of the sermon need not be exposed over- 
 much. A house with the studding and the rafters and all 
 the necessary framework on the outside would present a 
 singular and an unfortunate appearance. That comely 
 young woman with her full quota of two hundred and eight 
 bones hidden away somewhere within her loveliness, would 
 sacrifice a great deal if she undertook to wear her ribs 
 on the outside of her clothing. The present styles of dress 
 have done a good deal in that direction — they certainly 
 leave much less to the unaided imagination than did the 
 styles in vogue when I was a young man. And in that 
 
106 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 measure tliej seem to some of us to have rendered much 
 less attractive the more beautiful half of the human fam- 
 ily. But, as Kipling would say, "that is another story." 
 Keturning to my less distracting and less perilous theme, 
 the sermon which obtrudes its bones upon the public like 
 some poor famine-stricken sufferer from India is likely 
 to suggest to the congregation that it also has not had 
 enough to eat before it was brought out for exhibition. 
 
 In the earlier days at Yale University there was a cer- 
 tain preacher who was strong on heads and subheads. He 
 would have been a joy to Elspeth McFadyen, the famous 
 sermon taster of Drumtochty. She could have followed 
 him and have memorized his divisions without ever turn- 
 ing a hair. He would introduce Roman I, Roman II, 
 Arabic 1, Arabic 2, One in brackets, two in brackets, 
 and sometimes drawing it still finer, would bring in his 
 A's and B's and C's. He would announce these minute 
 subdivisions as definitely as if he had been giving a lesson 
 in trigonometry. 
 
 There was also at that time a student in the Junior 
 Class at Yale with a keen sense of humor who felt that 
 the Lord had delivered this tiresome preacher into his 
 hands. This Junior organized his class for a concerted 
 movement. The next time this preacher appeared in Bat- 
 tell Chapel, the whole Junior Class was ready. And 
 when he passed from Roman I to Arabic one, or from one 
 in brackets to two in brackets, they all crossed their legs 
 simultaneously in one direction; and when he passed an- 
 other bony headline on the coast of his discourse, they un- 
 crossed their legs and crossed them over the other way. 
 ^'his bit of exercise was very refreshing to their weary 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 107 
 
 spirits. And it soon became immensely diverting to the 
 rest of the congregation. The Seniors across the aisle and 
 the Freshmen and the visitors in the galleries withdrew 
 their attention entirely from the unfortunate preacher to 
 watch this mighty movement of three hundred pairs of 
 legs as the preacher passed from point to point. He too 
 presently became aware of what was taking place and the 
 sight of so much flesh and blood in action was too much 
 for even his dull spirit. He hastily closed his sermon and 
 gave out the last hymn. It is not recorded what that hymn 
 was — it might well have been, 
 
 "Look how we grovel here below, 
 Fond of these trifling toys, 
 Our souls can neither fly nor go. 
 To reach eternal joys." 
 
 The Junior was suspended for taking the leading part 
 in that demonstration but I hope for the credit of Yale 
 and for the credit of our own preaching profession that his 
 punishment was not of long duration. If I had been Dean 
 of the Divinity School at that time I should have been 
 almost tempted to recommend him for an assistant pro- 
 fessorship in the department of homiletics. 
 
 Have a solid backbone hidden away somewhere in your 
 sermon so that it can stand up man-fashion and do its 
 work. Organize your material around that spinal column, 
 heads, arms, legs, fleshy parts, muscles to grip the people 
 and nerves to respond to the movements of their own feel- 
 ings, so that it may accomplish the desired end. You 
 cannot afford to be one of those preachers who always 
 
108 THE AKT OF PREACHING 
 
 give the impression that having lost the trail, they are now 
 going hither and yon on any chance impulse like silly 
 sheep vi^hich have erred and strayed from the way. Have 
 a definite plan but do not have it too much in evidence. 
 
 The well-built sermon is always easier to deliver be- 
 cause the points, following each other naturally and there- 
 fore inevitably, can be more readily remembered by the 
 preacher himself. When I forget and leave out certain 
 vital points in one of my sermons I always know that the 
 sermon was not well built. If that particular idea had 
 been needed just there in the construction of that sermon, 
 I should not have forgotten it. 
 
 The well-built sermon will enlist the interest and atten- 
 tion of the people more completely. Even the untrained 
 mind will feel the lack of something if the minister goes 
 skipping about, liable to break out anywhere. The well- 
 built sermon is also more easily remembered by the people, 
 for the points can be held in the mind to the spiritual 
 profit of the hearer. And the well-built sermon rounds it- 
 self out and stops at last by virtue of its own careful or- 
 ganization. The organic tree or animal by the very ne- 
 cessities of its own being comes to an end somewhere, 
 while the inorganic may, like Tennyson's brook, go on 
 forever. This is fearfully and wonderfully true of certain 
 inorganic sermons as every patient churchgoer knows full 
 well. 
 
 The sermon is made to seem unduly long by the man 
 who dwells on the ol)vious. It may be necessary now and 
 then for a public speaker to say that two and two make 
 four. It is not necessary, however, to enlarge upon that 
 statement and rub it in, or to illustrate it, or to exhort the 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 109 
 
 people to put their full, unhesitating trust in it. The 
 moment such a truth is uttered, the people are saying, "Wo 
 know that. We feel the full force of it. Now what comes 
 of it ? What bearing has it upon the problems of life as 
 we face them? Proceed at once to what follows." 
 
 It may be appropriate now and then for a preacher to 
 say that the sun rose yesterday morning in the east and 
 on time as usual. This is a perfectly sound statement ; it 
 would be regarded as sound even at Princeton. But the 
 people are only interested in knowing what comes of it. 
 The fact itself is instantly apparent without further effort 
 on the part of the man who makes the reference — now let 
 him get down to business and make some worthy use of 
 what is so entirely obvious. 
 
 Unless you are unfolding some old truth in a new way, 
 or making a fresh application of some old truth to changed 
 conditions, or by your vital interpretation of it, causing 
 that old truth to live over again in the hearts of your peo- 
 ple, you are in a fair way to bore your congregation. You 
 will rob them of their time to no purpose when you need- 
 lessly dwell upon that which is undeniably old and fa- 
 miliar. The man who dwells even for three minutes on 
 some perfectly obvious truth will cause the people to feel 
 that he has been preaching to them for a full half hour. 
 
 The preacher who dawdles over his stories and illustra- 
 tions leaves the impression of having preached a long ser- 
 mon. The illustration is to be put out clear and straight 
 so that all can see it and then left at once to the minds 
 of the people. It is safe to trust something to their 
 own mental capacity in the way of application. The 
 suggestive illustration has ten times more force in it than 
 
110 THE ART OP PREACHING 
 
 the one which has been chewed to rags. The homiletic 
 pabulum which has been Fletcherized and predigested be- 
 fore it is turned over to the people for their sustenance 
 is never really appetizing. The perennial charm which 
 attaches to the parables of Christ is due in considerable 
 measure to the fact that they suggest so much more than 
 is directly declared. There are people who always mean 
 exactly what they say. Our Lord meant a great deal more 
 than he actually said in so many words. 
 
 Into one of our Connecticut pulpits there came one 
 summer a visiting minister who used for an illustration 
 the pathos which attaches to an unoccupied house in the 
 country located on an abandoned farm. It would have 
 served his purpose fairly well, had he introduced it in a 
 touch-and-go manner. But he dwelt on it. He described 
 every broken window pane and every rod of fence. He 
 gave us full details regarding every patch of weeds and 
 every old stump on that abandoned farm. He used it until 
 he had used it up. And then ever and anon he would 
 return to it for some additional reference. He kept that 
 '"abandoned farm" before that suffering congregation un- 
 til any man present would have bought it from him at any 
 price the minister might have chosen to name, simply to 
 get it out of his hands. The people are wearied and the 
 force of an illustration is altogether destroyed by the habit 
 of dawdling over the insignificant details. In speaking 
 to the people as well as in speaking to the Lord "use not 
 vain repetitions" as the heathen do. 
 
 The steady monotone, sometimes known among the un- 
 godly as the "preaching tone," will make any sermon 
 seem long. The droning of a sawmill at a distance, or the 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 111 
 
 steady rumble of some easy going railroad train will often- 
 times lull a wide-awake man to sleep. The monotonous 
 droning of a preacher's delivery in a similar way may 
 take away all desire to listen or even to stay awake. If 
 such ministers would open a sanitarium for insomnia, the 
 only other equipment they would need would be beds — 
 their own homiletic efforts would provide all the necessary 
 treatment. 
 
 The man who is uniformly earnest, uniformly tender, 
 uniformly emphatic ; the man who is striving to say some- 
 thing appealing and helpful with every breath he draws, 
 becomes wearisome. If he would only drop now and then 
 into some colloquialism for a moment or rise occasionally 
 to something impassioned, it would aid him greatly in 
 holding the attention of his people. 
 
 The conversational method wears better than any other, 
 because it has in it more of the element of variety, and be- 
 cause it also strikes more effectually the human note. 
 And when everything is said and done, preaching is talk- 
 ing — it is talking on a serious subject to serious-minded 
 people for serious ends. But at its best it is talking rather 
 than oratory. How much is suggested where we read, 
 *'He opened his mouth and taught them." The natural- 
 ness and the inevitableness of what he said, springing as 
 it did directly out of what he was, are there suggested in 
 that effective comment. He simply opened his mouth — 
 and out it came in the most natural way in the world. 
 
 The conclusions of sermons which are a long time in 
 concluding tend to make these sermons seem long. The 
 minister who is accustomed to say, "ISTow one thing more" 
 would better not make it sixteen more. If he says, ''Now, 
 
112 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 in conclusion," let him conclude promptly. He ought to 
 keep faith with the people when once he awakens a joyful 
 expectation of that sort in their minds. It is never wise 
 to trifle with the feelings of a congregation on anything so 
 sacred and vital as the conclusion of a sermon. You have 
 all heard sermons which dragged along and seemed to 
 indicate that the preacher did not know on what street 
 the grand terminal was to he found. When the patience 
 of the genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was once 
 being thus tried at a tiresome service he whispered to his 
 companion, "Do you suppose by any chance he has en- 
 tirely forgotten the conclusion of his sermon?" 
 
 Furthermore, the moment a preacher begins to throw 
 in those encouraging asides "Just one thing more" or 
 "Now in conclusion" he makes many of his hearers un- 
 easy. They feel as if they ought to be getting their rub- 
 bers on in place of listening with undivided attention to 
 what may be the most vital portion of the man's ser- 
 mon. 
 
 It is possible to bring people into a fine mood of Chris- 
 tian aspiration and of high resolve, and then by useless 
 reiteration and wearisome exhortation to get them out 
 of that mood again, so that some of them will go away 
 almost sorry that they came to church. "Exhorting" and 
 "exhausting" not only sound alike — in the effect produced 
 upon many a congregation the two processes there indi- 
 , cated are very much alike. Remember always that you 
 . are preaching for the sake of the people. You are not 
 preaching to fill up a given amount of time, or to get a 
 certain number of ideas off of your mind. And when 
 the sermon has really accomplished its high end in making 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 113 
 
 a definite spiritual impression, it had better stop before 
 that result is marred. 
 
 In my own practice, while I never use a manuscript in 
 preaching, there are five sentences in my sermon which I 
 always write out in advance and know by heart — the first 
 one and the last four. I like to begin, if I can, with a 
 sentence as good as I know how to make it, so that the 
 first ball may be pitched, if possible, right over the plate 
 and at the proper level. And I want to have the last four 
 sentences definitely in mind so that I may not be left 
 circling around in the air, like some helpless crow, flying 
 to and fro above a rail fence where the stakes have all been 
 sharpened, seeking in vain for a suitable place to light. 
 
 When the minister has gotten his case all in, strong and 
 clear as he can make it, then let him utter a few swift 
 sentences to send it home and lodge it permanently in the 
 minds and hearts of the people, and then cease. If he 
 leaves them wishing that he had gone on for five or ten 
 minutes more, it will not do any harm. If they are still 
 a bit hungry, they will be more apt to come back for fur- 
 ther spiritual rations on the following Sunday. 
 
 It is a good rule in physical hygiene to leave the table 
 while one could still eat a little more if he were urged. 
 It makes for good digestion and for the continuance of 
 that healthy appetite which brings us back to the table 
 again and again each time with an eager relish for what- 
 ever may be there in store for us. You can apply the same 
 principle to preaching. If your people are allowed to 
 leave their pews some little time before they are com- 
 pletely surfeited by the undeniably good things you are 
 urging upon them, they will be more ready to come back 
 
114 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 when the bell rings and another feast is spread for them 
 in the house of the Lord. In preaching as in prayer men 
 are not heard for their much speaking. 
 
 Now having indicated some things which are calculated 
 to make the sermon seem long, let me also indicate certain 
 qualities which make the sermon seem short. The first 
 
 /I l^ne is to be found in not making the sermon too long when 
 it is prepared. I believe in preparing a sermon which is 
 an hour in length as to its real content and then condens- 
 ing it so that it can be preached in twenty-five or thirty 
 minutes. This can be done to the profit of all your hearers. 
 In your unregenerate fishing days, before you learned 
 to fish properly with a fly, you may have resorted to bait. 
 You will remember how those long, squirming angle- 
 worms could vary their length. One of them might easily 
 extend himself until he would measure six inches, and 
 then suddenly at the prick of the sharp hook, he could 
 cuddle himself together until he was not more than two 
 inches long. But there was no more worm in the elon- 
 gated edition than there was in the worm of briefer com- 
 pass. If the mother bird had been feeding her young, 
 the nest full of birdlings would have derived just as much 
 proteid from the condensed edition. And when we have 
 learned the high art of condensation so that an hour of 
 talk may be compacted into twenty-five minutes, without 
 the loss of a single idea, the people will derive as much, 
 and even more, spiritual proteid from our efforts as a re- 
 sult of the condensation. 
 
 ^ The high art of saying things without using up too 
 much of the English language in the process is one to be 
 cultivated. It is well for the minister to study the art 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 115 
 
 of packing his sentences with meaning. Try it on ! You 
 will be amazed at the results you can achieve. Write a 
 whole page and then condense the entire meaning of it 
 into a single paragraph. Then by a further condensation 
 bring it within the compass of three sentences. You will 
 find that it can be done without loss. 
 
 The man who packs a Saratoga trunk for a trip to 
 Europe may be constrained by circumstances to select the 
 really necessary things and put them into a small steamer 
 trunk. He may then even be compelled by a further call 
 for the condensation of his luggage to bring the needful 
 articles into such compass that they can be carried in a 
 suitcase. He will commonly find that as a result of this 
 compression he still has all that he really needs for the 
 trip and his joy will be much heightened by this reduction 
 in the amount of baggage to be carried about. Hear then 
 the parable of traveling in marching order ! Apply the 
 content of it to the work of outfitting your sermons for 
 their weekly trip into the minds of a congregation. 
 
 I am not here pleading for the use of epigrams. The 
 smart, snappy, self-conscious epigram very frequently 
 sacrifices truth for the sake of a phrase. Many epigrams 
 indeed earn their living by that sort of self-sacrifice. The 
 congregation doomed to live on the smart, snappy, and 
 half-impudent Elbert Hubbard type of sentence is in for 
 a sorry time. It may be well to have the mustard pot and 
 the pepper box on the table, but to attempt to make them 
 serve in lieu of roast beef and good bread would be ruinous 
 to digestion and it would result in starvation. 
 
 But the minister can use short words rather than long 
 Greek and Latin derivatives. The intricate and extended 
 
116 THE ART OF PREACHINa 
 
 pliilosophical and theological words, whicli would not go 
 into a suitcase without being folded twice, may be replaced 
 by shorter and more expressive terms. When you count 
 the monosyllables in the finest passages of Shakespeare, 
 or in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or in the King James 
 version of the Bible, you find how a simple, terse, expres- 
 sive style can be built up by the use of short words. 
 
 It was Charles Kingsley who advocated the plan of 
 putting a tax on long words. "A light tax on words of 
 over three syllables which are necessary evils like rats, 
 but which like them must be kept down judiciously: a 
 heavy tax on words of over four syllables, heterodoxy, 
 spontaneity, spuriosity and the like; and on words of 
 over five syllables a totally prohibitory tax." 
 
 You are to speak "to every man in the tongue in which 
 he was born." 'Now no man was ever "born" in the pro- 
 fessional patois of the theological school or the philosoph- 
 ical club. The Lord who is merciful and gracious would 
 not allow it — he would not permit any innocent child to 
 start off with such a cruel handicap. It is a habit and a 
 bad habit at that. It is an acquired taste and in the pres- 
 ence of an untrained public a vicious taste. It may be 
 well enough to speak that language when we are address- 
 ing those who thoroughly understand it but not otherwise. 
 " J If you would interest and influence everyday people you 
 must speak to them habitually in the language of every- 
 day life. 
 
 We find this literary habit running all through Shake- 
 speare, It is significant that the two most familiar and 
 - most noble monuments of literary expression in our Eng- 
 lish language, the King James Version of the Bible and 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 117 
 
 Shakespeare's Plays, were put forth at almost the same 
 time and they both show the same high quality of English. 
 The King James Version of the Bible was published in 
 IGll, Shakespeare retired from the theater in that same 
 year and died in 1616. Hear this speech of Mark Antony 
 at the funeral of Julius Caesar ! 
 
 ''I am no orator as Brutus is: 
 But as you know me all, a plain, blunt man 
 That loves my friend; and that they know full well 
 That gave me public leave to speak of him : 
 For I have neither wit nor words nor worth.'' 
 
 There are forty-five words in that passage, forty-one of 
 them monosyllables — only three words in that entire pas- 
 sage aside from the proper name "Brutus" have more than 
 a single syllable. 
 
 Or these great words so familiar to us all ! 
 
 "Who steals my purse, steals trash; 
 'Tis something, nothing. 'Twas mine, 'tis his. 
 And has been slave to thousands. 
 
 But he that filches from me my good name 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him 
 And makes me poor indeed." 
 
 Here again are forty-one words, all but five of them 
 monosyllables ! The minister who would cause words to go 
 home to men's hearts like rifle shots should read Shake- 
 speare and the King James Version until they have fur- 
 nished him, as it were, the natural method of his daily 
 speech. 
 
118 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 The same principle holds regarding short sentences. 
 The sentence should go straight to the mark without loiter- 
 ing. The sentence that hesitates is lost, if it be found in 
 the steep places of a sermon. The sentence should be so 
 full of life as to bleed if one were to cut into it anywhere. 
 Those sentences which sprawl and are covered all over 
 with out-reaching tentacles will never have the efficiency 
 belonging to those sentences which are straight and true 
 with genuine vitality in every inch of them. The sentences 
 which are propped up all along with qualifying clauses 
 and modifying statements, as if the main truth were quite 
 unable to stand alone, confuse the audience and retard 
 the speaker. By the use of short words and short sen- 
 tences a vast amount of thought may be successfully 
 brought into brief compass. 
 
 There are special occasions when it may be appropriate 
 for a man to preach for an hour. You may be dealing 
 with some great doctrine or with some other mighty theme, 
 when you will need forty-five or fifty or even sixty min- 
 utes really to open it up from shore to shore. But on all 
 ordinary occasions the sermon of twenty-five or thirty 
 minutes will accomplish vastly more good than the one 
 which is drawn out to an hour. We are living in the day 
 of the short story, the quick lunch, the sharp ring at the 
 telephone, the swift flight of the automobile. It is the 
 day of short things and the man who would address, and 
 serve his generation aright must steadily take into account 
 the prevailing moods. 
 
 It is well for the preacher to have a clock or a watch 
 (to do justice finally to these useful time-keepers) where 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 119 
 
 he can see it during the delivery of his sermon. While 
 the clock does not determine the real length of the sermon 
 but only its apparent length, it is well for the speaker 
 to train himself in good habits. Even though he may be 
 lifting his people into the third heaven by the power of 
 his spiritual appeal, so that they do not know whether 
 they are in the body or out of the body, it is well for him 
 to know how long they have been up there on that high 
 level of feeling. It will be necessary for them to come 
 down presently so as not to be late for the Sunday dinner. 
 The minister therefore had better know what time of day 
 it is, even when he is mounting up with wings like an 
 eagle. 
 
 Furthermore, human nature constructed as it is can only 
 stand such rapturous exaltation for comparatively brief 
 periods. It is wise therefore for the minister, however 
 gifted he may be in causing congregations to ascend to 
 those higher levels of spiritual feeling, to understand to 
 what length his sermon has already extended. He must 
 be ready at the proper time to bring the people back to 
 their accustomed level where with renewed strength they 
 can walk in the way of duty and not faint. 
 
 If a man speaks habitually with a clock or a watch 
 where he can see it, he may also be trained perhaps to 
 become a bit more conscientious, than many ministers 
 seem to be, toward the other speakers who are to follow 
 them on some extended program. There are ministers in 
 every religious convention who will speak twenty minutes 
 when they have been asked to speak ten: they will take 
 forty minutes if twenty has been the assignment. 
 
120 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 I hope those brethren may go to Heaven when they die ! 
 I have faith to believe that some of them will. The Lord's 
 hand is not shortened that it cannot save, even such ex- 
 asperating sinners as they have been. But I have a feeling 
 that all such men should be compelled to learn the West- 
 minster Catechism by heart and that they should be com- 
 pelled to remain for two or three hundred years in some 
 sort of purgatory where they would have to recite that 
 Catechism from end to end three times a day before meals, 
 and then be forced to spend the rest of their waking hours 
 in hearing one another talk. By the godly sorrow thus 
 induced in them, they might at last be brought into a bet- 
 ter frame of mind and be admitted to the society of the 
 blessed. 
 
 But watch the people as well as the clock. The hands 
 on the clock may not point to the time when you ought 
 to stop, but if the eyes and the minds of the people indi- 
 cate that the sermon might appropriately end just there, 
 end it. The Apostle Paul himself sometimes preached 
 too long. He certainly preached too long on a certain 
 night of which we have record. "There was a young 
 man," the Scripture says — "a young man" rather than 
 one of those dear old saints who having already heard 
 enough of preaching to see them safely through, might 
 be pardoned for dozing off — "there was a young man 
 named Eutychus," who went to sleep and fell out of the 
 window and all but broke his neck while Paul was preach- 
 ing. These things were written, brethren, for our warning ! 
 
 On all ordinary occasions a period of twenty-five or 
 thirty minutes is ample for any sermon. If you have not 
 struck oil by that time, the chances are that you are 
 
THE MEASURE OF THE SERMON 121 
 
 horing — I use this term advisedly and in its full strength 
 — the chances are that you are boring in the wrong place. 
 If you have struck a good flow of oil, the vessels of your 
 people will he full at the expiration of that period. And 
 when they are full, they are full. You could not do any- 
 thing more for them if you held on in the same effective 
 way for another half hour. You can therefore close your 
 sermon with a clear conscience as one who has delivered 
 his soul and has profited his people. 
 
 The sermon seems shorter where the minister does not 
 stop to prove everything, nor to explain everything. Jesus 
 never stopped to prove anything. He spoke about God, 
 and about duty, about prayer, and about redemption, about 
 the kingdom of heaven and the future life, as great valid 
 certainties. He was so sure of them that he made others 
 sure of them. He did not argue ; he proclaimed. 
 
 It may be appropriate on occasion to show that our 
 claims are grounded in moral reason and that they will 
 stand all the tests applied to them by rigorous, intellec- 
 tual scrutiny. But in the main, it is much better to as- 
 sume the great fundamental verities and set them forth 
 with power. Let those great truths out and they will 
 take care of themselves ! They will prove their own valid- 
 ity by certifying themselves in an enlarged and ennobled 
 spiritual experience on the part of those who receive them. 
 
 You can learn to preach a great deal in a short time. 
 The people will feel the length and the breadth, the height 
 and the depth of some august truth as you put it forth, 
 even though you may not bring out in detail all of its rich 
 and varied content. The sense of limitless spiritual value 
 is there in that segment of truth which you concisely pro- 
 
122 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 claim even though you are leaving a very great deal to the 
 spiritual imagination. 
 
 I have preached, as no douht every minister has, when 
 I did not seem to get my proper connections made, either 
 perpendicularly or horizontally. I toiled in rowing and 
 the wind was contrary. I did not get anywhere even 
 though I persevered entirely too long for the comfort of 
 the patient listeners. My head felt like Noah's Ark. It 
 was made of gopher wood. It was covered with pitch 
 without and within, rendering it impervious to all new 
 ideas or to any sort of inspiration from on high or from 
 the waiting congregation. I could feel crawling around 
 within it all manner of four-footed notions and creeping 
 things. But I could not set them in any kind of marching 
 order, to say nothing of causing them to fly in the open 
 heavens. And I went home that day with a feeling that 
 after all I would better have followed my noble father's 
 example and have become an honest and useful farmer. 
 
 There have been other days, however, when I did get 
 my connections made, horizontally and perpendicularly. 
 The word of the Lord had free course. It ran and was 
 glorified. It came from Him, through me, to the people. 
 And on those days I felt like the Ark of the Covenant. 
 There was nothing in me save the two Tables of the Law 
 which Moses put there, and the grace and truth which 
 came by Jesus Christ. I was deeply conscious of the 
 fact that I was actually giving to those hungry souls of 
 my own best and the best of that which had been given 
 me from above. And on those days I went home with a 
 deep, sweet sense of gratitude to God that He had made; 
 me a preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
THE LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 
 
 IT is a sound principle in the science of nutrition that 
 life is best sustained where it is not fed upon undi- 
 luted proteid. Baked beans and brown bread are 
 nourishing as practical N^ew England knows full well. 
 But it is possible to have the food supply in such concen- 
 trated form as to defeat its own ends. Bulk for bulk, 
 there are a great many more calories in broiled bacon, 
 fried eggs, baked potatoes and corn muffins, than are to be 
 found in like quantities of spinach and celery, of turnips 
 and lettuce, of tomatoes or bran. But the coarser and less 
 nourishing foods have their normal and useful place in 
 the high task of nourishing life. They not only serve the 
 purpose of eliminating waste ; they also aid in the process 
 of assimilating and absorbing the food values in the richer 
 forms of sustenance. 
 
 In like manner the sermon may well contain elements 
 other than those which belong to pure religious instruction. 
 "The sincere milk of the word" and that solid, satisfying 
 "meat which comes down from above" .to give life to the 
 world, will be more readily assimilated by the children of 
 the Kingdom if other less nutritious elements are placed 
 alongside of them on the table of shewbread. Man shall 
 not live by sound doctrine alone, even though the truth 
 contained therein may be incontrovertible and the state- 
 ment of it clear and accurate beyond all peradventure. 
 
 123 
 
124 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 There are certain lighter substances which have a right- 
 ful place in the sermon. They serve to gain attention, to 
 relieve the strain of steady listening to the presentation of 
 abstract truth, and they contribute mightily to the sense of 
 help which the hearers will bear away from a well-pro- 
 portioned message. 
 
 In this lecture I desire to speak of three of these lighter 
 elements, illustration, humor and those aspects of truth 
 which are best brought out by the use of the imagination. 
 
 The word illustrate means literally to throw light or 
 luster upon anything. The illustration is never to be re- 
 garded as an end in itself; it shines for the sake of some- 
 thing beyond. When the lighted candle is held up to the 
 painting, it is not intended that the beholders should look 
 at the candle but at the painting upon which the candle 
 throws its light. When the speaker has uttered some 
 weighty truth, some valid argument, some fundamental 
 principle of life, he may well pick up an illustration to 
 shed further light upon that which he would have the 
 people see. "Arguments are the pillars of a discourse, 
 illustrations are the windows which let in the light." 
 
 The illustration is a concrete picture as distinguished 
 f;;-om t-he dry, abstract statement of truth. Now all chil- 
 dren love pictures — they must have them. The people 
 in our congregations for the most part are only grown-up 
 children. The phenomenal popularity of the "movies" 
 testifies to the wide-spread demand for pictures. The 
 larger circulation of magazines which are profusely illus- 
 trated as compared with the more sober reviews like the 
 Atlantic Monthly and the North American^ emphasizes 
 this same preference. 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 125 
 
 The Master knew what was in man and how his need 
 could best be met. He therefore "spake many things unto 
 them in parables" — that is to say, in pictures. In the 
 Sermon on the Mount, brief though it is, there are no less 
 than fifty-six metaphors, which are really word pictures. 
 Salt, light, candle, bushel, treasure, moth, rust, lilies, 
 ravens, splinter, beam, bread, fish, scorpion — these are 
 samples. Fifty-six of them! The entire Sermon on the 
 Mount can be read aloud in fifteen minutes. These fifty- 
 six metaphors mean therefore that in this particular utter- 
 ance word pictures came from His lips at the rate of more 
 than three per minute. 
 
 His parables have gone out throughout the world and 
 the meaning of them unto the ends of the earth. There 
 is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. 
 And the picturesque quality of His teaching as well as 
 the glorious content of it has helped to gain for it this 
 wider currency and to increase immeasurably its power 
 of appeal. 
 
 He likened the methods and the manifestations of the 
 kingdom of heaven to that which is found in yeast, in the 
 varieties of soil, in the varying fate of the seed, in the 
 work of the pearl-fisher, in the struggle of the wheat and 
 the tares in a single field, in the brooding attitude of the 
 hen who would gather her chickens under her wings, in 
 the action of the woman sweeping her house to find a coin 
 which was lost, in the search of the shepherd for the lost 
 sheep, in the behavior of wellbred and illbred guests at a 
 wedding and in many another well drawn picture which 
 served as a symbol of religious truth. There are thirty- 
 odd full-fledged parables in the teachings of Christ. 
 
126 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 He was an oriental himself and he was addressing the 
 oriental mind. His mode of speech, however, has so com- 
 mended itself to men and women of all nations and peo- 
 ples, of all kindreds and tongues, that we may fittingly 
 follow his method in the generous use of illustration. His 
 customary method will be found to have great pedagogical 
 value in every country where the sun shines. 
 
 Where the illustration is fittingly chosen and clearly 
 phrased, it accomplishes these four results. First it serves 
 to make one's meaning more clear. We are addressing 
 Sunday after Sunday a great many people who do very 
 little hard reading. They are not accustomed to think in 
 abstract terms. They need to see the truth with their eyes 
 as well as to hear it with their ears. The untrained mind 
 will follow you somewhat laboriously through a carefully 
 reasoned argument. It may possibly begin to fear lest it 
 has lost the trail, but a well-selected illustration will enable 
 it to come at once out into the open where it will see the 
 full meaning of all that went before. "I see it," the man 
 says to himself as this fresh light falls upon your presen- 
 tation which so long as it was left in abstract statements, 
 had been somewhat baffling. 
 
 The illustration will help your people to remember the 
 truth you have taught. It is hard to fix an abstract idea in 
 the mind of a man whose main concern is with things that 
 are seen. The picture sticks. The people who sit in our 
 pews live mainly in the concrete. When these truths are 
 by skillful illustration related to the plain, hard facts with 
 which they are accustomed to deal in home life and in 
 farm life, in industry and in commerce, the meaning 
 abides with them. 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 127 
 
 I may indicate the tendency of the mind to hold effec- 
 tively the illustration, even where the logical argument 
 which preceded it may have slipped away, by an experi- 
 ence of my own. I listened many years ago to an Easter 
 sermon by one of the leading preachers of America. I 
 had completely forgotten his text and the main points in 
 the development of his theme until they were recalled to 
 my mind recently when I found the sermon in a published 
 volume. There was, however, a single illustration used 
 by him that morning which had remained with me during 
 all the intervening years. Whenever I had recalled the 
 features of that illustration (as I had done many times) 
 I felt again the full power of his Easter message. Here 
 is the splendid picture which he painted that day before 
 our eyes! 
 
 "We make too much of death. We do not dwell enough 
 on the soul and its ongoing might. As one sails the beau- 
 tiful Mediterranean, round whose shores so much that is 
 greatest in human history took place, whose winds and 
 ■^vaves bear in them sacred and glorious memories, whose 
 coast-lines and the mountain ranges behind them represent 
 so many of the splendid years of our race, one shrinks 
 from leaving it. Then, too, the sea itself contracts toward 
 the west, the shores draw together, and there in the way 
 of the ongoing mariner are the straits so narrow, so ap- 
 parently impassable, so like the end. 
 
 "But as one advances, the illusion vanishes. The straits 
 are narrow and yet they are wide enough for the mightiest 
 ship; the straits are narrow and full of gloom, but they 
 are not the end. On past the great rock at the entrance, 
 on through the six-and-thirty miles of contracted life, on- 
 
128 THE ART OF PEEACHING 
 
 ward in solemn haste and high confidence, your ship goes 
 and out into a greater sea, the glow of light and lines of 
 fire on the whole distant horizon are the call of love from 
 afar and the tender welcome home. 
 
 "Such is our life on this sea of time. Its winds and 
 waves, its tides and shores are rich in the treasures of 
 human love. Who does not love this sea set in the frame- 
 work of the worthiest and happiest that man has done, 
 that man may know? Who does not rejoice in it at its 
 widest and greatest ? Who does not watch with pain the 
 inevitable lessening ? Who, as the years come and go, does 
 not become conscious of a shrinkage of being, and that 
 there in his path is death, narrow, wild, the abode of ut- 
 ter gloom ? Is it not the end, and in it shall we not lose 
 forever this enchanting human world? 
 
 "]!^ot so. In that narrow passage there is room enough 
 for the greatest soul to go. Let it go in solemn confidence 
 and serene hope! Beyond is the infinite, and out into 
 that infinite the soul shall sail to see again the abiding 
 values and splendors of the heart, to note on the tides that 
 draw it onward the welcome of the eternal love and the 
 gracious light that cannot fail." 
 
 The well drawn picture sends the truth home and causes 
 it to stick like a burr in the moral natures of those who 
 felt the full force of the ideas it contained. How effective 
 was ISTathan the prophet when he went to rebuke the king 
 for his frightful sin against the honest, heroic Uriah! 
 He drew that picture of the meanness of a rich man who 
 spared his own flock but stole the one ewe lamb of a poor 
 peasant that he might place a toothsome roast before his 
 guest. The guilty king flamed with anger against the 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 129 
 
 cold-blooded cruelty of such an action. Then the prophet 
 with his rapier thrust lodged his rebuke where it would 
 be felt and remembered. "Thou art the man." I wonder 
 if the shepherd king ever looked again upon the meager 
 flock of some poor man without feeling afresh the sting 
 of remorse. "Seeing is believing" we say; and certainly 
 seeing is feeling. 
 
 The illustration is also capable of varied and continued 
 application. It is elastic in its meaning. A statement 
 from the multiplication table leaves nothing to the imag- 
 ination. When we say that "two times two are four," 
 the returns are all in. When we read a parable of the 
 Master, it yields at once a certain meaning. But this 
 by no means exhausts its possibilities. The parable will 
 be read and re-read by succeeding generations. It will 
 receive fresh and vital interpretation and application un- 
 der conditions radically changed. This bestows upon it a 
 kind of immortality of influence. The very fact that it 
 is an illustration, suggesting more than it defines, will 
 give it an abiding opportunity for usefulness in thus min- 
 istering to the spiritual life of all those to whose minds 
 it may come. 
 
 The illustration also serves to indicate how a certain 
 unity of purpose and of method runs through all things. 
 The parables of our Lord were more than felicitous pic- 
 tures. They declared the fact that to him all life was 
 full of spiritual suggestion. The whole universe visible 
 and invisible was woven by a single hand. God the Father 
 Almighty was Maker of heaven and of earth. The illus- 
 tration portraying things visible which are temporal but 
 suggesting the invisible values which are lasting, proclaims 
 
130 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 this unity which extends through all created things. Use 
 illustrations therefore freely and aright — it will help your 
 people to feel that the whole world is alive with God. 
 There was sound philosophy as well as good poetry in what 
 Milton said, 
 
 "What if earth 
 Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
 Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought." 
 
 How can we best employ the illustration ? It is wise 
 not to overwork it. There ought to be in all of our preach- 
 ing more reading matter than pictures — a great deal more. 
 It is never necessary to illustrate the obvious. When a 
 truth has been clearly stated and can be clearly seen at a 
 glance, the people are impatient if we begin to draw fur- 
 ther diagrams of it. Get on with your sermon if your 
 meaning at a given point has already been thoroughly ap- 
 prehended. 
 
 It is foolish to use repeated illustrations of the same 
 truth. When a man says, "As sure as the sun will rise, 
 as sure as the tides will ebb and flow, as sure as spring 
 will follow winter," and so on for a series of six or seven 
 similar illustrations of inevitable sequence, the minds of 
 the people rebel. One such illustration will suffice. If the 
 thing is as sure as sunrise, that is sure enough, — we can 
 take the rest of the guarantees for granted. 
 
 It is foolish to introduce an illustration just for the 
 sake of its beauty, its novelty, or its cleverness. There 
 are preachers who, once possessed of an interesting story 
 or a clever illustration, become impatient to use it. They 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 131 
 
 can hardly wait for Sunday to come. They will employ 
 that illustration in the next sermon preached even though 
 it has to be dragged in by the hair of its head. They 
 had best salt it down in their notebooks until it is needed 
 and can be used in some connection where it will be en- 
 tirely apt. 
 
 The illustration cannot be allowed to usurp the place 
 of serious thought. Stories are easy to get, easy to remem- 
 ber, and easy to tell. There are even ready made "Cyclo- 
 pedias of Illustration" where one will find cut and dried 
 illustrations for every conceivable truth in the universe. 
 You can find there in alphabetical order illustrations taken 
 from the lives of all the men of the Bible from Adam to 
 Zebedee and applicable to all the truths under heaven from 
 avarice to the zone system in transportation. These 
 books are a delusion and a snare. If any young man has 
 been foolish enough to purchase one, he had best burn it 
 forthwith. The steady use of such "first aids to the lazy" 
 will weaken and impoverish the mind. 
 
 The public speaker had best not dawdle over his illus- 
 tration. Let him study the impressionist school of paint- 
 ing! The impressionist paints a picture where there are 
 trees, with birds sitting upon the branches, and cows in 
 the field beyond. The painter paints real trees, real birds, 
 and real cows. He does not, however, paint in all the 
 leaves on the trees nor all the feathers on the birds, nor 
 all the hairs on the back of the cow. When one looks at 
 his picture near at hand he sees nothing of all this. There 
 is a clear and distinct impression of all these forms of 
 life, but not of all the insignificant details. Strike out 
 your illustration in a free, bold way, so that without dally- 
 
132 THE ART OF PREACHINQ 
 
 ing over the minutiae the people will instantly see your 
 meaning. 
 
 The illustration should fit — the closer the hotter. It 
 may he impossible to have the analogy go on all fours, 
 but it should get at least three legs firmly on the ground. 
 If the illustration is false or misleading; if it is far- 
 fetched so that the connection is not readily recognized; 
 if it brings up any unworthy associations, then it may 
 well be cast out. 
 
 It is wise to leave the illustration while it still suggests 
 something more than has been actually brought out. 
 Vagueness hath its virtues no less than clearness. Al- 
 most any woman adds something to her beauty by wear- 
 ing a veil. The veil must not be too thick — if she wore 
 a blanket before her face her beauty would be entirely 
 obscured. When you offer an audience a picture do not 
 insist upon furnishing them an itemized statement of all 
 that it contains — let them use their own eyes a bit. When 
 you offer them an illustration, leave it with them while 
 there is still some juice left in it which you have not 
 pressed out. 
 
 Where shall we get our illustrations? Anywhere! 
 Everywhere! In heaven above and on the earth beneath 
 and in the waters under the earth! Get all you can out 
 of the Bible. There is value in illustrating ISTew Testa- 
 ment truths by Old Testament incidents. It is effective 
 to illustrate the Heavenly Father's yearning love over his 
 sinful children by the heartbreak of David the King over 
 the death of Absalom, the handsome but dissolute young 
 prince. The Bible is the greatest pieturebook in print. 
 The preacher may well "search the Scriptures" for illus- 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 133 
 
 trations as well as for tLo promises of eternal life. He 
 will never exhaust their rich content and the illustrations 
 from that source will have all the more value because of 
 the sacred associations which cluster around them. 
 
 Watch for useful illustrations in your general reading. 
 History and biography are the best of sources. "Lives of 
 all great men remind us" of situations which furnish us 
 all manner of good illustrations. The poets who dream 
 for us are forever offering us moving pictures of spiritual 
 truth. The great novelists, Dickens and Thackeray, An- 
 thony Trollope and George Eliot are replete with useful 
 material for illustration. 
 
 Watch for illustrations where your Master did ! When 
 he saw a woman putting leaven in the meal, or farmers 
 sowing their seed in all sorts of soil, or fishermen drawing 
 in their nets containing all manner of fish, or shepherds 
 moving out upon the mountains to recover the strays, or 
 a father breaking his heart over a wayward son in some 
 far country, he recognized everywhere the presence of 
 energies and activities which had their counterparts in 
 the life of his kingdom. Country life and city life, the 
 streets and the shops, the stores and the mills, the play- 
 grounds of the children and the recreations of the more 
 mature, are all full of suggestive pictures of moral truth. 
 
 You will watch for illustrations in current literature. 
 The popular stories as well as the more serious articles 
 in the magazines will furnish you an abundance of ma- 
 terial for the illustration of your truth. If you use oc- 
 casionally illustrations from the magazines or from stories 
 which your hearers have already been reading, the natural 
 interest to be found in such material will be increased. 
 
134 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 The people will feel a certain joy that you too have been 
 traversing the very fields where their minds have walked. 
 
 You can afford to range widely in making your choices. 
 The man of good judgment will avoid seeking all of his 
 illustrations from one or two fields of human interest. 
 If he cultivates a single patch of ground in his quest for 
 similes his people may soon come to feel that all the po- 
 tatoes in that field have already been dug. He is making 
 his appeal to all sorts and conditions of men. He must 
 therefore consult their varying interests in order to give 
 every man his meat in due season and in the form most 
 appealing to his habit of mind. 
 
 How effective was the Master's illustration when he 
 was pointing out the folly of attaching one's supreme in- 
 terest to perishable things ! "Take heed and beware of 
 covetousness" he said to a pair of brothers who had fallen 
 out over the division of an inheritance. "Take heed — 
 a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth." Then he drew a picture of that 
 man whose major interest lay in building big bams and 
 in filling them with things; and then in building still 
 bigger barns and in filling them with things. When this 
 man had gotten his barns all up and had filled them to 
 the eaves with things enough to last him for a thousand 
 years he said: "Soul, take thine ease. Thou hast goods 
 laid up for many years. Eat, drink and be merry." .He 
 was talking to his stomach under the impression that he 
 was addressing his soul ! The soul does not live on things 
 which can be stored up in barns or in banks. Then God 
 said to him: "Thou fool! This night shall thy soul be 
 required of thee! Then whose shall those things be!" 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 135 
 
 "So is every one," the Master added dryly, "who layeth 
 up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." 
 How clear-cut it all is and how telling a? an illustration of 
 the utter futility of the whole philosophy of materialism 
 as a program of life ! 
 
 The second of the lighter elements in the sermon which 
 I would discuss is that of humor. There are many serious- 
 minded men who might insist that humor has no rightful 
 place whatever in the work of preaching. We would all 
 agree that the clerical jester in the pulpit is out of place. 
 The man who makes puns on Scripture or cracks jokes 
 about sacred things, disgraces his calling and coarsens the 
 taste of the people to whom he speaks. We do not want 
 clowns in the pulpit. The clown in the circus with his 
 pointed cap and spotted clothes may easily be a means of 
 grace affording amusement, relief and relaxation from the 
 strain of living ever in the somber mood. We do not 
 care, however, to see the clown in the pulpit, with a 
 pointed nose and a spotted tongue. 
 
 But God saw fit to make men with the capacity for 
 laughter as well as for worship. We can smile upon oc- 
 casion as easily as we can pray upon other occasions. God 
 has given us all of these faculties, the talent for logical ar- 
 gument, the power of cogent statement, the ability to give 
 fresh interpretation to old truths, the taste for fine liter- 
 ary form, the sympathetic quality of voice, the capacity 
 for moral indignation, to be used in making the truth 
 effective. He has also given to all men, who are not sadly 
 defective, that saving sense of humor which employed 
 with reverence and with taste may add immeasurably to 
 ministerial success. The man who cannot look into a 
 
136 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 mirror occasionally and laugh heartily at that which he 
 sees reflected there, must be listed with the "defec- 
 tives." 
 
 r The humor must naturally be used sparingly, ever so 
 sparingly, but where it is used with discretion and in 
 proper proportions it serves to enlist and to hold attention, 
 where the interest of the people has begun to lag. It calls 
 them back to think again with more avidity upon the 
 serious ideas which are being presented. 
 ; The employment of delicate humor occasionally will 
 rest and refresh an audience. The smile which plays 
 across a congregation of people enables their minds to 
 unbend from the strain of serious and sustained mental 
 effort. They come back to the more vital interests with 
 strength renewed. 
 
 The employment of humor will also serve to impress 
 upon the mind some great principle by an unexpected 
 turn or by some statement of a familiar idea which has 
 in it an element of surprise. Where all men say the same 
 thing in exactly the same way it is almost as though no 
 one had said anything. Where the truth is clothed at 
 times in unusual forms and with a touch of humor, the 
 meaning stands revealed the more clearly, and it will be 
 more readily retained by the average mind. 
 
 We have abundant scriptural warrant for the employ- 
 ment of humor. The Bible is not a joke book — it- was 
 written for the most part by serious-minded men and with 
 a serious purpose. But it is not by any means uniformly 
 somber — there is an abundance of delicate humor within 
 its pages. The story of the crafty men of Gideon who 
 imposed upon the Israelites with their array of old clothes 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 137 
 
 and moldy bread; the parable of Jotham regarding the 
 trees in making their choice of a king, putting the crown 
 upon a worthless bramble because of the unwillingness of 
 the more respectable members of society, the olive tree, 
 the fig tree and the vine, to hold public office ; the conster- 
 nation of the rude Philistines when they had captured the 
 Ark of the Covenant, and were led to feel as if they had 
 actually captured Yahweh himself to their undoing — all 
 these familiar narratives with their fine vein of humor 
 were undoubtedly meant to be taken as expressive of the 
 sense of fun, as well as the embodiment of wholesome 
 lessons. 
 
 The story of Samson found its place on the pages of 
 Holy Writ mainly perhaps because of the humor it con- 
 tains. Samson was a great joker. He carried off the 
 gates of a city as a kind of Hallowe'en prank ! He burned 
 up the wheat fields of the Philistines by setting loose in. 
 them foxes with fire-brands tied to their tails in order to 
 get the laugh on his enemies. He joked with and deceived 
 his wife whose clumsy Philistine mind was unequal to 
 his own more nimble wits! When he propounded his 
 riddle, "Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the 
 strong came forth sweetness," making a wager with the 
 Philistines that they could not guess it, we read that the 
 answer was finally wheedled out of him by his Philistine 
 wife. She then promptly gave it to her own people. When 
 they brought the correct answer to Samson, thus winning 
 the wager, he replied rather coarsely, "If you had not 
 plowed with my heifer, ye had not guessed my riddle." 
 This is all rather low grad© ore from the mine of humor, 
 but it indicates the feeling of those earlier men touching 
 
138 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 the place of this element in the work of religious instruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The story of Elijah mocking the priests of Baal is full 
 of a grim and bitter humor. "Cry louder," he said, there 
 on the slopes of Carmel when the trial of the rival faiths 
 was being made. "Cry louder!" They were already 
 yelling at the top of their lungs and they had been yelling 
 from morning until midday. "He is a god," the prophet 
 added in sarcastic vein, "but either he is talking, or he 
 has gone out hunting, or he is on a journey, or perad ven- 
 ture he is asleep, and must be wakened up." This is all 
 meant to be pitiless irony. Elijah knew perfectly well 
 there was no such god as Baal, that there was none to hear 
 nor to answer. He was turning the laugh in contemptu- 
 ous fashion upon the futile efforts of a false faith. 
 
 When we come to the Gospels, we find that Jesus em- 
 ployed humor in a delicate but most effective way. He 
 was once reproached by the Pharisees because he and his 
 disciples ate with publicans and sinners. Hear his re- 
 ply ! "I am not come to call the righteous," he said, "but 
 sinners to repentance." "They that are whole need not 
 a physician, but they that are sick." It was a delicious bit 
 of irony. He enjoyed the making of this reference to 
 those narrow-minded, uncharitable Pharisees who were 
 anything but "whole." He held them up to ridicule by 
 speaking of them as "righteous" when they were all "sin- 
 ners" in sore need of "repentance." The very men who 
 were criticizing him for mingling with the morally needy 
 were the- ones who had the greatest need of "the physician" 
 for their own recovery. 
 
 How delicious is the humor in that familiar parable of 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 139 
 
 the Pharisee and the Publican ! "The Pharisee stood and 
 prayed thus with himself, ^God, I thank thee that I am 
 not as other men are, unjust, extortioners, adulterers, or 
 even as this Publican. I fast twice in the week; I give 
 tithes of all that I possess,' " His prayer was indeed 
 wholly "with himself." The entire transaction was car- 
 ried on within the limits of his own little soul. The 
 prayer never rose even to the ceiling — it went no higher 
 than the top of his own swollen head. What art there was 
 in picturing his moral complacency touching his super- 
 iority to "extortioners and adulterers!" Thank God, I 
 am not as other men are ! What other men ? Extor- 
 tioners, adulterers — the lowest, vilest men who could be 
 named! It must have been gratifying for this conceited 
 prig to feel that in the spiritual race set before us he had 
 not been entirely eclipsed by such rascals ! How effective 
 is this whole picture in "taking off" the self-righteousness 
 of those who in supercilious fashion entirely overlook their 
 own faults! 
 
 We shall not understand the reply of Jesus to that Syro- 
 phenician woman unless we have in mind His sense of 
 humor. When the woman appealed to the Master to heal 
 her child, He answered, "It is not meet to take the chil- 
 dren's bread, and cast it to the dogs." His words sound 
 almost brutal if we take them merely at their face value. 
 But when we picture His face with a smile upon it as He 
 used the ordinary term applied by contemptuous Jews to 
 those of foreign birth, indicating His own disagreement 
 with their habit of mind. His meaning is instantly ap- 
 parent. The woman saw and understood. She answered 
 at once, "Yea, Lord: yet the lap dogs do eat the crumbs 
 
140 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 which fall from their master's table." Jesus recognizing 
 the fact that she had understood and that her faith over- 
 topped all racial and sectarian barriers, pronounced upon 
 her His gracious benediction, "O woman, great is thy 
 faith! Be it done unto thee even as thou wilt." And 
 her daughter was healed in that hour. 
 
 There is a vein of delightful humor in the passage 
 where Jesus speaks of the Pharisees as "sounding trum- 
 pets" before them when they "do their alms." When they 
 send a basket of provisions or half a ton of coal to some 
 poor family, he represents them as hiring a band to go 
 along. He also caricatures the ostentatious men who pray 
 at the street corners "to be seen of men." "Verily, I sa'/ 
 unto you, they have their reward!" They pray to be seen 
 of men, and they are seen of men. They get what they 
 prayed for on the spot. There is nothing more coming to 
 them. 
 
 We have abundant scriptural precedent therefore for 
 the use of delicate humor of a high character. The quaint 
 and unexpected turns in the presentation of truth have 
 genuine value. We find it employed by some of the great- 
 est preachers in the history of the Church. Even Phillips 
 Brooks, restrained though he was by the stately conven- 
 tions of his own communion, would now and then cause a 
 smile to sweep over his congregation like a cool breeze 
 on a summer day. Dean Hodges of the Episcopal Church 
 used these unexpected turns habitually, and they contrib- 
 uted greatly to his usefulness in the service of the church. 
 The dry Scotch humor introduced now and then by George 
 A. Gordon, a preacher of high intellectual standards and 
 with a firm philosophical grasp of eternal principles, has 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 141 
 
 added always to his attractiveness in the pulpit of the 
 Old South Church, Boston. Henry Ward Beecher in the 
 days of his power in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, intro- 
 duced humor into his sermons repeatedly. It was the 
 judgment of some of his more serious-minded people that 
 now and then he used too much of it. He used to say 
 that if the people had just laughed it would be much more 
 easy to bring tears to their eyes by the effective appeal 
 which followed. Charles H. Spurgeon, with all his ear- 
 nest, evangelistic fervor, found place for the element of 
 humor in those heartfelt appeals which reached out 
 through all the English-speaking world. 
 
 It is not well for a minister to go out of his way even 
 six inches in order to make a joke. But when some un- 
 expected turn comes naturally in his treatment of some 
 great truth, he is unwise to turn aside in order to avoid 
 it. Let him study the great masters of delicate humor in 
 the literature of the race ! Let him use if he will those 
 lighter statements which bring a sense of surprise. Let 
 him employ "the finest of the wheat" in this matter of 
 humor just in passing, with a touch and go, never waiting 
 for a laugh, and he will find that by this method he has 
 added greatly to his power of spiritual appeal. The peo- 
 ple whose minds are quickened and refreshed may not 
 laugh with their mouths — they will laugh with their eyes 
 and they will be all the more ready to recognize and to 
 accept the full value of the solid truth which is thus pro- 
 claimed. 
 
 The wise, guarded, and tasteful employment of humor 
 now and then will aid in keeping alive in the minds of 
 your hearers a full sense of the fact that you too are a 
 
142 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 man. The uniformly solemn and excruciatingly pious 
 parson who proclaims the fact that he has no sense of 
 humor is hopeless. His people are likely to look upon 
 him as our great-grandparents looked upon certain drastic 
 spring medicines — not pleasant to take^, hut in some mys- 
 terious way ''good for the system." 
 
 The Lord meant you to have feet and hands, arms and 
 legs, a head and a heart as all your fellows have. He 
 meant also that along with those more sedate faculties 
 which are imperative in any useful ministry you too 
 ishould have and evince a saving sense of humor. It will 
 help to carry you through many a troubled situation in 
 your parish experiences. Cherish it and cultivate it. And 
 when the way is open for a hit of humor to make your 
 presentation of the truth more complete, more interesting, 
 more effective, allow it to have its day in court. For 
 humor also is one of "the good gifts of our God." 
 
 The third element of this sort which I would name 
 comes from the use of the imagination in preaching. You 
 may feel, some of you, that this sounds like small potatoes 
 and few in a hill. There was a time when I too would 
 have said so without a moment's hesitation. But that was 
 thirty years ago and more. We learn some things by 
 hard knocks as we grow older. The good sermon is not all 
 roast beef medium and mashed potato. Solid argument 
 walks on the ground until imagination gives it wings to 
 reach the high places of moral appeal. 
 
 It was Henry Ward Beecher, who knew quite a little 
 about this august business of preaching the gospel, who 
 remarked upon a certain occasion, "I regard the imagina- 
 tion as the most important of all the factors which go to 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 143 
 
 make the preacher." He was not comparing it, naturally, 
 with Christian character or with the ability to read and 
 write or with a sufficient amount of vocal strength to en- 
 able one to speak out loud. He took all those things for 
 granted — they were necessities the use of which went with- 
 out saying. But given these plain requisites without 
 which we could not have any preaching at all worthy of 
 the name, he made bold to utter that strong word on 
 behalf of the imagination. 
 
 It has much to do with the exercise of faith. The Re- 
 vised Version defines faith as the act of "giving substance 
 to things hoped for." Whether this process shall be mainly 
 a mere intellectual exercise or the upward, outward, God- 
 ward movement of a man's whole nature will depend 
 largely upon the use he makes of his moral imagination. 
 Here are certain claims not upon the face of them absurd 
 or impossible but not susceptible of immediate scientific 
 demonstration ! I accept them as furnishing a good work- 
 ing hypothesis for human life. By an act of faith I give 
 substance to them as things hoped for. Then I begin to 
 act accordingly. By the hard tests of experience all those 
 claims, God, prayer, duty, redemption, the sense of end- 
 less life already begun, become more and more real to me. 
 And faith was the high mood which originally gave sub- 
 stance to them as "things hoped for" and answered back 
 in terms of trust and obedience, of aspiration and high 
 resolve. 
 
 By that wholesome use of the imagination which en- 
 ables him to see the Unseen and to hear the Unuttered, 
 the preacher can give such genuine and living substance 
 to those "hoped-for things" as to cause them to exercise! 
 
144 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 their pull and lift upon the hearts and wills of all those 
 to whom he speaks. He makes the absent present. He 
 takes that which is historic and causes it to live and move 
 and transact spiritual business there in those lives before 
 him. He takes those things which are as yet only ideally 
 possible and causes people to behold them as actually 
 capable of being wrought out in terms of solid achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 At the heart of every splendid performance there is a 
 vision, a dream, which has not yet come true. The artist 
 sees an angel standing in the block of marble and his 
 hands reach eagerly for mallet and chisel that he may 
 bring it out. The teacher sees the hidden possibilities in 
 that roomful of restless urchins and all her power comes 
 at once to "attention" for the task of developing, matur- 
 ing and enriching wholesome personality in all those 
 young candidates for an existence worthy to be called 
 human. The wise physician sees the improved health of 
 an entire community, through better methods of sanita- 
 tion and more skillful hygiene, and his human interest 
 joins with his professional skill in moving toward that 
 worthy end. The merchant or the manufacturer has a 
 vision of his business as a great social utility, a means of 
 bringing together the resources of earth and the needs of 
 society, a place for the cultivation and the expression of 
 intelligent good will — and that vision lifts him above .the 
 danger of becoming sordid in the pursuit of money. It 
 sets him in paths of economic honor and of moral advance. 
 
 Now the ability to see in advance any one of those 
 things as a thing hoped for and the further ability to 
 make it live as an actual fact in the mind's qye of another 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 145 
 
 so that he too will see it and act upon it, comes by the 
 exercise of moral imagination. Where there is no such 
 vision, all the worthier elements of human life perish. 
 Society goes to seed in the barren futility of its petty pur- 
 suits. Man cannot live at all by bread alone. Man lives 
 by all those great words which proceed out of the mouth 
 of God — faith, hope, love, courage, aspiration, high re- 
 solve — by these man lives ! 
 
 There was a minister once with a dry, prosy, literal 
 mind who read these exquisite lines from Shakespeare : 
 
 "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones and good in everything." 
 
 He read all that in a newspaper and in his pedantic way 
 he proceeded to comment upon it to the wife of his bosom. 
 "Here is an amusing thing," he said. "It is evidently a 
 misprint. N^o one ever saw a sermon in a stone and a book 
 in a running brook would be all wet and useless. What 
 the writer meant to say apparently was 'Sermons in books 
 and stones in running brooks.' " Alas ! poor man ! What 
 a dull time the patient people must have had who "sat 
 under" his preaching, devoid as he was of imagination ! 
 
 When you undertake to "preach Christ," as we say, 
 you do not set out to give a dry catalogue of all the dates 
 and facts in his earthly life such as might be found in 
 "Who's Who." You do not merely recite in mechanical 
 fashion, as some phonograph might, the precise words and 
 sentences which fell from his lips. You do not undertake 
 to unfold "The Plan of Salvation" discoverable in His 
 
146 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 Incarnation, His Crucifixion and His Resurrection, with 
 all the mighty theological truths involved, as might be 
 done in some Westminster Confession of Faith. You 
 might do all this with all the painstaking fidelity imag- 
 inable and yet fail utterly in your announced purpose. 
 When you "preach Christ" you seek to have Him live and 
 move and have His redemptive being, as He was, as He 
 is now, in the fullness of His power, before the eyes and 
 through the minds and in the hearts of those waiting 
 people. 
 
 It was William Roscoe Thayer of Harvard who in writ- 
 ing of "History — Quick or Dead" insisted that "Four- 
 fifths of the history written up to the present time has 
 been dead. . . . The worship of Fact, which must not 
 be confounded with Truth, does not lead us far. To 
 know that Columbus discovered America on October 12th, 
 1492, or that the Declaration of Independence was made 
 on July 4th, 1776, or that Napoleon lost the battle of 
 Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, is interesting; but unless 
 these statements are reenforced by much matter of a dif- 
 ferent kind they are hardly more important for us than it 
 would be to know the number of leaves on a tree. And this 
 is true though the facts be indefinitely multiplied. 
 
 "I have read, for instance, an account of the American 
 Revolution in which the imcontroverted facts followed 
 each other in as faultlessly correct a sequence as the tele- 
 graph poles which carry the wires over eight hundred and 
 fifty miles of the desert of Gobi. The paramount interest 
 in this case is not the number of poles but the purport of 
 
 the telegrams flashed along the wires The meaning 
 
 of the sequent or scattered events in any historical move- 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 147 
 
 ment, be it of long duration or merely a fleeting episode — 
 that alone can have significance for us." And it is the 
 office of a well ordered imagination to people these "Val- 
 leys of Dead Facts" with moving interests that have life. 
 
 The bare events even of that matchless life which has 
 come to be the light of the world have little power to 
 change or to move the hearts of men until they are inter- 
 preted and related to the immediate interests of these 
 lives of ours. It is for us, every man in his own order 
 and according to the grace given him, to repeat and 
 realize in our own experiences the majestic truths sug- 
 gested by the Incarnation, the Transfiguration, the Cruci- 
 fixion, the Resurrection. We are set not only to revere 
 but according to the measure of our ability to reproduce 
 the life which was in Him. And the minds of men can 
 only be inspired to these high endeavors as the sacred, 
 significant events which lie in the remote past are made 
 to live before their eyes. 
 
 How vitally does the power of imagination enter into 
 all that high endeavor! I do not mean anything capri- 
 cious or fantastic. It is easily possible for a man to allow 
 his imagination to run away with him as any sort of 
 faculty may run wild when it is not held in leash by in- 
 telligence and conscience. It may land him in all man- 
 ner of absurdity. I would not have you suffer from in- 
 tellectual delirium tremens, seeing a lot of things which 
 are not really there. I mean that wise exercise of a sane 
 imagination which deals with unseen realities in such a 
 way as to make them real indeed. The materialist some- 
 times tells us in his dry, cold way that he deals only in 
 "facts." As if a thought, an impulse, a hope, a resolve. 
 
148 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 a prayer, were not as much of a "fact" as a brick or a 
 plant ! As if Jesus Christ were not at this moment the 
 sublimest "fact" ever known upon this common earth! 
 
 We look not solely at the things which are seen. They 
 have their place and their value which of necessity must 
 he limited because they are temporal. We look mainly 
 at the things which are not seen because they are eternal.. 
 You can go out and saw wood or break rock in the street, 
 you can wash the automobile or build a board fence with- 
 out using your imagination. Whether or not you can 
 read fairy stories or the stirring narratives of the Old 
 Testament or the words which fell from the lips of Christ 
 and know what it is all about and cause others to know, 
 will depend in large measure upon your power of imagina- 
 tion. You cannot by any means do it well unless you are 
 accustomed to look steadily at those unseen things which 
 are eternal and really see something. 
 
 It is this element which differentiates literature from 
 the reading matter to be found in the encyclopedia. 
 The Britannica has facts, literature has vision. Read 
 Baedeker on Mt. Blanc! It will give you the height of 
 the mountain, the extent of the snow fields, the length 
 and the age of the glaciers, the distance in kilometers 
 from Chamounix to the summit. Then read Coleridge's 
 "Ode to Mt. Blanc." Baedeker has the facts, Coleridge 
 has vision. 
 
 Read Baedeker on Belgium including the detailed 
 description of the field and of the Battle of Waterloo. 
 Then read Victor Hugo's description of the Battle of 
 Waterloo in his "Les Miserables" or the third canto of 
 Byron's "Childe Harold": 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 149 
 
 "There was a sound of revelry by night 
 And Belgium's capital had gathered then 
 Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright 
 The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men." 
 
 Baedeker has the facts, the poets have vision. And with- 
 out the exercise of imagination which underlies the power 
 of vision the dry facts would be for us all but useless. 
 
 How the Bible is filled with this from start to finish! 
 It was a poet who looked back to the period of the Crea- 
 tion and said, "The morning stars sang together and all 
 the sons of God shouted for joy." He saw the planets 
 in their courses finding such happiness in their serene 
 and august fidelity to the will of their Maker that they 
 set their satisfaction to music and sang it as a hymn of 
 praise from the rising of the sun even unto the going 
 down of the same. He>saw "the sons of God," the beings 
 of moral capacity made in the divine likeness, finding 
 such satisfaction in their high estate that they actually 
 became noisy and boisterous about it. They "shouted for 
 joy." "We have here, as any one can see, no dry, prose 
 statement of hard fact — it is poetry and its main appeal 
 is to the imagination. 
 
 Why does the man who lives in Jersey City, on a nar- 
 row street, in an ugly tenement, engaged in the monotony 
 of some repellent toil, his whole life dull and drab — why 
 does he drink until he is drunk ? He does it because the 
 bottle of whisky is the shortest road out of Jersey City 
 which he knows anything about. When he is thoroughly, 
 and joyously drunk, he too sees visions and dreams dreams 
 after his kind. He feels strong and rich, successful and 
 happy. (I am told that it is so — I am not speaking here 
 
150 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 from personal experience.) He may know, poor chap, 
 that there will come a sad awakening the morning after 
 and a dark brown taste in his mouth and in his mind, but 
 for an hour or two at least he has gotten out of Jersey 
 City. 
 
 Now what he attempts so unworthily, we are helping 
 men to achieve in ways which will not leave that dark 
 brown taste in their mouths or in their souls. This is 
 precisely what St. Paul had in mind when he said to 
 those Ephesians, many of them living also in Jersey 
 City! — "Be not drunken with wine wherein is excess but 
 be filled with the Spirit." He would provide them with 
 that better sort of exhilaration which would lift them 
 out of the sordidness of their ordinary mode of life into 
 that sense of life which is life indeed. 
 
 In all the cities of earth, Ephesus, Jersey City, 'New 
 Haven, even Boston, there are multitudes of dull and 
 dreary men and women, hungry for just that more radiant 
 type of experience. You are sent there to lift them 
 to that upper level where they too under wise guidance 
 will see those visions and dream those dreams which in 
 God's good time are all to come true. 
 
 How all the great poets used this power of imagina- 
 tion ! Here was Robert Burns watching a farmer whose 
 plowshare had just turned up and wrecked the nest of 
 some field mice! He saw there suggested in that little 
 scene, as the frightened creatures scurried to and fro in 
 futile fashion, the whole tragedy of human existence. 
 
 "I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
 Has broken Nature's social union 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 151 
 
 And justifies that ill opinion 
 
 Wliich makes thee startle 
 At me, thy poor earth-born companion. 
 
 And fellow mortal. 
 
 "That wee bit heap of weeds and stubble 
 Has cost thee many a weary nibble; 
 Now thou'rt turned out for all thy trouble. 
 
 "But, mousie, thou art not alone 
 In proving foresight may be vain; 
 The best laid plans o' mice and men 
 
 Gang aft agley. 
 And leave us nought but grief and pain 
 
 For promised joy. 
 
 "Still, thou art blessed compared with me: 
 The present only toucheth thee : 
 But, Oh, I backward cast my eye 
 
 On prospects drear 
 And forward, though I cannot see, 
 
 I guess and fear." 
 
 Burns stood there looking into that furrow, witnessing 
 the consternation of those helpless mice and meditating 
 upon the tragedy of his own life and of many another 
 life, as compared with those lighter ills which fell upon 
 these tiny creatures of the field. It all passed in review 
 before his mind because he was a poet with the power of 
 moral imagination. He had eyes to see, and he saw. 
 
 How wonderful was the exercise of this power in the 
 life of the Son of Man! He had sent forth "the other 
 seventy," the larger company of faithful disciples. He 
 
152 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 had charged them to heal the sick and to make known to 
 men the sublime fact that the Kingdom of God had come 
 nigh unto them. When the seventy returned from their 
 errands of service they made a glowing report upon the 
 success of their efforts. They had been healing diseases 
 and casting out devils. Their hearts were filled to the 
 brim with such joy as they had never known before. For 
 them the best wine had been kept until now. 
 
 Quick as a flash came the words of Christ. "I saw 
 Satan falling like lightning from heaven." And in that 
 hour he exulted in spirit and said, "I thank Thee, O 
 Father, Lord of heaven and earth." 
 
 In those glowing words Jesus was not giving them the 
 prose facts of a moral survey. He was not framing a 
 careful induction from the data they had brought him. 
 He was using his imagination to picture in swift, dra- 
 matic fashion the ultimate triumph of the redemptive 
 forces of earth and sky over all our human ills. He had 
 seen the earnest and the promise of all this in the faithful 
 kindly service of those seventy people whose very names 
 have faded from the history of the race which they were 
 helping to redeem. 
 
 If you would learn to preach, so that by the power of 
 your appeal the minds and hearts of your people will be 
 made to mount up with wings like eagles claiming all the 
 goods things which God has in store for them, then learn 
 how to exercise this power of moral imagination as fur- 
 nishing you another essential factor in any effective 
 sermon. 
 
 This age of ours ought to believe not less but rather 
 more in the Unseen. Our attention has been directed 
 
LIGHTER ELEMENTS OF THE SERMON 153 
 
 with peculiar force to things invisible. Here is the X-ray 
 piercing through coatsleeve and firm flesh, through thick 
 book and barndoor if need be, revealing plainly the con- 
 dition of the bones in the forearm, and all the hidden 
 articulations of wrist and hand — and incidentally telling 
 us of more things in certain forms of light than our 
 philosophy had dreamed of! Here is wireless telegraphy 
 enabling the ships to whisper to each other across wide 
 stretches of open sea and indicating that this simple air 
 we breathe has in it potencies hitherto unsuspected which 
 can be made the useful servants of intelligence! Here is 
 radium so dynamic in the outgoings of its power as to 
 bring to our minds the constant sense of something almost 
 superhuman, a tiny bit of it scarcely visible to the eye of 
 man holding within itself energy enough to keep a clock 
 ticking for a hundred years! In all these and in many 
 another direction the unseen has come to have a fresh 
 hold upon the interest of mankind. 
 
 Now if you can only picture the glorious truths sug- 
 gested by all this through a competent use of your spiritual 
 imagination you can secure a response of faith and of 
 action from the men of our day absolutely unequaled in 
 those ages of credulity when simpler minds pictured the 
 air as peopled with friendly spirits or with threatening 
 hobgoblins. The very fact that widening intelligence has 
 again and again rebuked the narrow and hasty dogmatism 
 which was ready to assert that now the returns were all 
 in, will aid you in making the minds of those to whom 
 you speak, more responsive to the claims of faith. 
 
 The tangible, wholesome fruits of the spirit are "love, 
 joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, 
 
154 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 mildness, and self-control." The great main business of 
 the tree of life, which grew on this side the river and 
 on that, was to bring forth an abundance of these whole- 
 some fruits and to do it every month in the year. There 
 was to be no unproductive winter of moral discontent in 
 that garden of the Lord. But incidental to its main pur- 
 pose, thrown in as you might say for good measure, "the 
 leaves of the tree" were to be "for the healing of the na- 
 tions." These lighter expressions of the tree's inner life, 
 — products which would not weigh out bulk for bulk with 
 apples and pears, products which would not begin to make 
 an equal showing in solid food values — were also to have 
 their place of honor and of usefulness in the great re- 
 demptive process. 
 
 See to it that your sermons have in them an abundant 
 supply of that bread which cometh down from heaven to 
 give life unto the world, bread which a man may eat and 
 not die ! Then let the leaves of your sermon, the lighter 
 elements of illustration, of humor and of things imagined, 
 be likewise set forth for the healing and the help, the com- 
 fort and the cheer of those who hear you. 
 
VI 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 
 
 HERE is the final test! Here you win or lose! 
 All that has gone before helps or hinders, as the 
 case may be, but the proof of the pudding is the 
 eating. Here in the delivery of your sermon the nourish- 
 ment which you have brought for a hungry congregation 
 is either eaten with relish, satisfaction and resultant 
 strength, or it is left on the plate as a bit of cold victuals, 
 useless and repellent. Take heed therefore how you 
 deliver ! 
 
 What do we mean by "delivery ?" What does it mean 
 "to deliver" a telegram or an order of groceries ? It 
 means to get the thing to be delivered into the possession 
 of the person for whom it was intended. There would 
 be no delivery if the boy threw the groceries into the back 
 alley, or tossed the telegram over the fence. In that case 
 they would not reach the person for whom they were in- 
 ' tended. Merely getting them out of his hands is not de- 
 livering them. Many sermons are never "delivered" at 
 all. The minister gets his words out ; he gets the sermon 
 off of his mind and out of his system, but he does not 
 lodge it in the minds and the hearts of the people to whom 
 it is addressed. He has not delivered it in any true 
 sense. In many cases there is only a partial delivery, the 
 delivery of a small percentage of the real content of the 
 sermon. Delivery is an intricate and a difficult process. 
 
 155 
 
156 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 We shall need to study all the conditions involved if we 
 are to meet them in any competent way. 
 
 The physical conditions in the church itself affect the 
 delivery of any sermon. The architects seein to have for- 
 gotten oftentimes that Protestant churches are built pri- 
 marily to speak in, to sing in, and to hear in. The Gothic 
 church, with its high arches and long aisles, with its 
 stately, obstructing columns and its defective acoustics, 
 may have been adapted to a spectacular service which was 
 meant to be seen rather than heard. The Gothic church 
 as a rule is not well adapted to the work of preaching. 
 
 The ideal auditorium for speaking would be shaped 
 something like a horseshoe, with the minister located 
 midway between the two corks of the shoe. This might 
 not be impressive architecturally, but it would lend itself 
 admirably to the purposes of public address. When 
 Charles Dickens made his famous lecture tour in the 
 United States he reported that Plymouth Church, Brook- 
 lyn, which was built in about that form under the direc- 
 tion of Henry Ward Beecher, offered him the best facili- 
 ties for public speaking to be found anywhere in this 
 country. Plymouth Church is not beautiful nor impres- 
 sive either outside or inside, but one can stand in its 
 pulpit speaking to a large congregation in a conversational 
 tone and be heard. Bad architecture has destroyed the 
 spiritual effectiveness of many a good sermon. The actors 
 in the theaters would not submit to the handicap which 
 is frequently imposed upon an unhappy minister of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 The ideal pulpit is one where the preacher is not bar- 
 ricaded behind heavy wooden breastworks which allow the 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 157 
 
 people to see nothing of him except what may appear 
 above the top button of his waistcoat. This pulpit where 
 I am standing now is an abomination. I should be almost 
 ready to give twO hours of extra credits to any adven- 
 turous divinity student who might steal in some dark 
 night and carry it off as Samson did the gates of Gaza. 
 Let the whole man stand out and speak! The man's 
 attitude and bearing in the declaring of some vital truth 
 may become as eloquent as the words themselves. 
 
 The habit of standing before a congregation where the 
 speaker can be seen from head to foot will also prevent 
 the minister from falling into those lounging slovenly 
 habits which are so easily hidden away behind the holy 
 barricade. The voice from the Unseen said to the prophet 
 of old, "Stand upon thy feet, son of Man, and I will speak 
 unto thee." "It is to men standing on their feet, all their 
 senses alert, all their powers active, that God speaks." 
 In my judgment the ideal pulpit contains nothing larger 
 than a reading desk, with sufficient room upon it to lay 
 a Bible, a hymn book, a few notes, and the minister's 
 watch. Then if he can stand out free and clear by the 
 side of this desk and declare the evangel, he has the best 
 sort of an opportunity to win the attention and to move 
 the hearts of the congregation thus brought before him 
 with an unimpeded view. 
 
 The pulpit had best be located as near as possible to Q 
 the front pews. If there is a wide open space of twenty 
 or thirty feet between the pulpit and the first row of 
 people, a kind of Nevada desert without even sage brush 
 and Jack rabbits in it to liven it up, this empty interval 
 serves as a non-conductor of spiritual power. It serves 
 
158 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 to insulate the preacher from those to whose needs he 
 would minister. You lose a full third of yourself before 
 you get across to that other shore where the people are. 
 When a man is declaring his affection for a certain young 
 woman and asking her to marry him, he does not get off 
 twenty or thirty feet away and call it out to her in loud 
 tones. As a matter of fact, I have never been personally 
 present when that thing was being done but once in my 
 life — on that occasion I remember distinctly that the man 
 was not speaking at a long remove from the object of his 
 desires. You are wooing those people to a Christian life 
 and to more active Christian service — ^you can do it better 
 if you are near enough almost to lay your hand upon the 
 heads of those in the front pews. 
 
 The presence of an abundance of fresh air contributes 
 steadily to the effective delivery of a sermon. The church 
 sextons as a rule are strongly conservative at this point. 
 In the last church I served I had a most obliging excep- 
 tion in the person of Charles S. Lewis, a man whom I 
 shall always hold in affectionate remembrance as an hon- 
 ored friend. He was a lover of fresh air and of all other 
 good things. But many church sextons do not want to 
 change the old customs or the old theology or the old air. 
 They like to keep it undisturbed, as though to preserve 
 "an odor of sanctity" which seems to them altogether pre- 
 cious. In such churches "the garment of praise" fails to 
 replace "the spirit of heaviness" for lack of fresh air. 
 
 There are certain flowers with a dull, heavy fragrance 
 — hyacinths, tuberoses, Chinese lilies and the like — 
 placed upon the altar occasionally by kind-hearted women 
 who know not what they do, which serve to create an 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 159 
 
 atmosphere wliere people fall asleep more readily than 
 they respond to spiritual appeal. The "heavy feeling" 
 at funerals is not always due solely to personal grief on 
 the part of the friends who have assembled — much of it 
 is due to the "floral offerings." Lift up your heads, O ye 
 gates, and open the windows to let in God's fresh air 
 of which there will always be enough and to spare! 
 
 The church should be sufficiently light for the minister < 
 to be able to look into the faces of the people, and to 
 know something as to what is going on in their minds. 
 It should be light enough for the people to follow the 
 changing expression in his own face. The "dim religious 
 light" may have a certain value in promoting the feeling 
 of reverence and the sense of something mysterious, but 
 the clearer light offers better opportunity for compelling 
 address. The true sermon is meant to say to all the 
 cloudy confusion in which the minds and hearts of many 
 are wont to move, "Let there be light!" 
 
 It is a distinct advantage not to have a broad aisle ^ 
 immediately in front of the pulpit stretching away in 
 empty, unresponsive fashion to the front door of the 
 church. That broad aisle is also objectionable because it 
 is calculated to produce a certain sense of social distinc- 
 tion and separation which is out of place in the church 
 of Christ. The people who sit on "the broad aisle" are 
 likely to be regarded as the big bugs of the church, while 
 those on the side aisles and in the galleries are relegated 
 to the small insect class. It is much more inspiring to 
 speak directly to columns of human faces than to speak 
 into a long vista of well-worn church carpet. 
 
 These are all little things but they affect for good or 
 
 / 
 
160 THE ART OF PREACHINa 
 
 for ill the delivery of the sermon. When the surgeon is 
 about to perform a major operation, he insists upon hav- 
 ing all the physical conditions as perfect as they can be 
 made. His own white antiseptic dress and that of the 
 nurse, the tiled room which reduces to a minimum the 
 danger of infection, the sterilized instruments, sponges 
 and bandages to be employed, — all these have to do with 
 the success of the operation. You are undertaking some- 
 thing much more difficult and delicate in every way — you 
 cannot afford to neglect any of those conditions which will 
 aid or retard you in accomplishing the desired spiritual 
 result. 
 
 Your own physical condition will enter decisively into 
 the quality of your delivery. It is altogether wise for a 
 preacher who is responsible for two sermons on Sunday 
 to refrain from all hard work on Saturday afternoon and 
 evening. The man who habitually postpones his prepara- 
 tion until that stage of the game and then in the spirit 
 of a desperate, eleventh-hour repentance strives to atone 
 for his earlier neglect by working furiously far into the 
 night on Saturday evening is an outrageous sinner. He 
 is sinning with a high hand and an outstretched arm 
 against himself and against his people and against his 
 Lord. 
 
 The minister can well afford to play with his children 
 on Saturday evening, or to play games with his wife, or 
 to indulge himself in light and pleasant reading which 
 imposes no particular strain upon his intellectual facul- 
 ties. He had best sleep soundly for eight or nine hours 
 on Saturday night. He might well sleep vicariously on 
 behalf of the congregation he is to meet the next day. If 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 161 
 
 he sleeps well on Saturday night the people are much less 
 likely to sleep while he is preaching to them on Sunday 
 morning. 
 
 The minister who is to preach a second sermon at an 
 evening service may well go to bed on Sunday afternoon. 
 It has been my custom for the last twenty-five years when- 
 ever I am to preach twice to take off my clothes after 
 dinner on Sunday and spend the afternoon in bed, as if 
 I had been put there for the night. I do not always 
 sleep, but I relax. Then if I take a sponge bath and a 
 rub-down about six o'clock, I find myself as fresh and 
 as keen for the evening service as I was for the morning. 
 
 The minister may well order his eating with reference 
 to the delivery of his sermon. He must of necessity avoid 
 the eating of anything heavy or indigestible on Saturday 
 night. Much of the religious apathy in country places in 
 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been attributed 
 to the prevalent habit of serving baked beans for supper 
 on Saturday night. There are homes where the beans are 
 served up again for Sunday breakfast. It is a well-nigh 
 impossible task for a preacher filled to the throat with 
 baked beans to preach to a congregation similarly filled 
 and accomplish the full and appropriate measure of 
 spiritual result. 
 
 The minister should eat just as little as possible on 
 Sunday morning so that he keeps his interior economy 
 from being uneasy and clamorous. It does not require 
 a great deal of food to quiet the demands which are likely 
 to arise from that quarter in a man who is intent on 
 preaching a good sermon. I thought at one time that I 
 needed to eat a very substantial breakfast on Sunday in 
 
162 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 order to "get up my strength" for the work of the day. 
 When the time came for the delivery of the sermon I then 
 had two tasks on my hands, the digesting of all the beef- 
 steak and fried potatoes, and the preaching of a sermon. 
 It frequently turned out that the blood which should have 
 been in my head was in my stomach. It is well-nigh im- 
 possible for the Holy Spirit to take a man full of fried 
 sausage, hot biscuits, and other solid substances, and use 
 him as a "chosen vessel" to make other people hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness. The most powerful electric 
 current cannot pass through certain non-conductors. You 
 can make your body an effective insulation against Divine 
 help. 
 
 Personally I am opposed to the use of all kinds of 
 stimulants. The Eighteenth Amendment has practically 
 removed alcoholic stimulants from our reach, even if there 
 Avere no conscientious scruples among ministers against 
 their use. I would also lay under ban the habitual use 
 of tea and coffee. They are drugs — caffeine is a powerful 
 drug. It may be advisable to use it as a drug when a 
 man has suffered all night Saturday night from toothache, 
 but the habitual use of such a stimulant is a disadvantage. 
 When a man has taken two or three cups of strong coffee 
 he feels good oftentimes when he has no right to feel good. 
 He is constantly teaching his nerves to lie to him. The 
 man who lives without stimulants knows always exactly 
 where he is. 
 
 The toiler who works mainly with his hands and in the 
 open air can do many things with impunity which would 
 prove perilous for you. The man who does the greater 
 part of his work indoors seated at a desk, living during 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 163 
 
 all of his waking hours under more or less of a nervous 
 and mental strain, had best let stimulants alone. If you 
 drink strong coffee habitually and in generous quantity, 
 you may see the time when insomnia will come like a thief 
 in the night and steal away your sleep. You may lie 
 awake all night, as many a nerve-racked minister ha?5 
 done, hearing the clock strike all the hours and all the 
 half hours until the day dawns and the shadows do not 
 flee away. You may do the same thing the next night 
 and the next. And if that sorry experience falls to your 
 lot, you will not on the third day feel like a bridegroom 
 coming out of his chamber, rejoicing as a strong man to 
 run a race. In the long run, the nerves which have not 
 been tampered with by the use of any kind of stimulants 
 or narcotics will show themselves most reliable in sus- 
 tained intellectual effort and in public address. 
 
 The main tool to be used in the delivery of the sermon o 
 is your voice. See to it that you keep your tools in good 
 order as workmen approved unto God who need not be 
 ashamed ! The minister is under moral obligation so to 
 train and so to use his throat and other vocal organs as 
 to avoid all sore throat, colds and hoarseness, which always 
 diminish where they do not actually destroy effective de- 
 livery. You ckn afford to dash the coldest water available 
 on your throat and chest every morning for three hundred 
 and sixty-five days in the year. This heroic treatment 
 will serve to stimulate the circulation in that part of your 
 body and to temper your throat until it becomes, like your 
 face, not susceptible to injury by sudden changes of tem- 
 perature. The man who is to speak will succeed better 
 if he wears a loose coUar which allows the free circulation 
 
164 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 of air around his throat and the freest sort of circulation 
 of blood from the body to the brain. 
 
 The public speaker may well avoid the drinking of 
 water while he is speaking, ligature has provided the 
 mouth and throat with glands which secrete a lubricant 
 far superior to anything which can be supplied from glass 
 and pitcher. If a man will use his vocal organs naturally 
 and rationally he can leave the entire process of lubrica- 
 tion to the efficient care of those glands. If, on the other 
 hand, he forms the habit of drinking water during the 
 delivery of his sermon, they will begin to loaf on their 
 job so that presently he will have to pour in something 
 at frequent intervals to prime the pump. 
 
 The man who is to deliver a sermon will need to submit 
 himself to all the necessary discipline for the development 
 of a strong, resonant, flexible, and pleasant voice. He 
 will have to practice the exercises prescribed by some 
 teacher of public expression who knows his business until 
 his voice shall become the responsive and reliable agent 
 of his mind and heart in conveying thought and feeling 
 to the listening congregation. He will have to study and 
 to obey all the searching exacting laws which control these 
 precious forms of energy employed in delivering sermons. 
 And blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of 
 the Lord, meditating thereon by day and by night. 
 
 It is a clear advantage for a man to cultivate the habit 
 of using a pleasant tone of voice always. If his ordinary 
 mode of speech is harsh, husky, rasping or shrill, it will 
 be almost impossible for him to display that quality of 
 tone suitable for the conveyance of a message of spiritual 
 help. "If a man's words say one thing and his voice saya 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 165 
 
 another, he is working at cross purposes." If his lan- 
 guage invites and his tones repel, the people will not know 
 whether they are going or coming. The inevitable con- 
 fusion will go far toward robbing his work of its power. 
 Every public speaker might well talk for five or ten min- 
 utes in his usual style into a graphophone, which will re- 
 produce for him with amazing fidelity those inflections and 
 infelicities of tone production which many a waiting con- 
 gregation has found a burden grievous to be borne. He 
 will there behold his natural self in a glass and knowing 
 what manner of man he is vocally, he may be moved to 
 go his way and strive for a better quality of voice. 
 
 The psychology of delivery is also to be considered. 
 Other things being equal, the man will best deliver his 
 sermon where his mind is at ease when he begins. How- 
 ever anxious he may be touching the effect of that par- 
 ticular message, it is a distinct gain if he is able to utter 
 it as if it were no particular trouble to him. The ill- 
 trained undisciplined singer in some cheap vaudeville 
 show will display such an amount of conscious effort, of 
 physical contortion and of facial grimace as to render her 
 performance painful to behold as well as an offense to the 
 ear. Patti and Caruso sang as the birds sing, with an 
 ease and a joy well-nigh perfect. They had paid the full 
 price of that apparent spontaneity by years of hard study 
 and discipline. 
 
 The preacher will be aided in his delivery by seeking 
 to develop also the right mood in the congregation just 
 before the sermon is to begin. It is bad psychology to 
 have the taking of the collection, or a long list of confus- 
 ing notices, or the singing of a choir number, which may 
 
166 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 frequently prove to be a misfit, come immediately before 
 the sermon. The best thing that the people in a congre- 
 gation can do to prepare their minds for the reception of 
 a sermon is to sing together in hearty fashion some suit- 
 able hymn which shall prepare the way for the message 
 of the hour. 
 
 Hear these wise words from one who combines the love 
 of beauty with the love of God. In his "Art and Re- 
 ligion," Von Ogden Vogt says, "A sermon should begin 
 interestingly but the heavier burden of impression should 
 come with the climax and at the close. Therefore some 
 more common and ordinary exercise such as a hymn 
 should immediately precede the sermon. If the order of 
 worship has developed an imaginative outlook and an 
 emotional power by itself, the cycle of its psychological 
 course should be brought to a certain conclusion before 
 the beginning of the sermon. There should be something 
 to ground the attention after the first emotional uplift, 
 something to bring back the whole situation, so to speak, 
 to 'neutral clutch.' An artistic solo does not do this. It 
 does too much. Something else is required which will 
 enable the sermon to begin lower down as it were and 
 then lead to a fresh ascent of the emotions." 
 
 The preacher does well to begin his sermon as if he 
 expected every one to listen from the very first word. He 
 may well wait a moment for the people to become quiet 
 before he announces his text. We read of One who "went 
 into the synagogue as his custom was and stood up to 
 read. . . . And the eyes of all them that were in the 
 synagogue were fastened on him." Then in the hush of 
 that complete attention "he began to say unto them" 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 167 
 
 words which they never forgot as long as they lived. The 
 preacher's very look and hearing, if he knows what he is 
 about, will help to produce the sense that something of 
 significance is about to occur. The well-bred horse knows 
 instantly whether the man who has just mounted him is 
 or is not accustomed to riding. Even so the congregation 
 feels instinctively the presence of a man who understands 
 his business. When you enter upon the delivery of your 
 sermon, have your eyes upon the people instead of fussing 
 over your hymn book or with the notes or the notices upon 
 the desk. If your eyes are vipon them, the chances are 
 that their eyes and their minds will be upon you. 
 
 The delivery of the sermon had best begin in an easy 
 conversational tone. If you start in immediately after 
 the style of Spartacus addressing the gladiators or of 
 Webster replying to Hayne, it may put upon your hearers 
 a strain so sudden and so severe as to disconcert them. 
 It will also make it difiicult for you to increase steadily 
 the power and effectiveness of your delivery in the further 
 development of your theme. Begin on the level even 
 though you are proposing to carry the whole congregation 
 up into the seventh heaven of spiritual ecstasy when the 
 right moment comes. When I begin my sermon, espe- 
 cially in some strange church where I may never have 
 preached before, I usually fix my eye on some one in the 
 rear of the church, and make my first remark to him. If 
 I can gain and hold his attention from the very start I 
 may be fairly sure that I am winning a sympathetic hear- 
 ing from all the rest. If the opening sentences of the 
 sermon are not uttered too rapidly or in too loud a tone 
 of voice this will give time for your vocal organs to adjust 
 
168 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 themselves to the task of delivery. The tone of dignified 
 conversation furnishes the staple method for effective de- 
 livery. It wears better than any other style of speech. 
 The men who shout and roar in the pulpit are not the 
 men who speak to the human heart the words of eternal 
 life. 
 
 The great parliamentary speakers in England — Herbert 
 H. Asquith, Arthur J. Balfour, David Lloyd George — 
 speak habitually in a quiet conversational tone. The 
 greatest English actors are as a rule much less stagey 
 and are more simple in their manner than are many of 
 our American actors. When Wendell Phillips was de- 
 livering those speeches on the abolition of slavery which 
 aroused the passions of the people to the point where they 
 sometimes answered back with bad eggs and brick-bats, 
 he did it in a quiet, well modulated tone of voice. There 
 need be nothing tame or spiritless about this method of 
 delivery — the highest art is to be found ever in the right 
 use of that which is simple and natural. 
 
 Eor nine-tenths of the time there may well be a sense 
 of reserve power in the preacher's delivery. He keeps his 
 chest full of air so that his tones may be well sustained. 
 He bears himself with such ease that the people are feeling 
 all the while that if he wished he could readily let out 
 another hole in his belt. He has himself so completely in 
 hand that every faculty is steadily contributing to the end 
 he has in veiw. The properties of the whole man — face, 
 voice, eyes, arms, legs, frame, throat, and lungs — are act- 
 ing together in the spirit of team work for the achieve- 
 ment of a certain high end. 
 
 The delivery of a sermon is no easy task. There are 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 169 
 
 some men whom joii simply cannot listen to, however you 
 may try. There are other men whom you can listen to 
 by a steady and resolute effort. There are other men who 
 speak in such fashion that you cannot help listening to 
 them. It is for us to strive, every man of us, to be en- 
 rolled in that third class. "His word was with power" 
 — there was no escape for those who heard, from its accent 
 of authority. 
 
 The heart has large place in the delivery of a sermon. 
 Unless the man is directly sympathetic with his theme 
 and with his main purpose in preaching that particular 
 sermon, the whole service will savor of the nature of a 
 mechanical performance. The cold, hard, selfish, indif- 
 ferent, ungodly man can never preach a sermon on the 
 love of God or upon any of the worthier aspects of human 
 nature with any effect, I care not what splendid material 
 he may have in his notes. Though I speak with the 
 tongues of men and of angels and have not the love of 
 God in my heart and a great warm love for those people 
 to whom my words are addressed, I become as sounding 
 brass or a clanging cymbal. 
 
 There should be no least suspicion of the self-conscious, 
 the pompous, the dictatorial attitude in the man who is 
 preaching the gospel of the Son of God. He is not laying 
 down the law to a long-suffering congregation. If he 
 flings out carelessly and harshly against the shortcomings 
 of his fellow-beings in a sort of "keep-off-the-grass" man- 
 ner, he will defeat the very ends he has in view. There is 
 a lot of pain and grief in the world connected up by 
 spiritual wireless with those lives there before him — let 
 him set himself deliberately and sympathetically to min- 
 
170 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 ' ister to all that need. He is not seeking to have lordship 
 over their minds, but to be a helper in their time of stress. 
 He is there, as St. Paul was, to be "their servant for 
 Jesus' sake." He may well say by his bearing, by his 
 tone of voice, and by the very atmosphere he bears with 
 him into the pulpit, "I am among you as one who 
 serves." 
 
 I shall never forget the description given by a friend 
 of mine of a service which he once attended in the city 
 of London. The preacher was George MacDonald. He 
 entered the pulpit, not arrayed in conventional black, but 
 in a gray tweed suit and a red necktie. The tokens of 
 his ordination were not in his clothes but in his life. 
 
 He read for the Scripture lesson that morning the 
 eleventh chapter of Hebrews. When the time came for 
 the sermon, George MacDonald said: "You have all 
 heard about these men of feyth. I shall not try to tell 
 you what feyth is — there are theological professors who 
 can do that much better than I could do it. I am here 
 to help you to believe." Then followed such a simple, 
 heartfelt, and majestic manifestation of the man's own 
 faith in those imseen realities which are eternal, as to 
 beget faith in the minds and hearts of all his hearers. 
 • His heart was in his work, and his delivery was effective 
 because it rested back upon the genuine beauty of his own 
 inner life. 
 
 Every man who preaches at all must launch out into the 
 deep where, as he knows full well, the water is over his 
 head. He must hold up before the aspiring hearts of his 
 hearers ideals which have by no means been fully realized 
 in his own imperfect life. He must point to higher levels 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 171 
 
 of spiritual experience, where he has not as yet been able 
 to walk himself with even tread. If he would not make 
 his preaching pathetically meager in its outlook, he must 
 allow his utterance to outnin his achievements, saying 
 with the apostle "not as though I had already attained 
 or were already made perfect, but this one thing I do, 
 forgetting the things which are behind and reaching for 
 the things which are ahead, I press toward the mark." 
 
 All this is so evident as to go without saying. Yet even 
 so, the best part of any man's deliverance is that which 
 comes forth in vital fashion out of the heart of his own 
 experience of the truth it contains. That higher mode of 
 life which he makes bold to urge upon his fellows must 
 have its beginnings and its promise of ultimate success 
 in the depths of his own soul. It must be that if his 
 preaching is to be anything better than a theatrical per- 
 formance. 
 
 The devil of unreality goes about like a roaring lion 
 seeking whom he may devour. The first house he heads 
 for when he comes to town is the parsonage. If he is 
 allowed to get in and to make himself at home among 
 your habits of speech and of life he will eat you up almost 
 before you know it. The only way to keep that beast, 
 and all the wolves which travel with him, from your door, 
 is to make sure that the best part of your preaching roots 
 down genuinely into the moods and purposes of your own 
 heart. "The preacher who really believes the half-truth, 
 will have more power than the preacher who half believes 
 the whole truth." 
 
 How the deeper experiences of Jesus conditioned and 
 then fortified his utterance! He not only introduced a 
 
172 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 finer mode of worship which should be "in spirit and in 
 truth" for his own Christian followers, he also changed 
 the mode of worship for faithful Jews. He hoped to 
 abolish the very habit of animal sacrifices which was in 
 vogue when he came upon the scene. "The great volume 
 of sacrifice had been pouring through innumerable chan- 
 nels," as William J. Tucker once said, "from the heart 
 of man into the heart of God. Christ met and over- 
 whelmed the sacrifice of man with the sacrifice of God. 
 It was the inflowing tide of the ocean staying and return- 
 ing the waters from river and creek which were seeking 
 its bosom." 
 
 "The act of Jesus was an act of sublime daring. We 
 ask instinctively. Who is it that bids men cease their 
 propitiatory rites? Who is it that puts out the fires on 
 sacrificial altars and stanches the blood of sacrificial vic- 
 tims ? It is He who carries out the change in his own 
 person and offers himself as the Lamb of God which 
 taketh away the sin of the world." It is the man who has 
 experienced the truth he would utter, by the struggles 
 and the triumphs of his own heart, who wins the right, 
 and gains the power to speak not as the scribes who had 
 learned their lessons out of a book, but as one having 
 authority. 
 
 It would be difficult to say how much of religion is 
 feeling. The feeling of dependence upon a Higher 
 Power ! The sense of kinship with the Eternal ! The 
 yearning for a more complete fellowship with the Unseen ! 
 The consciousness of accoimtability to One who sits for- 
 ever upon the Great White Throne! The quiet sense of 
 sweet security when we know Whom we have believed! 
 
THE DELIVERY OP THE SERMON 173 
 
 [All these deep and precious states of feeling enter into the 
 very warp and woof of religious experience. You cannot 
 address yourself to those more delicate and intimate emo- 
 tions, you cannot mold them or utilize them in the forma- 
 tion of finer types of character unless you have already 
 entered into them yourself. The heart knows the lan- 
 guage of the heart as no other faculty ever can. 
 
 The considerations of prudence may point to certain 
 conclusions as solid and verifiable as the statements of the 
 multiplication table and as powerless to move men to 
 higher levels of purpose. The voice of reason and the 
 finger of expediency may indicate a certain line of action 
 as clear and plain as the ISTorth Star — and as coldly re- 
 mote from hiunan well being. We are hearts as well as 
 heads. We are hearts even more than we are heads. 
 
 The men who wrote the Bible wrote with their pens 
 and with their minds up to a certain point, but when they 
 would have us see visions and dream dreams they wrote 
 with their hearts. "Out of the heart are the issues of 
 life" because men and women do mainly those things 
 which they feel like doing. "With the heart man be- 
 lieveth unto righteousness" — he cannot achieve that high 
 end in any other way. Therefore any one who ignores 
 sentiment or makes light of feeling in order to leave more 
 room for the chilly dictates of a coldly calculated expedi- 
 ency makes a sorry trade. 
 
 "The night has a thousand eyes 
 And the day but one 
 Yet the light of the whole world dies 
 When the sun is gone. 
 
174 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 "The mind has a thousand eyes 
 And the heart but one 
 But the light of the whole life dies 
 When love is done/' 
 
 "" Keep therefore as the preachers of a gospel which 
 
 came from the heart of God when He so loved the world 
 
 \, as to give His only begotten Son — keep therefore your 
 
 ^'- hearts with all diligence ! Keep them filled and charged 
 
 with delicate sensibility, with tender devotion and with 
 
 joyous enthusiasm, with gracious longings and with high 
 
 resolve, for out of the heart are the issues of life. The 
 r' 
 
 hest language and the best style of utterance, like the best 
 
 type of courtesy, have their seat in the depths of the soul. 
 They cannot therefore he put on or put off at will as we 
 change our clothes. 
 
 When you feel as a man ought to feel in preaching upon 
 certain great truths, your attitude and bearing, your voice 
 with its varying inflections and modulations, your accent 
 and your emphasis, as you pass lightly here and rest your 
 whole weight there, have a way of falling into line. If 
 you have had any sort of right training in making your 
 body responsive to your thought these lesser faculties will 
 - recognize and obey their superior officer. In any great 
 emotional crisis, sad or glad, which lifts a man for the 
 moment quite out of himself, his elocution and his ges- 
 tures, unstudied though they may be, are likely to be 
 — - above criticism. If then you would make the delivery 
 of your message touching the great verities at once sincere 
 and artistic you must live in them as a man who would 
 go no more out. 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 175 
 
 If you would preach well keep your heart ever in the ^ 
 presence of whatsoever things are just and true and pure, 
 in the presence of whatsoever things are honorahle and 
 reputable and lovable. Keep it there until the inevitable 
 reactions come to abide with you evermore in finer forms 
 of feeling. Then as you stand up to deliver your sermon, 
 really to deliver it and leave it as a precious possession 
 lodged in the lives of those who hear you, let those feel- 
 ings course through your veins like rich red blood and 
 the God of Peace shall be with you. 
 
 It was my good fortune in my seminary days to hear 
 Phillips Brooks preach almost every Sunday for the bet- 
 ter part of the three years. It was a privilege unspeak- 
 able for any man, particularly for a raw, unformed young 
 theologue. His sermons were full of sensible, scriptural, 
 helpful ideas. He was at home in the best of the world's 
 great literature and his diction had in it dignity and 
 grace. Yet even so those who have never heard him 
 preach do not, in large numbers, find his published ser- 
 mons attractive. His delivery of them had in it none of 
 the studied and prearranged tricks of the professional 
 elocutionist. His utterance was so rapid as to be the 
 despair of all but the most expert stenographers — the 
 words came pouring out at the rate of two hundred or 
 more per minute. He never made the least attempt at 
 what the world commonly calls "oratory." But it was 
 wonderful preaching. I can feel the tingle of it yet in 
 my nerves and the inspiration of it in the inmost recesses 
 of my soul even though it will be thirty years next Janu- 
 ary since he died. 
 r- The great power of his uttered sermon lay in the fact 
 
/" 
 
 176 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 that there before our eyes as we listened was a great and 
 beautiful soul. He was a man of God, a lover of his 
 fellows, a benign and sympathetic spirit, reaching out the 
 hand ©f help to each one of us that he might lift us up. 
 The soul of the man back of his sermon, breathing through 
 it, underlying it as a sure foundation for its reality, over- 
 arching it as a benediction from above — ^the soul of the 
 man preached as he delivered into our hearts the full 
 content of what he had brought. It was deep calling unto 
 deep, bringing up from profounder sources of motive and 
 stimulus those new impulses which sent us out to run 
 the race set before us with a finer and a firmer purpose. 
 
 Your effectiveness in the delivery will be strongly in- 
 fluenced by the style in which you have prepared your 
 sermon. When the missionary goes to China or to India 
 his first task is to learn the language. He may spend two 
 or more years of hard work making himself at home in 
 the vernacular. He keeps at it until he can speak the 
 tongue of those whom he would win to Christian life in 
 clear-cut, vigorous fashion with the native idiom and the 
 accent of reality in every word of it. 
 
 In the vision of the seer, the One who was set to win, 
 to rule and to save the nations "had a sharp two-edged 
 sword in his mouth." His sword was not on his hip nor 
 in his hand but in his mouth. Here between his lips 
 was the hiding of his power. He was to achieve by the 
 spoken word. In like manner you are under bonds to 
 learn to speak the English language as well as it lies 
 within the power of a man of your size to speak it as a 
 result of years of hard study and literary discipline. It 
 was One who spake as never man spake who said, "By 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 177 
 
 thy words shalt thou be justified and by thy Words thou 
 shalt be condemned." 
 
 Your style is the garment in which you clothe your 
 thought. You cannot send your ideas out naked — they 
 will refuse to go if they have any shred of modesty about 
 them, and people will refuse to welcome them into good 
 society if they undertake to make their approach in such 
 an unseemly way. The reception which your message 
 will enjoy at the hands of men will depend in large 
 measure upon whether or not it is well-dressed. 
 
 The best style for public address is one which makes 
 your thought presentable, interesting, effective, without 
 ever attracting the attention of the people to itself. A 
 woman has always overdone it if the people who meet her 
 in society think more about her clothes than they do about 
 her. She is dressed exactly right when her robing serves 
 to render her in the total impression made by her per- 
 sonality a lovelier and a more interesting factor in social 
 life. 
 
 The word style came from "stylus," a point. It was 
 the instrument the Romans used for their writing. It 
 indicates the chief means of gaining a good style. Write ! 
 Write! Write! And then having done all, write some 
 more! You had best wi-ite something every day if it is 
 nothing more than a brief paragraph on the back of some 
 old letter. Let it represent the very best that you can do 
 in composition. If you have already learned to write 
 shorthand or an abbreviated long hand, all the better — 
 you can thereby exercise yourself in careful composition 
 without too great an expenditure of time. 
 
 Write sermons. Write them out in full from time to 
 
178 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 time, even though jou may not be a manuscript preacher. 
 It will make the sermons you preach from outlines much 
 better in their literary form. Write an occasional article 
 for your religious paper — have something to say, say it 
 and say it in the strongest, clearest, mose persuasive man- 
 ner you can exhibit. When you have the chance take a 
 sermon which seemed to "go well," as we say, and re- 
 write it, making it fifty per cent better than it was in 
 thought and in style. Write on the margins and on the 
 fly leaves of the books you read — ^write out the thoughts 
 that have been started into being by what the author said. 
 Say something additional yourself and say it as well as 
 or even better than the author said his say. By this 
 means you will "covet earnestly the best gifts" and be 
 constantly reaching for "a more excellent way" of ex- 
 pressing your own ideas. 
 
 We have been told on high authority that "reading 
 makes a full man." So does drinking. In both cases the 
 man who has overdone it shows signs of dizziness and 
 intoxication as a result of his "load." Throw the book 
 aside occasionally and write something of your own. 
 "Writing makes an exact man" and thinking makes a 
 creative man. 
 
 There are three main marks of a good pulpit style 
 which will shed strength and beauty into your delivery. 
 First, clearness! It does not matter what you say if 
 people do not understand what you are driving at and 
 understand it right off. You are speaking straight along 
 and they cannot linger over a difficult sentence seeking 
 with dictionary and grammar to puzzle out your meaning 
 as we do when we read Browning's "Sordello." Your 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 179 
 
 next sentence will strike them between their eyes before 
 they have time for any such effort. Your meaning has 
 to be clear as the tones of the bell on a locomotive because 
 there is no time for them to "stop and look and listen" 
 while you are delivering your sermon. I had rather speak 
 five words which men will hear and feel and taste than 
 ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. 
 
 Being dull and obscure is not being deep. There are 
 light-headed young preachers who have a fear that if they 
 bring out their slender stock of ideas so clearly and so 
 simply that the people will see the purport of it all from 
 start to finish, they may be regarded as shallow and super- 
 ficial. They insist therefore on wrapping up their 
 thoughts in thick garments padded with verbiage some- 
 thing like the old Russian coachmen in Petrograd who 
 were so eager to display figures of generous proportions. 
 
 The complicated sentence which reels to and fro and 
 staggers like a drunken man will have the people at their 
 wits' ends to know what their beloved pastor is up to in 
 those verbal tangles. When R. W. Dale of Birmingham 
 was giving the Lyman Beecher Lectures here, he told us 
 of a preacher whom he used to hear occasionally in his 
 youth whose sermons invariably consisted of a series of 
 unwieldy sentences, each one "sprouting out into joint 
 after joint and never ceasing to grow until for some in- 
 explicable but altogether beneficent reason, he finally said, 
 lAmen." 
 
 If you would have a good speaking style use short 
 words for the most part! Short sentences for the most 
 part ! The long involved sentence which looks like the 
 map of an archipelago with various outlying islands of 
 
180 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 meaning and of qualifying clause scattered along on 
 either side of the main body of land is fatal to an effec- 
 tive delivery. Short paragraphs, where you round out 
 your treatment of some particular idea with measurable 
 completeness and then pass on to something else! Put it 
 clearly when you prepare your sermon if you would de- 
 liver it with power. 
 
 When Daniel Webster was quite a young man he gave 
 a Fourth of July oration at Portsmouth, 'New Hamp- 
 shire. The Fourth of July address in those days was 
 likely to be a form of speech where one would hear the 
 flapping of the angel's wings and the scream of the eagle's 
 mouth. The editor of a thoughtful review published the 
 oration in full together with some words of wise criticism 
 which ended like this : "Here is a lot of rhetoric which is 
 mere wording. If the speaker cannot learn to use simple 
 and sincere language he can never be an orator for the 
 common people." When Webster was at the height of 
 his power and his laurels were sure, he said, "I read that 
 criticism over and over, and finally concluded that if I 
 was to get my living by talking to plain people, I must 
 have a plain style." 
 
 The good pulpit style is also marked by force. "The 
 sword of the Spirit which is the word of God" has in it 
 the strength of tempered steel. Pick out words which 
 can stand up straight. Build them into sentences strong 
 enough to pry a reluctant man out of his pew if need be., 
 Build your paragraphs as men build bridges, strong 
 enough to carry without a tremor the full weight of your 
 biggest truths as you put them across. Write out your 
 sentences and then utter them aloud, thus testing them. 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 181 
 
 to ascertain whether or not they will bear the weight you 
 propose to put upon them without signs of breaking. 
 
 You have already learned no doubt not to end a sen- 
 tence with a preposition. It was a dainty, fastidious 
 teacher of English in the High School who said once, 
 "A preposition is not a good word to end a sentence with.'* 
 You do not want to end a sentence with any sort of weak, 
 anemic word. Spontaneity, promiscuity, miscellaneous, 
 differentiation — these are all respectable words in good 
 and regular standing in our dictionaries but they furnish 
 the poorest kind of a terminal for an uttered sentence. 
 Plan your sentence so that when you let your voice fall 
 at the end it will come down with a word strong enough 
 to drive your period in clear to the head. 
 
 If you would have a vigorous pulpit style shun the 
 habit of propping up your sentences all along with little 
 qualifying clauses and with modifying phrases, lest some 
 dunce should in the absence of those five barred gates 
 turn into your statement more meaning than you intended. 
 You have heard of the careful young divinity student 
 who desired above all things to be g-uarded in his utter- 
 ance. He said to his people one Sunday, with his head 
 on one side and the vox humana stop in his voice pulled 
 out full length, "My beloved hearers, if I may call you 
 so, you are under some measure of moral obligation to 
 repent, so to speak; and in case you do not, I would ven- 
 ture to suggest that there is a remote possibility that you 
 may be damned, as it were, to a certain extent." 
 
 How far all this is from the clear, strong, crisp style 
 of our Lord ! "He that saveth his life shall lose it." "It 
 is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
 
182 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." "l^o 
 man can serve two masters." "The Sabbath was made 
 for man and not man for the Sabbath." "The life is 
 more than meat." "The Son of Man is come to seek and 
 to save that which is lost." How firm and sure was His 
 touch upon truth as He put it in words! The man who 
 cannot learn to utter sentences as strong and as straight 
 as steel ramrods, would better become a man milliner 
 dealing with feathers and trimmings rather than under- 
 taking to speak in public to his needy fellows in words 
 which are "spirit and life." 
 
 Your style should be marked in the best sense by a 
 natural beauty. You are not striving primarily for ele- 
 gance. You do not want to make the sword of the spirit 
 so handsome that you will be afraid to draw it and use 
 it. Beauty in public address does not mean posy work 
 or excessive ornamentation. Is a beautiful woman ever 
 more beautiful than when she is dressed in pure white 
 with perhaps a single red rose to give that touch of 
 color which makes her white array seem all the lovelier? 
 The style of an address like the style of a dress may be 
 severely chaste and simple and yet be elegant in the best 
 sense of that word. 
 
 You can deliberately and conscientiously avoid rant and 
 all "tall talk" and that wild exaggeration which would 
 bring upon your words and upon your life the reproach 
 of insincerity. Ministers more than most men, perhaps, 
 by the very fact that they are dealing all the while with 
 interests so gigantic and with issues so far reaching, are 
 prone to overstatement. The story is told of a certain 
 Methodist preacher so much inclined to exaggeration that 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 183 
 
 after his Presiding Elder had admonished him in vain, 
 his brother ministers voted that he be called before the 
 bar of the Conference and be publicly reproved by the 
 Bishop. The reproof was given in a kindly affectionate 
 way and was received by the erring brother with becoming 
 submission. He promised to reform. He expressed great 
 sorrow for his fault, and assured the Bishop that this 
 habit of exaggeration had cost him many "pangs of re- 
 morse" and that over it he had already shed "barrels of 
 tears." 
 
 In the interest of a good style you can rejoice in a 
 close fit between your meaning and your phrases, your 
 words closing in around your ideas like well-made gloves. 
 You can avoid the use of all terms which have been soiled 
 and stained by unseemly associations until they are no 
 better than street drabs. You can eliminate hackneyed 
 threadbare expressions which have been worn on so many 
 pairs of lips as to be worn out. We have now a whole 
 collection of wearied and wearisome phrases in current 
 use to-day, — "One hundred per cent American," "Red- 
 blooded men," "Live wires," "good mixers" — which might 
 well be retired as belonging to the superannuated list. 
 They have long since become so completely out at the 
 elbows and run down at the heel as to be fit only for the 
 rummage sale. 
 
 You may by right method feed your style when it shows 
 unmistakable signs of becoming weak, thin, famine- 
 stricken. You can keep your style fresh and unworn by 
 replenishing it frequently with a new stock of useful 
 phrases. Words get tired as razors do — so the barbers 
 tell us — and they beg for respite, even as the patient peo- 
 
184 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 pie who grow weary under the ceaseless repetition of cer- 
 tain phrases, have already been hegging for a respite. 
 "Words have nervous prostration as human beings have 
 and when long overworked they should have an outing 
 and a rest." 
 
 The style of many public speakers has been weakened 
 and depleted by over-indulgence in newspaper reading. 
 The English of the average newspaper is poor in quality. 
 It is hastily written, to be hastily read and as hastily 
 thrown aside. The style becomes inevitably diffuse, 
 sloppy and frayed. Live with the great masters of Eng- 
 lish expression — The King James translation of the Bible 
 ^ and Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson, John Ruskin 
 and Matthew Arnold, James Anthony Eroude and John 
 Henry Newman ! Live with them and upon them until a 
 weak, shabby, muddy style would instantly repel you. 
 
 I am not pleading here for you to become phrase makers 
 — God forbid ! You have only twenty-five or thirty min- 
 utes for your sermon and the cutting out of useless 
 verbiage in order that those things which are supreme and 
 vital may be said becomes a most important considera- 
 tion. You are lost unless you strive for a style clear- 
 cut and compact. But strength and beauty can by per- 
 sistent practice be brought readily within that briefer 
 . compass which is always to be desired. "The language 
 of the pulpit," as a wise college president who was also 
 an excellent preacher once said, "must be the language 
 of certainty, the language of sympathy and the language 
 of hopefulness." 
 
 Hear this bit from Joseph Parker of the City Temple, 
 London ! How much he said and suggested in a few 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 185 
 
 words ! He was preaching from the text, "God is not 
 worshiped hj men's hands, as though He needed any- 
 thing." He was pointing out the difference between 
 "needing" a thing and "wanting" it. Pointing to a vase 
 of wild flowers on his pulpit he remarked, "These flowers 
 were growing yesterday in Devonshire. They were 
 plucked for me hy a tiny pair of hands that I love. Did 
 I need them? 'No. Did I want them? Your little 
 daughter kissed you yesterday morning when you started 
 to your business. Did you need it ? Did you want it ?" 
 
 You may think in the vanity of your mind that if only 
 you have knowledge, full and profound, it will get itself 
 expressed. It may after a fashion. You may, as the 
 English would say, "muddle through." But your thought 
 will only get itself expressed in such a way as to make 
 the delivery of your sermon effective where you take 
 pains to learn how. Pack your sentences with meaning. 
 Squeeze the water out of them so they will be full of 
 useful appetizing substance. Shape them up as sentences 
 which are to be said rather than read. Then stand up 
 in the full strength of your Christian manhood and utter 
 them as messages from the Lord you serve. 
 
 Hear these words on style by one of the best preachers 
 in N'ew York City! "Select the broad-shouldered nouns 
 and stalwart verbs which will best carry the weight of 
 your ideas. Choose adjectives which will not exaggerate 
 and adverbs which will not give a false accent or color. 
 Frame the sentences with words so clear that your truth 
 will blaze out through them. Whip your paragraphs into 
 subjection to your ruling purpose so that they shall carry 
 your thoughts on to fresh coronations in the hearts of 
 
186 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 those who listen. This is one of the greatest achievements 
 to which any mortal can aspire. It is a victory so dif- 
 ficult and glorious that to win it is worth an entire life- 
 time of heroic and unflagging toil. Use your pen — it is 
 the key to one of the kingdoms of power." 
 
 The King's English like the King's daughter is meant 
 to he "all-glorious within." It is meant to clothe your 
 ideas "in wrought gold." It is meant to "make your 
 arrows sharp in the heart of the King's enemies." It is 
 meant to "ride forth in its majesty and to ride prosper- 
 ously" because of the truth and righteousness it contains. 
 "Grace has been poured into its lips," therefore God 
 blesses it forever upon the high errand to which it is sent. 
 If you will only strive to have it so, your own style may 
 exhibit those elements of clearness, of strength and of 
 beauty which will add to the power of your spoken word 
 now thirty, now sixty and at times even one hundred- 
 fold. 
 
 If you can, by the discipline of hard work and by the 
 grace given you from above, learn how to prepare a ser- 
 mon which will lend itself to an effective delivery; and 
 if you can bring your body, your mind and your heart 
 into subjection to the high purpose involved in real 
 preaching, one can scarcely set any assured limit to the 
 measure of good which you may thus bring to the lives 
 of the people who hear you. It would not be too much 
 to assert that you too can in reverent, humble fashion say 
 of your own uttered word what was said of old touching 
 that word of God which finally became flesh and dwelt 
 among us full of grace and truth. "As the rain cometh 
 down and the snow from heaven and returneth not 
 
THE DELIVERY OF THE SERMON 187 
 
 thither but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth 
 and bud ... so shall my word be that goeth forth out of 
 my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it 
 shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper 
 in the thing whereto I sent it." 
 
VII 
 
 THE SETTING OF THE SEKMON 
 
 THE best type of sermon does not stand detached 
 from all else. In its work of ministering to the 
 spiritual life, it had best not be "a priest after the 
 order of Melchizedek" with no supporting antecedents 
 to strengthen its power of appeal. It adds to its own 
 inherent strength by being related in some organic way 
 to other factors in the common task of Christian nurture. 
 The sermon may well claim for itself all the reenforce- 
 ment which may arise from a worthy setting. 
 ff I am a firm believer in the value of courses of sermons, 
 where there is some uniting principle extending through 
 the entire series linking up part with part in a consistent 
 whole. There is nothing to be gained by stringing to- 
 gether a lot of colored beads of varied form and hue upon 
 some slender thread of interest which barely suffices to 
 bridge the gap between Sundays. (i^But a genuine series, 
 where the sermons mark successive steps in the unfolding 
 of some great truth too large and too intricate for treat- 
 ment in a single discourse, will contribute to the effec- 
 tiveness of any pulpit. 
 
 It will be for your own good as teachers of religion to 
 outline and develop in systematic fashion from time to 
 time such courses of sermons. It will train you in better 
 methods of study. It will help to save you from the skit- 
 tering, promiscuous way of presenting religious tnith 
 
 .188 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 189 
 
 which is the bane of so many pulpits. ) It will enable 
 you to utilize the results of some special line of reading 
 which you have been pursuing for an entire season. It 
 will strengthen the habit of seeing all truths in their rela- 
 tion to other cognate truths and in right perspective. It 
 will round out your treatment of the more august aspects 
 of religion. No minister can say everything about any 
 great theme in one sermon — he cannot say everything 
 about it in two sermons, nor in ten, but he can say much' 
 more in ten than he can in two. 
 
 It will also be good for your people to have the Gospel 
 presented in this more orderly manner. It will add 
 greatly to the instructional value of your preaching, if 
 they are taught to see the various ideas you bring to them 
 in these wider relations. The repeated impressions made 
 where some vital truth is approached on successive Sun- 
 days from different angles, viewed now in the cool north 
 light of intellectual scrutiny and now in a warmer south- 
 ern exposure of generous feeling; where the same truth 
 is seen in all its rosy promise with the early morning 
 light upon it and then viewed again in the more mellow 
 evening light of the setting sun — these repeated impres- 
 sions are altogether wholesome. The wise trial lawyer 
 brings his argument for a verdict before the jury now by 
 this route and now by that, until by virtue of these suc- 
 cessive presentations he has convinced their minds and 
 persuaded their judgments. 
 
 The course of sermons also serves to steady the people 
 in their church attendance, particularly at the evening 
 service which as a rule has in it a larger percentage of 
 opportunists and occasional hearers, The well arranged 
 
190 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 series of sermons will oftentimes change casual into 
 regular attendants and fix them in that more wholesome 
 habit. You will naturally strive with all your might to 
 make the first sermon in any series as strong, as interest- 
 ing and as vital as you know how to make it. You will 
 make it "suggestive" in the best sense, as it open^ doors 
 upon broader vistas which (as you delicately intimate in 
 passing) are to be followed up later. The people having 
 felt the strong appeal of that initial sermon in the series 
 will make up their minds to hear them all. And when 
 they have been at church for eight or ten siiccessive Sun- 
 day evenings they will have taken a real step toward 
 becoming regular attendants. 
 
 The course of sermons also gains in general attractive- 
 ness. When some commanding theme is announced on 
 your church calendar and through the newspapers with 
 six or eight inviting topics springing naturally from it, 
 the people will feel that this is too large an order to be 
 ignored. They might be able to resist the appeal of a 
 single sermon standing alone. We find to our dismay 
 that an amazing number of people in any community 
 where we may be called to preach are able to stand out 
 against this alluring prospect. They find it easier to 
 decline our offers piecemeal but when we offer them a 
 whole bill-of-fare, with half a dozen appetizing courses in 
 it, more of them at least may accept the invitation. 
 "Come," we say in scriptural phrase, "the oxen and the 
 fatlings are killed and all things are now ready. Come 
 ye to the feast." 
 
 The course of sermons will enable you to use printer's 
 ink more effectively. You can shape ;ip attractive display 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 191 
 
 advertisements in the church notices of your local paper 
 where you are announcing an entire series of sermons. 
 You can use window cards perhaps in some of the stores. 
 You can have a tastefully gotten up bulletin outside of 
 your church. The children of light can afford to be as 
 canny as the children of this world — we have high war- 
 rant for such an attempt. You can set the people of a 
 community to talking about the course of sermons now 
 projected or in actual operation at "the little church 
 around the corner" in such a way as to put that church 
 more completely upon the map of common interest. 
 
 The course had best not be too long. It is easily pos- 
 sible to have "too much of a good thing," too much of a 
 great many good things, where it is all flung at us at 
 once. As Ian Maclaren said here at Yale, "The people 
 lose heart at the prospect of sixteen sermons on 'St. Paul's 
 Idea of Faith' or twenty-four discourses on Job. I could 
 not personally recommend one mentioned to me by a 
 pious minister on 'The Limbs of the Almighty,' although 
 he assured me that it had enabled him to include some 
 extraordinary texts and that it had been much blest." 
 
 You can from season to season by a well ordered series 
 of sermons, make a more varied appeal to the different 
 classes of minds and of needs in the community you are 
 set to serve. "Fishers of men," you remember! That is 
 the way our commission reads ! You are not there to fol- 
 low slavishly some preconceived notion of your own as to- 
 what sort of flies should get a rise out of the fish which 
 swim in those waters. You are there to study their habits 
 and their preferences in order to catch them if you can. 
 If the lure of such standardized appeals as might be sug- 
 
192 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 gested by a Royal Coachman, a Browii Hackle or a Pro- 
 fessor does not achieve the desired end, then you may well 
 turn over another leaf in your fly book and try them with 
 Silver Doctors and Parmachene Belles. "Follow me," 
 said One, who in the freshness and the originality of His 
 method of approach as in all else, is the Master of us 
 all! "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." 
 
 In my own work as a settled pastor I made it a rule 
 every other winter at least to( preach a course of sermons 
 to young men. The young men themselves are likely to 
 be there in unwonted numbers because you are dealing 
 directly with their interests and problems.) The young 
 women will be there because they will want to hear what 
 you are saying to the young men and because of their 
 interest (entirely unselfish of course) in the spiritual wel- 
 fare of those young fellows. The fathers and mothers of 
 young men will feel a very deep and tender concern 
 touching that whole subject with which you are dealing. 
 They will be there, with prayers on their lips and with 
 a great, sweet sense of gratitude in their hearts, if you 
 are doing your work well. You can safely count on a 
 sufiicient measure of general interest to save such a course 
 of sermons from ever becoming in any sense a narrow, 
 over-specialized presentation. You can if you will sound 
 the deeper note of appeal to our common humanity. 
 
 You could preach a course of sermons on "The Young 
 Man's Affairs," — his main purpose, his intimates, his 
 books, his recreations, his money, his wife, his church. 
 During another season you could preach on The Young 
 Man's Assets, — his body, his brain, his trade, his invest- 
 ments, his amusements, his religion. You can deal, as 
 
THE SETTING- OF THE SERMON 193 
 
 you go along, with those interests and habits which are 
 likely to become liabilities rather than assets. You could 
 during some other season make an entirely different ap- 
 proach. You can speak on The Young IVian's Questions ! 
 How much of an education shall I get ? Shall I learn a 
 trade or try for a profession? How shall I spend my 
 evenings ? How shall I spend my Sundays ? Shall I go 
 into politics? How much time shall I give to society? 
 What shall be my relation to the church? 
 
 You will be dealing in every case with the same funda- 
 mental interests but you can vary your approach in such 
 a way as to make each series interesting and helpful. The 
 last church I served was only a block from the High 
 School building with its fifteen hundred young people, 
 and not far from a great State University with its more 
 than six thousand students. During the opening weeks 
 of the college year one autumn I preached a series of 
 evening sermons on "The Students' Problems." The 
 choices of the first year, athletics, fraternities, the deci- 
 sion as to a life work and the religion of a student ! The 
 very preparation of such a series of sermons will help 
 you to get into the right mood to speak to that body of 
 young life there within reach. It will help you to see 
 the world through their eyes. It will enable you to speak 
 to them in the tongue in which they were born and with 
 which they are transacting a lot of business which has to 
 do with the formation of character. 
 
 You could preach a course of doctrinal sermons, ten of 
 them if you like, dealing with the doctrine of God, the 
 divinity of Christ, the atonement, the inspiration of the 
 Bible, the philosophy of prayer, the fact of conversion, 
 
194 THE ART OF PREACHINU 
 
 the hope of a future life and other cardinal truths of 
 our Christian faith. The people will come with their ears 
 and their minds open, if you do not frighten them away 
 by announcing the course as "doctrinal sermons." Your 
 truth will smell as sweet by some other name and it will 
 attract more people if you do not label it as "dogma." 
 
 You could take up in another series the whole question 
 of the utilization of mental and spiritual forces for the 
 gaining and maintenance of sound health. We have been 
 prone to leave all that too much to irregular, wild-cat 
 organizations outside of the church of Christ. If the 
 church itself had been up to the mark thirty-five years 
 ago in its presentation of a full-orbed, well-rounded gospel 
 designed of God to make people every whit whole, we 
 would not have had a Christian Science movement, a 
 Dowie movement, a !N'ew Thought movement and all the 
 other "movements" which have sometimes been scarcely 
 better than diverting antics. 
 
 You could take up the application of the principles of 
 the Sermon on the Mount to social and industrial prob- 
 lems and thus aid in the development of that intelligent 
 and insistent spirit of good will in which alone these 
 vexed questions can be solved. You could thus promote 
 among the people of your community that social habit 
 of mind, which is of much more value than many of the 
 economic devices and social panaceas which get us 
 nowhere. 
 
 You may wish sometime to preach a series of sermons 
 historical in their setting and background. You can make 
 them intensely vital and practical as you relate the prin- 
 ciples involved to the needs represented by those lives 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 195 
 
 there before you. You could announce a course of ser- 
 mons on this general text — "There was a man sent from 
 God whose name was John." As a matter of fact there 
 have been a lot of men sent from God whose names were 
 John. John the Baptist and John the Beloved Disciple, 
 John Wycliffe and John Knox, John Calvin, John 
 Wesley and John Bunyan, John Milton and John Rob- 
 inson ! When you have finished such a course of sermons 
 your people will have had served up to them a big, broad, 
 juicy slice of church history, full of nourishing and in- 
 spiring truths for the good of their own souls. 
 
 You could with great profit to yourself and to your 
 people follow for ten months the cycle of lessons and 
 themes in "The order of the Christian Year" as laid 
 down in the liturgies of the Church Universal. You 
 could begin in the month of December with the assign- 
 ments for the Sundays in Advent leading up to and pre- 
 paring the way for the birth of Christ at Christmas. You 
 could move on through the record of the appearance of 
 the twelve-year-old boy in the Temple, and the Baptism, 
 the Temptation and the early events in the ministry of 
 Jesus. On the other Sundays between the Epiphany and 
 Lent you could take up in an orderly way some of the 
 cardinal truths in the teaching of our Lord. The Sun- 
 days in Lent are rich in their historical associations cul- 
 minating as they do in Holy Week with Palm Sunday, 
 the Last Supper, Good Friday and Easter Day as the 
 great outstanding events in His life. Then the Sundays 
 after Easter with the accounts of the manifestation of the 
 Risen Lord on to Ascension Day and Whitsunday com- 
 memorating the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pente- 
 
196 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 cost. Then Trinity Sunday and the Sundays after 
 Trinity with the lessons hearing upon the character and 
 service of the leading apostles, will round out a series of 
 sermons which even in a non-liturgical church will enrich 
 and deepen the sense of historic values in our common 
 Christian faith. Try it ! If you will do it carefully and 
 conscientiously you will thank me and you will thank 
 God for a wholesome suggestion. 
 
 You will be much more likely to deal with life in the 
 large if you plan for it occasionally in this more delib- 
 erate way rather than leave it to the hurriedly made 
 choices of themes from week to week with no sort of 
 system. All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos 
 or Peter, whether John Calvin, John Wesley or Edward 
 Everett Hale, whether Alexander Campbell or General 
 William Booth or the Archbishop of Canterbury! All 
 things are yours for ye are Christ's and so were they, 
 every man of them! All things are yours whether life 
 or death, things present or things to come, athletics or 
 labor unions, the love affairs of young people or the 
 domestic troubles of the more mature, the political defeats 
 of good citizens or the crying needs of the less fortunate 
 elements in the community! All things are yours to 
 study, to interpret, to illumine with the light that never 
 was on sea or land! All things are yours to consecrate 
 and to enroll as consenting and contributing factors in 
 that Kingdom of God which is an everlasting and an all 
 inclusive kingdom! 
 
 And you can, I am confident, achieve that high end all 
 the better if you so outline and coordinate your preach- 
 ing that each sermon shall not stand in complete detach- 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 197 
 
 ment from all the rest. Sermons move more strongly 
 where they advance in columns, marching forth together 
 like an army with banners as constituent elements in a 
 well-ordered and wisely-directed campaign of spiritual 
 appeal. 
 
 It may help some man if I name here a few books 
 containing first-rate examples of this more systematic 
 method of preaching. "Washington Gladden's little book, 
 "Who Wrote the Bible/' was made up from a series of 
 evening sermons which he preached to the people of the 
 First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio, to ac- 
 quaint them with better methods of Biblical study and 
 interpretation. He thus introduced them in a construc- 
 tive way to the best of that which "the higher criticism" 
 had to offer. It all helped to place their confidence in the 
 value of the Scriptures on foundations which stand sure. 
 \William Burnett Wright's little book, "Master and 
 Men," contains a series of sermons on the Beatitudes. 
 Each sermon on a Beatitude is followed by another ser- 
 mon on some character in history who seemed nobly to 
 exemplify the particular truth contained in that text. 
 Moses as a man possessed of that gentleness which is des- 
 tined to inherit the earth ! Socrates as a man who hun- 
 gered and thirsted after righteousness ! King Alfred as 
 one who obtained mercy because he was merciful ! Charles 
 George Gordon, an ofiicer in the British Army, who did 
 not refuse to fight but bore himself in such fashion as 
 to make peace! George Fox, a man whose pure heart 
 enabled him to see God! It is an admirable little book. 
 Buy it and study it ! I have used my own copy of "Mas- 
 ter and Men" until it is almost worn out ; it is all marked 
 
198 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 up and the margins are so filled witli notions of my own 
 which it started into being that it would require a skillful 
 "Redactor" to distinguish the "original sources" from the 
 later accretions and developments. 
 
 Charles E. Jefferson's book on "The Character of 
 Jesus" — His sincerity, His reasonableness, His originality, 
 His poise, His breadth, His optimism. His chivalry, His 
 generosity. His candor. His courage, His reverence — fur- 
 nishes another excellent example. Here are twenty-six 
 evening sermons given in Broadway Tabernacle, New 
 York, and addressed mainly to young men to awaken in 
 them the desire to know more of the Founder and Head 
 of the Christian church ! These books all furnish worthy 
 illustrations of the best method of setting a series of ser- 
 mons in order for the sake of a deeper and more lasting 
 impression. 
 
 The sermon may also add immeasurably to its strength 
 by being set in a well-arranged and well-conducted order 
 of worship. In all our non-liturgical churches the sermon 
 is commonly regarded as the outstanding feature of the 
 service, but it had best not stand aloof in lonely detach- 
 ment from other vital elements in that hour appointed 
 for the satisfying worship of God. 
 
 How much it means that the church has a practical 
 monopoly of the grandest of all musical instruments! 
 The pipe organ is ours, ours to enjoy, ours to utilize, ours 
 to consecrate to the highest ends ever achieved by the 
 appeal of music ! 
 
 When a trained and gifted organist is seated at his 
 console he has at his command an entire orchestra. When. 
 Harry B. Jepson, for example, sits down at the great 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 199 
 
 N^ewberry Organ here at Yale, he cau, by intelligent regis- 
 tration and by the skillful use of his hands and his feet, 
 play upon forty instruments at once. "With his mighty 
 diapasons he can fill Woolsey Hall with glorious harmony 
 — he could fill the loftiest temple ever built. By his wise 
 use of the string stops he can have all the violins and 
 cellos and double basses of some splendid orchestra play- 
 ing together in perfect accord. By his reed stops he can 
 cause a congregation of listening worshipers to hear all 
 the clarionets and the oboes blending their voices in search- 
 ing appeal. By the softer tones of the salicional, the 
 seoline, the dulciana and the vox humana, rising and 
 falling with the opening and closing of the swell organ, 
 he can whisper to the people messages from a world un- 
 seen as did the still, small voice of God when the prophet 
 stood upon the mount at Horeb. If the need of the hour 
 should be for a clarion call to duty or an imperious re- 
 buke to spiritual sloth and self-indulgence, he can by the 
 harsh strident tones of the trombone, the trumpet and the 
 tuba speak as Elijah spoke that day to the false priests 
 of a decadent faith on the slopes of Carmel. 
 
 The preacher of a message which has in it notes of ap- 
 peal ranging all the way from the highest joys of heaven 
 to the lowest depths of moral despair must develop and 
 cultivate a sympathetic understanding and a sense of 
 loyal cooperation with the trained musician who is there 
 at the organ to reenforce all his own. efforts in the conduct 
 of worship. 
 
 Here is a great congregation gathering from the north 
 and the south, from the east and the west, to spend an hour 
 together in the House of God ! They come drenched in 
 
200 THE ART OF PEEACHING 
 
 all the experiences, joyous and somber, ennobling and de- 
 grading, inspiring and depressing, known to the human 
 heart. They have come, many of them at least, through 
 the streets with careless chatter or perhaps with unkindly 
 gossip on their lips, with an almost total lack of reverence 
 or of aspiration in their hearts. They have come with 
 huge and soggy masses of the "Sunday edition" stuffed 
 into their heads. They have come with minds burdened 
 and harassed by all the vexing and depleting problems of 
 our modern city life. It is the high office of the organist 
 to take them as they come in all this unpromising mental 
 array and then by the power of this noblest of all instru- 
 ments to develop in them a sense of awe, of yearning, of 
 penitence and of aspiration before you ever undertake 
 as a minister of worship to utter in their ears the opening 
 words of the service. 
 
 It was my good fortune once for five months to supply 
 the pulpit of the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City 
 during the absence of their regular pastor. The organist 
 at that time was Mr. Walter C. Gale, a cultured Christian 
 gentleman and an organist in ten thousand. He knew 
 beyond a peradventure why he was there and to what high 
 ends he had been appointed of God. He played, as the 
 apostle said, "with the Spirit and with the understanding 
 also." He prayed with his fingers and with his feet, as 
 well as with his mind and with his soul. He looked not 
 upon the outward appearance of the score as he spread the 
 music before him, he looked upon the inner content of all 
 those hearts. He took those people as they came in from 
 the street with the air of Broadway in their lungs and in 
 their minds ; and then by the power of his music he began, 
 
THE SETTING OP THE SERMON 201 
 
 to soften and to mellow their hearts, to refine and to enrich 
 their thoughts. He caused them to feel that only with 
 clean hands and pure hearts may men ascend into the hill 
 of the Lord and stand in His holy place. When the time 
 came for the minister to say, "Let us pray," the people 
 were ready ! May God in heaven be blessed for the value 
 of truly religious music here on earth! 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church has not been studying hu- 
 man psychology on the religious side through all these 
 centuries without learning something about it. This 
 church is altogether too wise to entrust its message entirely 
 to one faculty of apprehension. It has something to say, 
 it has much to say, to the ears of men. But it also ad- 
 dresses itself to their eyes. By its style of architecture 
 it is forever saying to the careless, "The Lord is in His 
 holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him." 
 No one ever mistakes a well-built Roman Catholic church 
 for a concert hall or a place to play billiards. The exterior 
 as well as the interior of the building seems to be saying, 
 "This is none other than the house of God. This is the 
 gate of heaven." By painting and by sculpture, by its 
 altar pieces and by its Stations of the Cross, by the vest- 
 ments of its priests and by the robing of its acolytes, the 
 Catholic Church is making its steady appeal through the 
 sense of sight to the inmost recesses of the soul. It does 
 not leave out of account even the humbler sense of smell. 
 By the clouds of fragrant incence and by the association 
 of ideas (which comes more surely and more strongly 
 perhaps with the sense of smell than with any other one 
 of the five senses) the Catholic Church attaches the habit 
 ^of devotion to a certain aroma found ever in its appointed 
 
202 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 places of prayer. It knows full well how to employ all 
 these properties of worship in such a way as to give a 
 suitable setting for the uttered words of its priests. 
 
 The ordinary cultus of the Protestant Church is much 
 simpler in every way but it may well be ordered with equal 
 discretion. You too have at your disposal certain "proper- 
 ties," as a stage manager would say, which can be em- 
 ployed most effectively in promoting the spirit of worship. 
 You have there in your hands the greatest of all books — 
 it is "a book of final values for all who would live nobly." 
 There are portions of it with positive liturgical value — 
 these can be read responsively in such a way as to enlist 
 and organize the worshiping instincts of an entire con- 
 gregation. There are outstanding passages which are veri- 
 table classics in their literary form and in their spiritual 
 content. The Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the 
 Prodigal Son and of the Good Samaritan, the story of 
 the woman in Simon's house, the story of the woman at 
 Jacob's well, and the story of the man born blind ! There 
 are high places such as the tenth and the fourteenth chap- 
 ters of John, the eighth chapter of Romans and the thir- 
 teenth chapter of First Corinthians, the heart of the letter 
 to the Ephesians and the heart of the letter to the Philip- 
 pians — all these should be read as Scripture lessons in 
 every Christian church at least once each year. 
 
 There are the great narratives in the Old Testaraent! 
 The stories of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob's struggle at 
 Jabbok Ford, of Joseph and his brothers, of Moses, Ba- 
 laam, and Joshua, of David, Solomon, and Elijah, of 
 Z^Taaman, JSTehemiah, and Job — all these have in them 
 perennial interest and value for the life of the race. By 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 203 
 
 a bit of judicious selecting and editing, bj the omission of 
 redundant phrases and of less significant details, any one 
 of those great narratives may be brought within suitable 
 compass for a morning or an evening lesson. The min- 
 ister of worship who plods wearily through some entire 
 chapter simply because his text happens to stand within 
 its confines, without ever skipping a verse or omitting the 
 long unpronounceable name of some obscure individual, 
 has not as yet learned the alphabet of Scripture reading. 
 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that 
 need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of 
 truth ! 
 
 William M. Taylor of New York told this story of a 
 minister who had not properly learned his trade. "Some 
 years ago a friend from the other side occupied my pulpit 
 and read the latter half of the third chapter of Luke's 
 Gospel which consists of the genealogy of Joseph. As he 
 went on with the ever recurring phrase Vhich was the 
 son of 'which was the son of Vhich was the son of I 
 saw a broad grin spreading over the faces of the people. 
 When he announced his text in the words 'Adam, which 
 was the son of God' I could see why he had chosen to read 
 such a passage. But still the fact that his text was taken 
 from the last entry in the table was no proper reason for 
 reading the whole of it. The amusement of his hearers 
 at the strangeness of the selection was an unfortunate 
 preparation for the prayer which followed." 
 
 You may upon occasion read a composite lesson, made 
 .up of portions of Scripture taken from three or four dif- 
 ferent places in your Bible, both in the Old Testament 
 and in the New. They belong together in the unity of 
 
204 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 the spirit and in the bond of a common purpose rather 
 than from any accidental proximity on the printed page. 
 Read them to your people as a veritable message from the 
 God of love to the moral needs of mankind without stop- 
 ping in each case to inform the congregation precisely 
 where each portion of your lesson may be found. What 
 earthly importance attaches to the fact that you are read- 
 ing now from the thirteenth chapter of ISTehemiah begin- 
 ning at the twenty-third verse, and now from some other 
 locality equally remote from the personal knowledge of 
 most of those to whom you are reading! N'either con- 
 science nor taste impels one to waste time in naming such 
 irrelevant details. Read it ! Read it well ! Read it with- 
 out comment! What right have you "to muffle its tnusic 
 in the folds of your own conjectures." Read it in such 
 fashion that the people will mark, learn, and inwardly 
 digest the meaning of it all, and be moved to embrace and 
 ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which 
 there stands revealed ! 
 
 How much is suggested in that Scripture passage where 
 we read that "Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood" 
 and "he opened the book in the sight of all the people." It 
 was no mere physical performance. He "read in the book 
 of the law distinctly," the record says, "and gave the 
 sense and caused them to understand the reading." 
 
 He "opened the book" as a skilled interpreter of its 
 deeper meaning. He made clear its rich content by the 
 very manner of his reading. He uncovered to the souls 
 of men the divine message which lay beneath the surface 
 of the written word by his own intelligent, sympathetic 
 modulation. He showed its bearing upon present need 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 205 
 
 and duty. He related its age-long helpfulness to the moods 
 and opportunities of the hour. 
 
 "He read therein from morning until mid-day . . . 
 and the ears of all the people were attentive." He must 
 have heen a much better reader than are some of the read- 
 ers of Scripture in our modern pulpits. Had he read those 
 stately words in that pious, artificial sing-song sometimes 
 employed by the cleric who is more conscious of his cloth 
 than of his soul ; had he read them in that strained, would- 
 be-impressive humbug fashion sometimes heard in the pul- 
 pit; had he read them in that hard perfunctory tone, as 
 lacking in any true sense of sympathy as the noise of a 
 badly worn victrola, not even those devoted Hebrews who 
 had journeyed back to the Holy City would have shown 
 themselves "attentive from morning until mid-day." 
 
 The minister who is not able to read this Book in such 
 a way as to enlist the attention and hold the interest of 
 a congregation needs to be born again. Mind and voice 
 alone, however they may be informed and trained, are 
 >never quite competent to read the Book in such a way as 
 to "open it and to give the sense" and cause the people to 
 hang upon it as a veritable message from the Eternal. 
 The whole man must read. It is the heart that feels and 
 loves and has experienced the truth there contained, which 
 renders its possessor able to make his very reading of the 
 Scripture a spiritual exercise. It is a high art. It is an 
 art to be mastered both by increased attention to a wisely 
 conceived technique and by those profounder spiritual ex- 
 periences which serve to render mind and voice a more 
 perfect medium for the conveyance of the word of God 
 to the souls of men. Learn how to read your lessons aright 
 
206 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 and you will have taken a long stride toward giving your 
 sermon a suitable setting. 
 
 "If we master the meaning of the passage we intend to 
 read in public," said R. W. Dale; "if we enter so fully 
 into the spirit of what we are reading that the printed book 
 vanishes and the story it tells comes to us fresh from the 
 man who wrote it ; if we read a psalm as if we ourselves 
 had heard it as a confession of sin from the lips of David ; 
 a prophecy of Isaiah with the feeling which the words 
 would excite if we ourselves had heard him denouncing 
 the sins of the people and predicting the glories of God's 
 Kingdom ; a passage from Paul with that perfect sympathy 
 with the sorrow and the anger of the Apostle in his con- 
 flict with the Judaizers; if, in short, by the exercise of 
 imagination we place ourselves by the very side of the 
 men who wrote the Bible, see what they saw and feel 
 what they felt, our very reading of the Scriptures will 
 throw an intense light on every passage." And it will 
 also develop the right mood in the congregation for the 
 more effective delivery of the sermon. 
 
 You have in your hands also a hymn book where the 
 saints and the singers of all ages and of all churches have 
 lifted up their hearts to the One God and Father of us 
 all, praising him in the beauty of holiness! Here in a 
 single hymnal in constant use in almost any one of our 
 churches are "Blest be the tie that binds" and "I need 
 Thee every hour," written by Baptists ! Here are "Holy, 
 Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty," and "The Church's one 
 foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord," written by Episco- 
 palians! Here are "Love Divine, all love excelling" and 
 "Jesus, lover of my soul" written by a Methodist ! Here 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 207 
 
 are "Stand up, stand up for Jesus" and "I heard the voice 
 of Jesus say, Come unto me and rest" written by Presby- 
 terians. Here are "Lead kindly light" and "Jerusalem 
 the golden" written by Eoman Catholics! Here are "A 
 mighty Fortress is our God" and "N^ow thank we all our 
 God" written by Lutherans! Here are "N"earer my God 
 to Thee" and "In the Cross of Christ I glory" written 
 by Unitarians! Here are "My faith looks up to Thee" 
 .and "O Master, let me walk with Thee" written by Con- 
 gregationalists ! Doctrinal discussion and personal prefer- 
 ence in the matter of ritual and polity may divide us but 
 we all come together in prayer and praise. 
 
 ^Now with that hymnal, as a splendid property of wor- 
 ship, in your hands and in the hands of all your people 
 and with a skillful, sympathetic organist behind you who 
 can "give out a hymn" in such a way as to awaken in 
 every responsive heart a warm desire to sing that hymn 
 which you have chosen in the very mood in which it was 
 born, what a glorious chance you have to enlist that whole 
 company of people in an act of common, corporate wor- 
 ship! 
 
 Sing yourself ! Do it as a means of grace to your own 
 soul ! Do it also as a bit of godly example to your people. 
 The lazy, shiftless minister who announces a hymn and 
 then goes back to his chair and sits down while the people 
 stand up and sing it, as if praising God were no affair of 
 his, ought to be cast out of the synagogue. Unless he is 
 a semi-invalid almost too weak to be there at all, he ought 
 to be pitched out of his pulpit forthwith by some athletic 
 deacon ordained of God as the Scripture says "to purchase 
 to himself a good degree and great boldness in the faith" 
 
208 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 "bj thus exercising his authority as an officer of the church 
 militant. "Let the people praise thee, O God! Let all 
 the people (ministers included) praise Thee!" 
 
 'Now we cannot all sing as Caruso sang, but any man 
 who has voice enough to preach can "make a joyful noise 
 unto the Lord." He can certainly do as much as that 
 when several hundred other people are doing the same 
 thing together. Let him do it then, that the Scripture 
 may be fulfilled ! This particular Scripture was written 
 expressly for our comfort and encouragement when we 
 are conscious of our vocal limitations and for our re- 
 buke if we fail to use such talents as we do possess in par- 
 ticipation in the common worship. 
 
 I have given you Scripture for it and if further con- 
 firmation is needed for my contention here it is from the 
 master of English expression ! 
 
 "The man that hath no music in himself 
 Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils. 
 The nuotions of his spirit are dull as night 
 And his affections dark as Erebus : 
 Let no such man be trusted." 
 
 You need not undertake to preach the particular sermon 
 you have prepared for that day in every one of the three 
 or four hymns selected for that service. You had best not. 
 There are differences of operation in this worship of God 
 through "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" under 
 the immediate guidance of the same Spirit. In a single 
 service there may well be a hymn of thanksgiving* and 
 adoration ; another hymn of penitence and confession j an- 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 209 
 
 other hymn of aspiration and intercession; and then for 
 the closing h;^Tnn a song of consecration' and high resolve, 
 embodying the particular virtue or line of action which 
 you have emphasized that day in your sermon. 
 
 I make this appeal with some measure of insistence be- 
 cause I have tried out the principle I am urging upon you 
 under varying conditions. I have preached to congrega- 
 tions made up of the rich and the poor, the cultured and 
 the simple, the saintly and the sinful. I have preached 
 to congregations of cool, unemotional New Englanders 
 and to warm enthusiastic Southerners and to eager, rest- 
 less congregations on the Pacific Coast. And when all is 
 said and done, they were all just people, children of one 
 Father, standing alike in open need of that great and 
 gracious help which comes alone from Him. If you will 
 take pains to learn how to use your hymns aright and how 
 to use the voices of those waiting, needy people aright, 
 you can make this office of worship a rewarding means of 
 grace. And if you succeed in bringing it up to any kind 
 of fair measure of its possibilities, you will have done 
 much to achieve another worthy setting for the best ser- 
 mon you will ever be able to preach. 
 
 "Let knowledge grow from more to more 
 But more of reverence in us dwell 
 That mind and soul according well 
 
 May make one music as before 
 
 But vaster." 
 
 You can invite your congregation to rise with you and 
 utter as an act of worship their common faith by the use 
 of one of the great historic Confessions of the Church. 
 
210 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 How good it is to join with ancient saints, with our fellow 
 Christians throughout the world and with one another, 
 in affirming our helief in the everlasting verities! How 
 much it means for a body of Christians to stand up and 
 say to that dull, drab materialism which is the bane of 
 so much of our modern life, "We believe in God the Father 
 Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. We believe in 
 Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord ! We believe in the 
 Holy Ghost, the Author and Giver of life which is life 
 indeed !" How much it means to say in this corporate way 
 to that petty individualism which is too blind to recognize 
 the strength and beauty of concerted organized effort, 
 "We believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion 
 of saints !" How much it means to say to that life which 
 crawls on the lower levels when it might be walking in 
 high places with Him, "We believe in the forgiveness of 
 sins, the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting." 
 "O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. His mercy 
 endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." 
 And the very saying of it in this worshipful manner will 
 furnish added setting for a message from on high. 
 
 You are there as a man of prayer to lead and guide the 
 people in their prayers. The minister of worship in the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church has placed in his hands for 
 daily use, "The Book of Common Prayer." It is a great 
 title for a book — it does me good always just to see those 
 words printed on the title page. And it is a great book — 
 great in its comprehensiveness, great in its fine phrasing, 
 great in its sympathetic reach inward and upward and 
 great in the high quality of the spirit of devotion there 
 expressed! 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 211 
 
 I have had on mj desk and much of the time in my 
 pocket for the last thirty-five years the prayer book of 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church. I could not begin to 
 tell you of the help I have received from it as a minister 
 of Jesus Christ. I have used it until I know many of 
 its beautiful Collects by heart. I have read the Litany 
 again and again when it seemed to fit in around my own 
 need like a well-made garment. I have read day after 
 day, again and again, the "Order for Morning Prayer" 
 and the "Order for Evening Prayer" and the "Prayers 
 and Thanksgivings for Special Occasions" until they are 
 all as familiar to me as the twenty-third psalm. We are 
 told that the messenger of the Lord portrayed in one of 
 the closing chapters of the Bible "had in his hand a little 
 book open." The use of that little book of "Common 
 Prayer," which may be held in the hand of any man open, 
 will enrich and ennoble all his prayerful utterance. 
 
 But most of us who are here to-day have been reared and 
 are set to serve in the non-liturgical churches. It is for 
 us to learn how to reach out in sympathetic fashion and 
 gather into our minds the joys and the sorrows, the hopes 
 and the fears, the longings and yearnings, the victories 
 and defeats of a whole congregation of people. It is for 
 us, closing our eyes upon all things earthly and turning 
 our faces heavenward, to voice all that need to Almighty 
 God in fitting words of our own choosing. 
 
 It is an august exercise. It is a privilege unspeakably 
 precious to a man who is conscientiously engaged in the 
 cure of souls. It is an obligation exacting beyond any 
 other single office which the minister of religion is called 
 upon to perform. "Prayer," as President Eliot of Har- 
 
212 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 vard once said, "is tlie transcendent act of human intel- 
 ligence." 
 
 We undertake to do all this in what is sometimes called 
 with frightful accuracy "the long prayer." It had best 
 not he too long. A man can talk with his eyes shut in- 
 definitely. He can, if he has a fairly good command of 
 language, keep up a flow of fervent and pious words for 
 a quarter of an hour or more. And the people can, some 
 of them at least, keep their heads down and their eyes 
 shut for ten, fifteen or even twenty minutes upon occa- 
 sion. It might not be profitable, however, to inquire too 
 closely as to just what is going on in their minds, or in 
 his, for the last two-thirds of that time. The long prayer 
 is sometimes so long that it is no longer prayer. I am not 
 quite sure that this last sentence could be parsed, but the 
 sentiment, I am confident, is altogether sound. 
 
 In my earlier ministry I was once invited to deliver the 
 address on Memorial Day in an Eastern city. The exer- 
 cises were held in the Park and a large crowd had as- 
 sembled. The Mayor of the city presided, a Glee Club 
 had been engaged to sing some patriotic airs and the pastor 
 of one of the city churches had been asked to offer the 
 prayer. He prayed exactly eighteen minutes. I should 
 have been loath to believe that such a thing could happen 
 had I not been there and had I not timed him. The clock 
 in an adjoining steeple struck the hour just as he began 
 and when he went on indefinitely I became interested in 
 noticing the exact time when he concluded. 
 
 This is what he did. He began with a glowing reference 
 to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He 
 then referred by name to the more prominent political 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 213 
 
 and military leaders in the Revolutionary War, indicating 
 the principles which were involved in that struggle of the 
 thirteen original colonies to be free. He then moved on 
 in leisurely fashion, through the opening decades of our 
 national history, to the War of 1812, showing us how 
 those sturdy patriots went down to the sea in ships and 
 did political business in great waters. He then came on, 
 touching the high places in our national development here 
 and there, to the Mexican War. This is not a period of 
 our American History which readily lends itself to moral 
 idealism or to religious devotion. But this man's patriotic 
 fervor was such that like Othello's spirit of revenge, "he 
 had stomach for them all." He stood upon the walls of 
 Texas and showed us the towers and the battlements there- 
 of, giving abundant thanks for the extension of our boun- 
 daries. 
 
 When he reached the war between the North and the 
 South (it being Memorial Day) he really warmed up to 
 his theme. He pictured the horrors of negro slavery and 
 the iniquities involved in firing upon Fort Sumter. He 
 showed us General Grant at the capture of Vicksburg and 
 General Meade at Gettysburg repelling Longstreet's ad- 
 vance. He proclaimed the Emancipation of the slaves in 
 the stately words of Lincoln and he went "marching 
 through Georgia from Atlanta to the sea." Then in an 
 eloquent peroration, he outlined the resources, the present 
 problems and the prospects of the United States o:^ 
 America. 
 
 He was earnest and he was honest but you could hardly 
 call that sort of thing prayer. It makes no difference 
 whether the subject matter contained in the utterance i| 
 
214 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 American history or the theology of John Calvin — it is 
 not prayer. The man began by saying, "O Lord," and he 
 concluded by saying "Amen," but within those two far- 
 flung boundaries, his utterance was as I have indicated. 
 He was giving an address, when the Committee of Ar- 
 rangements had invited him to offer prayer. And I fear 
 that similar performances, not so extended perhaps, have 
 been given on other occasions when other men have like- 
 wise forgotten what it really means to speak directly face 
 to face with the God of all grace. 
 
 I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you 
 avoid that sort of thing, first, last and all the time, just 
 as you would avoid profane swearing. It belongs almost 
 in the same category — it seems to many thoughtful people 
 like taking the name of God in vain. If you are to "lead 
 in prayer," as we say in our familiar but exacting phrase, 
 you will need to keep in mind steadily and genuinely the 
 nature and meaning of the august exercise in which you 
 are engaged. You must pray with the Spirit and with 
 the understanding also. The tones of your voice must 
 be reverent and real. The language in which you clothe 
 your petitions must of necessity be simple, direct and 
 chaste. The least touch of that which borders on the flip- 
 pant or the frivolous ; the use of phrases which have been 
 cheapened and coarsened by unworthy associations; the 
 perfunctory utterance of words which have become hack- 
 neyed and meaningless, will banish that mood of devotion 
 in which alone the fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous 
 man can avail what God meant it to avail. If you have 
 any sort of just sense of what you are there to do you will 
 find yourself saying to Him a thousand times during the 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 215 
 
 first year of your ministry what the disciples said of old, 
 "Lord, teach us to pray." 
 
 "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet and shut the 
 door." The Master was not defining a physical act. He 
 was not concerned ahout the place where a man should 
 pray but only as to the spirit in which it should be done. 
 Let the prayer you ofi^er be a simple, direct, and genuine 
 transaction between your own soul and God ! The min- 
 ister standing in the presence of a great congregation may 
 nevertheless by the concentration of mind and soul, by 
 his utter absorption in the high task in which he is en- 
 gaged, enter into his closet and shut the door. He is 
 there alone with his Maker because his prayer is offered 
 directly and genuinely to God. 
 
 The enterprising reporter on a Boston paper, sharing 
 in that deep-seated and oft-remarked local pride, referred, 
 in his account of a religious convention, to the lengthy 
 invocation as "one of the most eloquent prayers ever 
 offered to a Boston audience." He may have builded bet- 
 ter than he knew. Many an audience (and congregation, 
 alas) has had eloquent prayers offered to it in such showy 
 fashion as to banish entirely the spirit of devotion. 
 ' I know of no human exercise so difiicult and so exacting, 
 which so takes it out of a man, as the act of praying in the 
 presence of a congregation. If the minister can take upon 
 his heart in sympathetic fashion the needs of all those 
 people and carry them up in well chosen words by his 
 own vital faith into the presence of God with a genuine 
 and sustained sense of the sacred nature of what he is 
 doing — if he can do that and keep it up for five or six 
 minutes he has done well. The moment he loses that sense 
 
216 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 of sympathetic, horizontal touch with the needs of his 
 fellows or the vital sense of a perpendicular hold upon 
 God, he would better say "Amen" and stop. It will not 
 avail anything for him to keep on talking (even though 
 he talks in pious fashion) for ten minutes more when 
 he has really ceased to pray. 
 
 Hear this testimony from Henry Ward Beecher! "I 
 can bear this witness that never in the study in the most 
 absorbed moments, never in those chance inspirations that 
 everybody is subject to, never in any company where 
 friends are the sweetest and dearest, never in any circum- 
 stances in life, is there anything that is to me so touching 
 as when I stand in ordinary good health before my great 
 congregation to pray for them. Hundreds of times as I 
 rose to pray and glanced at the congregation, I could not 
 keep back the tears. There came to my mind such a sense 
 of their wants, there were so many hidden sorrows, so 
 many weights and burdens, so many doubts and dangers, 
 so many states of weakness ! I had such a sense of com- 
 passion for them, that it seemed to me as if I could hardly 
 open my mouth to speak. When I take my people and 
 carry them before God to plead for them . . . there is no 
 time that Jesus is so crowned with glory, no time when 
 I get so far into heaven as then. I forget the body, I 
 live in the spirit. It seems as if God permitted me to lay 
 my hand on the very Tree of Life and shake down- from 
 it both leaves and fruit for the healing of my people." 
 
 I am sure that much of our praying in public is alto- 
 gether too mystical and too theological for human nature^s 
 Sunday food. It moves in a realm where only men with 
 college and seminary degrees are accustomed to enter 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 217 
 
 freely. It clothes itself in language which unordained 
 people never think of putting on. The man who intro- 
 duces into his prayer, or for that matter into his sermon, 
 such terms as regenerative and propitiatory, anthropo- 
 morphic and cataclysmic, needs to have a heart to heart 
 talk with some plain old farmer who could tell him a few 
 things which would be for his profit. It may be pre- 
 sumed that the Lord to whom the prayer is offered fully 
 understands such terms, but it may be assumed with equal 
 assurance that many of the people for whose benefit mainly 
 the prayer is being offered do not understand any one 
 of them. 
 
 "After this manner pray ye" — not always in just those 
 words naturally, but let the Lord's Prayer indicate to you 
 the general scope and method of your public devotions! 
 There are no technical terms in the Lord's Prayer. There 
 is not a line of theological or philosophical patois in it 
 from start to finish. This is not the only reason, but it 
 is one reason why the common people hear it and use 
 it gladly. Use not vain repetitions and rhetorical flour- 
 ishes as the heathen do. In all your public prayers, let 
 your yea be yea and your nay, nay. 
 
 Pray for the most part in concrete terms! Let your 
 thanksgiving and your adoration, your confession and 
 your intercession have in them steadily the accents of 
 daily life. Pray for the boys and girls — some of them, 
 thank heaven, will be present at the service of worship 
 and more of them would be present if we were only wiser 
 in our mode of conducting it. Speak of them as "boys 
 and girls" rather than as "children." When a boy has 
 gotten out of knee breeches into long trousers he does not 
 
218 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 like the idea of being classified as "children." Have re- 
 gard to this budding preference if you would hold the 
 interest and win the heart of the boy. 
 
 Pray for the fathers and mothers — their hearts are 
 hungry for help in their sacred office and the hearts of all 
 sons and daughters who are present will go with you in 
 that gracious petition. Pray for those who are sick or 
 in sorrow — there is a vast amount of pain and grief lying 
 in close relation to any number of those people there be- 
 fore you. Pray for the physicians and nurses that they 
 may be wise and skillful, that they may be thoughtful and 
 tender in their ministry of healing ! Pray for those who 
 preach the gospel and for those who sing it and for those 
 who hear it. Youi brother ministers, your choir, and all 
 who hope for profit from the service of the hour, will be 
 grateful for such a request on their behalf. 
 
 Pray for the public school teachers — they are set for the 
 rising or falling of many as they engage in their vital 
 task of forming and maturing personality in all those 
 young candidates for human existence. The teachers 
 themselves will be helped by your prayer and the boys 
 and girls who are not eager to be educated when they go 
 to school, who are accustomed to look upon the teacher as 
 the common enemy, may, after having walked in that 
 thick darkness, see a great light. 
 
 Pray for the public officials of your city, your state, 
 your nation — not always for the same officials in the same 
 set of words every Sunday in the year, but let your prayer 
 reveal the fact that you feel that "the powers that be are 
 ordained of God" for certain high ends of order and jus- 
 tice and that you would invoke upon them a higher con- 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 219 
 
 secration. Pray for employers that they may be just, 
 wise, and humane in their use of the five talents of or- 
 ganizing and administrative ability which God has given 
 them, remembering all the while that they too have a 
 Master in Heaven. Pray for those who toil mainly with 
 their hands that whatsoever they are set to do, they may 
 do it well, not as time-servers, wage-getters or men-pleasers 
 but heartily as unto the Lord. 
 
 Pray for the soldiers, the sailors, the policemen — they 
 are out at the edge doing those necessary things which be- 
 long to the security of so many of our valued interests. 
 Pray for the tempted and the discouraged, the puzzled, 
 and the burdened — they are all there before you waiting 
 for that friendly lift of your sympathy and of your faith- 
 ful petition on their behalf. You can help them to reach 
 up to the final source of all our help. 
 
 Pray for the strangers who are present, who have never 
 prayed in that place before! Ask that this first prayer 
 which they are offering now may bring to their waiting 
 hearts an answer of peace. If some of them have not been, 
 praying up to that point but merely listening to you, or 
 perhaps thinking of something else, that request of yours 
 reaching out after them in personal fashion as well as 
 Godward, may bring them in and you will know that they 
 too are there beside you on their knees before the Throne 
 of Grace. Pray for those who travel by land or by sea, 
 that God may give them safe conduct and bring them to 
 the desired place with a fresh sense of gratitude for all 
 His goodness. 
 
 You can well afford to pray frequently for these various 
 forms of hum^in need which are altogether familiar. The 
 
220 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 man who is forever striving to get out of the beaten track 
 in his devotions, who is so eager to say something fresh 
 and original to the Lord Sunday after Sunday, is very 
 likely to find himself walking alone. The "beaten path" 
 became beaten because so many heavy-hearted people have 
 walked and are even now walking there. The very bare- 
 ness of the beaten track is its glory. 
 
 If your head and your heart are actually among the 
 stars when you pray, you can afford to keep your feet 
 firmly on the ground as you take up in simple, homely 
 fashion, one after another, from week to week, these many 
 and varied earthly needs. Let the profound devotion, 
 the heavenward reach and grasp of your prayer be in your 
 tone of voice and in the spirit which breathes through 
 your petitions ! Then make the language and the objects 
 of your requests as simple and natural as you know how 
 to make them. If a son ask his father for bread or fish 
 or an egg — the plain ordinary staples which meet our 
 everyday need — he will not be sent away with a stone. 
 
 Here then are the main factors in that service of wor- 
 ship in our non-liturgical churches which are to furnish a 
 worthy setting for the message you bring from your Father 
 in Heaven to the souls of those people for whom you are 
 to give account ! If you and your organist, your choir 
 and your congregation, can order and render the music 
 aright : if you will learn how to read your Bible in "the 
 ears of men and how to lead them in their approach to 
 God by your honest and faithful prayer, you will find 
 that by the time you reach the utterance of your sermon 
 a favoring atmosphere will have been created in the church. 
 The very air of the place will "nimbly and sweetly recom- 
 
THE SETTING OF THE SERMON 221 
 
 mend itself" to the high task to be performed. Those 
 truths of yours will mount up with wings like eagles; 
 they will run upon the errands for which God has sent 
 them and not grow weary; they will move in and out 
 among the pews and among the needs of all those people 
 there before you, and not faint. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE SOUL, OF THE SERMON 
 
 IN^ the preceding lectures I have been dwelling on the 
 choice of texts and the writing of introductions, on 
 the assembling of material and the development of 
 plans, on the art of expression and the mode of delivery, 
 as if you had to do it all. But all this detailed prepara- 
 tion, taken by itself, is mere dust of the ground. It has 
 little worth until the Spirit of the Lord shall move upon 
 the face of it and breathe into it the breath of his own 
 mighty life, bestowing upon your sermon a living soul. 
 
 The preaching of a real sermon is no mere human trans- 
 action. In the very nature of the case, it caunot be. There 
 are at least three living factors involved in it — the 
 preacher himself, the people who listen, and the Spirit of 
 Him who has all those higher values which are involved 
 in the process, within his holy keeping. The prophets 
 and apostles spake of old "as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost" and the same high privilege, according to 
 the proportion of our faith, is open to each one of us. 
 
 We are none of us unmindful of the fact that this other 
 and higher form of energy is to be reckoned with steadily. 
 There are psychic forces at work in every preaching serv- 
 ice which operate quite independently of the will of the 
 preacher. They operate upon the minds and hearts of 
 the people who listen. They operate also upon the mind 
 and heart of the man who speaks. The divine impinges. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 223 
 
 all the while upon tlie human. Whether it is there for 
 furtherance and aid, or for opposition and hindrance, de- 
 pends entirely upon the quality and the attitude of the 
 human. But in any event it is there. 
 
 '"Work out your own salvation" then as preachers. 
 Work with all your might, as if everything depended 
 upon you. Yet all the while, know full well that unless 
 God is working within you to will and to accomplish His 
 good pleasure, your preaching will be vain. Work as if 
 you had to do it all ! Then pray and trust as if God had 
 to do it all. You will find that the correlation of those 
 two sets of forces will make your preaching spiritually 
 effective. 
 
 The same blending of energies, human and divine, 
 though less apparent in many other fields, is present every- 
 where. If a man is farming, he may plant and his asso- 
 ciate may water — this is all they can do — God gives the 
 increase. When men plow and plant with all possible skill 
 and fidelity, they are still profoundly conscious of their 
 utter dependence upon the latent energies of the soil and 
 the sunshine, the rain and the dew. One reason perhaps 
 why country-bred boys, other things being equal, make 
 the best preachers is because they have had their feet in 
 the soil. They have been constantly in touch with living, 
 growing things. They have been schooled in the fine art 
 of cooperation with those energies which are beyond all 
 human control. 
 
 ''The earth is given to the children of men," the psalm- 
 ist said, "but the heavens are the Lord's." You may 
 sometimes see a plant trying to grow under a shed. It 
 has soil enough — it has eight thousand perpendicular 
 
224 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 miles of earth, more or less, directly under it. It may 
 have water enough, for some man may pour a bucketful 
 of water upon it every morning. It may be that the hin- 
 dering weeds have all been removed, allowing it a complete 
 monopoly of its bit of soil. But still it does not grow. 
 It does not grow because it needs the open sky, the sun- 
 shine, the rain and the dew that it may indeed come to its 
 own best and utter itself in some splendid flower. It has 
 the earth and all that the children of men can do on its 
 behalf, but it needs also the heavens which are the Lord's. 
 
 You cannot preach under a shed. If your own quality 
 of inner life, your own lack of trust in spiritual forces, 
 your own careless indifference to those lines of spiritual 
 culture which mean steady, vital fellowship with the Un- 
 seen, are such that you are roofed in, then your preaching 
 will be feeble. It will be for all the world like one of 
 those yellow, sickly-looking, potato vines growing in the 
 cellar. You need both the common earth and the open 
 sky for the complete effectiveness of your work as preach- 
 ers of a divine Gospel. 
 
 The recognition of the necessity for this cooperation 
 with an unseen world is clearly brought out in those words 
 from Deuteronomy; "The land ye go to possess is not as 
 the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou 
 sowest thy seed and waterest it with thy foot, as a garden 
 of herbs." In the Nile Valley the utilization of the an- 
 nual overflow of the great River for the irrigating of the 
 fields, enabled the farmers to have practically all of the 
 elements of agricultural success under their own control. 
 They sowed their seed and then with bared feet they 
 pumped the water from the River and made tiny chan- 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 225 
 
 nels for it to irrigate the growing grain. In Egypt the 
 farmers did not feel the sense of an immediate depend- 
 ence upon the upper world. 
 
 "But the land thou goest in to possess, is a land of hills 
 and of valleys" — ^where irrigation would be difficult if 
 not impossible: " a land that drinketh water of the rain 
 of Heaven; a land which the Lord thy God careth for; 
 and the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it 
 from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the 
 year." The steady dependence of the farmer in Pales- 
 tine upon that upper world from which the land must 
 drink water from the rain of heaven in order to become fer- 
 tile, developed in him a profound sense of reliance upon 
 the unseen energies of the Lord. 
 
 Your own land of promise as preachers of the Gospel 
 is "a land of hills and of valleys." It is a land that 
 drinketh water of the rain of Heaven. If it fails to draw 
 its supplies from above, it soon dries up. The ensuing 
 drought destroys all the spiritual harvests you are sent 
 to produce. It is a land which the Lord thy God careth 
 for and the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon 
 it from the beginning of your task even unto the end 
 of it. 
 
 In order to secure this superhuman aid it is not enough 
 that the minister should merely live a decent, respectable, 
 upright life. This is to be taken for granted. And such 
 a mode of life in the ministry is all but universal, foe the 
 clergyman knows full well that lying, stealing, unclean- 
 ness, or any other coarse, moral lapse would end him. The 
 ministers of Christ are very rarely overtaken by the coarse 
 sins of the flesh. It is not enough that a minister should 
 
226 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 merely keep up the outward habits of devotion — this also 
 may be taken for granted. The preacher of a divine Gos- 
 pel must so live as to keep alive and sensitive within his 
 own soul that sense of steady cooperation with the Unseen. 
 
 Rubinstein used to say that if he stopped practicing 
 for one day, he noticed it in his playing. If he stopped 
 for a week his intimate friends noticed it. If he stopped 
 for a month the public noticed it. The subtle, nervous 
 reactions which were needed if he would take the notes 
 on the score in the piece of music before him, and utter 
 them worthily through those ivory keys, were dependent 
 upon that steady practice which kept him in condition. 
 
 What of the man who looks upon the realities of the 
 spiritual world and undertakes to utter them? If he 
 becomes spiritually indifferent for a day, he will notice^ 
 it in his preaching — he will if he is morally sensitive 
 and sternly honest with himself. If he is careless for a 
 week, his wife and his deacons will miss something. If 
 he is careless for a month, the outside world will feel the 
 absence of that subtle, commanding accent which belongs 
 to spiritual veracity, to religious genuineness. If you 
 propose to preach, you will have to be the real thing. No 
 shams, no make-believes, no perfunctory machines need 
 apply. 
 
 The young men in the ministry might just as well 
 realize at the start what they are in for. The work of 
 preaching is the most exacting task on earth. It lays un- 
 der commission all the best powers of body, mind and 
 spirit. It loads men with burdens not easy to be borne. 
 If we were not steadily reinforced and empowered from 
 ^n inexhaustible source of spiritual energy, we would 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 227 
 
 all of us despair of maintaining any sort of genuine effi- 
 ciency in such a high calling. — - 
 
 In your regular work, week after week, you are called 
 upon as your Master was before you, to see Heaven open 
 and the angels of God ascending and descending on their 
 errands of spiritual ministry. You are expected to live 
 in constant communication with that unseen world, where 
 the messengers of the Most High are coming and going 
 upon those august transactions which have to do with the 
 renewing, the maturing, and the enrichment of spiritual 
 life. You therefore must of necessity, beyond all other 
 men, have an open vision and a clear, definite sense of 
 your own cooperation with that upper world of unseen 
 forces. 
 
 It is the divine element in preaching which makes it 
 vital. In the words of Nathaniel J. Burton, "The sermon 
 y gets to be a sermon, and is saved from being a lecture, 
 by being made and delivered in the Holy Ghost." The 
 older Methodist preachers, who formerly traveled their 
 circuits, upon reaching one of their appointments would 
 often go out behind the church among the trees and pray, 
 as they said, "for the power." We can trace more ac- 
 curately than they did perhaps the underlying psycholog- 
 ical principles governing the experience they sought. 
 But however we may phrase it, the spiritual effort put 
 forth by those men in seeking "the power" gave them the 
 sense of an effective fellowship with the divine. When 
 Frederick Denison Maurice preached in London to a con- 
 gregation where the educated and the cultured touched 
 elbows with the simple, working people, the universal 
 testimony was that there was throughout the service "the 
 
228 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 sense of something which was not of this world." It was 
 that mysterious "something" which gave the service its 
 power of spiritual appeal. 
 
 You will naturally remember how the importance of 
 seeking the cooperation of this divine element in preach- 
 ing is urged upon the servants of Christ in the New Tes- 
 tament. "Ye shall receive power/' — dunamiSj dynamic, 
 dynamite, tremendous and mysterious energy! Ye shall 
 receive tremendous and mysterious energy "after the Holy 
 Spirit has come upon you." "Tarry ye in the city of 
 Jerusalem," in the place of your former attachment and 
 devotion, "until ye are endued with power," that is to say 
 dynamic, "from on high." "My speech and my preaching 
 was not in the enticing words of man's wisdom," Paul 
 said, "but in demonstration of the spirit and of power" — 
 in demonstration of spiritual dynamic. "I am not 
 ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power," — 
 the dynamite, — "of God, unto salvation unto every one 
 who believes." "God has not given us the spirit of fear, 
 but of power, and of love and of a sound mind," — energy, 
 intelligence, and character, — "that your faith should not 
 stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power" (in the 
 dynamic) "of God." It is this dynamic aspect of the 
 work of the Holy Spirit, a power infinite in its possibil- 
 ities which makes the profoundest appeal to the human 
 heart. 
 
 One great office of preaching is to permit, to encourage 
 and to aid the functioning and the energizing of the divine 
 Spirit, both within the soul of the man who speaks and 
 within the souls of those who hear. When this process 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 229 
 
 is In operation, we have preaching. ISTothing less than 
 that is preaching. Men will come, "to hear you preach," 
 as they say. That may completely describe the mood in 
 which they come. But if you do your work well, before 
 you are through, they will see no man, neither you nor 
 any other man, but Jesus only. You can only accomplish 
 that result as you become conscious yourself of the divine 
 Spirit present and energetic in all your work. 
 
 This divine element is your distinctive asset. If you 
 try to compete with the writers of editorials in the news- 
 papers or with the magazine writers, in clever literary 
 production, they will beat you. They have more leisure 
 than you can possibly have as an active pastor. They do 
 not undertake to produce in any one week as much as 
 would be found in two good sermons. There is open to 
 them a wider range of topics for suggestive treatment. 
 They may write on religion also if they choose and on 
 every other conceivable thing under the sun. You can- 
 not successfully run races with them in furnishing popular 
 literature. 
 
 If you undertake to compete with the theater or with 
 the vaudeville show, or the moving pictures in furnishing 
 entertainment, you will be left behind. The amusement 
 venders have vast amounts of money to spend. They have 
 been studying this entertainment business for years while 
 you were studying your Bible, your church history and 
 all the rest. Their mastery of that subject will make 
 your knowledge of it seem like the crude notions of an 
 amateur. They have all the appliances known to modem 
 science. There is a wide range of activity open to them, 
 
230 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 permissible in the theater, but not in the place of worship. 
 You cannot in your sermons compete with them in fur- 
 nishing people with entertainment. 
 
 If you undertake to run races with the lecture platform 
 in giving intellectual shows, you will be worsted. The 
 popular lecturer is at liberty to put all he knows into one 
 lecture if he chooses and then deliver it a hundred or a 
 thousand times as opportunity offers, until he has brought 
 it to the highest state of perfection in literary style and 
 in forcible delivery of which he may be capable. You 
 cannot do that with the steady demand made upon you 
 that you should preach twice every week in the same 
 church. 
 
 If you undertake to compete with the authors of books, 
 they will surpass you in sound knowledge and in well- 
 reasoned statement. The author of a book may take five 
 years or ten years to produce a single volume, while the 
 moment you have pronounced the benediction on Sunday 
 night you feel almost compelled to hurry back to your 
 study to prepare two more sermons for next Sunday. 
 
 In your own congregation there will be men who are 
 your equals, and in all probability your superiors, in many 
 lines of knowledge. The business men will know more 
 about business than you do. The scientific men will un- 
 derstand the methods and findings of modern science as 
 you do not. The politicians will understand all the moves 
 and gestures in that game more thoroughly than you do. 
 You cannot possibly instruct those men in their own 
 specialties. 
 
 And as a matter of fact, those men do not come to your 
 .church for instruction in Economics or in Biology or in 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 231 
 
 Civics. They are disappointed when you undertake to 
 palm off on them an inadequate presentation of their own 
 specialties. The President of the University of Califor- 
 nia, some years ago, was an accomplished Greek scholar 
 long before he went to Berkeley. He was accustomed 
 to read the orations of Demosthenes and the plays 
 of iEschylus in the original as a pastime. He attended 
 habitually one of the churches in that University town. 
 He had for his pastor at one time a minister who some- 
 times undertook to air his Greek in the presence of this 
 past master of the Greek language. And the result was 
 that at all such times the poor parson utterly failed to 
 furnish the college president what he most desired to re- 
 ceive in coming to church. 
 
 You are not there primarily to impart larger stores o 
 of learning to men touching their own particular lines of 
 interest. You are not there to repeat some lesson which 
 you may have learned out of a book. You are there 
 chiefly to impart spiritual life. Your sermon if it is 
 really worthy of being preached has grown in direct 
 fashion out of your own spiritual life. If you are preach- 
 ing on faith, you preach as a man who cherishes faith 
 himself and has put it to the test on a score of hard fields. 
 If you preach on hope, you preach as a man who is "saved 
 by hope." If you discourse upon love, you do it out of 
 a heart honestly controlled by love for God and for man. 
 If you are proclaiming reconciliation to God through 
 Christ, you do it as a man who has himself been recon- 
 ciled and has found that peace which transcends all human 
 understanding. If you speak of moral renewal, you do 
 it from your own deep sense of that process already begun 
 
232 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 and in process of completion in the depths of your own 
 soul. When you preach on temptation and the way 'of 
 escape, it is the word of a man who has fought the wild 
 beasts at Ephesus and vanquished them through grace 
 given him from on high. 
 
 Here you will find the hidings of your power! Here 
 you will discover your main field of usefulness ! The 
 more you can speak out of the abundance of the heart, 
 the more surely will your message find its way to the 
 hearts of other men. Herein lies that essential soul of 
 every sermon which lifts it out of the category of an 
 Academic performance and makes of it a spiritual exer- 
 cise. Your truths are not dealt with after the method of 
 the learned disquisition but as experiences to be imparted 
 in words which are "spirit and life." 
 
 When you enter your pulpit you are there to make peo- 
 ple feel the presence of God. And here you have a field 
 all to yourself, with little or no competition. The news- 
 papers and the theaters, the popular lectures and the larger 
 part of the books men read, do not undertake to make peo- 
 ple immediately conscious of the presence of God. They 
 do not have as their main office the direct impartation of 
 spiritual life. 
 
 In undertaking this high office you do not think of your- 
 self then primarily as a lecturer on theology or even upon 
 religion. Men do not send for the doctor to come and tell 
 them all he knows about anatomy or materia medica., 
 They want him to come and set the broken bone or to 
 carry the patient through some serious illness. And you 
 regard yourself as one commissioned to bring the people 
 ^into such relations with the healing agencies that have 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 233 
 
 to do with spiritual health that they will be steadily 
 getting better under your treatment. You do not try 
 to tell them how much you know, but to impart life 
 and to put them in touch with the source of life. This 
 ability is your best asset, I repeat, and it can only result 
 from real and constant transactions between you and 
 your Lord. 
 
 There is no other element in preaching which can show 
 such a measure of demonstrated efficiency as the presence 
 of this spiritual quality. It gets results. It gets real 
 results and lasting results. The style of speech which 
 never goes beyond a certain pleasing and popular form 
 of eloquence may be utterly devoid of any character-mak- 
 ing influence. Moses was not an orator — he was "slow of 
 speech," he said, and had a clumsy tongue. Aaron was 
 an orator. He was a silver-tongued orator, a spell-binder, 
 a fine public speaker. But Moses received the word of 
 the Lord and wrote it on the face of Israel's life to stay, 
 while Aaron, the silver-tongued orator, merely made a 
 golden calf and caused the people to worship that popular 
 idol to their own hurt. 
 
 When I was a pastor in Boston there was a minister in 
 one of the churches there whose name was Brooke Here- 
 ford. He was an Englishman, with all the quiet dignity 
 of the English clergy. There was no more of sensation 
 in his methods than there was about Bunker Hill Monu- 
 ment. He was simple as a child in his mode of speech. 
 He was a man who was almost shy in manner, yet with a 
 warm heart hidden away under that reserve. But his 
 church was always full and when he preached at Harvard 
 University, more students came to see him during his 
 
234 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 consultation hours than came to see any other one " 
 preacher, with the single exception of Phillips Brooks. I 
 talked once with a traveling man, who was thoroughly 
 worldly and careless in his own speech and mode of liv- 
 ing. He told me that whenever he had a Sunday in Bos- 
 ton he always made it a point to hear Brooke Hereford. 
 I asked him why he enjoyed going there. His reply was, 
 "Well, I hardly know — perhaps it is because he is so rev- 
 erent and so real in his religion. It does me good for 
 weeks just to have heard him pray." 
 
 The presence or the absence of that divine "something" 
 really determines the question of spiritual efficiency. The 
 autobiography of President Charles G. Finney of Oberlin 
 l-^is as plain as homespun in its literary quality but in its 
 inspirational quality it is a book in a thousand. I made it 
 a practice to read it through regularly once every year 
 for the first fifteen years of my own ministry. And each 
 reading sent me back to my task with a new measure of 
 spiritual passion burning hot within me. He was so 
 conscious of this divine enduement that when he uttered 
 his message "his words seemed literally to cut like knives" 
 as they fell upon the consciences of those who heard. 
 Strong men were moved there in their pews, without any 
 of the machinery of the modern revival, to cry out for 
 the divine mercy to relieve their burdened and guilty 
 hearts. 
 
 President Finney was a man meager in his own emo- 
 tional life. His training as a lawyer had made him se- 
 verely plain and logical in his mode of stating truth. He 
 employed, as we know from his published sermons and , 
 lectures, scarcely any of the beauties of literary expres- . 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 235 
 
 sion. But he was a man who preached the Gospel of 
 Christ in the power of the divine Spirit. 
 
 And to this day the wholesome effects of those great re- 
 vivals of religion which he conducted can be read as from 
 an open book in the higher life of whole communities in 
 "Western I^ew York and in Pennsylvania and in that part 
 of Ohio known as the Western Keserve. His sermon 
 showed a body of truth, simple and rugged as a rule, but 
 real — the power of it lay in the fact that it was possessed 
 by a living soul through the divine inbreathing. 
 
 Would that a double portion of the spirit of that mod- 
 ern Elijah, now caught up to heaven, might be upon all 
 the young Elishas ! It would equip them as nothing else 
 can for the high and hard tasks awaiting them in this 
 hurried, intricate, baffling life which they are sent to 
 possess in the name of Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts. 
 
 If you seek and secure this divine enduement of power 
 you will rejoice in your work. In the long run now as 
 then the joy of the Lord must be your strength. If your 
 preaching is a burden to you ; if you are doing it because 
 you must do something in order to live ; or if your work 
 is done in a mechanical sort of way much as a man might 
 get out fence posts, or cut cord wood ; or if you are preach- 
 ing mainly because you find a certain intellectual satisfac- 
 tion in standing in a public place, the admired of all be- 
 holders, then you will fail. And you ought to fail. You 
 cannot succeed except as your heart is joyfully set upon 
 the deeper, spiritual values bound up with this work of 
 preaching. 
 
 May you learn to preach as the birds sing ! They can- 
 not help it. They are so chock full of music clear up to 
 
236 THE ART OV PREACHING 
 
 their throats that if thej did not sing, they would burst. 
 You ought to reach the point where you will utter those 
 visions and dreams of better things, those insights of yours 
 into human need and those broad, rich sympathies with 
 all who fail, those experiences wherein you laid firm hold 
 of God's grace for your own eternal salvation, simply 
 because, like Luther of old, you cannot otherwise. You 
 feel the deep joy of it walking and leaping and praising 
 God in your own soul until like the lame man who was 
 healed you must enter into the temple and utter it for 
 the help of your fellow beings. 
 
 In the city and in the country alike, you will find great 
 masses of human life, sordid, narrow, stupid, mean. If 
 you yourself were sordid and narrow, stupid and mean, 
 you would have nothing for those poor lives thus caught 
 and held. But you have been apprehended, seized upon, 
 caught up, ennobled by Christ Jesus so that you have 
 something for them — something which is literally price- 
 less. By the power of what you have seen and felt, by the 
 power of what you are able to declare in the Lord, 
 you are made competent to transform those masses 
 of life, until they become radiant tabernacles of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 You are sent to do what the great poets do for us all. 
 They dream for us and they sing for us. They gather 
 up the plain materials of our lives and make them glorious 
 by the profounder interpretations they put upon them. 
 They cause these ordinary experiences of human life to 
 shine like the sun in his strength by the finer meanings 
 they infuse into them. You are to do just that for the 
 working, struggling, burdened and ofttimes defeated peo- 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 237 
 
 pie, by the finer interpretations you place upon the com- 
 monplace activities of everyday life. 
 
 "Fill the waterpots with "water," Jesus said to the serv- 
 ants at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. "And they filled 
 them to the brim." It was a commonplace service they 
 rendered — any one could have done it, any one who had 
 feet and hands. But when these servants did it at his 
 word and under his eye, and did it thoroughly, filling the 
 waterpots to the brim, that commonplace action at once 
 took on a higher meaning and a richer value. 
 
 The unnamed, unknown servants were making wine for 
 the wedding. They were saving a bride and her parents 
 from the mortification consequent upon such a disaster 
 as having the refreshments give out at her marriage. They 
 were adding such pleasure to the occasion that the ruler 
 of the feast declared that he had never tasted such joy 
 before. And they were also enabling the Master to so 
 ^'manifest his glory" that "his disciples believed on him." 
 They had believed on him before for they were already 
 "his disciples," but in the joy of that occasion their belief 
 grew rich and glad. You in turn must learn how to 
 change the water of humdrum activity into wine, how to 
 lift the prose of ordinary experience into the poetry of 
 spiritual achievement. 
 
 In order to do this, you will need every now and then 
 to step back from your work for an hour that you may 
 see it aright. It is what the painter is constantly doing. 
 He moves back from his canvas so that he may see, not 
 dabs of paint which is all that any one can see when his 
 eyes are close to the picture — he moves away that he may 
 see the vision of beauty which filled his soul taking shape 
 
238 THE 'ART OF PREACHINa 
 
 there on his easel. Step back from your task that you 
 may see it in its true perspective! Step back that you 
 may see it in all its relations perpendicular as well as 
 horizontal. Step back and recognize those deeper impli- 
 cations which are hidden away beneath the surface. 
 
 You will inevitably find in your ministry a great deal 
 of routine and monotony. You will feel many a time and 
 for days together that you are only an obscure servant 
 filling waterpots with water and when they are empty 
 filling them over again. Human life taken in the large 
 is very much like that. It is lived for the most part on 
 "Main Street" rather than upon "The Avenue." The 
 housekeeper makes up beds which have already been made 
 up a hundred times and they will all have to be made up 
 again to-morrow morning. She washes dishes which have 
 already been washed a thousand times and most of them 
 will have to be washed again after the next meal. The 
 business man goes down to his store to discuss sales and 
 figure on contracts and write letters, the same sort of 
 sales, contracts and letters to which he has been giving 
 attention for years. The teacher enters her school room 
 and faces forty more restless urchins, the same sort of 
 urchins she has been facing ever since she was elected 
 to her present position, as unresponsive and intractable 
 oftentimes as a lot of wild cats. The minister goes into 
 his study to prepare two more sermons for next Sundays — 
 he has been busy for the last twenty years "getting ready 
 for next Sunday" and here he is doing it again! And 
 when he stands up to preach, he is conscious that seventy- 
 five thousand other ministers in this broad land are do- 
 ing the same thing in much the same way. 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 239 
 
 We are all like the little switch engines down here in 
 the freight yard. We are never hitched up to the "Over- 
 land Limited" to draw it swiftly and surely across the 
 Continent until it lands its passengers at the Golden Gate. 
 We are simply puffing to and fro within the limits of a 
 narrow yard, doing those plain things which somebody 
 has to do if the great common traffic of human existence 
 is to be carried along. But when we perform our tasks 
 at the command of Christ, when we link them up with 
 that purpose of His which reaches from the hour when 
 the morning stars sang together on to the hour when a 
 multitude which no man can number will drink their 
 wine new with Him in the kingdom of God, we manifest 
 His glory so that the world believes on Him. And that 
 sublime result is not commonplace. 
 
 But you cannot do this, you cannot begin to do it, with- 
 out a profound and constant knowledge of spiritual reality 
 at first hand. The strong tides of your own spiritual life 
 setting steadily in a given direction must carry you and 
 your sermon on your way rejoicing as you minister effici- 
 ently to the souls of those men who are of necessity steadily 
 engaged in doing these humdrum, commonplace things. 
 
 / What you think about when your mind is free to do, 
 not what it must, but what it likes ; what your heart is, in 
 its prevailing moods when it is unleashed to go where it 
 will ; what your prevailing temper is when you are under 
 no sort of compulsion laid on from without, this will de- 
 termine what you will be able to accomplish by that nat- 
 ural flowering forth of your own inner being, which we 
 call preaching. 
 
 Your supreme concern then in the pulpit will not be 
 
240 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 your sermon but the souls of your people. You will not 
 enter your pulpit saying to yourself, "Go to, now! Let 
 us make great sermons." You will reach back for that 
 primeval intention, that universal purpose which underlies 
 all our ministry. You will say, "Let us make men in His 
 image, after His likeness." Then in that high mood and 
 by the strength of that fundamental, commanding purpose 
 you will enter upon the high level of direct spiritual im- 
 partation as the preacher of a divine Gospel. 
 
 "He shall show you a large upper room, furnished, there 
 make ready." Here is a divine finger pointing straight 
 toward the higher levels of experience which are impera- 
 tively demanded if we are to find ourselves fitted for those 
 exacting duties just ahead of us. 
 
 "A large upper room, furnished — there make ready." 
 It is a room away from the noise and dust of the busy 
 street. It is a room beyond the touch and defilement of 
 thoise methods which are of the earth, earthy. It is a 
 room lifted above the adjacent structures, giving it a 
 freer, wider outlook upon the broad areas of human in- 
 terest. It is a room fronting squarely on the blue sky, in- 
 viting the direct rays of the sun and opening its windows 
 wide to all the forces of that upper air. He will show 
 you this as the crowning opportunity for your own per- 
 sonal preparation as preachers. Enter it and there make 
 ready for those high privileges which await you. 
 
 Have you been reading, I wonder, the accounts of the 
 heroic achievement of some of the younger astronomers 
 in recent years? These men were not content to walk 
 the streets and look up at the stars on clear nights as the 
 rest of us were doing. They journeyed to those regions 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 241 
 
 "where the crust of Mother Earth has been thrust high into 
 the upper air, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen thousand feet 
 above sea level. They climbed high up on Chimborazo in 
 South America. They ascended to the very summit of 
 Mount Blanc, carrying and dragging their instruments 
 with them, one of those instruments weighing eleven hun- 
 dred pounds. While on these expeditions they slept in 
 thin silk tents which they carried along. They thawed out 
 •frozen food on little alcohol stoves until it was soft enough 
 to be eaten. They endured all manner of exposure and 
 hardship on those rugged steeps and in that frigid climate 
 in order to accomplish the high ends they had in view. 
 
 These young astronomers made these heroic and perilous 
 ascents that from those vantage points they might the 
 better scan the visible heavens. They desired to map out 
 the paths the wandering planets take. They undertook 
 to weigh the huge bulk of those distant suns. They act- 
 ually determined by their spectrum analysis the very fuel 
 those distant planets burned. And they were able to 
 make these observations, some of which were of great 
 value to science, because they were willing to pay the 
 price of ascent into those upper rooms. 
 
 They must have known all the while that the knowledge 
 gained and the very objects of their research all belong to 
 that order which passeth away. "The heavens declare the 
 glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork," 
 yet only for a few brief hours in cosmic history. The 
 heavenly bodies are all awaiting that elemental change 
 to which they are destined. 
 
 But what shall we say of the high privilege and ex- 
 acting obligations spread out before us as the intrepid 
 
242 THE ART OF PREACHINa 
 
 explorers of the world of spiritual realities ? It lies with- 
 in the power of every man of us to go aloft into that upper 
 world where with the eye of faith we may see the eternal 
 verities. We may know the movements of the Divine 
 Spirit in His stately goings from one end of the heaven 
 even unto the other end thereof. We may possess and 
 weigh those unseen values which are priceless. We may 
 look with unveiled face upon all the hues and tints which 
 burn in the glories of that upper world until our very 
 souls are changed into the same image. "He shall show 
 you a large upper room, furnished — there, make ready." 
 
 There are men of quite ordinary gifts who become 
 highly effective by the larger measure of this divine ele- 
 ment in their preaching. This fact affords us immense 
 encouragement. In the matter of brains and ideas we 
 are all conscious of our limitations — if unhappily we are 
 not conscious of them then our friends become all the 
 more conscious of them for us — and it is a limitation 
 which cannot be entirely remedied. We would all be 
 glad to be possessed of more ease of manner, of more 
 facility of expression, of more grace and force in deliv- 
 ery. We can do something by way of improving our 
 original stock of these fine qualities, but the gifts we re- 
 ceive at birth, when "the gates of the gods," as the an- 
 cients said, "are closed on each man," decide for us, in 
 the main, the measure of our unaided effectiveness. 
 
 But no one of us need be straitened in that which is 
 vastly more important. In our access to God we have all 
 the privileges ever enjoyed by any man. You will be 
 just as near the stars in some modest rural parish as you 
 would be if you were standing in the pulpit of some Fifth 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 243 
 
 Avenue Church, New York, or in City Temple, London. 
 In that infilling of our spiritual receptacles from His in- 
 finite supply, we need never be cramped. The gate of 
 the living God remains forever open in this matter of 
 spiritual enduement. We can, if we will, grow steadily 
 and endlessly in human sympathy and in spiritual ex- 
 perience — and this will put soul into our preaching be- 
 yond any other line of effort to be named. 
 
 You will find that in the number of conversions made, 
 in the range and power of your inspirational appeal, in 
 the measure of comfort and help afforded to your people, 
 and even in the sheer attractiveness you may exhibit as 
 a popular preacher, there is no other one asset which will 
 bear comparison for a moment with the sense of this 
 divine element operating in all your work. 
 
 How shall this quality of spiritual effectiveness be 
 gained and kept? I wish with all my heart that in def- 
 inite terms I could tell you. If I were actually able to 
 set it before you in finished phrase, my reputation as a 
 theological instructor would be made for all time. If I 
 could give you rules on which you could rely as men rely 
 upon chemical formulas when they are at work in the 
 laboratory, I should wake iip to-morrow morning and find 
 myself famous. 
 
 The giving or the withholding of divine help in public 
 address involves about the greatest mystery of which I 
 know anything in my own personal experience. I have 
 read all the books on the subject which I could conmiand. 
 I have talked repeatedly with many wise, experienced, 
 and efficient ministers of Christ. I have been trying all 
 the valid methods I could discover on myself for thirty 
 
244 THE ART OF PREACHINa 
 
 odd years, and still I find myself baffled. There is a sense 
 of mystery attaching to this matter of spiritual endue- 
 ment, which I am unable to solve. 
 
 If your experience has been anything like mine, you 
 will have observed this: On one occasion when I had 
 made careful, thorough, painstaking preparation, when I 
 had been living conscientiously, when I had prayed for 
 the effectiveness of that sermon with unusual fervor, when 
 I had a theme which filled my heart with joy, I still made 
 a failure ! The message I brought seemed ineffective and 
 the hearts of men were unmoved. On some other occasion 
 when I was not nearly so well prepared, when I had not 
 behaved myself the week before in all respects as a Chris- 
 tian minister should, when there had been a lack of prayer, 
 and no such measure of deep feeling, I spoke with great 
 personal liberty and (according to the grateful testimony 
 of those who heard) with genuine spiritual effectiveness. 
 In the one case I was becalmed and the whole sermon was 
 dull, lifeless, dead. In the other case there came a breeze 
 from Heaven which swept me along grandly and brought 
 the whole congregation toward the desired haven. 
 
 It seems as uncertain as the wind. And this was the 
 very illustration which Jesus used. He said to !Nicodemus 
 that unless a man was born anew, born from above, born 
 from within, he could not enter the Kingdom of God. 
 iNicodemus was amazed by this statement. It staggered 
 him. "How can these things be ?" he exclaimed ! "How 
 can a man be born when he is old ?" Just then the wind 
 rustled the leaves where the two men stood; and Jesus 
 said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth. Thou hearest 
 the sound thereof, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 245 
 
 or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the 
 Spirit." 
 
 We cannot tell how it is that the wind blows one day 
 from the north and we have cold, and another day from 
 the south and we have heat, and another day from the 
 east and we have rain. We know the fact but we cannot 
 explain the method. We cannot tell how the wind fits in 
 with all the other forces and movements of this universe. 
 And the same vast sense of mystery inheres in the action 
 and movement of the Divine Spirit. "Religion is itself an 
 invisible and intangible object best discovered as the wind 
 and the Spirit generally are discovered, in what they 
 move." 
 
 The utilization of divine help in preaching has not been 
 reduced to anything like an exact science. We are dealing 
 with realities too vast for complete formulation. Both 
 our words and our methods are "thrown out," as it were, 
 at these immensities which elude final, exhaustive state- 
 ment or treatment. 
 
 Here, however, is the best that I have found in this 
 matter. You can keep your hearts pure and your souls 
 responsive by living true, kind, devout lives. You can 
 avoid those tempers and dispositions which harden and 
 stiffen men, making them unresponsive to the Divine 
 Spirit. You can keep your own inner life as delicately 
 sensitive as the flesh of a child, so that you will feel the 
 softest breezes of Heaven when they blow your way. 
 
 You can pray until the veil which separates you from 
 the world of spiritual reality becomes thin. Your own 
 devotions may be so genuine that there will be no sense 
 of a dull, heavy barrier between you and the Most High, 
 
246 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 You will feel the direct impact of that unseen world upon 
 your own heart. You cannot achieve this result by an 
 occasional spasmodic fit of earnestness or by the special 
 prayer you offer in hurried preparation for some critical 
 occasion. You can only achieve it by a life of prayer. 
 
 You can practice meditation upon high themes. "While 
 I was musing, the fire burned." The direct relation of 
 mental reflection to moral enthusiasm is well understood 
 by competent psychologists. It was well understood by 
 the psalmist of old. It is well understood by all success- 
 ful teachers. 
 
 It was Madame Montessori who said "Meditation means 
 something growing within. Take the difference between 
 reading and meditating ! We may read a popular novel in 
 a single night. We may meditate upon a single verse of 
 Scripture for an entire hour. When we read the novel in 
 a night, it is like a wind that passes over arid ground. 
 There is a squandering of the physical powers. But the 
 one who meditates, assimilates in a manner that surprises 
 himself, because he feels something unforeseen coming 
 to life within him." When you take your theme apart and 
 meditate upon it, there will be developed within your 
 very soul that eagerness to impart the best that it holds 
 to those hearts which are awaiting the renewal it has 
 power to bring. This exercise wisely and steadily fol- 
 lowed up will multiply your power by ten. 
 
 You can count yourselves always the servants of the 
 Word of God, the active, efficient agents of that unseen 
 form of power. The preachers in the Book of Acts said 
 that it was not fit that they should "leave the ministry 
 of the Word to serve tables." They were waiting upon 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 247 
 
 that energy and presence which they called '^the Word 
 of God," and they could not bear the thought of having 
 their interests diverted even to the practical, useful tasks 
 involved in ministering to physical need. 
 
 "The Word of God," as the expression is here used, 
 does not refer to a book nor to any set of printed state- 
 ments. It indicates a form of living energy passing from 
 God to man. It is quick, powerful, sharp — sharper than 
 a two-edged sword. You are set to serve that. In your 
 study and in your pulpit you are to do the bidding and 
 to cooperate with the purpose of that living energy which 
 is here called "the Word of God." 
 
 **Beyond the saered page 
 I seek Thee, Lord ! 
 My spirit pants for Thee, 
 living word." 
 
 Here are two musicians ! One of them sits down before 
 a great pipe organ to render some noble composition. He 
 reads his score correctly. He has perfect control of his 
 fingers trained to obedience by consistent practice. He 
 puts down the right keys at the right moment and keeps 
 them down just long enough. He moves his feet with 
 perfect accuracy as they touch the keys of the pedal organ. 
 He draws his stops with precision, arranging and employ- 
 ing those particular combinations which are indicated in 
 the work he would render. 
 
 The other musician does exactly the same thing. But 
 in addition there is expressed in his playing deep, rich, 
 genuine feeling. He enters profoundly and sympathet- 
 
248 THE ART OF PREACHING 
 
 ically into the mood of the composer whose work he in- 
 terprets. He utters that high mood by the use of his 
 fingers and his feet through the wide variety of pipes 
 included in that splendid church organ. His playing is 
 such that all aside from the impartation made by the bel- 
 lows of the organ, the player himself breathes into that 
 instrument the breath of life, and brings us not merely 
 the body of the music but its inmost soul. 
 
 You will seek to make the subject matter of your preach- 
 ing as strong and as well-reasoned as it lies within your 
 power to make it. You will strive steadily to improve 
 and perfect your literary style until the expression of 
 your truth is the best that you can furnish. You will 
 study the methods of delivery until voice and face and 
 hand shall all agree in giving the finest possible interpre- 
 tation to your thought as you declare it from your pulpit. 
 But behind, and beneath, and above all else, you must 
 strive for that certain mystic element which comes by 
 the divine enduement, bestowing upon your performance 
 the high and permanent quality of spiritual effectiveness. 
 O The worl<l Lis iiot heard its best prciiching je\. In 
 preaching as in living, because preaching at its best is 
 the interpretation of living and the incentive to nobler 
 and fuller living — in preaching as in living, 
 
 ^^The best is yet to be 
 The last of life for which the first was made.'' 
 
 The better method of Bible study showing us how these 
 great truths were slowly and progressively wrought into 
 the experiences of men of like passions with us, makes 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SERMON 249 
 
 the word of God "living, powerful, sharper than a two- 
 edged sword" in a sense not understood by the men who 
 thought of this literature as having been dictated to "the 
 sacred penmen of the Holy Ghost." The finer and more 
 accurate psychology of these days, bringing out the real 
 content of religious experience, is putting into our hands 
 a blade of Damascus steel with which we are to fight the 
 battles of the Lord. It is giving us in larger and larger 
 measure the choicest and most delicate instruments ever 
 possessed by men for the rare work of Christian nurture. 
 The deeper insight into the real meaning of these social 
 impulses and of the prophetic unrest in the whole organ- 
 ized life of the race, is causing that great word "The 
 Tabernacle of God is with men and He will dwell with 
 them" to shine like the sun in his strength ushering in a 
 veritable day of the Lord. We are witnessing the signifi- 
 cant beginnings of what shall become at last "the social 
 incarnation of God." And it is for you, who stand here 
 on the shoulders of all your able and godly predecessors 
 in the work of the Christian ministry, to gather up this 
 richer knowledge and then with minds illumined and 
 wills empowered by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to 
 use it for the renewal of the race in righteousness. 
 
 The God we serve is "the living God," the militant, 
 striving, achieving God. The Father worketh even until 
 now and will forever work. The whole wide world of 
 thought, feeling, aspiration, and spiritual achievement 
 is an unfinished universe awaiting His action and ours. 
 The voice of God who is forever making all things new 
 is calling to us at this moment summoning us to join Him 
 in an enterprise infinite and unending. 
 
250 THE ART OF PEEACHING 
 
 "Come now let us reason together, saith tlie Lord." 
 Come now let us build together a new heaven and a new 
 earth wherein dwelleth righteousness! Come now let us 
 make men after the likeness and image of the Eternal! 
 .This is the word of God which is nigh thee, even in thy 
 mouth and in thy heart. And in this vast work of creative 
 evolution, under the Great Taskmaster's eye and in open 
 alliance with His full strength, the mind, the heart and 
 the will of man in that high exercise known as preaching 
 are to bear an honorable and an indispensable part. 
 
 
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