Part 4 (1/2)
The answer to this question is, and must be, No. It cannot be done if the preacher look at man only through his own eyes and try to love him for himself alone. It will be found impossible to love one man because we do _not_ know him. It will be found even more impossible--if impossibility admit of degrees of comparison--to love another because we _do_! Our hearts have neither power to conceive nor life to sustain an universal affection.
And yet this love of man as man must be realised before ever we can hope helpfully to lift up Christ and goodness for his acceptance. The secret thereof must come as came the message itself; as came our call to declare it,--through another love warming our hearts into living heat. The pa.s.sion for humanity comes to the preacher as a result of his pa.s.sion for Christ. His love for Christ goes beyond its divine object to all who are precious to his Lord. The worst of men is, by right of redemption, Christ's man, dear to the preacher, because bought by the blood which is more precious than silver and gold. The heathen are His inheritance and the uttermost ends of the earth are His possession. Urged, sustained and comforted by this reflection, the missionary crosses stormy seas, ready to find, if need be, a grave in a foreign land far from home and friends that, so going, he may speak to His Lord's beloved concerning His wondrous grace. Here, and here only, is the true missionary motive, the one missionary argument. We do _not_ seek to save the heathen because of an eschatology which would consign them to the outer darkness. We cannot receive as true any conception of G.o.d which includes belief in a doctrine involving so terrible an injustice as that men should be eternally punished for refusing that which has never been offered for their acceptance. We think, rather, of the Lord as robbed of the love of hearts He died to win, hearts made precious by His death, and in the pa.s.sion kindled by our vision of the Master looking from His cross away over tossing seas to those far-off lands and including every son of savagery to the last moment of time in His dying pet.i.tion, ”Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” We perceive upon every soul the sign of the cross; and this sign makes every man a brother to the ends of the earth. So the preacher is lifted by his love for his Master into a love for all for whom He agonised and died.
And this, from the beginning of his preaching to its end, and in relation to all the experiences into which his labours shall bring him, must be the true preacher's way of looking at his fellow-men. The social reformer has his way, too, the politician his, the scientist his. This is the preacher's way. Each and every man is sanctified to him by the sprinkling of blood. So he, also, will bear a cross for the saving of men; so he, too, will carry the sorrows and sins of humanity.
He will have a Gethsemane of his own, be led to a Calvary waiting for _him_, for every saviour of men must tread this appointed way. Every shepherd who is not an hireling ”giveth his life for the sheep.”
One word more. We have named the preacher's pa.s.sion for his Lord. We have also named his pa.s.sion for those upon whom his Lord has set the mark of His love. There is something more needed ere the flame of pa.s.sion burn with its fullest intensity. It is the pa.s.sion of the dream--the dream that is not a dream excepting to those who have only heard of it by the hearing of the ear. To the preacher it will be a _vision_. It is the vision of which we have already spoken, and may speak again in pages yet to come--the vision of the divine ideal at last triumphant. In this vision the preacher must live. To lose it is despair. No one has so many disappointments as the idealist; but it is the glorious fact that no one cares about his disappointments less.
Not that he does not see them, but because he sees _beyond_ them. The true preacher--_he_ is your incorrigible optimist. Some men form their expectations of the future out of material supplied in tables of statistics, ecclesiastical Blue Books, censuses of church attendance, returns and percentages. Not so the true preacher. He has ”seen the King in His beauty and the land that is far off.” Columbus like, he steers his barque toward the new world his faith has gazed upon, and, as with Columbus, the pa.s.sion of the coming victory holds him, heart in tune and head erect, while others mournfully prophesy the disasters always by shortsighted people seen.
So by the power of his pa.s.sion the preacher declares his message and this pa.s.sion gives power to every word thereof. In that same pa.s.sion is his own sustenance in all the divers contradictions that preaching may bring upon him. He needs it for his own preservation. Often the preacher who accomplishes the most is, more than those who accomplish less, rewarded with ingrat.i.tude, misjudgment, scorn. ”The carnal mind is at enmity against G.o.d, and is not reconciled to the law of G.o.d, neither, indeed, can be.” This means suffering for the preacher as it meant suffering for the Lord. What can keep him in countenance among it all? Love and the pa.s.sion of the vision. In these will he conquer ever! The prodigality of the younger son had long worn out the patience of the elder brother. Love kept the father waiting on and vision saw the lad's return while still he was far away. In this love and vision he went forth the door; in this love and vision he returned leading the late returning child back again to home and rest and peace and purity. The parable is for preachers as well as prodigals. Oh, for the pa.s.sion, the far, far sight of this old history! They are our greatest need to-day!
Pa.s.sion! How is it with us now? Have we this absolutely essential possession in our hearts, in our preaching, as we have had it aforetime, as our fathers had it? Are we so set upon giving glory to Christ that we long for the opportunity to come to speak His name in the congregation? Are we so given up to the enterprise of saving men that we rest not day nor night for very longing for their salvation?
Are we so full of the sense of the triumph drawing nearer that our hearts are already rejoicing with the joy of Harvest? These are questions for us all, and we may discover the quality of our preaching from their answers, if only we will whisper them to ourselves with faithfulness to G.o.d and men and our own souls.
BOOK II
THE MESSAGE:--
ITS ESSENTIAL NOTES
THEORY OF BOOK II.
The Effectiveness of the Message arises from the Completeness with which it Meets the Needs of Men. We believe that the Measure of the Gospel is the Measure of Man's Spiritual and Moral Necessity, and we plead for a Full Statement thereof in order that it may Prove its ”Power unto Life.”
_What are the Essential Notes of the Message?_
CHAPTER I.
The Note of Accusation.
In a purely heathen country the first business of the preacher must naturally be concerned with the publication of the great historical facts upon which the Christian faith is based. In such a land as ours, where these facts are already the subject of common knowledge, his first service to every soul to whom he is sent is to bring home the truth of that soul's condition and necessity. It is not a pleasant task. It is not an easy one. It forms a duty from which we instinctively shrink, but no ministry is complete in which it is neglected. No ministry that is incomplete can be effective and successful.
Now an examination of the history of preaching will reveal to us that all the great preachers have been examples of faithfulness concerning, not only the softer, but also the sterner portions of their message.
Before us are the Hebrew prophets. By them was Israel arraigned at the bar of G.o.d. Could anything be more fearful than the indictment they laid? Kings, priests, councillors and commoners--against them all was the testimony maintained. ”Art thou he that troublest Israel?” asks a conscience-stricken monarch of the seer from Mount Gilead. Troublers of Israel they were, exposing, denouncing, declaring judgment against evil doers. Such was their mission. Troublers of Israel, they were sent to be.
After the prophets, when, at last, the fulness of time began to dawn, he appeared who was to be the great herald of the Redeemer. ”In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” John, too, was an accuser. Hark, how he addresses the Pharisees; how he speaks of ”the axe laid at the root of the tree!” Once more did Israel hear of her rebellion and transgression. Again was the veil torn from her heart, the trappings of ceremonialism, the rags of hypocrisy. Again were men made to tremble by warning of the doom about to break.
Wonderfully effective this ministry seems to have been--”Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins.” To the preacher came martyrdom, and that as the direct consequence of his faithfulness. It is dangerous to play the accuser at the foot of the throne, and for this, in the lone dungeon of Machaerus, the Baptist dies, but not until He whom he announced, and of whom the law and the prophets did speak, has lifted up His voice to preach to the nations and the ages. To the world came Jesus also as an accuser, and such accusations were His as men had never heard--accusations founded upon an infinite knowledge of mankind, on an infinite hatred of sin, on a perfect vision of the end of all wrong-doing. To convince and convict the world--for _this_ first of all was He made flesh. Over the land His ”Woe unto you” rang out as the thunder of a divine sentence, blanching the cheek and smiting the soul with shame and fear. For this testimony He died.
And after He had ascended up on high the apostles carried on this accusing work. Knowing ”the terrors of the law” they persuaded men.
As Paul ”reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, Felix trembled.” To him the prisoner of that memorable day spoke as the representative of outraged deity. In his voice the hardened Consul heard the echo of his own disregarded conscience, and was reminded of his ”more perfect knowledge of that way” which would one day make all the deeper the blackness of his condemnation. The joints of his harness were undone.
And so in that time of beginnings was set forth for all after years on the stage of that Eastern land the pattern of Gospel preaching, and its great copyists in all subsequent generations have come forth bearing, as their first word to men, the message of accusation. ”All have sinned and come short of the glory of G.o.d;” such has been their opening announcement. Sin is rebellion against G.o.d; such has been their all-embracing definition. ”The soul that sinneth it shall die;”--this ”certain fearful looking for of judgment” they have held up before mankind. ”Thou art the man!” has been the constant challenge of the Christian amba.s.sador. It would be an interesting employment to journey back across the past and listen for this note as it fell from the lips of the great preachers of bygone ages. Our own Connexional fathers, however, as the figures most familiar to our minds, may remind us how faithful the pulpit used to be in the execution of this hard task.
Some of us are old enough to remember as common, a phrase which now we hear only occasionally and in the out of the way corners of our Church.
It was the expression ”black sermon” as descriptive of a discourse in which the sterner side of the revelation was enunciated. Such sermons in those days formed part of every preacher's armoury. They were sermons of accusation; sermons about sin; sermons diagnostic of the state of the human heart. In these discourses the sinner was a.s.sailed through the gateway of his fears. The old preachers believed there was such a place as h.e.l.l, and said so,--sometimes with a great wealth of staking, figurative language which was perhaps used less symbolically than literally. They believed in a final and general judgment in which the dead, small and great, with such as shall be then living upon the earth, will be called to stand before the Great White Throne to give an account of the deeds done in the body. Clearly did they see this coming day and clearly did they proclaim that at any time its terrors may break upon a careless and prayerless world. Some of them gained celebrity by the vigour and colour of their descriptions. In the North of England they still speak of the sermon with which Joseph Spoor transported mult.i.tudes into the circ.u.mstances of that awful hour. Hugh Bourne, it is well known, gave himself to this kind of preaching to a degree which has made his name the more to be remembered on its account. His language was literal indeed! To our mind, at the moment of writing, returns something of the emotion with which in the days of boyhood we listened to a sermon on ”The Pale Horse and his Rider” from a local preacher not long since pa.s.sed to his reward. Another discourse on ”The Swellings of Jordan” has been with us vividly, though forty years have flown since we heard it in a tiny chapel among the Northern hills. We can remember, too, an expression now used no more, but which we have often heard as part of the final appeal with which such sermons were wont to close. ”My friends,” the preacher would say, ”I have cleared myself this day of your blood.” Sometimes this declaration would be followed by a challenge in which the unG.o.dly of the congregation were called to meet the preacher, ”on that day when the books shall be opened and the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed,” there and then to bear witness of his guiltlessness as to their d.a.m.nation. It was very terrible, no doubt, very harrowing, and often as unpleasant to listen to as to utter, but such preaching was justified by its results. Many a sinner trembled as his heart was opened before him. Many a strong man broke into cries and tears as he saw himself a rebel against divine justice and mercy. Many an one smote upon his breast in terror as the veil of the future was lifted, and he saw himself standing guilty before the last tribunal, and praying for the mountains to fall and hide him from the eyes of an angry G.o.d. In our time, however, such preaching has become a tradition. It might be centuries since it was a fas.h.i.+on in the land, for hardly does its echo reach our ears to-day. And concerning this fact there emerges a curious thing. Confessedly the effect of such preaching was often the offending of the hearer. It has ever been so--was so, as we have seen, with the prophets; the apostles; the Lord Himself--and yet there is complaint when accusation and warning are withheld, and that, strangely, from the very people who would probably protest the most against it. It is said, even by these very people, that nowadays _the preacher does not hurt_; that he fails to find the conscience. The fact is, there exists in the heart of man an instinctive expectation that the messenger of G.o.d will do these things.
It is one of the criticisms of to-day that sternness has died out of theology. The preacher is no longer the representative of a _judge_; no longer in G.o.d's stead the accuser of men. In every age the Church displays favouritism in her doctrinal attachments. In our time it is the doctrine of the divine Fatherhood of which the most is heard. This were well if the whole truth were told; but what manner of fatherhood is that of which we all too often hear? A fatherhood of colossal good nature, of blind, of foolish, indulgence; a conception of paternal wisdom and affection against which the conscience of the thoughtful instinctively revolts. The man in the street is not satisfied, and never will be satisfied, with a merely sentimental G.o.d. Some day, perhaps, it may be discovered that he is outside the churches, not because preaching, asking too much, has made him afraid, but because preaching, asking too little, has left him contemptuous.