Part 8 (1/2)
Another thing to be remembered is, that much depends upon the order and arrangement of a sermon whether it is ”easy to follow” or not. We are old-fas.h.i.+oned enough to believe rather strongly in the method according to which the preacher divided his subject into ”heads.” We had heard that this method was falling into disuse, but have been surprised during recent months to discover how many of the more acceptable and successful preachers still find it the most effective plan. Of course there are those who vote the method out of date; and we have listened to the preaching of some who hold this view and act upon it. Our experience teaches us that in respect of clearness and, perhaps especially, of memorability, the method of distinct division has many advantages. It is easier to the preacher; _much_ easier to the hearer.
Only, let it be remembered that an ”introduction” should introduce; that ”divisions” should divide, and sub-divisions sub-divide. Needless and trifling ”majors” or ”minors” are irritating and confusing.
”Firstly,” ”Secondly,” ”Thirdly,” and--under very special circ.u.mstances--even ”Fourthly” may contribute to the making of the dark places plain, but the days have long since pa.s.sed away in which ”Ninthly” and ”Tenthly” could be borne; though there have actually been such days. We have read, or tried to read, discourses whose major divisions ran to ”eighteenthly” with minor divisions grouped under each like companies in a regiment. People came to preaching early in those days and stayed late. Can it be one result of their experiences that we, their posterity, have inherited that strange weariness which so frequently attacks us as ”One word more” is announced from the sacred desk?
Simplicity in language, and in putting things; as much repet.i.tion as may be needed; great care not to a.s.sume more knowledge in the hearer than he possesses; much allowance for the fact that the minds addressed may not be trained in the theme under discussion, and that there is a wide difference between the catching of an idea which waits upon a printed page and of an idea in flight of spoken discourse; clear and memorable arrangement of the whole address--all these concessions must be made if men are to be sent away from the sanctuary carrying with them any considerable part of the provision with which the preacher climbed the pulpit stair. And after all these concessions have been allowed the _great_ effort to make things plain has yet to be begun!
This _great effort_ for the attainment of transparency will be made, we need hardly say, along two lines, the line of ill.u.s.tration and the line of application. Possibly it may be held by some that these two lines are really one.
And concerning ill.u.s.tration:--The greatest preachers, and the most effective, have been those who have shown the greatest mastery of this art. The writing of these words brings to our minds names sufficient to establish their truth. Who can forget the ill.u.s.trations of C. H.
Spurgeon; the ill.u.s.trations of McLaren of Manchester, whose expositions of Scripture received illumination in this way at every turning of the path along which the preacher led us, happy and entranced? It has been p.r.o.nounced by some a mistake to cla.s.s D. L. Moody among the _great_ preachers. The answer will depend upon our definition of a great preacher. _We_ would support the inclusion and our reason lies here:--We heard the man in boyhood and so clear, by simplicity and aptness of language, of phrase and of ill.u.s.tration did he make his every contention, that we understood him from beginning to end. An example happily still with us has already been named in the earlier part of this chapter. Every preacher should hear the Rev. W. L.
Watkinson, if he walk a score of miles to do it!
But the art of ill.u.s.tration, excepting in those rare cases where a man brings to its learning a natural gift waiting only to be brought into use, is not easily acquired. Every preacher of experience will be prepared to testify that in attempting to ill.u.s.trate it is not only easy to make mistakes but difficult to avoid making them at times.
Sometimes an ill.u.s.tration, intended to light up a subject, rather takes away the thought of a congregation from that subject than otherwise.
Sometimes, again, the ill.u.s.tration may be found to carry other suggestions than were intended. The lad, to whom the wisdom of early rising was sought to be ill.u.s.trated by the good fortune of the early bird in securing the first worm, drew precisely the opposite moral, holding that the fate of the worm taught the wisdom of remaining in bed until a later hour. Then an ill.u.s.tration may be even less clear than the argument to be ill.u.s.trated. We have heard scientific ill.u.s.trations of this character, from which the hearer derived a supplementary dose of mystification rather than an elucidation of the problem with which he was already manfully grappling. An ill.u.s.tration may be too pathetic, and people may weep from the wrong cause, an event which often occurs in church. It is one thing to shed tears over a touching story and another to shed them from penitence. An ill.u.s.tration should not be more sublime than the lesson to be taught lest there follow a swift descent with loss of reverence by the way. There is a place for humour in the pulpit, if it be natural to the preacher and flow spontaneously, but a humorous ill.u.s.tration requires to be very carefully chosen, lest, instead of the healthy and holy laughter often so fatal to anger and meanness and pride, you have the guffaw in which blessing is lost in excess. Other reflections as to ill.u.s.trations are the following:--First, the ill.u.s.tration, if a story, ought at least to contain the element of probability. No preacher can _always_ satisfy himself as to the literal truth of a story he may hear and wish to use, but he can, at least, consider whether the event recounted was possible. We have heard stories from the pulpit which were so hard to swallow as to leave no room for the moral. We have heard ill.u.s.trations in sermons which have led to criticisms wherein the strength of the preacher's imagination has not been pa.s.sed over unrecognised. Further, an ill.u.s.tration derives power from being drawn from sources familiar to those to whom it is addressed. In some confessions regarding his early ministry, Henry Ward Beecher enforces this very lesson in telling of his failure to impress the people until he turned for his ill.u.s.trations to fields well known to them. Who has not seen a farm-labouring audience lift their heads when a preacher, saying, ”It is like,” has led his hearers into the fields where they had toiled during the previous week? Often have we seen a mining congregation captured _en bloc_ when some brother miner, speaking in native doric from the wagon at a camp meeting, has taken them ”doon the pit,” or ”in bye.” We have watched the faces of sea-going men gleam with a new interest as the preacher drew a simile, or caught a metaphor from the mighty deep.
Only, in using such ill.u.s.trations as these, let the user be quite certain that he is _accurate_. One mistake about the farm, the mine, the sea, and all is over! With accuracy as a quality constantly present, those ill.u.s.trations are most effective whose material is most homely and familiar. Things startling, novel and foreign, may arouse interest and excite wonder, but it will probably be at the expense of that realisation of truth which was sought to be created. Jesus said ”Like unto leaven,” ”Like to a grain of mustard seed,” ”Behold a sower went forth to sow,” ”Consider the lilies of the field.” His hearers saw these things every day. Perhaps they were in view as He spoke.
Finally, the less hackneyed our ill.u.s.trations are, the better. If this were more generally remembered we would miss, and that with a sense of relief, a few grey-headed similes which, having haunted our youth, threaten to haunt also our age; and which have a.s.sailed us so often as to create the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt. In how many Sunday school addresses--and a Sunday school address is preaching in a way--in how many such addresses have we seen the twig bent; in how many the giant oak which none can train? How often have we heard of that boy in Holland who saved his country by the simple expedient of pus.h.i.+ng his finger into a hole in the d.y.k.e through which the dammed-up waters had begun to escape? There is that other lad, too, who has come down in history by reason of his insane resolve to climb ”one niche the higher”--how often have we been told his thrilling story? These two boys are no longer young and have surely earned an honourable superannuation. That little incident of Michael Angelo and the block of marble from which he ”let the angel out”--even that improving narrative might with advantage be pigeon-holed for a generation or two.
The reason why these hardy perennials are seen in the gardens of so many preachers must surely be, that every ”Treasury of Ill.u.s.trations”
contains them. We have nothing to say in praise of such treasuries.
We have none to recommend for purchase. The best treasury of ill.u.s.trations is the memory of that man who keeps his eyes and ears open and has a preaching mind.
Following the naming of ill.u.s.tration as a means of lighting up the sermon comes the mention of application. Truth must be related to be understood. How wonderfully the application of a truth to familiar circ.u.mstances makes it clear. It may be laboriously defined and leave but a dim and indistinct impression upon the mind; but apply it to the age, to the life of men; show its relation to the pa.s.sing days, to daily duties, daily trials, daily sins, and how deeply is it impressed.
In the greater shops are models whose business it is to ”show off” the gown the shopkeeper wishes to sell by wearing it before the possible purchaser. The advantage of the plan is obvious. We must show truth in the wear to make it understood!
After all these reflections, the fundamental word still remains to be said:--_Clear preaching can only come from clear thinking_. What we see _ourselves_ we may, by great effort and rare good fortune, make others see; but when the preacher only beholds men as trees walking, how can he make clear their features to his fellows? The foggy sermon often proves the preacher's possession of a foggy mind. ”If the light that is in _thee_ be darkness, how great is that darkness,” so said One of old.
CHAPTER III.
On Appeal.
It is set before us in this last chapter of our lecture to say something in reference to appeal as an essential quality of the sermon.
The discourse, it must always be borne in mind, is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and that end the bending of the human will to ”repentance toward G.o.d, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” To the full and perfect surrender which this implies men are found to be opposed in every possible way. Pride is against it; selfishness is against it; self-indulgence and the l.u.s.ts of the flesh are against it. Often, in addition to these natural elements of opposition, a man's reluctance to yield himself to G.o.d will be fortified by tradition and strengthened by a.s.sociation. A hundred circ.u.mstances affecting his life, his comfort, his general well-being may seem to encourage, almost necessitate his refusal. Then, again, the teaching of all scripture goes to create and establish the belief that there are supernatural prompters of the sinner in his rebellion against G.o.d; that the warfare of the preacher for his deliverance is not against flesh and blood only, but also ”against princ.i.p.alities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places.” We do not always quite realise all that it may mean to a man to take the step to which we invite him--sometimes so lightly. To begin the following of Christ, or, having already begun that following, to arise from slackness to whole-hearted service, may involve the snapping of long cherished ties and an absolute revolution in every habit and mode of life and thought.
By many men the Kingdom of Heaven can only be entered at the cost of what seems to them a stupendous sacrifice and the facing of what appears an appalling risk. Against all these forces and considerations has the preacher to prevail, and that, through no compulsive power, but by exercise of such gifts of persuasion as are given unto him to be cultivated to that end, G.o.d's Spirit helping his efforts. He is here to make men _do_--do that which on every earthly account they had rather not do. Unless he accomplishes this result his work has been in vain.
Now, it is well that the nature of the work, its greatness and the hardness of it, should be fully realised and constantly remembered.
There is always a danger of being misled by the shows of incomplete, or false, success. In no branch of service is this more true than in preaching. It is such a glorious thing to be able to gather great congregations; but even this may be done and the messenger fail. It is such a delightful thing to a preacher to watch a mult.i.tude waiting spellbound beneath his eloquence in rapt attention, or swept by waves of emotion; but that mult.i.tude may disperse, the great end of preaching still unwrought and the whole attempt a splendid failure. It is possible to attract people to your preaching, possible to win the crown of their approval, and yet come short of accomplis.h.i.+ng the very results for which you were commissioned from on high. To please is one thing; to prevail against the heart of sin another.
And with the recollection of this much-to-be-remembered truth it will be well that a sense of the difficulty of the real task should abide continually with us. Some of these difficulties, we have already mentioned. The hardest to overcome are the obstacles within the mind and heart of the hearer himself. It is always finally _the man_ who has to be conquered. This, we surely know through our own spiritual experiences. He is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. Here is surely one reason why the Master sets men to preach to men:--Because every preacher has been himself a rebel and knows the way rebellion takes in heart and brain. Ours also was once the stubborn will; ours the stiff neck; ours the evil heart of unbelief. We, as well as he whom we now a.s.sail for Jesus' sake, have said, ”I will not have this man to reign over me.” Once upon a time we, also, bore ourselves proudly and contemptuously. Never are we weary of thinking of the wonder that ever we were brought to ground our arms at the Master's feet. Will the winning of others be easier than was the victory won over ourselves? Now that we battle against what once we were and did, we should understand from memory the immensity of the task. Once realised, it should never be forgotten. There is no miracle in all the Gospel history greater than the miracle of a broken human will.
Yes, the preacher's work is at the best a supremely hard one. The sense of this hardness must get into his soul, or else all hope of success will be vain. Should there ever come to him a moment in which it shall appear an easy thing to preach, or when his knowledge of the congregation awaiting him shall seem to indicate that ”anything will do,” then let him, in that moment, consider himself in peril of missing the true end of his calling. _Anything will not do_. The very best will hardly do! Think of the hardness of the heart! Think of the arguments of the tempter! Think how fair and sweet sin often seems!
Think of all the sacrifice and self-denial and self-surrender we are asking from men! Here is need for the utmost diligence; for the development of every latent power of persuasion; for the employment of every ounce of energy, of every resource of skill; for the expenditure of every volt of pa.s.sion the soul can contain. We can only hope to capture the citadel when the utmost possibilities of attack are brought to bear upon it. Even then the garrison may hold out against us!