109. I Will In This Place Thrust In A Word Or Two Concerning My Preaching.

CIX ‘I Will In This Place Thrust In A Word Or Two Concerning My Preaching.’ THE beginning of John Bunyan’s preaching was something like this. It was something like what we ourselves have sometimes seen in Scotland and in our own day. At a time of religious revival, or some other season of refreshing, the Spirit of God lays hold of a young man: a ploughman, or a tradesman, or a student. ‘Some of the most able for judgment and godliness of life’ immediately have their eyes on that young man. ‘Some of the most able among the saints’ with us also will prevail with that young convert to accompany them to some of their meetings in such and such a kitchen, or carpenter’s shop, or barn, or hayloft. I have seen it myself a hundred times in Padanaram, and in Airlie, and in Kirriemuir, and in Logiealmond, and in Huntly, and in Aberdeen, and in Hopeman. I have seen Duncan Matheson and John More taken in hand by the ‘most able for judgment and godliness of life,’ and gradually led on till their names became a great fragrance to all the country round about. And this same went on in Bedford till the ‘priests and doctors’ set the civil arm in motion. And till one evening just as the tinker was entering a little prayermeeting the village constable laid his hand on the unordained preacher’s shoulder.

‘At the sessions after, I was indicted for an upholder and maintainer of unlawful assemblies and conventicles, and for not conforming to the National Worship of the Church of England. So being by the justices delivered up to the gaoler’s hands, I was had home to prison again, and there have lain now complete twelve years, waiting to see what God would suffer those men to do with me.’

It cannot, I should think, but interest us all to learn what sort of a preacher the Bedford tinker was before he was shut up into Bedford jail, there to learn to be a still better preacher before he came out.

Well then to begin with, it was the old story. ‘Unworthy wretch that I am! Such a fool as I am! Of all unworthy men, the most unworthy!’ And then as to his literature. To the end they never made John Bunyan a doctor of divinity nor anything else of that honourable sort. But three degrees had already been granted to Bunyan that neither Cambridge nor Oxford could either give or withhold.

‘To wit, union with Christ; the anointing of the Spirit; and much experience of temptation. All of which go to fit a man for that mighty work of preaching the Gospel of Christ, much more than all the University learning that can be had.’ So says John Burton of Bedford in his excellently written preface to John Bunyan’s Gospel Truths Opened. ‘In my preaching of the Word,’ says Bunyan,

‘I took special notice of this, that the Lord did lead me to begin where His Word begins. Yea, it was for this reason I lay so long at Sinai so as to see the fire, and the cloud, and the darkness, that I might fear the Lord all the days of my life on earth, and tell of His wondrous works to my children.’

God’s Word, and Bunyan’s own conscience and heart, were about all the books he ever had; and in his preaching he always took the Bible view, and the view that his own conscience and heart took, of what true preaching is; with what all true preaching begins, and with what it all ends. Bunyan always began where Paul always began, and where Luther always began, and where all the Puritan preachers always began. And then, beginning as he always began, Bunyan shall tell you in his own words how he went on.

‘Now, this part of my work I fulfilled with great sense; for the terrors of the law, and guilt for my transgressions, lay heavy on my conscience. I preached what I felt; what I smartingly did feel; even that under which my poor soul did groan and travail to astonishment. Indeed, I have been to my hearers as one sent to them from the dead. I went myself in chains to preach to them in chains. And I carried that fire in my conscience that I persuaded them to beware of. I can truly say, and that without dissembling, that when I have been to preach, I have gone full of guilt and terror to the pulpit-door, and there it hath been taken off. I have been at liberty till I had done my work, and then, immediately, even before I could get down the pulpit-stairs, I have been as bad as I was before. And yet, God carried me on, but surely with a strong hand, for neither guilt nor hell could take me off my work.’

‘Now, this part of my work I fulfilled with great sense.’ Canon Venables’s editorial note upon ‘great sense’ is this: ‘With great sense: that is to say, with great feeling and with great sympathy. As in Shakespeare, Othello says:

O brave Iago, honest and just, Thou hast such noble sense of thy friend’s wrong. And our own Highland Brea, speaking like Bunyan about the beginning of his own ministry, says:

‘The preacher must have the sense of his charge; the danger of immortal souls deeply imprinted on his heart. He that hath but slight impressions of his charge will never faithfully perform it.’ And Newman, though he does not use the word ‘sense,’ has the very same thing under the word ‘earnestness.’ I like to give you Newman’s fine English when I possibly can. ‘He’ — says that great writer —

‘he who has before his mental eye the Four Last Things will have the true earnestness, the horror of one who witnesses a great conflagration, or the rapture of one who discerns some rich and sublime prospect of natural scenery. His countenance, his manner, his voice, all speak for him; and that in proportion as his view has been vivid and minute The great English poet has described this sort of eloquence when a calamity had befallen:

Yea, this man’s brow, like to a title leaf Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.

Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thine errand.

It is this earnestness, in the supernatural order, continues Newman,

‘which is the eloquence of saints; and not of saints only, but of all Christia preachers, according to the measure of their fait and their love.’

Now John Bunyan should have satisfied the Cardinal so far at any rate as his mental eye was concerned. For not St. Francis himself, not Dante himself, has ever held the Four Last Things before their eyes better, and to more earnestness and impressiveness, than John Bunyan has done.

‘God gave me some utterance wherewith to express in some measure what I saw. For still I preached as I saw and felt.’ And it was because Jacob Behmen had the same eyes as St. Francis and Dante and Bunyan had that there would continually arise within him what he calls a ‘fiery instigation’ to tell to others what he had seen and heard when he was caught up by the hair of the head, and was carried away into the Vision of God, as the captive prophet was carried away at the river of Chebar.

‘Wherefore I did labour so to preach the Word, as that thereby, if it were possible, the sin, and the person guilty of the sin, might be particularised by my preaching.’

‘The Lord,’ says Halyburton, ‘did point out to me particulars wherewith to try me. But when I saw that it behoved me to quit these particular sins, then I begged a little delay: Augustine-like, I was willing to be pure, but not yet.’ And out of that experience like Bunyan, Halyburton, in his pulpit particularisations, was very home-coming and very heart-searching. And he was wont to complain that most preachers were much too general and much too remote in their application of truth. And Fraser says this on this same subject:

‘I felt called to preach plainly, particularly, and authoritatively: yet courteously, wisely, meekly, and gently; not to speak in a cloud of words, but to say, Thou art the man!’

‘Again, I never cared to meddle with things that were controverted and in dispute, especially things of the lowest nature.’ Old Thomas Shepard shall comment on this of John Bunyan. ‘Divisions,’ says that great Pilgrim Father,

‘pull down kingdoms without foreign enemies. It is the delight of hell to see churches at variance among themselves. This is Satan’s continual attempt in the best churches and he is too often successful. It is most distressful to see what a small thing the devil will make to do his work: a word, a gesture, a garment will do it. One must have liberty to speak one thing, and another another thing. I am of this mind, saith one. But I am not of that mind, saith another. Even a breath of suspicion will not seldom do it. O, tremble to entertain a thought of contention! Love one another sincerely, and you will live together quietly.’ So far dear old Shepard.

‘Besides,’ says Bunyan, ‘I did let alone the things that engendered strife, because my proper work did run in another channel, even to carry an awakening word: to that therefore did I stick and adhere.’

‘Again, when, at sometimes, I have been about to preach upon some smart and searching portion of the Word, I have found the temper suggest and say — What! will you preach this? This, of which you are yourself guilty? Do not preach upon that subject to-day. Or if you do, mince it down so as to escape the condemnation yourself. But I thank the Lord I have never consented to these satanic suggestions. Let me die, said I, rather than water down the Word of God.’

Plutarch-like, I like to give you parallel lives in all these matters. To me parallel lives are very instructive and very impressive. You see how John Bunyan’s mouth was almost shut sometimes by reason of his own sinfulness. And listen to Jacob Behmen on the same experience.

‘Leave all these matters alone, it would be said to me. And so have I often said to myself; but the truth of God did burn in my bones till I again took pen and ink. All this time, do not mistake me for a saint or an angel. For my heart is full of all evil. In malice, in hatred, and in lack of brotherly love, after all I have experienced, I am like all other men. I am surely the fullest of all men of all manner of malignity and infirmity.’

And, wholly unlike Bunyan and Behmen in everything else, I myself am only too like them in my temptation to mince matters and to be mealymouthed in my preaching. Like them I would flee the pulpit if I only could, and for the same reason. Often when the church officer is bringing in the Bible I think of escaping by the back door. You will not believe me, but it’s true. And when you are settling yourselves down in your luxurious seats I am holding on by the banister behind, and am pleading with God that He would not cast me away from His presence, but would uphold me with His free Spirit! And when the organist is welcoming you in with sweet music I am staggering in with this prayer: O! sprinkle the pulpit, and the preacher, and the sermon, with the peace-speaking and the powergiving blood! And I never once come along Melville Street on a Sabbath morning or on a Sabbath evening that I do not have to reason with myself in this way: Be quiet, O my conscience! Be sensible, and look on things as they are! Remember that you are but a postman, as it were, to the people. You are not proposed as a pattern to them. Go boldly, then, and declare your message to them. It is not because you have attained, or are already perfect. If you follow after that is enough for you. And that, well considered, and laid close to my conscience and to my heart and to my imagination carries me through; when, otherwise, I would flee from before your faces. ‘It is far better,’ said Bunyan and Behmen to themselves, ‘that we condemn ourselves in what we preach, rather than, to escape condemning ourselves, we imprison the truth in unrighteousness.’

Every self-observing preacher will read with a humbled heart what Bunyan says about his temptations now to vainglory and now to a too great depression of spirit in and after his pulpit work. Again and again he returns to that, and not once too often. But there is one of his passages on that subject which I must give you.

‘I have also, while found in this blessed work, been often tempted to pride and to liftings up of heart. Yet the Lord, of His precious mercy, hath so carried it toward me, that I have had but small joy to give way to such a thing. For, it hath been my every day’s portion to be let into the evil of my own heart, and still made to see such a multitude of corruptions and infirmities therein, that it hath caused hanging down of my head under all my gifts and attainments.’ I have often wondered — and I say it with all reverence — how it was with our Lord Himself in this matter. He could not but have felt satisfied, and happy, and hopeful after such a sermon as the Sermon on the Mount: nor could it have been sinful in Him so to feel, could it? And Paul could not but have known that he had spoken eloquently and impressively on Mars Hill. Now, was it vainglory in the Apostle so to feel? And when he felt buoyant and generous-hearted and affable all day after such a sermon was he in that sinfully puffed up? What do you think? Or did the Apostle protect himself and justify his happiness by saying, ‘It is no more I that preach good sermons, or offer good prayers, but it is the Spirit of Christ that preacheth and prayeth in me’?

Both in their elation and in their depression, our preachers must often be thrown back upon such problems and such patterns as these.

There are many more points of the greatest interest in Bunyan’s account of his experiences in preaching. But I have time to mention only one more.

‘Now, I altered my preaching. Now, I did labour to hold forth Jesus Christ in all His Offices, Relations, and Benefits, to His Church. And with this God led me also into something of our mystical union with Christ. Therefore that I discovered and shewed to them also.’

Now this raises a question that I have often thought about. And that is how much, how far too much, a congregation is dependent on the attainments, and on the experiences, and on the labours, and on the alterations of their minister. For years John Bunyan’s congregation heard next to nothing of Jesus Christ as their Prophet Priest and King. And nothing at all of their mystical union to Him. It is true, they had five years of all that from Bunyan before he was caught, as he says, and was cast into prison. But there must be multitudes of our ministers who are caught and cast into their graves before they have ever preached a single sermon on the Mystical Union, or so much as know what it is. Now, in what way is that famine of the Word to be met? I do not know any other way but by all our ministers setting themselves to grow deeper and deeper into the divine life every day themselves; and then their preaching on the Sabbath day will grow deeper and deeper also. But here again, and most happily, our people are not wholly dependent on us. They need not be starved of evangelical, and spiritual, and mystical doctrine, even though we who preach to them know little or nothing of these great matters ourselves. You will all remember James Stewart of the cab office down at the Dean Bridge. Holding up his well-worn Walter Marshall to me on his death-bed, he said, ‘I read little else now but Marshall’s Third Direction. It is pure gold!’ he exclaimed. ‘It is pure honey out of the Rock! It is heaven upon earth to me to read it again and again!’ Now James Stewart to most men’s eyes was a plain man and an unlettered man. He was just the sort of man, you would have said, who would be wholly and entirely dependent on his minister for the deepest things of the spiritual life. Not at all! Not at all! James Stewart, plain man as he was, was a spiritually-minded student of spiritual things, and he was a much-experienced man of God. And it was largely Walter Marshall’s Sanctification, and it was largely his Third Direction, that made James Stewart the man he was, and the man he now for ever is. Blessed be the God of Walter Marshall and the God of James Stewart! And may He be your God and my God for ever also! Amen!