01.03. CHAPTER III - HERALDS OF A PASSION
CHAPTER III - HERALDS OF A PASSION
We cannot be heralds of our Lord’s passion unless we enter into the fellowship of His suffering. He has left behind Him in the path He trod a message written in His blood and fastened with a nail to His cross “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” We long for His triumph and are fain to have some humble part in it, but the condition on which we gain it is found in the words, “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” If we may attain unto that any price will be cheap. The apostle was so convinced of that that he cries, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us-ward.” How can any of us dare to represent Christ to men if we do not know something of the thrill of His passion, if we do not yearn after the souls of men so that we can cry concerning our own flock, as John Knox cried for Scotland, “Give me or I die!” This and no other is the passion which has transformed the world. Paul had caught it from his Master when lie exclaimed, “I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh. “It is a wonder that we can go through the sublime task which is laid upon us as heralds of a passion with a sense that it is an ordinary and common task. “I marvel,” said the old Puritan, “how I can preach stolidly and coldly, how I can let men alone in their sins, and that I do not go to them and beseech them for the Lord’s sake however they take it and whatever pains or trouble it should cause me. When I come out of my pulpit, I am not accused of want of ornaments or elegance, nor of letting fall an unhandsome word, but my conscience asketh me ’How could you speak of life and death with such a heart?
How couldst thou preach of heaven and hell in such a careless and sleepy manner? Truly this peal of the conscience doth ring in my ears, *0 Lord, do that on our own souls that thou wouldst use us to do on the souls of others.’ “ Are we not to get a verdict? Are we not sent out, in modern phrase, to actually sell goods? What boots it us that when we come down from the pulpit steps gracious ladies and cultured men thank us for the sermon, but do not surrender their souls to the will of their Lord? Is preaching a proclamation of a sublime and insistent truth, or is it only a lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument?
Morley says of Gladstone, who gained in Ms great Midlothian campaign, when over seventy, one of the greatest oratorical triumphs of history, that “he bore his hearers through long changes of strenuous periods as if he were now a hunter and now an eager bird of prey, now a charioteer of fiery steeds kept well in hand, and now and again we seemed to hear the pity or dark wrath of a prophet with the mighty rushing of wind and the fire running along the ground.” Would that apply to much of our preaching today? As Dr. Jackson asks, “Are we not growing too quiet, too tame, too subdued? Are we not sacrificing to mere literary primness and prettiness and to a mistaken self-restraint? Our preaching, ’ ’ he says, “is too dry-eyed; there is no red blood visible under the skin. The commonplace is not vitalized; the thin wire of words is charged with no current that quickens and thrills. ’ ’ Men are often apparently eager for some theoretical truth but oblivious of the real purpose for which the truth is presented.
Dr. Bonar, after listening to a minister who was preaching with great gusto, said to him, “You love to preach, don’t you?” “Yes, indeed, I do.”
“But,” said Bonar, “do you love the men to whom you preach?” We do not have to choose between a fervid ignorance and a passionless culture. Thank God, we may have both a knowledge and a zeal, a well trained mind and a warm heart. The man who knows the most ought to feel the most and do the most. The material which he gets together ought not to be a mass of dead fuel, he ought to touch it with the prophetic glow that shall set it ablaze. Only the divine fire wrought out in his own experience and conviction can do that. A recent writer to ministers has said, “The cold-blooded pedantry which affects to look down on all religious zeal as religious rant is being suffered to inflict the gravest injury upon the whole life and work of the church, and not least upon the life and work of the preacher. “ After all, nothing is so touching as an honest enthusiasm, and other things being equal, it is the man who is himself greatly moved and is not ashamed to let it be seen, who will greatly move others. Therefore, if a preacher has received from God a rich, strong, emotional nature, let him give no heed to the silly clatter of those who tell him he has no right to work on men’s feelings as if religion could do anything for a man whose feelings are not worked on! Let him give his zeal full play and he will find it mighty to the opening of many doors against which his most profound logic will beat itself in vain. In all true preaching spiritual passion is an essential element.
After all, it matters little how excellent the fuel if the fire be out. All that a man has of intellectual strength to the last ounce, he can put into the work of preaching, but intellect alone can never make a preacher, and the man with no more heart than can be made out of brains is in the wrong place in the pulpit. Dr. Chalmers once compared the sermons of the Moderates to a fine winter’s day: “They were short, clear and cold.
Brevity is good, and clearness is better, but the coldness is fatal. Moonlight preaching ripens no harvest.”
Dr. Jackson reminds us that whoever will go over the great names in the history of the Christian pulpit will discover that the passion to win men is the ultimate fountain of all preaching that is of the prophetic order. Of Rutherford a contemporary said, “Many a time I thought he would have flown out of the pulpit when he came to speak of Jesus Christ.” John Knox was supported in his old age by attendants to his place in the pulpit, but when he arose to speak, the divine passion blazed in his soul, until, one of his friends said, “So mighty was he in his yearning that I thought he would break the pulpit into bits.” Of Joseph Alleine it was said, “Infinite and insatiable greed for the conversion of souls, he preached with far reaching voice, flashing eye and a soul on fire with love.” Is not St. Paul the best of all examples for the preacher? Hear him calling himself a servant of Jesus Christ, “separated unto the Gospel of God.” He could say, “This one thing I do.” The divine imperative was upon his soul. ’ * I must see Rome,” he cried, because he was eager there to preach the gospel; and shouts with holy fervor, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.” The record shows that Paul was constrained by the word. His message burned like a fire in his bones. His passion to win men was a divine constraint which gave him no rest. By the space of three years, he told the Ephesian elders, “I ceased not to admonish every one night and day with tears.” When his friends urged him not to go to Jerusalem, he cried, “I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Does anyone doubt that a passion like that had been kindled by the altar fire of Christ’s own life?
What words are these from the hot heart of an English teacher of preachers! ’ * Shall we repeat an old sermon? Yes, if you can recover the heat in which it was first made, but if your soul is no longer kindled by it, if the fire is gone out of it, and it is now but a poor dead cinder, then let it be put straightway in the place of cinders.
People do not care whether your sermon is old or new; the only question is, ’Is it alive?’ Alas for the minister who forces the simple folks to say, ’What he says is faultless enough, but it leaves me strangely cold.’ So will it be if the truth which once was a glowing conviction at which men wanned their hands becomes but a heap of ashes from which the last glint of fire has died out. That is the tragedy of more pulpits than one cares to think of.” The greatest thing in the world is love. That never faileth. It is the one thing which He asks of us. “We cannot simulate it, if we wear a mask it will slip sometime. If love for man thrills our every act the world will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus*