1.I 10. General Variety of Sermon Plans

General Variety of Sermon Plans.

Now for the next important point. Much of the effectiveness of a discourse, as well as the ease and pleasure of delivering it, depends upon the plan.

Let me earnestly caution you against the sterile, conventional, regulation plans, that are laid down in the books, and are frequently taught in the semin aries. There is no one proper plan. You are not like a bullet-mould made to run bullets of the one unvarying shape. It is quietly assumed by the teachers of formal sermonizing that a sermon is to be unfolded from the interior, or from the nature of the truth with which it deals. That this is one element, and often the chief element, that determines the form of the sermon, is true; but it also is true, that the object to be gained by preaching a sermon at all will have as much influence in giving it proper plan as will the nature of the truth handled perhaps even more. Nay, if but one or the other could be adopted, that habit of working which shapes one’s sermons from the necessities of the minds to which it is addressed is the more natural, the safer, and the more effective.

Consider how various are the methods by which men receive truths. Most men are feeble in logical power. So far from being benefited by an exact concatenated development of truth, they are in general utterly unable to follow it. At the second or third step they lose the clew The greatest number of men, particularly uncultivated people, receive their truth by facts placed in juxtaposition rather than in philosophical sequence. Thus, a line of fact or a series of parables will be better adapted to most audiences than a regular unfolding of a train of thought from the germinal point to the fruitful end. The more select portion of an intelligent congregation, on the other hand, sympathize with truth delivered in its highest philosophic forms. There is a distinct pleasure to them in the evolution of an argument. They rejoice to see a structure built up, tier upon tier, and story upon story. They glow with delight as the long chain is welded, link by link. And if the preacher himself be of this mind, and if he receive the commendations of the most thoughtful and cultured of his people, it is quite natural that he should fall wholly under the influence of this style of sermonizing; so he will feed one mouth, and starve a hundred. In this way it is, and especially in large cities, that congregations are sifted by a certain process of elective affinity. Those will come to the church who like the style of the sermon, and those will drop out who have no sympathy with it; and thus we have churches of emotion, churches of taste, and churches of philosophical theology; whereas each pulpit should give somewhat of everything. The emotions of some men arc roused through the inspiration of the intellect mainly; “but there arc others whose intellect, although it may he the channel through which the incitement flows, is not itself roused to its fullest activity until the feelings come to inspire it. We hear much of preaching to the understanding and of preaching to the feelings, and it is discussed which is the better way; but in some men you cannot reach the understanding until you have reached the feelings, and in others you cannot reach the feelings until you have taken pos session of the understanding. A minute study of the habits of men’s minds will teach the preacher how to plan his sermon so as to gain entrance. As it is, sermons are too often cast in one mould.

Week after week, month after month, year after year, when the text is announced, every child in the congregation almost, as well as the minister him self, can tell that it will be divided into “ First,” “Second,” and “Third,” together with, “Then certain practical observations.” But what would be thought of one who should seek to enter every house upon a street or in a city with a single key, fitted to but one kind of lock? The minister is the “strong man,” armed in a better sense than that of the parable, and it is his business to enter every house, to bind the man of sin, and to despoil him. But every door must be entered by a key that fits that door. The minister is a universal, spiritual burglar. He enters, not to despoil good, but evil.

He enters, not to take possession, but to dispossess evil. He enters, not to deprive men of their valuable effects, but to restore to them that which their Father left for their inheritance, and which has been withheld from them by the Adversary. He must seek entrance, in every case, where God has put the door. In some men there is a broad and double open door, standing in the front and inviting entrance. The familiar path in other cases is seen to wind around to the side door. There be those industrious drudges who never live out of their kitchens, and if one would find them in ordinary hours, he must e engo around to the back door. If one lives in the cellar, he must be sought through the cellar.

It is this necessity of adaptation to the innumerable phases of human nature that reacts upon the sermon, and determines the form which, it shall take.

If it were possible, never have two plans alike.

It may be well, to-day, to preach an intellectual theme 1 >y an analytic process; but that is a reason why, 011 the following Sunday, an intellectual theme should be treated by a synthetic process. If you have preached the truth by the ways of statement and proof, you have then a reason for following it with a sermon that assumes the truth, and appeals directly to the moral consciousness. A didactic sermon is all the stronger if it follows in strong contrast with a sermon to the feelings. If you have preached to-day to the heart through the imagination, to-morrow you are to preach to the heart through the reason; and so the sermon, like the flowers of the field, is to take on innumerable forms of blossoming. When you have finished your sermon, not a man of your congregation should be unable to tell you, distinctly, what you have done; but when you begin a sermon, no man in the congregation ought to be able to tell you what you are going to do. All these cast-iron frames, these stereotyped plans of sermons, are the devices oi the devil, and of those most mischievous devils of the pulpit, formality and stupidity.

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