1.A 01. The Scope of Preaching
The Scope of Preaching. A preacher is a teacher; but he is more. A teacher brings before men a given view, or a department of truth. He expends his force upon facts or ideas. But a preacher assumes or proves facts and truths as a vehicle through which he may bring his spirit to bear upon men. A preacher looks upon truth from the constructive point of view. He looks beyond mere knowledge to the character which that knowledge is to form. It is not enough that men shall know. They must be.
Every stroke of his brush must bring out some element of the likeness to Christ which he is seeking to produce. He is an artist, not of forms and matter, but of the soul. Every sermon is like the stroke of Michael Angelo’s chisel, and the hidden figure emerges at every blow. A teacher has, doubtless, an ulterior reference to practical results; but the preacher, not indifferent to remote and in direct results, aims at the immediate. “ Now!
Now! “ is his inspiration. “ Cease to do evil, at once. Turn toward good immediately. Add strength to every excellence, and virtue to virtue, now and continually.” The effect of his speech upon the souls of men is his objective. It is this moral fruit in men’s souls for which he plants his truth, as so much seed.
Change the illustration and adopt the architectural figure, so much employed by the Apostle Paul, of rearing a building. When a master-builder goes to the forest for material, he does not take trees of any and every kind, and then put them together at haphazard, or so as to accommodate his building to the form of the trees. The trees must conform to the house that is to be. The builder carries in his eye the future house, and selects his trees from the wood by the known wants of the house: this one for a sill, that one for a corner-post, others for beams, and so on. Thus all truths, all sermons, are merely subordinate material and instruments; the preacher’s real end is to be found in the soulbuilding that is going on. He is an artist of living forms, of invisible colours; an architect of a house not built with hands Jesus Christ, the foundation.
There is another element which discriminates a preacher from a teacher. Moral truths may become personal, as physical or scientific truths cannot.
Number, weight, dimension, have no relation to a speaker’s personal feelings or those of his hearers; but hope, fear, joy, love, faith, have. A preacher is, in some degree, a reproduction of the truth in personal form. The truth must exist in him as a living experience, a glowing enthusiasm, an intense reality. The word of God in the Book is a dead letter. It is paper, type, and ink. In the preacher that word becomes again as it was when first spoken by prophet, priest, or apostle. It springs up in him as if it were first kindled in his heart, arid he were moved by the Holy Ghost to give it forth. He is so moved. The preacher is one who is aiming directly at the ennobling of his hearer. He seeks to do this partly by the use of truth existing as a philosophy or by ordinary facts, but yet more by giving to such truth the glow and colour and intensity which are derived from his own soul. If one may so say, he digests the truth and makes it personal, and then brings his own being to bear upon that of his hearers. All true preaching bears the impress of the nature of the preacher. “Christ in you.” The truth is that which is represented in the historical- Jesus Christ, but it is that truth “in you,” or as it exists in each man’s distinctive personality, which must make it a living force. Of course, in such a view, all preaching is to find its criterion of merit in the work performed in men’s hearts, and not in any ideal excellence of the sermon. The sermon is only a tool, and the work which is accomplished by it is to measure its value. No man is to preach for the sake of the sermon, nor for the sake of “the truth/ nor for the sake of any “system of truth; “but for the sake of the hearts and lives of the men that listen to his words. How aimlessly does he preach who has no thought of men, but who sympathizes only with his own cogitations!
How yet more foolish is he who has a certain round of topics which he calls his “system,” and which he serves out almost mechanically to meet his contract with the society which employs him!
It is hardly an imaginary case to describe one as approaching the Sabbath-day somewhat in this way, “O dear me, I have got to preach! I have beat out pretty much all there is in that straw, and I wonder what I shall preach on next; “ and so the man takes the Bible and commences to turn over the leaves, hoping that he will hit something. He looks up and down, and turns forward and back ward; and, finally, he does see a light, and he says, “I can make something interesting from that.”
Interesting, why? For what purpose? What, under heaven, but that he is a salaried officer, expected to preach twice on Sunday, and to lecture or hold the prayer-meeting in the middle of the week; and the time has come round when, like a clock, it is his business to strike, and so he does strike, just as ignorantly as the hammer strikes upon the bell!
He is following out no intelligent plan. He is a perfunctory preacher, doing a duty because appointed to that duty.
What would you think of a physician in the household who has been called to minister to a sick member of some family, and who says, “Well, I will leave something or other; I don’t know. What shall I leave?” and he looks in his saddle-bags to see what he has yet got the most of, and prescribes it with no directions the father, mother, and children may all take a little, and the servants may have the rest. Another physician, and a true one, comes, and the mother says, “Doctor, I have called you in to prescribe for my child.” He sits down and studies the child’s symptoms; traces them back to the supposed cause; reflects how he shall hit that case, what remedial agents are supposed to be effective, what shall be the form of administration, how often. He considers the child’s temperament and age, and adapts himself to the special necessity of the individual case. Do you suppose a man can deal with so subtle a thing as the human soul without any thought, skill, sagacity in adaptation? can take a sermon, and throw its contents over the congregation, and let everybody pick out of it what he can find each man left to take his share? Can this be done in a ministry and accomplish any good? Yes, in God’s providence, some good is done even in this way.
Paul said that the “ foolishness of preaching” would do a great deal of good; and there is so much foolish preaching that it would be strange if some of it did not do some good, here or there.