1.A 06. General Advantages of Directness

General Advantages of Directness. This view also will discriminate between sermons, those which seek direct effects definitely aimed at, and those that are institutional sermons. There are sermons for preaching, and there are sermons also for teaching and confirming. I do not say you should not preach these secondary sermons; but if that is the whole style of your ministry, you will not be so successful, although you may slowly advance. Every man ought to preach two kinds of sermons: one for direct power on men’s minds and hearts, and the other for their broadening in knowledge; but of this last class, less and less in our time, because the people have so many other sources of knowledge, and so many other training influences are going on in the community. No man ought to go into the pulpit with the direct kind of sermon without having a definite reason why he selected one subject rather than another, and why he put it in one form rather than another. The old fashioned way of sermonizing affords us some amusement; but they did a great deal of good with those queer, regulation old methods of first, second, third, and then the subdivisions. I remember that, in my boyhood, the moment a man announced his text, I could tell pretty nearly as well as he could how he would lay it out, because I knew he must proceed according to certain forms.

It seems to me that the highest conception of a sermon is, that it is a prescription which a man has made, either for a certain individual, or for a certain class, or for a certain state of things that he knows to exist in the congregation. It is as much a matter of prescription as the physician’s medicine is. For instance, you say: “In my congregation there has been a good deal of affliction, which I think I ought to comfort. Now, of all ways of comforting, how shall I do it? Shall I show the hand of God in all his administration? What will that do? That mode of consolation will raise people up into the conception of God; “but those that cannot rise so high will fall short of it, and not get it. Or, I can show them how afflictions will elevate the soul; and that will have another range. Or, it may be that I will not say a word about that, but strike a blow that exhilarates men and lifts them up, in dependent of any allusion to troubles; I may strike a chord to awaken the courage of men. What subject can I take which will most successfully sound that chord? “ And so you look for your subject. You know what you are after the whole time. It is exactly like the watchmaker, who has opened your watch and discovered that something is wrong. He turns to his bench and pokes around among his tools, but cannot find what he wants; he looks everywhere for it, and at last, there it is, and he takes it and uses it, for it is the only instrument exactly fitted to do just the thing he wanted to do in that watch. Now, in preaching to a congregation there are living men to reach; and there is a particular way of doing it that you want to get at.

You search for it in the Bible; and you make your sermon to answer the end. This is psychological preaching, drawing from your own gradually augmenting intelligence and experience, which will make you skilful in the ends you want to effect.