PREACHING 



383 



The whole century could show no preachers to be 

 compared with Latimer, Donne, Hall, Andrewes, 

 Jeremy Taylor, Howe, Baxter, as well as Fuller, 

 Sanderson, South, Barrow, and Tillotson : still less 

 with their magnificently eloquent French contem- 

 poraries Saunn, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Fenelon, 

 Massillon, La Rue, and Flechier. But in the 19th 

 century the pulpit recovered all its power, despite 

 a stock platitude of the modern press to the con- 

 trary, with such an illustrious roll of preachers as 

 Chalmers, Edward Irving, Robert Hall, F. W. 

 Robertson, Henry Melville, Maurice, Hook, New- 

 man, Mozley, Wilberforce, Martineau, Archer 

 Butler, Arnold, Spurgeon, Caird, Guthrie, Beecher, 

 Talmage, Moody, Magee, Liddon, Knox Little, 

 Farrar, Maclaren, Parker, and Philips Brooks. In 

 France again we find the names of Lacordaire, 

 Monod, Bersier, and Pressense ; in Germany the 

 Reformation preaching has been choked by Ration- 

 alism, but within the century reached its finest 

 flower in Schleiermacher, in whose sympathetic 

 heart there met in strange harmony Pietistic and 

 Rationalist traditions alike. Spener the Pietist, 

 Zollikofer, and Reinhard were earlier German 

 preachers of high rank. 



The modern Church of England has been driven, 

 through the activity of its dissenting rivals, to 

 recognise its neglect of preaching by opening the 

 naves of its cathedrals for special evening services, 

 and now actively employs the pulpit in every parish 

 as a principal engine of its warfare against evil, 

 still recognising it, however, in the words of Dr 

 Hook, as 'a means of instruction, more than a 

 direct means of grace.' 



The chief difficulties of the preacher are that he 

 has to speak always to the same hearers Wesley 

 said even in a year he would preach both them and 

 himself asleep ; his audience is of very varying 

 degrees of education and intelligence ; nis theme 

 is so familiar that it is difficult to compass the 

 grace of novelty indeed the wonder is rather, as 

 Borrow said, that so many are so good as they 

 are, seeing that the demand in the British Isles 

 alone extends to about 100,000 sermons a week. 

 The foundations of the preacher's success may be 

 said to be his personality, his sincerity, piety, and 

 cntliM-iii-iii, his respect and love for his hearers, 

 knowledge of their conditions of life, wider know- 

 ledge of human nature and experience of the 

 world, together with gravity, courage, and in- 

 tellectual and moral honesty. If to these be 

 added exegetical learning, natural eloquence and 

 fire, with the power of forgetting self in the 

 message to be delivered as an ambassador for 

 Christ, and finally unction which, as Vinet says, 

 there is no artificial means of gaining a preacher 

 of the very highest order is formed. The greatest 

 snare to the young preacher is a not unnatural self- 

 ron~. -lousiness, and still more the assumption of 

 affectations of voice or action, from which he would 

 quickly shake himself free if he could see how 

 really ridiculous he appears to the pews. The best 

 tonic for his self-consciousness is to be reminded that 

 he himself is bnt an accident in the vast Christian 

 scheme for the propagation of the gospel, and that 

 the greatest of the apostles was himself content to 

 be nothing so Christ was preached. Happily men 

 without some approximation to a vocation now 

 choose the clerical profession less frequently than 

 formerly, for it is more difficult now to tie a Charles 

 Honeyman than it was in our great satirist's days. 

 The sovereign law of preaching is to be genuine 

 and natural, for, as Faust says, ' no heart will take 

 fire if the spark does not come first from the 

 speaker's heart. ' In nothing is this bane of unreality 

 to be more guarded against than in the pulpit tone 

 the high falsetto, the impressive roll, the insinu- 

 ating whisper, or even whine, are one and all to 



be abhorred, as suggesting to the ear merely 

 simulated emotions. The best method is to begin 

 from a conversational level, to employ a completely 

 unaffected language and style, and to aim through- 

 out at clearness, all unfair use of the text and un- 

 authorised spiritualising being inadmissible. Plain 

 sensible thoughts in sensible English will always 

 be listened to with patience, if not too long, for the 

 modern hearer endures with difficulty more than 

 thirty to forty minutes, where his fathers expected 

 something at least twice as long. The judicious 

 preacher will seasonably lighten his discourse 

 with illustrations, terse proverbs, and anecdotes, 

 for, as Fuller says, ' while reasons are the pillars, 

 similes are the windows of every structure. The 

 same over-witty old divine adds a caution which it 

 can scarcely be said he himself never forgot, ' The 

 preacher avoids such stories whose mention may 

 suggest bad thoughts to the auditors, and will not 

 use a light comparison to make thereof a grave 

 application, for fear his poison go farther than his 

 antidote." But, while avoiding the grotesque, the 

 preacher must not forget Quintilian s fatal judg- 

 ment of mediocrity ' his excellence was that 

 he had no fault, and his fault that he had no ex- 

 cellence.' Jeremy Taylor was a master in the art 

 of illustration, some of his examples being among 

 the most exquisite passages in English prose. The 

 preacher may find his inspiration in the legitimate 

 use of the sermons and other writings of others, no 

 less than in his own experience of life. Even so 

 original a man as Robertson of Brighton says, ' I 

 cannot copy, nor can I work out a seed of thought, 

 developing it myself. I cannot light my own fire ; 

 but whenever I get my lire lighted from another life 

 I can carry the living flame as my own into other 

 subjects, which have been illuminated in the flame.' 

 Even the preacher's old sermons are full of advan- 

 tage to him, if judiciously 'employed to enrich, 

 rather than merely fill out, the new. For is it not 

 true that 'the good parishioner inquireth not whether 

 the sermon be new or old, but, like good venison, 

 if it be savoury, falls to to profit by it?' There is 

 an honest use that may be made of the thonghts of 

 others and even of one's self, when these are 

 vivified anew by the judgment and thought of the 

 present occasion. Rank plagiarism is entirely to 

 be reprobated, bnt there is an honest middle course 

 which will not vex the conscience of the preacher 

 himself, nor exercise the most careful listener. 

 What is taken from all books is borrowed from 

 none, and the preacher may do with sermons what 

 Dr Johnson tells ns Watts did with materials 

 gathered from a wider range 'every kind of in- 

 formation was, by the piety of his mind, con- 

 verted into theology." 



The early preachers, as Chrysostom and Angus- 

 tine, spoke extempore, and indeed the practice of 

 reading sermons from a manuscript does not seem 

 to have been practised before the Reformation, 

 when Burnet tells us the book of Homilies was 

 compiled on account of the fewness of qualified 

 preachers and the urgent necessity to get the 

 people instructed. Still, reading long remained 

 unpopular, and 'the present supine and slothful 

 way of preaching' was actually forbidden by 

 statute to the university preachers at Cambridge 

 in 1674. Leighton disliked it as detracting from 

 the weight and authority of preaching ' I know,' 

 he says, ' that weakness "of the memory is pleaded 

 in excuse for this custom ; but better minds would 

 make better memories. Such an excuse is un- 

 worthy of a father addressing his children. Like 

 Elihu, he should be refreshed by speaking." Read- 

 ing gained ground in the 18th century, and sermons 

 were bought, borrowed, or stolen by preachers less 

 honest than Sir Roger de Coverley's chaplain. The 

 advantage of reading is that it usually ensures a 



