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 BV 4211 .D34 1878 
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 Nine lectures on preaching 
 
 
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NINE LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 PREACHING. 
 
 DELIVERED AT YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN, CONN. 
 
 R. W. DALE, D.D., 
 
 Binnini^haj/i. 
 
 Immo vero audi quod dicis, quicumque dicis; et qui vis te audiri prior 
 TB AUDI. — Augitstim. 
 
 A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY, 
 NEW YORK, CHICAGO, AND NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 1878. 
 
c 
 
 b^ 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION LECTURE 
 FOR 1875. 
 
 §03 pp. l^mo, cloth. 
 PRICE $2.00. 
 
 Copyright., 1877, by A. S. Barnes 6* Co. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 T F I rightly understand the objects for which the 
 -■- Lyman Beecher Lectureship was founded, the 
 Lecturer is not expected to deliver a complete and 
 systematic course on Homiletics. He discharges his 
 duty if he offers to the students whom he has the 
 honour of addressing those practical suggestions 
 with regard to the work of the Christian Preacher 
 which have been verified by his own experience and 
 observation. 
 
 It is possible that the religious thought and life of 
 America are in some respects so different from the 
 religious thought and life of England, that very much 
 of what I have written may be of no service to those 
 who are being educated for the American ministry. 
 But I was obliged to speak of the work of the 
 Christian Preacher as I know it best. I have tried to 
 strike hard at the evils which seem to me to lessen 
 the power of the ministry in England ; I have tried 
 to strike hardest at the evils which have lessened the 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 power of my own ministry. If these are evils which 
 the students at Yale have no reason to fear, let them 
 be thankful. If I had a larger knowledge of the 
 Churches and of the ministry of the United States, I 
 have sufficient faith in American generosity to believe 
 that I should have given no offence had I attempted 
 to discuss the special duties and dangers of the 
 American preacher, as they appear to the eye of an 
 Englishman. If any American minister would tell 
 us English preachers, with perfect frankness, what he 
 supposes to be our special defects and our special 
 perils, we should receive his criticisms with cordial 
 gratitude. But my knowledge of America did not 
 justify me in making any such attempt. 
 
 I felt that the honour conferred upon me when I 
 was invited to deliver these Lectures was so great 
 that I was not at liberty to decline the invitation. 
 I was bound to do what I could. The President and 
 Fellows and Theological Faculty of Yale will, I trust, 
 receive my assurance that if my power had been equal 
 to my will I should have served them better. 
 
 R. W. DALE. 
 Birmingham, 
 
*Ai4Ui,7GX7 
 
 \5ir30LOGIOJ:L 
 
 1 ^1 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGH 
 
 INTRODUCTORY : PERILS OF YOUNG PREACHERS ... 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 I 
 THE INTELLECT IN RELATION TO PREACHING 27 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 READING •. ' ••• 63 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 READING (concluded) 90 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE PREPARATION OF SERMONS I16 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING AND STYLE 15' 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 EVANGELISTIC PREACHING 182 
 
 LECTURE VIIL 
 
 PASTORAL PREACHING 22! 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC worship: CONCLUSION ... 263 
 
 IT 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY : PERILS OF YOUNG PREACHERS. 
 
 GENTLEMEN,— My first duty is to express to 
 the Theological Faculty and to the President and 
 Fellows of this University my sense of the honour they 
 have done me in nominating and appointing me to 
 this lectureship. The illustrious services which Yale 
 has rendered to the intellectual activity and culture 
 of America, and the eminent learning of the long 
 succession of its graduates and professors, might have 
 made me shrink from accepting the distinction ; but 
 to have refused it would have been an ungracious 
 return to your courtesy and kindness. 
 
 When I received the invitation to deliver this course 
 of lectures, you had recently completed the centenary 
 of your national independence. Perhaps that celebra- 
 tion may have made you more vividly conscious than 
 ever that, although the political ties which once united 
 the States of this great Republic to the ancient mon- 
 archy of England are severed, Americans and Eng- 
 lishmen still belong to the same race. It may have 
 reminded you that the most heroic and glorious 
 periods in the political history of the English people, 
 the noblest names in our literature, the most sacred 
 
 2 
 
INTRODUCTORY. [lect. i. 
 
 traditions of our Churches, are yours as well as ours. 
 It may have renewed and deepened your generous 
 affection for us. Gentlemen, I believe that every 
 patriotic American and every patriotic Englishman, 
 every wise and thoughtful Christian man on the other 
 side of the Atlantic as well as on this, desires to draw 
 closer and to strengthen those ties between the in- 
 tellectual and religious life of the two countries, which 
 the disruption of former political relations could not 
 dissolve ; and it is partly because I share this desire 
 that I am here to-day. 
 
 In preparing these lectures, one consideration greatly 
 relieved the anxiety from which it was impossible that 
 I should altogether escape. I remembered that when 
 you come to England you come to see the monu- 
 ments and memorials of ancient life and manners. 
 You care very much more for the cathedrals at Canter- 
 bury, Lincoln, and York, than for the new Houses of 
 Parliament at Westminster. The Warwickshire lanes 
 in which Shakspeare courted Ann Hathaway three 
 hundred years ago, lanes with hedges which are as 
 green to-day as they were in Shakspeare's time, and 
 in which the same wild roses were growing last summer 
 that he picked to make a wreath for her hair, are 
 more attractive to you than the best railway line in 
 the country ; and to you, Shakspeare's house at 
 Stratford-on-Avon is more interesting than any of the 
 splendid mansions built for successful merchants and 
 stockbrokers at South Kensington or Knightsbridge. 
 Nor is your interest wholly absorbed in those ancient 
 
LECT. I .] IlWTR on UC TOR Y. 
 
 buildings which are attractive for their stately and 
 noble architecture, or in those places which have the 
 charm of association with famous names. Rude cot- 
 tages by the roadside, or on village greens, cottages 
 in which successive generations of obscure peasants 
 have lived and died, and in which hardly a beam or a 
 stone has been changed since the time of the Com- 
 monwealth ; sleepy country towns lying remote from 
 railways, and almost untouched by the life and stir of 
 the present century ; these also interest you, for at 
 home you have nothing old except the rocks, the moun- 
 tains, the stars, and the sea. 
 
 This seems to me to explain why an Englishm.an was 
 nominated to this lectureship. Freshness, originality, 
 brilliance — these the Theological Faculty and Corpora- 
 tion of Yale could find in abundance in this country. 
 An Englishman was sent for, that for once you might 
 have the opportunity of listening to lectures containing 
 nothing fresh, nothing that should have the look of 
 novelty, nothing but what had been familiar to men 
 for hundreds of years, nothing but what was trite and 
 commonplace. 
 
 And, gentlemen, I am increasingly disposed to 
 value the trite and the commonplace, especially in 
 everything that relates to the practical ordering of 
 life and the securing of the great ends of human exist- 
 ence. With Nathaniel Culvcrwel, I always "reverence 
 a grey-headed truth." When a truth comes to me which 
 has been reasserted year after year for centuries, it 
 comes with the sanction and authority, not of an in- 
 
4 THE VIRTUE OF COMMONPLACES. [lect. i. 
 
 dividual man, but of successive generations of men. 
 Our time in this world is too short for experiments the 
 issue of which is uncertain. In the great affairs of life 
 we can afford to risk nothing. It is as if we were making 
 our way across a mountainous and perilous country, 
 through which we had never travelled before : we are 
 bound to reach the distant hospice on the other side 
 of the great pass before the darkness sets in. We 
 cannot venture on doubtful and unknown paths. Here 
 is the well-beaten track under our feet ; let us keep to 
 it. . It may not be quite the shortest way ; it may not 
 take us through all the grandeur and sublimity which 
 bolder pedestrians might see ; we may miss a pictu- 
 resque waterfall, a remarkable glacier, a charming view ; 
 but the track will bring us safe to our quarters for the 
 night. Yes, I repeat that in all that affects the 
 supreme objects of life, I believe in the trite and the 
 commonplace ; and anyhow, just as in directing a 
 stranger among the hills we feel obliged to point out 
 to him the regular path, even though we ourselves 
 might venture now and then to get away from it, so in 
 giving advice to others we should be very cautious how 
 we diverge from the conclusions which have been es- 
 tablished by long experience and the general consent 
 of wise men. 
 
 It is no part of my duty to say anything about your 
 general studies. But you will allow me to express 
 the earnest hope that you have so caught the en- 
 thusiasm for intellectual pursuits which ought to 
 characterise a great university like this, that it is im- 
 
LECT. I.] COLLEGE LIFE TILE GOLDEN AGE. 5 
 
 possible for you to find without regret how rapidly 
 session after session is drifting away, and how soon 
 your studies in this place will be over. Never again, 
 gentlemen, will you have such days of unbroken 
 leisure for sustained and persistent intellectual work 
 as you have now. Nor can the freshness and genial 
 excitement of your student life ever return. In the 
 soul's early admiration of the great achievements of 
 human genius there is all the passion and joy and 
 romance of first love ; and the consciousness of the 
 capacity for appreciating them is the verification of 
 our own intellectual kinship with theologians, philo- 
 sophers, poets, and orators, whose thought and passion 
 have given life and strength and security to nations. 
 There are none of us that have reached the iron age 
 of conflict with the stubborn evils which afflict our 
 race, who do not look back with something of sadness 
 to the quiet, blessed \-ears of our college life, the true 
 golden age of our history. 
 
 But the heart of man is alwavs restless, and I have 
 no doubt that man\' of }'ou are sometimes impatient 
 for the da}'s of energetic action which lie before you ; 
 and it is right that the thought of your future work 
 should fill your heart, and that the earnest desire 
 to be doing something towards lessening the sor- 
 rows and sins of men should occasionally master 
 your intellectual enthusiasm. If, however, you are to 
 be good preachers by-and-by, it is necessary that you 
 should be hard students now. " For everything there 
 is a season, and a t m for every purpose under 
 
6 A SIN TO NEGLECT COLLEGE WORK. [lect. i. 
 
 heaven." Impatience is not zeal. To despise present 
 duties is not the way to prepare for duties yet to come. 
 Self-conceit and intellectual indolence may sometimes 
 disguise themselves under the form of eagerness to be 
 preaching the gospel of Christ. Your life at the 
 university is not merely a decent path to the ministry, 
 but a preparation for it ; and your future strength and 
 success will be largely determined by the intensity of 
 )'our devotion to the pursuits which claim — not your 
 time and labour merely — but your very soul, within 
 these walls. 
 
 You are Christ's servants — His " slaves," to use the 
 title by which St. Paul delighted to describe himself 
 The work He has given you to do just now is your 
 university work. Morning by morning, when the 
 class-bell rings, " the tale of bricks " should be ready. 
 You may sometimes find your work wearisome, and 
 may be ready to think it unprofitable. There is 
 nothing cheerful and exciting in Hebrew paradigms. 
 The intricacies of the Gnostic heresies may sometimes 
 seem very dull. But if you think that Christ meant 
 you to come to the university, you must also think 
 that He meant you to do the work of the university 
 heartily. For a student to be careless in getting up 
 his Hebrew verbs, or the chapters set him in Church 
 history, is a sin ; just as it is a sin for a preacher to 
 be careless in preparing a sermon. Whatever work a 
 Christian man does, is work that has to be done for 
 Christ ; and if we are negligent in the doing of it, we 
 ought to confess our sin with sorrow and shame, and 
 to ask Christ's forgiveness. 
 
LECT. i] INTELLECTUAL BISCIPLLVE. 7 
 
 You ought also to remember that for purposes of 
 intellectual discipline, a study which repels you is 
 invaluable. If a professor found among his students 
 a man who followed with equal eagerness every 
 subject included in the ordinary scheme of studies, I 
 am inclined to think that it would be the professor's 
 duty to discover for that student's special benefit a 
 subject that he would find offensiv^e and intolerable. 
 It is the very intention of a university course to enable, 
 a man to read — not what he likes, but what he does \ 
 not like ; to develop — not those intellectual muscles / 
 which are already healthy and vigorous, but those 
 which are so weak that the slightest strain upon them 
 is unwelcome while it lasts and leaves pain behind. 
 Throughout life it is a wise practice to have always 
 on hand two very different kinds of intellectual work 
 — work which is a pleasure to us, for in that direction 
 probably our true strength lies ; and work which is 
 a trouble to us, for by t/iatovw intellectual defects will 
 probably be modified and corrected. Be thankful for 
 the studies which are a drudgery to }ou ; never evade 
 them, or, to use a fitter word — I do not know whether 
 it is in use in America — never " scamp " them. They^ 
 will give you what will be one of the chief elements 
 of your power by-and-by, a despotic control over all 
 your intellectual faculties, which will enable you to 
 compel them to do their work, and to do it thoroughly, 
 when they are most disposed to rebel. 
 
 I trust that, without giving offence to the learned 
 professors who have charge of other departments, I 
 
8 DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [lect. i. 
 
 may be permitted to utter an earnest and emphatic 
 protest against the disposition to speak disparagingly 
 and contemptuously of dogmatic theology — the very 
 queen of the sciences. The mere intellectual interest 
 of this regal study should protec: it against dishonour. 
 The gradual development, through successive genera- 
 tions, of vast theological systems is at least as noble 
 an object of investigation as the gradual formation of 
 the material world beneath our feet. These systems 
 have also their fauna and \h€\x flora, and perpetuate 
 the memory of types of human life and thought — 
 some of them beautiful, some of them terrible, some 
 of them grotesque — which have now quite disappeared. 
 You will find in them the craters of extinct volcanoes, 
 which once poured out rivers of flame and clouds of 
 smoke that darkened the very heavens. They have 
 had their glacier periods and their periods of torrid 
 heat. The history of the evolution of the Calvinistic 
 theory of the Divine government during the ages that 
 lie between Augustine and Francis Turretin is quite as 
 remarkable as the history of the formation of the ter- 
 tiary strata ; and a sentence of the Athanasian creed, 
 with the impress upon it of the subtle theories and 
 protracted controversies from which it derived its pre- 
 cise form, is quite as curious a subject of study as a 
 remarkable fossil in the limestone. Nor can we use 
 the commonest theological terms intelligently without 
 a knowledge of the roots from which they sprang — 
 roots lying, some of them, far away in the obscure but 
 daring speculations of Alexandria, and others in the 
 
LECT. I.] DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 
 
 philosophical systems of ancient Greece. For the 
 very words of the great moral sciences are living 
 things ; they are not an artificial manufacture, like the 
 technical terms of the physical sciences ; they have 
 come from the very life and soul of man ; they tell the 
 story of the deepest thoughts and most tramc strueeles 
 of the race, of its sins and its sanctity, its darkest fears 
 and its divinest hopes. Nor can those who sneer at 
 theology, if they think at all on the relations of the 
 human soul to God, escape the necessity of finding 
 some answer to the questions which theology attempts 
 to solve, even if the only answer is that the questions 
 are insoluble. And, for my part, I refuse to concur in 
 the confession— very lightl}' and flippantly made by 
 some men— that the subjects included in the range of 
 theological science are inaccessible to us. Made in 
 the image of God, with the history in our hands of a 
 wonderful revelation of God to our race, and with the 
 Spirit of God permanently abiding in the Church, we 
 may know something of the nature of God and of His 
 moral relations to mankind. 
 
 But the very craving for knowledge of this kind and 
 the necessity of satisfying it will expose some of you 
 to a serious peril. You will enter upon your ministry 
 with many of the largest and deepest theological 
 problems unsolved. IVIontesquieu said : " II faut avoir 
 beaucoup etudie pour savoir peu," ^ which, being 
 freely translated, amounts to this— that in order to ^ 
 know nothing, it is necessary that a man should have 
 ' " Pensees Di verses." 
 
lo THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. [lect. i. 
 
 studied a great deal. This is especially true in relation 
 to philosophy and theology. When we begin we seem 
 to know everything ; when we have been at work for 
 three or four years we are confounded by discovering 
 how much that we thought we knew has vanished. In 
 these times, at least, however it may have been fifty 
 ' years ago, a theological student who has any intellec- 
 tual activity is sure to find that when his theological 
 course is over his theological studies have only just 
 'iDegun. 
 
 Your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, as God manifest 
 in the flesh, may be strong and deep ; you may wor- 
 ship Him from your very heart ; His will may be your 
 supreme law and His glory your supreme end ; you 
 may rely upon Him with habitual and unfaltering 
 confidence as the very fountain of spiritual light and 
 life and strength ; and yet you may be unable for a 
 long time to determine whether the Creed commonly 
 known as the Creed of Athanasius defines accurately 
 the eternal relations of the eternal Son of God to the 
 eternal Father, or whether those relations have been 
 more accurately defined by any modern theologian. 
 You may be uncertain whether the Divine Person who 
 became incarnate in Christ is rightly spoken of as 
 having been the Son of God before the incarnation. 
 While confessing His eternal and proper Deity, and 
 acknowledging that " in Him were all things created 
 that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and 
 invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or 
 principalities, or powers : all things were created by 
 
LECT. I.] THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. ii 
 
 Him and for [et?, unto] him;" you may hesitate to 
 acknowledge the absolute equality of the eternal Son 
 or the eternal Word to the Father, and may be 
 disposed to believe that in the mysterious life of 
 the Trinity there are relations of supremacy and 
 subordination. 
 
 Questions of a different kind may remain for a 
 time unsettled. You may be unable to form a con- 
 ception of the relations between the Divine personality 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ and His humanity, which shall 
 seem consistent with the limitations of His knowledge, 
 the development of His human perfection, and His 
 accessibility to temptation. 
 
 There are other questions relating to the Lord- 
 Jesus Christ for which you may find it difficult to dis- 
 cover any satisfactory solution. Is the -Lord Jesus 
 Christ in any real sense the root of the whole human 
 race t Is there in all men, as the result of their natural 
 union with Him, a higher life, which is their true light } 
 Does this life reveal itself in those that refuse to be- 
 lieve in Christ as well as in those that believe in Him t 
 Does it reveal itself in heathen as well as in Christian 
 lands } Is it in all men the source of moral intuitions 
 which, however faint and however obscure, bear wit- 
 ness to the authority of the eternal law of righteousness.? 
 Is it in all men the source of thoughts which *' wander 
 through eternity," and of yearnings for the infinite and 
 unknown, yearnings which, however vague and how- 
 ever ineffectual, are the invincible proof that the human 
 race is akin to God ? Or, on the other hand, is the 
 
12 THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. [lect. i. 
 
 Divine life wholly absent from those who are not in the 
 highest sense " in Christ," as the result of their per- 
 sonal faith in Him ? 
 
 You may also be unable for a long time to construct 
 any theory on the relation between the death of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and human redemption. You may 
 believe that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was 
 an expiation for human sin, that it is the objective 
 ground on which God forgives the sins of men ; but 
 what relation there is between His death and the 
 Divine forgiveness you may be unable to discover. 
 To discover it you will have to investigate the relation 
 between the Divine Will and the Eternal Law of 
 Righteousness, and between the Lord Jesus Christ 
 and the race for which He died ; and you will have to 
 determine the nature of punishment, and the unique 
 character of the Divine act which we describe as the 
 remission of sins. 
 
 It is possible that before you leave this university 
 you may have arrived at definite conclusions on some 
 of these great and difficult theological problems ; but 
 if you have settled them all, and if you begin your 
 ministry with your theological system completely de- 
 veloped, there must be a vast and inexplicable dif- 
 ference between the present position of theological 
 speculation in America and in England. I believe that 
 no such difference exists. The disorganisation of the 
 older systems of theological thought is as complete 
 among you as among us ; the work of reconstruction 
 is no farther advanced on this side of the Atlantic than 
 
LECT. I.] THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. 13 
 
 on the other ; the theological students of Yale have the 
 same perplexities and uncertainties as the theological 
 students of the old country ; and you will have to 
 begin to preach while the great task of organising your 
 theological theories is still unfinished. "^ 
 
 In England some young preachers transfer the 
 process of constructing their systematic theology from 
 the study to the pulpit ; some young preachers in 
 America may commit the same mistake. A friend 
 of mine who had just left college said to me a few 
 weeks ago, " A minister, when he is just beginning to 
 preach, iimst sometimes write a sermon to clear his 
 own mind on a subject." But a sermon which is ^ 
 written to "clear the mind" of the preacher will be 
 very likely to perplex and confuse the minds of the 
 hearers. It would strike you as very odd if a 
 politician told you that he had made a speech in 
 Congress in order to clear his own mind on the true 
 economical doctrine about " hard money " and a paper 
 currency: you would say that he ought to be sure 
 about the doctrine before he prepared his speech. 
 
 If you are trying to settle any grave and important 
 theological question, let your investigations be carried 
 on in your study. You may do well to write as you 
 think, for we very often discover that an argument, 
 a conception, a theory, which seemed vigorous and 
 beautiful in its disembodied form, becomes incoherent 
 and wholly unsatisfactory as soon as it is fixed in 
 words and transferred to paper. But say nothing till 
 you have something to say. Even when we have 
 
14 THEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. [lect. i. 
 
 reached a conclusion which seems satisfactory, it does 
 not follow that we should make known our discovery 
 J in our next sermon. Delay will enable us to revise 
 our position in new moods, and with an impartiality 
 which is hardly possible when our discovery is quite 
 fresh. It sometimes happens that what satisfies us 
 perfectly on a bright wholesome morning in early 
 autumn, looks very much less satisfactory on a foggy 
 chilly day six weeks later. Or we find on reflection 
 that some elements of the problem which ought to 
 have been taken into account have been overlooked, 
 and that our theory requires some slight modification ; 
 or that we had not quite seen all the relations between 
 the new doctrine and other provinces of truth with 
 which we had been long familiar, and that the lines 
 defining the new territory have to be shifted here and 
 there, and redrawn, in order to prevent encroachment 
 on established rights. 
 
 There are other reasons for delay. In the first 
 moment of discovery there is a certain intellectual 
 exultation and pride on account of our achievement. 
 We are apt at such a time to give ourselves airs, as 
 though we too could now claim rank among original 
 thinkers and among the reformers of theological 
 science. We shall do well to give ourselves time to 
 cool, and to recover our humility and modesty by 
 remembering the vast and boundless regions which 
 still lie beyond the limits of our thought. It is well 
 to be cautious. Vauvenargues warns us that when 
 we take the trouble to work out what strikes us as a 
 
LECT. I.] THEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. 15 
 
 profound discov^ery, we sometimes find that it is a 
 truth known to every man we meet in the streets ; ^ 
 and sometimes what a young theologian receives with 
 trembHng wonder as a revelation fresh from heaven, 
 never known before to scholar or saint, turns out to 
 be one of those familiar elements of faith which every 
 devout old lady in his congregation has known for 
 years. 
 
 There is still another reason for delay when we " 
 think we have a grasp of new truth. We shall not be 
 able at once to do justice to our new discovery. At 
 first we shall not handle it firmly and with any free- 
 dom. The kind of mastery over a doctrine which is 
 absolutely necessary to effective exposition can only 
 come when by repeated and prolonged meditation 
 we have made it perfectly familiar to us. Let me 
 recommend you, therefore, to build up your theology 
 in private, and not to perplex your congregations with 
 speculations which are only half finished, with theories 
 which are in process of formation. Let the walls of 
 the building be dry before you ask people to come 
 and live in it. Even when you think you have made 
 sure of a new truth, or have constructed a more com- 
 plete and philosophical exposition of a truth already 
 acknowledged, do not be in a hurry to preach it. There 
 is no need for being in a hurry. Do not be afraid that 
 some one will get out a patent before you. The world 
 
 ^ " Lorsqu'une pensee s'offre k nous comme une profonde 
 decouverte, et que nous prenons la peine de la developpen 
 nous trouvons souvent que c'est une verit^ qui court les rues." — 
 "Reflexions et Maximes. 
 
1 6 PREACHING NEGATIONS. [lect. i. 
 
 can wait for your discovery a week or two longer after 
 waiting for it through so many centuries ; and perhaps 
 the delay of even a few months will do mankind no 
 great harm. 
 
 While the process of reconstructing your own theo- 
 logy is going on, you will be tempted to criticise with 
 unsparing severity the traditional theology of evan- 
 gelical Churches. Some of you will find that the 
 temptation will be very strong. When a young man 
 begins to preach, if he has any fervour in him, any 
 enterprise, any intellectual brightness or freedom, he 
 is very likely to think that the changes which are 
 necessary in the thought of the Church are almost 
 
 infinite. 
 
 " Of old things all are over old, 
 Of good things none are good enough, 
 He'll show that he can help to frame 
 A Church of better stuff." ^ 
 
 There are false conceptions of God, and of the ways 
 of God to men ; false conceptions of duty, and of the 
 ideal of the Christian character. Doctrines which he 
 supposes are commonly accepted seem to him illogi- 
 cal, unphilosophical, perhaps immoral, perhaps gro- 
 tesque, perhaps blasphemous. Rules of life having 
 wide authority, and regarded with ancient reverence, 
 seem miserably artificial. What can he do.? He does 
 not know very much more than other people about 
 positive truth. If it occurred to him to write down 
 the truths of which he has made sure, and about which 
 
 ^ Wordsworth : " Rob Roy's Grave." I have taken some 
 liberties with the oricrinal. 
 
LECT. I. ] PRE A CHIXG NE GA TIONS. 1 7 
 
 ordinary Christian people are either ignorant or mis- 
 taken, he would not want many sheets of foolscap to 
 record them all. About how the facts really stand in 
 relation to many great questions he is very uncertain : 
 he is searching for truth, and in many directions he 
 knows that he has not found it. He is acquainted 
 with a great many speculations which have broken 
 down, but as to the real truth about the subjects which 
 these speculations were intended to illustrate and 
 explain, he has not made up his mind. 
 
 But if he is not clear as to the right solution of 
 many large and vital controversies, he is perfectly 
 clear that the people about him have received by 
 tradition very wrong solutions ; and so he attempts to 
 set them right. And yet this is hardly an accurate ac- 
 count of the matter : he shows them that they are 
 wrong at present ; but setting them right is a very 
 different business. He smites the errors of the Church 
 a little harder perhaps than the errors of the world. 
 He thinks that in this way he shall get some 
 sympathy for the Christian faith from those who have 
 hitherto rejected it. He repeats in another form the 
 mistake which is committed by politicians when 
 they deliver speeches which are more loudly cheered by 
 their opponents than by their own party. Politically, 
 that style of speaking does not prove in the long run to 
 have been very sagacious. It is much easier to lose 
 friends than to gain opponents. The young preachers 
 I am thinking of find this out in time. Meanwhile they 
 go on confuting the errors of old-fashioned Christian 
 
 3 
 
1 8 PREACHING NEGATIONS. [lect. i. 
 
 people, and chaffing them for their narrowness and want 
 of enlightenment. It is a delightfully easy occupation, 
 and very exhilarating. It takes nothing out of a 
 man. It is play, not work. Yet while a man is doing 
 it he seems to be getting on wonderfully fast, and to 
 be accomplishing amazing reforms. 
 
 Churches must bear with all this as patiently as they 
 can, if the young preacher is right at heart, if it is clear 
 that, with some intellectual waywardness and uncer- 
 tainty, he really grasps the central truths of the Chris- 
 tian faith, and that notwithstanding some conceit he 
 really wants to glorify God, and has only made a 
 mistake about the best way to do it. He will find out 
 his blunder in a few years. He will discover that, 
 while perhaps he has been cutting up many weeds, he 
 has planted very few trees and sown very little corn ; so 
 that as autumn after autumn goes by, there is not much 
 fruit ripening in the orchard and there is hardly any 
 crop in the fields. He will discover that it is one thing 
 to show men that they are in the wrong, and to leave 
 them there — another thing to show them how to get 
 right. He will ask himself, not how many errors he can 
 confute, but how much positive truth he has to teach. 
 
 Gentlemen, would it not be well to ask yourselves 
 that question before you enter the ministry } Before you 
 begin to teach others, is it not desirable that you should 
 know something yourselves .'' " We believe and there- 
 fore speak," has been the device of the true ministers 
 of the Church from apostolic times to our own. 
 Judging from many sermons which are preached in 
 
LECT. I. ] WHA T DO YOU BELIE VE ? 19 
 
 our day, there are ministers who have taken a new 
 motto — " We disbelieve and therefore speak." But 
 what results can come from a ministry which is almost 
 wholly critical and destructive ? What nobleness of 
 moral character can it build up ? What moral strength 
 can it inspire ? What ardour can it kindle ? What 
 lofty hopes can it confirm ? What broken heart can it 
 bind up ? To what weariness can it give rest ? What 
 defence can it offer to the tempted ? What relief from 
 the consciousness of guilt to the penitent ? What 
 guidance to the soul that is athirst for the living God ? 
 Have you anything to tell men that will make 
 heaven seem nearer to earth than it ever was before, 
 that will compel them to feel the tragic grandeur of 
 human life and the infinite contrast between righteous- 
 ness and sin ? Have you anything to tell them which 
 will save them from the bitterness of despair in their 
 worst sorrows, and which will keep them calm and 
 enable them to exercise self-restraint in their greatest 
 successes and triumphs ? Have you anything to tell 
 them that, in the fiercest heat of youthful passion, under 
 the severest strain of business and professional anxiety, 
 and when the cold selfishness of old age is creeping 
 upon them, will enable them to master the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil ? You are to be ministers of Christ 
 — have you anything to say that ought to make the 
 authority of Christ more awful and ai^gust to the con- 
 science and the will, and the mercy of Christ more 
 tender to the heart, of every man that listens to you ? 
 If not, then, whatever comes of it, refuse to be a can- 
 
 3* 
 
20 THINK OF YOUR CONGREGATION. [lect. i. 
 
 didate for a pulpit, refuse to accept the pastorate of a 
 Church. Go down to New York, and work in the 
 docks, or to Chicago, and get employment in the lum- 
 ber trade ; go out west and cultiv^ate a farm, edit a 
 newspaper, turn lawyer, become a clerk in a store or a 
 hired waiter in an hotel ; do anything to earn an honest 
 living", but in God's name do not become a minister. 
 
 I have warned you against the mistake of those 
 preachers who carry on in their sermons the intellec- 
 tual labour of building up their own scientific theology, 
 and of the mistake of those preachers w^ho pass their 
 time in the pulpit in the intellectual amusement of 
 destroying the theological creed of other people. It 
 is possible to avoid both these mistakes, and yet to 
 miss the true end of preaching. While you are at 
 the university you ought to be possessed with an 
 ardent enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits, and it 
 will be a great calamity if that enthusiasm is ex- 
 tinguished when you enter upon your ministry ; but 
 if you are to preach to any purpose you must care 
 more for men than for learning and literature. There 
 are some ministers who think so much about their 
 sermons that they never seem to think about their 
 congregations. They have so intense an intellectual 
 delight in the exposition and defence of religious 
 truth, that they do not remember that their business 
 is to teach, to impress, to convert the living men and 
 women that listen to them. If this does not happen 
 often, it may be regarded as a venial oftence. I do 
 not think that any man preaches well whose purely in- 
 
LECT. I.] THINK OF YOUR CONGREGATION. 21 
 
 tellectual interest in his work is not keen and strone. 
 When the intellectual excitement of the preacher is 
 passionate, it becomes contagious ; the people catch 
 it, and follow him from point to point with eager sym- 
 pathy and interest. 
 
 In establishing the true sense of a perplexed pas- 
 sage of Holy Scripture by which many commentators 
 have been baffled, in constructing a philosophical 
 defence of some fundamental article of the Christian 
 faith, in elaborating an exact definition of a great 
 doctrine, in developing a theological theory, in destroy- 
 ing some ingenious and popular objection to the trust- 
 worthiness of revelation, in analysing the subtleties of 
 some form of Christian experience, in discussing an 
 important question of Christian ethics, it will do no 
 harm if now and then we are so mastered by intellec- 
 tual excitement as to forget the people to whom we 
 are preaching. Occasionally it may do a congrega- 
 tion good to have their logical faculties strained to the 
 utmost limits of endurance, like the muscles of a 
 horse in a great race, and their whole intellectual life 
 stirred to its very depths, by the defence, the demon- 
 stration, or the exposition of a great truth. 
 
 But never to think of the people to whom we have 
 to speak, to forget them always, to preach Sunday 
 after Sunday without any sympathy with their sorrows 
 and disappointments, their happiness, their hopes, 
 their struggles with temptation, their failures and their 
 triumphs ; to preach as though we were not of the 
 same flesh and blood as our hearers, to permit our 
 
22 AIMLESS SERMONS. [lect. i. 
 
 whole interest to be absorbed in the investigations of 
 scholars and the controversies of theologians, to care 
 less for the righteousness and the religious strength 
 and joy of our congregations than for the beauty and 
 depth of our thought, the grace and vigour of our style 
 — this is treachery both to the Church and to Christ. 
 
 A year or two ago I heard two sermons while I was 
 at the sea for my summer holiday. The preacher was 
 a cultivated man, with an active, intelligent mind, and 
 genuine religious faith. The prayers which he offered 
 were true prayers, and would have made the service 
 worth attending, had there been no preaching at all. 
 The sermons were, of their kind, exceptionally good. 
 The exegesis was sound and scholarly ; the thought 
 was ingenious and fresh ; the illustrations were ad- 
 mirable ; the style had only one fault — it was at times 
 too delicately beautiful. But it did not seem to occur 
 to the preacher that there was anybody listening to 
 him. The sermons seemed to have been written 
 simply because he found it pleasant to think and to 
 write about the two texts which suggested them. I 
 could not make out what truth he wanted to make 
 clearer to us ; or what neglected duty he wished us to 
 discharge ; or what devout affection he intended to 
 quicken ; or even what error he intended to expose. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said that sermons of this kind fall 
 in with the mood and the habits of people who are away 
 from home for rest. All the week long they are lying 
 on the sands, listening to the dreamy music of the rising 
 or the falling tide, and watching the changing lights 
 
LECT I.] AIMLESS SERMONS. 23 
 
 on the sea ; or they are wandering without any definite 
 purpose over the hills ; or reading idle books in shady 
 glens ; and on Sundays they are hardly prepared to 
 listen to strenuous preaching. A quiet, thoughtful, 
 devout meditation, with no particular object in it, is all 
 they care for ; and I admit that such sermons may be 
 a pleasant change both to ministers and congregations, 
 even when they are at home. I am afraid, however, 
 that they are preached too often. 
 
 It seems hardly courteous, to say the least, to keep 
 people listening to you for half-an-hour without con- 
 sidering whether what you are saying is likely to 
 interest them or not. Congregations soon discover 
 that their presence is not recognised by the minister, 
 and they will leave him to do as well as he can without 
 them. If a minister forgets that he has to preach to 
 a congregation, the chances arc that he will soon have 
 no congregation to preach to. 
 
 Alexander Vinct reminds us that "preaching is an* 
 action." ^ A true sermon is meant to do something. 
 It is not intended to be listened to merely. It fails 
 of its purpose unless its makes some truth clearer, or 
 more vivid, or more certain to those who hear it ; or 
 unless it explains and enforces some duty ; or unless it 
 strengthens some Christian affection ; or brings solace 
 to trouble, or courage to despondency. On Sunday 
 evening, as we walked backwards and forwards on the 
 sands, I ventured to tell my friend, whose sermons I 
 have described, that it would do him a world of good 
 I " Pastoral Theology" (Clark's translation), p. 173. 
 
24 AIMLESS SERMONS. [lect. i. 
 
 to make twenty or thirty speeches at ward meetings, 
 held night after night, in a hot municipal contest. If 
 he had to persuade discontented ratepayers that the 
 School Board had not spent too much on the school 
 buildings, or paid the masters and mistresses too well ; 
 or if he had to convince them that it would be worth 
 their while to have the streets better paved, better 
 swept, and better lighted ; that the health of the town 
 would be improved if the corporation spent more 
 money in removing nuisances ; that a scheme for a 
 new street would soon repay the capital spent upon 
 it ; if he had to expose the misrepresentations, cor- 
 rect the figures, demonstrate the groundlessness of the 
 fears of the hostile party, and so to carry the vote and 
 fire the zeal of meeting after meeting for his own can- 
 didate ; I thought that he might learn some lessons 
 about preaching worth knowing, i^" To carry the vote 
 and fire the zeal " of our congregations — this, gentle- 
 men, is our true business. If we are to be successful 
 there must be vigorous intellectual activity, but it must 
 be directed by a definite intention to produce a definite 
 result. Our intellectual activity must be of the nature 
 of work — not merely of the nature of pleasant and 
 healthy exercise. There must be patient instruction, 
 solid argument, earnest appeal, declamation if you 
 please ; but we must know w^hat we mean to do, and 
 we must put out our whole strength to get it done. 
 We shall preach to no purpose unless we have a pur- 
 pose in preaching. Archbishop Whately said of some 
 / preacher that " he aimed at nothing, and hit it." 
 
LECT. I.] MELODRAMATIC SERMONS. 25 
 
 But preaching may seem to be very efifectlve, may 
 attract great crowds, may produce intense excitement, 
 may win for the preacher a wide reputation, and may 
 yet be practically worthless and even mischievous. 
 We cannot altogether escape the spirit of our times^ 
 When sensuous poetry is corrupting the public taste ; 
 when coarse, sensational fiction is popular, not only 
 among half-educated boys and girls, but among wo- 
 men who claim to have cultivation and refinement ; 
 it is only natural that we should be in danger of 
 adopting a melodramatic and hysterical kind of preach- 
 ing, which stimulates the passions, but conveys no 
 solid instruction and produces no wholesome moral 
 or religious results. 
 
 I believe in the duty of consecrating to the exposi- 
 tion and defence of Divine truth every faculty and 
 resource which the preacher may happen to possess. 
 There is no power of the intellect, no passion of the 
 heart, no learning, no natural genius, that should not 
 be compelled to take part in this noble service. The 
 severest and keenest logic, the most exuberant fancy, 
 the boldest imagination, shrewdness, wit, pathos, in- 
 dignation, sternness, may all contribute to the illustra- 
 tion of human duty and of the authority and love of 
 God. If the heavens declare God's glory, if fire and 
 hail, snow and vapour, and the stormy wind fulfil His 
 word, if all His works praise Him, then the loftiest 
 heights of intellectual majesty, the most dazzling intel- 
 lectual splendours, every brilliant constellation in the 
 firmament of genius, the lightnings and tempests of 
 
26 MELODRAMATIC PREACHING. [lect. i. 
 
 noble and eloquent passion, may also praise the Lord 
 and show forth His excellent greatness. 
 
 But the mere sensational preacher cannot shelter 
 himself under any such plea as this. He is always 
 straining for excitement ; he cares nothing about the 
 means by which he produces it. Even if he has true 
 genius his preaching is a peril to the souls of men. 
 Dramatic power in the pulpit as well as on the platform 
 or the stage may move to laughter or tears ; impas- 
 sioned rhetoric, when used by the religious orator as 
 well as by the politician, may lash the most sluggish 
 nature into vehement agitation ; and a sermon, by the 
 native force of the preacher, may produce an effect 
 upon the emotions which may be mistaken for peni- 
 tence, adoration, or faith. But if the effect which we 
 produce is not produced by the clearness and energy 
 and earnestness with w^hich we illustrate the very 
 truth of God, we shall save neither ourselves nor 
 them that hear us. Most commonly the men who are 
 tempted to preach in this style are mere charlatans. 
 They have neither the fire of human genius nor the 
 fire of a Divine zeal. They win a transient popularity, 
 but they inspire no intellectual respect, they command 
 no lasting confidence ; their popularity is a shame to 
 the Church, and contributes nothing to the final 
 triumphs of the kingdom of God. I entreat you to 
 refuse to purchase a temporary and worthless popu- 
 larity by means so base. Preaching of this kind is a 
 prostitution of the true dignity of the pulpit and a 
 desecration of the gospel of Christ. 
 
LECTURE IL 
 
 THE INTELLECT IN RELATION TO PREACHING. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, — It is my impression that some 
 men of considerable intellectual resources and 
 of genuine religious earnestness fail in the ministry 
 and fail especially as preachers, through falling into 
 habits which make them incapable of hard work. 
 Indolence is a vice of which, perhaps, Americans are 
 less likely to be guilty than Englishmen. There seems 
 to be something in your climate, or in your national 
 manners, or in the modification of your temperament 
 since you came across the sea, which makes you alert, 
 restless, and eager : among you the Anglo-Saxon slug- 
 gishness seems to have disappeared. But perhaps it 
 will be wise not to be too sure of yourselves. 
 
 Are there no American ministers who were men of 
 brilliant promise at the university, but who are most in- 
 efficient preachers ? — none whom their friends describe 
 as "unfulfilled prophecies"? Some men fail because 
 they lose their spiritual earnestness ; but others fail 
 because in the course of a few years after they become 
 pastors their intellectual force seems spent and their 
 intellectual fire extinguished. Their sermons show 
 no sign of elasticity and freshness of thought. The 
 
28 LEARNED SERMONS. [lect. ii. 
 
 muscles of their mind have degenerated. If a 
 preacher is to be effective — permanently effective — 
 he must form and maintain habits of regular and 
 strenuous intellectual activity, and he must exert his 
 utmost intellectual strength in his sermons. 
 
 I do not mean that you should fill your sermons 
 with antiquarian and historical and geographical 
 learning. • To do this may be sheer intellectual in- 
 dolence. With the Bible Dictionaries and the books 
 on the Geography and History of the Holy Land 
 which are now accessible to us, a great show of 
 learning may be made at the cost of a ver\^ little 
 trouble. Even if hard work has been necessary to 
 get the information together, no intellectual effort is 
 required to transfer it from your note-book to your 
 sermons. There are men who, if they are preaching 
 on the Book of Exodus, will give you on one Sunday 
 morning an elaborate account of the political and 
 religious institutions of ancient Egypt. On the next 
 they will confute the hypothesis that the pyramids 
 near Cairo were built by the Jews during the evil 
 times which followed the death of Joseph ; perhaps 
 they will describe the structure of the pyramids, and 
 discuss the theory of Mr. Piazzi Smith as to the 
 purpose for which they were erected ; and they will 
 be certain to say something about the probable sites 
 of Pharaoh's "treasure cities — Pithom and Raamses." 
 The Jews and their miseries will in all probability be 
 quite forgotten, and no poor fellow in the congregation 
 whose fortunes are ruined and whose heart is almost 
 
LECT. II.] LEARNED SERMONS. 29 
 
 broken through the villainy of men whom he has 
 trusted, or through the hardness and injustice of the 
 men he is obliged to serve, will go home comforted 
 because he has been reminded that God saw the 
 affliction of His people in Egypt, and heard their 
 cry, and knew their sorrows, and wrought great mir- 
 acles for their deliverance. The next Sunday, when 
 discoursing about the plagues, these preachers will 
 say very little about the tragic interest of the con- 
 flict between the haughty king and the God whom 
 he defied, about that persistent refusal to submit 
 to God's authority which, in our own days and 
 among ourselves, as in the days of Pharaoh, issues at 
 last in a hardness of heart which makes repentance 
 and salvation impossible ; but they will speak learnedly 
 about the natural history of Egypt, and about the 
 natural phenomena of which the plagues were perhaps 
 only the exceptional aggravation. 
 
 Even if they are preaching on the Gospels they 
 will make no intellectual effort to bring vividly before 
 you the Son of God in His living relations to the men 
 and women that saw His face and heard His voice, 
 and brought their children to Him to be healed of all 
 kinds of diseases ; but they will lazily repeat' what 
 they have read in Kitto, or Robinson, or Dean Stanley, 
 or their Bible Encyclopaedia, about the blue of Syrian 
 skies, about the fertility of the plain of Gennesareth, 
 about the range of limestone hills which form the 
 backbone of Palestine, about the structure of Eastern 
 houses, the family of Herod, the political condition of 
 
30 " INTELLECTUAL " SERMONS. [lect. ii. 
 
 Judaea and Galilee in the time of Christ, and the reli- 
 gious opinions of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Ser- 
 mons of this sort are not at all of the kind that I am 
 thinking of when I say that in your sermons you 
 should exert your utmost intellectual strength. Such 
 sermons as these may be written in your most indolent 
 moods ; you may write them on a hot summer's evening, 
 when you are worn out with your year's work, and 
 are longing for a holiday among the mountains or at 
 the sea. 
 
 Nor am I asking you to try to preach what in Eng- 
 land we are accustomed to call " intellectual " sermons. 
 Some preachers are always " intellectual " and always 
 cold. Their minds are never heated, even by the 
 rapidity of their own movement. They seem incap- 
 able of passion, — even of what may be called intel- 
 lectual passion. They put no more thought into their 
 sermons than other men who have more fire ; but 
 f because the thought is there and not the fire, they 
 suppose that they are more " thoughtful " than their 
 brethren. It would be just as reasonable to suppose 
 that a skeleton in a surgeon's cupboard has more bones 
 than a living man. The living man has quite as many 
 bones" as the skeleton ; and besides the bones he has 
 flesh and muscle ; an eye that may be filled with sun- 
 shine or with tears ; a voice that can command, or 
 entreat, or comfort ; a hand that can help or strike. 
 The preachers that I am thinking of are satisfied with 
 the " bones." When they have their " thought " they 
 care for nothing more. 
 
LECT. II.] ''INTELLECTUAL'' SERJMOXS. 31 
 
 You do not suppose that because Burke's " French 
 Revolution " is full of imagination, fancy, and fervour, 
 there is less " thought " in it than in some essay on 
 the Theory of Rent, which is hard logic from end to 
 end ; or that there is less " thought " in Shakespeare's 
 "Tempest" and " King Lear" than in some dry and 
 dreary dissertation on the doctrine of the Absolute. 
 Burke and Shakespeare have as much " thought " as 
 the political economist or the metaphysician, but the 
 " thought " has flesh as well as bones, and is inspired 
 by passion and imagination with a glorious life. 
 
 Your "intellectual " preachers are for the most part/ 
 men who are destitute of some of the brightest and 
 loftiest forms of intellectual power, or in whom they 
 have been suppressed. These men may have worked 
 hard in the forest, the quarry, and the mine ; they 
 may have prepared precious marbles, and silver ore, 
 and gold of Ophir, and cedar trees and fir trees from 
 Lebanon, for the house of their God ; but the timber 
 remains in rough logs, and the marble lies unpolished, 
 and the costly metal has not been shaped into beau- 
 tiful forms by the cunning hand of the artist. Why do 
 they not finish their work } Is it because they are 
 indolent } or is it because they have a false idea of 
 what preaching ought to be .? Or is it because 
 they are mere quarrymen, and are destitute of the 
 genius of the sculptor and the architect ; have the 
 strength to work hard at the gold diggings, but 
 are incapable of masterirg the art of the goldsmith } 
 The intellectual activity which I ask for is the 
 
32 EL OQUENCE MUST BE A TTRA C TIVE. [lect . 1 1. 
 
 activity of all the various powers of your intellectual 
 nature. 
 
 " Eloquence must be attractive," says Mr. Emerson. 
 " The virtue of books is to be readable, and of orators 
 to be interesting." He adds — and perhaps he is right 
 — that " this is a gift of nature." ^ But there are men 
 that have the " gift " who never use it in the pulpit. 
 Let them speak at a political meeting, or, indeed, at 
 a meeting of any kind, and their speeches are bright 
 with fancy and warm with generous excitement ; 
 memory, wit, imagination, are all alert and active ; 
 they make the most felicitous quotations from ancient 
 and modern poets ; they remember wise and noble 
 sentences in Plato, in Hooker, in Jeremy Taylor, in 
 Pascal ; they are familiar with Sir Walter Scott and 
 with Nathaniel Hawthorne and with Charles Dickens ; 
 they have a humorous tale to tell which they have 
 met with in some book of travels ; or they remind you 
 of a pathetic story which you saw in the newspaper 
 the day before ; or they have an adventure of their 
 own to describe, and you are moved to laughter or 
 tears. But let them once begin to preach, and every- 
 thing is changed. One might almost imagine that 
 between the vestry and the pulpit they had seen the 
 sable throne of the goddess of the " Dunciad," — 
 
 " Before her, Fancy^s gilded clouds decay, 
 And all its varying rainbows die away. 
 Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, 
 The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. 
 
 ^ "Society and Solitude." English reprint, p. 59. 
 
LECT. II.] THE GODDESS OF DULNESS, 33 
 
 As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, 
 The sickening stars fade off th' ethereal plain ; 
 As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest. 
 Closed one by one to everlasting rest ; 
 Thus at her felt approach, and secret" might, 
 Art after art goes out, and all is night." 
 
 Or if it is hardly fair to say that the presence of the 
 drowsy goddess sinks their whole intellectual life into "♦ 
 slumber, this at least must be acknowledged, that 
 three-fourths of their powers are in a condition of sus- 
 pended animation from the moment they announce 
 their text till the sermon is finished. At the very best 
 there is an unnatural strain on the faculties which re- 
 tain their activity, and which are compelled to do all 
 the work — a strain which is felt by the preacher, and 
 is felt still more b}' those members of the congregation 
 who conscientiously endeavour to hear the sermon 
 through. The same muscles are on the stretch all the 
 time. 
 
 We ought to remember that for an ordinary speaker 
 to excite and maintain the interest of his audience it 
 is indispensable that he should appeal to various sus- 
 ceptibilities of emotion and bring into play various 
 intellectual powers. Monotony is almost always fatal v 
 to interest ; monotony of voice, monotony of style, 
 monotony of intellectual activity. No doubt there 
 have been great preachers whose names may be quoted 
 against me. They achieved all their success by the 
 manly breadth and strenuous vigour of their logic, or 
 by the terrible vehemence with which they were able 
 to denounce sin, or by their pathos, or by their imagi- 
 
 4 
 
34 MONOTONY FATAL TO INTEREST. [lect. ii. 
 
 native fire, or by the keenness of their moral penetra- 
 tion. There was no variety of power ; but the soHtary 
 power they had was of transcendent force, and great 
 congregations Hstened to them without weariness. 
 Such examples, however, count for nothing. These 
 were extraordinary men ; we are not. The chances 
 are that we have no single faculty in such consum- 
 mate vigour and perfection that we can rely on it for 
 everything. We ought to take it for granted that we 
 must use every resource we have, in order to be 
 effective or even interesting. 
 
 Mr. Emerson's words are worth quoting again : " It 
 is the virtue of orators to be interesting." I doubt 
 whether preachers have any right to complain if 
 people who used to come to church regularly get into 
 • the habit of staying away. If we were " interesting," 
 they would find it pleasanter to listen to our sermons 
 than to spend the morning at home, writing letters or 
 reading the newspapers. I am sure that we have no 
 right to complain if while we are preaching people 
 go to sleep. It is our duty to keep them awake. 
 Nor have we any right to complain that while they 
 seem to be listening to us they are thinking of their 
 farm, or their store, or the new flower they have got 
 for their green-house, or the new horse they have 
 bought for their carriage. If I were speaking to a 
 congregation instead of to a class of students pre- 
 paring for the ministry, I should, perhaps, tell them 
 that they ought to make an effort to fix their minds 
 on the sermon, and that they ought to drive away 
 
LECT. II.] MR. GEORGE DA WSON'S MAXIM. 35 
 
 all thoughts that would distract their attention ; but 
 as I am speaking to you, I am bound to maintain 
 that it is your business to make your sermons so 
 interesting, that the people, so far from having to 
 make an effort to think of what you are saying to 
 them, shall have to make an effort to think of any- 
 thing else. 
 
 Some of you, perhaps, had the good fortune to hear 
 the late Mr. George Dawson lecture or preach ^^'hen 
 he was visiting the States, a year or two before his 
 death. Pic was a speaker who charmed and delighted 
 all kinds of audiences — literary men and farm- 
 labourers, merchants and mechanics. He once said 
 to mc, " When I speak I make up my mind that the 
 people shall listen to me : if they don't listen, it 
 doesn't matter ivJiat you say." That is a maxim which 
 it will be worth our while to remember, especially if 
 we complete it by adding that " if the people do 
 listen, what you say matters a great deal." The 
 maxim is obvious enough, and yet there are preachers 
 to whom it never seems to hav^e occurred. 
 
 Perhaps I may be warned that if the kind of advice 
 which I am giving you just now is followed, it will be 
 likely to lower the dignity of the pulpit. Gentlemen, 
 I decline to believe that dulness is necessary to dignity. 
 The dignity of the pulpit is derived from the grandeur 
 and glory of the truths which the preacher has to 
 illustrate, and from the solemnity of the duties which 
 he has to enforce ; from the infinite issues which de- 
 pend upon the manner in which the truths are re- 
 
36 THE DIGNITY OF THE PULFIT. [lect. ii. 
 
 ceived and the duties discharged by the people that 
 Hsten to him ; from the interest of God Himself in 
 the varying fortunes of the conflict which the preacher 
 is maintaining with the atheism, the irreligion, the 
 evil practices, and the moral indifference of mankind ; 
 from the mysterious and supernatural forces which 
 are in alliance with the preacher in this tremendous 
 and protracted conflict — for while the preacher is 
 speaking there is another voice than his appealing to 
 the hearts and consciences of men, the voice of the 
 Divine Spirit ; and there is the invisible presence of 
 Him who, when He charged His apostles to teach all 
 nations what He had commanded them, declared that 
 while they were fulfilling their commission He would 
 be with them always, even to the end of the world. 
 In an inferior degree the dignity of the pulpit is de- 
 rived from the intellectual force and culture of the 
 preacher, from his moral qualities, and from his per- 
 sonal sanctity ; from his courage, his gentleness, his 
 zeal, and from the earnestness and energy with which 
 he uses all his powers to secure the triumph of right- 
 eousness, and the rescue of the human race from its 
 sorrows and its sins. If there is any dignity derived 
 from dulness, I care nothing for it. Dignity which is 
 purchased at the expense of efficiency is dignity of 
 a false and artificial kind. And, to return to the point 
 from which I have wandered, we cannot be efficient if 
 we are not interesting ; nor can we be interesting if 
 we suppress all those intellectual faculties which would 
 give brightness, colour, variety, and animation to our 
 
LECT. II.] POWER OF STATEMENT. 37 
 
 preaching. Nor is it merely for the sake of stimulat- 
 ing and sustaining the interest of the people that I ask 
 you to use, in the pulpit, all the intellectual powers 
 you possess, and to take care that by your private 
 reading these powers are kept in vigorous he alth and 
 activity. You need then^. all if you are to preach 
 efficiently. 
 
 Take what may be regarded by inconsiderate persons 
 as the easiest part of our work — the mere statement and 
 exposition of religious truth. It may be supposed that 
 any one who has mastered a truth will be able to 
 make it clear to other people. But a moment's re- 
 flection will convince you that this is a mistake. Is a 
 man able to tell a story clearly and accurately merely 
 because he knows all the facts t It often requires all 
 the ingenuity and patience of a skilful barrister to 
 draw out of a friendly witness an intelligible account 
 of what the witness saw with his own eyes, heard with 
 his own ears, and perfectly remembers. Mr. Huxley — y 
 you will forgive me, I am sure, for taking my illustra- 
 tions from the other side of the Atlantic ; I have too 
 limited an acquaintance with distinguished Americans 
 to enable me to appeal with any confidence in my 
 accuracy to the names with which you are most fami- 
 liar, and which would occur most naturally to an Ame- 
 rican minister occupying this chair — Mr. Huxley has, 
 no doubt, immense scientific knowledge, and is also 
 eminent as a keen and original observer of scientific 
 phenomena, but he owes his distinction, partly, to his 
 rare powers of exposition. To listen to one of his 
 
38 MR. GLADSTONE'S BUDGET SPEECHES, [lect. ii. 
 
 popular lectures is a lesson in rhetoric. Mr. Gladstone 
 has an extraordinary genius for finance, but his power 
 of making a financial statement is, perhaps, equally 
 extraordinary. When he was Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer his budget speech was always one of the 
 great oratorical triumphs of the session. He often 
 spoke for three hours, and the House of Commons was 
 under a spell all the time. Of course, before our 
 tariff was simplified by Mr. Gladstone's policy, the 
 budget speech always excited a curiosity and interest 
 of which the dullest Chancellor was able to avail 
 himself Every one wanted to know whether the ex- 
 penditure for the year was to be provided for by 
 loading the income tax with an additional penny, or 
 whether the Chancellor was sufficiently well satisfied 
 with what we became accustomed to call the natural 
 expansion of other sources of revenue to take a penny 
 off. Tea merchants and grocers were eager to learn 
 whether the duty on tea was to be kept up ; coffee 
 merchants, whether the duty on cofi'ee was to be 
 lowered ; sugar refiners, whether the sugar duties 
 were to be touched ; farmers, whether the Govern- 
 ment was disposed to make any concessions to them 
 in the matter of the malt tax. It required very little 
 skill so to arrange the successive disclosures of the 
 intentions of the Government as to keep the attention 
 of the House active and awake to the very end of a 
 long speech. But Mr. Gladstone used to develop his 
 financial proposals with all the art with which a skil- 
 ful novelist develops his plot. There were alternations 
 
LECT. 11.] MR. GLADSTONE'S BUDGET SPEECHES. 39 
 
 of hope and fear. At the very moment when you 
 expected that your eager curiosity would be satisfied, 
 and that you would hear how everything was going to 
 turn out, some new complication arose, of exciting 
 interest, and you began to suspect that }'ou were only 
 half through the second volume of the story, instead 
 of being at the end of the third. It was not merely 
 in the way in which he kept all the commercial 
 " interests " on the stretch that he showed his power. 
 The statement of the revenue and expenditure for the 
 past year had appeared in the morning newspapers, 
 but when he went through the statement at night, 
 and explained it to the House, the figures which you 
 had seen a few hours before, printed in black ink, were 
 full of life and light. 
 
 It was very wonderful, and showed what may be 
 done by the power of skilful exposition, by an ingenious 
 arrangement of topics, by stimulating curiosity before 
 satisfying it, by making everything clear as you go 
 along, and yet taking care not to exhaust the interest of 
 your audience prematurely. A dull Chancellor, with the 
 same materials before him, would have gone through 
 the points in his "notes" just as they happened to 
 come ; would have given the explanation furnished by 
 one of his subordinates of how it was that the customs 
 or the excise exceeded or fell short of the calculations 
 he had submitted twelve months before ; would have 
 reminded the House in a dreary way of the unexpected 
 circumstances which had rendered necessary a larger 
 expenditure on the army or the navy than had been 
 
40 A DULL CHANCELLOR'S SPEECHES, [lect. ii. 
 
 provided for in the estimates for the preceding year; 
 and would then have stated in a few brief sentences 
 what taxes and duties he proposed to increase or to 
 diminish, "^ut a statement Hke this, though it might 
 contain the whole substance of one of Mr. Gladstone's 
 great speeches, might just as well be printed as spoken. 
 It would require an intellectual effort to master the 
 details. When they were mastered they would soon 
 be forgotten. It was the merit of Mr. Gladstone's 
 \l eloquence that it fascinated people to whom finance 
 was intolerably dry and unattractive ; enabled them to 
 understand, without any consciousness of painful in- 
 tellectual exertion, details which in print would have 
 had no meaning to them, and fixed the general finan- 
 cial position of the country in their memory. 
 
 It seems easy to tell others what we know ourselves, 
 but this power of exposition is in reality a difficult one 
 for most men to acquire. I do not know that I can say 
 anything about the way to acquire it which will be of 
 much service to you, and my present object is merely 
 to insist on its importance and value. The root of 
 the power, I believe, lies in honest intellectual habits. 
 ^Be sure that you know what you think you know. 
 Instead of yielding too much to the passion for making 
 your way into fresh and untravelled provinces of truth, 
 make yourselves perfectly familiar with the truth you 
 know already. Do not imagine that you know any- 
 thing because you have a convenient formula in which 
 you can express it. Get at the facts which lie behind 
 the formula, and live among them. 
 
 v/ 
 
LECT. II.] HONEST IXTELLECTUAL HABITS. 41 
 
 (^ Every subject on which we intend to speak should 
 be in our complete possession as a luJiole, and not 
 merely in its various parts. We must form the habit 
 of keepingsuspended before our own mind all that we 
 have to say. I mean that we must not be satisfied 
 with thinking in succession of the successive points 
 which we intend to touch ; we must get the power of 
 seeing all the points at once, and in this way we shall 
 become familiar with the relations between them. This 
 habit and faculty may be strengthened by patient and 
 honest reading. Before beginning a book it is well to 
 look carefully through the table of contents, and to 
 learn all that we can about the general design of the 
 author, the method he has followed, the relations be- 
 tween the various topics he has discussed, and the 
 various arguments on which he has relied. After 
 finishing the book we should repeat the process. We 
 should look at the book as a whole, and piece together 
 all its parts. When we are trying to master the 
 geography of a countr)-, we place vividly before our 
 minds the mountains which run through it, and fix the 
 watersheds : these determine the courses of the rivers. 
 Then we picture to ourselves the outline of the coast. 
 Then we distribute the mining districts. The physical 
 features of the country suggest its natural political 
 boundaries. The navigable rivers, the harbours, the 
 mines, determine the sites where the great towns are 
 naturally built ; and these again determine the prin- 
 cipal lines of communication, the roads, the canals, and 
 the railways. It is in this way, and only in this way, 
 
42 SEIZING A SUBJECT AS A WHOLE. [lect. ii. 
 
 that we can get a complete and organic conception of 
 the geography of a country, and we must adopt a 
 similar method if we are to get a complete and organic 
 conception of the contents of a book. Everything 
 worth reading with any care may be treated in this 
 way; an epic poem as well as a philosophical discus- 
 sion ; a tragedy as well as a theological argument ; an 
 impassioned lyric as well as a sermon ; the story of 
 a campaign as well as the decrees of a council and 
 the articles of a confession of faith. If you acquire 
 the power of grasping firmly and as a whole what 
 other men have thought and written, you will find it 
 far easier to grasp in the same way what you have 
 thought and written yourselves ; and this intellectual 
 mastery of a subject is necessary to the clear and 
 effective exposition of it. 
 
 That if you are to preach well you ought to keep 
 your logical faculty bright and clear, is so obvious that 
 I need hardly insist upon it. American preaching, I 
 am told, is conspicuously argumentative. You " prove 
 all things." But it may not be unnecessary to remind 
 you that of all public speakers a preacher is most in 
 danger of using arguments which prove nothing. He 
 does not speak under the salutary restraints which 
 compel other public men to consider whether there is 
 any relation between their premises and their conclu- 
 sions. There is no one to reply to him at the time, 
 and the fear of the newspaper belonging to the other 
 party is not before his eyes. This immunity from 
 hostile discussion and criticism ought to lead us to 
 
LECT. II.] THE LOGICAL FACULTY, 43 
 — \ 
 
 be the more careful and conscientious in making sure 
 
 of the soundness of our reasoning ; and since we are 
 
 deprived of the logical discipline which comes from 
 
 fair and open debate with equal opponents, we should 
 
 subject ourselves to discipline of another kind. 
 
 The rules and exercises of formal logic are not 
 without their value : to me they seem to afford an 
 admirable method of intellectual training, and the 
 contempt with which they are sometimes spoken of is 
 extremely unwise and indefensible. But if you wish 
 to invigorate your argumentative power, and to main- 
 tain habits of logical accuracy, let me advise you to 
 try your strength against the great writers in various 
 departments of thought, theology, philosophy, politics. 
 Master their method of proof. Compel your mind 
 to follow their reasoning step by step, and at every 
 step make sure that the ground is firm. Beware of an 
 indolent acquiescence in an argument on behalf of 
 your own opinions. Keep your mind awake and 
 active. Do not suffer yourselves to drift passively 
 down the stream of any man's logic ; try whether the 
 current is so strong that you cannot swim against it. 
 Challenge every position maintained by your author. 
 Test the strength of every link in his reasoning. Work 
 of this kind will prevent your intellectual muscles 
 from becoming flaccid. It will answer the purpose of 
 practice with the foils : it will improve your " wind," 
 give suppleness to your limbs, make your eye keen and 
 your stroke sure. 
 
 If you are to preach effectively you must also 
 
4+ FANCY AND IMAGINATION. [lect. ii. 
 
 endeavour to keep your fancy fresh and your imagi- 
 nation active. Every lecturer on preaching, every 
 writer on rhetoric, insists on the importance of " ilkis- 
 trations." They tell us that logic may lay the 
 foundations and build the walls of the house, but 
 that " illustrations " are the windows which let in the 
 light. But I wish to remind you that if fancy is 
 active and imagination vigorous, the walls will not 
 merely be pierced w^ith occasional windows — the walls 
 themselves will be transparent, the light wnll come 
 through everywhere. 
 
 I do not mean, of course, that it is a merit for 
 a sermon to be overlaid with ornament. Mere 
 ornament, instead of making our meaning clearer, is 
 likely to conceal it, just as architectural decoration 
 sometimes conceals the true lines of a building. It 
 is not of ornament I am thinking, but of the firm ard 
 vigorous expression of our thought. All language 
 representative of intellectual acts and moral qualities 
 was created by the imagination, and every word that 
 stands for a spiritual idea was at first a picture and a 
 poem. The imaginative process, which in the earliest 
 periods of human history transmuted the names of 
 material things into the symbols of intellectual and 
 spiritual attributes and activities, is going on per- 
 petually. It is one of the distinctions of an original 
 and powerful writer or speaker that his thoughts have 
 sufficient life and vigour in them to form for them- 
 selves, out of the common air and the common earth, a 
 visible organisation — " a spiritual body " — of their own. 
 
LECT. II.] DE QUINCEY ON BURKE. 45 
 
 De Quincey has some very striking observations on 
 Edmund Burke which illustrate my meaning. In 
 reply to those critics who are accustomed to speak 
 of the fancy of Burke, he says, with his customary 
 scorn of opinions which he rejects : " Fancy in your 
 throats, ye miserable twaddlers ! As if Edmund Burke 
 was the man to play w^ith his fancy for the purpose 
 of separable ornament. He was a man of fancy in no 
 other sense than as Lord Bacon was so, and Jeremy 
 Taylor, i and as all large and discursive thinkers are 
 and must be ; that is to say, the fancy which he had 
 in common with all mankind, and very probably in no 
 eminent degree, in him was urged into unusual 
 activity under the necessities of his capacious under- 
 standing. His great and peculiar distinction was 
 that he viewed all objects of the understanding under 
 more relations than other men, and under more com- 
 plex relations. . . . Now to apprehend and detect more 
 relations, or to pursue them steadily, is a process abso- 
 lutely impossible without the intervention of physical 
 analogies. To say, therefore, that a man is a great 
 thinker, or 2. fine thinker [by which De Quincey has 
 explained he means a subtle thinker], is but another 
 expression for saying that he has a schematising (or, 
 to use a plainer, but less accurate expression, a 
 figurative) understanding. In that sense, and for 
 
 ^ Not having the fear of De Oiiincey's scorn to restrain me, 
 J venture to say that the appeal to Jeremy Taylor seoms 
 unfortunate. Surely with him Fancy often usurped a place to 
 which she had no claim, forgot that she was a subject, and 
 reigned as a queen — a veritable Queen Mab of Fairyland. 
 
46 THINKING IN SYMBOLS, [lect. ii. 
 
 that purpose, Burke is figurative ; but understood, as 
 he has been understood by the long-eared race of his 
 critics, not as thinking in and by his figures, but as 
 deliberately laying them on by way of enamel or 
 after - ornament — not as incarnating, but simply as 
 dressing his thoughts in imagery — so understood, he 
 is not the Burke of reality, but a poor, fictitious 
 Burke, modelled after the poverty of conception which 
 belongs to his critics." ^ 
 
 You will observe that De Quincey says that 
 Burke thought " in and by his figures." Imagination 
 furnished him — not with mere jewellery for beauty 
 and ornament — but with the very tools and instru- 
 ments necessary to the process of thinking. In his 
 case, according to De Quincey, the subtlety and 
 originality of his thought imposed upon the imagina- 
 tion this service. The concrete symbols had to be 
 created which were necessary to make definite and 
 visible to himself the movements of his intellectual 
 activity, and to fix their results. In our case it is 
 probable that the symbols already formed to our 
 hand by the creative genius of other men will be 
 found sufficient for the purposes of our private think- 
 ing, and fancy will not be "urged into unusual 
 activity under the necessities of a capacious under- 
 standing." But there will be all the more reason for 
 keeping it active by other means. We may be able 
 / to think accurately in abstract terms, but if we are 
 to speak vigorously, our thoughts must take form and 
 
 1 De Quincey : " Rhetoric." Works. Vol. x. pp. 56, 57. 
 
LECT. II.] VIVID AND LANGUID SPEAKING. ' 47 
 
 colour, must clothe themselves in flesh and blood, so 
 that they can be seen and handled by the people who 
 are listening to us. It may not be necessary to be 
 constantly creating new imagery and new forms of 
 expression to convey our meaning ; if the common 
 language of common men will serve our turn, we 
 should use it. 
 
 As I hav^e said, every word that stands for a spiritual 
 idea was at first a picture and a poem. In the case of 
 most words of this class, the image stamped upon 
 them by the fancy of the poet has worn away and 
 become undistinguishable, like the impression on a 
 coin which has been passing from hand to hand for 
 a generation : — the colours have faded from the canvas, 
 and have left vague and blurred outlines where 
 there was once a picture. If your imagination is 
 vigorous, you will so use these words as to restore to 
 the worn coin the sharpness of the original impression, 
 and to the canvas the brilliance and the richness of 
 the original colouring. The difference between vivid 
 and languid speaking depends very largely upon the 
 extent to which the imagination contributes in this 
 way to the expression of thought. The imaginative 
 speaker instinctively rejects words, phrases, symbols, 
 which are incapable of being animated with vital 
 warmth. He rejects them as a tree rejects withered 
 leaves and dead wood. His style is alive in every 
 fibre of it. 
 
 Imagination has another function which perhaps 
 young preachers are in some danger of forgetting. In 
 
48 TMAGINAriON AND PERSUASION. [lect. ii. 
 
 the investigation of truth we are anxious to work in 
 the dry Hght of the logical understanding. We make 
 it a matter of conscience to give to every argument 
 ^ts just weight, and not more than its just weight ; to 
 follow every line of evidence as far as it will legiti- 
 mately lead us, and no farther. There is an intellectual 
 integrity which to the scholar is everything that com- 
 mercial integrity is to the merchant and judicial 
 integrity to the judge. When men leave the univer- 
 sity they are apt to suppose that the same laws which 
 should govern the search for truth have authority in 
 the propagation of it. They have a suspicion that 
 their intellectual honesty will be compromised if they 
 set an argument on fire with imagination and passion. 
 But imagination is a most legitimate instrument of 
 persuasion. It is an indispensable instrument. The 
 minds of men are sometimes so sluggish that we can- 
 not get them to listen to us unless our case is stated 
 with a warmth and a vigour which the imagination 
 alone can supply. There are many, again, who are 
 not accessible to abstract argument, but who recognise 
 truth at once when it assumes that concrete form with 
 which imagination may invest it ; they cannot follow 
 the successive steps of your demonstration, but they 
 admit the truth of your proposition the moment 
 you show them your diagram. Then, again, there 
 are some truths — and these among the greatest — 
 'y which rest, not upon abstract reasoning, but upon 
 facts. Imagination must make the facts vivid and 
 real. 
 
LECT. II.] IMAGINATION AKIN TO EMOTION. 49 
 
 Further — in a country like this there are large num- 
 bers of persons to whom it is unnecessary to offer any 
 proof of the great articles of the Christian faith, 
 although they are living in the habitual neglect of 
 Christian duty. That there is a living God ; that He 
 abhors sin and loves righteousness ; that the Lord 
 Jesus Christ is the Son of God ; that He died for 
 them, and that He will come again to judge the living 
 and the dead, they believe. But these awful and 
 glorious truths, though they have a place in the intel- 
 lect, exert no influence on the heart, the conscience, 
 and the will. They inspire no wonder ; they alarm no 
 fear ; they kindle no hope ; they quicken no affection ; 
 they fail even to excite the faintest moral interest. All 
 life has gone out of them. But imagination is akin 
 to emotion — much nearer akin than the logical under- 
 standing — and in such cases imagination may do 
 something to bridge the gulf between the speculative 
 and the active powers ; may fulfil the office which 
 Bolingbroke attributes to history, and '' set passion on 
 the side of judgment, and make the whole man of a 
 piece." 
 
 There are some verses in Mr. Tennyson's " In Memo- 
 riam" which remind us of another reason why the 
 Christian preacher, above all other public speakers, 
 should cultivate this faculty. 
 
 *' Though truths in manhood darkly join 
 Dccp-scated in our mystic frame, 
 We yield all blessing to the name 
 Of Him that made them current coin. 
 
 5 
 
50 THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION. [lect. ii. 
 
 " For wisdom dealt with mortal powers, 
 Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
 When truth embodied in a tale 
 Shall enter in at lowly doors. 
 
 " And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds, 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds. 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
 ** Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
 Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
 And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
 In roarings round the coral reef." 
 
 Nor is it merely at " lowly doors " that " truth em- 
 bodied in a tale " finds easier entrance than truth 
 which appears in the form of abstract propositions. 
 God, who knows as we cannot know the mystery of 
 our nature, has revealed Himself to mankind in a 
 supernatural history. The revelation which we have 
 to illustrate, and which furnishes the very substance 
 of all our preaching, is not a series of theological 
 dogmas or ethical principles ; it is in the main a 
 record of how God has dealt with individual men, 
 with nations, and with the human race. Above all, 
 it is the story of the earthly life, the death, the resur- 
 rection, and the ascension into heaven of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ — God manifest in the flesh. 
 
 What is commonly described as an historical imagi- 
 nation, is indispensable to us if we are to form a right 
 judgment on the historical contents of Holy Scrip- 
 ture. " Our view of any transaction," says Arch- 
 bishop Whately, "especially one that is remote in 
 
LECT. II.] IMAGIiVATION AND SCRIPTURE HISTORY. 51 
 
 time or place, will necessarily be imperfect, generally 
 incorrect, unless it embrace something more than the 
 bare outline of the occurrences ; unless we have before 
 the mind a lively idea of the scenes in which the 
 events took place, the habits of thought and of feel- 
 ing of the actors, and all the circumstances of the 
 transaction ; unless, in short, we can in a considerable 
 degree transport ourselves out of our own age and 
 country and persons, and imagine ourselves the agents 
 and spectators. . . . To say that imagination, if not 
 regulated by sound judgment and sufficient know- 
 ledge, may chance to convey to us false impressions 
 of past events, is only to say that man is fallible. But 
 such false impressions are even much the more likely 
 to take possession of one whose imagination is feeble 
 or uncultivated." ^ 
 
 If the imaginative faculty is too sluggish to make 
 the facts which are the vehicles of a large part of 
 Divine revelation real and alive to us, we shall read 
 two-thirds of the Old Testament and a third of the 
 New with very languid interest ; we shall fail to dis- 
 cover the truths and laws which the facts illustrate, 
 and our hearts will remain untouched by the story. 
 Even the epistles — and the epistles which are most 
 ^exclusively doctrinal — will fail to convey to us their 
 true meaning, unless we are able, by an eftbrt of the 
 imagination, to reproduce to ourselv^es the circum- 
 stances, the habits of thought, the moral and spiritual 
 perils of the people to whom they were written, and 
 iWhately: " Rhetoric," p. 124. 
 
 5* 
 
52 FACTS THE EXPRESSION OF TRUTHS. [lect. ii. 
 
 the personal character and idiosyncrasies of the 
 apostoHc writers. If we are to understand the Epistle 
 to the Galatians, we must become, while we read it, 
 {/ members of one of the Galatian Churches, with our 
 minds imperfectly liberated from heathenism, and 
 impressed by the confident claims of those who pro- 
 fess to be truer representatives of the new faith than 
 St. Paul, from whom we first heard the gospel of 
 Christ. We must know St. Paul as the Philippians 
 knew him, and we must love him as they loved him, 
 if we are to understand the Epistle to the Church at 
 Philippi. There is hardly a page of Holy Scripture 
 which will not become more intelligible to us if we 
 read it with an active imagination. 
 
 And when we have discovered for ourselves what 
 the Scriptures were intended to teach, we shall not, 
 if we are wise, forget the form in which the teaching 
 is given. The facts are still the most effective ex- 
 pression of the truths contained in them. The history 
 of Joseph — of his slavery, his imprisonment, his rise 
 to the government of Egypt — can never be made ob- 
 solete by any theories of Providence ; nor the history 
 of the sin and anguish of David by any theological 
 argument demonstrating the necessity of repentance ; 
 nor the history of the catastrophes which came upon 
 the Jewish race by any ethical proof of the certain 
 ruin which God will inflict upon a nation that revolts 
 against the authority of the moral law. The miracles 
 of Christ are still the most pathetic evidence of God's 
 compassion for human infirmity and suffering. The 
 
LECT. II.] MR. MOODY. 53 
 
 death of Christ is the final expression of the infinite 
 love of God for all mankind. 
 
 As the truths which we have to teach concerning 
 God are contained in the facts which constitute the 
 chief part of God's revelation of Himself to our race, 
 so the ethical and spiritual laws which should regulate 
 the Christian life are most vividly illustrated in the 
 virtues and the vices, the sanctity and the sins, of the 
 men whose story has been preserved to us in the Jewish 
 and Christian Scriptures. The preachers who have 
 learnt how to use these ancient facts are in possession 
 of a power which reaches the hearts and consciences 
 of all sorts of men. You know how Mr. Moody uses 
 them. He talks as though Jacob had been an intimate 
 personal friend of his ; as though he had met the 
 patriarch near Bethel the morning after he had seen 
 the \ision of the ladder and the angels ; had been 
 with him when his cruel sons brought to his tent the 
 coat of many colours dipped in blood ; had seen the 
 old man's face when in later years these same sons 
 returned from Egypt and told him how roughly the 
 governor had treated them, that he had charged them 
 with being spies, that he had made them promise to 
 bring Benjamin down into Egypt to verify their ac- 
 count of themselves, and that meanwhile he had kept 
 Simeon as a hostage of their good faith. While you 
 are listening to Mr. ?^Ioody you are ready to think that 
 he must have been in the boat with the apostles when 
 Christ came to them over the stormy sea ; must have 
 seen the lad who had the basket on his arm with the 
 
54 
 
 MR. MOODY, [lect. it. 
 
 five barley loaves in it and the two small fishes ; must 
 have been at the wedding feast at Cana, and tasted the 
 wine which came out of the waterpots. At times his 
 realisation of the story he is telling becomes so intense 
 that he almost makes you feel as though you as well 
 as he had been in the upper chamber and listened to our 
 Lord's last discourse to His disciples ; had seen Him 
 rise to go, and then linger, because He had not yet told 
 them all that was in His heart ; had gone with Him 
 through the streets of Jerusalem and across the ravine 
 of the Kedron, bright with the full moon, to the dark 
 shadows of the olive trees of Gethsemane ; had seen 
 Him in His agony ; had been startled by the appear- 
 ance of Judas with the crowd that came to arrest 
 Him ; had followed Him afar oflf to the house of 
 Caiaphas, and then to the judgment-hall of Pilate, 
 and then to the palace of Herod ; had stood at last 
 under the walls of Jerusalem and watched Him as He 
 hung on the cross, crowned wjth thorns ; had been 
 filled with terror by the earthquake and the darkness ; 
 and had heard Him cry with a loud voice, " Father, 
 into thy hands I commend my spirit." 
 
 No doubt ]\Tr. Moody makes the patriarchs and the 
 apostles talk as though they had been born in Chicago. 
 His reproduction of the ancient stories is wanting in 
 exact historical truth, because the whole costume in 
 which he clothes the characters is modern and western 
 • — not ancient and oriental. In fact, he translates the 
 men themselves and their ways of thought and action 
 into English, as the venerable scholars who produced 
 
LECT. 1 1 .] THE PRE A CHER TO L 'SE E VER V FA CUE TV. 5 5 
 
 our Authorized Version translated their mere words 
 into English. In this respect I do not ask you to fol- 
 low his example. With the knowledge of ancient life 
 and manners which you have acquired in this university, 
 it would be impossible, even if it were desirable, for 
 you to follow it. But if you have any of that dra- 
 matic imagination which he possesses in so eminent a 
 degree, you ought to learn from him the wisdom of 
 cultivating it, for it is one of the principal elements of 
 his power as a preacher. 
 
 Every intellectual faculty that contributes to the 
 vivacity, keenness, and strength of the graver forms 
 of secular eloquence, may also contribute to the 
 efficiency of the Christian preacher. Not to appeal 
 to the sermons of uninspired men, whose authority 
 might be challenged, let us turn to the Holy Scrip- 
 tures themselves. Examples of humour might be 
 difficult to find, unless we admitted that it appears in 
 a most c}'nical form in the Book of Ecclesiastes ; but 
 there is surely something like it in that delicious 
 touch of St. Paul's in the Second Epistle to the 
 Corinthians (Chap. xii. 12, 13}. "Truly the signs of 
 an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, 
 in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds. For what is 
 it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except 
 it be that I m}-sclf was not burdensome to you } 
 forgive me this zvrojig." Irony, and irony which at 
 times becomes scornful, he uses freely in both epistles. 
 " Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory 
 also. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves 
 
56 IRONY AND SARCASM. [lect. ii. 
 
 are wise" (2 Cor. xi. 18, 19). Again, "Who maketh 
 thee to differ from another ? and what hast thou that 
 thou didst not receive ? now if thou didst receive it, 
 why dost thou glory, as if thou didst not receive 
 it ? Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned 
 as kings without us : and I would to God ye did 
 reign, that we also might reign with you" (i Cor. 
 
 iv. 7, 8). 
 
 In the prophets, the idolatry into which the Jewish 
 people were continually being betrayed is over- 
 whelmed with the most bitter, contemptuous, and 
 elaborate sarcasm. "Who hath formed a god, or 
 molten a graven image that is profitable for nothing "i 
 . . . The smith with the tongs both worketh in the 
 coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it 
 with the strength of his arms : yea, he is hungry, and 
 his strength faileth : he drinketh no water, and is 
 faint. The carpenter stretcheth out his rule ; he 
 marketh it out with a line ; he fitteth it with planes, 
 and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh 
 it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty 
 of a man. ... He heweth him down cedars, and 
 taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth 
 for himself among the trees of the forest : he planteth 
 an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. . . . He burnetii 
 part thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he eateth 
 flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, he 
 warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have 
 seen the fire : and the residue thereof he maketh a 
 god, even his graven image : he faileth down unto it. 
 
LECT. II.] WHEN A PRE A CHER SHO ULD BE D ULL. 5 7 
 
 and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, 
 Deliver me ; for thou art my god" (Isa. xliv. 10-17). 
 
 I decline to acknowledge the binding force of those 
 traditions which deny to the Christian preacher the 
 weapons which have been consecrated by the hands 
 of Isaiah and St. Paul. A prudent man will of course 
 be careful to remember the tastes and the habits of 
 the people to whom he has to preach ; and in congre- 
 gations which have been long accustomed to the 
 dignity of a dull propriety in the pulpit, a young 
 minister will make it a matter of conscience to be 
 dull ; or, at least, he will avoid making his sermons 
 too interesting and too attractive. If he asserted the 
 perfect intellectual freedom which Christ has given 
 us, but which the traditions of some pulpits refuse to 
 allow, he would fail to secure tlie very results for 
 which — and for which alone — he has to use all his 
 intellectual resources. We cannot speak to men effec- 
 tive!}' of the " wonderful works of God " unless we 
 speak to " every man in his own tongue wherein he 
 was born." Congregations which have not been ac- 
 customed to the pla\' of humour and fancy, to the 
 glow of a fervid imagination, to the keen edge of 
 sarcasm, will be perplexed and alarmed if sermons 
 have too much intellectual vivacity in them. I say 
 that they will be alarmed as well as perplexed : they 
 will not only fail to recognise familiar truth in its 
 unfamiliar form ; they will be shocked at what they 
 will regard as the secularisation of the pulpit. It is 
 still true that " one believeth that he may eat all things : 
 
 y 
 
58 WEAK CONSCIENCES. [lect. ii. 
 
 another, \\\\o is weak, eateth herbs." To the weak we 
 may say, " Let not him which eateth not, judge him 
 that eateth. . . . Who art thou that judgest another 
 man's servant } to his own master he standeth or 
 falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up, for God is able 
 to make him stand." But to the strong we must also 
 say, " Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth 
 not. ... I know, and am persuaded by the Lord 
 Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself . . . But 
 if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest 
 thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, 
 for whom Christ died." Charity is the supreme law 
 of Christian rhetoric as well as of the Christian life. 
 
 " If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat 
 no flesh while the world standeth ; " and the preacher 
 who happens to be a man of genius, will say: To me 
 it may seem that glorious truth should clothe herself 
 in the glorious robes of imagination, and be crowned 
 with the flowers of fancy; that in her gentler reproofs 
 a pleasant irony may play on her lips ; and that in 
 her anger, indignation may flash from her eye, and 
 the lightnings of a fierce sarcasm may be hurled by 
 her hand. But if imagination, fancy, irony, and sar- 
 casm make my brother to offend, I will become a 
 fool for Christ's sake, and will be dull while the 
 world standeth. 
 
 To this severity of intellectual asceticism, however, 
 I believe that none of us are called. It is very rarely 
 that a preacher need be afraid of being too brilliant. 
 But if we are loyal to Christ and the Church, we shall 
 
LECT. II.] SELF-DISPLAY. 59 
 
 use our strength, not to win personal honour, but to 
 prevail upon men to receive the teaching of Christ, 
 to trust in His promises, and to keep His command- 
 ments. Always, indeed, the highest kind of work 
 implies the renunciation of all thought of personal 
 display. The artist who is anxious that }-ou should 
 see how perfectly he can paint, instead of being 
 anxious to paint perfectly, is certain to spoil his 
 picture. He will annoy you by wasting his power 
 on the satin coverlet of a bed or on a velvet dress, 
 instead of using it to tell the story which he is pro- 
 fessing to place on the canvas. The speaker who, 
 instead of tr}'i ng to enlarge your knowledge, to 
 awaken your sympathy for suffering, or fire your in- 
 dignation against injustice, is trying to show how well 
 he can speak, will be equally unsuccessful. He may, 
 perhaps, win the admiration of foolish, half-educated 
 people, but he will excite no real interest, will kindle 
 no passion, will produce no deep and enduring im- 
 pression : men of sense will call him an impostor. 
 He will not be even heard patiently by an audience 
 of any kind that is really in earnest about the subjects 
 he is professing to discuss. Ornamental speaking — 
 speaking which is nothing more than an exhibition of 
 intellectual strength, dexterity, and grace — may be 
 well enough on ceremonial occasions, at public dinners 
 and the like ; but when the minds of men are occu- 
 pied with grave questions, speaking of that sort is 
 hissed and howled down by a rough popular meeting, 
 and is got rid of in an equally summary manner by 
 
6o ORNAMENTAL SPEAKING. [lect. ii. 
 
 the most cultivated and dignified assembly. If the 
 affairs of a railway are going wrong, and the share- 
 holders are afraid of losing not only their dividends 
 but their capital, they want a man who can tell them 
 facts on which they can rely, and' w^ho can show them 
 a way out of their difficulties. The most witty and 
 amusing speaker, the most ingenious, the most bril- 
 liant, will not be listened to unless he can make the 
 position of affairs clearer, and unless he has some 
 idea about how the property of the company can be 
 kept together. If he is speaking only to show how 
 well he can speak, the excited shareholders will either 
 compel him to stop, or will throw him out of the 
 window. In great national troubles, politicians do 
 not want glittering periods, clever repartees, dainty 
 epigrams : they want to be told how the famishing 
 are to be fed, how crime is to be put down, how the 
 discontent which menaces the stability of the national 
 institutions is to be allayed, by what means war can 
 be honourably averted, or by what means the nation 
 can secure an honourable peace. A great statesman 
 may also be a great orator. He may speak on these 
 terrible questions, not only with terrible earnestness, 
 but with incomparable brilliance, energy, and fire. 
 His eloquence will in that case be of immense service 
 to the principles and the policy which he is urging on 
 the acceptance of the country. But if at such a time 
 he is simply airing his rhetoric ; if he is as anxious 
 to say graceful and humorous and beautiful things 
 when he is dealing with dangers which threaten the 
 
LECT. II.] THE AGONY OF THE PREACHER. 6i 
 
 lives and fortunes of the people and the honour and 
 security of the state, as when he is proposing the 
 toast of " The Ladies " at a lord mayor's banquet, he 
 will prov^oke indignation and fierce contempt. 
 
 It is not possible — it is not desirable — that you 
 should always preach under the strain of that agony 
 of earnestness with which I trust you will be some- 
 times inspired. There are hours when the true 
 minister of Christ is conscious that the celestial 
 splendours are shining and glowing around him ; and 
 there are hours when every fibre of his nature shivers 
 with terror at the prospect of the indignation and 
 wrath, tribulation and anguish, which menace the 
 finally impenitent. Such hours, I trust, will come to 
 you. When they come, you will preach as if the fate 
 of every irreligious man in your congregation were 
 to be determined at once — determined by a single 
 sermon — determined by the vehemence with which 
 you denounce sin ; the tenderness with which you speak 
 of the infinite mercy of God ; the fidelity with which 
 you reaffirm the certain destruction of all who persist 
 in their revolt against God's authority ; the rapturous 
 confidence with which you dilate on the glory, honour, 
 and immortality which are the inheritance of all who 
 trust in Christ and keep His commandments. 
 
 But though these great and critical times can come 
 to us only occasionally — our strength would be con- 
 sumed if they came often — every sermon that we 
 preach should have a relation more or less direct to the 
 rescue of the world from sin and its restoration to God. 
 
62 BE BRILLIANT FOR CHRIST. [lect. ii. 
 
 To accomplish this end we ought to use in the 
 work of the ministry all the resources that God has 
 given us — our keenest and most vigorous intellectual 
 powers, and whatever we have learnt from the specu- 
 lations of philosophers and theologians, from the 
 songs of poets, from the adventures of travellers, from 
 the history of nations, from the discoveries of science, 
 from grand and beautiful scenery, from great pictures, 
 from glorious music, from the ruined monuments 
 of ancient empires, from the triumphs of modern 
 civilisation, from the achievements and sufferings 
 of heroes and saints, and from the common lives 
 of common men. We should spend time and strength 
 in the endeavour to make all that we have to say as 
 clear, as strong, as effective as we can make it ; but 
 if we have any sense of the tremendous issues of the 
 conflict in which we are engaged between righteous- 
 ness and sin, the love of God and the miseries of the 
 human race, it will seem to us the greatest impiety to 
 yield to the impulses of personal ambition, and we 
 shall care for nothing except the glory of Christ and 
 the salvation of mankind. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 READING. 
 
 GENTLEMEN,— It is very possible that you may 
 have thought me hard and uncharitable when 
 I said in the last lecture that some men fail as 
 preachers through intellectual indolence. Or perhaps 
 you may have been generous enough to suppose that 
 it was my ignorance of the religious life of America 
 which led me to imagine that an American minister 
 could ever be guilty of this vice. 
 
 But the position of a minister on this side of the 
 Atlantic, as well as on the other, is obviously very 
 likely to encourage desultory intellectual habits ; and 
 dcsultoriness and indolence are very near akin. With 
 you, as with us, the judge has to be on the bench, the 
 barrister in court, the solicitor at his office, the manu- 
 facturer at his works, the merchant at his desk, the 
 tradesman at his counter, at a definite hour every 
 morning ; and not till a definite hour in the afternoon 
 are they released. An indolent lawyer or man of 
 business may, no doubt, go to his office, manufactory, 
 or shop, half-an-hour or an hour late, and may often 
 keep away altogether ; while he is there he may 
 waste his time over the newspaper, or in gossip with 
 
64 MINISTERIAL DESULTORINESS. [lect. hi. 
 
 men that call in and are as indolent as himself ; but 
 the regular hours are a great help to regular habits ; 
 they form a kind of frame, which a man knows he has 
 to fill up with work. With you, as with us, the minister 
 is under no such external constraint. If the judge is 
 not on the bench when the court opens, he hears of it 
 from the newspapers the next morning ; if the bar- 
 rister is not ready to speak when the trial comes on, 
 he has to meet the wrath of a furious client ; but the 
 minister may get up late, or he may spend half-an- 
 hour extra over his breakfast, reading an interesting 
 letter from the Paris correspondent in the Times or 
 the Tribune, or an exciting debate in Parliament or 
 in Congress, and may go into his study at half-past 
 nine instead of nine without incurring any immediate 
 penalty. 
 
 If a merchant leaves his letters unopened till the 
 mail goes out, he knows that there is a chance of his 
 receiving a sharp rebuke for not acknowledging a 
 cheque, or he may miss a large order through not 
 giving an immediate answer to an inquiry. But a 
 minister, when he goes into his study on Tuesday 
 or Wednesday morning, is under no compulsion to 
 sit down to any definite occupation. He may be 
 reading Dr. Dorner's " History of Protestant Theo- 
 logy," and has got half through the first volume ; 
 or he may have been working at the Epistle to the 
 Romans, and has just reached the passage which 
 has always perplexed him in the middle of the ninth 
 chapter ; but he looks up at his shelves, and his eye is 
 
LECT. III.] IDLE HABITS. 65 
 
 caught by a novel of Hawthorne's or of Thackeray's ; 
 or the postman brings the Neiv York Independent or 
 the Spectator ; or he has just received the last book 
 about Russia from the circulating library ; and so, for 
 an hour or two, he reads the novel or the newspaper or 
 the traveller's story, and before he turns to Dorner or 
 to St. Paul the morning has half gone. 
 
 A minister is in danger of being betrayed into idle 
 habits by a thousand temptations of which other men 
 know nothing. He has not slept well, or he is suffer- 
 ing from a slight attack of indigestion ; the morning 
 is fine ; there is nothing that absolutely compels him 
 to keep at his desk, and he feels quite at liberty to 
 stroll into the country. Or the weather is dull, and 
 he is not in the mood for work ; there is no particular 
 reason why he should not spend an hour in the news- 
 room ; or he persuades himself that he will be fulfilling 
 a pastoral duty if he calls on the pleasantest family 
 in his congregation, and so he idles away a couple of 
 hours in gossip. He has been trying to make out the 
 exact meaning of a text, and the longer he tries the 
 more perplexed he becomes ; and w hen his perplexity 
 is at the very worst, a lady calls to talk to him about a 
 girl in her class in the Sunday-school, and when she 
 goes he finds that it is only three-quarters of an hour to 
 dinner time. He thinks it is of no use returning to the 
 text, and so he amuses himself with the most amusing 
 article in the magazine which happens to be on the 
 table. When he was at college he had fixed hours for 
 work, and wrote his letters when he could. Now that 
 
 6 
 
66 WHAT TO WORK AT. [lect. iir. 
 
 he is in the ministry, if he gets a letter from an old 
 college chum by the morning post, and if he is not 
 obliged to give the morning to one of his sermons for 
 next Sunday, he thinks he may as well answer it at 
 once, and so he consumes in letter-writing one of the 
 prime hours of the day. Gentlemen, it is four and 
 twenty years since I left college, and the temptations 
 to desultoriness which I have either yielded to or 
 mastered would enable me to go on for four and 
 twenty hours with the story of the perils which will 
 beset you as soon as you leave these walls. You will 
 be ruined, your own hopes and the hopes of your 
 friends will all be blighted, unless you resolve, with 
 God's help, to stand firm and to work as hard when 
 you become a minister as you have worked while at 
 the university. 
 
 As to the subjects at which you should work, there 
 is one piece of advice which I can give you with per- 
 fect confidence : it is one of those " commonplaces " to 
 which I attach so much value, that I thought it worth 
 while to cross the Atlantic to insist upon them : 
 Keep up the knowledge which you have acquired at 
 the university — your mathematics and science, if you 
 can ; your ancient and modern languages, whether 
 you can or not. There are few things more mortifying 
 than for a man \\'ho, when he was four and twenty, 
 could read his Cicero and Tacitus, his ^schylus and 
 Plato, freely, to be obliged to puzzle over them with a 
 grammar and dictionary when he is forty-five, and to 
 discover a few years later that to him the music of the 
 
LECT. III.] HEBREW, GREEK, AND SYRIA C. 67 
 
 ancient poets is silent, and that the ancient orators are 
 dumb. That you will keep up, more or less perfectly, 
 your New Testament Greek is a matter of course ; but 
 if I may judge from my own observation and from 
 my own experience — I acknowledge it with shame — 
 nothing is easier than for a minister to lose in a very 
 few years his familiarity with Hebrew and Syriac. The 
 precious results of months of hard work may vanish 
 with extraordinary rapidity, and it will be very difficult 
 to recover them. Of course, if a minister has once learnt 
 to read his Hebrew Bible with ease and with keen 
 interest, he will be certain to consult it often enough 
 to prevent his knowledge of Hebrew from perish- 
 ing altogether ; and a knowledge of the genius of the 
 language, which is invaluable in the study of the Old 
 Testament, can never be lost when it is once acquired 
 But we ought to read the Hebrew Text regularly, and 
 if the habit is continued for only a few years after 
 entering the ministry, our knowledge, instead of being 
 lost, will soon be extended, and will be ours for life. 
 Syriac, although of immense use in New Testament 
 exegesis, will vanish altogether unless you make a 
 definite effort to retain it. 
 
 About German and French it is hardly necessary to 
 speak. If you read these languages with ease before 
 you leave the university, you will have such constant 
 occasion to use them both, and you will find it so plea- 
 sant to enlarge your acquaintance with French and 
 German literature, that you will be in no danger of 
 forgetting what you have learnt. 
 
 6* 
 
68 SCHOPENHAUER. [lect. hi. 
 
 But, as Schopenhauer said, " All that a man learns 
 at the university is what he has to learn afterwards." 
 There are some men, indeed, with a certain activity 
 and superficial brilliance of intellect, who when they 
 leave the university seem utterly unconscious of how 
 much remains to be learnt. The theological creed of the 
 Church to which they belong satisfies them perfectly ; 
 they have no suspicion that it does not contain a 
 complete account of the whole mystery of God's re- 
 lations to the human race. They remind one, in their 
 cleverness as well as in their shallowness, of George 
 Eliot's description of Gwendolen in " Daniel Deronda." 
 " In the schoolroom her quick mind had taken 
 readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and 
 unconnected facts which saves ignorance from any 
 painful sense of ignorance." But in the case of men 
 whose intellectual life has any depth and freedom, and 
 who want to know how the great facts of the universe 
 really stand, Schopenhauer's words are broadly true — 
 they have learnt very little more than how much they 
 have to learn afterwards. 
 
 If I ventured to give you any very elaborate advice 
 about the course of reading it will be expedient for 
 you to follow when you are in the ministry, I should 
 be guilty of unpardonable presumption. I have lived 
 far too active a life to have any pretensions to speak 
 with authority on that subject. About the books you 
 should read, you will do well to obtain the judgment 
 of your professors. But there are some general sug- 
 gestions arising out of my own experience which may 
 be of some use to you. 
 
LECT. III.] THEOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. 69 
 
 I assume that while you are here you will get a 
 general view of the scheme of orthodox evangelical 
 theology. You will carry away in your mind what 
 may be called an index map of the whole territory of 
 ascertained theological truth, as that territory is laid 
 down by evangelical theologians of recognised autho- 
 rity. You will have learnt how they define the prin- 
 cipal doctrines of their creed, the relations which 
 they conceive to exist between these doctrines, and 
 the general nature of the evidence by which it is sup- 
 posed that the truth of the doctrines is demonstrated. 
 If when }'OU are beginning to preach you discover 
 that here and there the lines of the map are beginning 
 to fade, that perhaps great breadths of country have 
 vanished altogether, so that you can give no account 
 of them, I think you will do wisely to recover your 
 knowledge as soon as you are able. Whether you 
 accept the whole scheme or not, you ought to be in 
 complete possession of it. 
 
 There are some preachers whose sermons — what- 
 ever they are preaching about — remind one of the 
 conversation of people that have never been out- 
 side the village or the county in which they were 
 born ; people who would settle the affairs of a 
 great nation in the interests of their own particular 
 parish, and with no other knowledge than that which 
 they have acquired in discussing and managing their 
 own parochial business. Have you never listened to 
 preachers of that sort — to men whose whole mind is 
 occupied with a solitary doctrine or a solitary group 
 of doctrines, and who seem to have no thought of the 
 
70 DOCTRINAL PROVINCIALISM. [lect. iiI. 
 
 relations which these doctrines sustain to other truths, 
 in which other men have the keenest interest, and 
 which, when considered in the Hght of the history of 
 the Church, are of the gravest importance ? The odd 
 thing is that these preachers, who in reh'gious thought 
 are the victims of a temper analogous to that nar- 
 row provincialism which, according to Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold, is one of the chief infirmities or vices of the 
 English nation, often claim to be " broad theologians." 
 Their interest is narrowed to a very few great truths, 
 and yet they imagine that their theology has the merit 
 of exceptional breadth. You may do something 
 towards protecting yourself against doctrinal provin- 
 cialism by maintaining an intellectual acquaintance 
 with truths in which you may be unable for a time 
 to feel any deep moral or spiritual interest. 
 
 Your chief work, however, and your most fruitful 
 work during the earlier years of your ministry, will 
 probably consist in the investigation of great truths 
 on which you have arrived at no satisfactory conclu- 
 sion while at the university, or which you feel to be of 
 such transcendent importance in relation to your per- 
 sonal religious life or to your ministerial work, that 
 you are morally obliged to re-examine them with 
 exceptional thoroughness and care. " Reading with- 
 out purpose," says Lord Lytton, " is sauntering, not 
 exercise. More is got from one book, on which the 
 thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than 
 from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye." ' 
 I " Caxtoniana," vol. ii. p. 327. 
 
LECT. III.] LYTTON AND BLACKIE. 71 
 
 The brilliant professor of Greek in the University of 
 Edinburgh has said much the same thing in another 
 form. " Reading, in the case of mere miscellaneous 
 readers, is like the racing of some little dog about the 
 moor, snuffing everything and catching nothing ; but 
 a reader of the right sort finds his prototype in Jacob, 
 who wrestled with an angel all night, and counted 
 himself the better for the bout, though the sinew of his 
 thigh shrank in consequence." ^ If there is no great 
 theological doctrine which you are compelled to re- 
 construct for yourself from its very foundations — none 
 which you are obliged to re-examine in order to 
 satisfy restless and clamorous fears that the walls 
 are perhaps giving way or that the roof is unsound — 
 I advise you to select some important doctrinal con- 
 troversy, and to resolve to study it thoroughly. But 
 the intenser your moral and religious interest is in the 
 truth you are investigating, the more profitable, even 
 intellectually, is your work likely to be. 
 
 In studying a doctrine, it is well to begin with its* 
 history. Learn how it grew ; who invented the tech- 
 nical terms in which it is commonly defined ; what 
 heresies stimulated orthodox theologians to dev^elop 
 the truth more fully, and compelled them to define 
 it more rigorously. Take particular notice of the 
 religious mood of the age in which it was developed 
 most rapidly and excited the most general and active 
 controversy. Consider, too, what was the character 
 of the dominant philosophy at successive periods in 
 I John Stuart Blackie " On Self Culture," p. 29. 
 
72 DOCTRINAL STUDIES. [lect. hi. 
 
 the history of the controversy. Fix in your memory 
 the men and the books that had chiefly to do with 
 impressing on the doctrine the various changes of form 
 through which it has passed. You may learn most of 
 these facts from a general history of Dogma ; if you 
 can get a good special history of the particular doc- 
 trine which you are investigating, you will of course 
 prefer it. 
 
 Then you will read for yourself a few of the great 
 books, the names of which you have become familiar 
 with in reading the history. You will soon learn 
 how much of a book it is necessary to read for your 
 purpose. In some cases you will be very likely to go 
 wrong unless you read a book through, and read it 
 through very carefully. In other cases, three or four 
 chapters, or even a single chapter, will be enough. 
 You must always try to be accurate in placing your 
 author. If you do not remember the precise position 
 of the controversy when he wrote, the errors which 
 he regarded as most formidable, his conception of 
 other doctrines more or less closely related to the 
 doctrine under discussion, and the general spirit and 
 modes of thought characteristic of his time, you will 
 have no satisfactory understanding of his meaning. 
 Athanasius wrote for the theologians of Alexandria, 
 Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome, in the fourth 
 century — not for Americans who were to live at New 
 Haven, or for Englishmen who were to live in London 
 or Birmingham, fifteen centuries after he was dead. 
 
 To retain the results of your reading, most of you, I 
 
LECT. III.] NOTES. 73 
 
 think, will find it necessary to read with your pen in 
 your hand, and with a few sheets of paper on your desk 
 A brief analysis of the principal lines of thought in a 
 great book, and occasional extracts containing the 
 most formal definitions of the author's theory and his 
 characteristic technicalities, will enable you to recall 
 the whole substance of volumes which might other- 
 wise fade altogether from your memory ; unless, 
 indeed, your memory is far less treacherous than my 
 own. In preparing, two or three years ago, a series 
 of lectures on the Atonement, I was able to save 
 myself a large amount of labour by using notes of this 
 kind which I had written sixteen or seventeen years 
 before. If as you read you discuss in your notes the 
 author's arguments and criticise his theories, you 
 will obtain at the time a more complete mastery of 
 his position, and your notes will be more useful to you 
 afterwards. 
 
 The objections to this practice are obvious. The 
 process of summarising what we are reading may 
 become as purely automatic as the process of report- 
 ing what we are listening to. There is good reason to 
 hope that the gentlemen of the press, to whose 
 courtesy, intelligence, and skill all public men owe so 
 much, are not cursed with any long remembrance of 
 the speeches which they report with such surprising 
 accuracy. Even when in their generous consideration 
 and kindly compassion they correct our grammar for 
 us, effect a rapid reconciliation between our nomin- 
 atives and our verbs, achieve a surgical miracle on a 
 
74 REPORTING. [lect. hi. 
 
 sentence which broke its back as it leapt from our 
 Hps, I imagine that the intellectual operations by 
 which all this is accomplished are almost mechanical. 
 A writer in a recent number of the Contemporary 
 Reviezu, who says that he has had large experience of 
 work of this kind, tells us that he has never found him- 
 self exhausted by working week after week for eighteen 
 hours a day. " The reason," he says, " is, mainly, that in 
 such work as in that of ordinary business the mind 
 gets all the enormous help derivable from the laws of 
 association. Link follows link, and the process goes 
 upon an inclined plane to its goal, "i Nature is some- 
 times kindly if she is often severe. When I think of 
 the intellectual ability and varied accomplishments 
 of many of the gentlemen who sit at the reporters' 
 desk, and of the intolerable dulness and folly of many 
 of the speeches which they have to transfer to their 
 note-books, it is a consolation to be assured that the 
 ear may listen and that the hand may write without 
 the memory being charged with a solitary sentence. 
 The sum of human misery is less than it seems. 
 
 But, gentlemen, your own note-books may be filled 
 very much in the same way. The hand may work 
 with the eye, as it may work with the ear, without 
 any vigorous concurrence of the intellect, and what 
 is read accurately and written accurately may be for- 
 gotten as soon as the note-book is closed. That you 
 have to condense what you read, and make an abstract 
 of it, does not secure you against this peril. Perhaps, 
 I Contemporary Review, April, 1877, p. 946. 
 
LECT. III.] NOTES. 75 
 
 instead of reading with your pen in your hand, as I 
 have suggested, you may find it some protection if your 
 permanent notes — the notes you intend to keep by you 
 for reference — are made from memory, after you have 
 mastered your author's meaning, and when the book 
 has been returned to the sheh-es. 
 
 Notes of another kind and for another purpose 
 may be made while you read. You may occasionally 
 find it necessary to make a " scheme " of an argument 
 in order to grasp it ; and you may often find it expe- 
 dient to write out an argument in your own words and 
 at some length in order to be sure that you understand 
 it. In any case, while you are reading, be sure to keep 
 your mind acti\'e. The habit into which I believe 
 some students fall of making notes in the mechanical 
 manner I hav^c described, and " getting up " an author 
 from their own dry abstract, depriv^es them of the 
 generous stimulus and excitement which they would 
 receive from direct contact with the vigorous activity 
 of a powerful mind. 
 
 This dissertation on the advantages and perils of 
 notes — you will take it for what it is worth — has led 
 me away from the subject which suggested it — the 
 manner in which you should read the great books 
 which have contributed to the formation of the par- 
 ticular theological doctrine which }ou happen to be 
 investigating. 
 
 To offer you any advice that is likely to be service- 
 able about the manner in which you read the Old and 
 the New Testaments, in order to discov^er what 
 
76 ''PRO OF- TEX TS," [lect. hi. 
 
 authority the doctrine — either In the substance of it 
 or in any of the forms which it has assumed — derives 
 from the teaching of the apostles, and from the his- 
 tory and the discourses of our Lord Jesus Christ Him- 
 self, is a more difficult task. Two methods are open 
 to you. If you adopt one of these you will find a 
 great part of the necessary work done for you already. 
 In books easily accessible, dogmatic and controversial 
 theologians have arranged and discussed all the 
 '* proof-texts " that can be alleged in support of almost 
 every conceivable doctrinal proposition. Calvinists of 
 every shade, Arminians of every school, Romanists and 
 Protestants, the representatives and advocates of con- 
 flicting or complementary theories on Original Sin, 
 the Divine Decrees, the Moral Freedom of Man, 
 the Person of Christ, the Atonement, the Nature and 
 Effects of the New Birth, the Blessings included in 
 Justification, the Conditions and Limits of Christian 
 Perfection, the Sacraments, the Future of the Impeni- 
 tent, have put in evidence every sentence and ev^ery 
 phrase and every isolated word of Holy Scripture 
 that could be supposed to give any support to their 
 respective positions. Whatever question we may be 
 investigating, the whole of the Scripture proof, so far 
 as it is contained in "proof-texts," is already in our 
 hands. The arguments and replies on the case may 
 go on for centuries longer, as they have gone on for cen- 
 turies already ; but the inspired witnesses have been 
 examined and cross-examined, their evidence is 
 before the court, it seems unlikely that any further 
 
LECT. III.] " FROOF-TEXTS:' 
 
 77 
 
 testimony can be obtained from them. If the sen- 
 tence is to be determined by the authority of the 
 witnesses, why need we examine them again ? Why 
 should we not be satisfied with considering their evi- 
 dence as it has been illustrated by the ablest men who 
 have had the conduct of the case on both sides ? 
 <■ I suppose that this is the common method of in- 
 vestigating the scriptural authority of a doctrine. I 
 do not disparage it. The conclusiveness of the " proof- 
 texts" which are usually adduced in behalf of the 
 great doctrines of the evangelical creed appears to me 
 decisive. It would be a sign of intellectual presump- 
 tion and excessive self-confidence if we did not avail 
 ourselves of the kind of evidence in support of a 
 theory or against it which is ready to our hand. But 
 I always feel that the least part of the Scripture proof 
 of a great doctrine is that which appears in a catena 
 of proof-texts ; and I therefore recommend you not 
 to suppose that }Ou have all the light which the New 
 Testament throws on any question which you are 
 investigating, until, with that definite question before 
 your mind, you have read the New Testament through 
 from end to end. 
 
 I speak of the New Testament alone, partly be- 
 cause the New Testament may be read through in a 
 very moderate amount of time, and partly because, 
 in the determination of any theological inquiry of 
 the kind to which I am now referring, the New Testa- 
 ment is practically decisive. Historically, the inves- 
 tigation of the religious ideas of the earlier books is pro- 
 
78 READ THE NEW TESTAMENT THROUGH, [lect. hi. 
 
 foundly interesting, and the roots and germs of Christian 
 thought are to be found in the writings of Moses and 
 the prophets. It must also be conceded that there 
 are parts of the teaching of the New Testament which 
 can hardly be accurately understood without an ac- 
 quaintance with the ancient institutions and traditional 
 hopes of the Jewish race. But practically the student 
 of Christian doctrine is governed by the authority of 
 the Christian Scriptures ; and to ask you, whenever- 
 you are trying to arriv^e at a satisfactory conclusion on 
 any doctrinal question, to read through the Old Testa- 
 ment as well as the New, would be to impose on you 
 an intolerable burden. 
 
 As you read, you will come across the " proof-texts " 
 which you have already considered in theological 
 manuals and in controversial and dogmatic treatises. 
 If I am not greatly mistaken, however, these texts 
 will have new life and colour in them. You will come 
 across them in their organic connection with the living 
 system of thought to which they naturally belong. 
 The words of Christ and of the apostles will receive 
 an unexpected illustration from the circumstances 
 which suggested them, from the emotion with which 
 they were uttered, from the impression they produced 
 on the people that heard them. A sentence may no 
 doubt be perfectly intelligible when it is separated 
 from the line of thought in which it occurs. The 
 meaning of its terms may be fixed by the grammar and 
 the lexicon beyond all reasonable controversy. But 
 very often there can be no controversy at all if you 
 
LECT. III.] A.¥ ARGUMENT OF ST. PAUL'S. 79 
 
 read it as it stands ; its meaning is determined with- 
 out appeal by the movement of thought which pre- 
 cedes it and the movement of thought which follows 
 it. The only true point of view from which to look 
 at any sentence is the point to which the author has 
 brought you by the path which leads up to it. 
 Look at it from any other point, and you will not 
 see it as he saw it, and as he intended that it should 
 be seen by his readers. 
 
 Take, for instance, the words of St. Paul in Rom. 
 V. 10: "For if, when we were enemies, we were re- 
 conciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, 
 being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." The 
 passage is quoted in support of the doctrine that the 
 death of our Lord Jesus Christ is the objective ground 
 on which God receives into His favour those whom 
 He had regarded with hostility on account of their sins. 
 But this application is denied. It is contended that 
 St. Paul meant that through the revelation of the in- 
 finite love of God in the death of Christ the hearts of 
 those who regarded God with hostility are subdued to 
 penitence, and that their hostility ceases. That the 
 death of Christ has this effect is earnestly maintained 
 by theologians who contend for an objective Atone- 
 ment ; but how are we to discover whether St. Paul 
 was thinking of the moral influence exerted by our 
 Lord's death on the hearts of men, or of its direct 
 relations to God Himself as the ground on which He for- 
 gives sin } The lexicon does not help us. The noun 
 translated " enemies " may mean either those zvJio are 
 
8o AN ARGUMENT OF ST. PAUns. [lect. iii. 
 
 hostile to lis or those to whom we are hostile. The verb 
 translated " we were reconciled " may mean either 
 that we have ceased to have any anger against some 
 one else, or that some one else has ceased to have any 
 anger against ns. The sentence standing alone may 
 therefore bear alternative interpretations. It may 
 mean that through the death of Christ we Christian 
 people have- ceased to be hostile to God — a truth upon 
 which all Christian theologians are agreed ; or that 
 through the death of Christ the Divine wrath, which 
 would have overtaken us sooner or later on account 
 of our sin, is averted — a truth which those who re- 
 ject the doctrine of an objective Atonement deny. 
 The passage is claimed with equal vehemence and 
 equal confidence by two rival doctrines. The lexicon, 
 as I have said, leaves the contest undecided. How is 
 it to be determined } 
 
 How } Precisely in the same way in which we 
 determine the meaning of a sentence which happens 
 to catch our eye in the middle of a letter from a 
 friend, when we are taking it out of the envelope. 
 The sentence appears ambiguous at first sight, and 
 if we looked at it alone, we might remain doubtful 
 about its meaning for a month. But if we begin the 
 letter and read it through, the ambiguity vanishes ; 
 and the sentence would never have seemed ambieuous 
 at all if we had not happened to see it before we had 
 read the earlier part of the letter. 
 
 And so, if your mind is filled and excited with the 
 thoughts which occupy the first four chapters of the 
 
LECT. III.] AN ARGUMENT OF ST. PAUL'S. Si 
 
 Epistle to the Romans, it seems to me that you will 
 be incapable of placing on this sentence in the fifth 
 chapter any other interpretation than that which is 
 imposed upon it by the theologians who contend for 
 an objectiv^e Atonement. In the middle of the first 
 chapter St. Paul dismisses the introductory matter 
 with the noble words : " I am not ashamed of the 
 gospel of Christ : for it is the power of God unto 
 salv^ation to every one that believeth ; to the Jew 
 first, and also to the Greek." He then opens the 
 doctrinal argument of the epistle by describing the 
 gospel as a revelation of the righteousness of God. 
 " Therein is the righteousness of God revealed from 
 faith to faith ; as it is written, The just shall live by 
 faith " — or " The just by faith shall live." But he passes 
 immediately to another revelation of a very different 
 and most awful kind — the revelation of the wrath 
 of God from heaven against all unrighteousness. In 
 what a terrible way this wrath has been revealed in 
 the heathen world, he tells us in the last half of the 
 first chapter. To St. Paul, the moral corruption of the 
 heathen was the sign that God, in His hot anger 
 against their idolatry, had " given them up to un- 
 cleanness " and " unto vile- affections." " As they did 
 not like to retain God in their knowledge " — or, as it 
 has been felicitously translated — " because they repro- 
 bated the knowledge of God, God gave tJicni over to 
 a reprobate mind." The crimes of which they were 
 guilty — so St. Paul believed — were so foul, so gross, 
 so revolting, that men would never have committed 
 
82 AN ARGUMENT OF ST. PAULS. [lect. iii. 
 
 them had not God, in His just resentment at their 
 revolt against His own authority, left them to them- 
 selves, and suffered them to be swept on from sin to 
 sin, from crime to crime, from shame to shame, 
 by the dark and turbid stream of their own worst 
 passions. The second chapter is a warning to the 
 Jews that their knowledge of the law, and the condem- 
 nation which they were so swift to pronounce on the 
 crimes of the Gentiles, would be no protection for 
 themselves against the judgment of God. God had 
 shown them wonderful goodness ; but they might 
 despise the riches of His goodness and forbearance 
 and long-suffering, not seeing that the intention of the 
 Divine long-suffering was to lead them to repentance. 
 If, while they condemned others for breaking God's 
 law, they broke it themselves, then St. Paul declares 
 that in the hardness and impenitence of their hearts 
 they were treasuring up unto themselves wrath against 
 the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous 
 judgment of God, " who will render to every man 
 according to his deeds : to them who by patient 
 continuance in well - doing seek for glory, honour, 
 and immortality, eternal life ; but unto them that are 
 contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey 
 unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation 
 and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, 
 of the ]^\N first, and also of the Gentile:" this is the 
 awful pre-eminence which St. Paul concedes to the 
 Jews who have the law and break it. It is an 
 appalling chapter. It is hot with the Divine wrath 
 
LECT. III.] AN ARGUMENT OF ST. PAULS. 83 
 
 against sin. While reading it I seem to be breathing 
 the burning air which rises from streams of fiery 
 lava, and my feet are scorched with the ashes which 
 have just been thrown from the furnace of a volcano. 
 In the early part of the third chapter the last hopes 
 of the Jews are swept away. If they supposed that, 
 although they were sinners, they would escape the 
 Divine wrath, because " to them were committed the 
 oracles of God " — and this was their chief distinction 
 — let them turn to those very oracles. Do the Jewish 
 Scriptures speak gently of the sins of Jews t In 
 times of national corruption did psalmists and pro- 
 phets shrink from uttering fierce words of condemna- 
 tion } You remember the chain of passages which 
 St. Paul quotes from the ancient Jewish books — pas- 
 sages which express anger and hatred against Jewish 
 sins. " Their throat is an open sepulchre ; with their 
 tongues they have used deceit ; the poison of asps is 
 under their lips ; their mouth is full of cursing and 
 bitterness ; their feet are swift to shed blood ; des- 
 truction and misery are in their wa\'s, and the way of 
 peace have they not known ; there is no fear of God 
 before their eyes." To be a Jew is not enough to 
 shelter a man from the Divine wrath. What things 
 soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under 
 the law ; and the very end for which these words were 
 written was that every mouth might be stopped — the 
 mouth of the Jew as well as of the Gentile — and that 
 so the whole world might become conscious of its 
 guilt before God. " By the deeds of the law slall no 
 
84 AN ARGUMENT OF ST. FAU VS. [lect. in. 
 
 flesh be justified in God's sight, for by the law is the 
 knowledge of sin." 
 
 It is from the Divine wrath that the world needs 
 deliverance, and the deliverance is accomplished 
 through Him whom God hath set forth for Him- 
 self as a Propitiation — through faith — has set forth 
 as a Propitiation in His blood ; to declare His right- 
 teousness, that He might be just and the Justifier of 
 him that believeth in Jesus. A Propitiation turns 
 wrath aside. 
 
 The fourth chapter is a parenthesis, and is intended 
 to show, by an appeal to two of the greatest names in 
 Jewish history — Abraham and David — that this doc- 
 trine of justification by faith instead of by the works 
 of the law was not new. In the fifth chapter, St. Paul 
 exults in the blessings which come to us from the 
 revelation of the Divine righteousness in Christ. 
 Read the chapter in the fierce light of all that has 
 been said in the earlier part of the epistle, and you 
 will be incapable of missing its meaning. We were 
 in peril of the wrath of God, but, " being justified by 
 faith, we have peace with God through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ;" that is, God is at peace with us. "By 
 Christ we have also access into the grace wherein we 
 stand." ^ We who were exposed to the Divine anger 
 are now standing in the Divine favour ; and more 
 than this, we who had reason to dread the revelation 
 of the righteous judgment of God — the indignation 
 and wrath, the tribulation and anguish, which have 
 been threatened against every soul of man that doeth 
 
LECT. III.] AN ARGUMENT OF ST. PAUns. 85 
 
 evil — cv^en we " triumph in the hope of the glory of 
 God." Link after link is added to the golden chain, 
 till the apostle exclaims, " God establishes — makes 
 certain — his love toward us, in that while we were 
 yet sinners Christ died for us ; much more then, 
 being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved 
 from the wrath through him." The wrath which 
 still threatens the impenitent and unbelieving, St. 
 Paul cannot forget ; but through Christ we who 
 believe shall be saved from it. " For if ivJicn we were 
 enemiesl' — when the ^\•rath of God was impending 
 over us on account of our sin, — " ive 2vere reconciled to 
 God,'' — received into His favour, into " the grace where- 
 in we stand," — " by tJie death of his Son, much more 
 being reconciled shall we be saved by his lif\' — saved 
 in the awful hour when His wrath against sin will be 
 revealed. 
 
 In this case a "proof-text" receives a definite and 
 more intensely vivid meaning when we read it in its 
 true place than when we read it in a classified list of 
 quotations. There are other cases in which passages 
 which could have no place in such a list may con- 
 tribute materials of great value in relation to the 
 doctrine we are investigating. We may sometimes 
 discover, for example, what the apostles must have 
 taught by observing the false impressions which their 
 teaching produced upon their converts, impressions 
 which are corrected in the epistles. St. Paul, in his 
 preaching at Thessalonica, must have given great pro- 
 minence to that glorious revelation of Christ which 
 
86 INDIRECT EXEGETICAL METHODS. [lect. hi. 
 
 is the supreme hope of the Church, or it would have 
 been impossible for the Thessalonians to imagine that 
 their Christian brethren who had died had sustained 
 an irreparable loss, and would not fully share the 
 glory of those who will be " alive " at " the coming of 
 the Lord." 
 
 The slanders of the enemies of the apostles are an 
 indication of vv^hat the apostolic doctrine must have 
 been. That it should have been possible for the 
 enemies of St. Paul to charge him with teaching that 
 men may " do evil that good may come," and " sin 
 that grace may abound," throws an intense light on 
 St. Paul's teaching about justification. 
 
 Further ; we should never forget that in the 
 apostolic epistles it is assumed that the persons to 
 whom they are addressed are already acquainted 
 with the elementary facts and truths of the Christian 
 revelation. It is very rarely, therefore, that the 
 apostles state in a categorical form that our Lord 
 Jesus Christ was divine ; but that they believed in 
 His divinity is shown in the reverence and boundless 
 love with which they speak of Him, in their habitual 
 recognition of His authority over their moral life, 
 their fervent gratitude for what He had done and 
 suffered for themselves and all mankind ; it is shown 
 by the immense significance which they attach to His 
 sufferings and death,'4nd by their trust in His mercy 
 for the forgiveness of sin, and in the power of His life 
 for strength to do the will of God ; it is shown by the 
 awe and the fear with which they anticipate the hour 
 
LECT. III.] INDIRECT EXEGETICAL METHODS. 87 
 
 in which He will judge the world. They very 
 rarely affirm in so many words that Christ died 
 for our sins, or that it is nccessar}- to be born again 
 of the Holy Spirit in order to enter the Divine 
 kingdom and to inherit eternal glory ; but these 
 truths are implied in all that they say about the great 
 prerogatives and hopes of the Christian Church. One 
 of the surest methods of ascertaining the contents of 
 the apostolic faith is, therefore, to study closely the 
 elements and characteristics of the apostolic life. 
 
 How these principles will affect your method of 
 reading an epistle, in order to discover the relation of 
 the writer to any particular theological doctrine on v 
 which you are trying to form a judgment, needs no 
 elaborate illustration. You will not look merely for 
 passages in which the doctrine is definitely asserted. 
 You will ask whether the writer's supposed faith in the 
 doctrine accounts for his way of conducting an argu- 
 ment — for what he omits that would naturally have 
 occurred to him if he had held a hostile theory, as 
 well as for what he has written ; whether it is the 
 natural and necessary complement of truths which he 
 explicitly affirms ; whether it is implied in his thanks- 
 givings and prayers ; whether it explains any of the 
 precepts which the epistle contains and the motiv^es by 
 which they are enforced ; whether if the doctrine had 
 not been a recognised part of the Christian faith some 
 of these precepts would have been necessary ; or 
 whether if the precepts had been necessary they would 
 have been enforced by different motives ; whether the 
 
88 INDIRECT EXEGETICAL METHODS. [lect. hi. 
 
 errors which are corrected in the epistle — errors of 
 opinion or errors of spirit and practice — could have 
 originated in a natural misapprehension of the apos- 
 tolic doctrine on the subject of your inquiry, and if so, 
 in what form the doctrine must have been taught, to 
 render the misapprehension possible. 
 
 These same general principles of Investigation may 
 be applied to the history and teaching of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ contained in the Gospels. Suppose that 
 He had been a man and nothing more — would not 
 the story of His life, and those passages of it which 
 are most truly human, have run differently, even 
 though the story had been written by the most unin- 
 telligent and fanatical of His disciples, or by the most 
 unintelligent and fanatical of their converts ? Suppose 
 that He had come — not to die for the sins of men, and 
 to assert His own claims to supreme moral authority 
 over the human race, but simply to teach nobler 
 ethics and a nobler religious faith than the world had 
 learnt before — would even His ethical teaching have 
 assumed its present shape, would his religious teach- 
 ing have been given in its present tone ? The Sermon 
 on the Mount — is there nothing in the manner of it 
 which Implies that He claimed to be more than a 
 prophet ? The story of His relations to Mary His 
 mother — Is there nothing in It which suggests that He 
 was infinitely more than her Son ? The facts which 
 illustrate His relations to His human friends — do they 
 not provoke many Inquiries which receive no satisfac- 
 tory solution except from the theory which attributes 
 
LFXT. III.] INDIRECT EXEGETICAL METHODS. 89 
 
 to Him a superhuman dignity and glory ? How was 
 it that He took it for granted that it was their highest « 
 moral and religious duty to forsake all in order to 
 serve Him ? How was it that He never consulted 
 them ? How was it that though on more than one 
 occasion He prayed in their presence, He never 
 prayed with them ? How was it that He never con- 
 soled them in their moral weakness by assuring 
 them that He too was conscious of the weakness 
 which is common to humanity ? How was it that He 
 never confessed sin ? ^ 
 
 The results of this method of investigating the 
 scriptural evidence in favour of any theological doc- 
 trine may not always be easily available for contro- 
 versial purposes ; they may sometimes be too subtle 
 for use in your sermons ; but, if I may judge from my 
 own experience, they will give great strength and 
 certainty to your own theological convictions, and 
 will continually suggest lines of thought which will 
 make your preaching fresh, vigorous, and instructive. 
 
 I hoped that I should have been able to finish this 
 afternoon all the suggestions I intended to offer you 
 about ministerial reading, but I find that I have some 
 things to say which must be reserved for the next 
 lecture. 
 
 I See the argument of this paragraph ehiborated in Harvey 
 Goodwin's Hulsean Lectures for 1846, " The Glory of the only- 
 begotten of the Father seen in the Manhood of Christ." 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 READING (concluded). 
 
 GENTLEMEN,— It is hardly necessary to remind 
 you that a man may have clear and strong 
 theological convictions ; may have a large acquaint- 
 ance with the contents of the Holy Scriptures and with 
 the history of the doctrinal thought of the Church, 
 and may yet be a dull and ineffective preacher. There 
 are many men whose knowledge Is rich and varied, 
 but who cannot teach. And of those who can teach 
 — that is, address a solitary faculty of human nature, 
 the understanding — how few there are who can com- 
 pel every province in the broad continent of the 
 intellectual and moral life of man to confess their 
 authority and power. It is one thing to have a clear 
 perception of Christian truth ourselves ; it is quite 
 another thing to be able to make the truth clear to 
 the common mind ; to force the conscience to feel its 
 pressure ; to disturb the slumbers of those mysterious 
 instincts which vindicate our kinship to God ; to call 
 to the aid of the Gospel all the friendly powers of 
 man's moral life ; to speak of the divine anger so as 
 to rouse the fears of men ; to kindle their imagination 
 by illustrations of the nobleness, and beauty, and 
 
LECT. IV.] A FALSE QUOTATION. 
 
 91 
 
 blessedness of a life in God ; to move them to peni- 
 tence, and to inspire them with faith in the infinite 
 love of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 You, gentlemen, are to be preachers. The instru- 
 ment you have to master stands before you — the 
 soul of man. You have to learn how to handle every 
 stop and to touch every key, and to bring out of it 
 the sweetest, richest, saddest, wildest, most stately and 
 most triumphant spiritual music. I know that you 
 can do nothing except through the concurrence of the 
 great power of God ; but if I understand anything of 
 the laws which determine the success of our preach- 
 ing, we have no right to hope that God will work with 
 us unless we work ourselves. No matter how earnestly 
 we pray, we may take it for granted that God will not 
 do His part unless we do ours. " Work, without 
 prayer," said an old English writer, whose name I 
 have forgotten, " is atheism ; and prayer without work 
 is presumption." If wc have to work at all we should 
 try to work in the most effective way. 
 
 There is a saying of St. Paul's which is often quoted «/ 
 inaccurately, and the false quotation produces a most 
 pernicious impression. He is represented as saying, 
 " Paul may plant and Apollos may water, but God 
 must give the increase." However true this may 
 be— and I do not for a moment dispute its truth— 
 the quotation in that form seems to imply that 
 between human work and the di\ine blessing, which 
 alone can make it successful, there is only a' casual 
 and uncertain relation. I prefer to take St. Paul's 
 
92 *' THE ARM OF FLESIir [lfxt. iv. 
 
 words as he wrote them : — "I planted, Apollos 
 watered, but God gave the increase." St. Paul did 
 not mean to imply that after we have done our best 
 it is as likely as not that God may do nothing. The 
 Corinthian Christians were divided into factions. 
 They quarrelled about the merits and claims of their 
 religious teachers. St. Paul reminds them that who- 
 ever may do the work, the glory of its success belongs 
 to God. 
 
 The inference which is sometimes drawn from these 
 words, even when they are not misquoted, is as pre- 
 posterous as it is mischievous. Since the success of 
 our work comes from God, it is argued that know- 
 ledge — though as profound as St. Paul's — and elo- 
 quence — though as fervent as the eloquence of Apollos 
 — count for nothing. It would be equally reasonable 
 to argue that because the vintage comes from God it 
 counts for nothing whether or not the vine-grower 
 understands his business and works hard in the vine- 
 yard. God gives no vintage if men plant elms instead 
 of vTftes. The vine itself will bear no grapes unless 
 God gives " the increase ; " but it may be so planted 
 that it will be certain to die in a week ; it may be so 
 cultivated, or the cultivation may be so neglected, that 
 the life and vigour of the vine will be fatally injured. \^ 
 
 Knowledge is clearly of some importance. A man 
 must know something about Christian truth or he can- 
 not preach the gospel at all. And who can tell when 
 he knows so much that more knowledge will be use- 
 less to him } We are surely trusting just as much in 
 
LECT. IV.] " THE ARM OF FLESIV 93 
 
 the " arm of flesh " when we insist that a minister 
 must know a Httle as when we insist that it is 
 desirable that he should know a great deal. 
 
 " Yes," it may be replied, " we admit that the more 
 a minister knows about God the better he is qualified 
 for his work, but what we object to is a solicitude about 
 st}'le and rhetoric and human learning ; this shows 
 that ministers are relying on the wisdom of men and 
 not on the power of God." And yet, I suppose that 
 if the good people who talk to us in this way send a 
 missionary to China to preach the Gospel, they expect 
 him to le.'irn Chinese. Why it should be supposed 
 that a Christian missionary in China betrays no want 
 of faith in God when he learns the words of the 
 Chinese language from a dictionary, its construction 
 from a grammar, its idioms from intercourse with the 
 people, but that a Christian minister in the United 
 States, or in England, is " trusting in an arm of flesh " 
 when he tries to increase his knowledge of English 
 by studying the great English authors, and when he 
 listens to homiletical lectures and reads boo!-cs on 
 rhetoric, in order that he may learn how to speak 
 more clearly and more effectively, is to me wholly 
 incomprehensible. Since we have to preach, we ought 
 to learn how to preach well. 
 
 Some men speak contemptuously of lectures on 
 preaching and treatises on the science or art of rhetoric. 
 For myself, I have read scores of books of this kind, and 
 I have never read one without finding in it some useful 
 suggestion. I advise you to read every book on 
 
94 THE THEORY OF PREACHING. [lect. iv. 
 
 preaching that you can buy or borrow, whether it is 
 old or new, Cathohc or Protestant, EngHsh, French, or 
 German. Learn on what principles the great preachers 
 of other churches as well as of your own, of other 
 countries as well as of your own, of ancient as well as 
 of modern times, have done their work. If your ex- 
 perience corresponds with mine, the dullest and most 
 tedious writer on this subject will remind you of some 
 fault that you are committing habitually, or of some 
 element of power which you have failed to use. 
 
 But useful as you will find the study of the theory 
 of preaching, you will probably find that the study of 
 the sermons of successful preachers is equally useful. 
 The artist is not satisfied with reading scientific 
 treatises on Perspective and lectures on Painting, nor 
 even with watching sea and lg.nd, mountain and glen, 
 forest and river, under their changing aspects, from 
 the cold grey light of the early morning to the fiery 
 splendours of sunset; he spends months and years, 
 if he is able, in the galleries of Florence and Rome, of 
 France, Germany, and England, trying to learn how 
 the immortal masters of form and colour worked the 
 miracles in the presence of which generation after 
 generation has stood with wonder and delight. You 
 will derive great advantage from following their 
 example. 
 
 Of Chrysostom and the other famous preachers of 
 the ancient Church I will not venture to speak ; but let 
 me advise you to study the sermons of Bossuet, Bourda- 
 loue, and Massillon, of Lacordaire and Ravignan, of 
 
LECT. IV.] SERMONS TO BE READ. 95 
 
 Monod and Bersier ; of Latimer and Jeremy Taylor, 
 Barrow, South, and Tillotson ; of Howe and Owen and 
 Watts ; of Chalmers, Edward Irving, and Guthrie ; of 
 Robert Hall, and Dr. Maclaren of Manchester, and 
 Charles Spurgeon ; of Thomas Binney and James 
 Parsons; of John Henry Newman and Dr. Pusey; of 
 Archdeacon Manning — about the sermons of Cardinal 
 Manning I know nothing ; of Frederick Robertson 
 and Canon Liddon. The merits of American preachers, 
 both living and dead, arc better known to you than 
 they can be to me. From some of your living 
 preachers I have learnt very much ; so much that I 
 have often felt how superfluous and even presump- 
 tuous it is for me to have crossed the Atlantic to deliver 
 these lectures ; among the dead I am under excep- 
 tional obligations to Jonathan Edwards and Mr. 
 Finney. To these names I trust you will allow me 
 to add that of another man, from whose theology I 
 differ widely, but for whose power and resources as a 
 preacher, and for whose courage in standing by the 
 cause of freedom in evil times, I have the greatest 
 admiration — I refer to the late Theodore Parker. 
 
 Of the German preachers I know too little to have 
 the right to select the names of those who are best 
 worth reading. Of the Italian preachers I know only 
 one — Scgncri, some of whose sermons were translated 
 a few years ago by an English clergyman ; they are 
 very striking. 
 
 If you read sermons wisely, it will not be with the 
 hope of discovering "suggestive thoughts," as we are 
 
J 
 
 96 HO IV TO READ SERMONS. [lect. iv. 
 
 accustomed to call them in England — thoughts which, 
 with a very little cultivation, you may grow into 
 sermons of your own ; — but you will read with a keen 
 eye for the qualities which have given to the great 
 preachers of our own and of past times the power they 
 exerted over the men that listened to them. You 
 will notice what subjects they preached on, and the 
 sort of texts they selected. You will try to find out 
 the principles and methods which governed them, 
 consciously or unconsciously, in the arrangement and 
 development of their principal thoughts. You will ask 
 whether the introduction to the sermon you are 
 reading really introduces what comes after it ; you will 
 observe how the preacher effects his " transitions " — to 
 which French preachers attach so much importance — 
 from one principal division of his subject to another. 
 You will endeavour to discover what is the secret of 
 his success in investing very familiar truths with fresh 
 interest. You will consider the amount and the kind of 
 truth which he has been able to present to a congre- 
 gation in a single discourse. You will notice how he 
 handles his illustrations. You will especially study 
 the methods in which he appeals, directly or indirectly, 
 to the hopes and fears of men, to their moral imagina- 
 tion, to their conscience, to their sense of shame, to 
 their susceptibility to gratitude, to all the active ele- 
 ments of their moral and religious nature. 
 
 In judging of sermons you will, of course, take into 
 account the kind of effect which the men who preached 
 them are known to have produced. The sermons 
 
LECT. IV.] HOW TO READ SPEECHES. 97 
 
 which have been preached in great revivals deserve 
 special study. If they did their work, you may take 
 it for granted that there is much to be learnt from 
 them. For the practical ends of your ministry you 
 may find it far more profitable to study the sermons ^ 
 of the late ]\Ir. Finney, and to listen to my friend Mr. 
 Moody, than to spend your strength on the preachers 
 that were admired by the Court of Louis XIV. 
 
 You ought to study the speeches of great secular 
 orators in the same way. The speeches of Lord 
 Erskinc, of Charles James Fox, of Plunket, of Grattan, 
 of Lord Brougham, of Mr. Bright, will repay careful 
 reading. The varying merits of your own orators are 
 known better to you than to me. In reading them 
 you will not be satisfied with admiring " fine passages." 
 The best and strongest parts of a speech — the parts 
 which reveal the true genius of the orator — are not 
 always the most brilliant. It was not with the deco- 
 rated hilt of his sword that the old knight cleav^ed in 
 two the skull of his enemy ; nor was it the shining, 
 plume on his helmet that protected his own head. 
 Very often the real strength of a speech lies in no 
 particular passage which you can learn and declaim, 
 but in the skilful arrangement of its arguments, illus- 
 trations, and appeals ; and the keen edge of it is some- 
 times to be found in passages which are destitute of 
 ornament, and \\hich may even look almost careless in 
 their style. 
 
 The way to make your study of a great speech 
 really useful is to place yourself in the position of the 
 
 8 
 
98 HOW TO READ SPEECHES. [lect. iv. 
 
 speaker ; to remember his previous history, the kind of 
 authority he had with his audience, the confidence or 
 the distrust, the enthusiasm or the hostiUty, with which 
 they regarded him. You must also recall the position 
 of the cause he was defending or attacking, the know- 
 ledge which his audience possessed of its merits and 
 demerits, the measure of their sympathy with the side 
 to which the speaker was committed, or of their an- 
 tag-onism to it. Try to understand what were the weak 
 points in his case and what were the strong points ; 
 what aspects of it were likely to secure the goodwill 
 of the audience, and what aspects of it were likely to 
 provoke hostile prejudice. Then look into the speech 
 and try to learn how all the conditions under which it 
 was delivered influenced the orator in the tone which 
 he assumed when he began to speak — made him 
 courteous or defiant, resolute and uncompromising, or 
 modest and conciliatory. If his tone changed as he 
 went along, ask why, and whether the change was wise. 
 Consider, too, how the conditions under which he was 
 speaking determined him to use some arguments 
 which may not strike you as being in themselves very 
 conclusive, and to avoid others which in themselves 
 may seem to you to have much greater force. 
 Consider how these conditions influenced him in the 
 arrangement of his topics, in his allusions and illus- 
 trations. Take particular notice of the way in which 
 he explains to his audience what he thinks they may 
 have misunderstood, and does it without implying that 
 they are ignorant, or that they have formed their 
 
LECT. IV.] HO IV TO READ SPEECHES. 99 
 
 Opinions hastily and rashly. Observe how he presents 
 over and over again, in different forms, the strong 
 parts of his argument, the facts, the inferences, with 
 which he is most anxious to fill the minds of those 
 whom he is trying to convince. Watch him in his 
 methods of relieving the attention of his audience ; 
 consider the use he makes of humour, or of wit, or of 
 imagination. Observe how, by a passing allusion, he 
 touches the deepest sympathies, or the just pride, or 
 perhaps the ambition and the self-interest, of those 
 whom he is addressing. " Fine passages " may occur 
 here and there ; but a true orator never uses them for 
 their own sake. He wants to convince his audience 
 of the innocence of his client ; of the soundness of the 
 political principles which he is defending, or the rotten- 
 ness of the political principles which he is assailing ; 
 of the merits of his own political friends and the de- 
 merits of his opponents. If " fine passages " will help 
 him, well and good ; but if not, then he docs without 
 them. 
 
 The resources and methods of the preacher differ, 
 no doubt, from the resources and methods of the legal 
 or political orator ; but you may discover in the 
 speeches of great lawyers, statesmen, and agitators, 
 many suggestions which, if }^ou are wise, you will be 
 able to use in the preparation of your sermons. Read- 
 ing of this kind will also do something to prevent that 
 want of completeness and symmetry in your intellectual 
 development which is likely to be the result of exclu- 
 sive devotion to theological studies. Thomas Taylor, 
 
 8 * 
 
loo GENERAL READING, [lect. iv. 
 
 the Platonist, used to show with pride two of his 
 fingers which, in copying out the manuscripts of 
 Proclus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand, had been 
 so bent that he had lost the use of them. " It would 
 be well," says Hazlitt, who tells the story, " if our 
 deep studies often produced no other crookedness and 
 deformity." ^ 
 
 To avoid this " crookedness and deformity," and to 
 maintain free intellectual relations with cultivated men 
 who are not professional theologians, as well as to satisfy 
 your own intellectual tastes, which, I trust, you will 
 always think it a duty to keep healthy and active, there 
 are other kinds of reading which you will not permit 
 yourselves to neglect. History — and especially the 
 history of your own country ; the lives of men who 
 have exerted a great and critical influence on the 
 fortunes of great nations, who have originated re- 
 markable religious movements, or who are famous 
 in literature and art ; the leading and authoritative 
 books on political economy ; books which illustrate 
 the laws of social and national life; books which 
 present the ascertained results of the investigations of 
 modern science: all these will enrich your thought, 
 will prevent you from becoming mere sermon-makers 
 and theological pedants. 
 
 It is hardly necessary that I should suggest that you 
 
 should read the books which, through century after 
 
 century, have succeeded in charming the imagination 
 
 and the hearts of men living in different countries, and 
 
 I " Sketches and Essays," p, 6. 
 
LECT. IV.] POPULAR BOOKS, ici 
 
 Speaking different tongues. You may not be able to 
 see the bazaars of Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad, but 
 from "The Arabian Nights" you may learn more about 
 the East than some people seem to know when they 
 come home after a long Eastern tour ; and " Don 
 Quixote " may teach you as much as a month in 
 Spain. Other books, not as famous as these, have as 
 strong a claim upon all who speak the English tongue. 
 It is a disgrace for an American or an Englishman 
 not to have read " Robinson Crusoe;" and, if I may 
 dare to say it, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and 
 "Holy War" are quite as profitable reading for our 
 purposes as very much that was written by Augustine 
 himself. 
 
 Having found courage to say this, I think I may as 
 well ruin m}-sclf altogether by saying something more. 
 At the risk of bringing down upon myself the sharp 
 and scornful condemnation of the more learned persons 
 in my audience, I will venture to add that I do not re- 
 commend }'OU to refuse to read books that have a 
 merely ephemeral popularity. If }'OU were all des- 
 tined to occupy university chairs, I might offer you 
 different advice — supposing that, in that case, I could 
 presume to offer you any advice at all — and yet 
 it may be possible that even in the library of a pro- 
 fessor of ecclesiastical history, above the shelves on 
 which the folios of the Magdeburg centuriators and the 
 rival Annals of Baronius stand side by side in solemn 
 and awful dignity, there may be a shelf that gives a 
 kindly refuge to " Helen's Babies ; " and I trust that I 
 
I02 EPHEMERAL BOOKS. [lect. iv. 
 
 am guilty of no irreverence if I imagine that even a pro- 
 fessor of dogmatic theology, if he has unfortunately 
 forgotten to put a volume of Athanasius or Aquinas 
 into his portmanteau to while away the tedious hours 
 of a railway journey, may go to a book-stall and buy 
 a volume of Mark Twain's, or the last book by Bret 
 Harte. I am conscious, however, that in these wild 
 speculations I am venturing on very thin ice. But we 
 who are not professors have to interest and impress 
 common people ; and whatever may be said about the 
 dissipation of intellectual energy incurred by the 
 attempt to read all the books that other men are talk- 
 ing about, I am convinced that we ought to keep up 
 a fair acquaintance with contemporary literature. If 
 we know nothing of the books that our congregations 
 ^are reading, they will soon learn to think of us as 
 intellectual foreigners — strangers to their ways and 
 thoughts, ignorant of a large part, and in some 
 respects the most interesting part, of their lives.^ 
 
 You will not misunderstand me. Your strength 
 must be given to grave and continuous studies. You 
 will fence round the prime hours of the day and keep 
 them for hard work, or else you will be lost. But the 
 humblest cottage should have a flower-bed as well as 
 a potato plot ; and even in England, where ground is 
 becoming scarce, I should be sorry to see the village 
 green ploughed up and turned into a corn-field. This 
 desultory and miscellaneous reading will give you a 
 certain intellectual exhilaration, and will enable you 
 to do your severer work with greater vigour. 
 
LECT. IV.] INTELLECTUAL '' hobbies:' 103 
 
 I always envy the men who have an intellectual 
 hobby — a hobby which they learned to ride when 
 they were young — perhaps when they were boys ; 
 and on which, even in their busiest years, they continue 
 to trot with as much enjoyment as ever. To have 
 some pursuit in which we are keenly interested, 
 lying outside our serious and imperative occupa- 
 tions, is a great intellectual refreshment.*/ It does not 
 very much matter what the pursuit is. Some men 
 collect ancient coins and learn all about them ; some 
 men care for a particular department of natural 
 science ; some concentrate their historical reading on 
 a particular century in the history of a particular 
 country ; some men devote themselves to a particular 
 poet and to all the literature that illustrates what he 
 has written ; some to Egypt, some to Holland, some 
 to Florence, some to Rome. If we do not give to 
 these by-subjects the time and energy which we ought 
 to give to the main business of life, they are an un- 
 qualified advantage to us. 
 
 Though we may have nothing that can be called a 
 " hobby," we may have our favourite books. There is 
 a wonderful charm in reading a book every line of 
 which is familiar to you. It is like talking over 
 school days and college days with an old friend. You 
 have heard him tell every one of his tales a dozen 
 times ; you know as soon as he begins a story how it 
 will end ; you anticipate his look when he comes to 
 his comic passages, and the tone in which he will tell 
 them, and the precise point at which he will explode 
 
£04 FAVOURITE BOOKS. [lect. iv. 
 
 in irrepressible laughter ; but the old stories from the 
 old friend have a greater charm than the fresh wit of 
 a stranger. Or, it is like walking along the roads of a 
 pleasant country in which for many years we have 
 spent our holiday. We know the trees and the 
 brooks and the bridges ; we look for the picturesque 
 cottages which we shall have to pass ; we are pre- 
 pared for the view of the distant mountains or the 
 shining sea, which is caught at a particular turn in the 
 road : in seeing the old objects one after another, 
 when we have been away from them for a few 
 months, there is a kind of pathetic surprise which 
 touches us far more deeply than the surprise of 
 novelty. I 
 
 If books are anything more to us than mere paper 
 and printer's ink, if, while we read, to use the felicitous 
 language of Bolingbroke, "we live with men who lived 
 before us, and inhabit countries which we have never 
 seen," we shall have our elect friends in our library as 
 well as among living men and women ; and there will 
 be books that will have the same kind of power over 
 our imagination and our heart as the village among 
 the hills which we dream about when we are worn 
 down with our winter's work, and in which summer 
 after summer we have found rest and health and 
 vigour. 
 
 The old books remain while everything else passes 
 away. The chances and changes of this mortal life 
 do not touch them. The fields in which we picked 
 
 I See Note at the end of the Lecture. 
 
LECT. IV.] FAVOURITE BOOKS. 105 
 
 wild flowers and played cricket when we were boys 
 are covered with dreary streets. The houses in which 
 we lived have been pulled down, and there are un- 
 familiar buildings on the site of our old homes. The 
 churches in which we worshipped have been enlarged 
 or rebuilt. The preachers to whom we listened are 
 dead, and the faces we remember so well are no longer 
 seen in the old pews ; or, if they are there still, they 
 are greatly changed. The brilliant and romantic lads 
 of our youth have become hard and prosy men ; 
 the bright wild girls have become very uninteresting 
 matrons ; the aged people, whose sorrows and loneli- 
 ness we pitied, or whose sanctity we reverenced, have 
 all passed away. We ourselves are conscious, as the 
 years drift by, that our strength is not what it once 
 was ; that there is less elasticity in our step ; that we 
 are more easily tired ; that our sight is at times a 
 little dim and our hearing a little dull. But we open 
 our books, and the vanished years return. Time has 
 run back and fetched the age of gold.^ The fancy 
 of Jeremy Taylor is as free and as fresh, and the 
 wit of South is as keen, and the fervour of Baxter 
 is as intense, as when we first heard them preach. 
 Charles James Fox is still speaking with undi- 
 minished energy and fire on the Westminster scru- 
 tiny. We knew old Lear when we were boys ; he is 
 no older now. Most of the young men and maidens 
 
 * " For if such holy song 
 Inwrap our fancy long, 
 Time will rim back aiid fetch the age of gold" 
 
 Milton's " Hymn on the Nativity." 
 
io6 FAVOURITE BOOKS. [lect. iv. 
 
 whose love passages entertained us when we ourselves 
 were young are old married people, and occasionally 
 wrangle over the expenses of housekeeping ; but 
 Romeo and Juliet are courting still : 
 
 " For ever he will love and she be fair." ^ 
 
 What books you will choose as your intimate 
 friends will depend upon your humour and taste. 
 Dr. Guthrie's choice seemed to me charming. He 
 told me that he read through four books every year — 
 the Bible, " The Pilgrim's Progress," four of Sir Walter 
 Scott's novels, which he reckoned as one book, and a 
 fourth book, which I have forgotten, but I think it was 
 " Robinson Crusoe." You will choose some books 
 because they soothe and quiet you ; some because 
 they are as invigorating as mountain air ; some 
 because they amuse you by the shrewdness of their 
 humour ; some because they give wings to your fancy ; 
 some because they kindle your imagination. 
 
 But there are books of another kind, which have 
 graver claims. Every great and original writer has 
 his characteristic intellectual method. He has his 
 own way of approaching every question that he 
 discusses ; his own way of investigating the evidence 
 of every doubtful proposition ; his own way of analys- 
 ing and destroying the arguments which are alleged 
 in support of a position which he rejects ; and his 
 own way of developing the proof of a position which 
 he maintains. If you read him carefully you will also 
 
 ^ " For ever wilt thou love and she be fair." — Keats's "Ode to 
 a Grecian Urn." 
 
LECT. IV.] GREAT BOOKS. 107 
 
 discover that there are certain settled principles of 
 judgment which are explicitly or implicitly recognised 
 in all his intellectual decisions. These correspond 
 to those great constitutional principles and those 
 authoritative legal maxims which are current in the 
 law courts and which govern an infinite variety of 
 cases. It is another quality of a writer of original 
 and creative genius that he is never satisfied with 
 dead thought. Whether his ideas are true or false, 
 they have such vital force in them that they are 
 capable of indefinite growth, and are the roots of 
 whole systems of speculation. 
 
 Close familiarity with a {qw great books will do 
 more than anything else to enrich and discipline your 
 mind. If we walk day after day with some illustrious 
 writer, we shall naturally fall into his pace. Thinking 
 his thoughts over and over again, we shall uncon- 
 sciously adopt his methods of thinking. He will train 
 us to his own habits of caution, moderation, and saga- 
 city. He will inspire us with his own courage and 
 boldness. Wc shall catch, without knowing it, and 
 without any attempt at imitation, something of that 
 intellectual manner which gives to everything that 
 he has written an inimitable nobleness, or vigour, or 
 grace. We shall become masters, not only of all the 
 thoughts which are actually expressed in his books, 
 but of very much that these thoughts imply. We 
 shall fully develop truths which were present to him 
 in a rudimentary form. We shall not be satisfied 
 with coming into possession of the rich golden grain 
 
io8 LEARNING AND PIETY. [lect. iv. 
 
 which he was able to garner, we shall drive our own 
 plough across the fields which he first reclaimed from 
 \/ the waste ; we shall practise his methods of cultiva- 
 tion ; we shall sow the seed which he has left us ; and 
 we shall reap fresh harvests of our own. 
 
 Perhaps you may say that I am expecting from you 
 an enormous amount of intellectual labour — an amount 
 of intellectual labour which you may even fear would 
 be inconsistent with the culture of your personal 
 religious life and with hearty and unreserved devotion 
 to your ministerial duties. In England, during the 
 last thirty years, we have seen from time to time very 
 unpleasant indications of a distrust of the influence of 
 literature and learning on ministerial earnestness and 
 efficiency. We are told that the Church does not 
 need more intellectual culture in the ministry, but 
 more spiritual fervour ; that we spend too much time 
 with our books and too little in active, energetic 
 labour for the salvation of mankind. The good men 
 who indulge in complaints of this kind are in the 
 habit of uttering loud lamentations over the disap- 
 pearance of the simpler piety and deeper devotion of 
 our fathers. The traditions of Puritan faith and 
 fervour are appealed to in order to shame and to 
 stimulate our languid zeal. They cannot be invoked 
 too often. 
 
 But what kind of men were these saintly ancestors 
 of ours } Did the fire of their devotion burn so high 
 because it was not choked with an excess of intellec- 
 tual fuel ? Were they better men than we are because 
 
LECT. IV.] THE PURITANS. 109 
 
 they had less learning ? Were they more zealous as 
 ministers because they were less industrious as 
 students ? 
 
 John Howe was a great theologian and a great 
 preacher ; but he was something more. " None can 
 peruse his writings," says his biographer, my own ac- 
 complished tutor, Mr. Henry Rogers, " without seeing 
 in almost every page traces of his ardent admiration 
 for Plato, and proofs that it was the admiration of a 
 kindred mind."^ But if the lofty idealism of Plato 
 was most akin to his own genius, his "Living Temple" 
 shows that he had an extraordinary mastery of the 
 whole range of philosophical speculation. He knew 
 the modern writers as well as the ancient. A con- 
 siderable part of his greatest treatise is a reply to 
 Spinoza ; and he had studied Descartes, and speaks 
 of him as " that great and justly admired master in 
 this faculty," and " that famed restorer and improver 
 of some principles of the ancient philosophy." 2 The 
 theological learning of John Owen, in its immense 
 extent and its massiveness, has sometimes reminded 
 me of those vast ruins which still perpetuate the 
 grandeur of ancient Rome. Some years ago, when I 
 was young and had my own ambitions, I extracted a 
 passage from Richard Baxter — I forget in which of 
 his works it is to be found — in which he tells us in 
 confidence the nature and variety of his own studies. 
 He sa}'s : " I have looked over Hutten, Vives, Erasmus, 
 
 ^ " Life of Howe,' p. 20. 
 2 "Works," vol. iii. pp. 53, T^. 
 
no THE PURITANS. [lect.iv. 
 
 Scaliger, Salmasius, Casaubon, and many other criti- 
 cal grammarians, and all Gruter's critical volumes. I 
 have read almost all the physic and metaphysics I 
 could hear of. I have wasted much of my time 
 among loads of historians, chronologers, and anti- 
 quaries. I despise none of their learning ; all truth is 
 useful. Mathematics, which I have least of, I find a 
 pretty, manlike sport. ... I have higher thoughts of 
 the schoolmen than Erasmus and our other gram- 
 marians had : I much value the method and sobriety 
 of Aquinas, the subtlety of Scotus and Ockham, the 
 plainness of Durandus, the solidity of Ariminensis, the 
 profundity of Bradwardine ; the excellent acuteness 
 of many of their followers ; of Aureolus, Capreolus, 
 of Bannes, Alvarez, Zumel, &c. ; of Mayro, Lychetus, 
 Trombeta, Faber, Meurisse, Rada, &c. ; of Ruiz, 
 Pennatus, Suarez, Vasquez, &c. ; of Hurtado, of 
 Albertinus, of Lud. a Dola, and many others." 
 
 Their studies did not lessen the ardour of their zeal. 
 These were the men who were the ministers of our 
 churches when religious faith was most robust and 
 when religious earnestness was most intense. It 
 was the teaching of men like these that gave muscle 
 and fibre to the religious life of the founders of New 
 England. Among the early ministers of your own 
 churches were men of the same masculine and noble 
 type. They were great students as well as great 
 preachers, and their studies helped their preaching. 
 
 Some accounts have come down to us of the 
 personal habits of the men of those times. John 
 
LECT. IV.] THE PURITANS. iii 
 
 Owen, during several years of his university life, 
 allowed himself only four hours' sleep, but kept him- 
 self in health and vigour by those athletic exercises 
 which enabled him, when he was Vice-Chancellor of 
 Oxford, to seize with his own hands a refractory 
 student and carry him off to prison, to the amaze- 
 ment of the gownsmen who were intending to effect 
 a rescue. Edmund Calamy studied sixteen hours a 
 day while chaplain to the Bishop of Ely, read Augus- 
 tine through five times, and, among his other studies, 
 mastered the immense literature which was created 
 during the controversy between Bellarmine and his 
 opponents. Matthew Poole, while preparing his 
 " Synopsis," which occupied him ten years of his life, 
 rose every morning between three and four o'clock, 
 worked till eight or nine, when he ate a raw (t^%, 
 worked on again till tweh^e o'clock, when his ascetic 
 meal was repeated, and did not leave his desk till the 
 afternoon was far advanced. <^ In the evening we are 
 told that he used to visit a friend and be very merry 
 till supper, after which he turned the talk to grave and 
 serious things, and then went home. Joseph Alleine, 
 who died in Taunton Gaol, seems to have worked as 
 hard as the rest. When he married, he received a 
 letter of congratulation from an old college friend, 
 who said that he had some thoughts of following his 
 example, but wished to be wary, and would therefore 
 take the freedom of asking him to describe the in- 
 conveniences of a married life. Alleine replied : " Thou 
 wouldst know the inconveniences of a wife, and I will 
 
112 *' FOURTEEN HOURS A day:' [lect. iv. 
 
 tell thee. First of all, whereas thou risest constantly 
 at four in the morning, or before, she will keep thee 
 till six ; secondly, whereas thou usest to study four- 
 teen hours in the day, she will bring thee to eight or 
 nine ; thirdly, whereas thou art wont to forbear one 
 meal at least in the day for thy studies, she will bring 
 thee to thy meat. If these are not mischief enough to 
 affright thee, I know not what thou art." So that all 
 the troubles of these studious men did not come from 
 a persecuting Government. We might add a deeper 
 pathos to the story of their sufferings and constancy 
 by dilating with sympathetic eloquence on the sorrows 
 which came on them from " those of their own house- 
 holds," from wives who deprived them of their liberty 
 to study fourteen hours a day and cruelly robbed them 
 of the joys of early rising. 
 
 Do not be afraid that honest intellectual work will 
 necessarily diminish your religious earnestness. But 
 I think that you may be satisfied with something less 
 than " fourteen hours a day," whether you have wives 
 or not. No man will have a right to call you indolent 
 if, when you become ministers, you really work for 
 eight or nine hours a day. As you grow older, and 
 the claims of pastoral and public duties become more 
 exacting, you will have reason to be grateful if, by 
 putting your wife at your study door, with a bayonet 
 on her shoulder to protect you from all intruders, you 
 can make sure of even six or seven. Nor is it 
 the amount of time that a man spends in his study 
 that measures the amount of real work that he gets 
 
LECT. IV.] LORD LYTTON, 113 
 
 through. Some men do as much in five hours as 
 other men of equal natural ability do in eight. For a 
 man who is to be a preacher it is of great importance 
 that he should acquire the habit of commanding his 
 whole intellectual force whenever he wants to use it. 
 If, by exerting all your strength, you can get through 
 a piece of work in an hour and a half, and get through 
 it well, you are injuring yourselves by spending two 
 hours over it. I do not mean, of course, that you 
 should care for nothing except the " pace " at which 
 you can work; in trying for "pace" some men get 
 " wild " and lose all their " form ; " but vigorous habits 
 of study will contribute to a vigorous habit of thinking 
 and speaking. 
 
 There is an observation of the late Lord Lytton's 
 which you will do well to remember while you are 
 here, and which you may remember with advantage 
 when you are in the ministry. In his judgment, 
 " youths who are destined for active careers, or 
 ambitious of distinction in such forms of literature as 
 require freshness of invention or originality of thought, 
 should avoid the habit of intense study for many hours 
 at a stretch. There is a point in all tension of the 
 intellect, beyond which effort is only a waste of 
 strength. Fresh ideas do not readily spring up within 
 a weary brain ; and whatever exhausts the mind, not 
 only enfeebles its power, but narrows its scope."' If 
 any of you have been sunk into despair by what I have 
 said about the enormous time which the Puritans 
 ^ " Caxtoniana,'' vol. ii. p. 327. 
 9 
 
114 LORD LYTTON. [lect. iv. 
 
 gave to their books, it may be a relief to you to hear 
 another sentence of Lord Lytton's, which occurs very 
 near to the passage I have quoted already : — " The 
 man who has acquired the habit of study, though for 
 only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the 
 one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to 
 see the way he has made at the end of a twelve- 
 month." I But remember that everything depends 
 upon the regularity with which you work, and upon 
 the perseverance and the vigour. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 104. 
 
 After Lecture IV. was in type, I remembered that there was 
 a passage in Hazlitt in which the charm of Old Books is 
 charmingly celebrated. I quote the passage for its own sake, 
 and also because what 1 have written on the same subject may 
 have been partly suggested by it. Hazhtt's choice of books 
 does not, however, seem to me very admirable. 
 
 " When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener 
 the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is 
 not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment 
 is altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange 
 dish — turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt 
 what to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence 
 and security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also 
 like made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally little 
 else than hashes and rifaccivienti of what has been served up 
 entire and in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in 
 thus turning to a well-known author, there is not only an 
 assurance that my time will not be thrown away, or my palate 
 nauseated with the most insipid or vilest trash, but I shake 
 hands with, and look an old, tried, and valued friend in the face, 
 compare notes, and chat the hours away. It is true, we form 
 
 ^ " Caxtoniana," vol. ii. p. 328. 
 
LECT. IV.] HAZLITT ON OLD BOOKS. 1 15 
 
 dear friendships with such ideal guests, — dearer, alas ! and 
 more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaintance 
 In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say the 
 first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagina- 
 tion, and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of 
 memory added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations 
 which I had in first reading it, and which I can never have 
 again in any other way. . Standard productions of this kind 
 are links in the chain of our conscious being. They bind 
 together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity. 
 They are landmarks and guides in our journey through Hfe. 
 They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from 
 which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral 
 imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and 
 records of our happiest hours. They are 'for thoughts and for 
 remembrance.' They are Hke Fortunatus's W'ishing-cap — they 
 give us the best riches — those of fancy — and transport us, 
 not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, 
 at a word's notice. 
 
 " My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give 
 me for this purpose a volume of " Peregrine Pickle" or " Tom 
 Jones." Open either of them anywhere — at the Memoirs of Lady 
 Vane, or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, 
 or the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of 
 Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the 
 edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture — and there I find the 
 same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the 
 same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it." — 
 Hazhtt : Table Talk. " On reading Old Books," pp. 310, 311. 
 
 9* 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE PREPARATION OF SERMONS. 
 
 GENTLEMEN,— When students for the ministry, 
 or young preachers, have the opportunity of 
 talking freely with a man who has been preaching 
 for some years, they are almost certain to ask him 
 what advice he can give them about the preparation 
 of their sermons. In attempting to offer you some 
 suggestions on this subject this afternoon, I do not 
 think it necessary to begin by discussing the question 
 whether it is better to preach extemporaneously, or to 
 write your sermons and learn them, or to write them 
 and read them ; for, even if you write, you ought to 
 have a great part of your preparation finished before 
 the first sentence is put on paper. Rousseau said 
 that when writing a love-letter, " you should begin 
 without knowing what you are going to say, and end 
 without knowing what you have said." That seems 
 to me an excellent way of writing love-letters — though, 
 perhaps, I am too old, and have too little sentiment 
 left in me, for my opinion on the matter to have any 
 authority — but I am sure that it is a very bad way of 
 writing sermons. 
 
 I repeat that a great part of your preparation should 
 
LECT. v.f ACCUMULATING MATERIAL. 117 
 
 be finished before you begin to write ; and, indeed, 
 if you are to economise time and to preach effectively, 
 a great part of your preparation should be finished — 
 if I may venture to say it — before you begin to pre- 
 pare. Let me explain what I mean. 
 
 I assume that you will read the Bible regularly — 
 partly to master its contents for yourself, and partly 
 to accumulate material for preaching. You will do 
 well to read the Bible steadily through, but you should 
 always have in hand some book which is likely to be 
 fruitful in texts and topics for sermons. If, for in- 
 stance, you give one half-hour in the morning to the 
 Book of Numbers, you should give the next half-hour to 
 one of the Gospels or one of the prophets ; for, judging 
 from my own experience, the Book of Numbers does 
 not suggest many subjects on which it is worth while 
 to preach to a Christian congregation. If you are 
 reading the Book of Joshua — although this book is 
 thought by some excellent people to be exception- 
 ally rich in spiritual truth, and to be " the especial 
 heritage of this generation " — you will do wisely to 
 turn from the land-surveying and the wars of Joshua 
 to the Psalms of David, or to one of the Epistles of 
 St. John or St. Paul. 
 
 In reading the Bible for the purpose of accumulat- 
 ing material for sermons, you will, of course, read it 
 with all the exegetical aids you happen to possess — 
 your lexicons, your Greek and Hebrew concordances, 
 and the best commentaries you have on your shelves. 
 In your ordinary reading, perhaps," you will not find 
 
t 
 
 1 1 8 A CCUMULA TING MA TERIAL. [lect. v. 
 
 it of much use to read everything that half-a-dozen 
 scholars have said on the book you are studying ; 
 there is necessarily a large amount of matter which 
 is common to them all, and you will get weary of 
 reading the same things over and over again. Read 
 all that has been written on the book by one man, 
 and consult the rest on points about which he has not 
 satisfied you. When you go through the same book 
 again, take another commentator for your principal 
 guide. But whatever help of this kind you obtain, do 
 not be satisfied with determining the meaning of a 
 contested passage as you determine a contested 
 election — by taking the interpretation which has most 
 votes : think your own way through the difficulty. 
 A great name is a strong reason for giving careful 
 consideration to the opinion which it covers ; but the 
 greatest names can sometimes be alleged for opinions 
 which are incredible. 
 
 Reading in this way, you will supply your minds 
 with the raw material which you have to work up in 
 your sermons — not merely with texts. The substance 
 of our preaching has been given to us in a Divine 
 revelation. This revelation is recorded in the Holy 
 Scriptures. For us, therefore, the Bible is not merely 
 a book of texts, but a text-book. It contains the 
 truths we have to teach, the laws which we have to 
 illustrate in their relations to the lives of our people, 
 the divine promises by which we are to console them 
 in trouble and to strengthen their faith in the love 
 and power of God. 
 
LECT. v.] ROUGH NOTES FOR SERMONS. 119 
 
 Read the Bible, as well as other books, with your^ 
 J note-sheets at hand. Whenever you meet with any 
 historical illustration of a vice or a folly to which men 
 are still tempted in our own days, or any noble and 
 pathetic example of virtue, devotion, and zeal ; when- 
 ever you come across the statement of any truth 
 concerning God, and His ways towards mankind, 
 about which you have omitted to preach, or any moral 
 precept on which you have omitted to insist, or any 
 brii^dit and pleasant region of spiritual thought which 
 is likely to give animation and vigour to a weary and 
 sorrowful heart, make a note of it. Half an hour's 
 reading will often give you the substance of three 
 or four sermons. Instead of hunting for a text or a 
 subject when Sunday is coming near, you will only 
 have to turn to the drawer in t\hich your notes are 
 kept, and you will find a score of sermons half ready. 
 Two or three sets of notes will sometimes run natu- 
 rally together into one discourse, and in using them 
 you will have hardly anything to do except to pre- 
 pare an introduction and a conclusion. Sometimes 
 such light and fire will suddenly flash out of a sentence 
 or a phrase that a whole sermon will come to you at 
 once, and you will be able to transfer to your notes 
 the rough outline of an effective discourse. 
 
 Your general reading and your theological reading 
 may not be equally fruitful in subjects and materials 
 for preaching, for the Bible is the great quarry of the 
 preacher ; but even abstract theological speculations 
 and controversies which have long been obsolete will 
 
120 ROUGH NOTES FOR SERMONS. [lect. v. 
 
 sometimes originate lines of thought which will work 
 easily and effectively into the plainest and most 
 practical sermons. Always have your note-sheets on 
 your desk. Whatever you are reading — theology, 
 philosophy, history, poetry, fiction, biography, science 
 — may at any moment give you something that will 
 be of use in the pulpit. Sometimes you will get a 
 subject for a sermon, sometimes a strong, epigram- 
 matic statement of a great ethical truth which you 
 will be glad to quote, sometimes a felicitous illustra- 
 tion. Do not be satisfied with recording a mere 
 reference to the page of the book where you have \ 
 found anything that you mean to use, or with simply 
 indicating the subject or the line of thought which the 
 book has suggested. Develop the illustration so that 
 it may be almost ready to be transferred to your 
 sermon when you want it. Indicate in your " notes " 
 briefly, but distinctly, how the subject, or the line 
 of thought, which has occurred to you should be 
 treated. Write out the sentence at length which you 
 mean to quote, and as you write you will probably 
 think of an effective " setting " for it — something will 
 occur to you that will naturally lead up to it. 
 
 It will also save you a great deal of trouble, and 
 will help to preserve what I think Dr. Brooks called 
 the "symmetry" of your preaching, if, at the begin- 
 ning of the year, you draw up a list of a dozen or 
 twenty subjects on which you think it desirable to 
 preach before the year runs out. I shall have some- 
 thing to say about this in another lecture ; for the 
 
LECT. v.] CHOICE OF TOPICS. 121 
 
 present I will only ask you to consider whether what 
 I fear is the very common practice of leaving the 
 choice of subjects to mere chance, is not one of the 
 chief reasons of the inefficiency of preaching as a 
 means of religious and ethical instruction. If we have 
 a list of subjects such as I have suggested, and refer 
 to it now and then, thoughts will gradually crystallise 
 round one subject after another until we shall find 
 that we have a number of sermons almost ready to 
 our hand. 
 
 In the choice of topics for sermons we should prefer 
 those which in themselves have a strong moral and 
 I religious interest. Mr. Arnold's advice to a poet is 
 worth remembering : — " I counsel him to choose for 
 his subjects great actions ;" he does not deny " that 
 the poetic faculty can and does manifest itself in treat- 
 ing the most trifling action, the most hopeless subject." 
 " But," he adds, " it is a pity that power should be 
 wasted ; and that the poet should be compelled to 
 impart interest and force to his subject, instead of 
 receiving them from it, and thereby doubling his im- 
 pressiveness. There is, it has been excellently said, 
 an immortal strength in the stories of great actions : 
 the most gifted poet, then, may well be glad to 
 supplement with it that mortal weakness, which in 
 presence of the vast spectacle of life and the world, 
 he must for ever feel to be his individual portion." ' 
 For the sake of the people, we are bound to choose 
 subjects which stir the hearts of men and which touch 
 ' Preiace to " Poems." Second edition, 1S54. Page vii. 
 
122 MR. ARNOLD'S ADVICE TO POETS. [lect. v. 
 
 the great duties, the great hopes and fears and sor- 
 rows of human Hfe. For our own sakes, too, we 
 should choose subjects of this kind. We are guilty of 
 the most irrational conceit if we imagine that we shall 
 be able, Sunday after Sunday, to inv^est with interest 
 subjects which in themselves are uninteresting. 
 
 The quotation I have just made from Mr. Arnold 
 reminds me of a verse of his, containing " a caution to 
 poets," which also suggests a caution to preachers. 
 
 " What poets feel not, when they make, 
 A pleasure in creating. 
 The world in its turn will not take 
 Pleasure in contemplating." ^ 
 
 The application of this principle has its limits. I 
 have already suggested the expediency of preparing 
 a list of subjects at the beginning of the year, and you 
 should make it a matter of conscience to exhaust the 
 list during the year whether you feel any keen interest 
 in the subjects or not. But your most effective sermons 
 will be those in which you deal with aspects of truth 
 and duty which have sovereign authority over your 
 own life, which stir your imagination, fascinate your 
 intellect, and inspire you with enthusiasm. If I may 
 trust my own experience, we can hardly preach too 
 often on any subject by which we ourselves are deeply 
 moved. We may return to it Sunday after Sunday 
 and month after month. As long as our own interest 
 in it remains intense we shall preach about it in a way 
 that will command the interest of our congregations. 
 *" New Poems." 1867. Page 159. 
 
LECT. v.] DESPOTIC TRUTHS. 123 
 
 Never be afraid of saying the same thing over and 
 over again, if you feel driven to say it by a strong 
 sense of its importance. I suppose that most preachers 
 who have any life and passion in them are under the 
 benignant despotism of a succession of great truths 
 and facts during successive periods of their ministry. 
 For months they can hardly ever escape from the 
 shadow and the glory of the death of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ — the supreme crisis in the prolonged conflict 
 between the righteousness and love of God and the 
 sins and sorrows of the human race. Then, for months, 
 the cross is almost forgotten, and the truth that the 
 Christ who died is aliv^e again, thrills them with a 
 wonder and a joy as intense as the disciples felt 
 when they first came to believe in the Resurrection. 
 The freshness of this excitement passes away, and 
 then, perhaps, they have a new and deeper sense of 
 the awful majesty of Christ as the Judge of all man- 
 kind ; and for weeks or months together they have so 
 solemn an impression of the final account which every 
 man must give of the deeds done in the body, that it 
 seems to them as if a truth had been revealed to them 
 which the Church had forgotten for centuries. At one 
 time the infinite mercy of God in forgiving our sins for 
 Christ's sake fills their thoughts day and night ; at 
 another they can think of nothing except the trans- 
 cendent mystery of the life which is given to us in 
 our regeneration ; after this, they are penetrated with 
 wonder at the greatness of the triumphs which, through 
 the power of the Holy Ghost, the Christian man may 
 
124 CHOICE OF TEXTS. [lect v. 
 
 achie\-e over sin ; and then, perhaps, come bright and 
 peaceful months in which the hope of the glory, 
 honour, and immortality which are our inheritance in 
 Christ becomes so strong and clear that heaven and 
 earth appear to touch, and the fair city of God, which 
 was seen by St. John in vision, seems as though it 
 had already become the home and rest of the soul. 
 
 Now, I think it is quite safe to tell you that while 
 you are " possessed " in this way by any great truth, 
 you may preach about it again and again, and that the 
 people will never get tired of listening to you. Only — 
 remembering the great varieties of moral and spiritual 
 conditions which exist in your congregation — you 
 ought honestly to endeavour to interest yourself in 
 other truths which may be necessary for the complete 
 education and discipline of their moral and spiritual 
 life. 
 
 I have spoken of the choice of " subjects " and of 
 J the choice of "texts ; " but a text, if honestly selected, 
 contains the subject on which you intend to preach, 
 or, at least, fairly and naturally suggests the subject. 
 To treat a text as a mere motto for a sermon is a 
 practice which can very rarely be justified. If a 
 minister does not intend to preach about what the 
 text teaches or implies, he had better take no text 
 at all. Whether it would be wise for you to do this 
 must be determined by your own good sense. I do it 
 myself occasionally, but I have been the minister of 
 the same congregation for nearly five and twenty 
 years, and can set aside the traditions of the pulpit 
 
LECT. v.] CHOICE OF TEXTS. 125 
 
 without giving any offence. It may be that some 
 congregations would not concede to a young preacher 
 the same Hbcrty. 
 
 I When you take a text be sure that it is in the 
 Bible. A friend of mine now dead — a very eminent 
 preacher — once made what has been described to me 
 as a very fine sermon on some words which he ima- 
 gined were in the Book of Proverbs. On Sunday 
 morning, before starting for church, he thought that it 
 would be as well if he looked up the chapter in which 
 he supposed that the words occurred. To his dismay 
 the words were not to be found. He turned to his 
 " Crudcn," but Cruden failed him. He was still con- 
 fident that the words were in the Book of Proverbs, 
 and when the critical moment came for beginning to 
 preach, he began by saying something to this effect : 
 "You will remember, my friends, the words of the 
 wisest of kings " — then he quoted his text and glided 
 into his sermon as if he had innocently forgotten to 
 say where the words of the wisest of kings occurred. 
 Many a child in the congregation that afternoon 
 hunted in vain through the Book of Proverbs and the 
 Book of Ecclcsiastes to discover the text of the morn- 
 ing's sermon. I think that my friend would have done 
 better if he had warned the people that though he 
 thought the words were Solomon's, he had not been 
 able to find them, even with the help of a concordance. 
 He discovered afterwards, I think, that the words 
 were in one of the collects or prayers of the Anglican 
 Prayer-book. 
 
126 CHOICE OF TEXTS. [lect. v. 
 
 But it was not to warn you against accidents of 
 this kind that I said you should make sure that your 
 text is in the Bible. The text may be printed in our 
 English version of the Holy Scriptures, and yet nothing 
 corresponding to it may ever have been written by the 
 hand of a Jewish scribe or of a Christian evangelist or 
 apostle. It may stand for a corrupt reading which 
 criticism has cancelled or modified ; or it may be a 
 false translation of the Hebrew or Greek. In either 
 case the text is not really in the Bible at all, and if 
 you treat it as though its integrity could not be chal- 
 lenged, you are not dealing fairly with your congre- 
 
 gation. 
 
 Some preachers choose texts with apparently no 
 other purpose than to display their owii wonderful 
 ingenuity. It is, no doubt, possible for a man to 
 preach a very pathetic and earnest sermon on the 
 words in Ezra i. 9 : " nine and twenty knives," or on 
 the description of the bedstead of Og king of Bashan, 
 in Deut. iii. 11," his bedstead was a bedstead of iron ; 
 is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon 1 nine 
 cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the 
 breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." ^ But when 
 I hear a man announce a text of this sort and watch 
 the process by which he develops from it the doctrine 
 of Justification by Faith, or the necessity of Regener- 
 
 ^ By way of caution to any of my young readers who may be 
 enamoured of cither of these texts, it may be as well to say that 
 the " iron " of Og's bedstead was probably black basalt, and the 
 '' bedstead " a sarcophagus ; and that it is very doubtful whether 
 Ezra's "knives" were knives at all. 
 
LECT. v.] CHOICE OF TEXTS. 127 
 
 ation, or a theory of Divine Providence, or some in- 
 teresting speculations on the millennium or the future 
 blessedness of the righteous — and a sermon on " nine 
 and twenty knives," or on Og's iron bedstead, may 
 cover any one of these subjects as well as another — I 
 always think of the tricks of those ingenious gentle- 
 men who entertain the public by rubbing a sovereign 
 between their hands till it becomes a canary, and 
 drawing out of their coat sleeves half-a-dozen brilliant 
 glass globes filled with water, and with four or five 
 gold fish swimming in each of them. For myself, I 
 like to listen to a good preacher, and I have no objec- 
 tion in the world to be amused by the tricks of a clever 
 conjurer ; but I prefer to keep the conjuring and the 
 preaching separate : conjuring on Sunday morning, 
 conjuring in church, conjuring with texts of Scripture, 
 is not quite to my taste. 
 
 On the other hand there is considerable risk in choos- 
 ing a text in which a great truth is stated with such 
 sublimity and grandeur, or in which the deeper spiritual 
 affections are expressed with such vehemence and 
 energy, or in which there is so powerful an appeal to 
 the imagination, that the text creates expectations 
 which the sermon cannot fulfil. What can any man 
 say after reading the words of St. John, " God is 
 love " } What kind of a sermon do you lead your 
 congregation to anticipate if you announce as your 
 text the last two verses of the eiglith chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans," I am persuaded, that neither 
 death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
 
128 CHOICE OF TEXTS. [lect. v. 
 
 powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
 able to separate us from the love of God which is 
 in Christ Jesus our Lord " ? What power of lyrical 
 eloquence ought a preacher to have who ventures to 
 write a sermon on Luke ii. 13, 14, " Suddenly there 
 was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, 
 praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, 
 and on earth peace, good will toward men " ? 
 
 There are texts of another kind, which I think are 
 likely to disappoint us if we attempt to preach upon 
 them, I remember hearing a sermon on the words, 
 " We all do fade as a leaf" The little chapel in which 
 it was delivered was in the Lake country : the fern on 
 the hills and the woods below^ were taking their 
 autumn tints of brown and gold. It was only neces- 
 sary to step outside, and the beautiful country was a 
 far more perfect and affecting sermon on the text than 
 any mortal lips could deliver. For five or ten minutes, 
 however, the preacher, who was a lady, succeeded ad- 
 mirably. She had caught the sentiment of the text, 
 and her quiet gentle manner was in harmony w^ith 
 the pathos of her words. But then the vein was 
 worked out, and the rest of the sermon was a series of 
 colourless commonplaces. This was not the preacher's 
 fault. The beauty and pathetic power of the text are 
 derived from the perfection of the poetical form in 
 which the brevity and decay of human liie and 
 strength and glory are expressed. A sermon on a 
 text like that should be a prose poem, but the theme 
 
LECT. v.] CHOICE OF TEXTS. 129 
 
 hardly admits of sufficient variations to permit the 
 poem to extend to the ordinary length of a sermon. 
 I doubt whether any poet could preserve the tone 
 and sentiment of the original idea through a hundred 
 lines, or even through fifty. 
 
 Are passages of this kind to be set aside by the 
 preacher as usele s ? Is he never to avail himself in 
 the pulpit of the m:)st sublime, the most animating, 
 the most touching, the most beautiful words of 
 prophets, psalmists, and apostles ? You can hardly 
 imagine that I mean to offer you such discouraging 
 advice as this. 
 
 The true course, as I v^enture to think, is obvious. 
 Passages which we hardly dare to take as texts may 
 contribute to our sermons their most effective and 
 impressive lines of thought. Had the lady preacher 
 of whom I was speaking just now, selected as the text 
 of her sermon some passage in which the frailty 
 of man is expressed with less poetic beauty, she 
 might have gradually prepared her congregation for 
 the striking and pathetic reflections which had occurred 
 to her on the words — " We all do fade as a leaf" 
 And so, if )-our imagination is excited by any of the 
 details in St. John's description of the New Jerusalem ; 
 if you have taken fire at the words, "the street of 
 the city was pure gold," and " the twelv^e gates were 
 twelve pearls ; " or if some bright and pleasant fancies 
 have clustered round the beautiful words in an earlier 
 chapter of the same book — "there was a rainbow 
 round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald " 
 
 10 
 
I30 CHOICE OF TEXTS. [lect. v. 
 
 — although I think that it would be perilous to take 
 any of these words as the text of a sermon, there 
 is no need that your thoughts about them should be 
 wasted. Take some quieter and less dazzling words 
 as a text, and gradually work your way to the beauty 
 and glory which you have found in these imaginative 
 passages. 
 
 The great and noble texts of which I was speaking 
 just ROW — texts which contain a promise too large for 
 any sermon to fulfil — may be dealt with in the same 
 way. If they have moved your own heart deeply, if 
 they have given you vigorous and lofty thoughts, 
 which you are eager to use, take a text which excites 
 less expectation, and so construct your sermon that it 
 shall gradually lead up to the heights of truth, to the 
 exulting hopes, the glowing passion with which your 
 soul has been thrilled. 
 
 These suggestions are, of course, not intended as 
 an inflexible law. There are occasions on which we 
 may preach on the most glorious passages which are 
 to be found in the Old Testament or the New ; there 
 are moods in which no words are too pathetic or too 
 animating or too startling for us to preachi about 
 them ; but as a rule I think it is safe to avoid texts 
 that are very sublime, very striking, or very remark- 
 able for their imaginative beauty. 
 
 When you have chosen your text and your topic, 
 how are you to begin to prepare? If your " notes " 
 serve you well, you will already have in hand a 
 considerable amount of material ; but whether you 
 
LECT. v.] HOW TO BEGIN TO PREPARE. 131 
 
 have little or much, you should first of all come to a 
 clear understanding with yourself about the precise 
 object of your sermon. 
 
 What is the sermon to do? The answer to this 
 question determines the whole method of preparation. 
 
 Is it your principal intention to prov^e some Christian 
 doctrine, to support the teaching of a particular text 
 by appealing to the concurrent authority of other 
 parts of Holy Scripture 1 — then your line of prepara- 
 tion is clear. If you do not happen to have in hand, 
 as the result of your previous studies, an organised 
 statement of the Scripture evidence — direct and in- 
 direct — of the truth on which you are about to preach, 
 you must rely on your general knowledge of the 
 contents of the Bible, and \'ou must hunt up the 
 proofs }'ou want, and carefully verify them. 
 
 Is it your intention to state and explain some truth 
 which you have reason to suppose is not generally 
 understood t Then you may be greatly helped by 
 thinking of two or three members of your congrega- 
 tion who are least likely to understand it, and you 
 should consider by what lines of thought and by what 
 class of illustrations you would be able to make the 
 truth clear to them if you were talking to them in 
 private. If in your congregation there are persons 
 who have grave misconceptions of the truth, you will 
 be tempted to begin by attacking and exposing what 
 you suppose to be their mistakes. This is the easy 
 way of trying to set them right, but it is not the 
 effective way. Men will not part with what they have, 
 
 10 * 
 
132 WHAT IS THE SERMON TO DO? [lect. v. 
 
 until you give them something better. The attack 
 provokes defence. Most people are very unwilling to 
 find out for themselves that they have been in the 
 wrong ; they are still more unwilling to let any one 
 else prove to them that they have been in the wrong. 
 Develop your own conception of the truth first — not 
 aggressively, with your teeth set, your hand clenched, 
 and your war-paint on ; but quietly and modestly. 
 Consider what kind of proof will satisfy the minds 
 of those who are least likely to accept your teaching ; 
 look for illustrations that shall be adjusted to their 
 temper and habits ; try to discover how you can 
 secure for your own position the moral and religious 
 sympathies of those who are intellectually opposed 
 to it ; make some practical and manifestly wholesome 
 application of point after point as your thought m.oves 
 on ; and you will find that a sermon is gradually 
 growing which will make the truth plain, to those 
 who had not understood it at all, and will correct the 
 mistakes of those who had formed a false conception 
 of it. 
 
 Perhaps your principal object is practical ; you 
 want to get the people to discharge some duty which 
 they neglect, or to break with some sin. If you have 
 reason to believe that they have no clear understand- 
 ing of the nature of the duty, or that they do not 
 believe that the sin is forbidden by the law of Christ, 
 your first endeavour must be to instruct their con- 
 sciences ; and until the necessary instruction has been 
 given, your appeals and warnings, no matter how 
 
LECT. v.] WHAT IS THE SERAJON TO DO? 133 
 
 solemn, vehement, and passionate, will have no effect. 
 You will then consider what motives will most power- 
 fully influence the particular class of persons who are 
 neglecting the duty on which you are insisting, or 
 who are committing the positive sin from which you 
 are trying, with God's good help, to rescue them. 
 
 Or your intention may be to strengthen some reli- 
 gious affection, to confirm the trust of your congrega- 
 tion in God's infinite mercy, to deepen their reverence 
 for the Divine Majesty, to give them nobler conceptions 
 of the power and glory of God, to alleviate sorrow 
 and anxiety by confirming their faith in the com- 
 passion and pity of Him who knoweth our frame, 
 and remembcreth that we are dust ; or you want to 
 inspire their zeal for the kingdom of Christ with new 
 fervour ; or to give larger breadth and greater tender- 
 ness to their Christian charity. If this is your object, 
 you will not be looking vaguely to the right and to 
 the left for any original and brilliant and eloquent 
 things which your subject may happen to suggest ; 
 but you will consider how the subject on which you 
 are intending to preach can be presented so as to pro- 
 duce the definite impression which you desire. 
 
 The general principle which I have been trying to 
 illustrate is v^ery simple and very obvious ; it is one of 
 those commonplaces which I told you were to make 
 up the whole substance of this course of lectures ; 
 but precisely because it is a commonplace I attach 
 great importance to it. I believe that many young 
 preachers, when they sit down to prepare a sermon, 
 
134 HA VE A DEFINITE OBJECT. [lect. v. 
 
 start like Abraham, who "went out, not knowing 
 /whither he went." Or perhaps it would be truer to 
 say that for half an hour or an hour they do not start 
 at all, but look idly round their subject, and wonder 
 whether they will be able to make anything of it. At 
 last, by some accident, they find what looks like a 
 path, and after trying it they find that it leads nowhere, 
 and so they come back to the place where they began. 
 The preacher who has a definite end to reach, rarely 
 loses any of the time which he gives to preparation ; 
 he sees in the distance the point to which he has to 
 travel, and he either finds or makes a road to it. 
 
 I wonder whether you know anything on this side 
 of the Atlantic of the terrible difficulty which we Eng- 
 lishmen experience in thinking of something to say 
 when we are making a formal call on persons who are 
 almost strangers to us. If I may judge from the 
 Americans whom it has been my pleasure to meet in 
 different parts of the world, you have far greater 
 freedom and vivacity and inventiveness in conversa- 
 tion than we have, and, perhaps, the difficulty to which 
 I am referring never troubles you. We open the con- 
 versation, as a matter of course, by talking of the 
 weather. We inform the lady or gentleman on whom 
 we are calling that there has been a great deal of rain, 
 or that the east wind is very trying, or that the un- 
 usual dryness of the season has made the dust ex- 
 tremely unpleasant. Then we begin to feel a little 
 nervous, and wonder what we shall say next. We 
 think ourselves very fortunate if we happen to dis- 
 
LECT. v.] AN ENGLISHMAJSrS DIFFICULTY. 135 
 
 cover that the lady was at a concert the night before, 
 or that the gentleman is going to Scotland the next 
 da)\ We are still more happy if we learn that either 
 of them has been suffering from toothache for a fort- 
 night, so that we can dilate on the dexterity of our 
 favourite dentist ; or if we discover that one of the 
 young gentlemen of the house has lately had an ac- 
 cident with his bicycle and broken his leg, or that he 
 fell into the river a week ago and was half drowned. 
 Then we can get on merrily enough till the time comes 
 when we can with decency rise to go. If none of 
 these fruitful subjects offer themselves we soon become 
 very miserable, and we sympathise keenly with Anna 
 Gascoigne in " Daniel Deronda," who said, " I am not at 
 all clever, and I never know what to say. It seems so 
 useless to say what everybody knows, and I can think 
 of nothing else, except what papa says." 
 
 But if we wish to secure some definite object, the 
 difficulty of "making conversation" v^anishes at once. 
 If we want to persuade the lady to join a musical 
 society, or to become one of the patronesses of a 
 flower show ; if we want the gentleman to vote for 
 the Liberal candidate for the borough, or to go on 
 the committee of a hospital, or to become a member- 
 of a new club, or to subscribe a couple of guineas a 
 year to an orphan asylum, we have plenty to say, 
 especially if there is any hesitation to be overcome, 
 or if there are any misconceptions to be corrected. It 
 is also true that while a preacher who simply wants to 
 find something good and sensible to say to his con- 
 
136 THE ''plan:' [lect. v. 
 
 gregation for half an hour or forty minutes, may be 
 driven to his wits' ends to think of anything that is 
 worth saying, a preacher who wants to get them to 
 understand something which they do not understand 
 clearly, or to do something, or to leave something 
 ^ undone, will find that the object he wants to gain will 
 suggest what he ought to say, and the difficulty of 
 preparing a sermon will be greatly lightened. 
 
 You have noticed, perhaps, that I have said nothing 
 about preparing " the plan " of the sermon, or what 
 in some books on preaching is grimly called " the 
 skeleton." Some preachers begin with their " plan." 
 They think that it is their first business to " divide " 
 their subject or their text ; and having constructed 
 their divisions, they fill them up as best they can. 
 When I was at college we had each to read a sermon 
 in class about twice in the session ; but we had to 
 prepare " plans " — with divisions and subdivisions — 
 about once in three weeks. A sermon might take 
 three or four evenings to prepare ; but a " plan " was 
 not supposed to take more than half an hour, and I 
 suspect that many a plan was thrown off in five 
 minutes. If the " plan " looked promising it was 
 sometimes developed into a sermon. I have heard 
 that it is the custom in some colleges for the homi- 
 letical professor to announce a text, and to require the 
 students of his class in turn to give him, off-hand, the 
 plan of a sermon upon it. Whether any practice of 
 this kind exists at Yale I do not know. If it does, I 
 have no doubt that your professor could give you 
 
LECT. v.] THE ''PLANr 137 
 
 excellent reasons for it as a class exercise. But it is 
 my impression that the habit of making the " plan " 
 of a sermon first and getting the materials afterwards 
 is likely to have an injurious effect on a man's preach- 
 ing. The " plan " of a sermon is the order in which 
 the materials are arranged, and it seems to me that 
 the reasonable method is to arrange the materials 
 when you have got them to arrange — not before. 
 
 When you are abou^ to build a house, you tell your 
 architect what you want — how large the dining-room 
 and the drawing-room must be, what kind of a library 
 he must give you, and what aspect you would like 
 these rooms to have ; and you tell him how many 
 bedrooms you want. When he knows for what he 
 has to arrange, he prepares his plans and his elevation ; 
 and, if he understands his profession, his plans and 
 elevation are governed by the number and size and 
 uses of the rooms which are required. It is this 
 which makes one of the chief differences between 
 good and bad architecture, between architecture which 
 is dead and formal, and architecture which has life, 
 freedom, and vigour in it. A poor architect designs 
 the outside of his building first, prepares his ground- 
 plan and elevation, and then does the best he can in 
 arranging the interior. A good architect begins with 
 the inside : asks, first of all, what the contents of the 
 building arc to be, and lets these determine everything. 
 I think that there is a similar difference between good 
 and bad architecture in sermons. Make your " plan " 
 first, and your sermon is in great danger of being 
 
138 THE '' plan:' [lect. v. 
 
 formal ; you will have to exclude some of the best 
 materials that come to you ; or you will fling them 
 down into the Introduction, because there is no place 
 for them anywhere else, just as we are in the habit of 
 leaving our heavy luggage in the hall of an hotel, be- 
 cause we cannot get it into the bedrooms. 
 
 In building a house, an architect is sometimes under 
 restraints which prevent him from working on what 
 he knows is the right principle. If the house is to 
 stand in a row, he may be obliged to make the outside 
 of it precisely like the outside of the houses that stand 
 to the right and to the left of it. He has no scope for 
 his genius. Formality is his doom, and he must sub- 
 mit to it. But a preacher is under no such restraints. 
 Every sermon stands by itself, in its own grounds, and 
 may be built just as the preacher pleases. If the ser- 
 mon is full of sentiment and fancy, it may be a plea- 
 sant cottage, with lawns and flower gardens round it, 
 and with windows open to the sun and air, and with 
 roses and honeysuckles growing about the porch. If 
 it is an attack on some grave speculative error or 
 on some evil practice, it may be a fort with walls of 
 granite, pierced here and there for a rifle to be thrust 
 through, defended by earthworks, and mounted with 
 heavy guns. The mischief is that some preachers 
 build all their sermons as though they were to stand 
 side by side in a street, and as though it were neces- 
 sary to make the front of number 264 precisely the 
 same as the front of number 265. Whatever there 
 may be inside, the outside conforms to an almost 
 
LECT. V.J HAVE IWO ''PLANSr 139 
 
 invariable model. The door is always in the same 
 place, the rows of windows are faultlessly uniform, 
 there is the same number of floors in every one of 
 them between the foundation and the roof — three 
 principal divisions, with three sub-divisions under 
 each, and then an application : they are all nine- 
 roomed houses, with attics on the top. This comes, 
 I think, of making the plan first. 
 
 There is another evil which is incident to this prac- 
 tice. Having made your plan, you have then to fill 
 up every one of the little logical or rhetorical squares 
 with argument, sentiment, explanation, or appeal. 
 Your thinking is done " to order," and the result is 
 not likely to be very satisfactory. The work is almost 
 certain to be uneven. Some of the thoucrht will be 
 
 o 
 
 forced and some will be tame. Your most vigorous 
 thinking will perhaps come in your first division, and 
 the rest of the sermon will be weak and ineffective. 
 You should have two plans : the first, a plan to guide 
 your own thought while accumulating your material ; 
 the second, a plan for arranging the material when 
 you have accumulated it. 
 
 Should the divisions of the second plan be an- 
 nounced } In England most Nonconformist preachers 
 always announce what are sometimes called the 
 " heads " of their sermons. Among the clergy of the 
 Established Church I believe that the practice is less 
 common. *' When the sermon is mainly didactic, when 
 it consists of a series of motives to enforce some duty, 
 or of a carefully organised procession of proofs in 
 
J 
 
 140 ON ANNOUNCING DIVISIONS. [lect. v. 
 
 support of some doctrinal or ethical proposition, the 
 announcement of the divisions will probably help your 
 congregation to understand and to remember what 
 you are saying. But I see no more reason for always 
 announcing the divisions of a sermon than for always 
 announcing the divisions of a speech. If the thoughts 
 of the sermon are well massed, if land and water, 
 earth and sky, are definitely separated from each other, 
 instead of being left in the confusion of chaos, the 
 sermon will be effective at the time, and the main 
 points of it will be remembered afterwards, whether 
 the divisions are announced or not. 
 
 There are some obvious disadvantages in announc- 
 ing them. The sermon is in danger of becoming a 
 series of short sermons, with the divisions for separate 
 texts ; and there is sometimes a great deal of trouble 
 in making a natural and easy transition from one di- 
 vision to another. 
 
 If the " heads " are announced it will sometimes be 
 expedient to announce them at the close of the succes- 
 sive parts of the sermon to which they belong, instead 
 of at the beginning. A few months ago I heard this 
 done very effectively by one of the most eloquent of 
 the High Anglican clergy — Mr. Body. He was 
 preaching on a well-known text in Isaiah : " It shall 
 come to pass in the last days that the mountain 
 of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of 
 the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; 
 and all nations shall flow unto it." His subject was 
 the Power of the Church. In his Introduction, after a 
 
LECT. v.] A SERMON OF MR. BODY'S. 141 
 
 rather fanciful exposition of the text, he gave a glow- 
 ing description of the triumphs which the Christian 
 Church has already won over the hearts and lives of 
 mankind. He effected his transition to the main ar- 
 gument of his discourse by asking, How have these 
 triumphs been won ? What is the secret of this force 
 which enables the Church to subdue men of every 
 race and of every variety of culture and civilisation ? 
 To these questions he replied by another, What is it 
 that men chiefly need ? Then followed a scries of 
 very vivid illustrations of the universal consciousness 
 of guilt. And is mercy possible .? Yes, he answered. 
 God has come from heaven to earth to atone for the 
 sins of men. He then gave a noble and pathetic 
 statement of the doctrine of the Atonement — an 
 atonement effected for all men, in all countries, and 
 all ages. But to make known to mankind the infinite 
 mercy of God revealed through Christ is one of the 
 chief functions of the Church. Her message is received 
 with wonder and joy, the sinful are drawn to her feet. 
 Tho: first element therefore of the Church's power is 
 this — She is Evangelical. But when the soul has 
 learnt to trust in Christ for the pardon of sin, it is 
 eager, he said, to learn all that can be known about 
 God and about the will of God. What shall it believe } 
 Can any of the sects, he asked, reply to that question 
 with confidence .^ He told us that men whose love for 
 Christ seems equally fervent teach conflicting doctrines, 
 and differ as to the authority and meaning of the 
 sacred rites of the Christian faith. The Independent 
 
142 A SERMON OF MR. BODY'S. [lect. v. 
 
 agrees with the Church as to the perpetual obligation 
 of Infant Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; the Baptist 
 refuses to baptise infants ; the members of the Society 
 of Friends will baptise neither infants nor adults, nor 
 will they celebrate the Lord's Supper. This line of 
 observation was developed with great vivacity, but 
 with great kindliness ; and then he reminded us of 
 the Church, with its ancient creeds, and of the authority 
 with which it claims to speak as the living representa- 
 tive of the great Society founded by Christ and His 
 apostles. He closed this part of the sermon by say- 
 ing that the second element of the power of the Church 
 is this — She is Dogmatic, The rest of the sermon it 
 is unnecessary to quote. 
 
 This method has the advantage of stimulating 
 and suspending curiosity. When a preacher begins 
 by announcing the proposition which he intends to 
 prove or to illustrate, the congregation will generally 
 see a straight piece of road before them, and will feel 
 that their attention may be relaxed till the next turn 
 comes. Sometimes, however, the proposition will be 
 misunderstood, sometimes it will provoke antagonism. 
 The misunderstanding will be obviated if the illustra- 
 tion comes first and the proposition afterwards ; and 
 if the proof is given before the proposition is stated, 
 the antagonism may not arise. 
 
 But no general rule can be given. A preacher may 
 sometimes see that he will excite curiosity by stating 
 his divisions before explaining, proving, or enforcing 
 them. We must judge for ourselves. What I am 
 anxious to contend for is variety and freedom. 
 
LECT. v.] REVIEWING PREPARATION. 143 
 
 When you have got your materials together and 
 arranged them, I think you should ask whether your 
 sermon will contain an adequate amount of positive 
 Christian truth ; whether what you have prepared 
 is governed and inspired by a recognition of the true 
 relations of the human race to God as those relations 
 are illustrated in the revelation which has been made 
 to us through Christ ; whether your sermon will satisfy 
 the apostolic conception of what the preaching of 
 the gospel ought to be ; whether it is likely to secure 
 any of the great ends for which the Christian ministry 
 is established, and the particular end which you had 
 proposed to yourself in preparing it ; whether you are 
 leaving anything unsaid that as a Christian preacher 
 you are bound to say ; whether the spirit of the sermon 
 will be in harmony with the mind of Christ. 
 
 You may then look at your materials from another 
 point of view. Is the sermon likely to be monotonous 
 in tone and colour ? Will it be sufficiently varied to 
 be interesting to all sorts of people ? You may con- 
 sider whether the subject has any pathetic aspects 
 which you have overlooked ; whether you have brought 
 it into a sufficiently close relation to the conscience 
 and to the common lives of men ; whether, with the 
 materials you have prepared, the subject will be lit 
 up with imagination or fancy ; whether there will be 
 a sufficient glow of feeling. 
 
 Do not suppose that I mean you to manufacture 
 an imaginative paragraph, or a pathetic paragraph, or 
 a humorous paragraph : to do this will make your 
 
144 REVIEWING PREPARATION. [lect. v. 
 
 sermon very false and artificial. But to secure interest 
 and effectiveness, you ought to try to appeal to as 
 many elements of human nature as possible ; and in 
 looking through your rough notes you will sometimes 
 find that there are the germs of imaginative, pathetic, 
 impassioned, or humorous passages which you have 
 omitted to develop, and which might be developed 
 with great advantage. 
 
 In this review of what you have prepared you will 
 make sure of saying — and saying clearly — the main 
 thing about your subject that ought to be said and 
 that you want to say. Dr. Duncan — Rabbi Duncan 
 — after listening to a sermon, declared that " the idea 
 of the preacher was in the sentence after the last'' 
 
 You will then consider what ought to be said in 
 your Introduction, unless, indeed, you believe with 
 Pascal, who I am inclined to think was right, that 
 " the last thing a man finds out when he is writing a 
 book is how to begin," and in that case you will post- 
 pone preparing the Introduction until you have deter- 
 mined how the sermon is to end. 
 
 The Introduction is one of the great perplexities of 
 young preachers. Very often they spend an amount of 
 strength upon it which would be far better used later 
 in the sermon. The style and size of the porch ought 
 to bear some proportion to the style and size of the 
 house. My late friend M. de Felice, one of the most 
 eminent of modern preachers among the Protestants 
 of France, once said to a colleague of his, M. Pedezert, 
 " I want half an hour's preliminary conversation with 
 
LECT. v.] THE INTRODUCTIOX. 145 
 
 my hearers." "Then," replied M. Pedezert, "you 
 begin just when others are finishing." M. de Felice, 
 I believe, generally preached for an hour and a half. 
 Even in his case, half an hour's " pfrfiminary conver- 
 sation," in the shape of an elaborate Introduction, was 
 a sufficiently serious encroachment on the time at his 
 disposal ; but for a man who preaches for only five 
 and thirty minutes to have an Introduction of a quarter 
 of an hour, is a far graver mistake. In listening to 
 the ostentatious preparations which some preachers 
 think it necessary to make before they fairly get into 
 their sermon, which too often proves to be a very 
 poor one after all, one is inclined to ask, in the words 
 of Robert Browning — 
 
 " But why such long prolusion and display. 
 Such turning and adjustment of the harp ; 
 And taking it upon your breast at length, 
 Only to speak dry words across its strings ?" 
 
 The Introduction should be as brief as possible. As 
 a rule, it should spring directly and naturally out of 
 the text ; that is, if the text is announced first. If 
 you want to say something before you refer to your 
 text, keep back your text till you have said it. But 
 the best advice I can give you is to get to work as 
 soon as you can. If your text requires explanation, 
 explain it ; if not, do not waste your time by explain- 
 ing it. 
 
 The time which most young preachers devote to 
 the preparation of the Introduction would be far 
 better spent on the close, or what our fathers used 
 
 II 
 
146 THE '' application:' [lect. v. 
 
 to call the Application, of their sermons. About this 
 all authorities are agreed. An English preacher of the 
 last generation used to say that he cared very little 
 what he said the first half-hour, but that he cared a 
 very great deal what he said the last fifteen minutes. 
 I remember reading many years ago an address de- 
 livered to students by Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, in 
 which he gave a very striking account of the sermons 
 of Jonathan Edwards. Mr. Beecher said that in the 
 elaborate doctrinal part of Jonathan Edwards's ser- 
 mons the great preacher was only getting his guns 
 into position ; but that in his " applications " he opened 
 fire on the enemy. There are too many of us, I am 
 afraid, who take so much time in getting our guns 
 " into position," that we have to finish without firing a 
 shot. We say that we leave the truth to do its own 
 work. We trust to the hearts and consciences of our 
 hearers to "apply it." Depend upon it, gentlemen, 
 this is a great and fatal mistake. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, we may preach a sermon which 
 is " application " from the first sentence to the last, as 
 an eloquent friend of mine once delivered a speech an 
 hour long, which was enthusiastically described as " all 
 peroration." Mr. Finney's sermons were not unfre- 
 quently of this kind. I do not mean that he " per- 
 orated " all through, but that the whole sermon was 
 "application." I heard him very often during his 
 visit to England when I was a student, and it seemed 
 to me that the iron chain of the elaborate theological 
 argument which sometimes constituted the substance 
 
LECT. v.] THE '' APPLICATION-'' H7 
 
 of his discourse— an argument on Free Will, or on the 
 Evil of Sin, or on the Moral Necessity which obliged 
 God to punish Sin— was fastened to an electric bat- 
 tery : every link of the chain as you touched it gave 
 you a moral shock ; but even in Mr. Finney's sermons 
 the supreme impression usually came at the end ; the 
 effect was cumulative. 
 
 The principle on which the closing passages of 
 our sermons should be prepared is obvious. Having 
 demonstrated some Christian truth, or having ex- 
 plained some Christian duty, we have to ask ourselves 
 how we can project the truth into the very depths of the 
 thought and life of our congregation, so that they shall 
 never lose it ; how we can constrain them to discharge 
 the duty. We may secure these ends in many ways. 
 Even if our principal object is to set or keep the 
 faith of the people right, the truth will be most 
 1 firmly enthroned in the intellect if we,invoke the 
 alHance^jjhe conscience and of the spiritual affec- 
 tions, or iTwe exhort the people to the discharge ^of. 
 the special duty which the truth imposes upon all who 
 receive it. Sometimes, on the other hand, the living 
 , authority of the truth will be felt most vividly, and 
 ^ itrThining glory will be most clearly seen, if it is 
 suddenly contrasted with the antagonistic error. Or 
 if it is our object to strengthen the religious affections 
 j— the gratitude, the love, the trust, the hope, the joy, 
 /which the truth inspires— we may often succeed by 
 ' giving free expression to the feeling and passion which 
 the truth has enkindled in our own hearts. If we are 
 
 II* 
 
148 THE '' APFLICATIONr [lect. v. 
 
 enforcing a duty, we may crown all that we have said 
 by some vivid historical illustration of the beauty and 
 nobleness of the particular excellence on which we are 
 insisting, or of the shamefulness and baseness of the 
 opposite vice. Or we may give heart and courage to 
 those who may think that the duty is above their 
 strength, by recalling with exulting confidence the 
 great promises of God. Or we may appeal to fear or 
 to hope, or to the authority of Christ, which no Chris- 
 tian heart can resist. We shall do well to study the 
 various methods which successful preachers have fol- 
 lowed in this part of their sermons. Original methods 
 of reaching the heart and the conscience and influencing 
 the will are of far more value to a preacher who wants 
 to do his work well than originality of any other kind. 
 There are one or two suggestions of a general 
 character which I should like to offer before I close. 
 J Never be afraid of making your explanations of any 
 truth, or fact, or duty, too simple and elementary. One 
 of the most charming popular preachers and speakers 
 that I ever knew, said to me once that he always took it 
 for granted that the people knew nothing about the sub- 
 ject on which he was speaking to them. A few months 
 ago, in a passage of a great speech on the Eastern Ques- 
 tion delivered at Birmingham, Mr. John Bright showed 
 that, consciously or unconsciously, he spoke on the 
 same principle. He explained the precise position of 
 Constantinople on the Bosphorus, and described the 
 Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles. I did not 
 happen to be in Birmingham when the speech was 
 
LECT. V.J MR. BRIGHT. 149 
 
 delivered, and while reading it in a railway carriage in 
 the north of England the next morning, I wondered 
 whether for once Mr. Bright's oratorical instinct had 
 failed him, and whether the audience had showed any 
 signs of impatience while they were listening to this 
 elementary information. When I got home my friends 
 told me that this passage of the speech was listened 
 to with the closest attention. Mr. Bright was right, 
 as usual, and he had giv^en me another illustration, in 
 addition to the innumerable illustrations which he had 
 given me before, of the true method of addressing 
 great audiences. 
 
 The thoughts of ordinary men on most things not 
 connected with their own profession are very inde- 
 finite. Large numbers of persons, who have been 
 accustomed to read the Bible and to listen to preach- 
 ing all their lives, have the loosest possible acquaint- 
 ance with the details of biblical history, and their 
 conceptions of doctrinal truth are extremely vague. 
 They are grateful to any man who will make their 
 knowledge of the external facts of Holy Scripture 
 definite, and who will give sharpness and firmness to 
 the outlines of their conceptions of truth. 
 
 Young preachers arc afraid to say the same thing 
 over and over again. Mr. Finney, in his Auto- 
 biography, quotes what a judge in your Supreme 
 Court once said to him on this subject, and it 
 deserves your careful consideration. " Ministers," he 
 said, " do not exercise good sense in addressing the 
 people. They are afraid of repetition. Now, if 
 
I50 THE ADVICE OF A JUDGE. [lect. v. 
 
 lawyers should take such a course, they would ruin 
 themselves and their cause. When I was at the bar," 
 he added, " I used to take it for granted, when I had 
 before me a jury of respectable men, that I should 
 have to repeat over my main positions about as many 
 times as there were persons in the jury-box. I learned 
 that unless I did so, illustrated, and repeated, and 
 turned the main points over — the main points of law 
 and of evidence — I should lose my cause." i The 
 judge was right. We should all preach more effec- 
 tively if, instead of tasking our intellectual resources 
 to say a great many things in the same sermon, we 
 tried to say a very few things in a great many ways. 
 I " Finney's Autobiography," p. 85. 
 
LECTURE VL 
 
 EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING AND STYLE. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, — About the comparative advan- 
 tages of preaching from a manuscript and 
 preaching extemporaneously, I have some difficulty 
 in speaking. It seems to me that the overwhelming 
 weight of the argument is on the side of extempo- 
 raneous preaching ; but I have very rarely the courage 
 to go into the pulpit without carrying with me the 
 notes of my sermon, and occasionally I read every 
 sentence from the first to the last. 
 
 The contrast between my theory of preaching and 
 my practice is in this respect very glaring ; but I had 
 better avail myself of this opportunity of saying that 
 in many other respects the contrast, if less glaring, 
 is not less real. Some of the worst faults, some of 
 the most fatal mistakes, which I have entreated 
 you to avoid, are the faults and the mistakes which 
 I have found it most difficult to avoid myself; 
 and the bitterness with which I may have spoken 
 of these vices has come from the soreness of heart 
 with which I remember the extent to which they 
 have impaired the power of my own preaching, and 
 from the resentment I feel against them as my own 
 
152 M. COQUERErS DEFINITION. [lect. vi. 
 
 persistent enemies — resentment which has been inten- 
 sified by prolonged and not very successful struggles 
 to escape from their power. The methods of work 
 which I recommend to you are not mere theoretical 
 suggestions. I have tested their value ; but some 
 of them I began to try too late. I shall be grateful 
 if the experience I have acquired from my own 
 failures contributes anything to your success. 
 
 It is not every man that appears in the pulpit 
 without his manuscript who is an extemporaneous 
 preacher. In Scotland and in France, where the 
 people regard the " paper " with horror, it is a 
 common practice for ministers to write their sermons 
 and to learn them by heart — clause after clause, 
 sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. 
 Some men, without any attempt to learn what they 
 have written, reproduce it with hardly the variation 
 of a single phrase. I have heard of eminent preachers 
 who are able to compose and to retain in their memory 
 long discourses without putting pen to paper. None 
 of these are extemporaneous preachers. 
 
 On the other hand it is not necessary, in order to 
 preach extemporaneously, that we should choose our 
 text as we go into the pulpit, and say what happens 
 to come first. M. Coquerel puts it admirably when 
 he says that the extemporaneous preacher " knows 
 what he is going to say, but does not know how he 
 will say it."^ Even this definition may require some 
 
 I "Observations Pratiques sur la Predication." Athanase 
 Coquerel. Page 193. 
 
LECT. VI.] MR. VINCE. 153 
 
 qualification. A man may be fairly said to preach 
 extemporaneously although he may have in his mind 
 a few strong epigrammatic sentences with which he 
 intends to close and to clinch some passages in his 
 sermon ; and who, in thinking over an illustration 
 which requires vivid or delicate treatment, has hit 
 upon the felicitous phrases in which he means to 
 clothe it. 
 
 A friend of mine now dead, who was a very 
 effective preacher and speaker, used to talk over his 
 sermons and his speeches, before he delivered them, 
 with any one he happened to meet. He was a very 
 busy man, but was always ready for a gossip : his 
 gossip was part of his work. How often he has 
 caught me in one of the most crowded streets of 
 Birmingham, or on the steps of the Public Library, 
 and put to me a thought or an argument or an il- 
 lustration which he meant to use in a sermon on the 
 following Sunday morning, or in a speech in the Town 
 Hall the next night! Perhaps the idea had just 
 occurred to him, and then he would develop it 
 briefly and in outline, and make it grow while he was 
 talking. Perhaps he had already tried it with some 
 one he had met earlier in the day, and in that case the 
 passage had taken a certain finish : he revised it while 
 he repeated it. It was his custom to write his sermons 
 and speeches, though he rarely used any notes ; but it 
 is my impression that he had got not only all his 
 main thoughts, but the very best words he could 
 find for expressing them, before he wrote a line. 
 
154 BOSSUET. [lect. vi. 
 
 A member of the House of Commons was telling 
 me a few weeks ago that one of our famous political 
 orators prepares in the same way. Before he makes 
 a great speech, said my friend, he talks over all the 
 points with every man he sees, and if he can talk to 
 nobody else, he will talk to his gardener. Sentence 
 after sentence, one epigram after another, gets into 
 shape in this way. 
 
 Great rnistakes are made about the habits of 
 orators and preachers. I remember being struck 
 very powerfully when I was a student by a pictu- 
 resque description of the way that Bossuet prepared 
 his sermons. The writer — I quite forget who it 
 was — said that Bossuet used to sit at his table for a 
 short time in perfect stillness, while with an eagle eye 
 he glanced over the whole extent of the subject on 
 which he was meditating ; that gradually he became 
 excited, and that then he dashed down ten or a dozen 
 sentences, indicating the principal lines along which, 
 when he was in the pulpit, his superb genius was to 
 travel ; and that when these were written the prepa- 
 ration was over. Very picturesque, rather melodra- 
 matic, and, if intended as a description of Bossuet's 
 uniform practice, absolutely false ! Sometimes, it is 
 true, Bossuet wrote very brief notes ; sometimes he 
 wrote at length, but wrote rapidly ; sometimes he 
 wrote with great care, and subjected what he had written 
 to exact revision. His method of preparation varied 
 with the varying leisure at his disposal, and with the 
 varying subjects on which he preached. And yet he 
 
LECT. VI.] LACORDAIRE. 155 
 
 may be almost described as an extemporaneous 
 preacher, for he does not seem to have been in the 
 habit of reproducing with any close accuracy what he 
 had written. His preparation had made him master 
 of himself and of his subject ; he watched his congre- 
 gation ; he worked out lines of thought which, in his 
 manuscript, he had barely suggested, if he saw that 
 they told ; he sometimes threw aside, when he was 
 face to face with the people, what M. Gandar calls 
 " the scholastic subtleties, which the theologian, in 
 his study, could hardly avoid " ; ^ he took fire as he 
 spoke, and he did not try to repress the flame. 
 
 Lacordaire, if we may trust M. Montalcmbert, who 
 was likely to be perfectly informed about his friend's 
 habits, was an extemporaneous preacher in the 
 strictest sense, and his extemporaneous power, in 
 M. Montalembert's judgment, was a principal ele- 
 ment of his effectiveness. In preparing his great 
 Conferences he took but very little time, but while 
 he worked the intellectual effort was intense. He 
 wrote nothing. The Conferences were taken down 
 in shorthand : the reports were submitted to him 
 the next day, and the corrections which he made 
 were very inconsiderable. Lacordaire, with all his 
 magnificent powers, did not, as M. Montalcmbert 
 acknowledges, escape altogether from the perils which 
 beset the extemporary speaker. Sometimes he was 
 too emphatic, sometimes too declamatory. It must be 
 ascribed, I suppose, to his neglect of writing, that his 
 ^"Bossuet: Orateur." By E. Gandar. Page xlv. 
 
156 JOHN ANGELL JAMES. [lect. vl 
 
 logic was sometimes weak and sometimes confused ; 
 that he often disturbed and even distressed his con- 
 gregation by stating with such force an objection which 
 he meant to answer, that, when the answer came, it 
 appeared inadequate. Perhaps, too, it was because 
 he prepared the substance only, and not the form of 
 his sermons, that he too rarely achieved the perfect 
 beauty which comes from perfect simplicity. ^ 
 
 These are the faults into which the extempora- 
 neous preacher — no matter what may be his genius — 
 is almost certain to be betrayed. He may do very 
 much to avoid them if he writes carefully, though 
 without any intention of recalling, when he is in the 
 pulpit, the precise language in his manuscript. 
 
 The advantages of writing and reading are obvious. 
 The preacher who goes to church with his sermon in 
 his pocket is sure of having something to say. He 
 escapes the anxiety with which many of the best ex- 
 temporaneous preachers are tormented every Friday 
 and Saturday. My predecessor, John Angell James, 
 usually preached without his manuscript, though he 
 nearly always wTote his sermons. While I was a 
 student he had to preach on what is regarded 
 by us as a great occasion in connection with the 
 Lpndon Missionary Society. He happened to tell me 
 three weeks before the sermon was to be delivered 
 that he intended to read it, and I ventured, rather 
 presumptuously, to remonstrate with him. "Why 
 
 2 See " Le Pere Lacordaire." By Le Comte de Montalembert. 
 Second edition, pp. 143-145. 
 
LECT. vi.J ADVANTAGES OF READING. I57 
 
 shouldn't I read ? " he asked. " Because you are never 
 so effective when you read," I repHed. He gave me 
 an odd look, and said, "Well now, I'll tell you how it 
 is. If I preach without reading I shall be miserable for 
 three weeks — miserable till I am in the pulpit ; if I 
 read, I shall be quite happy till I begin to preach, 
 though I shall be miserable till I finish." The old 
 man's reason for using his manuscript was not to be 
 answered ; and I suppose that there are many 
 preachers who, if they did not read, would soon be 
 worn away by the anxiety and dread with which they 
 would anticipate their Sunday's work. 
 
 It must also be conceded that in sermons in which 
 clearness and precise accuracy in the statement of truth 
 arc of special importance, the man who reads is likely 
 to have a great advantage. Language is a difficult in- 
 strument to master, and even the ablest speakers and 
 those who have had the longest practice cannot always 
 command at the moment the simplest and most 
 transparent expression of their thought. This is espe- 
 cially true when they are dealing with unfamiliar lines 
 of speculation. The written sermon is also likely to 
 be most successful in the clear and orderly develop- 
 ment of an elaborate argument. 
 
 Nor is it fair to say that those who read their ser- 
 mons show a distrust of the aid of the Holy Spirit. 
 Our self-distrust, our dependence upon Divine teaching 
 and aid, may be just as perfect when we are writing as 
 when we are speaking. I do not accept the supersti- 
 tion which implies that the Spirit of God is with us in 
 
158 PREACHING OLD SERMONS. [lect. vi. 
 
 the pulpit and not in the study. Those who argue 
 that it is a sign of want of faith to write and to read, 
 ought also to protest against making any preparation 
 for preaching at all. Verbal inspiration is not claimed ; 
 it is for the substance of his sermon that the preacher 
 is to rely on the illumination of the Spirit of God ; 
 and the man who prepares the substance of his ser- 
 mon and not the form, is therefore open to precisely 
 the same charge as the man who prepares its form as 
 well as its substance. So far, indeed, as this argument 
 is concerned, I think that the preacher who writes his 
 sermons and reads them is in a rather better position 
 than the man who prepares the general outlines of his 
 thoughts without writing. They both prepare the sub- 
 stance of their sermons, for which we are told that 
 they ought to rely on the illumination of the Holy 
 Ghost, and therefore they are both equally guilty of 
 distrust ; but the one who does not write is also guilty 
 of presumption, for he relies on the inspiration of the 
 Holy Ghost for the language he will want, though for 
 this reliance it is admitted that there is no adequate 
 ground. The whole argument is preposterous and 
 fanatical. If carried to its logical issue it would re- 
 quire us to go into the pulpit without selecting a text. 
 There is one advantage on the side of writing and 
 reading sermons, which is rarely mentioned. Extem- 
 J poraneous sermons, as Hooker says, " spend their life 
 in their birth, and may have public audience but once."i 
 If a man writes and reads he can preach his old ser- 
 
 » Hooker : " Ecclesiastical Polity." Book v. cap. xxi. 
 
LECT. VI.] PREACHING OLD SERMONS. 159 
 
 mons over again, and preach them effectively. When 
 ministers remove to a new congregation, I suppose that 
 they have no scruples about preaching sermons which 
 they have preached before ; but I can sec no sufficient 
 reason for not preaching sermons a second or a third 
 time to the same congregation. Indeed, after an interval 
 of seven or eight years, though we may be preaching in 
 the same pulpit, we are not preaching to the same con- 
 gregation. Many of the people have died ; some have 
 removed to other churches or to other parts of the coun- 
 try ; new people have taken their places ; children have 
 become young men and women; young men and women 
 who were uninterested in the sermon when it was first 
 preached have had their moral and intellectual interest 
 in religious truth awakened, and will listen to it with 
 eager attention. If }'ou write a sermon on any of 
 those great topics to which you are bound to recur 
 frequently — on the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 for instance, or on the Personality of the Holy Spirit, or 
 on the nature of Regeneration, or on the Protestant 
 doctrine of Justification, or on the principles which will 
 determine the judgment of men at the last day ; — if 
 the substance of the sermon is the result of reading 
 and thought extending over many months ; if you 
 think that the statement of the scriptural proof of the 
 doctrine is clear and full and strong ; if the arrange- 
 ment satisfies you ; if the whole discussion is as 
 complete and effective as you can make it — I think 
 that you will waste a good piece of work if you use 
 it only once and then throw it aside. Some of the 
 
i6o CALEB MORRIS. [lect. vi. 
 
 people — perhaps many of them — will recognise it 
 as an old sermon ; but your congregation will be a 
 very remarkable one if there are more than a very 
 few persons who will remember the contents of it 
 so perfectly that it will not do them good to hear 
 the sermon again. The Rev. Caleb Morris, who, 
 thirty years ago, was one of the ablest and most 
 fascinating preachers among the English Congrega- 
 tionalists, was obliged, some time before his death, 
 to resign his pastorate on account of ill-health ; but 
 he continued to conduct a religious service in his 
 own drawing-room, at which twenty or thirty persons 
 were present. I have heard that, after reading the 
 Scriptures and offering prayer, he sometimes examined 
 his little congregation on the sermon of the preceding 
 Sunday. If he found that they did not remember 
 it very well he preached it over again. I am not 
 sure that I can commend Mr. Morris's practice to 
 your imitation, but there was surely a great deal of 
 good sense in it. If it became common it would 
 considerably lighten our labours in the preparation of 
 our sermons. 
 
 Nor is it only sermons which contain an elaborate 
 proof and illustration of the great central doctrines of 
 the Christian faith which may be preached over again. 
 Ten years ago, certain aspects of ethical and religious 
 truth and duty exerted exceptional power over my 
 o\yn moral and spiritual life : five years earlier, certain 
 other aspects of truth had the same ascendency, and 
 ruled me with the same authority. These particular 
 
LECT. VI.] PREACHING OLD SERMONS. i6i 
 
 truths or particular aspects of truth do not seem to 
 me less important now than they were when they 
 haunted me day and night. Their practical value to 
 my congregation does not seem to me less than it 
 was then. But they have been so incorporated into 
 the very substance of my faith and life, that the 
 intense intellectual interest which they once excited 
 has gone by. I could not state them now with the 
 same energy with which I stated them when they 
 absorbed my whole thought and fired me with en- 
 thusiastic ardour. And yet when I take up an old 
 sermon in which these aspects of truth or duty are 
 illustrated and enforced, the flame bursts out again ; 
 I am ten, fifteen years younger ; I can preach the 
 sermon with the same vehement moral interest with 
 which I preached it first. Sometimes, indeed, I think 
 I preach an old sermon of this kind with even stronger 
 emotion than I felt when it was fresh, for the ex- 
 perience of subsequent years has deepened my sense 
 of the value of the truth or the sacredness of the 
 duty which it was intended to illustrate. If, however, 
 I had to write a new sermon on the same subject, I 
 should not be able to write with the same force and 
 fire. 
 
 You will be good enough not to misunderstand my 
 meaning. I do not suggest that if you write and read, 
 you should preach over again the sermons which 
 strike you as very " pretty," or very " fine." The ser- 
 mons which we have a right to repeat are sermons 
 to which we have given so much time and strength 
 
 12 
 
1 62 PREACHING OLD SERMONS. [lect. vi. 
 
 that they contain the very best that we can say on 
 some great subject ; or sermons which, though of per- 
 manent interest and value, derived their force from 
 the special intellectual and moral experiences which 
 we were passing through when they were written. 
 \ When you preach an old sermon, be frank about it. 
 There are people who keep a record of our sermons ; 
 the margins of their Bibles are enriched with dates 
 placed against the texts we have preached from. Do 
 not try to cheat these keepers of homiletical chronicles. 
 The old sermon may sometimes require a great deal 
 of revision : you may have to cancel some passages and 
 replace them with others ; you may have to strike out 
 many superfluous epithets, to improve the form of an 
 illustration, to strengthen the foundations or change 
 the structure of an argument ; but do not try to 
 conceal the fact that the sermon is not a new one ; let 
 the old text stand. 
 
 Do you say that if you preach old sermons and the 
 people know it they will think that you are getting 
 lazy } If there is any chance of your people thinking 
 that you are lazy, you have no right to preach at all. 
 A man who is doing his work as he ought to do it, 
 will be quite safe from imputations of that sort. 
 
 There is something to be said, then, in favour of 
 writing our sermons and reading them ; and there is 
 something still more decisive to be said for the prac- 
 tice than I have said yet. It is certain that there are 
 many able and useful preachers, who, if they did not 
 use their manuscript, would be unable to preach at all. 
 
LECT . VI. ] EXTEMPORANEOUS PRE A CHING. i d^ 
 
 And yet — notwithstanding my own habits — I am 
 compelled to admit that if we can preach without 
 y reading we are likely to preach more effectively. 
 \ It is not true that read sermons are always dry and 
 dull, or that extemporaneous sermons are necessarily 
 vivacious and vigorous. Dr. Chalmers was accustomed 
 to read every syllable, and yet he preached with a fire 
 and a passion which created great excitement and 
 produced the deepest impression. How weak, how 
 dreary, an extemporaneous preacher may be, we all 
 know. But there are few of us that have Dr. Chalmers's 
 strong and impetuous nature. Unless there is extra- 
 ordinary force in the preacher, the manuscript some- 
 how comes between him and the congregation. The 
 very reasons which lead us to say that we cannot 
 preach unless we read, suggest some of the causes 
 which make written sermons ineffective. If a preacher 
 reads because he is afraid that he cannot carry in his 
 mind all the thought that he is accustomed to put 
 into a sermon, the probability is that the thought is 
 wanting in simplicity and breadth ; that it is not well 
 massed ; that the details are so numerous as to be 
 confusing; and that, as a natural and almost inevitable 
 consequence, the congregation will master his meaning 
 very imperfectly. Or if he is conscious that what he 
 wishes to say is not quite familiar to himself, and that 
 he must write, in order to make sure of expressing 
 it clearly, he may infer that he is not in such complete 
 possession of it as to be able to handle it — even in 
 writing — with freedom and vigour. If the thought — 
 
 12 * 
 
i64 EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING. [lect. vi. 
 
 though perfectly familiar to the preacher — is so subtle 
 and so delicate that a great deal of care is necessary 
 to express it accurately, the presumption is that it is 
 too subtle and delicate to be caught at a single 
 hearing, no matter how felicitous the expression may 
 be. The thought of an extemporaneous preacher is 
 more likely to be of a kind to interest and impress an 
 ordinary congregation than the thought of a preacher 
 who reads. 
 
 In the development of his thought the extempora- 
 neous preacher has an advantage to which it is hardly 
 possible to attach too great importance. When we 
 are writing, it is not easy to determine at what point 
 we ought to stop in working out an idea. If the idea 
 has life in it, and our fancy happens to be fertile, there 
 is a great intellectual delight in letting a single thought 
 shoot out branch after branch covered with foliage and 
 blossom. For an Essay, in which the intellectual in- 
 terest is supreme, there is no harm in permitting our 
 fancy to have its way ; but in a sermon, in which the 
 practical interest dominates everything else, restraint is 
 necessary if we are to be effective. As soon as the people 
 are conscious that we have been caught by the mere 
 intellectual attractions of any thought that has oc- 
 curred to us, they become either impatient or critical ; 
 they want us to pass on, or else they watch our per- 
 formance with curious eyes, to see whether we get 
 through it gracefully and brilliantly. The extem- 
 poraneous preacher — even though he may have pre- 
 pared the substance of a passage that is too elaborately 
 
LECT. VI.] EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING. 165 
 
 ingenious — is checked by the direct relations between 
 himself and his audience. He might have read it 
 without being conscious that he was at fault ; but, if 
 he has any oratorical instinct, it is impossible for him 
 to speak it. 
 
 The extemporaneous preacher will also be likely to 
 have an advantage in his style. It is true that he 
 can hardly be accurate. I met a few years ago some 
 very able parliamentary reporters, and they told me 
 that there were only three or four men in the House 
 of Commons whose speeches it was possible to report 
 exactly as they were spoken. But what the extem- 
 poraneous speaker loses in accuracy, he may more 
 than gain in ease, directness, and vigour. He will 
 escape the formality and the " bookishness " of man- 
 ner which are the snare of most writers, and which are 
 intolerable to all listeners ; and in the generous heat 
 which comes from direct contact with his audience, he 
 may achieve a boldness both of thought and expres- 
 sion which are rarely achieved at the desk. 
 
 There is another advantage which belongs to the 
 extemporaneous speaker. In writing, we cannot be 
 sure whether we ought to be satisfied with saying a 
 thing once, or whether we ought to say it over again. 
 In speaking extemporaneously, we watch the faces 
 of the people, and we often discover that statements 
 which seemed to ourselves perfectly clear, require to 
 be repeated, illustrated, and expanded. 
 
 I admit that the question cannot be determined 
 peremptorily ; that there are advantages on the side 
 
 ^ 
 
i66 PREPARATION. [lect. vi. 
 
 of preaching from a full manuscript, as well as advan- 
 tages on the side of preaching from the briefest notes, 
 or from no notes at all. Very much depends on the 
 preacher, very much on the character of the congre- 
 gation. There are, too, some subjects which may be 
 treated as effectively by the man who reads his 
 sermons as by the man who preaches extempora- 
 neously. But I say again that, on the whole, I am 
 clear that the practice of reading our sermons lessens 
 the interest and impairs the power of our preaching. 
 
 If you determine — as I trust you will — not to read, 
 you will do well to master the materials you have 
 prepared for a sermon in the same way in which men 
 master the materials they have prepared for a speech. 
 On a few sheets of note-paper — if you cannot trust 
 your memory — you may indicate your leading lines 
 of thought, and the illustrations which you are most 
 anxious not to forget. You will find it expedient to 
 prepare two or three opening sentences ; it is still 
 more expedient to make sure of an effective close. 
 One of the best speakers I have ever heard was often 
 in the greatest difficulty through his inability to hit 
 upon a perfectly satisfactory sentence to finish with. 
 Those of us who knew him used to watch him with 
 the greatest amusement while he was hunting to the 
 right and to the left for what he wanted. We used to 
 say that he was " running after his tail." If you have 
 an illustration which requires perfection of form, you 
 may write it out carefully and commit it to memory. 
 You may also prepare a few keen, epigrammatic, or 
 
LECT. VI.] PREPARATION. 167 
 
 passionate sentences, in which to concentrate the effect 
 of extemporaneous passages which lead up to them. 
 I beheve that Plunket, one of the greatest of our 
 orators, was accustomed to prepare his speeches in 
 this w^ay. It is generally understood that on great 
 occasions Mr. Bright follows the same method. 
 
 You need not be afraid that the sentences and 
 passages which you have prepared will look like 
 Horace's " purple patches " on the meaner fabric 
 of your extemporaneous style, or that they will at all 
 embarrass the free play of thought and passion. 
 There is great shrewdness in the criticism of George 
 Sand on the vehement words in which one of her 
 heroes — a law student — denounced the practice of law 
 — " They came to him too naturally not to have been 
 studied."^ If you ha\e the true instinct and habit 
 of a speaker, these prepared passages will simply 
 heighten the effect and complete the impression of 
 the rest of your sermon. 
 
 As for the extemporaneous passages, let them be 
 perfectly extemporaneous. Make no attempt to re- 
 call the words in which your thoughts occurred to you 
 in your study. Never permit yourself to criticise the 
 form of your sentences ; grasp your thoughts firmly, 
 and let the sentences take their chance. The advice 
 of Mr. Pitt to Lord Mornington was admirable. "My 
 lord," he said, "you arc not so successful as you ought 
 to be in the House of Commons, and the reason, as I 
 conceive, is this : you are more anxious about words 
 
 * George Sand : " Horace," p. 11. 
 
 •" 
 
1 68 CULTIVATION OF STYLE. [lect. vi. 
 
 than about ideas. You do not consider that if you 
 are thinking of words you will have no ideas, but if 
 you have ideas words will come of themselves." Lord 
 Mornington — who is better known as the Marquis of 
 Wellesley — took Pitt's advice, and he became one of 
 the most eloquent of English orators. 
 
 But though you ought not to think of your style while 
 you are preaching, you must think of it at other times. 
 Whether you read your sermons or preach extempo- 
 raneously, it is equally necessary that you should take 
 a great deal of trouble to acquire a mastery of the 
 English language. Do not imagine that a knowledge 
 of your own tongue will come to you by instinct or 
 inspiration. The power of writing and speaking in 
 clear, strong, racy, picturesque, and musical English is 
 as truly the result of culture and hard work as the 
 power of reading a play of yEschylus or a difficult 
 speech in Thucydides. 
 
 I trust that you are already acquiring a discriminat- 
 ing admiration for the characteristic qualities of the 
 great writers of English prose. The pomp and splen- 
 dour and vigour of Edmund Burke, the masculine 
 strength of Robert South, the ease of Cowper, the 
 perfect transparency and unrivalled felicity of Arch- 
 deacon Paley, the subtlety and flexibility of Nathanael 
 Hawthorne — you are learning, I hope, to find delight 
 in them all. But mere delight is not enough. Voltaire 
 used to keep the " Petit Careme " of Massillon always on 
 his table. Dr. Johnson, oddly enough, considering his 
 own ponderous and artificial manner, said that who- 
 
LECT. VI.] DO NOT BE IMITATORS. 169 
 
 ever would write English must spend his days and 
 nights in the study of Addison. 
 
 You will not, if you are wise, try to imitate the style ^ 
 of any of the men whom you admire. " A man who 
 writes well," says Montesquieu, " does not write as 
 other men write ; he writes in his own way ; " and he 
 adds, with a Frenchman's delight in an epigram, " he 
 often speaks well when he speaks badly." ^ A 
 man's style if it is a good one fits his thought like a 
 good coat fits his figure. Your friend's coat may fit 
 him admirably ; but everything depends upon the fall 
 of his shoulders, the length of his arms, and the 
 breadth of his chest. If you tried to wear it you might 
 find that you had put on a strait-jacket, or that the 
 garment which, when worn by }'our friend, was per- 
 fectly graceful, hung about you like a sack. 
 
 Do not imitate the style of the great writers, but 
 study them closely enough to learn how infinitely 
 varied are the resources of the English tongue. You 
 will find it, I think, a useful practice, after reading a 
 paragraph which seems to you to be expressed with 
 unusual clearness and force, to lay aside the book and 
 to endeavour to express the same thoughts yourself 
 To compare your own handiwork with the bright 
 original will be an instructive exercise : I have found 
 it a very humiliating one. As you read, you may 
 enlarge your vocabulary by marking and remember- 
 ing words — not rare and remarkable words — but very 
 ordinary and useful words, which never place them- 
 selves at the service of your thought. 
 
 * Montesquieu : '• Pensees Divcrses," p. 226. 
 
I70 STRUCTURE OF PARAGRAPHS. [lect. vi. 
 
 You will notice idiomatic phrases and forms of 
 sentences which you never employ. You will discover 
 the various styles of architecture which may be fol- 
 lowed in the building up of paragraphs — styles as 
 different as Gothic and Grecian, Egyptian and Lom- 
 bardic. One man begins by stating the general prin- 
 ciple which the paragraph is to illustrate in detail. 
 Another puts his concrete illustrations first, and the 
 general principle explodes epigrammatically in the 
 sentence with which the paragraph closes. Another 
 ascends through details to a general principle, and 
 then descends to details again. 
 
 The "theme" of a paragraph may, of course, be 
 something very different from a general principle. 
 The observations I have just made are intended 
 simply to show what I mean by the different forms 
 which a paragraph may assume. 
 
 Nor is it the great prose writers alone who will 
 assist you in writing and speaking good English. 
 For the language of pathos and humour, imagination 
 and fancy, you will also study the poets — the poets 
 who have won their place among English classics. 
 
 Men who have to preach twice every Sunday, and 
 most of whose week evenings during eight months 
 in the year are spent in lecturing, preaching, speaking, 
 or conducting Bible-classes, cannot hope to acquire 
 a very noble or beautiful style. But there is no 
 reason why our sentences should all be run into one 
 mould ; or why we should lose ourselves every few 
 minutes in the mazes of an unintelligible parenthesis. 
 
LECT. VI.] THE STYLE FOR PRAYER. 171 
 
 or why our sermons should be like those of a 
 preacher it was my happiness to hear occasionally 
 when I was your age, each of which invariably con- 
 sisted of one unwieldy sentence, sprouting out into 
 joint after joint, and never ceasing to grow till for 
 some inexplicable but beneficent reason the preacher 
 said Amen. There is no reason why, when you have 
 at your service the noblest language for an orator that 
 was ever spoken by the human race, you should be 
 satisfied with the threadbare phrases, the tawdry 
 tarnished finery, the patched and ragged garments 
 with a smell like that of the stock of a second-hand 
 clothes shop, with which half-educated and ambitious 
 declaimers are content to cov^er the nakedness of their 
 thoughts. You can do something better than this, 
 and you should resolve to do it/ 
 
 Perhaps the most difficult of all styles to acquire is 
 a style perfectly appropriate to public prayer. The 
 mere language of our prayers may seem to some of 
 you comparatively unimportant, but I think that not 
 only intelligent and cultivated men, but very ordinary 
 people, are sensitive to the qualities which render a 
 style suitable to the purposes of devotion. They may 
 find it impossible to explain why it is that when they 
 arc listening to one man's prayers their hearts are filled 
 with awe and reverence and devout trust, and that 
 when they are listening to the prayers of another man, 
 who is not less devout, they find it almost impossible 
 to pray at all ; but the difference in the mere style of 
 the prayers may often suggest a partial explanation of 
 
172 THE STYLE FOR PRAYER. [lect. vr. 
 
 the difficulty. Phrases which when they were fresh 
 were very beautiful, but from which the delicate bloom 
 has long ago been quite rubbed off; heterogeneous 
 fragments of ill-remembered and ill-applied sentences 
 from the Psalms of David, the prophecies of Isaiah, 
 and the hymns of Dr. Watts and Charles Wesley — 
 these, to a man who is offering prayer, may seem to 
 express his own devotional feeling, but they do not 
 really express it, and they make it very difficult for 
 many who are listening to him to maintain a devo- 
 tional temper. The language of conversational fami- 
 liarity is worse still. Rhetorical finery is most offensive 
 of all. 
 
 These are gross faults easily avoided. No devout 
 man of any education need pray in a style which will 
 hinder the devotion of others. To acquire the natural 
 use of a style which shall assist the devotion of those 
 who listen to us, just as the music of a penitential 
 hymn breathes a deeper pathos into its confessions of 
 weakness and sin, and just as the music of a hymn 
 of thanksgiving adds new passion to its gratitude, is 
 not so easy. 
 
 That there should be a difference between the 
 language of prayer and the language of preaching 
 ought to occasion no greater perplexity than the very 
 obvious fact that there should be a difference between 
 the language of a sermon and the language of a 
 hymn. Wordsworth, as you remember, contended 
 that the style of a poem becomes unnatural just in the 
 degree in which it varies from good prose. The theory 
 
LECT. VI.] THE STYLE FOR PRAYER, 173 
 
 — happily it was a theory which he rarely practised — 
 is at once destroyed by a comparison between any 
 page of Wordsworth's prose and any page of Words- 
 worth's sonnets. It would be as rational to affirm that 
 singing becomes unnatural just in the degree in which 
 it varies from ordinary speaking. Every word that 
 may be used by a poet may, perhaps, sometimes be 
 used by a good prose writer ; nearly every form of 
 construction that is admissible in verse is admissible 
 in certain kinds of prose ; but there are words, there 
 are turns of expression, there arc phrases, which are 
 perfectly in their place in the columns of a news- 
 paper or in the pages of a review, which no poet 
 would dream of using in serious verse. It seems to 
 me that there arc similar limitations — limitations still 
 more subtle perhaps — which have to be recognised in 
 our prayers, and which should distinguish the style of 
 our prayers from the style of our preaching. I can- 
 not define the difference between the two styles. The 
 critics who rightly controverted Wordsworth's theory 
 found it difficult to define the difference between the 
 style appropriate to verse and the style appropriate to 
 prose. But in both cases the difference exists. 
 
 A friend of mine, whose prayers were perfect in the 
 simplicity and beauty of their form, told me that he 
 thought no word should be used in prayer that had 
 come into the language since the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth. The canon seemed to me artificial, and 
 most of us would find great difficulty in observing it ; 
 but in his own case it was certainly used with ad- 
 
174 VICES OF STYLE. [lect. vi. 
 
 mirable results. The reasons for using in prayer old 
 words which are still living words, will be obvious to 
 every one that has thought about the philosophy of 
 language. Perhaps, nistead of adopting my friend's 
 rule, it might be well to determine to use in prayer 
 those words only which are found in our authorized 
 version of the Bible, and to attempt, in the form of 
 our sentences, the utmost simplicity of syntactical 
 structure. 
 
 Before closing this lecture I should like to say 
 something about those vices of style to which young 
 writers and speakers are especially liable. But I am 
 conscious of the same difficulty which troubled me in 
 the early part of the lecture, in which I recommended 
 you to preach extemporaneously. The precepts which 
 I most honour I have found it hardest to obey. The 
 faults which seem to me most serious are those which 
 I have always found it difficult to avoid. 
 
 Perhaps I shall be less vividly conscious of my in- 
 consistency — and I shall certainly speak to better 
 purpose — if I invoke the authority of two or three 
 great French writers instead of using my own words. 
 
 Montesquieu reminds us that the easiest style of all 
 is the inflated and emphatic style ; but this, he says, is 
 the style of a nation just emerging from barbarism. ^ 
 Joubert has several maxims in which he insists on the 
 great virtue of simplicity. "Words, like lenses, obscure 
 what they do not enable us to see better."^ "The 
 
 * Montesquieu : " Pens^es Diverses," p. 233. 
 2 Joubert : " Pens^es, Essais, et Maximes," vol. ii. p. 61. 
 
LECT.VL] VICES OF STYLE. 175 
 
 oratorical style has often the disadvantage of those 
 operas in which the music prevents the words from 
 being heard : in this case, the words prevent you from 
 seeing the thoughts." i Vauvenargues asserts that if 
 a thought cannot be expressed in simple words, it is 
 not worth expressing at all, " When a thought is not 
 strong enough to bear a simple expression, that is a 
 reason for rejecting it." 2 Joubert has also a maxim 
 which suggests the necessity of varying our style ac- 
 cording to the quality and power of our voice, and 
 according to the size as well as the character of our 
 congregation.3 A tenor song, even though you 
 transpose it a fifth lower, will not suit a bass singer ; 
 and the style of speaking which may be very effective 
 for a man with a shrill, keen voice, may be absolutely 
 grotesque if attempted by a man whose voice is rich*'' 
 and deep and full. Some of the lady orators whom I 
 have heard do not seem to have thought of this. 
 They speak like men. It is just as if you played on 
 the flute a piece of music written for the bass viol. 
 The ladies must hit upon a new style of eloquence if 
 they intend to be effectiv^e public speakers. One or 
 two lady orators, whose originality of intellectual 
 power and strong individuality save them from being 
 imitators, seem to be striking the right path, but they 
 have a long way to trav^el. 
 
 There are two other maxims of Joubert's which are 
 
 I Joubert : " Pensdes, Essais, et Maximes," vol. ii. p. 80. 
 
 2 Vauvenargues : " Reflexions et Maximes," p. i. 
 
 3 Joubert. Vol. ii. p. 61. 
 
176 VICES OF STYLE. [lect. vi. 
 
 worth thinking of every day. " It is by familiar words 
 that a style bites and takes possession of the reader. 
 It is by these that great thoughts obtain currency 
 and are assumed to be good metal, like gold and 
 silver stamped with a well - known impression." ^ 
 Again : " It is not enough to make people understand 
 what you say ; you must make them see it. The 
 memory, the understanding, and the imagination 
 must all take possession of it." 2 In another maxim 
 he passes out of the region of literary criticism and 
 touches the region of morals. " Let your mind always 
 be loftier than your thoughts, and your thoughts loftier 
 than your language." 3 If this maxim needs a com- 
 mentary, you have it in the well-known verses by John 
 Henry Newman, in the " Lyra Apostolica." 
 
 *' Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control, 
 That o'er thee swell and throng ; 
 They will condense within thy soul, 
 And change to purpose strong. 
 
 " But he who lets his feelings run 
 In soft, luxurious flow, 
 Shrinks when hard service must be done, 
 And faints at every woe. 
 
 "Faith's meanest deed more favour bears, 
 Where hearts and wills are weighed. 
 Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, 
 Which bloom their hour and fade." 3 
 
 " By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy 
 words thou shalt be condemned." This warning of our 
 
 I Joubert. Vol. ii. p. 8j. 2 ibid. 3 Ibid. 68. 
 
 3 " Lyra Apostolica," p. 85. 
 
LECT. VI.] MORALITY OF STYLE. i-j-j 
 
 Lord's has a special meaning for us ministers. The 
 morahty of a merchant consists very largely in the 
 way in which he deals with money ; the morality of a 
 minister consists very largely in the way in which he 
 deals with thoughts and words. There is an integrity 
 of the intellect as well as of the exchange. We are 
 not honest, merely because our words agree with our 
 thoughts ; honesty requires that we should do our 
 best to make our thoughts agree with the facts. And 
 for truthfulness of speech, it is not enough that we 
 never say what we know to be false ; we must do our 
 best to form a style that shall be an accurate expres- 
 sion of our inner thought and life. 
 
 The morality of style is a subject so interesting that 
 I wonder it has nc\cr been discussed. Some one said 
 that Gibbon's style was a style in which it was impos- 
 sible to speak the truth. There are other vices with 
 which a style may be chargeable besides untruthful- 
 ness. Young ladies display their vanity in their dress 
 and jewels, and perhaps they are sometimes reproved 
 by young preachers who display equal v^anity in the 
 glittering phrases with which they bedizen their ser- 
 mons — phrases which they want }'ou to admire as 
 much as if they were diamonds, but which are mere 
 paste set in base metal. A st}-le with magnificent 
 qualities may sometimes touch the line which sepa- 
 rates great excellences from great vices. Lord 
 Macaulay was conscious that his own style was 
 very near being a bad one. It may be doubted 
 whether he altogether escaped the perils of which 
 
 13 
 
178 MORALITY OF STYLE. [lect. vi. 
 
 his strong clear sense warned him. But there can be 
 no doubt that in the hands of his imitators his style 
 has become as bad as a style can be — ostentatious, 
 domineering, and tyrannical. Lord Macaulay's man- 
 ner is very contagious. The miserable fate of those 
 who have imitated him should teach us to avoid it. 
 
 Some young speakers and writers seem to be 
 greatly fascinated with a style which has become 
 common in some of our cheaper English newspapers 
 during the last few years, and which I have occasion- 
 ally met with in sermons published on both sides of 
 the Atlantic. I do not know how to describe it except 
 by calling it " the hot gin-and-water style " — the gin 
 greatly predominating over the water. Sometimes it 
 becomes maudlin, sometimes hysterical. It is the 
 style of men who are guilty, intellectually, of an 
 habitual violation of the laws of temperance and 
 sobriety. I suppose that there was an original want 
 of firmness in the fibre of their intellectual nature, and 
 as the result of their love of intellectual excitement, 
 and their impatience of plain honest work, they have 
 become permanently diseased. Their intellectual con- 
 dition reminds one of what the doctors say about men 
 who have drunk so constantly and so heavily, that 
 their blood and brain are alcoholised. These unfortu- 
 nate writers may never touch a stimulant, but they 
 suffer from intellectual delirhun tremens. 
 
 There is hardly a vice, there is hardly a virtue of 
 moral conduct, that has not its correlative in style. 
 Conceit, vanity and ambition, insolence and pride. 
 
LECT. VI.] MORALITY OF STYLE. 179 
 
 selfishness, cowardice, slovenliness and indolence, in- 
 temperance and violence, pretentiousness and indifter- 
 ence to truth — you may find them all in style as well 
 as in character. You may also find the opposite 
 virtues — courage, frankness and honesty, humility, 
 modesty and simplicity, sobriety, gentleness and in- 
 dustry. I do not mean that the vices of a man's style 
 are always present in what we call his moral character. 
 It sometimes happens that through accidents of tem- 
 perament, or through defective early moral discipline, 
 or through the imperfect development of conscience, 
 ethical laws are grossly violated by the intellect which 
 are rigorously respected in conduct. 
 
 Let me remind you, gentlemen, in conclusion, that 
 your language is one of the noblest and most precious 
 parts of that magnificent inheritance which you have 
 received from a great ancestry. It is the living and 
 glorious monument of the thought, the endurance, 
 the achievements, and the sorrows of many genera- 
 tions. It has been created by the affections and 
 by the toil of the common people, by the genius of 
 orators and poets, by the speculations of philoso- 
 phers, by the devotion of saints. It is a legacy from 
 your remote forefathers in German forests whose 
 virtues are celebrated by the severest of Roman 
 historians. It preserves some of the most costly 
 treasures of ancient civilisations. It is the fruit 
 of long years of patient industry, of cruel wars, of 
 voyages in strange seas, and of travels in strange 
 lands. It is yours, but all the citizens of this great 
 
 13* 
 
i8o THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE. [lect. vi. 
 
 commonwealth have a property in it. It is yours, but 
 we, too, who Hve on the other side of the ocean have 
 rights in it which you are bound to respect. It is 
 yours, but it is entailed on your children and your 
 children's children, and you will do them a great 
 wrong unless you transmit it to the next generation 
 with its wealth unimpoverished and its dignity un- 
 impaired. 
 
 You have no more right to injure the national 
 language than to chip a statue or to run a penknife 
 through a picture, in the national museum. To use 
 words so loosely and inaccurately that their definite 
 meaning is lost, is to commit an intellectual offence, 
 corresponding to that of removing the landmarks of 
 an ancient estate. To prostrate noble words to base 
 uses is as great a wrong to the community as to deface 
 a noble public monument. A word once degraded 
 can rarely be restored to its original rank ; the bloom 
 once rubbed off by rude and unmannerly hands can 
 rarely be recovered ; when once defiled by gross and 
 vulgar associations, its delicate purity is lost for ever. 
 
 Your language is not yours — not yours alone ; it 
 belongs to your country and to posterity. Take care 
 that, so far as you are concerned, none of its fertile 
 provinces are permitted to sink out of cultivation ; 
 take care that the cold grey sea is not permitted to 
 encroach on the coast. Maintain its ancient idiom. 
 Honour the laws which have governed its structure. 
 While a language lives it must grow. Old words must 
 gradually fall off from it, like dead leaves from a tree 
 
LECT. VI.] THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE. i8i 
 
 in autumn ; new words must express the new life, like 
 the fresh leaves on a tree in spring. But if you are 
 not the last to use the old words, do not be the first to 
 use the new. A language lives on the lips of the 
 people, not in the dictionary. A dictionary is not 
 merely a home for living words ; it is a hospital for 
 the sick ; it is a cemetery for the dead. We, who 
 have the ear of the people, can help to keep the best 
 part of the language alive. Let us resolve that we 
 will do nothing to make Shakespeare and Spenser, 
 and Milton and Dryden, and Hooker and Howe, and 
 Barrow and Baxter, and Defoe and Addison, and 
 Bolingbroke and Swift and Burke, less intelligible to 
 posterity than they are to ourselves. 
 
 It is said of a distinguished German philosopher 
 that he pursued his philosophical studies undisturbed 
 and apparently uninterested by the supreme struggle 
 of his country with Napoleon ; that " his patriotism 
 was limited to the German language, whose powerful 
 beauties he appreciated so keenly that it maddened 
 him to see it wielded in the clumsy grasp of ordinary 
 writers." i I cannot recommend you to cherish so 
 exclusive a devotion to the language of your country 
 that you shall become indifferent to the violation of 
 its territory ; but among the duties which an educated 
 American citizen owes to the Republic, this seems to 
 me to have no inconsiderable place — the duty of 
 maintaining the purity and the strength and the 
 honour of the national tongue. 
 
 » Schopenhauer. See his Life, p. 47. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 EVANGELISTIC PREACHING. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, — In a volume of Essays on. the 
 Christian Ministry/ which I remember reading 
 when I was a student — Essays, by the way, selected 
 from your o^sin Biblical Repository and other American 
 periodicals — there was an anonymous paper, in which 
 it was argued that a preacher ought to have a large 
 and deep acquaintance with the life of the age in which 
 he lives. " A Kjtow ledge of his own Times important 
 to a Christian Minister^' — this was the title of the 
 paper, and this was the proposition which the writer 
 maintained with great earnestness, ingenuity, and elo- 
 quence. I wish he had written a second paper with a 
 slightly different title — ''A Knoivledge pother Times 
 than his own important to a CJiristian Minister T For, 
 not to mention many other topics which might have 
 found a place in the second essay, the writer might 
 have shown that the despondency — I might almost 
 say the terror and despair — with which some good 
 men speak of the forces which are hostile to the 
 Christian Faith in our own days, would give place to 
 
 * " Essays on the Christian Ministry." Edited by W. H. 
 Murch, D.D. London. Third edition. 1848. 
 
LECT. VII.] NO REASON FOR DESPONDENCY. 183 
 
 hopefulness and courage if they knew more of the 
 irrehgion and unbeHef of past centuries. 
 
 There is no reason, gentlemen, why in these times a 
 Christian preacher need be out of heart, whether he 
 preaches in America or in England. 
 
 Do you remind me of the passionate eagerness for 
 wealth, which is one of the chief vices both of your 
 country and of mine ? — of the fierceness of com- 
 mercial competition, which forces upon merchants, 
 manufacturers, and tradesmen, who would be satisfied 
 with a modest income, incessant vigilance and inces- 
 sant labour in order to escape commercial ruin ? Or 
 are you dismayed by what you hear or what you see 
 of the feverish restlessness which makes men incapable 
 of living a quiet life, and which makes them crave 
 incessantly for exciting and sensational pleasures ? 
 
 But the men and women about you are, after all, 
 God's children, and as He has not forgotten tJiein^ 
 they are unable to forget Him. Like their fathers, 
 they, too, are sometimes conscious of vague and mys- 
 terious yearnings for an unknown and infinite good. 
 They, too, sometimes come into the shadow of vast 
 and solemn thoughts about the life beyond the 
 grave. To them, too, conscience reveals the august 
 authority of the Eternal Law of Righteousness. They 
 spend lonely hours in sick chambers. They watch 
 by the bed of the dying. They mourn for their 
 dead. The deeper sorrows, the deeper joys of human 
 life, do not vary much from age to age. The fairest 
 hopes still fall away like spring-blossoms, and the 
 
1 84 INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY. [lect. vii. 
 
 sweetQS^pleasures pass away like summer flowers ; 
 the steagest self-confidence is humiliated^ the most 
 vigorous ambition is thwarted. The old story is trans- 
 lated into new languages, but the plot remains the 
 same. 
 
 In brain and muscle, in heart and lungs, in form 
 and limb, men are very much the same to-day that 
 they were centuries ago — in the times of great reli- 
 gious revivals, in the times of the apostles and of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The eyes of men are still 
 open to the brightness of the heavens, and their ears 
 to the sound of the wind. And so the avenues by 
 which in past generations God found His way into the 
 innermost depths of their moral and spiritual life are 
 still unclosed. Men may still be penetrated with awe 
 by the Divine righteousness, may still be touched by 
 the Divine pity, may still be compelled to tremble by 
 the fear of the Divine anger: they may still be made 
 to long for the sound of God's voice, for the grasp of 
 His hand, and for the vision of His glory. 
 
 As for the intellectual activity of our times, of which 
 some good men are so afraid, I cannot see that there 
 is anything in it to create alarm. There are grave 
 perils, no doubt, in the moral tendency of certain 
 philosophical theories, which shelter themselves under 
 the authority of recent scientific speculations ; but 
 ever since St. Paul wrote to the Golossian Christians 
 about that false Gnosis which was attracting them 
 from the simplicity of the gospel, the Church has had 
 to maintain a perpetual struggle against theories of 
 
LECT. VII.] INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY. 185 
 
 human nature and of the universe, which threatened 
 the very foundations of faith. It is one thing, however, 
 to say that the ancient conflict between the truth of 
 Christ and human unbeUef is not yet over ; it is an- 
 other thing to be alarmed on account of the intel- 
 lectual activity of our times. Intellectual activity is 
 unhappily far less common than one would suppose, 
 from the accounts which are sometimes given of it. 
 
 I do not find that the majority of the English 
 people spend their days and nights in studying phy- 
 sical science, or that there is a universal and consuming 
 passion for the writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Nor 
 do I find that there is such an enthusiastic devotion 
 to literature and art, that it is impossible to induce 
 people to think of anything else. It is not true, so far 
 as I know, that balls and garden-parties have had to 
 be given up, because all the young ladies between six- 
 teen and five and twenty are absorbed in the music of 
 Herr Wagner or in the philosophy of Schopenhauer. It 
 is not true, so far as I know, that cotton-manufacturers, 
 iron-masters, merchants, farmers, have given up their 
 newspapers, that they may have more leisure for making 
 out the meaning of Mr. Robert Browning's later poems. 
 Nor did I hear that the London Stock Exchange was 
 closed last season while the Grosvenor Gallery was 
 open, because the brokers were anxious to give all 
 their time to the study of the remarkable paintings 
 of Mr. Burne-Jones, and the Nocturnes in Blue and 
 Silver, and the Harmonies in Amber and Black, of 
 Mr. James Whistler. I can only speak for the people 
 
1 86 INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY. [lect. vii. 
 
 of London and Liverpool and Manchester and Bir- 
 mingham, and for those I happen to know in some of 
 the quieter towns and villages of the old country. In 
 Boston and New York, in Chicago and Charlestown, 
 among your western settlers and the farmers of New 
 England, it may of course be altogether different. 
 
 Even among the men who are eminent for their 
 scientific or literary attainments, it does not seem to 
 me that, except in rare instances, science or literature 
 so completely fills up the whole capacity of their 
 thought, and obtains so complete a mastery of their 
 passions, that they are incapable of being interested in 
 ordinary affairs. I know literary men and scientific 
 men who care for national politics and for municipal 
 business. They even think about how they can get 
 5 per cent, for their investments instead of 4^ ; they 
 go out to dinner like other people, and they can talk 
 about the weather ; they fall in love ; they marry ; 
 they have a taste for old china and for furniture of the 
 time of Queen Anne. Their knowledge brings them 
 some noble excitements and satisfactions ; but human 
 nature in them is after all very much what it is in the 
 rest of the race. They, too, are the children of God, 
 and they have wants and capacities which neither 
 science nor literature can ever satisfy. 
 
 The Christian Faith has lived through epochs of 
 intellectual excitement at least as intense as that by 
 which the more active intellectual life of our own day 
 is exalted. Have you forgotten the enthusiasm and 
 pride of the intellectual revival which came to Europe 
 
LECT. VII.] THE RENAISSANCE. 187 
 
 in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries ? All the 
 intellectual glory of ancient Greece suddenly flooded 
 the mind of Italy, France, and Germany. The noblest 
 eloquence, philosophy,- poetry, and art which the world 
 had ever known, and which had been almost forgotten 
 for centuries, were restored to the scholars of Europe, 
 and produced an intellectual intoxication which per- 
 haps has hardly ever been equalled since. Men felt that 
 never before had they seen the transcendent splendours 
 of human genius — that never before had they even 
 suspected the vast possibilities of the intellectual 
 powers of man ; — but that time of intellectual triumph 
 was followed, not by the destruction of Faith, but by 
 the greatest of all religious revivals in the history of 
 the Christian Church, the Protestant Reformation. 
 
 The new learning of the Renaissance might natu- 
 rally have been regarded with terror. Paganism was 
 invested with an intellectual glory which for a time 
 made the brightest triumphs of the intellect of Chris- 
 tendom look poor and dim. The new learning which 
 came with these dazzling pretensions, dealt with many 
 of the-problems for which a solution had been sought 
 in theology ; and it appealed to those very elements 
 of our nature which are stirred by religious faith. It 
 was no wonder that for a time men listened to Plato 
 and forgot St. Paul ; that their imagination was filled 
 by the solemn grandeur and the perfect beauty of the 
 ancient tragedians, so that the eloquence of Isaiah and 
 the pathos of the Psalms were for a time overborne. 
 
 The Science of our times is a less formidable rival 
 
1 88 REVELATION AND SCIENCE. [lect. vii. 
 
 to Faith. It does not touch the great problems in 
 which the heart of man is most deeply interested ; or, 
 if it ventures to touch them, it ceases to be Science 
 and becomes pure speculation. 
 
 It is of no avail to tell us about the structure of 
 the lachrymal gland when w^e want to know how 
 the sorrow which finds a momentary relief in tears is 
 to receive a permanent consolation. In quiet times 
 we can listen with keen and respectful interest to all 
 that Science can tell us about our mysterious kinship 
 to the inferior animals, and even to the lowest forms 
 of vegetable life ; but there are times in which we are 
 conscious of a kinship of another kind — kinship to a 
 life that is above us as well as to a life that is below 
 us — and the higher kinship provokes an intenser in- 
 terest, and is felt to be our supreme concern. The 
 laws of heat and light, the history of the physical 
 universe, the structure of our own physical nature, pro- 
 voke intellectual curiosity ; but the deeper passions 
 of our hearts are not touched until we are spoken to 
 about the origin, and obligation, and transcendent 
 nobleness and beauty of that idea of goodness which 
 haunts us and which we cannot reach ; about the 
 struggles and triumphs of heroic virtue and the per- 
 fection of saints ; about the consciousness of fault and 
 failure which clings to us and which we cannot throw 
 off; about the possibility of a future existence, in 
 which our baffled hopes of resolving into a perfect 
 harmony the harsh discords of our moral life may be 
 fulfilled ; about the authority of God, about access to 
 
LECT. VII.] REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 189 
 
 the Divine presence in this world, and about a day of 
 judgment in the world to come. 
 
 Of all these things Science knows nothing. As 
 soon as we enter into the sphere of moral freedom we 
 ascend to heights which are beyond the wing and 
 beyond even the vision of scientific speculation ; for 
 Science knows of no laws which are not uniformly 
 obeyed, and in Morals we have to do with laws which 
 we are free to obey or to transgress. 
 
 There is no reason, gentlemen, for being afraid that 
 the splendid scientific triumphs of our time, triumphs 
 in which every devout heart ought to rejoice, will 
 stand in the way of our work. The whole region of 
 human nature to which we appeal, Science leaves quite 
 untouched. 
 
 Every age, however, has its superstitions, and one 
 of the curious susperstitions of our own da\'s ma}-, 
 perhaps, impair the energy of your own faith, and so 
 diminish the force of your preaching. It seems to be 
 taken for granted that because a man is very great on iXy 
 the life and structure of flowers and animals, he has ' 
 exceptional authority on questions about God and 
 immortality; and that because he knows a great deal 
 about light and heat and electricit}-, he is sure to have 
 very much to tell us about the spiritual universe. Yet 
 no one supposes that because a man is a learned 
 lawyer he is likely to give us safe advice about how to 
 treat scarlet fever; and no one thinks that because a 
 man is a very skilful physician, he has any claim to 
 speak with authority on the best form of construction 
 
190 REVELATION AND SCIENCE. [lect. vii. 
 
 for steam-boilers or on the merits of a new plough. 
 Even among scientific men themselves you will hear 
 
 it said, Mr. is a great astronomer, but he knows 
 
 nothing of biology ; or he is a profound chemist, but 
 he knows nothing of physiology. It is plain that a 
 man may be eminent in one branch of physical 
 science, and that in another branch his opinion may 
 ■ not be worth listening to : it is still more obvious that 
 when a scientific man discusses ethical questions and 
 questions of spiritual philosophy, he is dealing Avith 
 subjects which are so remote from his usual studies, 
 that his scientific knowledge and discipline give his 
 opinions no claim to exceptional deference. To attach 
 weight to a man's views on the authenticity of the 
 four Gospels, or on any questions of religious truth 
 
 '^ and duty, because he is a distinguished geologist, 
 chemist, or biologist, is just as preposterous as to 
 
 \ attach weight to a man's views on geology because he 
 \is a profound theologian. The story of the conflict 
 between Science and Religion is full of interest and of 
 instruction, but it is only half finished. A century or 
 two hence, when a few additional chapters wUl have 
 to be written, some of our brilliant and eloquent con- 
 temporaries, who on scientific grounds — and with all 
 the authority derived from their scientific achieve- 
 ments, are requiring us to abandon our faith in moral 
 freedom and our hope of a life beyond the grave, will 
 take their turn in the pillory — will be the objects of 
 the same scorn and derision as the theologians who in 
 the name of the Church, and on the authority of the 
 
LECT. VII.] REVELATION AND SCIENCE. 191 
 
 Book of Genesis and the Book of Psalms, imprisoned 
 Galileo, condemned Kepler's laws as religious heresies, 
 and made it a treason against God to believe that the 
 earth revolves on its axis, and was created more than 
 six thousand years ago. 
 
 You, I hope, will make it a matter of conscience to 
 avoid the error committed by theologians in past ages, 
 and committed in another form by some scientific 
 men in our own times. As religious teachers, you 
 have absolutely no authority over questions lying 
 within the province of Science. At no point in the 
 working out of any scientific problem have you — as 
 religious teachers — any right to interfere. You have 
 no right to ask for any consideration of the interests 
 of religious faith in the settlement of any scientific 
 controversy. The judges in your law courts would 
 resent as an insult to their integrity any suggestion 
 that they should put the slightest pressure upon the 
 law in order to favour the interests of their personal 
 friends or of their political party. You offer an equal 
 insult to the integrity of scientific men when you betray 
 any wish that in their scientific inquiries they should 
 be influenced by the way in which it is supposed that 
 their conclusions might affect the authority of Divine 
 revelation.' It is part of their religious duty to settle 
 scientific questions on scientific grounds, and on 
 scientific grounds only. For you to wish them to 
 work under a bias, is the indication of a flaw in your 
 intellectual honesty, and a decisive proof of a want of 
 courage and firmness in your religious faith. 
 
1 92 ArOL GE TIC PRE A CHIXG. [lect. v i i . 
 
 To what extent it is our duty to discuss in the 
 pulpit modern speculations — partly scientific, partly 
 philosophical — which are hostile to the Christian 
 Faith, is a question which every man must determine 
 for himself. You must determine it by considering 
 your own resources and the character of your con- 
 gregation. 
 
 If you touch controversies of this kind, you ought 
 to be quite certain that you understand the theories 
 which you are attacking, and that you have mastered 
 the grounds on which they rest. You ought, also, 
 to be quite sure that you can reply — not to the 
 weakest — but to the strongest arguments by which they 
 are supported. The serious beliefs of men ought to be 
 discussed seriously and fairly. It is perfectly legiti- 
 mate to illustrate the grotesque absurdity of a false 
 speculation when we can prove it to be false ; it is 
 perfectly legitimate to kindle a generous indignation 
 against an intellectual imposture if we have the know- 
 ledge and skill to unmask it ; but to attempt to laugh 
 our opponents out of court without meeting their case, 
 and to make passion take the place of reason, are 
 shameful offences against the laws of intellectual 
 honour and equity. I trust that the ethics of theolo- 
 gical controversy are better understood by us than they 
 were by our fathers ; but theological controversialists, 
 like controversialists of other kinds, are always under 
 a strong temptation to seek fair ends by foul means. 
 We have no right to secure the condemnation of the 
 basest criminals by menacing the jury and bribing 
 
LECT. VII.] APOLOGETIC PREACHING, 193 
 
 the judge. I do not believe in Lynch law, even for 
 the worst crimes. It is dangerous to try to cast out 
 devils in the name of Beelzebub the prince of the 
 devils. We shall never fight the battles of Heaven to 
 any purpose with arms forged in hell. J To attempt to 
 destroy even the most pernicious error by reckless 
 misrepresentation, by appeals to ignorance and blind 
 passion, by weapons poisoned with slander, is to repeat 
 the crime of the Jesuits, who are credited with sanction- 
 ing the assassination of heretical princes. If you touch 
 controversy, be just, be generous, to your opponents. 
 
 But it is doubtful whether it is wise for most of us, 
 especially in the earlier years of our ministry, to carry 
 on any direct controversy with scientific and philo- 
 sophical unbelief Sermons on subjects of this kind 
 should, in any case, be preached very seldom. In 
 ordinary congregations there are very few persons 
 who have any exact knowledge of the speculations 
 by which the Christian Faith is menaced, very few 
 who are acquainted with the scientific grounds on 
 which most of these speculations rest, very few who 
 are trained to those intellectual habits which are 
 necessary for forming any intelligent judgment on 
 them. Our true business— and this we should be care- 
 ful not to neglect— is to secure our own territory. So 
 far as Science is concerned, the war we have to carry 
 on is purely defensive. In our case, the principle of 
 non-interference is not only legitimate but obligatory. 
 As theologians, we have no occasion to be troubled so 
 
 14 
 
194 ^OIV TO MEET MODERN DOUBT. [lect. vii. 
 
 long as our neighbours do not pass our frontier. We 
 may leave it to scientific men to discuss the claims of 
 Darwinianism on scientific allegiance ; to us as theo- 
 logians the settlement of the scientific controversy has 
 no practical interest. Our only interest is to know 
 the truth. It is, perhaps, impossible for us to main- 
 tain an absolute neutrality of feeling while watching 
 the civil strife which disturbs a neighbouring kingdom, 
 and there are many reasons which might lead us to 
 prefer that the struggle should be settled in favour of 
 Mr. Darwin's theory rather than against it ; but we 
 must respect the rights of belligerents while the 
 struggle lasts, and we are prepared to accept whatever 
 theory may ultimately make good its authority. 
 
 We are not prepared, however, to yield to either 
 party an inch of the soil which belongs to ourselves, 
 and which it is our duty to defend. A defensive con- 
 troversy is imposed upon us as a necessity. In the 
 name of Science, in the name of Philosophy, theories 
 are propagated which underm.ine moral responsibility 
 and train the soul, first to ignore and then to deny the 
 existence and the authority of the living God. These 
 theories are in the air. They determine the method 
 of many social speculations which to innocent minds 
 seem to have no relation to religious truth. They are 
 the fundamental assumptions which underlie a great 
 deal of historical criticism. They give a colour to 
 leading articles on the political questions of the hour. 
 You find them everywhere. 
 
 I believe that the wisest and most effective way of 
 
LECT. VII.] HOW TO MEET MODERN DOUBT. i95 
 
 I dealing with these theories is to insist very earnestly 
 on the moral and religious truths which are imperilled. 
 The scientific speculations — true or false — are no 
 V special concern of ours. The moral and religious 
 truths which are menaced have their own evidence. 
 The issue of the controversy largely depends, for the 
 moment, upon the vigour and authority of conscience, 
 and upon the ardour and vehemence of those moral 
 affections which are the allies of conscience and the 
 strong defenders of her throne. /Let there be a regular 
 and systematic endeavour to strengthen among the 
 members of your congregations the sense of moral 
 responsibility. Give no quarter to the miserable and 
 ignominious doctrine that the moral character of a 
 man is determined by his environment. Heap up fires 
 of indignation on the excuses that men find for their 
 crimes in their circumstances. While frankly acknow- 
 ledging that physical temperament, early education, 
 the nature of a man's employment, his social position, 
 his success or failure in business, the food he eats, the 
 very temperature of the air he breathes, may affect his 
 moral life injuriously or favourably, teach men that it 
 is the prerogative of human nature to force and com- 
 pel the most adverse circumstances to give new firm- 
 ness to integrity and new fire to enthusiasm, to harden 
 the fibre of courage, to make generosity more genial 
 and pity more compassionate, to exalt innocence to 
 virtue and virtue to heroism. The literature of all 
 ages and all countries is on your side— history, poetry, 
 and eloquence ; the common speech of all nations is 
 
196 • HOW TO MEET MODERN DOUBT. [lect. vii. 
 
 on your side — language, which is the expression of the 
 enduring instincts of human nature, refuses to confound 
 crime and misfortune, affirms a distinction of infinite 
 and eternal significance between the conditions of 
 human life for which men are to be pitied or envied, 
 and the moral acts for which they are to be honoured 
 or condemned ; the conscience of every man to whom 
 you speak is on your side, and though drugged by 
 immoral sophistries, or almost driven from her throne 
 by the revolt of evil passions, let her hear your voice 
 asserting her regal titles, and calling back her subject 
 powers to their allegiance, and she will spring up in 
 terrible and glorious majesty — an archangel of God, 
 armed with the lightnings and thunders of Heaven. 
 Robust ethical preaching is one of the surest defences 
 against the worst and most prevalent forms of modern 
 unbelief. 
 
 A vigorous conscience is not only a protection 
 against those materialistic theories of the universe 
 which deny the reality of Moral Freedom, it is also 
 the surest and m.ost trustworthy ally of faith in the 
 Living God. It is the moral side of human nature 
 that touches the Divine. It is through the conscious- 
 ness that we ourselves have a will which moves freely 
 among natural laws, and is not bound by them, that 
 we are able to believe in a God who is above Nature. 
 Let the consciousness of Moral Freedom be lost or 
 become feeble, and by no metaphysical searching will 
 men be able to find out a personal God. 
 
 But if men are to be held fast to their religious 
 
LECT. VII.] HOIV TO MEET MODERN DOUBT. 197 
 
 faith by the instincts of their moral Hfe, the God we 
 preach must not be a kindly good-natured God, who t/^ 
 does not think very seriously of our moral character, 
 who cares more for our comfort than for our righteous- 
 ness, who commands no obedience, but leaves us to 
 order our lives as we please, "according to our light," 
 who threatens sin with no penalties, and will make tis 
 all happy at last. This sentimental conception of God 
 corresponds to no reality. The relations between God 
 and ourselves are wholly misconceived when we forget 
 that He has a right to rule, and that we are under 
 an obligation to obey. The conception is powerless 
 as well as false. It never secures any firm hold of the 
 deeper life of men. They part with it and are con- 
 scious of no loss ; none of the great forces which stir 
 human passion and inspire human energy are missed. 
 We must assert God's authority; and if we assert it 
 there are irrepressible instincts in the moral and spi- 
 ritual life which will confess the duty of submission. 
 
 But should we not tr\' to meet men on their own 
 ground .'' It is just as true that God loves men as that 
 He claims authority over them ; — is it not our wisdom 
 to present those aspects of truth which attract sym- 
 pathy and provoke no antagonism } If we adopt any 
 other line, shall we not destroy what little faith some 
 men still retain } Every one will listen to us when we 
 speak of the Divine love, but to the idea of God's 
 moral authority, and especially to the idea that this 
 authority will be resolutely maintained, the temper and 
 spirit of our age are irreconcilable. 
 
198 NO CONCESSIONS TO UNBELIEF. [lect. vii. 
 
 " Meet men on their own ground ? " Yes. But the 
 only legitimate reason for meeting them on their own 
 ground is the intention to persuade them to come over 
 to ours. We may " meet them on their own ground," 
 but if we remain on the ground which is occupied by 
 those who are in revolt against Christ, we go ovei to 
 the camp of the enemy. Some preachers seem to 
 suppose that the true method of converting unbelievers 
 is to explain away or to conceal everything in the 
 Christian faith to which unbelievers object, and to 
 emphasise everything in it which they are willing to 
 admit. While listening to preachers of this kind, 
 men cannot help thinking that if there is so very 
 little difference between what is contained in the gospel 
 and what they have discovered for themselves, and so 
 very little difference between what they are already 
 and what they would have to become if they acknow- 
 ledged the Christian law of life, their conversion to 
 Christ must be a matter of very slight importance. 
 
 I believe that the principle which should govern 
 the Christian preacher is precisely the reverse of that 
 which is accepted by these pleasant and accommo- 
 dating apologists. Addressing men who have an hon- 
 ourable abhorrence of untruthfulness and injustice, 
 but who ignore the personal claims of Christ on their 
 obedience and their trust, I should never hope to con- 
 vert them by insisting that according to the teaching 
 of Christ no reverence for Himself is of any worth 
 apart from moral integrity ; nor should I have any 
 hope of converting charitable persons who are insen- 
 
LECT. VJI.] NO COiVCESSIONS TO UNBELIEF. 199 
 
 sible to the claims of the Divine authority by expa- 
 tiating on those parts of our Lord's teaching which 
 urge the claims of human poverty and suffering. In 
 England, and I suppose in America, there are large 
 numbers of people who acknowledge the ethical 
 beauty of our Lord's teaching and the ideal perfection 
 of His character, but who cannot tolerate the awful 
 menaces which He uttered against the impenitent, and 
 who refuse to acknowledge that faith in Christ can be 
 the condition of everlasting life, and that unbelief will 
 end in everlasting destruction. Such persons will listen 
 to us with perfect complacency while we discourse on 
 the duty of gentleness, kindness, and self-sacrifice, 
 and while we illustrate the infinite mercy and com- 
 passion of our Father in heaven. Preaching of this 
 sort will not provoke their resentment ; it will com- 
 mand their sympathy and admiration. But though 
 everything that we say on these subjects may be true, 
 we shall never, by preaching exclusively on subjects ^ 
 of this kind, overcome their deeply-rooted hostility to 
 the authority of Christ. To preach to such persons 
 in this way, and in this way only, is what I mean by 
 meeting them on their own ground and remaining 
 there. 
 
 But was not this St. Paul's policy at Athens ? Did 
 he not appeal to the inscription on a heathen altar, and 
 found an argument on a quotation from a heathen 
 poet .^ No doubt. But when he appealed to the 
 inscription on one of their own altars, it was not with 
 the intention of assuring them that they had already 
 
200 DID ST. PAUL TEMPORISE 1 [lect. vii. 
 
 discovered nearly everything that he could tell them 
 about the " God that made the world and all things 
 therein : " the inscription is used with consummate 
 grace to imply that though God created us, and is 
 " not far from every one of us," and though " in him 
 we live and move and have our being," to the Athenians 
 He was " an unknown God." The line from an ancient 
 poet is not quoted to show that the Greeks had already 
 anticipated a large part of the revelation which it was 
 St. Paul's commission to make known to mankind : it 
 was quoted with the express object of attacking the 
 whole system of idolatry : " Forasmuch, then, as we 
 are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that 
 the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven 
 by art and man's device." This was St. Paul's method 
 of meeting unbelievers on their own ground. He found 
 his way into their fortifications to turn their own guns 
 upon them. He exploded their whole system from 
 within. He quoted the inscription on one of their 
 own altars in order to suggest that neither their philo- 
 sophy nor the traditions of their ancestors had given 
 them any knowledge of the true God. He quoted 
 Aratus or Kleanthes in order to expose the ignorance 
 of the Divine greatness which was illustrated by the 
 temples and statues which they had erected in honour 
 of their divinities. 
 
 Nor — though this was the first discourse that he 
 delivered to them — did he keep within the limits of 
 philosophical discussion about the nature of God, 
 and the true method of worshipping Him. He went 
 
LECT. VII.] DID ST. PAUL TEMPORISE? 201 
 
 on at once to speak about judgment to come, and 
 about Christ's resurrection from the dead. He mieht. 
 had he chosen, have said many things to which the 
 Epicureans and Stoics would have Hstened with 
 interest, and even with respect. He might have 
 discussed questions of morals. He might have com- 
 pared or contrasted the ethical teaching of Christ 
 with their own. But all this would have been to no 
 purpose. The resurrection of Christ might provoke 
 their mockery, but to be silent about it would have 
 given them a false conception of the gospel. It was 
 more important that the Athenians should know the 
 truth — whether they received it or not — than that St. 
 Paul should conciliate their respect. 
 
 The principle on which I am insisting is a very 
 simple one : whether true or false, it is intelligible. 
 We shall never make men Christians by suppress- 
 ing and throwing into the shade those parts of the 
 Christian revelation which especially provoke their 
 hostility. Truth which men regard as incredible, 
 truth which men resent — we must be sure, first of all, 
 that it is truth, and truth of an important kind — is^ 
 precisely the truth which men most need to hear, and 
 which is likely to produce the deepest moral impres- 
 sion. In this age, therefore, when, according to the 
 theory of some thinkers who are exerting a powerful 
 influence over popular thought on both sides of the 
 Atlantic, ethics and religion are little if anything 
 more than a branch of physiology ; when the worst 
 passions of bad men and the devotion of saints are 
 
202 WHAT TO PREACH IN THESE DAYS. [lect. vii. 
 
 regarded as mere functions of our physical organi- 
 sation ; when vice and virtue are supposed to be 
 *' products hke sugar and vitriol, the laws of whose 
 production Science may be expected to discover ; " 
 when the will is treated as only one form of that uni- 
 versal force which, in whatever form it is revealed, is 
 subject to fixed and invariable laws ; when we are 
 asked in the name of Science, and in the name of 
 an unselfish devotion to humanity, to renounce the 
 hope and even the desire of personal immortality, 
 and to be satisfied if, by the labour and virtue of this 
 transient life, we contribute something to the moral 
 and intellectual development of the race ; when we 
 are asked to reduce our faith in God Himself to a 
 belief in the omnipresence of something which passes 
 comprehension, or at best are permitted to acknow- 
 ledge Him as a power without us, that works for 
 righteousness, a power that cannot be touched to pity 
 by our sorrows, cannot be indignant when we sin, 
 cannot watch with ardent sympathy our struggles 
 with temptation, cannot rejoice with us in our 
 triumphs and be troubled with us in our defeats ; — 
 in these days it is the duty of the Christian preacher 
 to assert with greater energy than ever the moral 
 freedom of man, the certainty of a life beyond the 
 grave, and the personality and authority of the 
 Living God. 
 
 Sermons on these elementary topics are not to be 
 regarded as merely controversial, philosophical, or 
 ethical. Their intention is to strengthen those 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. 203 
 
 natural instincts, and those elements of what may 
 be called the natural faith of men, which are 
 threatened by prevalent forms of unbelief, and to 
 which the supernatural revelation which has come 
 to us through Christ appeals. They should be pene- 
 trated with an evangelistic spirit, and their immediate 
 or ultimate object should be to make men conscious 
 of sin, and to prevail upon them to serve God. 
 
 Our evangelistic preaching might, perhaps, be more 
 successful if we gave more careful and intelligent 
 thought to the conditions of success. To tell men 
 ov^er and over again that they ought to repent and 
 believe the gospel, to entreat them, no matter with 
 what vehemence, to " accept Christ," will rarely 
 produce any real results. Nor shall we do much 
 by telling men that they ought to be afraid of God's 
 anger, and that they ought to trust in His love. 
 We have to present to their minds and hearts those 
 truths which will make them wonder at the infinite / 
 greatness of the love of God, and which will make 
 them afraid to provoke His wrath ; those truths which 
 will create repentance and inspire faith. I know that 
 to preach the gospel so as to reach the hearts and 
 consciences of men, we need a special gift of the Holy 
 Ghost : this gift we ought to seek in earnest prayer. 
 I know, too, that the preaching of even an apostle 
 will be powerless apart from the direct action of the 
 Spirit of God upon the souls of men ; and the 
 manifestation of the presence and power of the Spirit 
 is not to be expected unless we pray for it. It remains 
 
204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii. 
 
 true that the substance and manner of our preaching 
 should be determined by the effect which we wish to 
 produce. 
 
 I doubt whether we sufficiently consider the variety 
 of motives which bring men to Christ, or the kind of 
 preaching which is likely to call these motives into 
 vigorous and effective action. There Is room for a 
 treatise on the Philosophy of Conversion, in which 
 questions of this order might be investigated. In the 
 absence of any such treatise, which if it were written 
 by a competent hand would be invaluable, we must 
 do the best we can for ourselves. Your remembrance 
 of your own religious history and your knowledge of 
 the religious history of your friends will furnish many 
 suggestions that may be of use to you. These mate- 
 rials will be rapidly increased if you watch the reli- 
 gious life of the members of your congregations. 
 
 Some men begin to live a Christian life under a sense 
 of duty. There is no keen sorrow for sin ; there is no 
 serious dread of the Divine anger ; there is no fear of 
 eternal perdition. Very much that usually precedes 
 conversion follows it, and follows it sometim.es after a 
 long interval. Christ appeals to the conscience, and 
 He is obeyed. There may be persons to whom we are 
 preaching who will respond to this appeal, and to this 
 appeal only. We should therefore ask how we can pre- 
 sent the Christian life so as to compel the consciences 
 of these men to confess that this is the kind of life 
 they ought to live. We should consider how we can 
 preach upon the moral greatness and authority of 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. 205 
 
 Christ SO as to make them feel that disloyalty to Him 
 is a grave moral offence, and that to acknowledge Him 
 as the Lord and Ruler of their lives is their supreme 
 
 duty. 
 
 Other men are drawn to God by the hope of escap- 
 ing from a vague dissatisfaction with themselves and 
 with the poverty of their life. Young people soon 
 find that life is not so large and rich and animating as 
 they hoped it would be. In the absence of ambition, 
 or of an exceptional enthusiasm for literature, science, 
 or politics, or of the distraction produced by a rapid 
 succession of stimulating pleasures, or of the nobler 
 and more generous excitement which springs from 
 happy love, there is something wanting ; they know 
 not what. There seems to be nothing worth living for. 
 They are capal^lc of an enthusiasm which there is 
 nothing to excite, of a love and devotion which there 
 is nothing to command. At such times, if they catch 
 any glimpse of the wealth and fulnessof the life which 
 is possible to them through Christ, they may be won 
 for ever. They may be won if they can be brought 
 under the power of any of the grander aspects of the 
 Christian revelation, if their hearts can be thrilled by 
 its immortal hopes, if they can be stirred with the 
 passionate devotion inspired by Christ's infinite love. 
 Such persons may be reached by the appeal of the 
 gospel to the moral imagination of man and to his 
 deeper moral emotions. 
 
 In others there is something to which we can appeal 
 that is more definite than this vague restlessness. 
 
2o6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii. 
 
 The native instincts of their spiritual life are no longer 
 
 latent, and there is a keen solicitude to find God. They 
 
 have half learned the open secret of Nature. They 
 
 know what Wordsworth meant when he said : — 
 
 "And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 Such men are sometimes idealists in philosophy, 
 and read the transcendental poets. But they are con- 
 scious that the mysterious Presence escapes them. 
 They know that the kingdom of heaven is near to 
 them, and are striving to enter in, but somehow they 
 are unable. They have to be taught the mystery of 
 the new birth. To the pardon of sin and to justifica- 
 tion they are as yet indifferent, but they will listen to 
 the words of St. John about the eternal life which was 
 with the Father and was manifested in Christ. They 
 will listen to Christ when He speaks of Himself as the 
 Way to the Father and as the true Vine, of which those 
 who believe in Him are the branches. They may be 
 reached by the mysticism of the gospel. 
 
 There are some, again, who begin to think of God 
 through the shame and self- disgust which are the 
 result of moral failure and the discovery of moral 
 weakness. Their firmest resolutions are broken almost 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. 207 
 
 as soon as they are made. They fall under the power 
 of the poorest and most ignoble temptations. They 
 repent, and fall again. They become alarmed about 
 themselves. There is no sense of sin, but there is an 
 agony of moral shame, and sometimes they sink into 
 moral despair. The gospel which will attract their 
 hearts is the assurance that Christ can break the force 
 of evil habits and destroy evil passions, and give them 
 strength for all moral duty. This gospel they may re- 
 ceive before they discover clearly that what conscience 
 condemns as vicious God condemns as sinful ; but if 
 they walk in the light which comes to them, no matter 
 how faint the light may be, it will brighten into perfect 
 day. 
 
 Other men, whose moral life is generous and as- 
 piring, may approach Christ through those ethical 
 precepts of His which require a perfection that is -^ 
 altogether impossible apart from the power of the 
 Holy Spirit. They have been haunted by thoughts of 
 an ideal and romantic goodness ; but Christ's ethical ^ 
 precepts and His own character create still fairer and 
 loftier visions of what human life might be. When 
 they learn that the laws of Christ are promises in 
 another form, and that the character of Christ is the 
 prophecy of the perfection which . is possible to those 
 who receive the life of Christ, theit- moral enthusiasm 
 will be kindled. They have very much to learn before 
 they can receive the kingdom of heaven as little 
 children ; but if they are in earnest, the humility of 
 faith will come at last. 
 
2o8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii. 
 
 There are many who are drawn to Christ by His 
 lov^e — drawn to Him, not because they are conscious 
 either of moral weakness which His love is eager 
 to strengthen, or of sin which His love is willing to 
 forgive, or of unintelligible cravings which His love 
 is able to satisfy — but by the love itself. They are 
 ^ drawn to Him as if by the force of moral and spiritual 
 gravitation. Children, especially — if I may judge 
 from my own observation — are drawn to Christ in this 
 way. Whether the opinion is sound which is held by 
 very many persons just now, that in nearly all cases it 
 is the love of Christ that originates religious thought 
 and life, seems to me very doubtful. That the opinion 
 should be a common one, is explicable; for whatever 
 may have first awakened religious earnestness, there 
 must be an apprehension of the love of Christ before 
 it is possible to have faith in Him ; but this is no 
 proof that the truths and facts which created the feli- 
 gious solicitude were superfluous. And yet it is certain 
 that if we could preach about the love of Christ with 
 the ardour, the exultation, and the rapture which it 
 ought to inspire, there would be something contagious 
 in our faith and joy ; if we could preach about it with 
 a tenderness like that which He Himself manifested 
 to the weak and the sorrowful and the sinful, the hearts 
 of men would be melted by it. 
 
 To preach with any effectiveness on Christ's love we 
 ourselves must be full of the spirit of Christ, and we 
 must have a vivid sense of the continuity of Christ's 
 life. We must feel, and must make others feel, that 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. 209 
 
 we have not merely a history to tell, but that the 
 Christ of the Gospels is alive ; that He has been living 
 through all the centuries which separate our own age 
 from the days in which men saw His human face and 
 heard His human v^oice, and that He is living still ; 
 that He does not merely reign on some golden throne 
 in some remote world, surrounded by shining angels 
 and by saints who have fought the good fight and 
 received their crown, but that He is still seeking and 
 saving the lost ; that in His heavenly glory He has 
 lost none of the compassion and gentleness which 
 win our affection in the story of His earthly humilia- 
 tion ; that the men who were His contemporaries 
 were no dearer to Him than the men of later genera- 
 tions ; that He is still the very Christ ^ho took the little 
 children in His arms and blessed them ; who saw the 
 desolation of the poor widow at Nain as she and her 
 friends were carrying her only son to the sepulchre, 
 and who, without being asked, stopped the sorrowful 
 company and restored the young man to His mother ; 
 who, when He was reproached for eating with pub- 
 licans and sinners, defended Himself in the parable of 
 the Prodigal Son ; who wept when He thought of the 
 calamities which were coming upon the city that re- 
 jected Him ; who endured for us and for our salvation 
 the agony of Gethsemane, and the desertion and death 
 of the cross. 
 
 " The cross " — this, according to the consent of all 
 Churches, and of all the evangelistic traditions of 
 Christendom, is the supreme power of the gospel ; and 
 
 i; 
 
2IO THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii. 
 
 the power of the cross is the power of the love of 
 Christ. And yet, not of the love of Christ only. For 
 the sufferings of Christ were not a mere dramatic dis- 
 play of love. " I delivered unto you first of all," said 
 St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, "that which I also 
 received, how that Christ died for 0217^ sinsT This 
 truth, according to the greatest evangelist among the 
 apostles, was one of the chief things, the fundamental 
 things, that he made known to those heathen people 
 when he preached the gospel to them. It is not 
 enough to tell men that Christ died because He loved 
 them ; the gospel of the death of Christ includes the 
 fact that He died for their sins. Until men know 
 what sin is — sin as distinguished from mere natural 
 defects and infirmities, which they may attribute to 
 their temperament and to the physical constitution 
 which they have inherited from their parents ; — sin as 
 distinguished from mere deformity which offends their 
 ideal of moral grace and beauty ; — sin as distinguished 
 from mere vice, which conscience condemns, and 
 which, in the absence of any belief in the authority 
 or even the existence of the Living God, conscience 
 would continue to condemn ; — until, I say, men know 
 what sin is they can see no meaning in a large part of 
 St. Paul's gospel of the death of Christ. Until they 
 are troubled, ashamed, and alarmed by the conscious- 
 ness of sin, they will listen to a large part of this 
 gospel w^ith moral indifference, or even with moral 
 resentment. 
 
 It should therefore be one of the principal objects 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. 211 
 
 of the Christian preacher to discover how he can 
 awaken the sense of guilt. He must be careful to 
 avoid all those representations of God which encourage 
 men to think that God is indifferent to human sin. 
 He must not suffer even the Law of Righteousness to 
 come between the conscience and God, but must train 
 men to the recognition of the Divine authority over 
 human life. To assert the authority of an impersonal 
 Law will not create the consciousness of sin. Right- 
 eousness is the discharge of those duties which we 
 owe to persons ; i unrighteousness is the neglect of 
 those duties ; and what has been called the " higher 
 law" is the law which arises from the relations be- 
 tween the human race and the Personal God. The 
 Christian preacher must also insist on the ethical view 
 of human nature, utterly refusing to make any com- 
 promise with theories which dull the sense of human 
 responsibility, never losing any legitimate opportunity 
 of giving emphasis to the truth that all the dignity 
 and shame, the romance and the heroism, the tragedy 
 and the glory, of the life of nations and of individual 
 men, have their origin in the mysterious prerogative 
 of moral freedom. 
 
 Sometimes the sense of guilt may be awakened by 
 a deliberate and persistent assault on a particular vice ; 
 sometimes by compelling the conscience to pronounce 
 
 ^ See " Christianity and Morality:" the Boyle Lectures for 
 1874 and 1S75. By Henry Wace, M.A. London: Pickering. 
 These lectures are, in my judgment, the most valuable contribu- 
 tion to English theological thought that has been made for 
 many years. 
 
 15* 
 
212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii. 
 
 judgment on the character of a life which may be free 
 from vice, but in which the authority of God counts 
 for nothing. Sometimes a vivid presentation of the 
 ideal of saintliness will suddenly reveal to mien the 
 contrast between what they are and what they ought 
 to be. Sometimes men will become sensible of their 
 guilt in the light of the infinite love of God. Some- 
 times they will start back with terror and astonish- 
 ment and bitter sorrow when they discover that it was 
 for their sins that the Christ was forsaken of the Father, 
 and died a cruel and shameful death. The death of 
 Christ, which is the supreme revelation of the Divine 
 love, is also the supreme revelation of human guilt. 
 
 What are we to say of that appeal to fear which 
 is denounced with such scorn and vehemence by 
 the Christianity that claims to be " liberal," and 
 teaches us to bring our religious faith into harmony 
 with the spirit of the nineteenth century "i I think 
 that we have to ask ourselves, first of all, whether 
 those who continue in revolt against God, and who 
 refuse to receive the Christian redemption, have any- 
 thing to fear } One of the soundest and noblest 
 elements of the intellectual temper of the nineteenth 
 century is its respect for facts. The great lesson 
 which scientific men have been trying to teach us is 
 that we cannot make a universe out of our own heads. 
 Of late, indeed, scientific men themselves seem to have 
 sometimes forgotten their own lesson ; and by a singu- 
 lar Nemesis, some daring scientific speculations on the 
 origin and constitution of the universe have recently 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION, 213 
 
 been sharply criticised by Dr. Bridges, one of the chief 
 "^ngHsh representatives of orthodox Positivism — not 
 of orthodox Christianity — on the ground that they 
 violate the fundamental canons of scientific inquiry.^ 
 Those who describe themselves as " liberal " Christians 
 seem to me to be open to criticism of a similar kind. 
 We may resent the intrusion of scientific methods into 
 the sphere of ethics and religion, but if moralists and 
 theologians can learn nothing else from science, they 
 should at least learn this — that facts should govern 
 speculation, and that if speculation, however brilliant 
 and charming, refuses in its pride to acknowledge 
 their authority, the facts will always be strong enough 
 to hold their own. 
 
 I ask again whether those who continue in revolt 
 against God, and who persistently reject the Christian 
 redemption, have anything to fear } Christ spoke 
 of " the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not 
 quenched." He said that there will be " wailing and 
 gnashing of teeth " when the wicked are severed from 
 the just and cast into "the furnace of fire ; " that the 
 wicked and slothful servant will be driven into the 
 darkness without, when the Lord of all returns to hold 
 high festival in light and joy with those who have 
 served Him loyally; that when He comes with His 
 holy angels and sits on the throne of His glory. He 
 will say to the unmerciful, " Depart from me ye cursed." 
 St. Paul speaks of the " indignation and wrath, 
 tribulation and anguish," which are to come upon 
 ^ See Fort7iightly Reviezu for June and July, 1877. 
 
214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii 
 
 those who know the law of God and break it ; and 
 warns those that obey not the gospel of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, that they will be " punished with 
 everlasting- destruction." Had St. Paul any authority 
 to declare that this awful doom menaces the impeni- 
 tent ? He who came to seek and to save the lost — 
 was He sure of His own mind when He affirmed that 
 when all nations are gathered before Him, He will 
 separate them into two companies, and that He will 
 pronounce a curse on those who are on His left hand, 
 and command them to depart from His presence into 
 everlasting fire } Is this His settled purpose } Will 
 He carry it out — not shrinking from the awful penalties 
 which He threatens to inflict upon those whom He 
 condemns .'^ '^ All that we actually know about the future 
 — all that we kiiozv^ as distinguished from what we 
 imagine, from what we infer, from what we hope — we 
 learn from Him who has brought life and immortality 
 to light through the gospel, and who has also declared 
 that unimaginable woes are the destiny of the unsaved. 
 Is Christ's testimony to be trusted ? This is the first 
 question which we have to solve. 
 
 About the precise measure and character and 
 duration of the evils of which He speaks, you may 
 be uncertain. To insist that the lost will be punished 
 in material fires, is as irrational as to insist that the 
 saved will dwell in a city paved with material gold. 
 You may think that the language of Christ and His 
 apostles suggests that although the doom of the 
 condemned is irrevocable, their sufferings will end in 
 
LECT. VII.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSIL N. 215 
 
 the exhaustion of life and strength, and in a second 
 death, from which there will be no resurrection. You 
 may even think that possibly there is some reserve in 
 the revelation of the eternal future, and that He who 
 will first command the wicked to depart from Him, 
 will afterwards seek them in the desolation to which 
 His own word had banished them, and will strive, not 
 without success, to bring them back to light and to God. 
 You must interpret the teaching of Christ for your- 
 selves, remembering only that you have to discov^er — 
 not what His words may be made to mean, — but what 
 they meant ; but however you interpret it, does there 
 not remain something very appalling for the im- 
 penitent to fear } And while this remains, is it not a 
 ground on which you may rest some of the strongest 
 and most effective arguments for renouncing sin, and 
 submitting to the authority of God t 
 
 To rely exclusively, or even chiefly, on terror as an 
 instrument of conversion, is no doubt a grave mistake; 
 but if we shrink from speaking of the Divine anger 
 which sin provokes, and of the Divine resolution to 
 inflict upon the impenitent intolerable punishment, we 
 suppress truths which on the lips of wiser, firmer — 
 yes, and I will add, more merciful — preachers than our- 
 selves, have not only agitated men with alarm, but 
 have constrained them to appeal to Christ for deliver- 
 ance, at once from sin and from eternal death. There 
 is one caution which I will venture to suggest, and I 
 will give it in the words of a man who on this sub- 
 ject has a right to be heard with exceptional respect. 
 
2i6 JHE PHILOSOPHY OF CONVERSION. [lect. vii. 
 
 Mr. Moody once said to me that " a preacher ought 
 to have a very tender heart, to speak with any good 
 effect about the conditign of the lost", J '^h^^^^ ' 
 
 It was not my intention to attempt a complete ac- 
 count of the various elements of man's moral and 
 spiritual nature to which the gospel appeals ; I merely 
 wanted to illustrate what I meant when I said that in 
 our evangelistic preaching we ought to study the con- 
 ditions of success. It is not by the monotonous repe- 
 tition of a solitary truth, or by putting an incessant 
 strain on a solitary motive, that we shall convert all 
 sorts of men. It is our duty to consider the manner in 
 which the varied contents of the Christian revelation 
 affect the varied powers and passions and suscepti- 
 bilities of human nature. We ought to try, in turn, 
 every possible access to the conscience and the heart. 
 
 In saying this, I have assumed that there is no rigid 
 and uniform type to which the spiritual life in its 
 origin and development should be compelled to con- 
 form. It cannot matter how a man comes to Christ, 
 if only he comes. Any motive that brings men to 
 Christ is a legitimate motive. Do not permit your- 
 selves to be fettered in your preaching by the formal 
 conception of an exact succession of experiences 
 through which every one that forsakes sin and lives 
 for God must necessarily pass. John Bunyan made 
 Christian flee from the City of Destruction in great 
 terror, and carrying a heavy burden. The poor pil- 
 grim sunk deep in the Slough of Despond ; was 
 
LECT. VII.] NO RIGID TYPE OF CONVERSION. 217 
 
 frightened almost out of his life under the awful rocks 
 and flames of Mount Sinai ; carried his dreadful load 
 on his weary shoulders long after he had passed 
 through the Wicket-gate, and even after he had been 
 shown the wonders and mysteries of the Interpreter's 
 House. But when Christiana and her children started 
 on their pilgrimage, Christiana had very little terror, 
 and the children had no terror at all. The boys cried 
 before setting out, but it was only because they had 
 not gone with their father, and now they wanted to 
 follow him. Not one of them sunk into the Slough ; 
 not one of them had a load to carry ; and neither the 
 cliffs nor the fires of Sinai alarmed them. John Bun- 
 yan was much wiser than those good men who cannot 
 believe that little children are in the right way at all 
 unless they can tell the story of how for a time they 
 were almost crushed with the sense of guilt, and only 
 found peace at the sight of the cross. 
 
 The city of God has twelve gates : every one of 
 them is a gate of pearl. What presumption it is to 
 insist that unless men enter by a particular gate they 
 cannot enter at all ! Let them enter by the gate that 
 is nearest to them. Nor should we insist that to 
 reach the gate itself there is only one path. Some 
 men find their way to it by the high road of duty ; 
 some through ravines of gloomy desolation and des- 
 pair ; some across pleasant meadows, bright with the 
 sunlight of hope and musical with the song of birds. 
 When once they are among the happy nations of the 
 saved, inside the jasper walls, no one will challenge 
 
2i8 EVANGELISTIC POWER. [lect. vii. 
 
 their right to a place in the holy city because they 
 entered by the wrong gate, or approached the right 
 gate by the wrong road. 
 
 If we are to have exceptional success in the con- 
 version of men we must have that exceptional form 
 of spiritual force which has been granted to some 
 great evangelists. " To one is given by the Spirit 
 the word of wisdom ; to another the word of know- 
 ledge by the same Spirit ; to another faith by the 
 same Spirit ; ... to another prophecy ; " to another 
 an evangelistic power which seems almost irresistible. 
 " All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, 
 dividing to every man severally as he will." In some 
 cases this power seems to have come to a man at the 
 very beginning of his own religious life ; in others, 
 after many years of patient and earnest Christian 
 work, which had achieved no extraordinary success ; 
 in some cases it has rested upon a man for a time and 
 has then been withdrawn. 
 
 I do not know that we have any right to believe 
 that this exceptional gift is to be obtained by every 
 one that seeks it. Nor do I think, therefore, that if 
 we have sought it and not received it, we are bound 
 to suppose that the cause lies in our own sin and un- 
 belief " For the body is not one member, but many. 
 ... If the whole body were an eye, where were the 
 hearing 1 If the whole were hearing, where were the 
 smelling } . . . And if they were all one member, 
 where were the body } " All Christian men are not 
 
LECT. VII.] EVANGELISTIC POWER. 219 
 
 called to the ministry. The carpenter and the black- 
 smith, the cotton manufacturer and the merchant, the 
 physician and the lawyer, the artist, the scholar, and 
 the statesman, are all as necessary as ourselves to the 
 complete fulfilment of God's idea concerning the 
 kingdom of heaven on earth. And all ministers do not 
 receive the same spiritual gifts ; for the work which 
 they have to do is of different kinds. St. John as a 
 saint and an apostle was not inferior either to St. 
 Peter or to St. Paul ; but I do not know that we have 
 any reason to suppose that his power as an evan- 
 gelist was equal to theirs. It has been justly said that 
 if St. Peter was the apostle of the circumcision, and y 
 St. Paul of the uncircumcision, St. John was the 
 apostle of the Church. It may be that many of us 
 are appointed to forms of service for which extra- 
 ordinary evangelistic energy is not necessary. The 
 spirit which leads some Christian men to speak dis- 
 paragingly of all ministers who arc not conspicuous 
 for their evangelistic success, is a schismatic spirit. 
 Our gifts vary with our functions, " that there should 
 be no schism in the body ; but that the members 
 should have the same care one of another." Schism 
 is schism still, even when it assumes the form of ex- 
 ceptional zeal for the evangelisation of the world. 
 
 The man on whom extraordinary evangelistic power 
 is conferred must, as a rule, separate himself from the 
 ordinary duties of the pastorate. He is appointed to 
 other work, and must not decline it. His position is 
 one of exceptional honour, and also of exceptional 
 
220 EVANGELISTIC POWER. [lect. vii. 
 
 peril. He should be strengthened and sustained by 
 the constant intercessions of the Church. 
 
 But even those of us who have reason to believe 
 that God has called us to walk in obscurer paths, and 
 to render Him a less brilliant service, may with rever- 
 ence and humility ask for a larger measure of this 
 special form of grace than most of us have received. 
 God will not rebuke us for presumption if, in the pre- 
 sence of vast masses of human ignorance and misery 
 and vice and irreligion, on which we are able to make 
 hardly any impression, we entreat Him to grant us 
 some of the force which He has granted in such a 
 wonderful measure to illustrious evangelists. Or if 
 for any reason this cannot be, we may still implore 
 Him to bestow it on some of our brethren. Whether 
 the work is done by ourselves or by others, it matters 
 not ; but we ought to pray incessantly that the work 
 may be done. 
 
 Meanwhile, our duty is plain. It is for us to work 
 with the strength we have, and to work devoutly and 
 energetically. Dissatisfaction with our present ser- 
 vice, a want of fidelity in the use of the gifts we have 
 already received, will incapacitate us for service which 
 may seem to us more urgently demanded, and will 
 lessen the spiritual power which we actually possess. 
 " To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have 
 more abundance ; but whosoever hath not, from him 
 shall be taken away even that he hath." 
 
LECTURE VIIL 
 
 PASTORAL PREACHING. 
 
 C^ ENTLEMEN, — In the course of a very few 
 T years most of you will be pastors of Churches. 
 I trust that you will enter upon your ministry with a 
 right conception of the relations between yourselves 
 and your people. Some ministers appear to think 
 that Churches are founded in order to provide salaries 
 for men who wish to master recent speculations on the 
 Origin of Species and the Descent of Alan, or to study 
 at their leisure Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, 
 or to make themselv^es familiar with German litera- 
 ture, and to form a judgment on the movement of 
 German philosophical thought from Kant to Schopen- 
 hauer. There are other men who seem to believe 
 that Churches exist to enable them to cultivate and to 
 display their own remarkable genius, and that church 
 buildings are erected to assist them to win a reputation. 
 In the discourses which they are good enough to 
 deliver every week, they suppose that they will 
 discharge their duty if they report the results of their 
 private studies, and show with what richness of 
 imagination, what humour, what wit, what originality 
 of thought, what beauty and vigour of style they can 
 
222 MINISTERS EXIST FOR CHURCHES, [lect. viii. 
 
 discuss any moral or religious subject in which they 
 happen to feel a personal interest. These men are 
 often betrayed by their immeasurable egotism and 
 intellectual conceit into the most grotesque follies. 
 Their sense of the immense importance of everything 
 that concerns themselves and their sermons appears 
 in their bearing and in their conversation in private, 
 and not unfrequently finds its expression in the pulpit. 
 Unhappily a preacher of this kind, if he has any 
 power — no matter how inconsiderable — too often at- 
 tracts a number oi foolish people, who confirm him 
 in the opinion that he is one of the greatest and most 
 distinguished of mankind, and that his sermons take 
 rank with the great historical events of the century. 
 I shall not be so discourteous as to suppose that it is 
 necessary to warn you against the grosser kinds 
 , of ministerial selfishness ; but I trust that you will 
 always remember that ministers exist for Churches — 
 \not Churches for ministers. 
 
 There is a certain measure of respect due from the 
 people to their pastor ; you are most likely to receive 
 it if you do not claim it ; you will never receive it at 
 all if you forget that there is a certain measure of 
 respect due from the pastor to the people. There is 
 an authority belonging to the man who holds the 
 ministerial office — an authority hard to define, but the 
 recognition of which is essential to the peace of the 
 Church and to its vigorous action. This authority 
 will be most frankly and loyally conceded if you do 
 not ostentatiously assert it. It will be refused if you 
 
LECT. VIII.] SECURE CONFIDENCE. 223 
 
 do not habitually recognise the authority belonging 
 to the Church. 
 
 One of your first objects should be to secure the'^ 
 confidence of your people. They will get very little 
 good from your preaching unless they trust you.// 
 You and they are to work together ; mutual trust is 
 indispensable if you are to work together happily. 
 To secure their confidence it is not enough that you 
 deserve it. There are some young ministers who are 
 upright, unselfish, chivalrous, devout, loyal to Christ, 
 and who yet put a very severe strain on the generosity 
 of their congregations. They thoughtlessly and wan- 
 tonly provoke suspicion. So far as the substance 
 of their creed is concerned, it is precisely identical 
 with the creed of the people to whom they are 
 preaching. But the form is different ; and by their 
 incessant attacks on what they suppose to be the 
 unsatisfactory form in which the truth is commonly 
 held, they create the impression that they reject the 
 truth itself This is sheer folly. The truth is greater 
 than their particular intellectual conception and de- 
 finition and theory of it. This they seem to forget, 
 and the result is that they surround themselves with 
 an atmosphere of distrust. They ought to make it 
 clear that they have no new gospel to preach, though 
 they may preach it in a new language. And even 
 if, in connection with the central and fundamental 
 truths of the Christian faith, many of their people 
 hold what they believe to be pernicious errors, they 
 will act wisely if, before attacking the errors, they 
 
224 THE EVANGELIST AND THE PASTOR, [lect. viii. 
 
 have placed their own loyalty to the truth beyond 
 suspicion. 
 
 Most of you, as I have said, are to be pastors of 
 Churches — not missionaries or evangelists. You will 
 have to preach to congregations largely composed of 
 persons who already confess the authority of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and who are trying to live a Christian life. 
 The work of the evangelist and the work of the pastor 
 are not, indeed, so different in fact as they are in 
 theory ; for many sermons which have for their direct 
 aim the conversion of men who have not yet come 
 home to God, strengthen the faith and increase the 
 religious earnestness of those who have lived for 
 thirty or forty years in the light of God's presence ; 
 and, on the other hand, sermons which are intended to 
 give courage and guidance to those who are already 
 seeking " by patient continuance in well-doing . . . 
 for glory, honour, and immortality," sometimes alarm 
 the conscience, and touch the heart of the impenitent. 
 J But it is quite clear that you would make a grave 
 mistake if you always preached as though no one 
 in your congregation had ever heard of the gospel 
 before. As pastors, you will have to instruct your 
 Churches in religious truth and duty. 
 
 In England there is an impression that modern 
 sermons are generally defective in the element of 
 instruction. Whether the impression is correct or 
 not, I cannot tell ; if it is, I think that the fault lies 
 with the Churches themselves as well as with the 
 preachers. If there is to be teaching in the pulpit, 
 
LECT. VIII.] THE PEOPLE AT FAULT. 225 
 
 there must be intellectual activity in the pew ; and 
 there are some good Christian people in England 
 who have yet to learn that they ought to serve God not 
 only " with the spirit/' but " with the understanding 
 also."*^ One Sunday morning, when I was a lad, I 
 heard an excellent minister offer the prayer that God 
 would grant the congregation during that day " in- 
 tellectual repose," and I am inclined to think that 
 very many of the people silently said Amen. It may 
 be different in America, but with us there are many 
 congregations that seem to have lost the habit of 
 caring for solid teaching. Describe a thunderstorm, 
 or a cataract, or a shipwreck ; move them to tears by 
 a touching story of human sorrow ; give wings to your 
 fancy, and carry the people far away into quiet glens, 
 where the bright waters murmur softly over their 
 rocky bed, where the foxglove blossoms, where the 
 bee hums among the wild thyme, and the gorgeous 
 dragon-fly hovers over the fern, and they think you 
 one of " the finest preachers " in the country, though 
 they are no wiser when the sermon ends than when 
 it began. God forbid that I should depreciate the 
 music of graceful speech, or the beauty and pomp 
 of an imaginative eloquence ; but for a nation's life, 
 corn-fields and rich pastures are more precious than 
 the romantic beauty of lonely lakes or the stern 
 sublimity of the mountains which rise above them ; ^^ 
 and that preaching is barren and worthless which has 
 no other object than to excite transient emotion, to 
 stimulate the imagination, or to gratify the fancy. 
 
 16 
 
226 TEACH THE PEOPLE. [lect. viii. 
 
 It is not our business to get a reputation for being 
 
 " fine preachers ;" and if we are honest enough, manly 
 
 enough, and, above all, Christian enough, to care less 
 
 about winning a hasty and transient popularity than 
 
 about doing real service to the Church, I believe that 
 
 there is no congregation whose taste is so hopelessly 
 
 corrupt, and whose intellectual life is so completely 
 
 demoralised, that it may not be trained to value 
 
 / sermons which are full of instruction. All that is 
 
 / , ' necessary is that the preacher should have courage, 
 
 ' earnestness, patience, and a moderate amount of skill. 
 
 He must not attempt too much at first; he must not 
 
 preach dry sermons ; he must learn how to teach — an 
 
 art which can be acquired only by practice ; and then 
 
 he will find that to create in his congregation a keen 
 
 interest in ethical and religious truth is less difficult 
 
 than, perhaps, he supposed. I do not mean that 
 
 sermons addressed to Christian people should be 
 
 simply didactic. The formation of right moral habits 
 
 and the discipline of the spiritual life should be the 
 
 supreme objects of pastoral preaching ; but ethical 
 
 and religious knowledge is worth having for its own 
 
 sake, and in the absence of it we have no reason to 
 
 look for the development of the higher forms of moral 
 
 and spiritual character. 
 
 In the Holy Scriptures we have the record of a long 
 
 succession of supernatural revelations. Have we any 
 
 reason to believe that even intelligent Christian men 
 
 and women read the Scriptures intelligently } Do 
 
 «^ not many excellent persons seem to suppose that 
 
LECT. VIII.] ON READING THE BIBLE, 227 
 
 if they read a chapter in the Bible, whether they 
 understand it or not, they have performed a reHgious 
 duty, and are certain to receive reHgious benefit ? In 
 the Epistles, and even in the Gospels — to say nothing 
 of the Old Testament prophecies — are there not 
 many words, many phrases, whole sentences, long pa- 
 ragraphs, to which people who have been reading 
 the Bible all their lives attach no meaning at all ? 
 When they are reading chapters with which they are 
 most familiar, do they not come to crevasse after 
 crevasse, over which they have to leap as best they 
 can ? And yet these very people have been listening 
 twice a week for thirty or forty or fifty years to the 
 discourses of men whose function it is to explain, 
 illustrate, and enforce the contents of Holy Scripture. 
 Something might be done to lessen this ignorance 
 if the lessons which commonly have a place in the 
 order of public worship were selected more systemati- 
 cally, and were read with greater care. I acknowledge 
 that to read the Bible well is not easy. The way in 
 which our Bibles are printed creates a mechanical 
 difficulty of a kind more serious than might be im- 
 agined : it would be hard to read Macaulay or 
 Addison well if the "History of England" and the 
 "Spectator" were cut up into verses. There is a 
 graver difficulty. Our authorised version has great 
 merits ; but even when the translation is accurate and 
 intelligible, the English is not the English of our own 
 times. The structure of the sentences and the order 
 of the words differ from the modern structure and the 
 
 16' 
 
228 MR. DA IVSON'S READING. [lect. viii. 
 
 modern order. The style which we can read most 
 easily and naturally is the style in which we and the 
 people about us are constantly writing and speaking. 
 This is not the style of the English Bible, and hence 
 we find it hard to read the Bible with the right 
 emphasis and the true cadence. 
 
 I have heard several men who read the Bible well ; 
 I never heard but one who read it supremely well. 
 This was the late Mr. Dawson, of Birmingham, to 
 whom I referred in a former lecture. To quote words 
 of my own from a recent article in the Nineteenth 
 Century .-^ — " It was genuine reading, not dramatic 
 recitation — the dramatic recitation of the Bible is 
 irreverent and offensive. But if he was reading a 
 narrative he read it, not indeed as if he were telling 
 the story himself, but as if he, too, had seen what he 
 was reading about, and as if, while he read, the whole 
 story lived again in his imagination and in his heart. 
 If he was reading a psalm, he read it, not as some 
 men read a psalm — as though they had written it — 
 which is the dramatic style, and which seems to me 
 false in art and morally presumptuous ; but while he 
 was reading you felt as if the words of the Psalmist 
 recalled to him the brightest and the saddest passages 
 in his own history, and as if these personal experiences 
 naturally led him to read with a tone and an emphasis 
 which were in perfect sympathy with the Psalmist's 
 thought and feeling." To read in this way is not 
 possible to most of us. It requires a rare combination 
 ' Nineteenth Ce?ttiiry, August, 1877. 
 
LECT. VIII.] HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 229 
 
 of powers. But we should try to do our best. If we 
 master the meaning of the passages we intend to read 
 in public ; if we so fully enter into the spirit of what 
 we are reading that the printed book vanishes, and 
 the story it tells comes to us fresh from the man that 
 wrote it ; if we read a psalm as though we ourselves 
 had heard it from the lips of David, and as if the 
 broken tones in which he confessed his sin, or the 
 triumphant joy with which he spoke of the goodness 
 of God, were still lingering in our ears ; if we read a 
 prophecy of Isaiah's with the feeling which the words 
 would excite if we ourselves had listened to him while 
 he was denouncing the crimes of his contemporaries 
 and predicting the glories of the future kingdom 
 of God ; and if we read a passage from St. Paul's 
 Epistle to the Galatians with that perfect sympathy 
 with the sorrow and anger of the Apostle which will 
 be create .1 by a vivid realisation of his fierce conflict 
 with the Judaizers; if, in short, by a vigorous imagina- 
 tive effort we place ourselves by the very side of the*^ 
 men who wrote the Bible, see what they saw and feel 
 what they felt, our mere reading of the Scriptures will 
 throw an intense light on every passage that the people 
 understood before, and will often bring out the meaning 
 of passages which they had been accustomed to pass 
 over as being quite unintelligible. 
 
 When I began my ministry it was my custom to 
 preach expository sermons, in which I carefully ex- 
 plained and illustrated, clause by clause, verse by 
 
2^0 
 
 EXPOSITOR V PRE A CITING. 
 
 [LECT. VIII. 
 
 /verse, a group of chapters or a complete book of 
 Holy Scripture. Of late I ha\'e adopted what seems 
 to me a better method. In the earlier part of the 
 service I read a dozen or twenty verses — sometimes 
 more, sometimes less — of the book I am expounding, 
 beginning, of course, where I left off on the previous 
 Sunday, and often prefacing the reading with a brief 
 summary of what has gone before. Sometimes I 
 venture to make a change in the translation, if I 
 am quite sure that the translation is inaccurate, or 
 that the change will make the meaning plainer or 
 more vivid. If there are any sentences which are at 
 all obscure, I give brief explanatory comments. If 
 there are any allusions which ordinary people are not 
 likely to notice, and which it is necessary to recognise 
 in order to catch the writer's thought, I illustrate these 
 allusions. When the whole passage is clear and 
 intelligible, I read it without explanatory comments, 
 / for to explain what requires no explanation will 
 perplex people instead of instructing them. Even 
 in this case I often fasten on a particular verse or a 
 particular phrase, and show how it annihilates some 
 common error, or strengthens the evidence of some 
 great truth, or rebukes some sin, or suggests a solemn 
 or pathetic motive to the exercise of some Christian 
 virtue. 
 
 The text of the sermon is selected from the passage 
 which I have read, unless the passage would receive 
 
 . effective illustration from a text taken from another 
 part of the Bible. If the passage is a consecutive 
 
LECT. VIII.] EXPOSITOR V PRE A CHING. 23 1 
 
 argument in support of any doctrine, or an exhorta- 
 tion to the discharge of a moral or rehgious duty, or 
 the expression of any sentiment or emotion — this doc- 
 trine, duty, emotion, or sentiment, is generally the 
 subject of the sermon. If the passage treats of a suc- 
 cession of truths or duties, it is sometimes my endea- 
 vour to show how they are related to each other ; 
 sometimes I take one of them and leave the rest. 
 Occasionally the sermon consists of a review of the 
 contents of three or four chapters which have been 
 read on previous Sundays. Sometimes when I have 
 finished a book I have given a summary of the whole 
 of it. I found that a summary of the Epistle to the 
 Galatians was quite as exciting as a fiery pamphlet 
 on some question of modern party politics. 
 
 The advantages of this method of exposition over 
 that which I used to follow in the earlier years of my 
 ministry seem to me to be very great. It is possible 
 to get over the ground more rapidly. I never made 
 such slow progress as the German exegetical professor, 
 who, after lecturing on the Book of Isaiah for rather 
 more than twenty years, had reached the middle of 
 the second chapter ; but I have the impression that I 
 was two or three years getting through the first eight 
 chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. With my 
 present method I began the Epistle in April, 1876, 
 reached the end of the eighth chapter in October of 
 the same year, though I had been away for six weeks 
 in the summer, and in February, 1877, the Epistle 
 was finished. 
 
v' 
 
 232 EXPOSITORY PREACHING. [lect. viii. 
 
 This method of exposition seems to mc more effec- 
 tiv^e, as well as more rapid. Our practice of preaching 
 from texts has accustomed people to try what they 
 can discover in single sentences, and even single 
 phrases, of the Bible, and to disregard the general 
 current and structure of the argument or history : 
 the minute exposition of clause after clause will con- 
 firm their evil habit. They seem to think that the 
 best way to get a right conception of the Rhine, or of 
 the Falls of Niagara, is to examine separate drops of 
 the water under a microscope. The expository method 
 which I have followed for some years past is likely, I 
 think, to lead people to read the Bible as they read 
 other books, and to look not merely at separate 
 thoughts and fragments of separate thoughts, at iso- 
 lated facts and the most insignificant circumstances 
 connected with isolated facts, but at facts and 
 thoughts in masses, and as they are grouped by the 
 Scriptural writers themselves, v 
 
 Exposition will do something to protect you from 
 the desultoriness and want of method which is one of 
 the gravest faults of our modern preaching, and which 
 is one of the chief causes that it conveys so little de- 
 finite and systematic instruction ; but the fault is so 
 serious that you ought, I think, to guard against it in 
 .. other ways. Once, at least, in the course of a year, a 
 Christian preacher should preach a sermon on such 
 topics as the Humanity of our Lord, His Divinity, the 
 Atonement, Justification by Faith, the Personality and 
 
LECT. VIII.] DOCTRIISrAL PREACHING. 233 
 
 Work of the Holy Spirit, Regeneration, Prayer, the 
 Future Judgment, and its awful and glorious results. 
 We assume that persons who are accustomed to read 
 the Bible and to listen to Christian preaching are sure 
 to have a just conception of these great elementary 
 truths. But the incidental allusions to them which 
 occur in our sermons, the fragmentary illustrations of 
 them which are suggested by texts in which they are 
 presented under a special aspect, the references we 
 make to them in order to enforce moral and spiritual 
 duties, will never enable the people to form a clear 
 and definite conception of them. Itvis a good habit to 
 draw up at the beginning of the year a list of topics 
 of this kind, on which we ought to preach before the 
 }'car runs out, to refer to it from time to time, and when 
 we preach upon any of the selected subjects, to write 
 the date against it. 
 
 Both in your expository and in your doctrinal preach- 
 ing it will be necessary to remember that the interest 
 which you feel in certain intricate and difficult ques- 
 tions is largely the result of your professional studies. 
 Some young preachers forget this. They have been 
 investigating the controversies which culminated in 
 the Council of Nicaea ; or they have tried to master 
 the philosophy of the theologians of Alexandria ; or 
 they have been reading Thomas Aquinas ; or working 
 hard at Turretin, Maestricht, and Episcopius ; or they 
 have become penetrated with the spirit and method 
 of Schleiermacher ; or, at least, they have been studying 
 
234 DO NOT BE PROFESSIONAL. [lect. viii. 
 
 closely the writings of American and English authors 
 whose speculations are as yet unfamiliar to most 
 educated men who are not professional theologians. 
 As the result of their reading, and of their strenuous 
 thinking on the deeper questions of theological science, 
 they have a vehement interest in controversies which 
 to large numbers of their hearers appear trivial or are 
 absolutely unintelligible. To introduce controversies 
 of this kind into the pulpit is preposterous. No genius 
 or eloquence will induce most of your people to care 
 for them. 
 
 I know what your reply will be. You will say that 
 these controversies ultimately affect our way of con- 
 ceiving the most elementary truths of the Christian 
 faith. It is equally true that certain difficult branches 
 of astronomical science have a great deal to do with 
 the navigation of a ship, and that the latest biological 
 speculations may throw a great deal of light on the 
 growth of barley and the breeding of sheep. But it 
 does not follow that a man must be a great astrono- 
 mer before he can be qualified to take the command 
 of a White Star or a Cunard steamer ; nor does 
 it follow that a man must master the latest books 
 on biology before he can be a good farmer. The 
 scientific theology which as a minister you have to 
 master for yourself is something different from the 
 popular and practical theology which alone you can 
 teach your people — no matter how intelligent, no 
 matter how cultivated they may be. You must be 
 willing to accumulate a large amount of learning of 
 
LECT. VIII.] THE PASTOR MORE THAN A TEACHER. 235 
 
 which you can make no display in the pulpit, and to 
 carry on long and laborious processes of thought 
 which will make no show in your sermons. 
 
 What is true of doctrine is also true of exegesis. In 
 Meyer's "Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans " 
 he is incessantly discussing and refuting the interpre- 
 tations of Hofmann ; but the people in your congre- 
 gation never heard of Hofmann, and Hofmann's 
 interpretations are never likely to occur to them. For 
 you to discuss Hofmann's exegesis in the pulpit, be- 
 cause it has interested you in your study, would be to 
 show that you had yet to learn the most elementary 
 principles of the art of teaching. 
 
 But as a pastor you will be very much more than a 
 teacher. You will have to cultivate the religious lifeK 
 of your people. This will be one of your gravest! 
 duties, and it will be one that ought to occasion you 
 the most anxious thought. It must have occurred to 
 you already that in the history of the Church the 
 spiritual life has at different times and in different 
 countries taken very different forms. The deep, central 
 elements of sorrow for sin, consciousness of spiritual 
 weakness apart from the life and strength of God, 
 trust in the Divine mercy, love for Christ, earnest desire 
 to do the Divine will, have been present everywhere 
 and always. But just as a flower varies in the form 
 of its leaf and the tint of its blossom according to the 
 soil in which it is planted and the climate with which 
 it is surrounded, so these permanent elements of the 
 
236 TYPES OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. [lect. viii. 
 
 Christian life have manifested themseh^es in different 
 types of character according to the influences which 
 have controlled and stimulated their development. 
 Unless you believe — which would surely be somewhat 
 presumptuous — that in the Church to which, you 
 happen to belong the religious life has at last assumed 
 its perfect form, you will be anxious to learn in what 
 it differs from the deepest and most vigorous piety 
 of other Churches, other countries, and other centu- 
 ries. Your sermons, your prayers, your intercourse 
 with your people, will largely determine the colour 
 and complexion of their religious character. The 
 truths upon which you preach most frequently, the 
 advice which you give to your congregation about the 
 culture of devout affections and the formation of 
 moral and spiritual habits, the characteristic elements 
 and prevailing spirit of your public prayers, must 
 powerfully affect for good or evil the growth of their 
 religious life. You may give it too much sunshine 
 or too much shade ; you may shelter it too much, or 
 may expose it to winds too rough and cold; you may 
 let it grow too luxuriantly, or may prune it with too 
 relentless a hand. 
 
 Would it not be wise to study the principal types of 
 the spiritual life as they are represented in the few 
 great devotional books which have won their way to 
 the very hearts of Christian men } I refer to such 
 books as Augustine's " Confessions," the " De Imita- 
 tione," Francis de Sales' "Devout Life," the "Spiritual 
 Exercises " of Ignatius, Jeremy Taylor's " Holy 
 
LECT. v.:ii.] TYPES OF RELI GIOUS LIFE. 237 
 
 Living," Pascal's '^Pensees," Richard Baxter's " Saint's 
 Rest;'' John Bunyan's "Grace Abounding" and " Pil- 
 grim's Progress." You might extend your reading 
 to such books as Bishop Hall's " Christ Mystical," 
 John Owen's " Spiritual-Mindedness," John Howes 
 "Blessedness of the Righteous," Law's "Spiritual 
 Call," and Doddridge's " Rise and Progress." If there 
 are any books of the same popular kind which have 
 exerted a similar influence on the religious life of the 
 Churches of this country, these too should receive your 
 careful attention. Their popularity is a proof that 
 they represent the religious ideal which fascinated 
 the popular mind, and that their writers were in the 
 main stream of the popular life and sympathies. 
 
 Among the considerations which books like these 
 would suggest, will be the different results produced 
 by the different degrees of prominence which have 
 been given at different times to particular elements of 
 the Christian creed. The great truths concerning the 
 nature of God-such as the Trinity and the doctnnes 
 implicated in the Incarnation; the great truths con- 
 cerning human redemption-such as the Atonement 
 and Justification; the great truths concerning the per- 
 sonal realisation of redemption-such as the New Birth 
 through the power of the Holy Ghost ; have all at 
 various times and in various places exerted supreme 
 influence over the development of the religious life ; 
 and it is an inquiry full of interest to discover the 
 
 varying results. 
 
 There are inquiries of another kind which will be 
 
238 TYPES OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. [lect. viii. 
 
 suggested by such books as those to which I have 
 referred. You will be led to investigate the true 
 limits within which self-examination should be con- 
 fined, and the evils which the soul suffers from habitual 
 introversion. You will consider how far asceticism is 
 a legitimate and healthy aid to Christian living — that 
 is, how far we may attempt to escape from sin by 
 avoiding the occasions of sin, and how far we should 
 trust for safety to the victorious power of the higher 
 life of the soul, or, rather, to the victorious power of 
 the Spirit of Christ. You will ask what are the 
 natural and inevitable effects of certain spiritual 
 maxims which have been accepted as self-evident by 
 many eminent saints — as that the love of God is the 
 only right motive of human action, a maxim which 
 appears to me to be a direct impeachment of the 
 righteousness of Him who gave us this strangely 
 complicated nature, and a formal repeal of the law 
 that in addition to loving God we are to love our 
 neighbour as ourselves. You will consider to what 
 extent conflicting theological systems such as Calvin- 
 ism and Arminianism have received a practical veri- 
 fication from their effects on the spiritual life ; what 
 are the truths which, concealed under monstrous 
 errors like that of Transubstantiation, have exerted a 
 wonderful and ennobling influence on many devout 
 souls ; what are the causes which have given to 
 Methodism its fervour, to Quakerism its practical 
 Christian benevolence, and to the best type of Angli- 
 canism its sobriety and reverence. 
 
LECT. VIII.] SPIRITUAL ''PROVINCIALISM:' 239 
 
 These studies will giv^e depth and energy to your 
 own religious earnestness. They will save you, in 
 the temper and spirit of your religious life, from that 
 which in the intellectual life has been called Pro- 
 vincialism. They will protect you from being mastered 
 and fascinated by writers and preachers who from time 
 to time produce a very powerful impression by the 
 exhibition of isolated aspects of spiritual truth which, 
 because they are isolated, have many of the effects of 
 the worst and most pernicious errors. 
 
 These studies will have a most important relation 
 to your preaching. They will enrich your knowledge 
 of the laws, the perils, and the triumphs of the 
 spiritual life, and they will do something to prevent 
 you from treating the spiritual life of your people 
 unwisely. There arc, I believe, few congregations, 
 at least in England, in which some persons may not 
 be found whose religious nature has received serious 
 and permanent injury from the very intensity of 
 earnestness with which they have endeavoured to 
 translate into practice false ideals of Christian cha- 
 racter, empirical theories of the nature of holiness, 
 and artificial methods of spiritual discipline. These 
 unhappy people are likely to enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven halt and maimed through the want of 
 larger spiritual wisdom on the part of their religious 
 teachers. Our work lies with the soul of man in its 
 Divine relations, and we shall not do our work in- 
 telligently and effectively unless we give a considerable 
 measure of time and thought to the investigation of 
 
240 THE TRUE IDEAL. [lect. viii. 
 
 the various phases which the spiritual life has assumed 
 in the history of Christendom. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to remind you that 
 for the Divine ideal of Christian character our ultimate 
 authority is the New Testament. We have no right 
 to be satisfied with striving to create in ourselves or 
 others those forms of moral and spiritual excellence 
 which happen to be sustained by the tradition and the 
 general sentiment of the Church of which we are 
 members, or which have kindled our imagination as 
 they are illustrated in the writings and lives of the 
 saints of other Churches. You will study, both for 
 your own sake and for the sake of your people, the life 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is at once the law 
 and the promise of Christian perfection ; and you will 
 endeavour so to preach that your people shall "abide" 
 in Him by faith, by love, and by loyal obedience to 
 His commandments. You will also endeavour to recon- 
 struct for yourselves that conception of the Christian 
 character which is suggested by the precepts, the 
 prayers, the thanksgivings, and the incidental dis- 
 closures of the personal life of the apostles, in the 
 epistles of the New Testament. 
 
 We ought not to take it for granted that most 
 Christian people know what they ought to be, and 
 that all they need is constancy and strength to live 
 up to their knowledge. Some important elements 
 seem to be suppressed in the common ideal of Chris- 
 tian perfection. Take a single illustration. In St. 
 Paul's account of " the fruits of the Spirit," he gives 
 
LECT. VIII.] • JOY A DUTY. 241 
 
 the first place to Love, and we acknowledge that a 
 Christian man who has an unloving, ungenerous, 
 unkindly heart, is hardly a Christian at all. But he 
 gives the second place to Joy, and it is my impression 
 that there are many of us who seldom think of Joy as 
 a necessary and indispensable element in our con- 
 ception of a saint. We ask God to forgive us for our 
 evil thoughts and evil temper, but rarely, if ever, ask 
 Him to forgive us for our sadness. Joy is regarded 
 as a happy accident of the Christian life, an ornament 
 and a luxury, rather than a duty. We forget that we 
 are commanded to " rejoice evermore." It should be 
 one of the objects of our ministry to deepen and 
 heighten the joy of Christian hearts, as well as to 
 strengthen reverence for God's authority and to in- 
 crease the fervour of zeal for His glory. 
 
 In trying to cultivate Christian perfection, we must 
 not satisfy ourselves with censuring people for being 
 imperfect. You will not do much towards sanctifying 
 your people by scolding them. Perpetual fault-finding 
 does no good : it is bad for children, bad for servants, 
 and it is bad for Churches. It is mere indolence, 
 and it is sometimes ill-temper, which leads a minister 
 to indulge in perpetual condemnation. Nor will you 
 do much if you merely tell the people over and over 
 again that they ought to be better. Men are not to 
 be worried into goodness. You remember Mrs. 
 Poyser's description of the two parsons of Hayslope. 
 " You know she would have her word about every- 
 thing — she said Mr. Irwine was like a good meal 
 
 17 
 
242 MRS. POYSER'S PARSONS. [lect. vjii- 
 
 o' victual, you were the better for him without 
 thinking on it ; and Mr. Ryde was Hke a dose o' 
 physic, he gripped you and worreted you, and after 
 all he left you much the same." ' Mr. Ryde has 
 many followers — preachers who give their congrega- 
 tions all " physic " and no " victual." The physic 
 may be excellent of its kind, admirable if prescribed 
 occasionally. But physic, week after week, all the year 
 round ; physic every Sunday morning at eleven, and 
 every Sunday evening at half-past six ; physic again 
 at the prayer - meeting on Wednesday or Thursday 
 night— ugh! — it is intolerable. It is pernicious as 
 well as offensive. It is enough to ruin the health of 
 the most vigorous Church. 
 
 Let your congregation have the " Bread of Life." 
 Instead of merely complaining to them of the absence 
 of brotherly kindness, preach sermons which are likely 
 to make them more vividly conscious that they are 
 brethren in Christ. Instead of satisfying yourself with 
 finding fault with them for their want of zeal, ask how 
 you can stimulate it. Speak sharp words occasionally 
 in condemnation of covetousness, but return again 
 and again to those parts of the gospel which inspire 
 generosity. Deplore, if you must, the inconstancy 
 of many Christian people in right-doing, the languor 
 of their spiritual affections, their indifference to the 
 supreme objects of the Christian life ; but remember 
 that mere lamentations will work no deliverance for 
 them. You must consider by what truths, by what 
 
 ^ George Eliot : "Adam Bade," p. 157. (One volume edition.) 
 
LECT. viii.] '' MORAV SERMONS. 243 
 
 method and spirit of teaching, you can develop among 
 them all the energetic forces and all the noble ex- 
 cellences of the Christian character. 
 
 I wonder whether you have in America any Chris- 
 tian people who resent what are contemptuously de- 
 scribed as " Moral " sermons. There were, I believe, 
 many such people in England thirty years ago, and 
 though it has never been my ill fortune to meet with 
 them, I am told that a few of their descendants may 
 still be found in some obscure Churches. Whether 
 sermons of this kind are resented or not, they are 
 necessary. The distinction between moral duties and 
 religious duties is a convenient one, but it is mislead- 
 ing. The very same authority that requires us to 
 believe in the Lord Jesus Christ requires us to be 
 just, truthful, temperate, and industrious. The prac- 
 tice of the common virtues is as essential a part 
 of Christian obedience as the habit of prayer and the 
 culture of the spiritual affections. There may be 
 morality where there is no religion ; but that there 
 should be religion where there is no morality, is im- 
 possible. The moral law is the law of God. 
 
 It is therefore just as much our duty to illustrate 
 and enforce the obligations of morality as it is to insist 
 on the necessity of believing the gospel. We have to 
 teach men the will of God ; and we have no more 
 right to suppress that part of the will of God which 
 relates to duties which are called moral than we have 
 to suppress that part of the will of God which relates 
 to duties which are called religious. 
 
 17* 
 
244 '' MORAV SERMONS. [lect. viii. 
 
 If we require any authoritative sanction for moral 
 preaching we may appeal to the example of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. But the people who object to preaching 
 of this kind would probably reply that what they delight 
 to call the " Old Covenant," and the " Covenant of 
 Works," was not abolished till Christ died for the sins 
 of men, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. 
 They have a secret conviction that though the Sermon 
 on the Mount might be very well for Jews, it is not 
 spiritual enough for Christians ; and I think that if 
 they had their wish, the first three Gospels, if not the 
 fourth, would be bound up with the Old Testament 
 instead of with the New. Well, we must meet men on 
 their own ground, and if the authority of Christ is not 
 decisive, we must ask them whether St. Paul mis- 
 understood the spirit and genius of the Christian dis- 
 pensation. If moral teaching is out of place in a 
 modern sermon, had it any right to a place in an 
 apostolic epistle .'* St. Paul wrote about lying, anger, 
 malice, covetousness ; about the duties of masters and 
 servants, parents and children. It is difficult to under- 
 stand why we should be guilty of a " legal " spirit 
 when we preach against the vices which St. Paul 
 condemned, or enforce the duties which St. Paul 
 commanded. 
 
 It may be said that St. Paul was writing to 
 people who had been recently converted from heath- 
 enism, and whose consciences had not yet been trained 
 to the recognition of the sinfulness of vices which were 
 sanctioned by the common opinion of their heathen 
 
LECT. VI 1 1]. ♦' MORAL " SERMONS. 245 
 
 fellow-countrymen ; and, like converts from heath- 
 enism in our own times, they did not discover at once 
 the obligation of even those ordinary virtues which in 
 Christian countries are enforced by the moral judgment 
 of the whole community. It is unnecessary to con- 
 sider to what extent it is true that the public opinion 
 of Thessalonica, Colosse, and Ephesus approved the 
 vices which St. Paul condemns in his letters to the 
 Churches in those great cities. It is clear that St. 
 Paul did not believe that faith in Christ rendered 
 moral instruction unnecessary. And if the moral 
 ideal of the Christians of apostolic times was cor- 
 rupted and degraded by the false moral judgments of 
 that heathen society with which they were in per- 
 petual contact, we have to ask whether even in 
 countries like America and England the ethics of 
 public opinion are identical with the ethics of Christ } 
 whether it can be assumed as a matter of course that 
 no American and no Englishman has anything to 
 learn from the moral teaching of the New Testament } 
 The slightest knowledge of mankind is sufficient to 
 prove to us that even in countries like our own it is 
 possible for the conscience to be most imperfectly 
 developed. In the world and in the Church men 
 mean well and act badly. In both there is a lamentable 
 ignorance of moral duty. 
 
 Where moral duty is recognised it is not always 
 discharged, even by Christian people. Through force 
 of habit, perhaps unconsciously, they distinguish be- 
 tween duty and duty. One duty they dare not 
 
246 ''MORAL'' SERMONS. [lect. viii. 
 
 neglect, another they neglect constantly without any 
 keen compunction. Sins of one class they suppose 
 to be utterly inconsistent with loyalty to Christ ; sins 
 of another class they have come to regard as being 
 mere infirmities — infirmities to be regretted, infirmities 
 which mar, no doubt, the perfection of Christian cha- 
 racter ; infirmities for which they need God's forgive- 
 ness ; but still mere infirmities, which may be tolerated 
 '^without imperilling their eternal salvation. Some 
 habits their consciences condemn only occasionally ; 
 weeks and months go by and these habits are un- 
 rebuked. Some of Christ's moral precepts they seem 
 to regard as " counsels of perfection," intended for 
 great saints, but having no relation to the lives of 
 common Christian people. Or they even suppose 
 that there were some of His precepts which He never 
 expected would be kept, and which were meant — not 
 to givQ form to our righteousness — but to deepen our 
 consciousness of sin. It is certain — we may learn it 
 from observation, we may learn it from our personal 
 experience — that the Divine life which comes to a 
 man when he is regenerated does not at once trans- 
 form the whole character. He may be guilty of many 
 moral offences which his conscience does not condemn ; 
 or the authority of his conscience may be feeble, and 
 he may make no serious effort to escape from moral 
 habits which he knows are sinful. In our ethical 
 preaching we must deal both with moral ignorance 
 and with the want of moral earnestness. 
 
 We must be careful to avoid the tendency to dwell 
 
LECT. VIII.] PAGAN VIRTUES. 247 
 
 exclusively on those virtues which Christianity re- 
 deemed from dishonour or from neglect, or which, 
 through their nearer kinship to the characteristic 
 spirit of the Christian faith, have flourished with ex- 
 ceptional vigour in the Christian Church. Humility, 
 meekness, gentleness; the charity that "suffereth long 
 and is kind, . . . envieth not, . . . beareth all things, 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things ; " are specifically Christian virtues, and if we 
 ever preach on morals these virtues are almost certain 
 to receive attention. Nor are we likely to fail in insist- 
 ing on the obligations of temperance and purity; for the 
 traditional sentiment of the Church is irreconcilably 
 hostile to the opposite vices. But there are virtues 
 which Paganism recognised, and these are equally 1/ 
 necessary to the completeness of the Christian cha- 
 racter. To these, neither the teaching nor what may 
 be called the public opinion of the Church has given 
 adequate prominence, and it is part of our duty to 
 reassert their authority. You will remember the ac- 
 count which Mr. John Stuart Mill gives in his Auto- 
 biography of the moral training which he received 
 from his father. It was the training of a pagan. His 
 father's moral convictions, as he tells us in the passage 
 to which I am referring, were " wholly dissevered from 
 religion," and " were very much of the character of 
 those of the Greek philosophers." " My father's moral 
 inculcations," says Mr. Mill, " were at all times mainly 
 those of the * Socratici viri : ' justice, temperance (to 
 which he gave a very extended application), veracity, 
 
248 PAGAN VIRTUES. [lect. viii. 
 
 perseverance ; readiness to encounter pain, and es- 
 pecially labour; regard for the public good ; estimation 
 of persons according to their merits, and of things ac- 
 cording to their usefulness ; a life of exertion, in con- 
 tradiction to one of self-indulgent ease and sloth."i 
 
 Throughout these lectures I have suffered under 
 the disadvantage of knowing very little about the life 
 of American Churches. From the evils with which 
 I am familiar at home you may be free. But in 
 England there are many Christian men and women 
 who seem to ignore the obligation to cultivate these 
 heathen virtues. They have no conception that a 
 life of indolent ease is an unchristian life ; that the 
 instability of character — as distinguished from mere 
 physical weakness — which betrays itself in a perpetual 
 change of pursuit, and an incapacity to sustain for long 
 together the pressure of any kind of work, is a moral 
 fault ; that cowardice is not meekness ; that neglect 
 of public duty and absorption in the quiet pleasures 
 of home, instead of being a proof of unworldliness 
 of spirit, is a proof of selfishness ; that a man may be 
 very kindly and yet very unjust, generous with his 
 money and ungenerous in his spirit. Some people, in 
 short, who pass for very good Christians would be 
 very poor pagans. If you have people of this kind 
 in America, you will feel the necessity of preaching 
 on what we call the masculine virtues, although I 
 have seen them quite as nobly developed in the lives 
 of women as in the lives of men. 
 
 ^ John Stuart Mill : "Autobiography," pp. 46, 47. 
 
 i 
 
LECT. VIII.] TEXTS FOR ''MORAL'' SERMONS. 249 
 
 For your ethical sermons you may find appropriate 
 texts in the innumerable moral precepts both of the 
 Old Testament and the New. You will also find 
 in the biographical and historical incidents of the 
 Bible admirable subjects for sermons of this kind. 
 Rebekah's treatment of Jacob may bring home to 
 parents the sin of parental partiality. Jacob's treachery 
 to Esau will enable you to show that devout men may 
 be guilty of the basest conduct to men who profess 
 no religious earnestness. Joseph telling his dreams is 
 an illustration of youthful vanity and conceit. The 
 story of the spies you can use to condemn cowardice 
 as well as unbelief The chaotic history of the Jewish 
 people during the time of the Judges is a warning to 
 nations of the perils which threaten them when they 
 shrink from the vigorous and thorough suppression 
 of moral evils which threaten the unity and stability 
 of the national life. The history of David and of 
 Solomon is full of ethical instruction on every page. 
 The history of Jeremiah is a perpetual condemnation 
 of the popular intolerance of men who assert unwel- 
 come truths. St. Paul's kindly words in the last 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans — "Salute 
 Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. 
 Salute the beloved Pcrsis, which laboured much in 
 the Lord " — may teach Christian people to repress 
 their miserable jealousy when the work of others 
 receives higher and warmer commendation than their 
 own. And where can you find a more effective rebuke 
 of that intense selfishness which takes the form of a 
 
250 SECULAR WORK SACRED. [lect. viii. 
 
 morbid craving for sympathy, than in Epaphroditus, 
 who, as St. Paul tells the Philippians, was " full of 
 heaviness " because his friends at Philippi " had heard 
 that he had been sick " ? He had been in greater 
 danger than they imagined, for " he was sick nigh 
 unto death ; " and yet it distressed him that his 
 brethren should have known anything about his 
 illness. 
 
 But we have not merely to deal with the details 
 of moral conduct, with particular virtues and particular 
 vices ; we have to make clear to our congregations the 
 ultimate laws and aims of the Christian life. There 
 are many Christian people whose conception of the 
 relation of Christ's authority to their common occupa- 
 tions and pursuits is fundamentally false. They call 
 Christ their Master, and yet they seem to imagine 
 that for six days in the week their time is their own, 
 and that they are at liberty to work for themselves. 
 The farmer, the builder, the manufacturer, suppose 
 that after they have surrendered themselves to Christ 
 as His "servants," His "slaves," they are just as free 
 as they were before to carry on their business for 
 their own profit, so long as they do not violate the 
 laws of common morality. A sharp line is drawn 
 between the Christian ministry and all other occu- 
 pations. We ministers have a right to receive 
 adequate support, but if it were our object to " make 
 money " by the ministry, the universal sentiment 
 of the Church would condemn us as profane and 
 irreligious persons. It would be of no avail to plead 
 
 \ 
 
LECT. VIII.] SECULAR WORK SACRED. 251 
 
 that all the means we used were perfectly legitimate, 
 that we violated no moral law, that we preached 
 sound doctrine, tried hard to make bad men good 
 and good men better : we should be told that we 
 cannot serve Christ and Mammon, that if a minister 
 sets his heart upon " making money " by his ministry 
 he ceases to be a true servant of Christ. 
 
 Are we the servants of Christ, and are the people, 
 at least for six days in the week, the servants of 
 Mammon .'' Do we belong to Christ, and do they 
 belong to themselves t Are we temples of the Holy 
 Ghost — our whole life being set apart to sacred 
 purposes, filled with the presence and glory of 
 God — and are wc to teach the people that their 
 life — the greater part of it at least — is a mere store, 
 or counting-house, or cotton-mill, and that they must 
 be satisfied with having a little chapel built on at the 
 end of it, covering only a seventh part of the site } 
 I decline to be a party to that atrocious conspiracy 
 against the prerogatives of the commonalty of the 
 Church, which has invested the life of the priesthood 
 with a sacredness that docs not belong to the life 
 of the people. We are all Christ's servants, though 
 we have to serve Him in different ways. "By one 
 Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we 
 be Jews or Gentiles, bond or free," lawyers or phy- 
 sicians, artists or schoolmasters, manufacturers or 
 farmers, merchants or ministers ; " and have been all 
 made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not 
 one member, but many." 
 
252 SECULAR WORK SACRED. [lect. viii. 
 
 It is our function, as ministers, to satisfy the wants 
 and to contribute to the strength and joy of the 
 higher life of man. But men have a physical as well 
 as a spiritual nature. There are other wants than those 
 which we are appointed to satisfy, and there are other 
 forms of strength and joy than those to which we are 
 appointed to contribute. The race would perish with 
 hunger if all men gave themselves to " prayer and the 
 ministry of the Word," and if there were none to 
 " serve tables." We say that God opens His hand 
 and satisfies the wants of every living thing. Behind 
 the mystery of the life which is hidden in the seed, 
 behind the fruitful qualities of the soil, behind the 
 soft spring rains and the heat of the summer sun, 
 we recognise the Divine presence and power. But 
 if the harvest is God's gift, the farmer is God's 
 servant. While he ploughs the ground and sows the 
 seed and reaps the brown corn, he may give God 
 thanks that he is engaged in no mere secular work. 
 He and God are working together, and answering the 
 prayers of men for " daily bread ; " he is the minister 
 of God's goodness, "attending continually upon this 
 very thing." He serves God in the field, as we serve 
 God in the study and in the pulpit. As it is our first duty 
 to bring out of God's supernatural revelation whatever 
 it can be made to yield for the spiritual Hie of man, it 
 is his first duty to bring out of God's material world 
 whatever it can be made to yield for the physical life 
 of man. The farmer has to get his own living while 
 he is providing for the wants of others ; but this is 
 
LECT. VIII.] THE FARMER AND THE BUILDER. 253 
 
 true of the preacher ; the ox is not to be muzzled 
 that treadeth out the corn. But the preacher, if his 
 heart is right, and if he understands the true idea 
 of the ministry, does not work to '^ make money," but 
 because God has appointed him to minister to the 
 spiritual wants of mankind ; and the farmer, if his 
 heart is right, and if he understands the true idea 
 of farming, does not work to " make money," but 
 because God has appointed him to minister to the 
 physical wants of mankind. 
 
 Every profession and occupation that men call sec- 
 ular becomes a good work and a part of the religious 
 life when it is carried on in this spirit and with these 
 aims. One man — perhaps he may be a Christian man — 
 who has been a builder for thirty or forty years, and 
 who has been, as the world says, " successful," has 
 nothing to show except the hundred or two hundred 
 thousand dollars which he has made out of his busi- 
 ness. It was for this that he worked, and this is the 
 net gain of his work. Another man in the same trade 
 but with higher conceptions of it may have accumu- 
 lated less or more, but his dollars are to him the least 
 important result of his thirty or forty years in the 
 building trade. He has been serving God all the time, 
 and his true reward will come when he stands at last 
 in God's presence to hear God's judgment on his ser- 
 vice. Even now it is not his dollars which give him 
 the greatest satisfaction. As he passes the schools 
 and the churches which he built, it is pleasant to him 
 to remember that he, too, has had a share in providing 
 
 I 
 
254 THE ARTIST. [lect. viii. 
 
 for the education of children and for the worship of God. 
 As he Hes awake on a winter's night, and hears the 
 wind and the rain on the windows, he thinks of hun- 
 dreds of houses built by himself, with strong walls and 
 sound roofs, that are giving a shelter from the storm to 
 sick people, and to aged men and women, and to boys 
 and girls whose sound sleep the wind and the rain do 
 not disturb, and he thanks God that he was permitted 
 to do so good a work for mankind. What are the 
 dollars, compared with the consciousness of having 
 used life for a kindly purpose } 
 
 The artist who has worked at his art in the same 
 temper has similar rewards. He may have received 
 great prices for his pictures, and have become famous, 
 but neither his wealth nor his fame is the chief source 
 of his joy. He remembers the sunset which he saw 
 on the sea twenty years ago — the magnificent masses of 
 purple and the throbbing lines of fire in the heavens 
 above, and the splendour that rested on the rocks and 
 the water beneath. It was God who gave men that 
 vision of glory, but had it not been for him it would 
 have faded away from human memory for ever : the 
 glory is still glowing on his canvas in the gallery of 
 some remote city, and is filling men with wonder and 
 delight. Every year he has spent many months among 
 the corn-fields that lie round quiet New England vil- 
 lages, or on the banks of pleasant streams, or among 
 the lonely hills, and he has taught men to see a loveli- 
 ness and a majesty in God's works which they would 
 never have seen for themselves, His paintings hang 
 
LECT. VIII.] THE JEWELLER. 255 
 
 on the walls of city merchants, and are a perpetual 
 refreshment to them. Engravings of them find their 
 way into poor men's houses, and add something of 
 grace and dignity to lives which are spent in exhaust- 
 ing toil. He has not lived in vain. God gave him 
 noble work to do, and he has done it. 
 
 There is no legitimate trade which may not receive 
 consecration. How charming a life, for instance, may 
 be the life of the jeweller. He is employed by God to 
 get precious stones from distant lands — diamonds and 
 emeralds and sapphires— stones which God made for 
 ornament and beauty. He sets them in gold curiously 
 worked, and then they are ready to give a new bril- 
 liance to womanly loveliness which seemed already 
 perfect, and to be the graceful expression and enduring 
 memorial of human affection. The husband brings 
 home the costly bracelet, and as the wife clasps it on 
 her arm she is happy that after twenty years^oT mar- 
 riage her husband's heart clings to her still. The child 
 puts on her necklet, and thinks less of the pearls than 
 of the dear love of the father who has given them to 
 her. The young man, far from home, is strengthened 
 in right doing by the face of his mother in his locket, 
 or perhaps by a face which his mother, with a sigh, 
 must be content should be dearer to him than her own. 
 A jeweller's work is beautiful in itself ; in its uses it is 
 more beautiful still. He may thank God for appoint- 
 ing him to so pleasant a service. 
 
 Every trade and profession is vulgarised and debased, 
 becomes " of the earth, earthy," when a man follows it 
 
256 PUBLIC DUTY. [lect. viiit 
 
 selfishly and simply to make money ; when a man 
 accepts it as the senice to which God has appointed 
 him, for the adv^antage and happiness of the human 
 race, it is exalted and transfigured, and takes its 
 place among the activities of the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 In your Pastoral Preaching you ought not to omit to 
 illustrate the law of Christ in relation to public duty. 
 Perhaps you have sometimes met good people who in- 
 formed you in a tone of spiritual self-complacency that 
 they have never been in a polling-booth. They do not 
 seem to understand that the franchise is a trust, and 
 that it imposes duties. A secretary of state might as 
 well make it a religious boast that he habitually neg- 
 lected some of the work belonging to his department. 
 The duties of an individual voter may be less grave than 
 the duties of an official politician, but neglect in either 
 case is a crime against the nation. I think it possible 
 that the time may come when men who refuse to vote 
 will be subjected to Church discipline, like men who 
 refuse to pay their debts. The plea that the discharge 
 of political duty is inconsistent with the maintenance of 
 spirituality ought to be denounced as a flagrant piece 
 of hypocrisy. It is nothing else. The men who urge 
 it are not too spiritual to make a coup in cotton or 
 coffee. Although they profess to be alarmed at the 
 spiritual perils of the ballot-box and of an occasional 
 hour in a political committee-room, they are not afraid 
 that their spirituality will suffer if they spend eight 
 hours every day in their store or their counting-house. 
 
LECT. VIII.] PUBLIC DUTY. 257 
 
 Their spirituality is of such a curious temper that it 
 receives no harm from pursuits — no matter how sec- 
 ular — by which they can make money for themselves ; 
 but they are afraid of most disastrous consequences 
 if they attempt to render any service to their country. 
 The selfishness of these men is as contemptible 
 as their hypocrisy. They consent to accept all the 
 advantages which come from the political institutions 
 of the nation and from the political zeal and fidelity 
 of their fellow-citizens. They are quite willing to hold 
 United States bonds ; they draw their dividends with- 
 out any conscientious scruples ; they send part of the 
 money perhaps to the Board of Foreign Missions ; 
 the Sunday after they receive it they put an extra dollar 
 into the plate at the Lord's Supper. But United States 
 bonds would be as worthless as •iprkish 6 per cents 
 of '62 if thousands and tens of thousands of American 
 citizens did not devote themselves with courage and 
 earnestness to the maintenance of sound political prin- 
 ciples and to the defence of your political institu- 
 tions. People who are so very spiritual that they feel 
 compelled to abstain from political life ought also 
 to renounce the benefits which the political exertions 
 of their less spiritual fellow-citizens secure for them. 
 They ought to decline the services of the police when ^ 
 they are assaulted ; they ought to refuse to appeal to 
 such an unspiritual authority as a law court when 
 their debts are not paid ; and when a legacy is left 
 them they ought piously to abstain from accepting 
 it, for it is only by the intervention of public law that 
 
 18 
 
258 PUBLIC DUTY. [LECT. viii. . 
 
 they can inherit what their dead friends have left 
 them. For men to claim the right to neglect their 
 duties to the State on the ground of their piety, while 
 they insist on the State protecting their persons, pro- 
 tecting their property, and protecting from disturbance 
 even their religious meetings in which this exquisitely 
 delicate and valetudinarian spirituality is developed, is 
 gross unrighteousness. It is as morally disgraceful as 
 for a clerk to claim his salary from his employer after 
 leaving other men to do the work for which his em- 
 ployer pays him. It is a repetition in another form of 
 the crime which our Lord condemned in the Pharisees 
 who declined to give assistance to their poor parents, 
 and excused themselves by saying that what their 
 parents might have expected from them they had 
 devoted to God. 
 
 The public duties which you have to exhort your 
 congregations to discharge are not exhausted when 
 they have used their ballot-paper. In a free country 
 every citizen should do something towards strengthen- 
 ing public opinion on behalf of what he believes to 
 be wise and just political principles, and towards 
 maintaining whatever political organisation will, in 
 his judgment, place the administration of public affairs 
 in the hands of upright and able men. 
 
 Nor is it only in the political life of this great 
 Republic as a whole, or in the political life of their 
 own State, that Christian men ought to be taught to 
 take their fair share. Honest and effective municipal 
 government lies at the very base of public freedom 
 
LECT. VIII.] MUNICIPAL DUTY. 259 
 
 and public order. It is by the discharge of municipal 
 duties that men are disciplined to the true political 
 temper, to the sagacity, moderation, patience, and 
 courage which are necessary for the right conduct of 
 political affairs ; and it is by encouraging men to 
 watch their local administration with keen interest, 
 that public spirit is formed and strengthened. 
 
 The burdens which lie on those who take an active 
 part in the government of a great city are very heavy. 
 But the burdens must be accepted, and accepted by 
 good men, or your common schools will be badly con- 
 ducted, and the children will be badly taught ; your 
 streets will be neither well drained nor well swept, 
 and the health of the people will suffer ; your police 
 will be inefficiently organised, and will fail to repress 
 crime ; your public servants will be appointed by 
 corrupt influence ; your finances will be plundered. 
 For men who arc able to serve the community by 
 entering municipal corporations, to refuse to do it 
 when their services are needed, is a dereliction of 
 Christian duty. If they decline on the ground that 
 the rough incidents of a popular election and the 
 rough conflicts of public life are inconsistent with 
 their spirituality, they should be taught that they are 
 either suffering from an exceptional want of spiritual 
 earnestness and vigour, and that they ought to be- 
 come healthier and stronger ; or that their conception 
 of the spiritual life is fundamentally false, and ought 
 to be corrected ; or that they are playing the hypo- 
 crite, and that it is time for them to become honest 
 
 18* 
 
26o MUNICIPAL DUTY. [lect. viii. 
 
 men. If they decline through sheer indolence and 
 want of interest in public affairs, they should be re- 
 buked for their selfishness, and taught that the supreme 
 law of the Christian life requires a man to " look not 
 on his own things, but on the things of others." 
 
 When a Christian man accepts municipal or poli- 
 tical office, it should be with the simple intention of 
 serving the community. He has no right to think of 
 his office as an instrument for increasing his own 
 wealth, or for acquiring reputation, or for strengthen- 
 ing his personal influence. His office is a public trust, 
 and should be used for the public good without any 
 thought of private advantage. 
 
 It is our constant prayer that God's will may " be 
 done on earth, even as it is done in heaven ; " our 
 preaching should be definitely directed to securing 
 the fulfilment of this prayer. We fail if we merely 
 induce men to accept a right creed. We fail if we do 
 nothing more than create religious sentiment and stim- 
 ulate religious emotion. We also fail if the authority 
 of Christ is excluded from any province of human life. 
 In England I fear that the Christian ministry itself 
 is largely responsible for an unnatural and fatal re- 
 conciliation of practical atheism with Christian faith. 
 In our preaching we have omitted to show the 
 relation of Christian law to many of the most ener- 
 getic forms of human activity. We have left what we 
 have called the secular interests of mankind to be 
 governed by secular aims and to be penetrated by 
 a secular spirit, forgetting that if a man is a true ser- 
 
LECT. VIII.] PRACTICAL PREACHING. 261 
 
 vant of God he serves God always and everywhere, 
 and that Christ came into the world to brine earth 
 and heaven together. We have even neglected to 
 insist on the Christian development of some of the 
 most important elements of human character, and 
 have led men to suppose that the more vigorous 
 virtues — the very virtues which are most necessary in 
 the actual business of life — derive no inspiration and 
 force from the law and truth of Christ, and from the 
 great hopes of the gospel. We have insisted on pre- 
 cise accuracy in the definition of difficult theological 
 problems ; we have subjected spiritual experiences 
 to a delicate analysis ; but we have been wanting 
 either in the wisdom or the courage to insist that 
 human life in all its length and breadth and height 
 and depth belongs to Christ, and that no part of it 
 can be withdrawn from His control without guilt. If 
 we have asserted this in general terms, we have shrunk 
 from illustrating in detail the relations of the law of 
 Christ to the actual pursuits of men. We have sup- 
 posed — some of us at least — that we have performed 
 nearly all our duty in relation to the practical life 
 of our people when we have discussed the legitimacy 
 of balls and card-playing and the theatre, and other 
 amusements of a similar kind, in which most of 
 them could spend only insignificcint fragments of their 
 time. We have tithed " mint and anise and cummin, 
 and have omitted the weightier matters of the law ; 
 . . . these ought [we] to have done, and not to leave 
 the others undone." From the cup of life we have 
 
262 PRACTICAL PREACHING. [lect. viii. 
 
 strained out the gnat, and left our people to swallow 
 the camel. 
 
 These fatal mistakes must be corrected, or the force 
 of the Christian faith will be paralysed and its autho- 
 rity will cease to command reverence and awe. We 
 have not to leave the world to itself, but to conquer 
 it. God intends that Commerce, Science, Art, Litera- 
 ture, Politics, shall all be subjected to His law. Then, 
 and not till then, will " the kingdoms of this world " 
 become in deed and of a truth the kingdom of our 
 Lord and of His Christ. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF PUBLIC WORSHIP: THE LIVING 
 god: originality: the presence of CHRIST: 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 GENTLEMEN,— In this closing lecture I trust 
 that you will allow me to speak on several 
 topics, each of them of sufficient importance to claim 
 an afternoon for itself. The time at my command 
 has almost run out, but there are three or four subjects 
 having no intimate and logical relation to each other 
 on which I should like to say something before I bid 
 
 you farewell. 
 
 First of all, I will speak of the Conduct of Public 
 Worship. Before you have been very long in the 
 ministry I think it very likely that your public prayers 
 will occasion you great perplexity and humiliation. 
 Your courage will, perhaps, fail altogether, and you 
 will begin to ask whether your people would tolerate 
 a liturgy. There is hardly a thoughtful minister 
 of my ''own age, among my personal friends, who 
 has not at times looked wistfully in that direction. 
 Happily the traditions and instincts of our congrega- 
 tions have saved us from the mistake into which our 
 
264 A LITURGY OR FREE PRAYER? [lect. ix. 
 
 weakness might have betrayed us. Reflection and 
 experience have convinced me that it would be 
 hardly possible to inflict a worse injury on the 
 life and power of our Churches than to permit 
 free, extemporaneous prayer to be excluded from 
 our services or even to be relegated to an inferior 
 position. We need not despair. We, too, have re- 
 ceived the Holy Ghost. He did not forsake the 
 Church when the great saints of former ages passed 
 away ; and if we rely on His inspiration, and de- 
 vote to the substance, the spirit, and the form of 
 this part of the service the thought and care which 
 it ought to receive, our difficulties will soon be di- 
 mmished, and perhaps in time they will disappear 
 altogether. 
 
 The root of my own difficulties, and the root, as I 
 think, of the difficulties of many of my friends, was 
 a mistaken impression that extemporaneous prayer 
 might include — in addition to its own excellences 
 — the characteristic excellences of a liturgy. But we 
 must make our choice. In extemporaneous prayer, 
 the stateliness, the majesty, the aesthetic beauty of 
 such a service as that of the Anglican Episcopal 
 Church, and the power which it derives from vener- 
 able associations, are impossible. We must be con- 
 tent with simplicity, directness, pathos, reverence, 
 fervour ; and if we are less vividly conscious than those 
 who use a liturgy that we are walking in the footsteps 
 of the saints of other centuries, we may find com- 
 pensation in a closer and more direct relation to the 
 
LECT. IX.] PRA VERS NOT WORKS OF ART. 265 
 
 actual life of the men, women, and children who are 
 waiting with ourselves for the mercy and help and 
 pity of God. We lose less than we may gain. 
 
 But we shall gain nothing and lose everything if we 
 do not remember the true purpose for which prayers 
 are offered. They are not intended to afford a special 
 form of gratification to men of taste who feel no awe 
 in the presence of God's greatness, no distress at the 
 remembrance of their sin, no strong desire for forgive- 
 ness and for strength to live a holy life, no deep sym- 
 pathy with the sorrows and perils of mankind. They 
 are intended to express to God the trouble and fear 
 and trust of hearts which have learnt that their only 
 hope for themselves and for all men is in Him, and to 
 obtain from God those blessings which He has promised 
 to bestow. Prayers are not works of art ; they are 
 great spiritual acts. 
 
 In the earlier years of your ministry most of you 
 will, I think, find it wise to make definite preparation 
 for your prayers as well as for your sermons. I am 
 not sure that even those of us who have been in the 
 ministry longest have any right to neglect that prepa- 
 . ration. 
 
 A great part of the material for our prayers we may 
 derive from God's thoughts about ourselves and the 
 people with whom we have to pray. God's idea of our 
 life, the idea which He wants us to fulfil, is the law of 
 our conduct ; and we may be certain that God wants 
 to give us the light and strength we need to keep this 
 law. If the moral and spiritual perfection for which 
 
 */ 
 
266 MATERIALS FOR PRAYER. [lect. ix. 
 
 we are longing is nothing more than a dream of our 
 own, then our confidence in God's wilhngness to help 
 us is not likely to be very firm. We may trust Cod 
 when we ask Him for power to obey a law which we 
 accept from Him ; we have no right to be sure that 
 He will enable us to obey a law which we have con- 
 structed for ourselves. The love of God as well as 
 His law — if His law and His love can be separated — 
 will also suggest materials for prayer. The love of 
 God found its supreme expression in the incarnation 
 and the death of our Lord Jesus Christ ; but the pro- 
 mises of Christ, the large hopes of prophets, psalmists, 
 and apostles, the consolation which God has given 
 in times of trouble to those who have trusted in Him, 
 the defence which He has given in times of danger, the 
 victories which He has given over strong temptation, 
 the light in hours of perplexity and darkness, also 
 illustrate the wealth of the Divine goodness, and teach 
 us what we may pray for. There is no height of joy, 
 no depth of peace, no intimacy of communion with 
 Himself, which God does not desire to make ours. 
 When we ask for them we may not consciously receive 
 them at once, but it does not follow that He has re- 
 fused to answer us. A child who wants to go home 
 is answered as soon as his father's consent is put on 
 the wires ; but if the child is several thousand miles 
 away, it may be weeks and even months before he finds 
 himself under his father's roof And, perhaps, after 
 the consent has been given he may shrink from the 
 long journey over sea and land ; his home-sickness may 
 
LECT. IX.] THINK OF THE CONGREGATION. 267 
 
 pass off ; he may prefer to stay where he is ; and so 
 his father's arrangements for his return may come to 
 nothing. It sometimes happens so with us. We ask 
 God for great blessings, but when He answers us, and 
 the path which leads to the blessings lies open before 
 us, we have ceased to care for them, and we refuse to 
 take a single step to reach them ; or soon after we 
 have started we grow weary and turn back ; and then 
 we wonder that our prayers are not answered. 
 
 We may derive materials for prayer from the lives 
 of our congregations — materials of inexhaustible 
 variety. There is always sin to be confessed, sorrow 
 which God alone can soothe and comfort, weakness 
 that needs Divine support ; and there is always hap- 
 piness for which we should offer thanksgiving. But 
 wc must be very indolent or else we must be cursed 
 with a dull and unsympathetic nature, if we are satis- 
 fied with a vague and general remembrance of the sin, 
 the sorrow, the weakness, the joy, which cloud or 
 brighten the lives of our people. In our preparation 
 for our public prayers we should think of the people 
 one by one, and make all their trouble and all their 
 gladness our own. There are the children — children 
 whose faces are pale from recent sickness or accident, 
 or whose health is never robust and whose spirits are 
 never high ; children that are strong and healthy, 
 with pure blood in their veins, with sound limbs, and 
 who are always as happy as birds in summer time; 
 children that are wretched because they have no kind- 
 ness at home ; children that want to do well, but 
 
268 THINK OF THE CONGREGATION. [lect. ix. 
 
 who have inherited from their parents a temperament 
 which makes it hard for them to be gentle, obedient, 
 industrious, courageous, and kindly; and children to 
 whom with the earliest dawn of reason there came a 
 purer light from the presence of God, and to whom it 
 ^seems natural and easy to be good. 
 
 We should think of the young men and women, 
 with their ardour, their ambition, their vanity ; their 
 dreams of the joy and glory which the hastening 
 years are to bring them ; their generous impulses ; 
 the inconstancy in right doing which troubles and 
 perplexes them ; the disappointments which have 
 already embittered the hearts of some, and made 
 them imagine that for them life has no gladness left ; 
 the consciouness of guilt which already rankles in the 
 hearts of others ; the frivolity, the selfishness, of which 
 some are the early victims ; the hard fight which 
 some are carrying on with temptations which are 
 conquered but not crushed ; the doubts which are 
 assaulting the faith of others ; the bright heaven of 
 happiness in which some are living, happiness which 
 comes from the complete satisfaction of the strongest 
 human affections ; the still brighter heaven which is 
 shining around others who are already living in the 
 light of God. 
 
 The enumeration, if I attempted to go through 
 with it, would occupy hours. We have to think of 
 aged people who have outlived their generation, 
 and whose strength is gradually decaying, in lonely 
 and desolate houses, uncheered by the presence of 
 
LECT. IX.] THINK OF THE CONGREGATION. 269 
 
 living affection, and saddened by memories of tho. 
 dead. We have to think of the men and women 
 whose children are growing up about them, and on 
 whom the cares of life are resting heavily. We have 
 to think of places which are vacant in some seats 
 because a boy is at college, or has gone to sea, or has 
 just entered a house of business in a distant city, or 
 because a girl has been sent away to recover health 
 under some kindlier sky. There are other places 
 vacant for other reasons : those who once filled them 
 have forsaken and forgotten the God of their fathers. 
 We have to think of families in the congregation 
 whose fortunes hav^e been ruined ; and of orphans and 
 widows ; and of the young bride whose orange flowers 
 have hardly faded ; and of the young mother whose 
 heart is filled, all church time, with happy thoughts 
 about her first-born at home. 
 
 There are the impenitent of all ages; and there are 
 those whose consciences have been recently struggling 
 to assert the authority of God, and whose hearts have 
 been recently touched by the love of Christ, but who 
 have not yet fully committed themselves to Christ's 
 service ; and there are those who are thrilling with the 
 unutterable joy of their first access to God ; and there 
 are some, perhaps, who are becoming weary of the 
 great endeavour to keep God's commandments per- 
 fectly, and who are drifting back to a life of religious 
 indifference. 
 
 There is the work of the Church to pray for. And 
 we should not think of the work as though it were 
 
270 THE CHURCH AND THE NATION. [lect. ix. 
 
 done by a great machine. We should remember the 
 living men and women who are doing it — some of 
 them glowing with the heat of early enthusiasm ; some 
 of them beginning to be disheartened because success 
 does not come as soon as they hoped it would ; some 
 of them with the firm and settled habits of labour 
 which have been formed by many years of loyal and 
 faithful endeavour to serve Christ. There are neigh- 
 bouring Churches to pray for ; there are missions at 
 home and abroad, amoriig Pagans, among Mahometans, 
 among the adherents of corrupt Churches. The in- 
 tellectual life of the nation, and its social and political 
 condition, will also suggest materials for prayer. You 
 pray for your President, and for the political men at 
 Washington, and for the governors and political au- 
 thorities of your separate States ; but you should also 
 pray for your schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, and 
 for your judges and magistrates. Sometimes, surely, 
 you should remember the criminals in your gaols and 
 the criminals at large, and the compassionate and 
 noble labours of the good men and women that are 
 trying to reform them. Gentlemen, I believe in free 
 prayer. You will believe in it too, if your hearts are 
 open to all the sorrow and gladness, weakness and 
 strength, conflict and hope, glory and shame, of the 
 lives of men, and if you have a large faith in the love 
 of God. 
 
 In addition to preparing the substance of your 
 prayers, it is legitimate, and some of you may find it 
 necessary, to think of their form. You may collect 
 
LECT. IX.] CONGREGATIONAL PSALMODY. 271 
 
 passages from the Psalms, the Prophets, and the 
 Epistles, which, in loftier words than you can com- 
 mand, express adoration of God's majesty and holi- 
 ness and glory. You may arrange the order in which 
 you will use "exceeding great and precious promises." 
 You may occasionally prepare the language as well 
 as the substance of special petitions, confessions, and 
 thanksgivings. Above all, you will remember that 
 unless your own spirit is disciplined for communion 
 with God, all other preparation will be of no avail. 
 
 In England, after all that has been written on Con- 
 gregational Singing, during the last twenty -five or 
 thirty years, I doubt whether we even now appre- 
 ciate the importance of Psalmody in relation to the 
 spiritual life and temper of the Church ; and in 
 Psalmody I include both hymns and the music to 
 which they are sung. Some one said, " Let me write 
 the songs of a nation, and I do not care who makes 
 the laws ; " and I should be inclined to say, " Let me 
 write the hymns and the music of the Church, and I 
 care very little who writes the theology." 
 
 Heresy and Orthodoxy alike have in past ages dis- 
 covered and used the power of sacred song. Arius, 
 though a keen and acute controversialist, did not rely 
 on his logic alone for the spread of his doctrine on the 
 person of Christ, but wrote songs for sailors, millers, 
 and pilgrims. Chrysostom, when bishop of Constan- 
 tinople, saw the crowds of people that were gathered at 
 night and early dawn, in porticoes and in the open air 
 
272 CHOIR SINGING. [lect. ix. 
 
 to sing the hmyns of the Arians, and to Hsten to them ; 
 and instead of relying simply on his eloquence, al- 
 though he was the most eloquent of preachers, he de- 
 veloped the psalmody of his own Church. Bardesanes, 
 the Gnostic, composed hymns and had them arranged 
 to popular melodies, in order to propagate Gnosticism. 
 Ephraem Syrus fought the heresy like a wise man, by 
 writing hymns himself, and encouraging the faithful to 
 sing them. Even Augustine wrote an elaborate hymn 
 to fortify his people against the Donatists. In later 
 times, the doctrines of the Lollards and the doctrines 
 of the Reformers were propagated by popular singing. 
 Descending later still, Charles Wesley's hymns and 
 the animating melodies which were the delight of 
 the early Methodists did as much for the triumphs of 
 Methodism as John Wesley's sermons. And the sacred 
 •jongs which Mr. Sankey taught us to sing were hardly 
 less important in promoting the recent revivals of 
 religious earnestness in many parts of England than 
 Mr. Moody's preaching. 
 
 I have heard that there are many congregations in 
 America where nearly the whole of the singing is left 
 to the choir. There is only one hymn — so I have 
 been told — which the people are expected to sing. It 
 would be impertinent in a stranger to criticise your 
 ecclesiastical customs, and perhaps the information 
 which I have received is incorrect; but if any such 
 custom began to show itself in England I should be dis- 
 mayed. There is, indeed, no conceivable reason why 
 people should not worship with all their hearts while 
 
LECT. IX.] THE SONG OF THE PEOPLE. 273 
 
 they are listening to an anthem sung by a choir, as well 
 as when they are listening to a prayer offered by a 
 minister. Some of the loftier and some of the more 
 pathetic musical expressions of religious thought and 
 feeling are beyond the reach of ordinary congregations. 
 They must be entrusted to cultivated voices, trained to 
 sing together. Nor can I see why those who listen in 
 peace to a solitary voice from the pulpit should be 
 shocked and scandalised if sometimes they hear only 
 a solitary voice from the choir. If the singing is for 
 mere display we ought to recoil from it, just as we 
 ought to recoil from preaching which is for mere dis- 
 play. If the singing is devout, whether it is a quartett 
 or a solo, it may be a beautiful and noble part of 
 Christian worship. 
 
 But the congregations that always leave the singing 
 to the choir, and never sing at all, or that sing very 
 rarely, or that sing languidly and without any vigour 
 and heartiness, do not know what they miss. In 
 nearly all great revivals of religion the common people 
 themselves have been inspired with a passion for sing- 
 ing. They have sung their creed: it seemed the 
 freest and most natural way of declaring their trium- 
 phant belief in great Christian truths —forgotten or 
 denied in previous times of spiritual depression, and 
 now restored to their rightful place in the thought and 
 life of the Church. Song has expressed and intensi- 
 fied to enthusiasm their new faith, their new joy, their 
 new determination to do the will of God. Song has 
 consoled them in their sorrows, and sustained their 
 
 19 
 
274 THE SONG OF THE PEOPLE. [lect. ix. 
 
 courage in the presence of danger. When a great 
 assembly — in a church or on the hill-side — has united 
 in a mournful confession of sin, or a pathetic appeal 
 to the Divine mercy, or in* exultant thanksgiving for 
 salvation, there has been created in a thousand hearts 
 that vivid consciousness of sharing a common spiritual 
 life which gives new energy to religious faith and new 
 depth to religious emotion. When we find each other 
 we are in the right way to find God. Sometimes, no 
 doubt, when listening to a solitary singer — as when 
 listening to a solitary speaker — a whole congregation 
 may become conscious of sharing a common fear, a 
 common sorrow, a common hope, a common trust, a 
 common joy ; but this consciousness of a universal 
 sympathy is far more certainly and far more strongly 
 developed when the common emotion gives pathos and 
 tenderness, vehemence and energy, to the great wave 
 of song which every voice, the rudest as well as the 
 most cultivated, assists to swell. This, I believe, 
 explains in part the power which psalmody exerts 
 over the religious life ; and I think that the explana- 
 tion is confirmed by the fact that it is the songs which 
 people have sung with others which they delight to 
 sing alone. While they sing, they recover in some 
 measure the consciousness of fellowship with other 
 Christian souls. 
 
 Believing that popular psalmody is to be valued — 
 not for its mere aesthetic effect, but as a means of de- 
 veloping and realising the communion of saints — I 
 think that you should try to get good congregational 
 
LECT. IX.] THE '' singing-school:' 
 
 275 
 
 singing. And by good congregational singing I mean 
 singing which answers the purpose for which we wish 
 the people to sing. The singing ought to be free from 
 the faults which will make it intolerable to persons of 
 cultivated musical taste, but it ought not to be of a 
 kind in which only persons of cultivated musical taste 
 can join. An ordinary congregation may sing in good 
 time and with considerable expression tunes in which 
 the rhythm is well marked, tunes which have a real 
 melody in them, and in which the melody is not too 
 difficult. These are the tunes with which we oueht to 
 be satisfied. To sing even these as they ought to be 
 sung, most congregations will require some instruction. 
 Judging, indeed, from the manner in which Mr. San- 
 key's songs were suddenly caught up by immense 
 congregations in England, there are some melodies 
 which, as soon as they arc heard, people who never 
 sang before, cannot help singing. The Pentecostal 
 " gift of tongues " seemed to have come again in a new 
 form ; it was a " gift of song." But the wonders of 
 Pentecost are not to be expected in ordinary times, 
 and perhaps even the most beautiful of the melodies 
 which Mr. Sankey has collected or composed for great 
 revival services are not all that the Church requires for 
 its ordinary worship. Instruction in singing will be 
 necessary if your congregation is to sing well. 
 
 In novels, from which we Englishmen learn most of 
 what we know about your American country life, and 
 in some popular American biographies, I remember to 
 have seen the " singing-school " mentioned very fre- 
 
 19* 
 
276 THE '' singing-school:'' [lect. IX. 
 
 quently, and in a manner which suggested that the 
 "singing-school" is one of the most popular of Ameri- 
 can institutions ; but I do not remember to have heard 
 of its existence in your larger cities. Perhaps this 
 is because the people in your cities have less time on 
 their hands than the people in country places, or be- 
 cause there are more exciting amusements accessible to 
 them. Whatever the reasons may be, those of you who 
 may become city pastors should encourage your con- 
 gregations to learn to sing well enough to sing in church 
 on Sunday. If musical cultivation is generally diffused, 
 an occasional meeting of the congregation for " prac- 
 tice " is all that will be necessary ; but if the people 
 know nothing of music, you should try to arrange for a 
 congregational singing-class. In England, when large 
 masses of our population did not know how to read, 
 the Churches said that every man, woman, and child in 
 a Christian country ought to be able to read the Bible, 
 and established schools to teach reading. If people 
 do not know how to sing, I think that the Churches 
 should say that every man, woman, and child in a 
 Christian congregation ought to be able to sing hymns, 
 and should establish classes to teach singing. 
 
 The minister should take care that the tunes which 
 are selected for the hymns are tunes which the people 
 will be able to sing, and, what is equally important, 
 tunes which the people will like to sing. I have heard 
 complaints in England that organists and leaders of 
 choirs are a touchy, sensitive race, impatient of minis- 
 terial interference, more anxious to display their own 
 
LECT. IX.] ORGANISTS AND CHOIR-MASTERS. 277 
 
 powers than to assist unmusical people to sing their 
 best ; but I have nev^er had the kind of experience 
 which seems to have troubled some of my ministerial 
 brethren. I cannot pretend to any scientific know- 
 ledge of music ; but I have always held myself re- 
 sponsible for the whole service, and my responsibility 
 has been frankly and cordially recognised by the gen- 
 tlemen who have superintended the musical arrange- 
 ments of the church. 
 
 Very much mischief might be averted if, in the 
 selection of the organist and the choir-master, Churches 
 remembered that the spirit of the man who has 
 charge of the music is at least as important as his 
 musical skill. If your only anxiety is to appoint a 
 very fine player, the chances are that when you have 
 appointed him Jiis only anxiety will be to show how 
 finely he can play ; and if in appointing a choir-master 
 you think of nothing except his musical taste and his 
 skill in selecting and conducting a choir, you have no 
 right to be surprised if he justifies your appointment 
 by thinking of nothing but his choir and the artistic 
 excellence of their singing. 
 
 The choice of hymns will, of course, be absolutely 
 in your own hands. Some ministers act on the 
 principle that a service should be a perfect unity, and 
 their hymns are as far as possible in the same tone as 
 their sermons. I venture to think that this principle is 
 a false one, and that, speaking generally and leaving 
 special occasions to be governed by a special rule, the 
 hymns should be complementary to the sermon both in 
 
278 CHOICE OF HYMNS. [lect. ix. 
 
 subject and in feeling. It is unwise to keep the minds 
 and hearts of the people under a monotonous strain 
 for an hour and a half They become weary, and it 
 is a relief to them when the service closes. There are 
 great varieties of mood, of external condition, and of 
 spiritual interest in the congregation, which we ought 
 to try to recognise. While there should be no abrupt 
 and violent transition from one part of the service to 
 the part which follows it, I think there should be 
 movement and change. When I am at home, if the 
 sermon is hard and logical, I like to have two or three 
 hymns throbbing with emotion ; if the sermon is pre- 
 dominantly ethical, I look for hymns which give free 
 play to lofty spiritual thought and desire ; if the 
 sermon is meant for light-hearted, happy people, who 
 are in the full vigour of their strength, I generally take 
 care that there is at least one hymn for the weary and 
 the sorrowful. The hymn immediately before the 
 sermon should, I think, be in harmony rather than in 
 unison with it. Nothing can be a better preparation 
 for a sermon on the mercy of God than a lofty hymn 
 of worship, celebrating the glory of His holiness; and, 
 on the other hand, a hymn on the infinite love of 
 God is an admirable preparation for a sermon on His 
 inflexible righteousness. Even when a hymn is sung 
 immediately after the sermon, it is not always wise to 
 make it a direct continuation of the sermon itself If 
 we have been preaching on the Divine majesty, the 
 people will sometimes put their whole heart most easily 
 into a hymn on the Divine pity and goodness ; and 
 
LECT. IX.] A GOOD HYMN-BOOK. 279 
 
 after a sermon on the future triumphs of the kingdom 
 of Christ, we shall sometimes do well to ask them to 
 sing a hymn in which they consecrate themselves to 
 present Christian work. 
 
 It is one of the infelicities of a minister when preach- 
 ing away from home that he often finds all the hymns 
 selected for him when he goes into the vestry on Sun- 
 day morning. But even when he is at home he is 
 sometimes in a difficulty : the hymn-book may have 
 very few good hymns in it. I have no intimate know- 
 ledge of the hymn - books in common use by the 
 American Churches ; but if, after giving a fair trial to 
 the book which you find in your Church when you are 
 elected to the pastorate, you discover that it is a bad 
 one, you should try by gentle means to induce the 
 people to make a change. I know a book — not an 
 American book — in which large numbers of the hymns 
 are so chilly, that if you put a thermometer into it, the 
 mercury sinks many degrees below zero. Cold hymns 
 — no matter what fire there may be in the preaching 
 — will encourage a cold and heartless religion; and 
 weak, sentimental hymns will encourage a weak, sen- 
 timental religion. On the other hand, hymns full of 
 generous trust, of ardent, reverential love, of manly 
 vigour, of thanksgiving, of hope, of joy, will train the 
 people to a noble, masculine, and impassioned piety. 
 
 If you can get it, have a book large enough to give 
 ample variety of choice. In a collection containing 
 only three or four hundred hymns, ministers and 
 Churches are " cribb'd, cabin'd, and confin'd." " But 
 
2So A LARGE HYMN-BOOK'. [lect. ix. 
 
 a large book is very heavy." Yes, four or five ounces 
 heavier than a small one : and shall we impoverish 
 the worship of the Church for the sake of having four 
 or five ounces less to carry from home to church and 
 back again, or for the sake of having four or five 
 ounces less to hold in our hands when we stand up to 
 sing ? " But a large book is expensive." Well, sup- 
 pose it costs forty or fifty cents more than a small one : 
 a hymn-book will last at least ten years, and the differ- 
 ence of the cost will be four or five cents a year. Is the 
 difference of sufficient importance to justify the harm 
 inflicted on the very life of the Church by the use of 
 a book in which you look in vain for the hymns which 
 express some of the most vivid thoughts and some of 
 the strongest emotions with which the Church is in- 
 spired .'' In England some congregations which do 
 not hesitate to spend five or six thousand dollars in 
 decorating their Church, grudge a thousand for a new 
 hymn-book. I would far rather preach in a mean, 
 dingy, ugly building, than use a poor collection of 
 hymns. " But no congregation ever uses more than 
 three or four hundred hymns, even if the hymn-book 
 contains a thousand." I doubt it, unless the other six or 
 seven hundred are not worth singing. But if it were 
 so, we should remember that no two congregations 
 will sing the same three or four hundred hymns, even 
 if they use the same book. What I ask for is variety 
 of choice. 
 
 We should have hymns enough to enable the people 
 to express in sacred song all the moods and expe- 
 
LECT. IX.] HYMNS FOR THE SEASONS. 281 
 
 riences of their changing Hfe. It is my impression 
 that some ministers have not discovered how won- 
 derfully hymns may consecrate the common thoughts 
 and common feeHngs of men. When they come to 
 church on a bright spring morning, a hymn may 
 transfigure and exalt the physical and aesthetic de- 
 light with which they welcome the returning life of 
 Nature. 
 
 " The glory of the Spring, how sweet ! 
 The new-born life, how glad ! 
 What joy the happy earth to greet. 
 In new bright raiment clad. 
 « # * * 
 
 " Divine Renewer ! Thee I bless, 
 I greet Thy going forth ; 
 I love Thee in the loveliness 
 Of Thy renewed earth. 
 
 "But O these wonders of Thy grace, 
 These nobler works of Thine, 
 These marvels sweeter far to trace, 
 These new births more divine. 
 # # # • 
 
 " Creator Spirit, work in me 
 
 These wonders sweet of Thine ! 
 Divine Renewer, graciously 
 Renew this heart of mine."— T. H. GiLL. 
 
 And when 
 
 " Summer suns are glowing 
 Over land and sea, 
 Happy light is flowing 
 Bountiful and free;" 
 
 it is a good thing for the congregation to rise from 
 the visible splendour, and to exult that 
 
282 HYMNS FOR THE SEASONS. [lect. ix. 
 
 " God's free mercy streameth 
 
 Over all the world, 
 And His banner gleameth 
 
 Everywhere unfurled. 
 Broad and deep and glorious 
 
 As the heaven above, 
 Shines in might victorious 
 
 His eternal love." 
 
 When farmers come to church through a kindly 
 rain that is falling after a long drought, why should 
 we be satisfied with a sentence of thanksgiving in the 
 prayer ? Let them sing — 
 
 " The river of God 
 
 The pastures hath blessed, 
 The dry wither'd sod 
 In greenness is dress'd. 
 
 " And every fold 
 
 Shall teem with its sheep, 
 With harvests of gold 
 The fields shall be deep. 
 
 " The vales shall rejoice 
 With laughter and song, 
 And man's grateful voice 
 
 The music prolong." — A. L. P. 
 
 And when in some village on the coast of Maine, 
 or Massachusetts, or Rhode Island, a congregation is 
 gathered on a stormy winter afternoon, and there 
 are many hearts filled with anxiety about husbands, 
 brothers, sons, who are likely to have a rough and 
 perhaps a dangerous night on the Atlantic, with what 
 a depth of feeling will they sing — 
 
 " Eternal Father, strong to save, 
 Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, 
 
LECT. IX.] NATIONAL HYMNS. 283 
 
 Who bidst the mighty ocean deep 
 
 Its own appointed limits keep ; 
 
 O hear us when we cry to Thee 
 
 For those in peril on the sea," — W. Whiting. 
 
 Sometimes our hymns should take a wider range. 
 The Jewish psalms are full of thanksgivings to God 
 for His great goodness to the Jewish nation, for the 
 pleasant country which He had given them, for the 
 deliverances which He had wrought for them in hours 
 of national peril. They recall the memory of the 
 great men He had raised up among them — " Moses 
 his servant, and Aaron whom he had chosen ; " 
 Samuel the prophet, and David the king. There are 
 lamentations over public calamities, and vehement 
 appeals to the Divine pity. Is there any reason why 
 the American people should not praise God for His 
 goodness to themselves } This vast continent, stretch- 
 ing from the Atlantic to the Pacific — is it not the 
 land which God gave to your fathers } The skies that 
 bend over you in Connecticut and Ohio — are they not 
 bright with the same sun that shone in the old days on 
 the fields of Bethlehem, when David watched his 
 father's sheep t Is there any reason why you should 
 not translate into new forms the ancient strain of the 
 Psalmist — " The heavens are thine, the earth also is 
 thine ; as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou 
 hast created them " } " Tabor and Hermon," sang the 
 Psalmist, " shall rejoice in thy name," — and have the 
 mountains of this New World no songs of praise for 
 Him ? Have they forgotten the God by whose 
 strength their eternal foundations were laid .'' or do 
 
284 NATIONAL HYMNS. [lect. ix. 
 
 they seem to be silent, only because the ears which 
 ought to catch their music are heavy and dull ? 
 
 Has God wrought no deliverances for you and for 
 your fathers ? Has He not brought you through great 
 sufferings and great dangers ? Can you not say, like 
 the ancient saints, " We went through fire and through 
 water, but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy 
 place " ? Has He not taught your hands to war and 
 your fingers to fight ? In times of fear and sore per- 
 plexity, has He not sent you men of noble courage 
 and great sagacity and stainless devotion to the public 
 good ? Why should you not sing of the mercy of 
 God which has followed this majestic Union of States 
 all the days of its life, and confess that it is to God 
 that you owe all your greatness and wealth and 
 power ? 
 
 The history of the Jews is our history. Our re- 
 ligious life still receives strength and guidance from the 
 faith of Abraham, the troubles of Jacob, the exodus 
 from Egypt, and the wanderings in the wilderness. I 
 can therefore sing with all my heart about the national 
 blessings which God bestowed upon the Jewish race 
 three thousand years ago, whether in the rugged verse 
 which rose from many a wild, glen and many a lonely 
 moor in Scotland when the Covenanters were hunted 
 down by the Stuarts, verse which blended the fires 
 of devotion with the fires of patriotism, and added the 
 courage of saints to the courage of heroes : — 
 
 "To Him great kings who overthrew, 
 For He hath mercy ever ; 
 
LECT. IX.] NATIONAL HYMNS. 285 
 
 Yea famous kings in battle slew, 
 
 For His grace faileth never. 
 E'en Sihon, king of Amorites, 
 
 For He hath mercy ever ; 
 And Og, the king of Bashanites, 
 
 For His grace faileth never : " 
 
 or in the smoother lines of Dr. Watts : — 
 
 " Great monarchs fell beneath His hand ; 
 Victorious is His sword ; 
 While Israel took the promised land, 
 And faithful is His word." 
 
 But many things have happened since then — since 
 the Jews crossed the Red Sea, and since they smote 
 the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the 
 Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. God "made 
 known his ways unto Moses, and his acts unto the 
 children of Israel," but " he fainteth not, neither is 
 he weary ; " and when I am conducting the worship 
 of Englishmen I remember that England, too, has 
 had its history, and I am not such an atheist as to 
 suppose that in this history God has had no part. It 
 seems monstrous for us to sing about God's goodness 
 to the Jews and never to sing about His goodness to 
 ourselves ; and in these times when we are threatened 
 with a return of dark and poisonous superstitions 
 which we thought had passed away for ever, I am 
 thankful for hymns in which the people can exult in 
 the remembrance of the statesmen, the poets, the 
 preachers, the soldiers, the saints, who, under God, 
 accomplished in former centuries our redemption from 
 sacerdotal tyranny. Let us thank God for sending to 
 
286 THE LIVING GOD. [lect. ix. 
 
 the Jews in the time of trouble, Gideon and Jephthah 
 and Barak and Samson ; but devout EngHshmen have 
 quite as much reason for thanking Him that He sent 
 Wyclifife and Latimer and Cromwell and Milton, to 
 fight and to suffer for the faith and freedom of their 
 own country. " O that men would praise the Lord 
 for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the 
 children of men." For a Christian congregation in 
 London, Birmingham, Manchester, or Liverpool, to 
 thank God for the defeat of Sihon, king of the 
 Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and not to thank 
 Him for the defeat of the Spanish Armada ; to thank 
 Him for the destruction of Pharaoh, and not for the 
 destruction of the Stuarts ; to thank Him for the 
 military triumphs of David, and not for the glory of 
 the Commonwealth and for the Revolution of 1688 ; 
 would be as irrational as to thank Him for the corn 
 that was threshed out on the threshing-floor of Arau- 
 nah the Jebusite, and to refuse to thank Him for the 
 harvest in Kent and Essex and Norfolk last autumn. 
 
 What I have just been saying rests upon a principle 
 which has an important relation to the whole sub- 
 stance and method of our religious thought. Our 
 preaching deals largely with a very wonderful history. 
 But the story of what happened in the tents of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; the wars and captivities 
 of the Jewish people, their national sins and their 
 national chastisements ; the heroism of their prophets, 
 the crimes of their priests and their kings ; would have 
 
LECT. IX.] THE LIVING GOD. 287 
 
 very little to do with the lives of Americans and Eng- 
 lishmen in the nineteenth century, if the history were 
 not also a revelation — a revelation of the living God, 
 who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The 
 teaching and the miraclesof our Lord Jesus Christ Him- 
 self, His death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, 
 derive their supreme importance from the fact that 
 they originated and revealed the relations which exist 
 at this hour between God and ourselves. Our faith 
 rests upon a history, because the history reveals the 
 God in whom we live and move and have our being. 
 
 It is possible, however, so to treat both the Old 
 Testament and the New as to create the impression 
 that, although in distant lands and distant centuries 
 God was active in the affairs of men. He is active no 
 longer ; that His intimate relations to mankind were 
 suddenly broken off eighteen hundred years ago ; that 
 since then He has left the world to itself, with nothing 
 more than a wonderful tradition of a diviner and 
 more glorious age. 
 
 Such an impression is utterly destructive of religious 
 faith. Men instinctively refuse to accept a creed 
 which is only a tradition. The sun is shining still ; 
 the tides still ebb and flow ; every spring the earth 
 clothes itself with fresh grass and flowers ; and every 
 autumn a new harvest falls under the sickle. And 
 the intellectual life of man is still restless, eager, 
 and enterprising. From generation to generation it 
 has continued to make new conquests — widening the 
 region of human knowledge and augmenting by its 
 
2S8 THE LIVING GOD. [lect. ix. 
 
 discoveries the wealth and power of the race. In the 
 moral and social and political life of nations there is 
 also constant movement and change. Ancient wisdom 
 offers no solution of the problems which task the 
 strength of every new age. Laws once salutary and 
 just become obsolete. Venerable institutions by which 
 great races have been disciplined to greatness gradu- 
 ally decay. In every country where there is any moral 
 vigour, where society is not utterly corrupt, where 
 political government is not a rigid despotism, there is 
 an incessant struggle for reform. 
 
 Shall we look on all this activity with suspicion and 
 alarm } Why should we ? We, of all men, — we 
 whose very function it is to assert the glory of God, 
 should be the most eager to acknowledge the splen- 
 dours of human genius, and to celebrate the intellec- 
 tual triumphs of the race ; for " the inspiration of the 
 Almighty giveth them understanding." We, of all men 
 — we who have consecrated our strength to the study 
 of the life and the thought of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 should be the first to honour the men who with 
 equal patience and enthusiasm are investigating the 
 structure and laws of the material universe, and to us 
 their work should have an exceptional sacredness. 
 They are enlarging our knowledge of Christ Himself; 
 " for by him were all things created, that are in 
 heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, 
 whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principali- 
 ties, or powers : all things were created by him and 
 for him." And we, of all men, we who are constantly 
 
LECT. IX.] THE LIVING GOD. 289 
 
 insisting- that neither individuals nor nations can 
 prosper unless they learn the Divine will and do it, 
 should watch with the keenest sympathy and should 
 warmly encourage the efforts of reformers and states- 
 men to discover and apply the laws on which national 
 prosperity depends. 
 
 If, indeed, in the presence of this exciting and 
 perpetual activity — this constant extension of man's 
 knowledc^e of the Universe ; this prolonged and ge- 
 nerous and not unsuccessful struggle to lessen the 
 evils of man's condition, and to secure the triumph of 
 righteousness and truth — we had to confess that in 
 the sphere of Divine revelation with which we have 
 to deal there has been no movement for eighteen cen- 
 turies, that through the whole of this vast and desolate 
 period God has shown no living interest in the for- 
 tunes of mankind, we might well have reason to fear 
 that the world would refuse to listen to us. 
 
 But we have no such confession to make. God's 
 relations to the human race are still real and intimate. 
 His activity in human affairs has never been inter- 
 rupted. The revelation of Himself in human history 
 is still incomplete. He has not left us, in these last 
 a^es with no other sources of knowledge of Him than 
 those which are contained in His material works, or 
 in the irreversible laws which are constantly receiving 
 fresh illustrations from the social and political vicissi- 
 tudes of nations. Nor has He even left us to make 
 what we can of that supernatural revelation which cul- 
 minated in the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 20 
 
290 THE LIVING GOD. [lect. ix. 
 
 " He fainteth not, neither is he weary." I see the 
 proofs of His mercy and power in the triumphs of the 
 gospel on the day of Pentecost ; but other triumphs 
 of the gospel achieved in later centuries manifest the 
 same mercy and the same power. The conversion of 
 St. Paul was an illustration of the Divine grace ; but 
 every successful preacher is continually witnessing 
 illustrations of the same grace in the conversion of 
 men by his own ministry. Divine acts are not less 
 Divine because they do not happen to be recorded in 
 the canonical Scriptures. The last report of your 
 Board of Foreign Missions is the continuation by an 
 inferior hand of the story which was begun in the 
 Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 The miracles of earlier ages have ceased ; they are 
 no longer necessary ; they ought to have taught us to 
 recognise the permanent manifestation of the power 
 of God in the orderly movements of the material 
 universe. We no longer possess the special illumina- 
 tion which was granted to the sacred writers, enabling 
 them to bear authoritative testimony to the presence 
 God in events for which historical philosophy 
 might have attempted to offer a natural explanation ; 
 but we ought to have learnt from the Holy Scriptures 
 that the common lives of men and the common 
 history of nations are under the Divine contiol. 
 
 Gentlemen, I trust that you will not be mere reli- 
 gious antiquarians. You will assert the present autho- 
 rity, you will preach the present love, of the living 
 God. It will be your endeavour to make men under- 
 
LECT. IX.] THE RIGHTS OF THE PRESENT. 291 
 
 Stand that the dream which came to Jacob at Bethel is 
 a dream no longer ; that in Christ, heaven and earth, 
 God and man, have been brought together. You will 
 teach men that only in God's light can they see light, 
 and that if they devoutly seek for it the light of God 
 will come to them, and will illuminate both the ancient 
 Scriptures and our modern life. You will insist that the 
 moral and spiritual perfection to which we are called 
 is beyond our reach until we receive the power of 
 God ; and you will warn them against the superstition 
 of supposing that they can derive moral and spiritual 
 strength either from Divine promises written in a book, 
 or from the memory of the manifestations of Divine 
 glory and goodness in remote ages. The promises 
 are intended to command our faith in God's present 
 help : the history of His great and merciful deeds in 
 former times illustrates the love and the power to 
 which we can appeal in our own days. It will be the 
 object of your ministry to prevail upon your congrega- 
 tions to recognise the authority of God, and to honour 
 Ilim, in all the common affairs of life as well as in 
 their religious worship and in what they call their 
 religious work ; in their homes, their trades, their pro- 
 fessions, their amusements ; in literature, politics, and 
 art. To accomplish this object you must believe — and 
 you must make them believe — that God is still " a 
 God nigh at hand, and not afar off." 
 
 Respect the rights of the past : assert the rights 
 of the present. Sing the songs in which the saints of 
 past generations expressed their trust and joy in God, 
 
 20 * 
 
292 SPIRITUAL INTUITION OF TRUTH, [lect. ix. 
 
 but do not refuse the songs of devout men of our own 
 days. Be grateful for the pathos and solemnity of 
 Gregorian chants ; be grateful, too, for the brighter 
 and more triumphant strains which have been written 
 in later times by men who have consecrated their 
 genius to the service of the Church. Welcome all 
 truth — the truth in that glorious " Psalm of Creation " 
 which appears on the first page of the Jewish Scriptures, 
 and which reveals the personal relations of God to the 
 universe ; the truth in the latest demonstrated results 
 of scientific inquiry which reveal the methods by which 
 through unmeasured ages God has been bringing the 
 order of this fair world out of darkness and chaos. To 
 you, America must be sacred as well as Judaea ; and you 
 will teach men that in New York and Washington, in 
 Chicago and Charleston and San Francisco, they may 
 be as near to God as were the priests on the day when 
 the temple was consecrated, and when they " could not 
 enter the house of the Lord " because it was filled with 
 His glory. 
 
 After what I have said in previous lectures you will 
 not suspect me of depreciating that knowledge of the 
 truths of the Christian faith which we acquire by the 
 study of Exegetical and Dogmatic Theology. But 
 this knowledge, invaluable as it is, will prove inade- 
 quate to the exigencies of your ministry. Is there not 
 a direct vision — what has been called an intuition — of 
 the great objects of faith } It is true that the revela- 
 tion which was made to us by the Lord Jesus Christ 
 
LECT. IX.] ' SPIRITUAL INTUITION OF TRUTH. 293 
 
 Himself, and which was illustrated by His apostles, 
 must constitute the very substance of all Christian 
 thought. No man who has discovered the dignity and 
 glory of Christ, and who understands the greatness of 
 the commission which He gave to the apostles, will 
 ever speak as though it were possible for us to be- 
 come independent either of Him or them. But the 
 New Testament itself may be read in the natural light 
 of the human intellect or in the light of the Spirit of 
 God ; and until we read it in the diviner illumination 
 we have no such knowledge of it as we need. 
 
 There are very many men whose personal history 
 is a commentary ow my meaning. Their creed in its 
 logical expression is very much the same to-day that 
 it was twenty years ago, but they would tell you that 
 though the same it is wonderfully different. The 
 Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, for instance, they 
 had long ceased to doubt. They had examined the 
 controversy, and their minds were made up. They 
 believed that He was God manifest in the flesh. Yes 
 — they believed this, just as we believe that some great 
 painting we see in a picture gallery is the work of 
 Murillo or Da Vinci. The catalogue tells us so, and 
 perhaps gives the history of the painting from the 
 time it left the easel till it was hung on those very 
 walls. But an artist comes in, and he does not require 
 to look at the catalogue to learn that it was an illus- 
 trious master who created those gracious outlines and 
 that rich depth of colour. He knows that the work 
 could not have come from any common hand ; he sfxs 
 
294 SPIRITUAL INTUITION OF TRUTH. [lect. ix. 
 
 the genius in which you and I, perhaps, only believe. 
 Time was when he, too, wanted the catalogue with its 
 documentary proofs ; he may even now be obliged to 
 appeal to those proofs against any who doubt, for his 
 own perceptions cannot be made theirs ; but for himself 
 evidence of that kind has become unnecessary : he 
 knows the hand of the master on the canvas as we 
 know the hand of a friend in a letter. And so there 
 are many who would tell you that their belief in the 
 Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, which once rested, 
 and rested immovably, on granite foundations of 
 authority, has passed into something higher and better : 
 they read the Gospels and they see God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ. It is as though they had been with Him 
 on the Mount of Transfiguration, and had beheld His 
 glory. Nay, there is something better than that ; for 
 the splendour which was seen by Peter, James, and 
 John, soon faded away ; it became a mere remem- 
 brance ; while the glory which they behold in Christ 
 is like that which shone in the Holy of Holies, a per- 
 manent witness to the presence of God. 
 
 But in the creed of many of us are there not doc- 
 trines, facts, which have never yet risen out of the 
 region of intellectual belief into that of immediate 
 spiritual vision t Some of us can remember the kind 
 of transformation which passed upon " the principles 
 of the doctrine of Christ " at the time of our conver- 
 sion : must we not acknowledge that there are other 
 truths which have not even yet been thus transformed } 
 What I wish to say is that every one of you, before 
 
LECT. IX.] ORIGINALITY. 295 
 
 your life in this university is over, should endeavour 
 to secure from God the immediate and supernatural 
 revelation of those great truths which must constitute 
 the strength of your ministry. It is unnecessary that 
 I should tell you how you are to secure it. Solitary 
 meditation ; earnest prayer for Divine light ;' devout, 
 quiet, yet persistent efforts to see things as they are ; 
 fellowship with Christian men, who, though they may 
 have less learning than yourselves, have lived longer 
 than you have lived in the presence of God ; a loyal 
 discharge of all common duties, practical fidelity to 
 the light which God has already given you — these 
 will be rewarded by a gradual, sometimes by a sudden, 
 manifestation of vast provinces of the spiritual uni- 
 verse. Do not ask for the solution of the difficulties 
 by which theologians have been perplexed and divided ; 
 try to know at first-hand — to see for yourselves — the 
 facts about which the Church is agreed. Human sin 
 — endeavour to see it as God Himself sees it. Entreat 
 God so to reveal to you His love for the human race, 
 that it may become as real and vivid to you as the 
 love which will change your mother's voice into music 
 when you go home again, and will fill her face with 
 light. Knowledge of this kind will give depth to your 
 religious life, security and stability to your faith, and 
 power to your ministry. 
 
 Perhaps some of you will reply that the truths of 
 which I have been speaking are the mere common- 
 places of the Christian Faith, and that if a preacher is 
 to have any real force he must be original. Well, if 
 
296 ORIGINALITY. [lect. ix. 
 
 I may suggest anotlier and very inferior reason for 
 seeking the kind of knowledge I have been describing, 
 I will add that it will invest your preaching with the 
 charm of originality. I remember that to many of the 
 students of my own day originality appeared to be one 
 of the chief excellences of a sermon. Perhaps to some 
 of you it may have the same supreme attractiveness. 
 Eloquence, you are perhaps disposed to speak of very 
 lightly, as though it were a mere trick by which some 
 men are able to invest with a meretricious brilliance 
 the poorest and dreariest platitudes. That practical 
 knowledge of the human heart and of human life which 
 constitutes the power of some successful preachers, 
 you have, in all probability, not yet learned to appre- 
 ciate at its true value, and you cannot understand 
 how it is that the men who have nothing else, achieve 
 such considerable results. I am speaking, you must 
 remember, as if you had the same way of thinking 
 about preachers that prevailed at my own college 
 when I was a student. We thought that there were 
 hardly any sermons to be heard that w^ere worth 
 listening to. Popular ministers were the favourite 
 objects — well, not of our contempt — but of our kindly 
 and condescending patronage, except that now and 
 then we felt righteously indignant that they should 
 have won their reputation so cheaply. But origin- 
 ality was the pearl of great price : we were ready to 
 sell all that we had to buy it. 
 
 Our estimate of the supreme worth of originality 
 was not altogether false ; only, I think, that we some- 
 
LECT. IX.] ORIGINALITY. 297 
 
 times failed to recognise it where it existed, and were 
 sometimes imposed upon by a miserably paltry imita- 
 tion of it. We have gradually found the cheats out. 
 We have discovered that very much that seemed 
 fresh and wonderful was only a grotesque distortion 
 of the most familiar truths, or a weak and servile 
 imitation of the mere intellectual mannerism of some 
 writer of great — or, perhaps, even of second or third 
 rate — genius. Originality of that kind is within the 
 reach of every man that is fool enough to care for it. 
 It is no pearl of great price, which all your wealth 
 will hardly purchase ; it is what men slanderously call 
 mere " Brummagem jewellery," to be bought for a few 
 poor coppers. 
 
 True originality is something different from this. 
 It is not to be acquired by the m.ethods which some 
 men adopt to obtain it. You may become singular, 
 odd, ridiculous, absurd, by trying not to think and 
 speak like other people, but original — never.' If 
 you want to be an original preacher, look at heaven 
 and hell, life and death, sin and holiness, with your ^ 
 own eyes ; listen for yourselves to the voice of God ; 
 ask Him to reveal to you the glory of His love, the 
 steadfastness of His truth, the energy of His right- 
 eousness, and tell the world what you have heard and 
 seen. Pierce to the heart of things. Get at the 
 facts which lie behind appearances. In this way 
 originality will come to you when you are not seeking 
 
 i"Ouand on court apres I'esprit, on attrape la sottise.*' 
 Montesquieu: "Pensees Diverses." 
 
298 THE PRESENCE OB CHRIST. [leci. ix. 
 
 it. It will be unconscious,! and therefore will not min- 
 ister to your conceit ; it will be part of your very life, 
 and will therefore characterise more or less all your 
 sermons, and not merely those on which you have been 
 able to spend most time and labour ; it will not wear 
 out after the first years of your ministry are over, but 
 will remain with you as long as you have the clear vision 
 of God, and as long as the spiritual universe lies open 
 to you. While it will command for you the respect 
 of those who are capable of forming a true judgment 
 of your power, it will not provoke the silly wonder of 
 conceited and undisciplined minds. It will save you 
 from the humiliation of their foolish idolatry ; it will be 
 out of the reach of their critical admiration ; but it 
 will enable you to accomplish for them and for all 
 your people the great objects of your ministry. 
 
 Among the truths which with special earnestness 
 you should ask God to reveal to you by the light of 
 His Spirit, so that you may have a direct and 
 original knowledge of it, is the truth of Christ's pre- 
 sence with you in your work. His own words, " Lo, 
 I am with you always " — words which express a fact 
 rather than a promise — are directly connected with the 
 command to disciple all nations. If this presence is 
 revealed to you all your ministerial work will be trans- 
 figured. The weight of anxiety which, if you are 
 
 ^ "Voici comme je ddfinis le talent : un don que Dieu nous a 
 fait en secret, et que nous revelons sans le savoir." Montes- 
 quieu : " Pensees Diverses." 
 
LECT. IX.] THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. 
 
 299 
 
 alone, will almost crush you ; the consciousness of 
 weakness which, if you do not see that Christ is near, 
 will sometimes force from you a bitter and despairing 
 cry for release from the responsibilities of the ministry, 
 will vanish. Saturday night comes, and you are 
 thinking of the services of Sunday : your heart will 
 leap when you say to yourself, " Christ will meet the 
 congregation with me." You may be troubled by the 
 fear that the fervour of your earnestness for the 
 salvation of men has cooled ; but while seeking to 
 rekindle it your trouble will be lessened, for you will 
 say, " Christ will be with me, and Christ's earnestness 
 will be intense as ever." You have done your best in ^ 
 the way of preparation ; but perhaps you have been 
 interrupted in your work, or your brain has been 
 sluggish, and you know that in what you have pre- 
 pared there is less than the usual force and fire, but you 
 will not be despondent ; you will say, " I have done 
 what I could ; Christ will be with me, and He can. 
 invest this poor discourse of mine with power." 
 Your own sense of Christ's presence may not be so 
 vivid as- it has been, but you will say, " Still He will 
 be with me, and He will bless the people beyond my 
 hopes, and theirs." 
 
 It would be of no avail for us to preach at all if He 
 were not with us ; we shall preach to little purpose if 
 we do not believe that He is with us. It is still true 
 that "he that soweth the good seed is the Son of 
 man : " only as we are filled with His life and His 
 thought shall we preach anything that will deserve 
 
300 THE PRESENCE OF CHRIST. [lect. ix. 
 
 to be called a gospel. If ££/^ always have the conscious- 
 ness of Christ's presence our congregations will dis- 
 cover it, and the discovery will assist to strengthen 
 their faith in Him. 
 
 It may be that there are laws which determine the 
 manifestations of the supernatural power of Christ ; it 
 is clear that these manifestations are related to the 
 truth which is preached, to the spirit and manner in 
 which we preach it, and to the earnestness and faith 
 with which we entreat Him to have mercy on mankind. 
 We have to discover and to satisfy the conditions on 
 which the success of our preaching depends. But, after 
 all, the quickening of the souls of men, and their sanc- 
 tification, are as truly the personal acts of Christ as 
 were any of the miracles of His earthly history. It is 
 He who must forgive the sins of which we speak to our 
 people ; it is He who must renew their hearts ; it is He 
 who must give them strength for right-doing. It is not 
 truth merely — no matter how sacred ; it is not spiritual 
 motive merely — no matter how urgent, how pathetic, 
 how glorious, how appalling ; it is not our own earn- 
 estness — no matter how deep and how impassioned ; 
 that will move men to penitence, draw them to God, 
 enable them to keep the Divine law. We have to 
 rely ultimately on the power of the Spirit, and the 
 power of the Spirit is the revelation of the presence 
 of Christ. The presence of Christ is assured to us by 
 His own words. To disregard it, to think only of how 
 we ourselves can stir the hearts of our hearers and 
 instruct their understandings, is to be guilty of an 
 
301 
 
 LECT. IX.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 atheistic presumption which will utterly destroy the 
 effectiveness of our ministry. 
 
 Gentlemen, yours is a noble vocation. To be 
 the ally of Christ in His great endeavour to save the 
 world, — with Him to assert the authority of the 
 throne and law of God ; with Him to support human 
 weakness in its vacillating endeavours to do the Divine 
 will ; to inspire the sinful with trust in the Divine 
 mercy ; to console sorrow ; to awaken in the hearts of 
 the poor, the weak, and the desolate, the consciousness 
 of their relations to the Infinite and Eternal God ; to 
 exalt and dignify the lives of old men and maidens, 
 young men and children, by revealing to them the 
 things unseen and eternal which surround them now, 
 and the mysterious, awful, glorious life which lies be- 
 yond death — this is a great work. There is nothing on 
 earth comparable to it. Whatever genius you have, 
 whatever learning, whatever native moral force, what- 
 ever energy of spiritual inspiration, will all find their 
 freest and loftiest service in the work to which you 
 are consecrated. And in the ministry, even the 
 humblest faculties, if used with devout earnestness, 
 may, through alliance with the power of God, achieve 
 great results. 
 
 However obscure your ministerial position may be, 
 to whatever discomforts you may have to submit, 
 however bitter may be your disappointments, I trust 
 that your work will be always invested with the dig- 
 nity and glory which now invest it, when in your 
 
302 CONCLUSION. [lect. ix. 
 
 noblest and most sacred hours you anticipate in im- 
 agination the years which are stretching before you. 
 Give Christ your best. Be faithful to Him — be faith- 
 ful to your people — be faithful to yourselves — and you 
 will not have to exclaim when your life is over, " All 
 is vanity and vexation of spirit." You will thank God 
 that He appointed you in this world to a service 
 which was the most perfect preparation for the larger 
 life, the loftier activities, the everlasting glory of the 
 world to come. 
 
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