Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

another chapter, and opens eternal health and endless joy to those who went out from us amid agony and tears. You need waste no sympathy on the man who has this golden key. All doors of helpful opportunity are open before him. God's treasures are his. There is but one alternative for any heart; you are either without God in the world because you banish him, and so become hopeless and helpless amid the hard and bitter things which come to all men soon or late, or else you have on your side, by your choice, the omnipotent and allloving Father, all of whose power and love is enlisted for you as an obedient child. "He that will not obey the laws of God must obey his own passions, which are the worst tyrants; he must obey the world, and the humors of others. In short, to serve God is perfect freedom; all else is mere slavery, let "the world call it what it please." It is therefore possible for the Christian to say, face to face with any experience of life, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." To this life I invite you. It must challenge all that is noble within, and it satisfies every longing with absolute certainty of final and sublime victory.

6. L. Goodell.

ART. XI. THE MASTER PREACHER.

THE beginning of preaching, properly so called, was coincident with the founding of the Christian religion. Since that time the leading factor in the upbuilding of the Church of Jesus Christ in the world has been the Christian ministry, and the chief work of that ministry has been the preaching of the Gospel. The Gospel dispensation had its roots in the past, but it was the introduction of a new order. In the cry of John the Baptist there suddenly broke from the Judean wilderness the startling announcement, "The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the good news." The dispensation of the Christian preacher had dawned. The apostle Matthew begins his account of the active ministry of Christ with these words: "From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." To every age Jesus, the Christ, must stand as the Master Preacher. From the first all hesitation, doubt, experimentation was behind him. He preached like a man confidently sure of himself. And well he might, for the beginning of his ministry was preceded by years of the most careful preparation and training. There was no haste with him to begin his work. Such deliberateness of preparation in the face of tasks of such magnitude the world has never seen in another. He was an habitual student of no easy type. Days and nights of the most severe application marked his work as a preacher. The results are seen in his sermons. His facility of expression is marked. The style is simplicity itself, but polished and brilliant. There is no resisting its persuasive power. “How exquisitely and freshly simple is the language of Christ compared with all other teaching that has ever gained the ear of the world. There is no science in it, no art, no pomp of demonstration, no toil, no trick of rhetoricians, no wisdom of the schools." It is short, clear, precise. He used the best of grammar. The unlearned and ignorant in large

part made up his audiences, but he did not cater to them by the appearance of ignorance. He disdained all vulgarisms. Says Bushnell, "It is a remarkable and even superhuman distinction of Jesus, that, while he is advancing doctrines so far transcending all deductions of philosophy, and opening mysteries that defy all human powers of explication, he is yet able to set his teaching in a form of simplicity that accommodates all classes of minds." He made almost no use of ceremony; he avoided all formality; he seemed not to know the use of display. He was absolutely free from superstition, and did not hesitate to trample on old and cherished beliefs. He paid no court to place or position. Dignitaries of Church and State were more than once singled out by him for most severe rebuke. For the illustrations to point his discourses he went to nature and to common life. He of all men lived closest to the heart of nature. The green fields and the springing flowers, the seed and the tree, the vine and the fishes, the night and the storm, the clouds and the lightning, the wind and the rain, the sunrise and the sunset, the rent garment and the bursting wine skins, the net and the fish, the eggs and the serpents, the pearls and the pieces of money, the wheat and the wine, the corn and the oil-all these and many others were the means of enforcing truths and impressing lessons upon the minds of men.

Jesus was the Authoritative Teacher. The preacher must speak with authority if he is to gain the attention of men. The authority of Jesus compelled a hearing for his message. The late Archbishop of York made the following classification of preachers of the Gospel: "There are three kinds of preachers: the preacher you can't listen to, the preacher you can listen to, and the preacher you can't help listening to."

Across the sea, along the shore,
In numbers ever more and more,
From lonely hut and busy town,

The valley through, the mountain down,
What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk of Galilee?

[merged small][ocr errors]

A teacher? Rather seek the feet
Of those who sit in Moses' seat.
Go, humbly seek, and bow to them
Far off in great Jerusalem.

What is it came ye here to note?
A young man preaching in a boat.

A prophet? Boys, and women weak,
Declare and cease to rave-

Whence is it he hath learned to speak?
Say who his doctrine gave.

A prophet? Prophet wherefore he
Of all in Israel's tribes?

He teacheth with authority

And not as do the scribes.*

Jesus was the Master Preacher in obtaining a hearing for his message. Truth must have a hearing. The first responsibility of the preacher is to gain a hearing for the truth. This Jesus did under the most adverse conditions. The ears of the multitude are ever open to pleasant sounds, but the severest test of public speech is to gain a hearing for unpleasant truths. Jesus overthrew the most fondly cherished conceptions of his hearers. He discouraged their dearest ambitions concerning their nation. He repulsed every expectation that greeted him. Despite all this his enemies acknowledged his power, and the multitude followed him persistently and heard him gladly. His methods were both simple and honest. Sensationalism gains a hearing, but it robs the truth of its reality. Sensationalism impresses itself rather than the truth upon its hearers. The ministry of Jesus was farthest removed from the voice of sensationalism. Says Robert Hall, "Miracles were the bell of the universe which God rang to call men to hear his Son."

Jesus was the Master Preacher in his supreme endowment with the Holy Spirit. That the power manifested in his ministry came to him through his endowment with the Holy Spirit rather than by virtue of his divine nature is a fact often indirectly set forth in the New Testament. "Not

*Arthur Hugh Clough.

by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit"-this is the explanation of the lifework of Jesus Christ.

He first

We make a great mistake in interpretation if we think of preaching as an end in the ministry of Jesus. Back of all his preaching was his supreme love of men. This was the urgency which led him to become a preacher. loved men, then came to preach to them. Dr. Pentecost tells that he was once preaching in the presence of Dr. Bonar, enjoying the luxury of proclaiming the Gospel. When he had finished Dr. Bonar turned to him and touching him on the shoulder said, "You love to preach; don't you?" "Yes, I do." "Do you love men to whom you preach ?" That was a test question, and one which some preachers cannot answer.

The Prince of heralds was his own proclamation. Jesus was the Master Preacher in his character. Milton never more truly sang than in this, "He who would be a true poet, or would speak in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem." Says Channing: "I affirm that the efficacy of the Christian religion lies chiefly in the character of Jesus. Christianity separated from Jesus, wanting the light and comment of his character, would have done comparatively little for the world. Jesus with his celestial love is the life of his religion. I might have received from a common messenger of God the same precepts which fell from Jesus. But how different are these precepts in quickening power when coming from those holy lips, from that warm and noble heart, from that Friend who loved me so tenderly, and died that these laws of life might be written on my soul! The perfect charity that Jesus inculcates if taught would have been a beautiful speculation and might have hovered before me as a bright vision. But could I have that faith in its reality which I now possess, as I see it living and embodied in Jesus? Others have spoken to me of God, but from what could I have learned the essence of divine perfection as from Him who was in a peculiar sense an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in

« ПредишнаНапред »