ART. VII.—SUBJECTIVE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO THE HIGHEST POWER IN PREACHING.

THE chief vocation of the Christian minister is preaching. He has other duties that are auxiliary and supplemental to it, and for which he must have adequate furniture; but his office as a preacher outranks them all. The pulpit is his throne. The Gospel has no power of self-proclamation. It needs a suitable agent and a fitting mode. Man is the accredited agent, and preaching the instrument of his power. By preaching he must engage the attention of men, instruct their understanding, convince their judgments, arouse their feelings, quicken their consciences, and direct their volitions. By it he must awaken men to a sense of their responsibility to God, and also to a sense of their moral insolvency. By it he must draw men out of a world of sin and selfishness to a penitential confession to God of their personal guilt and of their absolute dependence upon divine mercy. And by it men are to be guided, nurtured, and trained for a holy and useful life and for a final residence with God in heaven.

The power of preaching is the power of public speech. This power was an art of great repute in the pagan world when the Christ began his mission. He instantly converted it. His example was followed by the apostles. They did not aim to attract men by gorgeous vestments or stately ceremonials. They looked men in the face and preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. The flaming miracle of the cloven tongue was at once a symbol and a prophecy. It placed a divine seal and emphasis upon the art of speech, and notified the Church that this was the instrument chosen of God for the propagation of divine truth. Infinite wisdom must needs choose the best means for reaching the hearts of men; therefore this must be the best. The successors of Jesus, like him, were great preachers. The people had the law and the prophets, but these were not sufficient. A living voice was needed to state, interpret, and enforce them.

Christianity has always possessed the power of public speech. It has used it to an unprecedented degree. The prosperity or decline of the Church may be measured by the use, abuse, or

disuse of it. It is the exponent of the courage and sympathy of the Church. A higher degree of valor is required to speak than to write to men. It is also true that the way to the human heart is shorter by a sermon than by a book. Preaching is indispensable to evangelism. The work of the preacher is in part ministerial, but it is primarily and preeminently missionary. He must seek men. The lost sheep is seldom found by a pamphlet. The Bible alone will not accomplish the conversion of the world. This is to a phenomenal extent an age of letters and reading. It is sometimes asserted that the tripod of the editor is the modern pulpit, that the rhythmic clatter of the printing press takes the place of oratory. But it may be affirmed that literature, whether it be book, pamphlet, magazine, or current journal, can never be a substitute for the human tongue nor supersede the preacher. It is by the foolishness of preaching that men are yet to be saved.

The highest power in preaching is only attained when the heart of the hearer is profoundly impressed. It is undoubtedly true that the heart can only be deeply impressed through the aid of the reasoning faculties; but there may be rational processes that in no measurable degree touch the moral sense of men. The preaching that so reveals sin as that men feel its degradation, that so discloses the sovereignty of God that men stand in awe of the great white throne, that so unfolds the love of God that with the shame of transgression there springs up the hope of mercy, that so defines moral obligation as to make men feel that true reverence for God is only realized in genuine, abiding, self-sacrificing devotion to the welfare of man, and that so addresses the human will as to make it pliable to moral truth and persuasion-this is the summit of all preaching.

But as a matter of fact and observation we find that all preachers are not equally successful. Some have natural ability and trained powers. They use the same words and preach the same doctrines as other men, they are blameless in their behavior, they frequently secure attentive auditors, yet they achieve but little. The apparent results are meager and superficial. They are rarely the center of any deep religious movement. Few are turned from sin to holiness by them. Others, as with the touch of a wizard, pierce through the mantle of thick-woven prejudices, subdue the pride of the most self

willed, disperse all foes to the word of God, and, laying hold of trembling sinners, lead captive to the cross the old and young, the sage and savage, the river pirate and the devotee of fashion. The effect of their preaching cannot be explained by any of the formulas laid down in books of logic, rhetoric, or homiletics. They are sometimes men of erudition; but their success is not due to their learning. They are occasionally of very slender acquirements; but the effect of their speech is more than the surprise excited by one "whose father and mother we know." They are in some instances orators, from whose lips the truth flows out like beaten oil; but others are plain men, of homely speech, ignoring all the pleasing refinements of oratory; yet a virtue proceeds from them that is not in what they say or in the manner of saying it. Sinners are startled, reflection is promoted, and many are moved to decisive action.

The antiquated legend of the preacher who, on learning that one soul had been led to Jesus in a ministry of thirty years, proposed to invest thirty years more to accomplish the same result has wrought more mischief than good. It ought to be shrouded and buried. If it was ever true it was an impeachment of the credentials of the man who plumed himself with so much vanity on such a scant return. Not that one soul is not of infinite value; but to assume that the word of God can be faithfully declared by a man called of God to proclaim it, during such an extended period, in a populous neighborhood, and to a people who evince no external animosity to it, with no wider result is incredible. Inasmuch as seed is assured to the sower, and bread to the eater, "so," saith the Lord, "shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please."

Are there spiritual laws that account for such a disparity in the fruit of men's labors? Or must we settle down to the conclusion that by the sovereign act of God men are made to differ in their effectiveness? The last alternative would be a complacent way of throwing off all personal responsibility. But would it be rational? Would it be scriptural? There are questions that affect the moral character and status of the preacher and must be considered before we dismiss to a divine tribunal the solution of this problem. Is it not imperative that we should ask whether the Gospel is modified in its power over

the mind or conscience by the personality of the agent employed to declare it? May it not be true that the force of divine truth is increased or diminished by the moral or mental state of the preacher? It may be said that truth is truth, no matter who utters it, or even if it be rolled from the cylinder of a phonograph. And some may say, "Is not divine truth the power of God, whether it issue from holy or profane lips? Can the preacher add out of his own resources to the natural power of the truth, to its vividness, to its dynamic influence, to its illuminating force?" If so, then there is a human as well as a divine element in preaching. This also adds immensely to the responsibility of the sacred office. Of what infinite delinquency a man is guilty who puts in peril the life of the soulnot his own soul only, but the souls of others--and withholds from men the propulsive or the attractive power of a surcharged personality?

Whether the degree of spiritual life in the pulpit necessarily determines the state of the Church and of society may not be susceptible of demonstration; but history points to the exist ence of such a process. For two centuries succeeding the dawn of the Christian era the men who preached the word held the truth with a reverent and earnest faith. They believed implicitly and spoke with a directness that was simply the natural and spontaneous outflow of the Christ life. This life was the evidence to them that they were born again. Their preaching was chiefly the corroboration of the doctrine of Christ, as it existed in their own consciousness, and pious exhortation to others to adopt and enjoy it. The pulpit was filled with a passion for souls, and the truth was made authentic to the skeptic and to the inquirer by the unconscious art with which it was urged upon them. But soon, like the spread of infected air, devitalizing theories spread among the leaders and preachers of the Church. They were less concerned about their spiritual union with Christ, and more anxious about theories, ceremonies, sacraments, dignities, relics, and external forms. They became dogmatists, ecclesiastics, ritualists, polemists, allegorists, speculators, dreamers, parrot-like followers of

other men's notions.

There were, however, two notable exceptions. John Chrys ostom, the "golden-mouthed," was preeminently a preacher.

He lost himself in solitude for his cause. He aimed to move the conscience of men and succeeded, for his own was powerful and sensitive. It was said of him, "He breathed upon all duties the life and the moving power of the person and work of Christ." He united voice, language, passion, taste, art, piety, and motive in his dauntless enforcement of divine truth. He had a deep, broad, strong, spiritual nature. He was scholarly, lucid, majestic, tropical. He knew the mind of man and how to deal with it so as to secure a prompt response. He was a master in the use of the human voice. But the supreme force behind all these, and endowing them with a holy utility, was manhood in the image of God. He gave forth not only light but heat. He poured his own feelings into his utterances. He left the Church a legacy of a thousand sermons; but one discourse as it fell from his burning lips wrought more effect upon the souls of men than all his published sermons. There was also Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who was more Protestant than Romanist. It is said of him that "there was an emphatic impulse which he gave to instruction in truth and to impression through it, as opposed to the arts of the mere orator." An intense moral earnestness and deep spiritual insight enabled him to search the hidden man of the heart as from his own selfknowledge. In the fourth book of his manual, entitled De Doctrina Christiana, he shows that the personality and earnestness of the preacher are the true secrets of his greatest power.

If these two consecrated men had been supported by colaborers equally devout, direct, sincere, and spiritual Martin Luther would not have been a religious necessity. Great names in the Church preceded these, and many rose to eminence in the ecclesiastical firmament after their translation; but in none of them was there the same unadulterated love of God and of human souls. Gregory the Great observed that "the sermon has most effect when given by the person whose it is." And of the Venerable Bede it is noted that "his genuine sincerity and piety were so apparent as to add greatly to the force of what he said." But he was never a great preacher. He preached mainly to priests, seldom to the people. In the Eastern Church preaching so lost its importance that for a thousand years no great name has appeared stirring the hearts of the masses. That Church has become a mere sacerdotal system. The czar 28-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. X.