To My Younger Brethren Part 11

That instance has many parallels; and G.o.d only knows their limits. Never should we say, whatever we may awfully fear, that such and such a soul is _to our knowledge_ lost.

As regards the practical management of extreme cases, the young Clergyman will of course act altogether under his Inc.u.mbent. And the young Inc.u.mbent will remember that he can have recourse to his Bishop for counsel.

THE HOLY COMMUNION.

iv. Let me say one special word on our administration of the precious ritual of the Table of the Lord. I am not attempting here any discussion of its doctrinal aspects in detail. For myself, as I have said elsewhere, I make no secret of long-settled "Evangelical"

convictions. I regard the Holy Eucharist as above all things else the Lord's way of sealing to His true Israel the unutterable benefits of the New and Everlasting Covenant, rather than an occasion on which He infuses into them His glorified Manhood. His sacred Body and Blood are, for me, the Body and the Blood _as they were_, once for all, at Calvary, and as they are not therefore literally now; and my partic.i.p.ation in them is accordingly my partic.i.p.ation in the virtues of the Atoning Sacrifice, there once and for ever wrought and offered. But this is by the way. I speak now of our spirit and manner in the administration, in respect of some principles which are little if at all affected, it seems to me, by even grave differences of doctrinal theory. Alas, at the present day it is too often the case that the communicant is fairly bewildered by the varieties of Communion ritual, or by the complications of it. Ought this to be so, on _any_ theory of the Eucharist? Did I for one believe our adorable and beloved LORD to be locally present (I use the words not technically but practically) on the Holy Table as nowhere else here on earth, I think that all my instinct would go towards a reverence whose depth was manifested not by an elaborate ceremonial but by the most solemn possible simplicity of act. A ritual whose details must be matter of careful practice, and which suggests almost the need of a Spanish master-of-the-ceremonies--ought _that_ to be the natural effect of an, as it were, invisible Presence?

SIMPLICITY AND REVERENCE.

But probably I write for readers whose inclinations or risks lie little in that direction. And for them I say, let your administration of the blessed Communion always combine a manifest reverence and a restful simplicity. The Lord _is_ there, the Master of His own Table, the Prince of His own Covenant, ready to give His people His royal Seal by your hands. And His people are there, to have their sacred interview with Him. Do not obstruct their view, their colloquy; humbly aid it. Be their servant, as in HIS presence; obtrude yourself as little as you possibly can.

ADDRESSES ON THE PRAYER BOOK.

As I draw the chapter to a close, I make one practical recommendation to my younger Brethren. It is, to do what they can to interest their people in the Prayer Book, and to promote its intelligent use, by taking what opportunities they can to talk to them about it. Many a private occasion for this will no doubt present itself. But if now and then a simple lecture on the history of the Prayer Book can be given, and if possible well ill.u.s.trated, it will be very useful; and so will be a series of week-night devotional addresses on the teaching of the Prayer Book. And let not the need of plain matter-of-fact explanation of obsolete terms and technical phrases be forgotten on such occasions. Of course the Curate will carefully consult his Inc.u.mbent on the whole matter. But few of my elder Brethren will not feel with me that such "talks upon the Prayer Book," carefully considered and conducted, whether by Inc.u.mbent or by Curate, may be of the greatest use, under our Master's blessing.

"MORE CEREMONIAL, LESS WORs.h.i.+P."

One last word, and I have done with these suggestions. An English Bishop once told me that he had lately met a gentleman who, after ten years'

residence abroad, returned to England, and to his place as a wors.h.i.+pper in our Churches. "Do you remark particularly any change or advance in what you see there?" "I observe on the one hand much more ceremonial, on the other hand, apparently, much less wors.h.i.+p. Fewer kneel, fewer respond, fewer around me seem devoutly attentive." Less wors.h.i.+p! Is it so indeed? Let the very opposite be the case, so far as our influence and teaching can have effect, with our fathers' Prayer Book in our hands, and in our hearts.

"_Lo, G.o.d is here; Him day and night Th' united quires of angels sing; To Him, enthron'd above all height, Heaven's hosts their n.o.blest praises bring; Disdain not, Lord, our meaner song, Who praise Thee with a stammering tongue.

"Being of beings, may our praise Thy courts with grateful fragrance fill; Still may we stand before Thy face, Still hear and do Thy sovereign will; To Thee may all our thoughts arise, Ceaseless, accepted sacrifice._"

J. WESLEY, from TERSTEEGEN

CHAPTER X.

_PREACHING_ (i.).

_Earthen vessels, frail and slight, Yet the golden Lamp we bear; Master, break us, that the light So may fire the murky air; Skill and wisdom none we claim, Only seek to lift Thy Name._

I have on purpose reserved the subject of Preaching for our closing pages. Preaching is, from many points of view, the goal and summing up of all other parts and works of the Ministry. What we have said already about the Clergyman's life and labour, in secret, in society, in the parish; what we have said about his study and use of the Book of Common Prayer; all, so far as it has been true, ought to contribute its suggestions as we approach this great theme.

THE PULPIT THE CENTRAL POINT.

For, indeed, "the Pulpit" (I use the word in its widest application, wide enough to cover the mission-room desk, or the preaching place in the open air) is no mere isolated item in the midst of other matters which call for a Clergyman's attention. If the man is working, and ordering his work, aright, the Pulpit will not be a something which has to be taken by the way, a link in a long chain in which committees, clubs, and social gatherings, and the like, are other and co-ordinate links. It will be a sacred central point, the living heart of the busy life, to which everything will bear relation. To the Pulpit everything will somehow converge, and from the Pulpit everything will be influenced. As the Pastor moves about amongst his people, he will be gathering incessantly, from all parochial places and seasons, material which will tell upon his sermons; he will be getting to know his people's minds and lives with an intimacy which will give his preaching to them a point which otherwise it could not have. And when he stands in the Pulpit, this continually acc.u.mulating knowledge will come out, not indeed in the way of diluting or distorting his Gospel, but so as to give its eternal and holy message a point and closeness of application which will ensure its "coming home," as G.o.d gives the blessing.

TEMPTATIONS TO FORGET THIS.

It needs thought and care to keep the parish and the sermon thus _en rapport_. But such thought and care is infinitely well worth taking.

The Clergyman who longs to be useful for his Lord in the highest degree he can be, cannot possibly think lightly of his sermons. Yet he may be tempted, half unconsciously, to treat them too lightly in practices, particularly if he is beset with a consciousness that he is not "a born preacher," or if he stands in the opposite danger of having a "fatal"

facility of speech. Let the Clergyman only remember that his sermon, his public delivery of instruction, of exhortation, in the Lord's name, is not to be an exhibition of his own powers of thought or utterance, but a faithful message-bearing to his own flock, in the light of what he knows of Christ and the Word on the one side, and of the needs of the flock on the other, and he will find a most useful encouragement, or a most useful corrective, as the need may be. "O my Lord, I am not eloquent,"

[Exod. iv. 10.] will be no disheartening thought, as he carries to the pulpit the ever-growing weight of pastoral experience, all giving point and freshness to the unalterable message. And the secret temptation to think the sermon a light thing because mere words come easy, will be powerfully counteracted in the other case not only by contact with the realities of life in the daily work, but by remembering that the sermon will have to do with not an abstract audience but _these particular_ souls and lives thus laid on the man's conscience and affections.

THE PASTOR PREACHES TO THOSE PARTICULAR HEARERS.

Let me repeat it as earnestly as I can. The sermon, if it is to be what it should be, should be affected at every point by the facts of the preacher's own inner life, and by those of his intercourse with his people. Those facts must, of course, be thoughtfully weighed and handled. The tact which is so important in a Pastor, and which is best learned and developed in the school of Christ's love, will see instinctively how to apply in preaching the experience gained in prayer, in conversation, in every branch of ministering life. We shall remember that indefinite harm, not good, may be done when a man, particularly a young man, unwisely preaches what may fairly seem to be personalities; I have known some sad instances in point here. But taking that for granted, a.s.suming the good sense and sympathy of the preacher, I am quite sure that the most eloquent sermon, adapted to _any_ audience, is far less likely to be blessed and used by our Lord than the sermon which is penetrated with the Pastor's personal intimacy with _that particular_ audience, and which goes therefore straight from him to them.

It has been well said that preaching may be described as "truth through personality"; not merely the presentation somehow of so many facts and thoughts, but the presentation of them through the medium of a living man, who brings into the pulpit his heart, his character, his experience, and so gives out his message. We may add to this suggestive dictum that the true pastoral sermon is also "truth _to_ personalities"; the living man's delivery of the message to living men and women whose life, more or less, he knows. And so it presupposes some real amount of pastoral intercourse, intelligently brought to bear on pulpit work.

PREPARE SERMON IN THE PARISH.

I linger a little over these thoughts, though they are little more than introductory. For experience tells me how easily, in these days, the Clergyman is tempted to dislocate his "parish work" from his sermons, to the great loss of one or both parts of his duty. And if once he begins to think of his sermons as a thing really apart, which must be got through somehow, but rather as a mere duty than as a vital ministerial function, the results will be sad for the sermons. So I lay stress on the thought that the sermon-preparation ought to go on not only in the study, over the Word, but in the parish, over the hearers of it. The more constantly this is recollected, and put in practice, the less fear will there be that the sermon will be a weariness either to people or to preacher.

"LABOUR IN THE WORD."

But let me, however, entreat my younger Brother, by any and every means, to watch and pray against a slack or low view of his function as a preacher. From very many quarters at the present day we are invited to slight our sermon-labour. Sometimes it is "work," organization, committees, which is set against the sermon; sometimes it is the reading-desk and the Communion Table--the liturgical functions of the Ministry. Let pastoral activities and holy rites alike have ample place in our thoughts and work; but for Christ's sake, my Brother in the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, do not forget the Word. A Christian Church where preaching sinks to a low ebb, where the labour of public teaching and exhortation is neglected, in favour either of machinery or ritual, cannot possibly--I dare to say it deliberately--be in a truly healthy state now, and most a.s.suredly is not laying up health and strength for years to come. For the very life of our flocks, and of our Church, and for the dear glory of our Master, let us "labour in the Word and teaching." [1 Tim. v. 17.]

"LITHO SERMONS."

Is it necessary, in the case of any reader of these pages, that I should not only appeal thus in general, but add one special entreaty--always to preach _your own_ sermons? Probably it is not necessary; but it may be "safe" [Phil. iii. 2.] nevertheless. Not long ago I was distressed to read, in the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of an excellent Church newspaper, a conspicuous announcement of a series of "_litho sermons_," that is, I suppose, sermons so printed as to look like ma.n.u.script. If such literature has a sale, it is a miserable fact. Can these discourses possibly be either written by a "man of the Spirit," or used by such a man? I say, No. The production of them (in order to be lithographed), and the use of them in their "litho" state, are untruthful acts, untruthful in the very sanctuary of truth. The Lord pardon--and the Lord forbid!

Better the most stammering and incoherent utterances of a man who loves the Lord, and the Word, and the flock, and who in Christ's Name does his best, than the unhallowed, and usually, I think, vapid glibness of such acted as well as spoken falsehoods.[27] And surely, the more the Clergyman keeps his pulpit and his parish in living relation, the less will he be tempted, be it ever so remotely, by any exigencies, to dream of expedients such as these.

[27] I am far from saying that the preacher should never get help from other men's sermons. This may be done honestly and usefully, in many ways. But to let another man's sermon pa.s.s as one's own is a sin.

"DR SOUTH IN THE AFTERNOON."

Quite conceivably, there may be rare occasions when another man's sermon may be rightly used by you. But then, of course, you will do it honestly and above-board, telling your people whose it is. In Addison's _Sir Roger de Coverley_ there is a pleasant scene, where the venerable Knight asks the Parson who the preacher for next Sunday is to be. "The Bishop of St Asaph in the morning," replies the good man, "and Dr South in the afternoon."[28] That is, he was about to read, openly and honestly, a sermon of Beveridge's, and then a sermon of South's; neither, certainly, in lithograph. I do not say he did the best for his people in so doing; most certainly he could not "speak home" to the details of their village life, and its temptations, if he spoke only in the phrase of the two cla.s.sical pulpit-masters. That _rapport_ of parish and pulpit of which I have spoken could not have been much felt, at least on that coming Sunday. But the good Parson was honest, however.

The practice of which I speak is not honest.

[28] "He then shewed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Sanderson, Dr Barrow, Dr Calamy, with several living authors."

(_Spectator_, No. 106, July 2nd, 1711.) Calamy by the way was a Presbyterian, made one of the King's chaplains at the Restoration.

WE MUST PREACH ATTRACTIVELY.

Let me come now to a closer view of the preacher's work, and I will be as practical as possible. I have besought my Brother to let nothing tempt him to push his preaching into a neglectful corner. Let me now beseech him to remember that he must not only be a diligent preacher, but do his very best to commend his preaching to his people,--to be, in a right sense, _attractive_.

I deliberately say, attractive. That word, of course, suggests some very undesirable applications. It is only too possible to aim at attractiveness by bad methods. We may tone down the Gospel-message, leaving out unpopular and man-humbling truths, and try to "attract"

people so. We may strive to "attract" them to hear us by doubtful external accessories (of very different kinds), which, after all, will rather attract attention--for a season--to themselves, than to the message, and the Lord. But none the less it is every Clergyman's plain duty to make his preaching, so far as he can, lawfully attractive. It is his duty to see that he preaches Christ Crucified; and "the offence of the Cross" [Gal. v. 11.] will always occur, sooner or later, in such preaching; but it is his duty to see that there is no other "offence" in it, so far as he can help it. If he so speaks of sin, and righteousness, and judgment, that the unregenerate heart does not like it, though the preacher has spoken wisely and in love, that is not the preacher's fault. If he has so magnified Christ, and the glory and fulness of His salvation, that it sounds like exaggeration to the unspiritual hearer, though the words have been said in all reverent reality, that is not the preacher's fault. But it _is_ his fault if he has repelled his hearers from his message by what is not the message, but his own setting of it; his spirit, manner, his delivery, his neglect of some plain precautions against prejudice and weariness. Of a few such precautions I come now to speak; and first, of what I may call the most external amongst them.

NEEDFUL AND NEEDLESS OFFENCES.

Beginning, then, with physical precautions against needless "offences,"

[Greek: skandala], in our preaching I say first, let us do our best to be _audible_.

AUDIBILITY: MEANS TO IT.

The word sounds almost amusingly commonplace. But it must be said. Many more of us Clergymen than know it, or think about it, are not audible.

The lack of training for the bodily work of the pulpit, in our Church, is serious; far more is done in this way among our Nonconformist brethren.[29] And accordingly there are numbers of young English Clergymen who read and speak without a thought of methodical audibility.

They do not articulate distinctly. They do not remember that the _pace_ and _force_ of utterance, fit for a private room, are quite unfit for a large building. They do not know, perhaps, how extremely important is the articulation of consonants, and of final syllables of words, and of closing words in a sentence. They do not know that a certain equability (not monotony) of voice is necessary, if the utterance is to "carry" to the end of a long church, or a church of many pillars.