October, 1940
T H E K I N O ' S B U S I N E S S
SOT
the Preacher [A ll Rights Reserved J
Perils of
By HERBERT LOCKYER Chicago, Illinois
P RIVILEGES carry perils. And as the ministry is the most privi leged vocation any one could be engaged in, it necessarily carries with it the greatest perils. “The pulpit," says J. H. Jowett, “is commonly regarded as a charmed circle where ‘the destruction that wasteth at noonday’ never arrives. . . . It is sup posed that there is many a bewitching temptation that never displays its wares at our window! . . . Privilege never con fers security; it rather provides the con ditions for the fiercest fight.” Let us therefore examine “some of these perils which falter upon privilege, these enemies which will haunt us to the very end of our ministerial life.” Modernistic Sympathies While a great deal of new light has been brought to bear upon the Word of God as the result of the modem critical treatment of it, we cannot be blind to the fact that what is known as “higher criticism” has damned the spiritual in fluence of many a preacher. The ration alistic approach to the Bible has emptied churches and has given us an impotent ministry. Modernism, more than any other influence, is responsible for the wane of evangelism in the church. If the pulpit is to be saved from ex tinction, and once again be graced with Pentecostal power, it must return to positiveness. Too many preachers are drifting when they ought to steer. At the same time that infallibility is denied to the Bible* human fallibility is winked ou t When men scorn the miraculous Within the Scriptures, conversion—which is ever a miraculous experience—never happens. 4 What really is the gospel of t h i mod ernist? It is as General Booth once described it: “Religion without the Holy Spirit; Christianity without Christ; for giveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration; politics without God; heaven without hell.” If a man does not accept the Inerrancy of the Scriptures, the miraculous con
preacher Era got the echoed t? En au thentic voice; they are artificial struc tures produced for Sunday! What a re vival the pulpit would experience if all preachers would never preach anything thing but what they are! If they all realized that preaching can only be ef fective as the preacher himself is a man of God, living by faith in Christ Jesus, filled with His Spirit, and telling nat urally and eagerly what he has experi enced, what, a Pentecost the church would have! James Gossip tells us of James Stalker’s honesty: “He never, in prayer or sermon, said more than he actually meant and felt. I remember a man’s tell- ' ing me how he followed Dr. Stalker down to the church on a most wretched day, with inches of slush melting upon the street, and a per sistent drizzle falling through a touch of fog, and how he asked him self, ‘What will the Doctor do when he reaches the prayer of thanks giving? He does not look thankful, creeping along there ahead of me. ' Will he leave it out, or will he do the formal thing and for once utter what he does not mean?’ But, as he proudly confessed, he need not have feared. For, when the time came, the prayer opened: ‘O Lord, wo thank Thee that it is not always as bad as this!’ And starting from that damp wretchedness they were all feeling, he pictured life as it might have, been.” The tragedy of some preachers is that of living on their reputation as preachers or teachers, and not upon the spiritual forces responsible for the position they hold. They are correct, but cold; popular, but powerless; doc trinal, but dead. Unworthy Plagiarism
tent of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the efficacy of His shed blood, the ne cessity of regeneration, the physical res urrection of Christ, the second advent, the reality of heaven and hell, how can he have a magical preaching? It is related that a friend one day met David Hume, the historian and phi losopher, hurrying along the streets of London, and asked him where he was going. Hume replied that he was going to hear George Whitefield preach. The friend, remembering that Hume was none too friendly to Christianity, said, “Surely you do not believe what White- field is preaching, do you?” “No,” replied Hume, “but he does.” Brother, has your preaching the ring of certainty in it? Or can it be that, enamored by the so-called findings of modernists, you’have allowed your trum pet to have an uncertain sound? If you have surrendered a position once held, and have suffered thereby, will you not repent and get back to the old paths ? Baneful Professionalism Professionalism or ministerialism is a secret, dangerous snare besetting the pathway of every preacher. We read our Bibles as ministers, pray as minis ters, go the whole round of religion as if we had only to hand it out to others. Professionalism, carrying with it "dead ening familiarity with the sublime,” as Dr. Jowett states it, is ever a fatal peril confronting the preacher. The one who becomes a prey to it remains orthodox, but his is a dry, dead orthodoxy. Another sad feature of the peril before us is that very often it leads a man to preach something altogether beyond his own experience. The people discover that the sermons of a mere professional
The word “plagiarism,” meaning steal ing from the writing's or ideas of an other, is from a Latin word signifying [ Continued en Rage 396] Seventh in a Series on "The Art and Craft of Preaching 99
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