May, 1940
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
17«
What Habits Should the Preacher Cultivate? By HERBERT LOCKYER Chicago, Illinois [A ll rights reserved ] P REACHING, if it is to be vital, must be delivered from all unreal ity and uncertainty. A preacher rides for a fall if he persists in getting prayer and therefore bore the Imprima tur of certitude.
speaks poinards, and every word stabs.” This mult also be true of the preacher. His aim must be direct; at the same time his weapon must bear no poison, but rather healing for the very wounds it makes. “Our young friend did well today,” said one friend to another. “Aye,” was the reply, “it was a nice little harmless sermon.” Sermons, however, causing men to re pent must be more than harmless; they must be sharp arrows directed to their goal. The physician commanding our confi dence, and doing us the most good, is the one who understands our case and knows just what our sickness requires. Diagnosis is nine-tenths of the treat ment. When the physician places his finger on the painful spot and has dis covered our ailment, the cure has be gun. In like manner, when the man in the pew feels that the one in the pulpit understands his case—and he is not long in detecting the true spiritual physi cian—he listens for the announcement of a cute. The certificate of efficiency which is gladdening to any preacher is the remark, “Your sermon was about me and to me.” Salesmen are urged to leave no stone unturned until they get names “on the dotted line.” Good business is not count ed by the number of calls made, but by the orders secured. It is thus with preachers. They must cast the net—distribute order blanks and press for signatures—win men for Christ by a direct appeal. Preaching with Simplicity Augustine’s dictum was, “Make the truth plain, make it pleasing, make it fnoving.” “I sink myself deep down,” said Lu ther, meaning that he preached so as to make himself, aye, and the most pro found of the Christian verities, intelli gible to the meanest mind. Clear preaching, of course, can come only from clear thinking.. Unless the- preacher clearly discerns the truth, he cannot expect to make others see it. “The foggy sermon often proves the
May you and I ever face seeking hearts with a “thus saith the Lord.” The great ages of Christianity have been those in which affirmation has been clear and definite and strong. The most powerful preachers have ever been positive preachers, men whose assur ance concerning their message was heard in every tone of their voices, who knew in whom they had believed. How positive was Wesley! How sure was Whitefield! How absolutely cer tain of things were the fathers of the church! They knew where they were. Of mental reservations they knew noth ing. No honest doubts characterized their utterances. They dealt in "wills” and “shalls,” not in “peradventures” or “maybes.” They did not go out in • search of a gospel for the needs of the * age. Their business was not to arrest the spirit of the age, but to correct it. Hence, as they proclaimed a positive message, men followed them, inquiring with weeping eyes, “What must we do to be saved?” And this age needs simi lar preaching, mighty in its very sure ness and carrying a splendid dogma tism. ■ May our ministry revolve around the infallible Christ and the infallible Scrip ture revealing Him! Preaching with Directness Benedick, speaking about Hero, in Much Ado about Nothing, says, “ She
up his sermons in cold blood. Bishop Hánnington’s biographer says of him that “He never dealt In the false coinage of a truth unfelt.” This is the only kind of preaching that tells. Unless a man has some inward compulsion that will not let him keep silence, he had better quit the pulpit. When a man believes his message, then, as Spurgeon once put it, it will leap at him like a lion from a thicket, com pelling him to echo it forth. Preaching with Certitude Certitude is an indispensable note in the sermon as £ whole. It should be a definite declaration made with convic tion. Nothing convicts like conviction, and he who undoubtingly delivers his message will be listened to and fol lowed. The pulpit is not the place for negations, nor for the airing of doubts. It is the man who is certain, who knows, who believes strongly, that im presses others. A. T. Pierson affirms: “Candor and a good conscience demand that we in the pulpit utter our deep experiences and deliberate convictions. And no marked ad vance in pulpit power will be at tained without more emphatic and exclusive preaching of Christ cru cified, enforced by experience.” Because the preacher is charged with God’s .message to men, he is concerned with truth. The demand of Goethe was: “Give me the benefit of your convic tions, if you have any; but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.” Remarked David Hume when he heard Ebenezer Erskine: “Thát’s the man for me; he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at his elbow.” No preacher can carry the consciousness of Christ’s presence with him into the pul pit if he doubts the veracity of the Word revealing Christ. Said a stranger to Alexander Whyte after he had ministered the Word, “You spoke as if you came straight from the presence of Christ.” “ Perhaps I did,” he answered shyly. Indeed that was Dr. Whyte’s settled home; all his work was soaked in
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