Pulpit Notes

Jesus Christ was moved with compassion. There are no other words wliicli so expressively declare Ms power as a preacher. It would appear from New Testament history that Christian preaching is not a little indebted for its enduring and far-reaching influence to the pureness and intensity of its pathos. As God himself is love, His messages must be lovingly delivered if they are to tell upon the deepest life of mankind. That there is a pathos which is little more than physical sensibility is no argument against that true pathos which expresses emotionally all the highest thinking and keenest conviction of the intelj lect. Persuasion by logic may shut up the mouth of gainsaying without touching the viciousness of the moral life, but persuasion by love brings the heart into holy captivity, and burns with unquenchable fire the desires which move towards darkness and evil. There is no coldness in the preaching of Jesus Christ. AVhen He calls to repentance, the tones are more than vocal; the cry of pain broadens and softens into a voice of hopefulness and welcome, and men’s hearts know the voice by its shepherdliness, and by something in it which tells of care and home. Pathos is a universal language. What if preaching become but an angry contention with men who pride themselves in unbelief? Then it attempts to do with the hand what can be done only by the heart, and thus it puts itself to disadvantage where it might establish itself in gracious and beneficent victory. Christianity has, indeed, its great rocks of argument, but it has also pastures where the flock feeds, and woods where the birds make music. Few men can argue, all men can feel. Where one man has difficulties which are purely intellectual, ten thousand men have sorrows that lie beyond the province of logical analysis or solution. Jesus Christ spake the word of hope to the world’s heart. Now and again, indeed, (and herein He will be followed by every zealous minister) He dealt with special classes and particular difficulties, but the substance of His ministry belongs to all men through all time. When it is said that the common people heard Him gladly/ it is not to be understood that He was a preacher to a distinct class of the community; it is rather to be understood that His preaching i:ouched the common heart of the world,, and that man as man heard in His voice a tone absent from all other human speech. When Jesus Christ preached to Nicodemus the argument soon widened from the appeal made to ’a ruler in into the most universal and pathetic of all revelations —” God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

This universality came out of the compassionateness of Jesus Christs heart. He rules most who feels most. The preacher is to attempt a universal work; — the pastor the teacher the critic may do a work more special, yet of incalculable interest and importance. On going into the presence of a man who is preaching the Gospel, as Jesus Christ preached it, the hearer should soon become conscious that he is expected to take the deepest interest in the spoken word, and that he can only exclude himself from its influence by the most irrational and cruel self-suppression. Is it not possible for a preacher to speak almost wholly in an unknown tongue? When, in a miscellaneous conb2 gregation, he speaks of objective and subjective,”’ of the unconditioned and absolute/ and when lie uses such words as liypotliesis, psychology, phenomena, and cognoscibility, is he not talking something else than the language of Englishmen? Such words, proper enough and most convenient in a book, separate the preacher from the hearer at a time when the current of sympathy should be complete and strong. There IS but one cure for such mischief, — a purification and de&pening of yearning comjpassionateness over human sin, and jpain, and want. Where there is strong com-

passion, there will be simple speech. Love will not wait for a golden chariot of utterance, but will rush out in haste, and tell her story with all frankness and pathos. The preacher who tells his audience that he is about to point out the difference between intuitive and empirical morality does not speak the language of the race, but the jargon of a class. He may be a, philosopher, but he is no preacher. One of the first lessons he has to learn is the lesson of self-denial in the use of words: his tastes lie in the direction of difficult phrases, and those tastes must be put to death

/ before he can speak to such people as form the

majority of all congregations assembled for Christian

s purposes. The hearers of Jesus Christ often stumbled

at the doctrine, but when did they complain of the

hardness or obscurity of the mere words? In this, as

THE PREACHING OE JESUS CHRIS!. 5

in all else Jesus Christ says — ‘’ I have given you an j example/^ There is a language which is common property, and there is a language which belongs to a class. How rich is the speech which belongs to the whole world! Take examples: — Grod Truths Rights Wrong, Love, Peace, Faith, Trust, Hope, Light, Home, Rest, Joy, Life, Death, — a child can say such words, yet what man can tell all their meaning! The one sure remedy for the use of unprofitable words in the Christian pulpit is an increase of intelligent and genuine convpassionateness for the spiritual state of mankind. The presence of sin should wound, even to agony and bleeding, the heart of the Christian preacher; and, on the other hand, the presence of the love of God as seen in the life and work of his Son should move towards speech of entreaty and welcome unequalled for simplicity and gentleness.

Compassionateness must not be mistaken for weakness. There are tears of the heart as well as tears of the eyes. The compassionateness of Jesus Christ is seen quite as much in the fulness and emphasis of His doctrine as in the persuasiveness of His manner. Compassion first expounds and then pleads. When Jesus Christ welcomed men to the hospitality of God’s love, He carefully pointed out the nature and scope of that love; hence we have in the New Testament His wonderful statements and illustrations of doctrine. He uttered positive doctrines in a tender tone. He revealed the Father not as an Indicator but as a Son. It is at this point that Christian preachers are to enter into the mystery of His grace — they are to declare the Father not as devout speculators but as loving children. The Christian preacher must realize to himself the solemn fact that he has something to say which is perfectly distinct from the instruction given by the teachers of all other subjects, and that he is called upon to say it, not with petty dignity and self-admiring display, but with tenderness, unction, and all the importunity of love. The preacher who undertakes his work under the impulse of mere feeling will soon reach the end of his ministry. Where there is no depth of earth, the green blade will soon wither away; so where there is no substance of doctrine, the mere trick of emotion will speedily bring upon itself a destructive resentment.

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