The Institution and Importance of the Ordinance of Preaching

The Public Ministry of the word is the most responsible part of our work — the grand momentum of Divine agency — the most extensive engine of Ministerial operation — acting — not, like parochial visitations, upon individual cases — but with equal power of application to large numbers at the same moment. Baxter therefore justly remarks it to be ‘a work, that requireth greater skill, and especially greater life and zeal, than any of us bring to it.’’ It well deserves therefore a prominent and detailed consideration in passing over the Ministerial field, though a full discussion of its several particulars would furnish ample materials for a volume. We need hardly remark, that this description is more than ever important at the present time, when this Divine ordinance has been degraded from what we shall see to be its true Scriptural elevation.

1 Reformed Pastor.

CHAPTER I.

THE INSTITUTION AND IMPORTANCE OF THE ORDINANCE OF

PREACHING.

‘Because therefore want of the knowledge of God is the cause of all iniquity amongst men, as contrariwise the ground of all our happiness, and the seed of whatsoever perfect virtue groweth from us, is a right opinion touching things Divine; this kind of knowledge we may justly set down for the first and chiefest thing, which God imparteth unto his people; and our duty of receiving this at his merciful hands, for the first of those religious oflices, wherewith we publicly honour him on earth. For the instruction therefore of all sorts of men unto eternal life it is necessary, that the sacred and saving truth of God be openly published unto them. Which open publication of heavenly mysteries is by an excellency termed preaching.’’

The incidental notices of Enoch and Noah connect this institution even with the Ante-diluvian era.* In the Patriarchal ages public instruction was probably vested in the heads of families.^ In the Jewish oeconomy Moses received his commission immediately from God; subsequently assisted by seventy elders associated with him.’* Often did Joshua, like his predecessor, collect the people to hear the message of God.* Lower down the history — we read of the schools of the Prophets — the repositories of public teaching for the land.* After the captivity, the ordinance seems to have been received nearly according to the present simple, solemn, well-conducted ceremonial: with an established course of exposition and interpretation.’ Our Lord — the great Preacher of righteousness — was anointed to this ofRce,^ and constantly employed in it.^ He ordained his Apostles as his successors in office,’” and sealed their commission with the gift of his own Spirit.” Invested with this authority they stretched their efforts, publicly and privately, to preach the Gospel to the utmost compass of their commission —

1 Hooker, Book v. 18. 2 Exod. xiv. 15. 2 Peter ii. 5.

Gen. xiv. 14. marg. xviii. 19. * Exod. xxiv. 12. Numb. xi. 16, 24, 25.

5 Compare whole Book of Deuteronomy, with Joshua xxii. — xxiv.

6 1 Sam. X. 5, 6. Scott in loco.

‘Compare Neh. viii. 4 — 8. with Acts xiii. 14, 15. xv. 21.

8 Isa. lxi. 1, 2, with Luke iv. 16, 21, 43. 9 Ps. xl. 9, 10, with Luke xix. 47.

“Mark iii 14.” Matt, xxviii. 18 — 20. Mark xvi. 15, with Luke xxiv. 47-^9.

“unto every creature which is under heaven.”’ No congregation in liie Primitive CJiurch separated without being ’ fed ’ (as Tertullian writes) ’ with holy sermons.’* And though for ages the preaching office was suspended in the papal, as indeed it is still in some branches of the Greek Church; yet it is now generally acknowledged to be the primary instrument in the Divine appointment for the conversion of the world.

An able writer of our day admirably illustrates the power of this grand institution — ‘Of all methods for diffusing religion, preaching is the. most efficient. It is to preaching that Christianity owes its origin, its continuance, and its progress: and it is to itinerating preaching (however the ignorant may undervalue it) that we owe the conversion of the Roman world from Paganism to primitive Christianity; our own freedom from the thraldom of Popery, in the success of the Reformation; and the revival of Christianity at the present day from the depression which it had undergone, owing to the prevalence of infidehty and of indifference. Books, however excellent, require at least some previous interest on the part of the person, who is to open and to peruse them. But the preacher arrests that attention, which the written record only invites; and the living voice, and the listening numbers heighten the impression by the sympathy and enthusiasm which they excite; the reality, which the truths spoken possess in the mind of the speaker, is communicated to the feelings of the hearers; and they end in sharing the same views, at least for the moment, and in augmenting each other’s convictions.’*

1 Acts V. 20, 21, 42. XX. 20, 21, with Rom. xv. 19; Col. i. 23.

2 The Homilies (or popular discourses — o a,li.i, from ri/,(> >?, a multitude) of the ancient fathers twice — occasionally if not frequently — three times on the Sabbath, are sufficient evidence on this point. Compare Bingham and Cave. Mosheim marks the simphcity of preaching in the second century, and its subsequent declension in the time of Origen. In later ages, the corruption assumed another form not less darkening to the light of God — when the public instructions were drawn not from the Scriptures, but from the writings of the fathers; and the Church sunk into darkness by her unplicit faith in these most fallible guides.

3 Compare 1 Cor. i. 17, 18, 21. Rom. x. 14 — 17. ‘Prjcdicatio vcrbi est medium gratiae divinitus institutum, quo res regni Dei publice et explicantur et applicantur populo ad salutem et sedificationem.’ Bowles’ Past. Evang. Lib. ii. c. i. Archbishop Grindal in his celebrated remonstrance to Queen Elizabeth, upon her restraint upon his preaching exercises, well points out the supremacy of preaching in the Christian Ministry — ‘Public and continual preaching of God’s word is the ordinary means and instrument of the salvation of mankind. St. Paul calls it “the Ministry of reconciliation” of man unto God. By preaching of God’s word, the glory of God is enlarged, faith is nourished, and charity is increased. By it the ignorant is instructed, the negligent exhorted and incited, the stubborn rebuked, the weak conscience comforted, and to all those that sin of malicious wickedness, the wrath of God is threatened.’ The whole of this admirable letter is given in Fuller’s Church History, Book ix. and in Strype’s Life of Grindal.

Douglas’s Advancement of Society in Knowledge and Religion. A yet more excursive view is thus forcibly given by an anonymous writer — ‘The Pulpit, whether we view it with the eye of a Legislator, watching for the welfare of the state; of the Learnecl,

This ordinance has always been held in the highest honour. Gregory Nazianzen insists upon it, ‘as the principal thing that belong to us Ministers of the Gospel.’’ St. Augustine marks it as the proper office of a Bishop.’^ Even in the dark ages of Popery, we find an edict of the reign of Henry III., at a provincial synod, enjoining all parish priests ’ to instruct the people committed to their charge, and to feed them with the food of God’s word;’ the synod styhng them, in the event of their neglecting this duty, ‘dumb dogs. ‘2 Erasmus gives a high pre-eminence to preaching — ‘The Minister is then in the very height of his dignity, when from the pulpit he feeds the Lord’s flock with sacred doctrine.’* Mr. Thorndike (a writer of some authority on ecclesiastical matters) justly remarks — ’ that preaching in respect of personal performance, is the moat excellent work bishops and presbyters are able to do in the service i God.’* Hooker’s judgment is to the same purport — ‘So worthy a part of Divine service we should greatly wrong, if we did not esteem preaching as the blessed ordinance of God — sermons as keys to the kingdom of heaven, as wings to the soul, as spurs to the good affections of man, unto the sound and healthy as food, as physic unto diseased minds.’* ‘Certainly there is no employment more honourable; more worthy to take up a great spirit; more requiring a generous and free nurture, than to be the messenger and herald of heavenly truth from God to man, and by the faithful word of holy doctrine to procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like to God, by infusing his likeness into them to their salvation, as God did into him; arising to what climate he may turn him, like the Sun of righteousness that sent him, with healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and gloomy hearts of hearers, rising out of darksome barrenness a delicious and fragrant spring of saving knowledge and ‘good

jealous for public science and taste; of the Moral Philosopher, anxious for the virtue of the community; or of the devout Christian, weighing every thing in the balance of eternity — the Pulpit must, in every light, appear an object of vast importance.’ Eclectic Review. We may add, that so powerful is the influence of the Pulpit upon the Church, that the general state of the Church at any given period may be correctly estimated by the prevalent style of preaching.

‘TTOMTDi, T(iyv riiJCrcpiov. Orat. 1.

2 De Offic. 1. c. 1. Thus the Council of Trent designates this office — jyrcecipuum Kpiscoporum munus. Sess. iv. c. 2.

3 Bishop Stillingfleet’s Duties and Rights of the Parochial Clergy, p. 15. The Coxmtcss of Richmond (mother of King Henry the Seventh) ’ had such a sense of the necessity of the office in those times, that she maintained many preachers at her own charges, and employed Bishop Fisher to find out the best qualified for it.’ Ibid. p. 206.

4 Erasm. Eccles. Lib. i. Elsewhere he observes, that the sense of religion grows very cold, without preaching.

5 See his Due Way of composing Differences. The Primitive Bishops (Augustine, Gregory, Chrysostom, Ambrose, &c.) were the greatest preachers of their time.

s Book V. 22.

works.’’ All our diversity of means and machinery must subserve, and their energy depend upon a faithful exercise of the preaching commission. All the work done, or to be done, must be connected with “the foolishness of preaching,” as God’s chosen and chief ordinance.2

The sacred history connects this ordinance with national blessing, and the extension of scriptural religion. National distress and “vexation” marked the destitution of “a teaching priest” in Asa’s reign.* In the subsequent reign of Jehoshaphat, great public prosperity was combined with the mission of Levites and Priests throughout all the cities.* The comparative disuse of preaching was a concomitant mark of the dark ages of Popery, while its revival was coeval with the era of the Reformation.^

George Herbert, therefore, might justly call his Country Parson’s pulpit ’ his joy and his throne ‘* — as, indeed, invested with a dignity, solemnity, and efficiency peculiar to itself.