The Preacher Communing with the Spirit

Conclude the discussion of this theme by some thoughts on what, for want of a better title, I call “spiritual homiletics.” A sermon is plainly a product, not of the mind of man, only, but of the mind of man in contact with the Spirit of God and the truth of God. In I Cor. ii. Paul gives some most valuable and important hints on the subject of preaching. We are there taught that the natural man — even the princeliest intellect with philosophical wisdom — is still incapable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned; but Paul adds, “Wo have received the Spirit which is of God that we may know the things that are freely given to us of God; which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual” — which latter phrase may be interpreted to mean, expressing spiritual conceptions in spiritual terms, or interpreting spiritual truths to spiritual faculties.

This was undoubtedly written with regard to the production of inspired writings, and as such has been considered; but the principle here set down is fundamental to the production of a proper sermon, and upon this subject it may be well to expatiate.

The most attractive and effective preachers have exemplified seven great secrets of power:

I. Simplicity of treatment. 2. Close adherence to the text. 3. Full presentation of the truth — the sword of the truth is two-edged: it has an edge of law and an edge of grace, and they combine to make it powerful. 4. Enforcement of supernatural truth by the analogies of natural law. 5. Use of illustrations, apt and telling. 6. Constant progress toward a climax. 7. The tone of deep spirituality, which again involves — first, a thorough conviction on the part of the speaker, and therefore secondly, a certain

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positiveness born of conviction, not Yea and Nay, but Yea; preaching not defensive, but offensive; not destructive of error only, but constructive of the truth, consisting not of negations, but of positions.

Spiritual preaching should go beyond all these, and exhibit a higher and subtler quality. The Holy Scriptures are an inspired book, and the Holy Spirit, who inspired them, is the indwelling Spirit in the believer. All true insight into the Book hangs on the unveiling of the eyes to behold wondrous things in the Word. From these premises it follows that the supreme help in the preparation of sermons is a prayerful, humble, devout meditation on the Holy Scriptures, by which the spiritual eye shall be unveiled and these wondrous things revealed. Moreover, every text of Scripture is a divine gem, and it is a gem which is cut into facets upon the wheel of the Spirit. As we need, therefore, to turn a piece of spar around in order to get the angle at which it reveals its beautiful colors, and, as a diamond with many facets must be seen at every angle to appreciate its brilliance, so a text of Scripture must be turned about in the process of meditation, and looked at from every point of view, before its wonderful radiance is fully perceived. The most effective and spiritual preachers have therefore found that immersion in the Scriptures, with dependence upon the Spirit, alike for instruction and unction, has been the secret of their highest pulpit power. And so, as the Rev. John McNeil says,” The true preacher prays and meditates on the Scriptures tintil he lias a vision and we may add, he never preaches until he gets the vision.

For myself, I feel constrained to bear my witness that no amount of study of commentaries, or of any other form of human product, has been of such help as the spiritual, devotional study of the Scriptures in the original tongues, carefully noting every word and phrase, case and noun, mood and tense and number and person of a verb, and the relation of clauses and phrases and words to each other. Prayer for insight into the Scriptures, and a supreme regard for the mind of the Spirit, will lead to a comparative indifference as to mere literary standards, or so-called “homiletic” completeness, and will tend to raise one above the atmosphere of criticism.

The highest kind of homiletic analysis is not an invention, but a discovery; not the product of intellectual ingenuity, but the result of spiritual illumination. Therefore preachers should covet earnestly the best gifts. As has been said: “There is an intellectual covetousness abroad, a haste to be wise, which, like the haste to be rich, leads men to speculate upon indifferent securities; and theology must not be bound up with such speculations.”

I venture to give a few examples of the effect of such personal and prayerful meditation upon the Holy Scriptures, though it is quite possible that I may not select the best illustrations which further thought might bring to my mind.

One example, already referred to, is found in Genesis xlii. 21: “We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us,” Careful meditation will show here the threefold basis of natural retribution:

I. Memory: “We saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear.” 2. Conscience: “We are verily guilty concerning our brother.” 3. Reason: “Therefore is this distress come upon us.”

In Romans, first and second chapters, there will be found hints of a fourfold revelation: I. Of God, from creation. 2. Of Law, in the conscience of man. 3. Of Wrath, in history, individual and collective. 4. Of Righteousness, in the gospel.

Take another example: Our Lord’s intercessory prayer (John xvii). A careful study will show that there are four forms of prepositions here which reveal our Lord’s conception of theVelation of believers to the world:

1. They are in the world. 2. They are not of the world. 3. They are chosen out of the world. 4. They are sent into the world. These four prepositional forms leave nothing more to be said. In this chapter also we shall find a progress of doctrine that does not at first reveal itself :i. Separation.

2. Sanctity. 3. Unity. 4. Glory. Nothing can be added, nothing can be subtracted; neither can the order of these four be changed without damage.

John iii. 16 is a most familiar passage of Scripture: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish.

but have everlasting life.” I am sure that I had preached upon this text fifty times, before I ever discovered the relation of the different words which compose this verse. After a prolonged meditation upon it, it suddenly occurred to my mind that there are in this text ten prominent words: God — Loved — World — Gave — Son — Whosoever — Belie veth — Perish — Have — Life.

On further meditation it also occurred to me, as by a flash of illumination, that these ten words naturally divide themselves into jive groups oj tzi’o each.

I. There arc two words that have to do with the persons of the Godhead: God the Father and God the Son.

2 There are two that describe the Divine attitude: “Loved” and “Gave.”

3 There are two that describe the ohjeets of this love: “World” and “Whosoever.” Both of them universal terms, but one collective and the other distributive.

4. There are two that intimate man’s
activity: “Believe” and “Have.”

5. There are two that represent the extremes of destiny: “Perish” and “Life.”

No one will say that this is an invention. These words were there, and sustained this relation, though it might have been previously undiscovered by any other reader.

We might venture another illustration from Psalm li., where a series of adjectives may be found which carry our thoughts higher and higher till we reach a climax: Clean — Right — Holy — Free.

There are manifestly four levels of life: I. Sin; 2. Righteousness, or obedience to conscience; 3. Holiness, or the love of right for its own sake, and from sympathy with God. 4. Freedom, or the sense of privilege in doing and suffering the will of God, rising above law and duty to love and liberty and joy.

Again, in Rom. viii. we have a marvelous combination and crystallization of truths which centralize about the conception oi the privileges of God’s sons. There are ten prominent thoughts which may be divided into two classes: First, those which pertain to child-life; and second, those which pertain to family-life, or the position of the child in the family.

First, as to child-life, we have life itself; walking, talking, access to God in prayer, and adoption {adoptio, Latin) or the attainment of majority. Second as to family-life: First, heredity, implying, of course, conformity to the Father’s likeness; second, harmony, or the convergence of all household provision in the well-being of each member; third, discipline, including education and correction; fourth, liberty, or a growth toward freedom from restraint; fifth, heirship, or the final inheritance in God. The student of this chapter finds these things here awaiting discovery.

These, however imperfect as illustrations, will serve perhaps at least to show the meaning of what has been said. It will be observed that, wherever this method of preparing sermons is followed, there comes to be an element in the product essentially original and individual, for the humblest believer may strike upon some beauty in thought, or in its relations, or both, which has hitherto been unveiled to no other believer. Hence there enters into preaching of this sort a peculiar personal element, which reminds us again of Buffon’s fine definition of style; such preaching incarnates the preacher; the man with all his spiritual knowledge, habits, attainments, enters vitally into every sermon constructed upon this pattern. Moreover, the degree of personal attainment in holiness and in sympathy to God will have much to do with the clearness of apprehension, as well as the effective presentation, of spiritual truth. A man who lingers in the atmosphere of the secret place of communion, and obtains there his insight into the Scriptures, will carry that atmosphere with him into his pulpit — a tone of personal sympathy with God, than which nothing is more important. There will also be personal sympathy between himself and the souls to whom he preaches, because of the unveiling to him of human need, in the unveiling of his own. As the high priest bore in two places the names of the children of Israel — upon the onyx stones which clasped the two parts of the ephod over his shoulders, and on the breastplate upon his bosom — a true preacher will bear his hearers on his shoulders in supporting their burdens, and on his bosom in his cherishing love for their souls; and, as there will be personal sympathy by contact with the hearer, so there will be a still higher personal sympathy by contact with God. He Vvill become an ambassador representing God in a human court, and because he speaks and acts within the limits of his instructions he will be conscious that his words carry the weight and the authority of the government which he represents. He will speak as becomes the oracles of God.

I confess that I feel the greatest solicitude for a revival of this kind of preaching in the modern pulpit. There is too much of the essay, or oration, or lecture style in modern discourse; there is too little of the conscious identification of the preacher with God.

To get one’s sermons, themes, and treatment from the illumining power of the Holy Ghost will beget a marvelous intrepidity. Such a preacher is bound to speak God’s truth. As Seneca’s pilot said to Neptune, he will say:

“You may sink me or you may save me, But I will hold my rudder true;”

or, as Curran, in his defense of Bond, when he heard the clatter of the arms of his threatening antagonists in the court, said: “You may assassinate me, but you cannot intimidate me.” Before whatever human presence such a preacher may be called to speak, his whole being will be so absorbed in that greater Unseen Presence, that the dignitaries of earth will become as nothing.

Such a preacher will be likely to be a man of exceptional personal purity. The mind, which is the channel of the Holy Ghost’s inflowing, and the tongue, which is the channel of the Holy Ghost’s outflowing, will not be likely to be given over to the control of impure thoughts, or even the coarse and gross forms of jesting in speech.

Such preaching is born only of prayer. It has, like General Gordon, its morning signal. It is told of him that, during his sojourn in the Soudan country, each morning for half an hour there lay outside his tent a white handkerchief. The whole camp knew what it meant, and treated the little signal with the highest respect. No foot crossed the threshold while that little guard kept watch. The most pressing message waited for delivery, and even matters of life and death, until the little signal was withdrawn. God and Gordon were in communion. The man that wants to preach with power must have his times alone with God. If he wants to be a distributing reservoir, he must become a receiving reservoir. If he wants to prevail with man, he must learn, first of all, to prevail with God.

Such preachers will be found to be full of a Divine energy. They will not count their life dear unto themselves. Their love will seek, not limits, or even inlets, but outlets, and they will renew their strength in waiting upon God. Oh, for a new era of preaching that is biblical in the highest sense, and spiritual in the grandest sense, because not only identified with a spiritual character and life, but because it is essentially a spiritual product — a product of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and outworking!

The modern pulpit may not lack intellectuality, nor learning, nor culture, nor eloquence. But it does lack spiritual power. It fails to grapple with the mind so as to compel conviction, with the conscience so as to compel contrition, with the will so as to compel resolution. The power that melts men’s wills into God’s is not a human gift, but a Divine grace. For such power we must wait before Him in the secret place, and if we are to pierce to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, we must wait until He makes our quiver full of arrows, pointed and barbed by the Spirit Himself. No time will be lost for preparation, which is spent in that first of all preparations — PRAYER. This is the preparation which prepares. All spiritual power runs back for its source and fountain to the mercy seat!

One word in conclusion as to the interpreting power of a deep and godlike experience. The spiritual wealth of the Word of God can only be understood by one who is spiritually enriched. There are some things, says Dr. Pardington, which a deep and devout spiritual life alone can interpret. Voltaire attempted to versify the fifty-first Psalm. He succeeded fairly until he came to the tenth verse, “Create in me a clean heart, O God! and renew a right spirit within me.” His self-righteousness and enmity to God forbade his saying that. He struggled to put it into verse, but could not. The fear of God seized him, his pen refused to move, he sought to leave his study but could not; he fell on his couch in great mental suffering, and he subsequently said to a friend, “I can never think of that hour without great terror.” How true it is that the natural man perceives not the things of the Spirit of God. A discernment of spiritual things is impossible except through a quickening of the spiritual senses by the Holy Ghost. Then we find the Psalms and all other portions of the Word of God to be a vehicle of divine truth. The heart is prompted to prayer for celestial cleansing. The man enters upon the heritage of righteousness, sanctification, and becomes the means of divine power on the souls of others.

I have seen in a recent copy of an American paper the following letter received recently by a young minister from one of his hearers upon the occasion of an exchange with another pastor, and it teaches how much of the prevailing indifference to the gospel on the part of men may be ascribed to the fact that pointless essays are too often substituted for gospel sermons. Let me add here this letter, with the hope that God will bless the rebuke which it contains to every one of us.

“Reverend lrothcr: I listened very attentively to your clever essay on history this morning, and hoped to find some features of a gospel sermon. Was it my fault that I did not find or detect anything in it: first, to convict men of sin; second, to conduct the penitent to Christ; third, to quicken the backslider; fourth, to comfort the afflicted; fifth, to guide the perplexed; sixth, to encourage the desponding; sev-COMMUiYING WITH THE SPIRIT. 155

enth, to caution the unwary; eighth, to remove doubt, ninth, to stimulate zeal; tenth, to fortify patience; eleventh, to arouse aspirations; twelfth, to kindle devotion; thirteenth, to expose the wiles of the devil, fourteenth, to broaden charity; fifteenth, to develop faith; sixteenth, to instruct in any of the practical duties of Christian life; or finally, to impart information needed for practical utilization in Christian life. You may reply, I did not design to do any of these things. But, my brother, as a Christian minister and not as a literary essayist, can you afford to misuse any such occasion by not designing to do some of these things? You are a minister of the Word, which is to make the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Pardon these kindly suggestions from one, who, tired of business, goes to Church to be helped.”

In the foregoing pages, it has been the author’s aim simply to throw out hints on the greatest of themes and of duties.

If completeness is looked for here, it will not be found, for it has not even been attempted. A vast continent of thought can-

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not be covered within such limits: it can scarcely be outlined. But these few fragmentary suggestions represent the outcome of an experience of thirty years, and many of these lessons were learned in the sad school of failure. IMay my brethren, before whom life’s untrodden paths yet lie, be graciously kept from the blunders and the blindness that have characterized the course of too many who have gone before them; and may the Spirit of God, with His fullness, qualify them as only He can for the faithful ministry of the Word, and