The Delivery of Sermons

The preaching of the gospel is spiritual gunnery; and many a well-loaded cartridge has failed to reach its mark from the lack of powder to propel it. A good sermon committed to paper, or carefully prepared in your mind, is merely a preliminary process; when you get into your pulpit, you must preach. And preaching is not paper-reading, nor is it mere frothy gush. It is the faithful presentation of God’s inspired truth to immortal souls; and that truth must be addressed not only to the reason, but to the conscience and to the affections. Your aim must be to arrest the attention of your auditors, — to arouse those who

are indifferent, to warn the careless, to rebuke the faithless professor, as well as to “comfort the sorrowing, strengthen the weak, and edify believers. As the ambassador of the living God, yon must demand and command a hearing, cost what it may. An advocate strikes for the jury; and if he does not gain the verdict, his effort is a failure. You must strike for souls; and if you do not succeed (with the sought help of the Holy Spirit) in moving your hearers one inch toward a better life, then your preaching is a failure. Results are what you are after, and they will never be secured if you address your auditors in a cold, or careless, or formal and perfunctory manner.

The delivery of your sermons, my young brother, is half the battle. Why load your gun, unless you can send your charge to the mark? Many an ordinary discourse has produced an extraordinary effect by an intensely earnest delivery.

It is equally true that many an excellent discourse has failed to produce any impression on account of the dull and monotonous manner of the speaker. If you do not warm yourself up, you may be sure that you will never warm up your congregation. I once asked Albert Barnes, “Who is the greatest preacher you have ever heard!” Mr. Barnes, who was himself a very calm, clear-headed thinker, replied, “I cannot answer your question exactly; but I can tell you what was the grandest specimen of preaching I ever heard; it was by Edward N. Kirk, before my congregation during the height of a revival. It produced a tremendous effect.” Dr. Kirk was not a profound scholar or thinker; but he was a born orator, with a superb voice and graceful manner and persuasive tone, and his whole soul was red-hot with a holy love of Jesus and of dying souls. About the time that I had this talk with Mr. Barnes

I was in Boston, and at a public meeting there I heard a very able production read in a lifeless manner before a listless audience. As I was coming out, a gentleman said to me, “If Edward N. Kirk had had hold of that address, he would have thrilled everybody in the house.” Certainly, my old friend Kirk had a remarkable gift of saying even a common thing with most uncommon power.

You may call this “magnetism” if you choose, or by any other name; but I would define it as the fire in your own soul that not only kindles your tongue, but also kindles the hearts before you. Paul must have had this when he ceased not to warn the Ephesians, night and day, with tears. It has been the characteristic of nearly all the most effective preachers. Dr. Chalmers had it; McCheyne had it; Dr. Guthrie had it to such a degree that a Highland drover standing in the packed auditory spoke out audibly, “And did ye wer hear the like o’ that! “The sermons of Frederick W. Robertson, of Brighton, are models of vigorous thought and clear-cut expression; yet they owed much of their power at the time to their being delivered “with a fiery glow.” In my own humble experience I have seen my congregation much moved by a certain discourse, and spiritual results have followed it. At another time and place the same sermon has produced no impression, and I feel quite confident that the difference was more with me than with my hearers. Physical condition may have something to do with a minister’s power in delivery; but the chief element in “yldt the eloquence that awakens and converts la souls is the unction of the Holy Spirit. Your best power, my brother, is power from the Holy Ghost. You may have that if you empty yourself of pride and vainglory and foolish fear of man, and then seek the inpouring of the divine

Spirit in his fullness. Do not be discouraged if your voice is weak, or is harsh and unmusical; do not trouble yourself too much about the gracefulness of your gestures. Dr. Alexander Duff’s eloquence swept his audience like a hurricane,”but such outlandish contortions of gestures as his, I never witnessed elsewhere. Physical defects may often be overcome by resolute training, as Bishop Phillips Brooks overcame them; and, if you fall into uncouth and disagreeable habits of intonation or gesticulation, get some good friend to score you out of them. You never will become an effective preacher if you are unwilling to accept the sharpest criticisms kindly; and faithful are the wounds of a wife, if she sometimes cuts your self-conceit to the quick, or prunes off your bad habits without mercy.

During my three years in Princeton Theological Seminary I made it a rule to go out as often as possible and address little meetings in the neighboring schoolhouses, and found this a very beneficial method of gaining practice. A young preacher must get accustomed to the sound of his own voice; if he is naturally timid and bashful, he must learn to face an audience. He must first learn to speak at all; afterward he may learn to speak well. “I spoke every evening but one during my first session of Parliament,” said Charles James Fox, “and I am only sorry that I did “not speak on that evening also.” It was by such constant practicing on the patience of his auditors that Fox became one of the most splendid masters of parliamentary debate. It is a happy thing for a young minister to begin his ministry in a small congregation. He has more time for study; he has a better chance to become intimately acquainted with individual characters, and also a smaller audience to face. The first congregation that I was called to serve contained about forty families; three or four of these were wealthy and cultured, and the rest were plain mechanics, with a few gardeners and coachmen. I aimed my sermons at the comprehension of the gardeners and the coachmen at the rear of the house, leaving my cultured parishioners to gather what they could from the sermon on its way. One of these rich folks was a very distinguished lawyer. After I had delivered a very earnest sermon on “the worth of the soul “I went home and said to myself,” Lawyer C must have thought

that was a camp-meeting exhortation.” He met me during the week, and to my astonishment he said to me, “Young man, I thank you for that sermon last Sunday; it had the two best qualities of preaching — simplicity and earnestness. If I had a student in my office who was not more in earnest to win his first tendollar suit before a justice of the peace than some ministers seem to be in trying to save souls, I would kick such a student out of my office.”

That lawyer’s remark did me more good than any month’s study in the seminary. It taught me that the cultured relish plain, simple truth as much as do the ignorant, and that downright earnestness to save souls “hides a multitude of sins” in us raw young preachers. If you want to be a natural and forceful speaker, do not trammel yourself too much with the canons of elocution. Load your piece with God’s truth, take good aim, and then fire away. The less you think about yourself while in the pulpit, the better. Leave your own self-consciousness and your own reputation down under the pulpit stairs. Look at your auditors as immortal beings bound to the judgment-seat of Christ, and remember that you are to meet them there, and to render your account for discharging your duty to them.

Then seek the power from on high, and preach for souls! Preach as if the light of eternity flashed into your face. The more soul you put into your preaching, the more souls you will bring to Jesus Christ.