TABLE OF CONTENTS:
EDITORIAL:
How quickly can believers become like Elijah, despairing of the state of the church. How soon we need to be reminded of the 7 000 who have yet remained loyal to God through the graciousness of God alone. We are never alone in this world, having not only the Lord our God always with us, but those yet reserved unto God Himself through His amazing grace. This we need often to be reminded of. We also need the grace of God operative in our own hearts and lives for we too soon forget the veracity of God's Word and think ourselves alone in the world to face the taunts of the Devil, the world, the flesh and the false church.
I know this temptation, threat and despair too well to say it would never happen to me. The only difference I can see between Elijah's situation and my own is that I am no Elijah. I cannot begin to place myself alongside that prophet of God, who though despairing of the church in his day, yet was a far greater Christian and prophet than myself. I am a poor Christian who has and does despair of the state of the church in my country and have often found myself in great spiritual despondency. I am but a poor mouthpiece for my God. It is not God who has failed, but I myself through the sin of unbelief. May God yet raise me up again by His great and merciful grace, undeserving though as I am. We need to look away from the state of things around us and find our hope, not only of personal salvation but also for the church, in the Lord our God who will yet have a great and glorious church.
My prayer is that the continuing series on personal declension and revival of religion in the soul will be to you a great blessing as it has been to me in the past and most likely will be again in the future. I hope you enjoy this next issue of The Reformed Baptist Outpost.
THE PREACHER AND HIS MODELS
THE YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING, 1891By the Rev. James Stalker, D.D.
To
The Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D.
LECTURE 4: The Preacher As A Man Of The Word
GENTLEMEN, in the lecture before last I spoke of the prophet's call to the service of God, and in the last lecture of the work itself which he had to do. To-day I am to speak of the instrument with which he did it.
This was the Word; the prophet was a Man of the Word. In accomplishing his great and difficult work he wielded no other weapon. It seems the frailest of all weapons; for what is a word? It is only a puff of air, a vibration trembling in the atmosphere for a moment and then disappearing. But so might one speak of the cloud whose rolling coils of vapour, changing every moment, seem the least substantial of all things; yet out of it breaks the forked lightening, which rives the giant of the forest, and overturns the tower which has defied ten thousand assailants, and, loosening the crag, sends it thundering down the mountain-side. Though it be only a weapon of air, the word is stronger than the sword of the warrior. Words have overturned dynasties and revolutionised kingdoms. When the right virtue is in them, they outlast every over work of man. Where are the cities which were flourishing when David sang? Where are the empires whose armies were making the world tremble when Isaiah wrote? Nineveh and Babylon, Tyre and Memphis - where are they? But the psalms of David still delight, and the wisdom of Isaiah still instructs, the world.
The prophets were well aware of the temper and force of the weapon which they wielded. Jeremiah refers with especial frequency to the power of the word. “Is not My word,” he asks, “like as a fire, saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” When putting this weapon into his hand, the Lord said to him, “See, I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.” How was one man to be able to throw down and build up kingdoms? He speaks as if he were at the head of irresistible legions and equipped with all the enginery of war. But so he was; for all these and more are in the word. Such military notions seem to have occurred naturally to the wielders of it. Another of them says, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Yet another of them says, “The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.” And Isaiah says, in the name of the Servant of the Lord, “He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He hid me (1).”
The word of the prophets has two aspects: it is, on the one side, a Message from God, and, on the other, a Message to Men.
1. The word which the prophets wielded was the word of God. Herein lay the secret of its power. For the word of God is the thought of God; and this is more ancient than the stars and lies more deeply embedded in the constitution of things than the roots of the mountains; it is the prop by which the universe is sustained. God's word is before all things, for it created them; and His thoughts are the rails on which the course of the world runs.
It was the privilege of the prophets to approach so near to God, to enter so completely into sympathy and fellowship with Him, and to know so clearly what were His purposes, that their own thoughts became identical with His; and, therefore, when they spoke, their words were God's words. Not only do they preface many of their utterances with “Thus saith the Lord,” but - what is far more strange - they often begin, with out any preface, and go on speaking in the first person singular, when not the prophet but Jehovah is the speaker; as if their personality were so enveloped in His as to disappear altogether (2).
But this remarkable knowledge of the thoughts of God was not given to the prophets for themselves. The philosopher may shut himself up in secret to study the laws of the universe and keep his conclusions to himself; and even the poet perhaps may be so happy to his own vision of beauty that he does not care to utter his song to the world; but not so the prophet. He, indeed, was also, in the strictest sense, an original thinker, and the new conceptions of God which he was privileged to convey to the world dawned upon his own mind with that secret delight which makes the creative thinker feel himself to be
Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.One of the prophets gives expression to this secret joy when he says, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy words were unto me the joy and the rejoicing of mine heart;” and, after a night spent in receiving revelations, he says, “On this I awaked and beheld, and my sleep was sweet unto me.” But the knowledge of God's mind and will which the prophets obtained was not for themselves, but for others. It was not abstract knowledge, but a knowledge of God's will about the course of history - about “what Israel ought to do.” It was, in short, not only a revelation, but a message.
Hence, one of the most outstanding characteristics of the prophets was the sense of being anbassadors charged with a communication which they were bound to deliver. If those to whom they were sent with it welcomed them, good and well; but, if not, they were not absolved of their duty. The man who speaks to men for his own ends - to obtain influence in the management of their affairs or to display his talents and win a name - will go on speaking as long as they are inclined to listen; but, if they do not appreciate his efforts, or if he wearies of the employment, he can betake himself to retirement and be heard no more. But a prophet could not act thus. His message might arouse bitter opposition, and ofetn did so: “Woe is me, my mother,” exclaims Jeremiah, “that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth.” Gladly would he have withdrawn from the contest, if he could, and sought a lodge in some vast wilderness. But the sense of being a messenger drove him on: “Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name; but His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”
This was what lent the prophets the wonderful courage which characterized them. They forgot themselves in their message. The fire of God in their bones would not permit them to hesitate. Whther it was a frowning king or an infuriated mob the prophet had to brave, he set his face like a flint. Comfort, reputation, life itself might be at stake; but he had to speak out all that God had told him, whether men might hear or whether they might forbear.
2. The other aspect of the prophets' word was that it was a Message to Men. If, on the one hand, the word of the prophets was a power because it was the word or thought of God, it depended, on the other hand, for its effect on becoming a word which those to whom it was communicated could repeat in their own vocabulary and thereby turn into a thought of their own; for it was only when men's minds were so modified by the prophets' words that they began, in their degree, to think the thoughts of God, that the prophetic message became an influence in their life. The prophet had, therefore, to stand in a double attitude, and a double process had to be performed in his mind. He had, in the first place, to turn himself wholly round to God and away from the world, and clear his mind of everything else, that he might receive the message in its purity; but then he had, in the second place, to turn himself round towards men and, taking their circumstances into account, deliver the message to them in the most effective way. He had first to allow the Divine message to master him; but then he had to turn upon it and master it, before he could be the medium by which it was conveyed to others.
The prophets had to go amongst men, even if it were at the risk of life, and deliver the Divine message. They had to use every device to make it telling, striking in at every opportunity and giving line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. They did not disdain the homeliest means, if it served the purpose. A prophet would go about in public carrying a yoke on his neck, like a beast of burden, or lie a whole year on his side, to attract attention to some important truth. More than once we find a prophet setting up a board in the market-place, with only a few words written on it, into which he had condensed his message, that the passers-by might read it.
On the other hand, when it was appropriate, they did not spare themselves the trouble of cultivating the graces of style by which words are made attractive and impressive (3). The prophetic books are almost as artistic as poems. Their literary form is not exactly poetry, though now and then it crosses its own boundary and becomes poetical. It is a kind of rhythmical prose, governed by laws of its own, which it carefully observes. All the prophets are not, indeed, equally careful. Some of them appear to have been too completely carried away with the message which they had to deliver to think much of the way of delievering it. But these were not the strongest of the prophets; and it is worth observing, that those who took the most pains about the form in which what they had to say was couched have been the most successful prophets in this sense, that they have been most read by subsequent generations.
At the head of them all, in this respect, stands Isaiah. If the book of an ordinary reader of the Bible were examined, it would be found, I imagine, that Isaiah is thumbed far more than any other portion of the prophetical writings; and this is due not only to the divinely evangelical character of his message, but also to the nobly human style of his language (4). All the resources of poetry and eloquence are at his command. Every realm of nature ministers to his stores of imagery; and his language ranges through every mode of beauty and sublimity, being sometimes like the pealing of silver bells, and sometimes like the crashing of avalanches, and sometimes like the songs of seraphim. He is generally supposed to have been a native of Jerusalem and to have spent his life within its walls. So identified, indeed, is he with it, that he is coming to be called Isaiah of Jerusalem; and a recent expounder of his prophecies says that Jerusalem was more to him than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal, or Florence to Dante. But, at some period of his life, he must have had ample experience also of a country life; because the aspects of the country are mirrored in his pages with incomparable charm.He lets us see nature, as it existed in his day, both wild in the forest and wilderness, and cultivated around the abodes of men; and he paints for us the figures of the country people themselves and the labours they went forth to. We see in his pages the trees of the wood moved by the wind; the willows by the watercourses; the fresh branches sprouting from the stock of the pollard oak or terebinth. We hear the doves mourning from the depths of the thicket, and see the roe, chased by the hunter, disappearing within its shelter, and even the schoolboy rifling the birds' nests so ruthlessly that “there was none that moved the wing or opened the mouth or peeped.” We see the swarms of bees and flies resting on the branches in the summer heat; the ploughshare lying in the furrow; the tow and the distaff; the ox turning its head to be patted by the hand of its owner, and the ass trotting off at feeding-time to its master's crib. The prophet looks with a specially observant and sympathetic eye on the toils of men - the woodman thinning the trees of the forest; the carpenter, with saw and axe, turning to his own uses the sycamore and the cedar; the builder among his bricks and stones; and the farmer, on the exposed height of the threshing floor, winnowing his corn with the shovel and the fan. As is usual in the Bible, the shepherd is portrayed with special honour, whether he calls out his neighbours to frighten away the lion from his flock or is seen gathering the lambs in his arms and carrying them in his bosom. But most of all does the poet-prophet love to linger in the vineyard, marking accurately all the operations of the vine-dresser and all the stages of the growth of the vines. We see the tearing up of the hillside with the mattock, the accumulation of soil, the gathering out of the stones, the construction of the winepress and the watch-tower. Then we see the roots planted and growing from stage to stage - from that “afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower,” to that when the vineyard is ringing with the songs of the vintage and the gleaners are picking the last relics from the outermost branches.
At whatever period these pictures of nature were laid up in the memory of Isaiah, they came back to him when he was engaged in the work of a prophet, and supplied the imagery by means of which the Divine turths which he heralded were made impressive and attractive to his countrymen and acceptable to all subsequent generations; for men are so made that they are never so won by the truth as when they see it reflected in a physical image.
These two sides of the prophet's activity nearly correspond to what we should call Thought and Expression. Or, to put it still more broadly, the preacher must be a man who both has something to say and knows how to say it. On these two apparently simple qualifications hang all the science and art of our vocation.
In reality they are not simple. To have the right thing to say is a great commandment, and to know the right way to say it is, though second to it, hardly inferior. But the problem of the ministry is to have both in perfect equipoise - to utter a word which is at the same time both a message from God and a message to men.
It would be possible to be so taken possession of by the message from God as to lose self-control and even reason itself. In Scripture we meet with manifestations of prophecy which are akin to madness. Just as the wind, catching the sail, would, if the ropes were not adjusted to relieve the strain, overturn the boat, so the Wind of God might sweep the mind off its balance, the human personality being overborne by the inrushing inspiration. Thus religion may make a man a fanatic, who has no control over his own spirit, and no wisdom to choose the times at which to speak or the terms in which to address his fellow-men. On the other hand, the opposite excess is still more easy. So much stress may be laid on the form of words, and so much mastery obtained of the art of winning attention, that the necessity of having a Divine message to deliver or of depending on the power of the Spirit of God is forgotten. The windy master of words, whose own spirit is not subdued either by the impression of great thoughts or the sense of a great responsibility, but who can draw the eyes of men on his own performances and earn the incense of applause, has always been too familiar a figure in religion. It is to a man like Isaiah we must look for the absolute balance of both sides. There you have the blowing in all its degrees of the Wind of God, from the gentlest whisper to the force of the tempest, but, at the same time, the most perfect self-control and the adaption of the word to the tastes and necessities of those to whom it was delievered.
There is a name sometimes applied by the prophets to themselves which admirably expresses the combination and balance of these two aspects of their activity. They call themselves Interpreters. The process of interpretation is a most interesting one, when it is well done. I have heard a speaker address with the greatest fervour a multitude who did not understand a word he was saying; but, as fast as the sentences fell from his lips, another speaker by his side caught them up and, in tones as fervid and with gestures as dramatic as his own, rendered them to the hearers in their own tongue with such effect, that the performance made all the impression of an original speech. An interpreter is one who receives a message for people in a language which they do not understand and delivers it to them in their own tongue. Jehovah was incessantly speaking to His people in the vicissitudes of their history, but they did not apprehend His meaning. The prophet, however, understood; he took the Divine message into his own soul, and then he went and communicated it to the people in terms with which they were familiar. An interpreter requires to know at least two languages - that in which the message comes and that inwhich it has to be delievered. If he knows either imperfectly, his interpretation will be proportionately imperfect. No interpreter of God, perhaps, knows both languages equally well. Some know the Divine language imperfectly, while they know thoroughly the language of men. What they say is interesting, fresh and human; but there is not much of a Divine message in it. Others have got far into the secret of God and know the Divine language well; but they are not sufficiently masters of the language of men. These are saintly men and command reverence by their character, but what they say does not find its way to men's business and bosoms.
I have seen the same truth put in another way. Tholuck, one of the most gifted of modern preachers, has made the remark, that a sermon ought to have heaven for its father and the earth for its mother. Why, he asks, do one half of our sermons miss the mark? It is because, while they treat of the circumstances and relationships of life in an intersting way, they do so only in the light which springs from below, not in that which streams from above: they have the earth for their mother, but not heaven for their father. And who do the other half of our sermons fail to touch the heart? It is because, while they display the heavenly things shining at a distance, they do not bring them down to the homes and workshops, the highways and byeways of ordinary life: they have heaven for their father, but not the earth for their mother (5).
Indeed, gentlemen, the definition of the preacher as a Man of the Word covers a very large area of our duty, and an analysis of its contents will furnish a kind of natural history of that which is the most important part of a minister's work from week to week.
1. To be a Man of the Word is to be a master of the Divine Word. In the pulpit not only must a man have something to say, but it must be a message from God. Where is this to be found? We do not now require to seek it, as the prophets had to do, in the empty void. Their work was not in vain. They were working for their own times, but they were also working for all time. The prophets and apostles put into a permanent form the principles on which the world is governed, and gave classical expression tothe most important truths which man requires to know for salvation and for the conduct of his life. Thus they are still serving us, and we can begin where they left off. He who receives the message of God now finds it in the Word of God.
Hence one of the primary qualifications of the ministry is an intimate familiarity with the Scriptures. To this end a large proportion of the study required of you at college is directed; and the subsequent habits of ministerial life have to be formed with the same object in view. A large portion of our work is the searching of the Scriptures, and a preacher of the highest order will always be a man mighty in the Scriptures. We chance at present to be living at a time when the questions about the Bible are the most numerous and the most difficult in theology, and many accepted opinions are cast into solution. I daresay it is the experience of most students of divinity that they are more perplexed about inspiration and related questions than about any other subjects. On the other hand, the attention directed to the Bible was never so great as it is at present; and the methods of studying it are daily improving. And, in spite of all the difficulties, it is questionable if there ever was in the Church an intenser conviction that the voice of God is heard in His Word. The experience of the ministry deepens this conviction every year. If I may give utterance to my own experience, I have never come to the end of a close study of a book of Scripture in the congregation without having both a fresh respect for its literary character and a profounder impression of its Divine wisdom. The more the Bible is searched, the more it will be loved; and the stronger will the conviction grow, that its deep truths are the Divine answers to the deep wants of human nature.
Yet to deliver the message of God is not merely to read what prophets and apostles penned and to repeat it by rote. The man who is to be God's messenger must himself draw near to God and abide in His secret, as they did. The word must detach itself from the book and become a living element of experience, before it can profit even the reader himself; and much more is the case, of course, before it can profit others (6). It is the truth which has become a personal conviction, and is burning in a man's heart so that he cannot be silent, which is his message. The number of such truths which a man has appropriated from the Bible and verified in his own experience is the measure of his power (7). There is all the difference in the world between the man who thus speaks what he knows from an inner impulse and the man whose sermon is simply a literary exercise on a Scripture theme, and who speaks only because Sunday has come round and the bell rung and he must do his duty.
The selection of the theme for preaching is to be determined chiefly by the power of the Word to lay hold of the conviction of the preacher. Or, if the subject is prescribed, as when one is lecturing through a book of the Bible, the points to be treated are to be determined in this way. Sometimes, as a preacher reads the Word, a text will leap from the page, so to speak, and, fastening on the mind, insist on being preached upon. A sermon on such a text is nearly always successful; and a wise man will, therefore, take care to garner such texts when they occur to him. He will underline them in his Bible, or, better still, enter them in a note-book kept for the purpose, adding a few words perhaps to indicate the first lines of thought which have occurred to him. These notes may be multiplied from time to time; and, when the minister turns to a page which has been thus filled, he will often find his sermon nearly made to his hand (8). Dr. Wendall Holmes tells of Emerson that he kept such a note-book for subjects on which he might lecture, and for suggestions of lines of thought which he might follow out. He called it his Savings Bank, because, though the payments into it were minute, they gradually swelled to riches; and passages which his hearers and readers supposed to be outbursts of sudden literary creation were really the results of slow accumulation. If this was necessary for even a genius like Emerson, it will be far more necessary for the ordinary man. The gold of thought has generally to be collected as gold dust.
2. But this already brings me to the second stage of this natural history, which is, that the preacher must be a Master of Human Words. The message from God which we carry is to become a message to men, and therefore we must know how to introduce it successfully to their notice. Strong as our conviction may be, yet it may be crude and formless; and before it can become the conviction of others, it must take a shape which will arouse their attention. It may belong to a region of thought with which they are unfamiliar, and it has to be brought near, until it enters the circle of their own ideas.
This is the problem of the composition of the sermon, whether this emans the writing of it out or the arrangement of the materials in the memory in preparation for delivery. And many rules might be given to help at this point.
One often recommended is to keep the audience in view to which the composition is to be addressed. If by this is meant that the writer, as he sits at his desk, should try to conjure up in his imagination the benches of the church and their occupants, I do not know whether it is a practicable rule or not. But, if it means that the preacher, as he composes his sermon, should keep in view the circumstances of his hearers - their stage of culture, the subjects in which they are interested, the Scriptural attainments which they have already made, and the like - it is one of the prime secrets of the preacher's art, and I will return to speak of it more fully in a subsequent lecture. I once heard Mr. Spurgeon preach a characteristic sermon on an unusual text. It was on these words in Hosea: “I was unto them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.” To illustrate the first clause he drew a graphic picture of a London carter in Cornhill loosening the harness, when his horse had surmounted the incline, taking the bit out of its mouth, and fastening on the cornbag; and he applied the second clause with humerous wisdom to the behaviour of preachers. As the carter in the stable “lays” the hay to his horse, so the preacher has to “lay” the food to the congregation. The carter must not put the food too high, where the horse cannot reach up to it, nor too low, where it cannot get down to it, but just where it can seize and devour it with comfort. So the preacher must neither pitch his message too high, where it will be above the comprehension of the congregation, nor too low, where it will not command their respect, but just where they can reach it easily and comfortably. This quaint illustration has often recurred to me in the study, and made me anxiously consider whether I was putting the truth in such a way that the congregation could grasp it.
Many rules have been proposed for winning the attention of the congregation. Some have laid stress on commencing the sermon with something striking. Mr. Moody, the evangelist, whose opinion on such a subject ought to be valuable, recommends the preacher to crowd in his best things at the beginning, when the attention is still fresh. Others have favoured the opposite procedure. During the first half of the discourse nearly every audience will give the speaker a chance. At this point, therefore, the heavier and drier things which need to be said ought to occur. But about the middle of the discourse the attention begins to waver. Here, therefore, the more picturesque and interesting things should begin to come; and the very best should be reserved for the close, so that the impression may be strongest at the last (9). St. Augustine says that a discourse should instruct, delight and convince (10); and perhaps these three impressions should, upon the whole, follow this order. The more instructive elements - the facts and explanations - should come first, appealing to the intellect; then should follow the illustrative and pathetic elements, which touch the feelings; and then, at the close, should come those moving and overawing considerations which stir the conscience and determine the will. Thus the impression would grow from the commencement to the close (11).
To obtain command of language it is good to hear the best speakers and to read the best books. It has been my fortune to be acquainted with a good many celebrated preachers; and I have observed that, almost without exception, they have had a thorough acquaintance with the whole range of the higher English literature. To have the music of Shakspeare or Milton echoing in your memory, or to have lingering in your ear the cadence and sweep of the sentences of Thackeray and De Quincey, will almost unawares give you a good style (12). In reading over an old sermon of my own, I can almost tell whether or not, in the week of its composition, I was reading good literature. In the former case the language is apt to be full and harmonious, and sprinkled over with gay flowers of maxim and illustration, whereas in the latter the style of the performance is apt to be bald and jerky (13).
Let me mention one more rule for the composition of the sermon which appears to me to be the most important of all. It is, to take time. Begin in time and get done in time - this, I often say to myself, is the whole duty of a minister. The reason why so many of our sermons are crude in thought, unbalanced in the arrangement of the materials, destitute of literary beauty, and unimpressive in delivery, is because they are begun too late and written too hurriedly. The process of thinking especially should be prelonged; it is not so important that the process of writing should be slow. It is when the subject has been long tossed about in thought that the mind begins to glow about it; the subject itself gets hot and begins to melt and flash, until at last it can be poured forth in a facile but glowing stream. Style is not something added to the thought from the outside. It is simply the beauty of the truth itself, when you have gone deep enough to find it; and the worst condemnation of a careless and unattractive style is that it does the truth injustice.
3. The preacher ought to be master of the Oral Word. There is a stage which the truth has to pass through after it has been prepared in the study for the consumption of the hearers. This is the oral delivery; and it is a part of the natural history of the sermon which must not be overlooked. A sermon may be well composed in the study and yet be a failure in the pulpit. Indeed, this is one of the most critical stages of the entire process. There are few things more disappointing than to have received a message to deliver and spent a laborious and happy week in composition, and yet on Sunday, as you descend the pulpit stair, to know that you have missed the mark. This, however, is far from an infrequent occurrence. The same sermon may even be a success on one occasion, and on another a partial or a total failure.
Wherein a good delivery consists it is difficult to say. It is the rekindling of the fire of composition in the presence of the congregation; it is the power of thinking out the subject again on your feet. This must not be a mere repetition of a byegone process, but a new and original action of the mind on the spot. Tholuck, to whom I have already alluded in this lecture, says that a sermon needs to be born twice: it must be born once in the study in the process of composition, and it must be born again in the pulpit in the process of delivery. Many a sermon is a genuine birth of the mind in the study which in the pulpit is still-born (14).
Some preachers have an extraordinary facility of putting themselves at once, and every time, en rapport with the audience, so that there is from first to last, whilst they speak, a commerce between the mind in the pulpit and the minds in the pews. To others this is the most difficult part of preaching, The difficulty is to get down amongst the people and to be actually dealing with them. Many a preacher has a thought, and is putting it into good enough words, but somehow the people are not listening, and they cannot listen.
If the Senate of this University were ever to try the experiment of asking a layman to deliver this course of Lectures on Preaching, I am certain he would lay more stress on this than we do, and put a clear and effective - if possible, a graceful and eloquent - delivery among the chief desiderata of the pulpit. I do not know how it may be among you; but, when I was at college, we used rather to despise delivery. We were so confident in the power of ideas that we thought nothing of the manner of setting them forth. Only have good stuff, we thought, and it will preach itself. We liked to repeat, with Faust,
True sense and reason reach their aim
With little help from art and rule;
Be earnest! then what need to seek
The words that best your meaning speak?So we thought; and many of us have since suffered for it. We know how many sermons are preached in the churches of the country every Sunday; but does anyone know how many are listened to? The newspapers supply us now and then with statistics of how many hearers are present in our congregations; but who will tell us what proportion of these are listeners? If we knew the exact percentage, I suspect, it would appal us. Yet it is not because there is not good matter in the sermons, but because it is not properly spoken. In the manufacture of steam-engines the problem is, I believe, to get as much work as possible out of the coal consumed. In every engine which has ever yet been constructed there has been a greater or less waste of heat, which is dispersed into the surrounding air or carried away by the adjacent portions of the machinery, without doing work. Engineering skill has been gradually reducing the amount of this waste and getting a larger and larger proportion of work out of the fuel; and a perfect engine would be one in which the whole of the coal consumed had its full equivalent in work done. One of our problems, it seems to me, is a similar one. There is an enormous disproportion between the amount of energy expended during the week in preparation and the amount of impression made on the hearers on Sunday. Ministers do not get enough of result in the attention, satisfaction and delight of their hearers for the work they do; and the failure is in the vehicle of communication between the study and the congregation - that is to say, in the delivery of the sermon. What I am pleading for is, that there should be more work to show for the coal consumed (15).
4. Allow me, gentlemen, in closing this lecture, to emphasize another sense in which the prophets were men of the Word, and in which they are worthy of imitation. They were masters of the Written Word. They not only spoke the Word of God, but wrote it for publication, in a form sometimes more diffuse and sometimes more compressed than their oral utterances; and by this means they not only extended their influence in their own day, but have enormously prolonged it since.
It is surprising how few of those who have spoken the Word of God have cultivated this mode of delivering it; and it is perhaps equally astonishing how few of those who have cultivated it have done so in earnest. In last century, promotion in the Church of England was won by literary achievement; but the would-be bishop did not generally think of religious literature: he published a political pamphlet or edited a Greek play. Among the Scottish Moderates there was a keen ambition for literary disticntion; but it was the more prized the more remote the fields in which it was won lay from a minister's peculiar work. This led the Evangelicals to discountenance literary productivity, which they regarded as springing from unholy motives and as likely to distract the mind from the true ends of the ministry. But surely there is a juster point of view than either the Moderate or the Evangelical. This work ought to be cultivated with precisely the same aims as preaching and with the same earnestness. When a man is truly called to it, it brings a vast audience within his range, and there may rest on it a remarkable blessing. Here is a significant extract from the history of British Christianity: Richard Baxter wrote A Call to the Uncoverted, and Philip Doddridge was converted by reading it; Philip Doddridge wrote The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and William Wilberforce was converted by reading it; Wilberforce wrote The Practical View, and Thomas Chalmers was converted by reading it. What a far-extending influence does each of these names represent! The writing of books is perhaps the likliest of all avenues by which to carry religious influence to the most select minds (16).
NOTES:
(1) The Servant of the Lord is a prophet; and in the desriptions of him in this character we can perhaps best see what was Isaiah's conception of a prophet. See especially ch. lx1. 1-3.
(2) See Ewald's Introduction to The Prophets.
(3) “Bonorum ingeniorum insignis est indoles, in verbis verum amare, non verba. Quid enim prodest clavis aurea, si aperire quod volumus non potest? Aut quid obest lignea, si hoc potest, quando nihil quærimus, nisi patere quod clausum est? Sed quoniam inter se habent nonnullam similitudinem vescentes atque discentes, propter fastidia plurimorum etiam ipsa sine quibus vivi non potest alimenta condienda sunt.” - ST. AUGUSTINE.
(4) See the excellent chapter on Isaiah's style in Driver's Isaiah.
(5) The same idea has long been helpful to me in a third form - in the following lines of Platen -
Was stets und aller Orten
Sich ewig jung erweist
1st, in gebundenen Worten
Ein un gebunder Geist(6) “Into Ezekiel's hand there was put a roll written within and without with lamentation and mourning and woe, an objective revelation which he himself had not written; but, before he could deliever it to others, he had to eat it: all that was written on it had to become a part of himself, had to be taken into his most inmost experience and be digested by him, and become his own very life's blood.” - MARCUS DODS, D.D.
(7) This is what our Lord chiefly meant by a teacher's “treasure” - “Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of God bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” How much the treasures of different preachers differ in magnitude! It is worthy of note that the Saviour calls the preachers of the New Testament “scribes.” In spite of the evil associations of the name He retained it, because it emphasizes the fact that the Christian preacher is to be a student and an exponder of Scripture.
(8) Some preachers keep an interleaved Bible, in which references to passages in their reading are entered opposite the texts which they illustrate - an excellent device.
(9) “The strongest part of all great sermons is the close. More depends on the last two minutes than on the first ten.” - From a choice little tract on Preaching, by “Prediger.”
(10) He is quoting Cicero. Dixit ergo quidam eloquens, et verum dixit, ita dicere debere eloquentem, ut doceat, ut delectet, ut flectat. Deinde addidit: Docere necessitatis est, delectare suavitatis, flectere victoriae ... Oportet igitur eloquentem ecclesiasticum, quando suadet aliquid quod agendum est, non solum docere ut instruat, et delectare ut teneat, verum etiam flectere ut vincat. - De Doctrina Christiana, IV. 13.
(11) An esteemed friend, the Rev. John McMillan of Ullapool, some years ago repeated to me the following rhyme on the method of constructing a sermon, and, although I have never succeeded in coming up to its standard, yet it has often floated before me with advantage in the hours of composition -
“Begin low;
Proceed slow;
Rise higher;
Take fire;
When most impressed
Be self-possessed;
To spirit wed form;
Sit down in a storm.”(12) It will be remembered that John Bright used regularly, during the session of Parliament, to read aloud from one of the poets the last thing at night.
(13) Tholuck gives another weighty reason why ministers should know the best literature: In einer Zeit wo Shakespeare eine starkere Autoritat fur Viele ist als Paulus, undein Distichon Gothes eine kraftigere Belegstelle als der ganze Romer-und Galaterbrief, darf der Geistliche, welcher auf seine Gemeinde wurken will, mit inren Gewahrsmannern bicht unbekannt seyn. Wenn irgendwo, so gilt auch hier des Apostels Wort: Alles ist Euer.
(14) “Aber nicht bloss die Erzeugung der Predigt geschehe im heiligen Geist, sondern auch ihr Vortrag. Es lasst sich nicht aussprechen, welch' ein Unterschied zwischen der Wurkung einer Predigt, welche bloss aus der Erinnerung von der Kanzel herabgesprochen wird - wie treffich sie auch ubrigens seyn mag-und welche dort zum zweitenmal geboren wird in lebendigem Glauben. ... Die predigt muss eine That des Predigers auf zeinem Studirzimmer, sie muss abermals eine That seyn auf der Kanxel; er muss, wenn er herunter kommt, Mutterfreuden fuhlen, Freuden der Mutter, die unter Gottes Segen ein Kind geboren hat.”
(15) Adolphe Monod, himself a distinguished master of the art of delivery, gives some good hints on it in a paper on “The Eloquence of the Pulpit,” translated and published as an article in The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, January 1881:-
“In general, people recite too quickly, far too quickly. When a man speaks, the thoughts and feelings do not come to him all at once; they take birth little by little in his mind. It is necessary that this labour and this slowness appear in the reciting, or it will always come short of nature. Take time to reflect, to feel, and to allow ideas to come, and hurry your recitation only when constrained by some particular consideration.” ...
“Talk not in the pulpit. An exaggerated familiarity would be a mistake nearly as great as declamation: it happens more seldom; it is, nevertheless, found in certain preachers, those especially who have not studied. The tone of good conversation, but that tone heightened and ennobled, such appears to me the ideal of pulpit delivery.” ...
“In order to rise above the tone of conversation, the majority of preachers withdraw too far from it. They swell their delivery, and declaim instead of speaking. Now, when bombast comes in, nature goes out.”
In regard to the first of these extracts I should say that many Scotch speakers fail through lack of pace in the delivery. The interest is lost in the pauses between the sentences. A slow delivery is only effective when a thought is obviously being born, for which the audience is kept intently waiting.
But the most remarkable thing in the article is the following quotation from Talma, the actor:-
“We were rhetoricians and not characters. What scores of academical discourses on the theatre, how few simple words! But by chance I found myself one evening in a drawing-room with the leaders of the party of the Gironde. Their sombre countenance, their anxious look, attracted ny attention. There were there, written in visible letters, strong and powerful interests. They were men of too much heart for those interests to be tarnished by selfishness; I saw in them the manifest proof of the danger of my country. All come to enjoy pleasure; not one thinking of it! They began to discuss; they touched on the most thrilling questions of the day. It was grand! Methought I was attending one of the secret councils of the Romans. 'The Romans must have spoken like these,' said I.
Let the country be called France or Rome, it makes use of the same intonations, speaks the same language: therefore, if there is no declamation here before me, there was no declamation down there, in olden times; that is evident!' These reflections rendered me more attentive. My impressions, though produced by a conversation thoroughly free from bombast, deepened. 'An apparent calm in men agitated stirs the soul,' said I; 'eloquence may then have strength, without the body yielding to disordered movements.' I even perceived that the discourse, when delivered without efforts or cries, renders the gesture more powerful and gives the countenance more expression. All these deputies assembled before me by chance appear to me much more eloquent in their simplicity than at the tribune, where, being in spectacle, they think they must deliver their harangue in the way of actors - and actors as we were then - that is, declaimers, full of bombast. From that day a new light flashed on me; I foresaw my art regenerated.”
(16) Referring to this subject, Scheiermacher, in his Praktische Theologie, makes the following characteristic remark: “Das ist eben das grosse und vortreffiche was allen freien Gemeinschaften eigen ist, ganz vorzuglich aber der christlichen Kirche, die ihre Berechnung hat auf Gestaltung derselben in unserer evangelisechn Kirche, das einem jeden in dem Masse, wie ihm das geistige Auge geoffnet ist, eine Wirksamkeit auf das Ganze der Kirche sich eroffnet, und dass man es einer jeden Wirksamkeit anmerken kann, in wie fern einer dem Geiste nach der grossen Gemeinschaft angehort, oder ob er freiwillig sich davon ausgeschlossen hat und aus dem Gesichtspunkt eines kleinen Gebietes wirkt.”
PERSONAL DECLENSION AND REVIVAL OF
RELIGION IN THE SOULby Octavius Winslow, D. D.
CHAPTER 1 - INCIPIENT DECLENSION (Part Two)
“The backslider in heart (Prov. 14:14).”
We have thus endeavoured to bring to view some of the prominent characteristics of a state of incipient declension of the life of God in the believer. It will be seen that we have referred to those only which mark the hidden departure of the heart from God; - that state that is so concealed, so veiled from the eye, and wearing so fair an exterior, that all suspicion of its existence is lulled to rest, and the soul is soothed with the delusion that all is well with it. Dear reader, is this thy state? Has this book thus far detected in thee any secret declension, and concealed departure, any heart backsliding? Has it proved to thee - the Spirit of God speaking by it - that thy soul is in an unhealthy state, the Divine life within thee is drooping? Turn not from the discovery, painful though it be. Look at it fully, honestly. It is no step towards the recovery of a sickly state, to disguise the worst symptoms of that state from the eye. The mark of true wisdom and skill is, to ascertain the worst of the disease, to probe the depth of the wound. And although such a course may be painful to the patient, it is essential to his thorough recovery. Beloved reader, it is important that thou shouldst know the exact state of thy soul before God. And if thou art sincere in that petition which has often breathed from thy lip, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me;” thou wilt thank him for any gentle and faithful admonition that sets thee upon the great work of self-examination. “It is fit,” says Dr. Owen, “that professors of all sorts should be reminded of these things; for we may see not a few of them under visible decays, without any sincere endeavours after a recovery, who yet please themselves that the root of the matter is in them. It is so, if love of the world, conformity unto it, negligence in holy duties, and coldness in spiritual love, be an evidence of such decays. But let none deceive their own souls; wherever there is a saving principle of grace, it will be thriving and growing unto the end. And if it fall under obstructions, and thereby into decays for a season, it will give no rest or quietness unto the soul wherein it is, but will labour continually for a recovery. Peace in a spiritually-decaying condition, is a soul-ruining security; better be under terror on the account of surprisal into some sin, than be in peace under evident decays of spiritual life.”
Some of the marked characteristics of the state of heart declension which we have been considering, are so strikingly set forth in the case of the church, as decsribed by the Holy Ghost in the fifth chapter of the Song of Solomon, that we would direct the serious attention of the reader to it in connexion with this part of our work.
In the 2nd verse, the church acknowledges her drowsy, yet not entirely insensible condition: “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” Here was the existence of the Divine life in the soul, and yet that life was on the decline. She knew that she had fallen into a careless and slumbering state, that the work of grace in her soul was decaying, that the spirit of slumber had come over her; but the awlful feature was, she was content to be so. She ehard her Bel0oved knok; but so enamoured was she with her state of drowsiness, she gave no heed to it - she opened not to him. “I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, mu undefiled; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” Thus addressed, her duty would have been instantly to have aroused herself from her sleep, and admitted her Lord. A believer may fall into a drowsy state of soul, not so profound as to be entirely lost to the voice of his Beloved speaking by conscience, by the word, and by providences: and yet so far may his grace have decayed, so cold may his love have grown, and so hardening may have been his declension, he shall be content that this should be his state. O, alarming symptom of soul declension, when the indulgence of sloth and self is prederred to a visit from Jesus!
Then observe that, when she did arise, Christ had withdrawn himself. “I opened to my Beloved, but my Beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake; I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer (verse 6).” Weary with waiting so long, grieved at the discovery he made of her deep declension, and wounded by her cold repulse, he withdrew his sensible, loving presence, and left her to the consequences of her sad departure. The Lord never withdraws himself from his people willingly: he is never actuated by an arbitary impulse of his will. Such is his delight in his people, such his love towards them, and such the joy he derives from their fellowship, that he would walk with them all the day long, and sun them with the unclouded light of his countenance. But when he hides himself for a little moment, he is driven from their embrace by their lukewarmness of heart, and unkind resistence of his love. Possessing a tender heart himself, the slightest indifference discoverable in his child wounds it: an ocean of love himself, the least lukewarmness in the love of his people causes him to withdraw. And yet this momentary withdrawment is not a judicial, but a fatherly, loving correction, to bring them to a knowledge and confession of their state: “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face; in their affliction they will seek me early (Hos 5:15).”
It is worthy of remark, that she receded into this state of declension immediately after a peculiar manifestation of Christ's love to her soul. We find her thus inviting her Beloved: “Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices may flow out. Let my Beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasane fruits.” He graciously accepts the invitation: “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” Thus was her declension preceded by near and peculiar communion with her Lord. And how many of the Lord's people can testify to the same solemn truth, that some of their saddest departures have immediately followed seasons of the most endeared and holy fellowship with their God and Father! It is after such periods that the believer is most exposed to a spirit of self-complacency. Without a great vigilance over the heart, self takes the glory and the praise of the gracious visit of love Jesus has made to the soul, and looks within for some secret cause of the mercy. When the Lord imparts a blessing, we need especial grace to keep us from falling through that very blessing. The case of the disciples affords a memorable illustration of this thought. The occasion on which the circumstance transpired to which we are about to refer, was a most solemn and affecting one; it was the scene that immediately preceded the crucifixion of Jesus. Luke thus records it: “And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you (Luke 22:19,20).” What moment could have been more holy than this? what occasion more solemn and sacred? Here were the disciples holding fellowship with their adorable Immanuel in the awlful mystery of his sufferings! But immediately after the close of this hallowed service, what do we read? - “There was also a strife among them, which should be accounted the greatest (verse 24).” Here were the worst exhibitions of fallen nature, - passion, hatred, envy, rankling in the heart, at a moment when the elements of their Saviour's dying love were yet upon their lips! Oh, what does this instructive lesson teach us! - trust not in frames and feelings, pray without ceasing, and particularly “watch unto prayer” immediately after seasons of peculiar nearness to God, or especial merceies received at his hands. “Special spiritual enjoyments,” wisely remarks Traill, “are dangerous, and render a man very needy of the helping grace of God. They expose to special temptations, are apt to give rise to special corruptions, such as spiritual pride, contentedness with a present good condition, dullness of desire after a better state. If the Lord grant singular communications of himself, know that it is a season of special need of grace to guide them well. They would return more frequently, and would spring higher and last longer if they were better improved. The greater the blessing be, the greater is the difficulty of guiding it well' and the more difficult the work, the greater our need of the grace of God; and the more frequent and fervant should our applications be to the throne of grace for that needful, helpful grace.”
Yet once more: Mark the hardening tendency of repeated declension in her case. In chap. iii. I, she manifests some desire for Christ, though her posture indicated a slothful spirit: “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth.” Immediately after, Christ knocks, but she had sunk so deep in slumber that she arose not to admit him. Trace the steps, and mark the deadening nature of soul declension. She first places herself in the posture of sloth, and soon is heard to say, “I sleep.” Why is it that so many who appear to be seeking Christ, rest short og him? It is not difficult in most cases to ascertain the true cause. It is this - they seek him in a slumbering posture - on their beds. Their desires are so languid, their frame of spirit so dead, their hearts so cold, that their very manner of seeking him seems to give an air of insincerity to their desires, and would seem to plead for a denial of their requests. Ponder again her confession: - Oh, is it not the confession of many? - “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.” And the reason why she found him not, was her slothful posture, and her drowsy spirit in seeking him! Guard against a slothful seeking of Jesus. With such a frame, disappointment will inevitably ensue. But seek him with all your heart, with all your desire, with the whole bent of your soul. Seek him as thy chief, thine only good. Seek him as that which can supply the absence of all other good, without whom nothing is good. Seek him as that blessing that can turn every bitter cup into sweetness, every dark cloud into brightness, every cross into a mercy; that can bring bread out of the eater, and honey out of the rock. Oh what a portion has that soul that has Jesus for its portion! “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him.” But he must be sought with all the vigour of the soul, with all the intensity of desire, and with all perseverance of purpose, if he would be found. And well is he worth this labour of search. He is that pearl that will repay a diligent seeking. He will plentifully reward every sincere, humble comer. Not a want but he will supply, not a wound but he will heal, not a sorrow but he will soothe, not a sin but he will pardon, not a corruption but he will subdue. But seek him with full purpose of soul, and he shall be found. “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek (Ps 27:8).” “The soul of the slugged desireth, and hath nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat (Prov 13:4).”
There is yet one more remarkable feature in the state of the church we have been considering, too instructive to pass by unnoticed; - we allude to the persuasion she felt, that though the Divine life in her soul was at a low ebb, still, Christ was hers, and she was Christ's. “I sleep, but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh.” In the worst frame that can affect a true child of God, there is always some indication that the Divine life in the soul is not quite extinguished. In its greatest decay, there is yet some symptom of life. In the darkest hour, there is that in the nature of true grace, which emits some scintillation of its essential glory; in its greatest defeat, that which asserts its divinity. Just as a king, though deposed from his throne and driven into exile, can never entirely divest himself of the dignity of his regal character; so real grace, though often severly tried, sharply assailed, and sometimes momentarily defeated, can never sink its character, nor relinquish its sovereignty. Mark the proof of this in the case of the apostle Paul: “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me (Rom 7:17,19,20).” And so the church expresses it, “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” In her most drowsy, slothful state, she could not forget that she was still her Beloved's, and that her Beloved was hers. Glorious nature, and blessed triumph of the life of God in the soul of man!
We now come to the consideration of the REVIVAL of this Divine life in the soul of the believer. From what has been already advanced it will be preceived that we are far from considering this a hopeless state. For a declining believer to settle down under the conviction that such a state is irrecoverable; that because he has taken the first step in departure from God, he must necessarily take the second, is to afford the most alarming evidence of a state of soul declension. But so far from this, we state it distinctly and emphatically, that whatever be the departure of a backsliding child of God, it is recoverable: not a step has he lost but may be retraced; not a grace has decayed but may be restored; not a joy has fled but may be won back. Alas! for us, when the day comes that shall close up every avenue to the return of a backsliding soul! that tells us that the Father no longer welcomes home the prodigal; that the blood of Jesus no longer heals a wounded spirit; that the Holy Ghost no longer restores the lost joys of God's salvation! But we desire now to show, that for every poor, self-condemned, heart-broken, returning soul, there is a lingering affection in the heart of the Father, a welcome in the blood of Jesus, and therefore every encouragement to arise and come to God.
The first direction which we would give in the way of recovery is, acquaint yourself thoroughly with the real state of your soul as before God. As the first step in conversion was to know yourself to be a lost, helpless, condemned sinner; so now, in your re-conversion to God, you must know the exact state of your soul. Be honest with yourself; let there be a thorough, faithful examination of your spiritual condition; let all disguise be removed, the eye withdrawn from the opinion of men, and the soul shut in with God in a close scrutiny of its worst state. Your minister, your church, your friend, may know nothing of the secret state of your soul; they may not even suspect any hidden decline of grace, any incipient backsliding of heart from God. To their partial eye, the surface may be fair to look upon; to them your spiritual state may present the aspect of prosperity and fruitfulness; but the solemn question is between God that judgeth not as man judgeth - by the outward appearance only - but who judgeth the heart. “I, the Lord, search the heart.” The “backslider in heart” may deceive himself, he may deceive others, but God he cannot deceive. Seek then to know the real condition of your soul. Search and see what graces of the Spirit have declined, what fruits of the Spirit have decayed. My reader, this is a solemn and a great work we have set you upon, but it is necessary to your recovery. We would bring you into the court of your own bosum, to examine fairly and strictly the spiritual state of your soul. It is a solemn process! The witnesses summoned to testify are many; - conscience is a witness - how often it has been silenced; the word is a witness - how sadly it has been neglected; the throne of grace is a witness - how frequently it has been slighted; Christ is a witness - how much he has been undervalued; the Holy Spirit is a witness - how deeply he has been grieved; God is a witness - how greatly he has been robbed. All these testify against the soul of a backslider in heart, and yet all plead for its return!
The second step is, to discover and bring to light the cause of the soul's declension. “Is there not a cause?” Search and see what has fallen as a blight upon thy soul, what is feeding at the root of thy Christianity. The apostle Paul, skilful to detect, and faithful to reprove, any declension in the faith or laxity in the practice of the early churches, discobered in that of Galatia a departure from the purity of the truth, and a consequent carelessness in their walk. Grieved at the discovery, he addressed to them an affectionate and faithful epistle, expressive of his astonishment and pain, and proposing a solemn and searching inquiry. “I marvel,” he writes, “that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ. How, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements? I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Where is the blessedness ye spake of? I stand in doubt of you. Ye did run well; who did hinder you? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you.” To the reader, conscious, as he hangs over this page, of secret declension in his soul, we propose the same searching and tender inquiry. Ye did run well; who did hinder you? - what stumbling-block has fallen in your way? - what has impeded your onward course? - what has enfeebled your faith, chilled your love, drawn your heart from Jesus, and lured you back to the weak and beggarly elements of a poor world? You set out fair; for a time you ran well; your zeal, and love, and humility, gave promise of a useful life, of a glorious race, and of a successful competition for the prize; but something has hindered. What is it? Is it the world, creature love, covetousness, ambition, presumptuous sin, unmortified corruption, the old leaven unpurged? Search it out. Rest not until it be discovered. Your declension is secret, perhaps the cause is secret, some spiritual duty secretly neglected, or some known sin secretly indulged. Search it out, and bring it to light. It must be a cause adequate to the production of effects so serious. You are not as you once were. Your soul has lost ground; the Divine life has declined; the fruit of the Spirit has withered; the heart has lost its softness, the conscience its tenderness, the mind its seclusion, the throne of grace its sweetness, the cross of Jesus its attraction. Oh, how sad and melancholy the change that has passed over you! And have you not the conciousness of it in your soul? Where is the blessedness ye spake of? where is the sunlight countenance of a reconciled Father? where are the rich moments spent before the cross? the hallowed scenes of communion in the closet, shut in with God? Where is the voice of the turtledove, the singing of birds, the green pastures where thou didst feed, the still waters on whose banks thou didst repose? Is it all gone? Is it winter with thy soul? Ah! yes; thy soul is made to feel that it is an evil and a bitter thing to depart from the living God. But yet there is hope.
The next step in the work of personal revival, is, to take the cause of the soul's declension immediately to the throne of grace, and lay it before the Lord. There must be no parleying with it, no compromise, no concealment: there must be a full and unreserved disclosure before God, without aught of palliation or disguise. Let your sin be confessed in all its guilt, aggravation, and consequences. This is just what God loves - an open, ingenuous confession of sin. Searching and knowing, though he does, all hearts, he yet delights in the honest and minute acknowledgment of sin from his backsliding child. Language cannot be too humiliating, the detail cannot be too minute. Mark the stress he has laid upon this duty, and the blessing he has annexed to it. Thus he spake to the children of Israel, that wandering, backsliding, rebellious people: “If they confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that they have walked contrary unto me; and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity; then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land (Lev 26:40-42).” Truly may we exclaim, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage! he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.” This, too, was the blessed experience of David, God's dear yet often backsliding child: “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord: and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin (Ps 32:5).” And how did the heart of God melt with pity and compassion when he heard the audible relentings of his Ephraim! “I have heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: Thou has chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God.” And what was the answer of God! “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord (Jer 31:18,20).” Nor is the promise of pardon annexed to confession of sin, unfolded with less clearness and consolatoriness in the New Testament writings. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:9).” How full, then, the blessing, how rich the consolation connected with an honest, heart-broken confession of sin? How easy and how simple, too, this method of return to God! “Only acknowledge thine iniquity (Jer 3:13).” It is but a confession of sin over the head of Jesus, the great sacrifice for sin. O, what is this that God says? “Only acknowledge thine iniquity!” Is this all he requires of his poor wandering child? This is all! “Then,” May the poor soul exclaim, “Lord, I come to thee. I am a backslider, a wanderer, a prodigal. I have strayed from thee like a lost sheep. My love has waxed cold, my steps have slackened in the path of holy obedience; my mind has yielded to the corrupting, deadening influence of the world, and my affections have wandered in quest of other and earthly objects of delight. But, behold, I come unto thee. Dost thou invite me? Dost thou stretch out thy hand? Dost thou bid me approach thee? Dost thou say, 'Only acknowledge thine iniquity?' Then, Lord, I come; in the name of thy dear Son, I come; 'restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.'” Thus confessing sin over the ehad of Jesus, until the heart has nothing more to confess but the sin of its confession - for, beloved reader, our very confession of sin needs to be confessed over, our very tears to be prayed over, so defaced with sin is all that we do - the soul, thus emptied and unburthened, is prepared to receive anew the seal of a Father's forgiving love.
The true posture of a returning soul is beautifully presented to view in the prophecy of Hosea 14:1,2: “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render thee the calves [sacrifices] of our lips.” Here are conviction, godly sorrow, humiliation, and confession, the essential elements of a true return to God. Conviction of the true state of the declining soul; godly sorrow resulting from the discovery; humiliation, deep and sincere, on account of it; and a full and unreserved confession of it before God. O blessed evidences! O lovely posture of a restored soul!
Essentially connected with the discovery and the confession, there must be the entire mortification and abandonment of the cause of the soul's secret declension. Apart from this, there can be no true revival of the work of Divine grace in the heart. The true spiritual mortification of indwelling sin, and the entire forsaking of the known cause, whatever it is found to be, of the heart's declension, constitute the true elements of a believer's restoration to the joys of God's salvation. And when we speak of the mortification of sin, let not the nature of this sacred work be misunderstood. It has been in the case of many, why may it not in yours? There may exist all the surface-marks of mortification, and still the heart remain a stranger to the work. An awakening sermon, an alarming providence, or a startling truth, may for a moment arrest and agitate the backsliding soul. There may be an opening of the eyelid, a convulsive movement of the spiritual frame, which, to a superficial observer, may wear the appearance of a real return to consciousness, of a true waking up to new life and vigour of the slumbering soul, and yet these may be but the transient and fitful impulses of a sickly and a drowsy spirit. The means of grace, too, may be returned to - the secret declension felt, deplored and acknowledged, but the hidden cause remaining unmortified and unremoved, all appearance of recovery quickly and painfully subsides. It was but a transient, momentary shock, and all was still; the heavy eyelid but feebly opened, and closed again; the “goodness” that promised so fair, was but as the morning cloud and the early dew. And the reason is found in the fact, that there was no true mortification of sin. And so I may repair to a plant withering and drooping in my garden; I may employ every external means for its revival; I may loosen the earth about it, water, and place it in the warm sunbeam; but if the while I had not discovered and removed the hidden cause of its decay - if I had not know that a worm was secretly feeding at the root, and, in ignorance of this, had proceeded with my surface-work of restoration, what marvel, though the morning sunbeam, and the evening dew, and the loosened earth, had produced a mementary freshness and life, that yet my plant had ceased to exist, had withered and died? Thus may it be with a declining believer. The external means of revival may be sedulously employed, means of grace diligently used and even multiplied, but all to no real and permanent effect, while a worm secretly feeds at the root; and until the hidden cause of decay be mortified, removed, and utterly extirpated, the surface revival does but end in a profounder sleep, and a more fearful deception of the soul. Again, and yet again would we repeat it - there cannot possibly be any true, spiritual, and abiding revival of grace in a believer, while secret sin remains undiscovered and unmortified in the heart. True and spiritual mortification of sin is not a surface-work: it consists not merely in pruning the dead tendrils that hang here and there upon the branch; it is not the lopping off of outward sins, and an external observance of spiritual duties; it includes essentially far more than this: it is a laying the axe at the root of sin in the believer; it aims at nothing less than the complete subjection of the principle of sin; and until this is effectually done, there can be no true return of the heart to God. Christian reader, what is the cause of thy soul's secret declension? What is it that at this moment feeds upon the precious plant of grace, destroying its vigour, its beauty, and its fruitfulness? Is it an inordinate attachment to the creature? mortify it; - the love of self? mortify it; the love of the world? mortify it; - some sinful habit secretly indulged? mortify it. It must be mortified, root as well as branch, if you would experience a thorough return to God. Dear though it be, as a right hand, or as a right eye, it yet it comes between thy soul and God, if it crucifies Christ in thee, if it weakens faith, enfeebles grace, destroys the spirituality of the soul, rendering it barren and unfruitful, rest not short of its utter mortification.
Nor must this great work be undertaken in your own strength. It is pre-eminently the result of God the Holy Ghost working in, and blessing the self-efforts of the believer: “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live (Rom 8:13).” Here is a recognition of the believer's own exertions, in connexion with the power of the Holy Ghost: “If ye” (believers, ye saints of God) “through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body,” &c. It is the work of the believer himself, but the power is of the Spirit of God. Take, then, your discovered sin to the Spirit: that Spirit, bringing the cross of Jesus, with a killing, crucifying power, into your soul, giving you such a view of a Saviour suffering for sin, as it may be you never had before, will in a moment lay your enemy slain at your feet. O yield not to despair, distressed soul! Art thou longing for a gracious revival of God's work within thee? - art thou mourning in secret over thy heart-declension? - hast thou searched and discovered the hidden cause of thy decay? - and is thy real desire for its mortification? Then look up, and hear the consolatory words of thy Lord: “I am the Lord that healeth thee (Ex 15:26).” The Lord is thy healer; his love can restore thee; his blood can heal thee; his grace can subdue thy sin. “Take with you words, and turn to the Lord; say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously:” and the Lord will answer, “I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him.”
Endeavour to enrich and enlarge your mind with more spiritual apprehensions of the personal glory, love, and fulness of Christ. All soul-declension arises from the admission of things into the mind contary to the nature of indwelling grace. The world, - its pleasures, its vanities, its cares, its varied temptations, - these enter the mind, disguised in the shape often of lawful undertakings and duties, and draw off the mind from God, and the affections from Christ. These, too, weaken and deaden faith and love, and every grace of the indwelling Spirit: they are the “foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes (Song 2:15).” The world is a most hurtful snare to the child of God. It is impossible that he can maintain a close and holy walk with God, live as a pilgrim and a sojourner, wage a constant and successful warfare against his many spiritual foes, and at the same time open his heart to admit the greatest foe to grace - the lovee of the world. But when the mind is pre-occupied by Christ, filled with contemplations of his glory and grace and love, no room is left for the entrance of external allurements: the world is shut out, and the creature is hut out, and the fascinations of sin are shut out; and the soul holds a constant and undisturbed fellowship with God, while it is enabled to maintain a more vigorous resistance to every external attack of the enemy. And O, how blessed is the soul's communion, thus shut in with Jesus! “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” “I would come in,” says the dear Lamb of God, “and dwell in you, and take up my abode with you, and sup with you, and you with me.” This is true fellowship! And O, sweet response of his own Spirit in the heart, when the believing soul exclaims, - “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek!” “Enter, thou precious Jesus; I want none but Thee; I desire no campany, and would hear no voice but thine; I will have fellowship with none but thee, - let me sup with thee: yea, give me thine own flesh to eat, and thine own blood to drink.” Ah! dear Christian reader, it is because we have so little to do with Jesus - we admit him so seldom and so reluctantly to our hearts - we have so few dealings with him - travel so seldom to his blood and righteousness, and live so little upon his fulness, that we are compelled so often to exclaim, - “My leanness, my leanness!” But, if we be “risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God;” let us seek to know Christ more, to have more spiritual and enlarged comprehensions of his glory, to drink deeper into his love, to imbibe more of his Spirit, and conform more closely to his example.
But that which forms the great secret of all personal revival is yet to be disclosed; we allude to a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost. This a declining soul needs more than all beside. Possessing this in a large degree, he possesses every spiritual blessing: it includes, and is the pledge of every other. Our dear Lord sought to impress this, his last consoling doctrine, upon the drooping minds of his disciples: his bodily presence in their midst, he taught them, was not to be compared with the spiritual and permanent dwelling of the Spirit among them. The descent of the Holy Ghost was to bring all things that he had taught them to their remembrance; it was to perfect them in their knowledge of the supreme glory of his person, the infinite perfection of his work, the nature and spirituality of his kingdom, and its ultimate and certain triumps in the earth. The descent of the Spirit, too, was to mature them in personal holiness, and more eminently fit them for their arduous and successful labour in his cause, by deepening their spirituality, enriching them with more grace, and enlarging them with more love. And fully did the baptism of the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost, accomplish all this: the apostles emerged from his influence, like men who had passed through a state of re-conversion.
And this is the state, dear reader, you must pass through, would you experience a revival of God's work in your soul: you must be reconverted, and that through a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost. Nothing short of this will quicken your dying graces, and melt your frozen love; nothing save this will arrest your secret declension, and restore your backsliding heart. You must be baptized afresh with the Spirit; that Spirit whom you have so often and so deeply wounded, grieved, slighted and quenched, must enter you anew, and seal, and sanctify, and reconvert you. O arise, and pray, and agonize for the outpouring of the Spirit upon your soul; give up your lifeless religion, your form without the power, your prayer without communion, your confessions without brokenness, your zeal without love. And O, what numerous and precious promises cluster in God's word, all inviting you to seek this blessing! “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth (Ps 72:6).” “I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon. They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon (Hos 14:4-7).” “Come, let us return unto the Lord; for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us, in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth (Hos 6:1-3).” Seek, then, above and beyond all other blessings, the renewed baptism of the Holy Ghost. “Be filled with the Spirit;” seek it earnestly, - seek it under the deep conviction of your absolute need of it, - seek it perseveringly, - seek it believingly. God has promised, “I will pour out my Spirit upon you;” and, asking it in the name of Jesus, you shall receive.
One word more: Be not surprised if the Lord should place you in corcumstances of deep trial, in order to recover you from your soul-declension: the Lord often adapts the peculiarity of the discipline to that of the case. Is it secret declension? He may send some secret rebuke, some secret cross, some hidden chastisement; no one has discovered thy concealed declension, and no one discovers thy concealed correction. The declension was between God and thy soul, so also it may be is the rebuke; the backsliding was of the heart, so also is the chastisement. But if the sanctified trial works the recovery of your soul, the restoration to Christ of your wavering heart, the revival of his entire work within you, you shall adore him for the discipline; and with David, extolling the dealings of a covenant God and Father, shall exclaim, - “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes!”
Lastly: Set out afresh for God and heaven, as though you had never started in the way before. Commence at the beginning; go as a sinner to Jesus; seek the quickening, healing, sanctifying influence of the Spirit; and let this be your prayer, presented, and urged until answered, at the footstool of mercy: “O Lord, revive thy work! Quicken me, O Lord! Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation!” In answer to thy petition, “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth;” and thy song shall be that of the church, “My Beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE:
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Reformed Baptist Outpost please visit the link below:
Aussie Outpost Homepage
TOP
Reformed Baptist Outpost Site
15/10/2006
AN OUTPOST PRODUCTION
