SHOULD A YOUNG PRIEST WRITE HIS SERMONS?
Clearing the ground
That the young priest may discharge the office of preacher with efficiency and honour, not only must he bring ability and industry to his task, but he must approach it with a mind free from false theories. One unsound principle may mean shipwreck. Amongst the many questions discussed by aspirants to pulpit success, perhaps the greatest prominence is given to the relative merits of the written or the extemporary sermon. This is so important that its full treatment demands an entire chapter.
Before coming to close quarters we may premise a question. If the carefully prepared sermon cost as little trouble as the extemporary effort, would the world ever have heard of this discussion? Oh! the fatal tendency to move on the lines of least resistance, to glide on the downward slope, and when we have reached the bottom to manufacture arguments and apologies justifying the course we selected! When the question is probed to the bottom you will find that all advocacy of extemporary preaching resolves itself into an apology for laziness.
To me the question has long since ceased to be anything more than a mere academic one, useful perhaps for a debating class, where youthful gladiators flesh their harmless swords. In practical life, the well written, the well prepared sermon was the only one I discovered able to bear the test of experience.
Manning
At the threshold of this discussion the authority of Cardinal Manning may be invoked against us, who, without condemning the written sermon, shows a decided preference for speaking from notes. A written sermon, such as advocated, could scarcely be before his mind when he wrote that chapter in "The Eternal Priesthood." It is evident he had in view the post-renaissance preacher—vain, pompous, decked in borrowed ornament, anxious about the embroidery, and careless about the soul of his discourse. The species, thank God, is extinct.
At any rate, if Cardinal Manning meant to condemn the written discourse such as we understand it, is he triumphantly answered by himself. The man who advises you to preach from notes and then launches upon the world a goodly set of volumes of carefully written sermons, every line of which passed under his correcting pen, requires no refutation. His action nullifies his advice. It is to be feared, too, that in forming his judgment he relied too much on his own experience, and out of it drew conclusions for others, who could never hope to have his exceptional advantages— a fatal mistake.
Before his conversion he had completed a distinguished career at Oxford. Of the English language and its perfect use he was a past master. The copiousness of diction, elegance of phrase, the power of expressing himself in graceful strength were eminently his. His intellect was stored with abundant knowledge drawn from many sources. The thoughts of his well-ordered mind stood in line as definite and orderly as soldiers on parade. The fibres of his reasoning had waxed strong in encounters with the ablest intellects of the day and before the most distinguished audiences in the literary and debating clubs at Oxford. Add to this the fact that in a keen knowledge of the human heart, its strength and weakness, he was surpassed by no man of his age. This was the equipment with which Manning started life, and it is to be feared he pre-supposed this, or a great part of it, to be in possession of those for whom he wrote.
Now, what young priest, even the most brilliant of his class, going on the mission can pretend to the hundredth part of the advantages that enabled Manning to dispense with the written page? Therefore, to conclude that because he, under such privileged circumstances, succeeded, you can do the same under a very different set of conditions, is to ignore the hard logic of facts and pay a poor compliment to your reason.
Father Burke and O'Connell
Then, we are confronted not with opinions but names—the two names that will stand for all time in the forefront of Irish orators are those of O'Connell and Father Burke. O'Connell wrote but one speech—his first. The orations delivered by Father Burke in America, by which he achieved a European reputation, were not written. What, then, it is asked, becomes of the advocacy of the written sermon? The answer to this argument is evident. If the question is reduced to one of great names, into the other side of the scales may be thrown not two but dozens of the most illustrious men who not only wrote, but became famous mainly because they wrote.
Passing by the great pagan orators, Cicero and Demosthenes, and the Doctors of the Church, Saints Augustine, John Chrysostom, &c.—these all wrote, polished and elaborated—we come to the four names that have flung a deathless glory around the French pulpit, that created a golden era of sacred eloquence which has never been surpassed: Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Massillon, and Fenelon. I will not labour the argument by showing how much of their strength and fame rested on the construction of their sermons. But, to return to the intrinsic merits of the statement—yes, O'Connell and Father Burke were great orators in spite of, and not because of, the fact that they spoke extemporarily. So crude were some of O'Connell's speeches, so careless was he of their dress, that Shiel complained: "He flung a brood of young, sturdy ideas upon the world, with scarce a rag to cover them."
If ever there was a case when the man made the sermon instead of the sermon making the man, it was the case of Father Burke. How little he owed to his sermons and how much they owed to his delivery is left on record by a capable judge. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy says: "Father Burke was a born orator; the charm of voice, eye and action combined to produce his wonderful effects. When his words were printed much of the spell vanished. One rejoiced to hear him over and over again, but re-read him rarely, I think."[1] The greatest tribute that can be paid to the genius of these two orators is that compositions, wordy, loose, abounding in repetitions, in their mouths enthralled multitudes. Every defect disappeared; the mastery, the dazzling brilliancy of their oratory swept all hearts and blinded criticism. We well may pause before answering the question: What effects would they have produced had they time to write masterpieces of finished beauty like those of Grattan and of Bourdaloue? where each link in the chain of argument hangs in glittering strength, and each thought shows the flash of the gem and its solidity too.
[a]1] "My Life in Two Hemispheres," Vol. II., 274.
Defence of the system I
The first great difficulty against extemporary preaching is that, though a priest studies his subject and maps his plan, he still reckons without his host. The mind aroused to activity and warmed by exertion is sure to spring new thoughts, arguments, and illustrations across his path. These offspring of latest birth clothed in freshness will prove a temptation too strong. He will swerve from the main line to pursue them: the tendency to chase the fresh hare can scarcely be resisted. Then another new thought springs up, and, alas! another fresh hunt. The defined sketch lying on his desk is abandoned: the new ideas have mastered him, but he cannot master them. He labours himself to death without avail, for there is neither point, argument, nor sequence: his sermon is a definition of eternity—without beginning and without end. The congregation is groaning in despair, and the only appreciated passage in the whole performance is the preacher's passage from the pulpit to the sacristy.
Now, to a man who writes his sermon, such a catastrophe is impossible. In the process of preparation the field is well beaten and every thought that could arise secured. From the best of these his selection is made. To this selection he clings without danger of swerve. The road on which he travels is not only mapped but free of ambush and surprises. The milestones are erected. He may not be a Bossuet or a Burke, but he speaks to a definite point, has a time to stop, and the people leave the church with a clear idea.
II.
The defenders of extemporary preaching must postulate three essentials in any man undertaking the office. (I) Orderly thought. (2) Abundant vocabulary. (3) Accurate and graceful expressions. Without these he cannot speak. Admit the want of any one of them and the contention falls to the ground. Now, what young priest coming out of college has this equipment? It is a singular fact, too, that these three can be acquired only by, and are the direct outcome of, pen practice. How is it that this fact has escaped so many? "Writing makes an exact man," says Bacon; and to the question: "How can I become an orator?" Cicero's answer was: "Caput est quam plurimum scribere." When then men point to a Gladstone or a Bright as an example of an extemporary orator we are entitled to ask: "In what sense can they be called extemporary speakers, except in the most limited, since the well marshalled ideas, the flowing periods and elegant graces of delivery are the products of reams and reams of written pages and years of patient drudgery?" Yet, even with all these advantages, on great occasions it was on the written page they relied. Till the young priest, then, comes to his task as well furnished as a Gladstone or a Bright, the advocates of extemporary speaking are out of count.
III.
The extemporary preacher challenges nature on her own ground. No one need doubt the issue. Nature will conquer, and the man who defies her will succumb. He endeavours to think, to select word-clothing for his thoughts, to labour his memory, and deliver his sermon, and performs all four operations at the same time, a task clearly impossible, but more so when we remember the usual embarrassments that beset a young preacher—the nervous agitation, the want of self-control, the desire to succeed. It ends generally in a stammer and then a break, greeted by the congregation with a sigh of relief or perhaps a sneer of contempt.
Is it by preaching such as this you hope to challenge the respect and get a hold on the intellect of a cynical world? Is it through such instrumentality you would bring home the Church's message to proud and festering humanity? No one can succeed who attempts more than one task at a time.
Look to analogy. At the moment when a regiment is expected to charge, you don't find it engaged in collecting ammunition, sharpening swords, and learning drill. All these necessary preliminaries are long since completed. Now every bridle is grasped, every sword hilt in grip, and the rowelled heels are ready to dash into the horses' flanks at the first note of the trumpet blast.
The preacher should come to the pulpit in a like state of preparedness, with his thoughts already gathered, moulded, polished and clothed in the words that fit them best; with every argument as definite and well knitted as a proposition in Euclid; the page swept clear of superfluous verbiage; each idea standing out bright as a jewel in its setting, and the whole so thoroughly committed to memory that he can defy the most critical to discover a trace of effort. He should come, holding his elocutionary forces in reserve, and ready, when the moment arrives, to flash from his lips each living thought and send from his heart the waves of subtle, unseen fire to melt, rock, or subdue the hearts of others, instead of attempting four tasks simultaneously, and failing in all. His sole business in the pulpit is not to shape his message or to clothe his message, but to gather and converge all the powers within him for one grand purpose and it alone—to send that message home.
These pages are written mainly for the Irish priest on the foreign mission. It is well he should be under no delusion. In Ireland a slipshod or unprepared sermon may meet with indulgent charity. A very different reception awaits it abroad. The priest who attempts it will quickly discover how he is set up for a sign that shall be contradicted. The free, white light of open criticism penetrates even the sanctuary. There is no dignity to hedge any man. Congregations smart at being treated to such poor fare, and will not leave him long in ignorance of their opinions. Perhaps while in the pulpit the sight of many a curving lip will make the blood tingle or cause the shame spot to burn on his cheek.
Again, the priest on the foreign mission will never face a congregation that is not sprinkled with Protestants or unbelievers. Should he not then consider the feelings of his own people who are humiliated or filled with honest pride by the manner in which their pastor acquits himself in the eyes of strangers? Waiving then all supernatural motives, should not every priest have sufficient manly pride, self-respect and sensibility for the honour of his exalted office to lift himself and his work above the sneer of the most censorious, and challenge the respect, if not the admiration, of every listener?
The preparation should begin not on the day the sacred oils are poured on the young priest's hands, but on the day he enters college. His eyes should be kept fixed on the goal before him. "I am to be a preacher, and every obstacle that stands on my path must go down, and every advantage that goes to make a great orator, at all costs, I must make my own." This ambition should be nourished till it consumes him, till it becomes "his waking thought, his midnight dream." His reading, recitation and debates should be studied under the light of this lodestar of his destiny: at first shining afar off, but swiftly nearing as each vacation ends.
Objectors answered I.
Those who champion the method of extemporary preaching lay great stress on two points. (I) The extemporary preacher has a natural warmth and earnestness of conviction that goes straight to the heart. (2) These, they maintain, can never accompany the prepared discourse. Let us examine these two statements. It is true that when men speak under the influence of strong emotions, passion may, in a large measure, compensate for accurate expression and sequence of thought, especially with a rude or half educated audience. In proof of this, Peter the Hermit and Mahomet are striking examples. We are dealing, however, not with extraordinary but the ordinary demands on a priest's powers, and it would be poor wisdom to stake all his success on the chance moods of his temperament. To-day the tempest may rock his soul and his words bear the breath of flame; but, by next Sunday, the spirit has passed, his passions are ice chill; he is confronted with the duty of preaching, and on what support shall he now lean? We must also remember that with increasing education the popular mind is becoming more analytic, and congregations less willing to accept emotions, no matter how sincere, as a substitute for reason.
The second statement—that the written sermon cannot be vitalized with fervour—seems childish in face of the fact that even actors, speaking the thoughts of men dead three hundred years, move people to tears or cause their blood to blaze. The great pulpit orators, to whom allusion has already been made, preached carefully written sermons, yet over ten thousand hearts they poured lava tides that swept every prejudice in their fiery breaths.
Shiel
What, then, becomes of this trite assumption when there are iron facts like these to fall upon it? Again, it is objected that the freshness disappears in elaborate preparation, and an oft-repeated sermon becomes stale to its author. Shiel, we are told, "always prepared the language as well as the substance of his speeches. Two very high excellences he possessed to a most wonderful degree—the power of combining extreme preparation with the greatest passion."
Wesley
That disposes of the first statement. Now, does the repetition of the same sermon cause it to grow flat? Listen to the actor on his hundredth night, and see have he and his words grown weary of each other. Wesley wrote every sermon, and repeatedly preached the same discourse, with the result that so far from losing by repetition it gained; and Benjamin Franklin, who was the American ambassador in England at the time, assures us he never became truly eloquent with a sermon till he had preached it thirty times. The following graphic picture of the effects produced by the preaching of Wesley and his two companions will scarcely help to support the theory that a sermon preached frequently becomes fruitless:—"He looked down from the top of a green knoll at Kingswood on twenty thousand colliers, grimy from the Bristol coalpits, and saw, as he preached, the tears making white channels down their blackened cheeks. . . . The terrible sense of a conviction of sin, a new dread of hell, a new hope of heaven, took forms at once grotesque and sublime."[2]
[a]2] Green—"Short History of the English People."
We have heard preachers from whose lips each thought fell as fresh and as hot as if that moment only it welled up from the fountains of the heart; yet each rounded and chiselled sentence, that seemed to flow so spontaneously, cosily nestled between the covers of their manuscripts. We have watched the varied gestures, the cadences of voice and facial expression to harmonize with and so express the sense of the words that one seemed to grow out of the other; still these graces of elocution, that looked so artless and so charming, were the fruit of long years of study. All was fresh! All was natural! All palpitated with the blood of life, yet all were the products of previous toil. It is nonsense, then, for any man to assert that the written sermon must bear the stamp of artificiality or that the fire evaporates in the passage from the desk to the pulpit.
II.
But I may be told there is small time for writing sermons. It is singular that where there is most time on a priest's hands there are fewest sermons on his desk. But to the objection. One of the strongest motives urging the writer to insist on the written sermon is his deep conviction of the shortness of time, for there is no more expeditious way of squandering that precious gift of God than by preaching extemporary sermons.
This is how the case stands. You have to spend as much time in gathering and arranging the matter for the extemporary as for the written one. Next year you may have to preach on the same gospel or feast; of what use will your notes be then? The ideas, arguments, and illustrations that now spring to your mind with a glance at this cipher or note will then have vanished. The cipher remains, but its inspiring power has passed. The oracle is dumb. You may summon spirits from the vasty deep—but will they come? You have again to face your old task; year after year the same drudgery awaits you with less hope of success. The brain, at first stimulated by novelty, poured forth the hot tide of thought; now it will answer only to the lash. At the end of five years what hoarded reserve have you laid by? Your hands are as empty as the day you started, with this disadvantage, that you have lost the habit of labour you acquired at college—a serious loss. When a man permits the fine edge of college industry to become blunted, the best day of his usefulness is passed. This treadmill of ineffectual toil fills with disgust, till finally all efforts are abandoned, and the people are treated to Hamlet's reading: "Words, words, words." This is the usual series of evolutions through which an extemporary preacher passes. He begins with good intentions and bad theories. The system breaks down, but his habits are now too set to try another, and so he runs to seed. Here you have explained the fruitlessness, indeed the paralysis, of many a pulpit.
In the written sermon, on the other hand, you have a treasure for life; years pass, but your sermon remains, an instrument becoming more flexible and telling every time you use it. You are independent of your mood, on which the extemporary preacher has to lean so much. You can also defy chance that may call you to the pulpit at a day's notice. Your motto is: Semper paratus. Your brain may be barren and your feelings frigid, but here are thoughts already made and shaped. They are your own; and the mind instinctively responds to the children of its own birth. It rises, clasps, and embraces them. The passion glow enkindles afresh; and heart and words are aflame with the ancient fires. When for the first five years you lay aside a well-written sermon a month, what a handsome stock-in-trade is at your disposal for life—your fortune is made.
Incitements to toil
The world is in no humour to stand half-hearted work; it will bow its proud head only to the man who pours out sweat; and Bourdaloue's standard of excellence will hold for all time. His answer to the question "What was your best sermon?" is: "The one I took the most pains with." His labour at the desk was the precise measure of his success in the pulpit. The French have a proverb, "Tout vaut ce qu'il coute." ("Everything is worth what it costs.")
See how laymen put our lethargy and its apologists to shame. Look at the author with pallid cheek and fevered brow, half starving in an attic, perfecting his style, polishing his periods. There is the actor, haggard, jaded, toiling for hours at a single passage, that he may interpret its meaning and enchain his audience. While the world is dreaming the barrister is studying his brief, ransacking tomes, wading through statutes, in search of one to support his contention, knitting his defence in logical terseness, cudgeling his brains for ingenious appeals to move a jury. The lives of eminent lawyers are records of appalling drudgery.
Turn to the great doctors of the church. After preaching for thirty years, St. Augustine did not consider himself free from the obligation of writing his sermons. He prepared, he tells us, cum magno labore. "I have," says St. John Chrysostom, "traversed land and ocean to acquire the art of rhetoric." If giants so laboured, who are we to expect exemption? Ah! if our bread entirely depended on our sermons, as a lawyer's on his briefs or an actor's on his parts, what a revolution we should behold! Yet how humiliating the thought! Every time you go into the pulpit it is to plead a brief for Christ. The destiny of many a soul hangs on your effort. Will you permit yourself to be outdone in generous toil by the lawyer, who consumes his night not to save a man from an unending hell, but from a month's imprisonment?
To-day the devil's agents put forth sleepless activity. The world rings with the clash of warring forces. The priest, then, that idly folds his arms and manufactures sops for a gnawing conscience, while the very air is electric with the energies of assault, that priest is set up not for the resurrection but the ruin of many in Israel.