[27] I am far from saying that the preacher should never get help from other men's sermons. This may be done honestly and usefully, in many ways. But to let another man's sermon pass as one's own is a sin.
"DR SOUTH IN THE AFTERNOON."
Quite conceivably, there may be rare occasions when another man's sermon may be rightly used by you. But then, of course, you will do it honestly and above-board, telling your people whose it is. In Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley there is a pleasant scene, where the venerable Knight asks the Parson who the preacher for next Sunday is to be. "The Bishop of St Asaph in the morning," replies the good man, "and Dr South in the afternoon."[28] That is, he was about to read, openly and honestly, a sermon of Beveridge's, and then a sermon of South's; neither, certainly, in lithograph. I do not say he did the best for his people in so doing; most certainly he could not "speak home" to the details of their village life, and its temptations, if he spoke only in the phrase of the two classical pulpit-masters. That rapport of parish and pulpit of which I have spoken could not have been much felt, at least on that coming Sunday. But the good Parson was honest, however. The practice of which I speak is not honest.
[28] "He then shewed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Sanderson, Dr Barrow, Dr Calamy, with several living authors." (Spectator, No. 106, July 2nd, 1711.) Calamy by the way was a Presbyterian, made one of the King's chaplains at the Restoration.
WE MUST PREACH ATTRACTIVELY.
Let me come now to a closer view of the preacher's work, and I will be as practical as possible. I have besought my Brother to let nothing tempt him to push his preaching into a neglectful corner. Let me now beseech him to remember that he must not only be a diligent preacher, but do his very best to commend his preaching to his people,—to be, in a right sense, attractive.
I deliberately say, attractive. That word, of course, suggests some very undesirable applications. It is only too possible to aim at attractiveness by bad methods. We may tone down the Gospel-message, leaving out unpopular and man-humbling truths, and try to "attract" people so. We may strive to "attract" them to hear us by doubtful external accessories (of very different kinds), which, after all, will rather attract attention—for a season—to themselves, than to the message, and the Lord. But none the less it is every Clergyman's plain duty to make his preaching, so far as he can, lawfully attractive. It is his duty to see that he preaches Christ Crucified; and "the offence of the Cross" [Gal. v. 11.] will always occur, sooner or later, in such preaching; but it is his duty to see that there is no other "offence" in it, so far as he can help it. If he so speaks of sin, and righteousness, and judgment, that the unregenerate heart does not like it, though the preacher has spoken wisely and in love, that is not the preacher's fault. If he has so magnified Christ, and the glory and fulness of His salvation, that it sounds like exaggeration to the unspiritual hearer, though the words have been said in all reverent reality, that is not the preacher's fault. But it is his fault if he has repelled his hearers from his message by what is not the message, but his own setting of it; his spirit, manner, his delivery, his neglect of some plain precautions against prejudice and weariness. Of a few such precautions I come now to speak; and first, of what I may call the most external amongst them.
NEEDFUL AND NEEDLESS OFFENCES.
Beginning, then, with physical precautions against needless "offences," σκάνδαλα, in our preaching I say first, let us do our best to be audible.
AUDIBILITY: MEANS TO IT.