To My Younger Brethren: Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work

by H. C. G. Moule

Another deep and unfailing secret of interest, so that it be used intelligently and prayerfully, is close akin to this last. It lies in the right sort of expository preaching. I have in my mind such exposition as will be found in Dr Vaughan's sermons on the Philippian Epistle. The charm and power of those sermons lie, I know, very much in the extraordinary excellence, the curiosa simplicitas, of their literary style, so unpretentious and so masterly. But it lies also in the fact that the preacher takes us over a familiar Scripture passage, verse by verse, phrase by phrase, and translates it into the dialect of present circumstances. Let me heartily commend this sort of preaching from my own parochial experience in past days. In a congregation consisting chiefly of the poor, I found that the most intelligent and sustained interest was excited by a series of Sunday evening sermons on a selected chapter or paragraph, in which the aim was first to paraphrase the sacred phrases, as it were, into modern shapes, and then at the close to enforce some main message of the portion. The method is as old as the Homilies of Chrysostom, and older.

INTEREST OF PRACTICALITY.

Another secret of interest, permanent and effectual, is practicality in preaching. I protest, whenever I can, and I hope to do so to the last, against the common but unhappy fallacy of an outcry against doctrine: "Give us not a creed, but a life." The whole New Testament, the whole Bible, protests against such a sentence. There, a divine creed is always seen as necessary for a divine life. Supernatural facts, livingly apprehended, are necessary for supernatural peace and power in this formidable natural world. But then, on the other side, it is a fallacy almost as fatal to preach the supernatural fact and truth without a constant and practical application of them to the crude and stern realities of life. A young pastoral preacher was once, in my hearing, warmly and lovingly thanked for his pulpit-work, on the eve of his quitting his Curacy; and the point on which his humble friends dwelt was that he had always preached Christ, and always showed them how to make use of His presence and power in the actual circumstances of their lives. Eloquent words, aye and true words, spoken in vacuo, will be dull to most hearers; eternal truths laid alongside the weekday work and temptation will always be interesting.

"PREACH THE GOSPEL FULLY."

iv. "Preach the Gospel fully." Here is our great Nonconformist's last adverb, in his recipe for attractive preaching. Its point is not so obvious perhaps as that of the other words, but it is nobly true. "The Gospel" is, as I have said, and as we know, nothing less than Jesus Christ the Lord, in His whole harmonious glory of Person, Work, and Word. It is deeply true that in that mighty and manifold theme there are points which must be always prominent and ruling; and most surely the man-humbling and soul-blessing truths of the Atoning Sacrifice are such points. "First of all" (we have recalled that all-significant sentence already), "first of all, Christ died for our sins." [1 Cor. xv. 3.] Alas for the Church, for the congregation, for the pulpit, where that is forgotten, obscured, or put into a secondary, or perhaps a tertiary place! One thing is certain; that pulpit cannot be bearing its right witness meanwhile to the "exceeding sinfulness" of sin—not merely the deformity of sin, but the awful evil and condemnable guilt of sin [Rom. vii. 13.]. But then it is a thing to be regretted (and corrected) when the Pastor's preaching is always and only concerned with the urgent need, and wonderful provision, for the pardon and acceptance of the believing sinner. I dare to say it is impossible that such preaching should be permanently, or even long, interesting and attractive, and this because of the nature of the case.

*PREACH PARDON, BUT MORE ALSO.

Man's fallen and sinful soul needs pardon unspeakably, and always, but it needs it as a means to an end; and that end is nearness to God, conformity to Him, power to do His blessed will as His servant for ever. For this same great end the soul needs, even in the range of truths which are of the order of means, to learn more than the glorious rudiments of forgiveness. It needs to know something of the heavenly Offices of the once Crucified One: His Mediation, Suretyship, and Intercession; His Priesthood; His Royalty; His Headship. In Him lie stored the divine treasures with which our whole extent of need is to be met. And the preacher who would permanently attract his people, by bringing out of his storehouse things eternally old and new, must seek and pray to preach Christ fully.

CHRIST FOR US AND IN US.

To some devoted men it seems impossible not to be always preaching the glory of "Christ for us"; others can never leave the precious theme of "Christ in us." But if they are not missioners, but pastors, they will assuredly find that a permanent attraction can only be secured by doing what the Word of God does—setting forth both glorious sets of truths in fulness, in harmony, and in application to the realities of sin and of life.

So we have thought awhile about attractive preaching. Need I say again what the sort of attractiveness is which I have in view? It is indeed, on the surface, attraction to the church, attraction to the sermon; but its whole inner purpose is an attraction which neither church nor sermon can in the least degree cause, but which the Eternal Spirit, sovereign and loving, can cause through them—an attraction to Jesus Christ, in true repentance, living faith, genuine surrender, and patient, happy service.