The Message and the Man: / Some Essentials of Effective Preaching

by J. Dodd Jackson

CHAPTER II.

On Transparency.

There is one quality of such vital importance to the effectiveness of our sermons as to merit more than passing mention, and that is the quality of lucidity. The business of the preacher is to make his meaning understood, to make his audience see what he sees, understand what he understands. It is laid upon him as a special instruction to present the truth with such plainness that "a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." Failing here, he fails badly. It is possible, perhaps, to excite a hearer's admiration without clearness. There is to be found in some men a curious liking for being puzzled; and they will credit with high talent and deep learning him who is able thoroughly to mystify them. We have more than once heard a man described as "far learned" because of a style in which polysyllables, not always correctly chosen, did duty for thought, as polysyllables often do. But the mere winning of ignorant admiration is a poor result of pulpit work, and no manly man will set such an end before him as the goal of his ambition. Admit that hearers may receive a measure of blessing out of all proportion to the degree of their understanding—a friend of ours tells us that he has had wonderful times in listening to sermons in the Welsh language of which he knows not a word,—it still remains true that men are saved through the knowledge of the truth. In joining himself to the Eunuch from Ethiopia who, sitting in his chariot read the Prophet Esaias, Philip asked, "Understandest thou what thou readest?" and all his effort went to make the dusky stranger comprehend. To make men understand, is our bounden duty still.

And to accomplish this necessary achievement is not invariably the easiest thing imaginable. Indeed, it may well be contended that in none of his aims does the preacher fail more frequently than in this. Often would we be greatly surprised and deeply discouraged had we the means of comparing the idea received with the idea we meant to convey. The reticence of our hearers is wisdom in them and mercy to us.

For it is absolutely certain that most preachers overestimate—we do not say the intelligence of their congregations,—but their ability to grasp the truth presented at the speed, and in the way in which it is brought before them. Because the trained mind of the preacher can readily and easily understand religious literature and speech, it does not follow that the hearer has the same power; nor does it follow that the lack of it proves him a person of smaller intellectuality than the man whose utterances bring perplexity to his mind. The preacher should remember that what are matters of daily thought and research to him are not so familiar to his hearers. To him they form a well-known country. He should not assume that the man who turns to him for direction as to the points and places of this holy land will always be able to comprehend these directions as easily as he gives them. We speak from experience when we assert that it is much easier, in a land one knows very well, to direct the traveller on his way than it is to understand such directions when, from strangeness in the path, we have in turn to seek them ourselves.

Not only is this true, but it is also true that we are too apt to take for granted that what is knowledge to the preacher is knowledge to the hearer. It is to be feared that in these days the average church-goer is not so well versed in Biblical knowledge as the assumptions of our sermons might suggest. Most men nowadays live in a hurry, and are busy about many things, and it cannot be pretended that the Scriptures receive that reading and study which give such advantage to the hearer of preaching. Probably an examination of any ten men chosen without discrimination out of the congregation of one of our churches would reveal a state of things both startling and sad. It is so easy to be misled by appearances. The congregation is well dressed, respectable, keen. There are the usual signs of education, even of culture. All these things are consistent with great shallowness of sacred knowledge. Men are careful to till their own fields, but common land is generally sorely neglected. There is a scientist in yonder pew; in his own science he is supreme. Near him sits a politician; few there are who know the questions of the hour better than he. In the pulpit stands the preacher; he is—shall we venture the assertion?—a man mighty in the Bible. It is his book. It is, in a general way, the book of the scientist, of the statesman, of every person in the congregation, but the preacher specialises in it and in all that relates to it. He will make a mistake if he assumes too much either to the credit of one man before him or another. Here a memory of many years ago rises to the surface. Having to preach one Sunday to an audience which usually contained two or three men of positions rather above the common run, we confessed great nervousness to an aged minister of our church now no more. "Never bother a bit, lad," was the reply; "remember one thing:—You will know more about that subject than any man in the chapel, because you will have been working at it. The doctor will have spent his week mixing physic, the lawyer his in mixing law. You will have spent yours in getting to know all about this text of which, like as not, neither of them has ever heard." There was consolation in the old man's assurances, though they recognised a sorrowful fact too often forgotten. Probably if we knew everything we should come to the conclusion that one fault of our sermons is that they are not half sufficiently elementary.

Along the same line follows the remark, that it is also a mistake to assume that the terminology familiar to the preacher and conveying to his mind certain ideas, must of necessity be equally familiar and convey the very same ideas to every other man. Much of this language is technical; much of it consists of words and phrases which have long been obsolete so far as daily use and wont are concerned. Let the preacher set himself to listen to a professional man who elects to speak upon the subjects in which he is most interested in the language of his profession; or let him hearken to an artisan who talks about his craft in the terms in use at the bench, or in the factory, and then he will in some degree comprehend the effect of technical language in mystifying the uninitiated hearer. We recall in this connection a sermon in which, years ago, we heard a very young preacher declaiming to an audience of labouring men and women concerning a certain "anthropomorphic" passage. As we say he was very young, and probably no longer uses the word outside the study. Another worthy man in our hearing solemnly advised a congregation largely composed of factory girls to make their lives "Christo-centric." We acknowledge our indebtedness to the Rev. W. L. Watkinson, himself a splendid example of the excellence for which we plead, for two humorous illustrations of the mistake now being considered. One is that of a local preacher who, during a revival of religion, most earnestly counselled his auditors to exercise "fiduciary" faith; the other, of a learned divine whose appointment in a certain village coincided with the visit of a travelling menagerie. "I perceive," he said, in sensational tones, "that a spirit of German transcendental ratiocination is creeping into the Church." The congregation, remembering the adjacent caravans, left at once in hurry and alarm.

In that very interesting volume in which the proprietors of The Daily News tabulated the results of a census of church attendance in the metropolis, Mr. F. C. Masterman, writing on the religious problem of South East London, has the following words:—

"The prevailing theology, even more perhaps than the prevailing liturgy, is wrapped up in an ancient language. The very terms are technical—grace, justification, conversion, perseverance. They flow out glibly from the student who has soaked himself in their historical meanings; they are Greek to the general. They were once living realities for which men fought and gladly died; they still symbolise realities, the permanent elements of the life history of the soul—but they are wrapped around in cobwebs and the complications of a technical system, frozen into sterility; and they have no more meaning and no more appeal to the audience at whom they are thrown in such profusion than the details of the performance of the Mosaic ritual, or the genealogies of the legendary heroes of the Hebrew Bible. We want neither edifying lessons drawn from the wanderings of Israel or the Book of Joshua; nor brilliant 'word-painting' of some of the scenes described in the Bible with a more appealing eloquence; nor the exposition of the machinery of schemes of salvation once real from which the life has departed; but some message concerning the things of the spirit, delivered in simplicity and humility and sincerity to men who would fain be simple and humble and sincere." These are weighty words, and many a preacher might do worse than take them seriously to heart. Such an event might mean the blessing of many who have so far been mystified rather than edified. Mr. Masterman represents, we are sure, multitudes who could add proof to his words from frequent experience; he speaks, also, for many more who, because of similar experience, come no more to the house of the Lord.

But the difficulty does not always arise from the preacher's terminology alone. It is possible to fall into the fault of over-condensation in our preaching. Highly concentrated foods are proverbially hard of digestion, and the same may be true of highly concentrated sermons. "Words packed with profoundest meanings" are apt to pass over the mind carrying much of their meaning with them undiscovered. A "highly sententious style" may have some of the qualities of a thunder shower, in which the rain falls so fast as to be of little use in watering the thirsty ground, over which it courses unabsorbed to join the brook down yonder in the vale. The maxim "multum in parvo" may be an admirable one for an author whose book will lie in the reader's hand the while he has time to grasp the full significance of every well-filled sentence. By a public speaker, however, packing may easily be overdone; and here is one of the dangers of the written sermon as compared with one in which the preacher, having gathered together his knowledge and his thought upon a matter, leaves the choice of words to the hour of delivery. A little wise prolixity may be necessary to the speaker. A little repetition; the putting of a truth, first in this way, then in that, and again perhaps in quite a different fashion, so that different minds may have in turn their chance—even this may be needed, and though the preacher's impatience may find such a method irksome, duty may lie that way while inclination turns to a more sententious and expeditious mode. When all has been done that can be done to render every argument and lesson absolutely transparent there will still be some who will not have quite understood. The simplest of preachers must some day encounter the old lady who accosted, so it is said, a former Bishop of Chester, who, at great pains to be lucid, had unfolded the argument against the errors of atheism, with the words, "Well, my lord, I must say as I think there is a God after all you've told us."