The Preacher and His Models / The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891

by James Stalker

It might be argued that this is a stage of preaching which has been superseded, and that the message of ministers ought now to be addressed entirely to individuals. This is the theory of preaching on which many act, without perhaps considering how widely it differs from the procedure of the prophets. And no doubt much might be said in its defence. It was a vast step in the development of religion when Jesus turned from the nation to the individual and taught the world the value of the soul. Here must ever now lie the stress of Christian preaching; the preacher is not worthy of the Christian name who does not know what it is to hunger and thirst for the salvation of individuals, and who does not esteem the salvation of even one soul well worth the labour of a lifetime.

Still it may be doubted whether any stage through which preaching has passed can ever be entirely superseded; and we may well hesitate to believe that the work of an Isaiah or a Jeremiah is not still work for us.

This doubt is further strengthened when we turn to the record of Christ's own preaching. He is the final standard and incomparable model. But, though He discovered the soul and taught the world the value of the individual, His preaching was not exclusively directed to individuals. It had a public and national side. He cast His protection over publicans and sinners, not only because they were the children of men, but also because they were the seed of Abraham; He submitted His claims to the ecclesiastical authorities of the nation, and, when they rejected them, He directed against the religious parties the thunderbolts of His invective. The tears and words of indescribable tenderness which He poured out upon the city where He was about to be martyred proved that the patriotism of Isaiah and Jeremiah still burned in His heart; and He charged His apostles, when sending them forth to evangelize the world, to begin at Jerusalem.[20]

If this did not settle the question, the nature of the case would demonstrate that the preacher's vocation includes a message to the community as well as to the individual. It will be conceded by all that the preacher exists for the promotion of righteousness and the diminution of sin in the world. But sin is not only lodged in the heart of the individual: it is embodied also in evil customs and unjust laws, for which the community is responsible. The individual is largely moulded by his environment; but this may either be so favourable to goodness that his evil tendencies are restrained and everything encourages him to do well, or so evil that the worst vices are easily contracted, while every step in the right direction meets with a storm of opposition. No one would contend that the chances of a soul are the same whether it lives among those who watch carefully over its development and guide its footsteps in the paths of peace, or among those whose word and example are encouragements to every kind of sin. Society ought to be a kindly matrix in which incipient life is nurtured into health and beauty; but it may be a malignant nurse, by whom the stream of life is poisoned at its very source. If this be so, then it is as reprehensible in those whose vocation is to watch over the moral and spiritual development of their fellow-men to be indifferent to the conditions by which life is surrounded as it would be discreditable to the physicians of a city swept year after year by pestilence, if they took no interest in the insanitary conditions to which the epidemic was due, but lazily contented themselves with curing their own patients.

We seem to have arrived at precisely the point in the Church's history when her mind and conscience are to awake to this aspect of her duty. One of the most eminent members of the English bench of bishops said recently, that the social question is the question which the Christianity of the present day has to solve; and this sentiment is being echoed in every quarter. Strange it is how age after age one word of the message of Christianity after another lays hold of the Christian mind and becomes for a time the watchword of progress. There can be little doubt that this is the word for our age. The extraordinary response given throughout the civilised world to General Booth's In Darkest England proves how deeply the conscience of the world is being stirred by the misery and degradation of the outcasts of society.

General Booth's book, and other books and pamphlets like it, have brought home to us the fact, that at the base of our civilisation there is sweltering a mass of sin and misery, which is not less a reproach to Christianity than were the publicans and sinners to the religion of the contemporaries of Christ; because, though the Church may not, like the Scribes and Pharisees, despise and hate these outcasts, it has not yet coped effectually with the problem of their condition; and perhaps their numbers are increasing rather than diminishing. There are sections of the community in which the conditions of existence are so evil that childhood is plunged, almost as soon as it is born, into an element of vice and crime, the bloom of modesty is rudely rubbed off the soul of womanhood, and manhood is so beset with temptation that escape is well-nigh impossible. Can anyone doubt that an Isaiah or a Jeremiah would, in such a state of society, have lifted up his voice like a trumpet and cast the condition of these lost children of our people in the face of the luxurious rich, and especially of the professors of religion? And is it less obvious that this is still the duty of the modern pulpit?

It cannot, indeed, be said with truth, that the Church has not faced the problem. There is one of the causes of social misery, and that the very chief, against which the Church, especially in your country, has nobly asserted herself. Drink is the cause to which magistrates and judges, and all who are brought directly into contact with the fallen and criminal classes, attribute three-fourths of the evils of society. Drink is the despair of every Christian worker who has ventured down among the pariahs of our civilisation. Against this the Churches have not been inactive. But we are just beginning to acknowledge that, though drunkenness is the great cause of misery, there are other causes behind it which must likewise be coped with. Why do the people drink? This question, when it is impartially considered, will bring many abuses of our social system into view, which must be put out of the way before the evils of drunkenness can be stopped. Excessively prolonged labour exhausts the system and makes it crave for artificial stimulus. Excessively low wages, with no prospect of rising in the world, beget a spirit of recklessness, which makes men ready to turn to anything that promises to bring a gleam of sunshine into their monotonous lot. Ill-furnished and insanitary abodes drive forth their inmates to seek the brightness and comfort of the saloon. These are specimens of the new questions which demand the attention of those who feel the reproach of our defective civilisation.

There is one type of remedy which the Church has liberally supplied. To those already fallen she has extended a helping hand. The Evangelical Revival produced a spirit of philanthropy which has invented schemes for the relief of every form of human woe; and these have multiplied to almost unmanageable numbers. But we are beginning to see that, multiply them as we may, they must be totally insufficient as long as the causes of misery are undealt with. If the causes remain as strong as ever, new victims will be manufactured as fast as philanthropy can rescue those already made. The time has come to ascend higher up the stream than has hitherto been done, and cut it off at its source. In other words, we must direct the whole force of Christian philanthropy to the stopping of the causes of social misery.

For this work new weapons will be required; and perhaps the principal of these will be legislation. The prophets appealed, as I have said, to kings and princes, because in their hands lay at that time the force of government. But this power has now passed, and is daily more completely passing, into the hands of the people, on whom lies the responsibility which formerly lay elsewhere. And, if we are to follow in the footsteps of Isaiah and Jeremiah, we must teach the people to rise to their responsibility and make use of the weapon which time has put into their hands for altering the conditions of life. They must send to the seats of authority, both in the municipality and in the state, men of public spirit, who will act not for their own interest or for the interest of factions, but for the good of the whole community; and they must see to it, that the laws and their administration are such as will make evil-doing difficult and well-doing easy.

Of course this will involve conflict with those interests which are vested in abuses; for there are trades which flourish in the poverty of the poor and even the vices of the vicious. These enjoy, in many cases, the advantage of high social standing; and many of the organs of public opinion will rally to their support. But the Church must appeal to the Christian conscience and summon forth the resources of Christian virtue, to meet this new phase of the task which has been appointed her. Christianity has always, and especially during the last hundred years, had the open hand of charity; but she will need, during the next hundred years, to have also a hand which can close itself firmly over the instrument of government, and make use of it as a lever for lifting out of the way many great obstacles which are keeping back the Kingdom of God.