THE PREACHER AS A MAN
LECTURE VI.[ToC]
THE PREACHER AS A MAN.
Gentlemen, in the foregoing lectures I have finished, as far as time permitted, what I had to say on the work of our office, as it is illustrated by the example of the prophets; and to-day we turn to the other branch of the subject—to study the modern work of the ministry in the light cast upon it by the example of the apostles.
When we quit the Old Testament and open the New, we come upon another great line of preachers to whom we must look up as patterns. The voice of prophecy, after centuries of silence, was heard again in John the Baptist, and his ministry of repentance will always have its value as indicating a discipline by which the human spirit is prepared for comprehending and appreciating Christ. I have already given the reason why I am not at present to touch on the preaching of Christ Himself, although the subject draws one's mind like a magnet. After Christ, the first great Christian preacher was St. Peter; and between him and St. Paul there are many subordinate figures, such as Stephen, Philip the Evangelist and Apollos, beside whom it would be both pleasant and profitable to linger. But we have agreed to take St. Paul as the representative of apostolic preaching, and I will do so more exclusively than I took Isaiah as the representative of the prophets.
It is, I must confess, with regret that I pass St. Peter by. There is a peculiar interest attaching to him as the first great Christian preacher; and there is something wonderfully attractive in his rude, but vigorous and lovable personality. Besides, a study of the influences by which he was transmuted from the unstable and untrustworthy precipitancy of his earlier career into the rocklike firmness which made him fit to be a foundation-stone on which the Church was built would have taught us some of the most important truths which we require to learn; because these influences were, first, his long and close intimacy with Christ and, secondly, the outpouring on him, at Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit; and there are no influences more essential than these to the formation of the ministerial character.