But no book did so much to make me a practical preacher as the Bible. It is practical throughout—intensely practical, and nothing else but practical. The moment it introduces man to our notice, it presents him as subject to God's law, and represents his life and blessedness as depending entirely on his obedience. God is presented from the first as an avenger of sin, and as a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. In His address to Cain He sets forth the whole principle of His government: 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? But if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.' Enoch is translated because he walked with God. The world is destroyed because of its wickedness, and Noah is saved because of his righteousness. Abraham is blessed because he observes the statutes and judgments of God, and because he is ready to make the greatest sacrifices out of respect to His commands. The sum of the whole revelation given to the Jews is, "Behold I set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse. Obey, and all conceivable blessings shall be your portion: disobey, and all imaginable curses shall fall on you." The history of the Jews is an everlasting story of obedience and prosperity, of disobedience and adversity. The history of individuals is the same. The just live; the wicked die. The good are honored; the bad are put to shame. The Psalms, the Proverbs, and the Prophets are all lessons of righteousness. Righteousness exalteth nations; sin brings them down to destruction. And Jesus and Paul, and Peter and James, and Jude and John, have all one aim, to bless men by turning them away from their iniquities, and by urging them to perpetual advancement in holiness. All the histories, all the biographies, all the prophecies, all the parables, all the preaching, all the praying, all the writing, all the reasoning, all the things the Book contains, have just one object, to make men good, and urge them to grow continually better. All the doctrines are practical, and are used as motives to purity, love and beneficence. All the promises are given to support and cheer people in the faithful discharge of their duty. All the warnings are to keep men from idleness, selfishness and sin. The Church and all its ministries; the Scriptures and all their revelations; Providence and all its dispensations; nature and all her operations, are all presented as means and motives to a life of holy love and usefulness. The Bible has nothing, is nothing, but laws and lessons, aiming at the illumination, the sanctification, the moral and spiritual perfection of mankind.
Idleness and selfishness are the greatest of all heresies, and love and beneficence the perfection of all religion. No doctrine can be falser or more anti-christian than the doctrine that a man may sow one thing and reap another; that he may sow tares and reap wheat; or sow cockle and reap barley—that he can grow thistles and reap figs, or plant thorns and gather grapes. 'He that doeth good is of God;' 'he that committeth sin is of the devil.' 'By this we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.' 'By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.' 'Ye know that every one that doeth righteousness, or lives to do good, is born of God.' 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' Good trees will bring forth good fruit, bad trees will bring forth bad fruit. 'Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire.'
But to give all the practical passages the Bible contains you must quote the substance, the soul, the bulk of the whole Book. It is all of a piece. It has one aim and one tendency from beginning to end, to kill sin and foster righteousness, to crush selfishness and develop philanthropy. It consists of a multitude of parts, written in different ages, by a great variety of authors, in a great variety of styles, but it has one spirit, the spirit of truth and righteousness. And the last oracles it contains are like the first: 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works follow them.' 'Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have a right to the tree of life, and enter in through the gates into the city.'
Under the influence of this most rational, common-sense, practical Book, what could I do but become a thoroughly practical preacher? What could I do but drink in its blessed, god-like lessons, and make it the great business of my life to teach them and preach them to my hearers, and urge them on their consciences as the governing principles of their hearts and lives?
The book of nature preaches the same practical Gospel as the Bible. There is not a creature on earth that is not required to work. Birds, beasts and insects must all labor, or die. The birds must build their nests, and gather supplies of food for themselves and their young, or they would all perish. The cattle must graze, or browse, or burrow, or dive, or lack their needed supplies of food. The beaver must build its dam, and the wolf must dig its hole, and both must labor for their daily food. The bee must gather her wax, and build her cell, and fetch home her honey, or starve. The ant must build her palace and look out for food both for herself and her family. The spider must spin her thread, and weave her web, and watch all day for her prey. All seek their food from God, and obtain it at his hands as the reward of their industry.
Every organ in man's body has to work, or the body, with all its organs, would die. The lungs must be continually breathing, and the heart incessantly beating, and the blood perpetually running its mysterious round, or the whole frame would perish. And the hands must work, and the feet must walk, and the eyes must look, and the ears must listen, and the tongue must talk. And the jaws must grind our food, and the stomach digest it, and the liver and the spleen, and the brain and the bowels, and the nerves and the glands must all co-operate, or we hasten to the dust.
And so it is through every department of nature. All things are full of labor. The vegetable world serves the animal world, and the animal world serves the vegetable world, and the mineral and meteorological worlds serve them both. And the branches of the tree shed their leaves to feed the roots, and the roots collect moisture and nutriment from the soil to feed the branches and the leaves. And the clouds let fall their showers, and the sun sheds down his warmth and light, and the more mysterious powers of nature exert their secret influences, and all things are thus kept right. And the winds keep ever in motion, bearing away the surplus cold of one region to temper the excessive heat of another, and carrying back the surplus heat of the warmer climes, to soften the rigors of the colder ones. And so throughout the universe. There is not an idle orb in the whole heavens, nor is there an idle atom on earth. The sun the moon and the stars are in eternal motion, and are evermore exerting their wondrous influences for the good of the whole universe. And the streams are ever flowing, and the sea is ever toiling. The great things and the small, the seen and the unseen, the conscious and the unconscious, are all at work, helping themselves, and serving each other, and contributing with one consent to the welfare of the great mysterious whole. Nature's laws are so framed that idleness is everywhere punished, and honest industry everywhere rewarded. Everywhere obedience is life, and disobedience death. Salvation by works is the principle of the Divine Government throughout the universe, among all the creatures of God.
My favorite preachers were William Dawson, David Stoner and James Parsons, all eloquent and earnest men, and all decidedly practical. I never missed an opportunity of hearing them if they came within five or six miles of the place where I lived. And many of their sermons which I heard more than forty years ago are still fresh in my memory, and continue to exert a happy influence on my heart.
William Dawson was a local preacher, a farmer. He was a large, broad-chested, big-headed, strong built man,—one of the finest specimens of a well-made, thoroughly developed Englishman I ever saw. And he was full of life. There was not a sluggish atom in his whole body, nor a slow-going faculty in his whole soul. He had eyes like fire; and his face was the most expressive I ever looked upon. And his voice was loud as the fall of mighty waters. And it was wonderfully flexible, and full of music. And he always spoke in natural tones. There was nothing like cant or monotony in his utterance. Yet he would raise his voice to such a pitch at times that you could hear him half a mile away. He was the most perfect actor I ever saw, because he was not an actor at all, but awful, absolute reality. And he was a man of wonderful intelligence and good sense. And he was well read. His mind was full to overflowing of the soundest religious knowledge. And his good sound sense had no perceptible admixture of nonsense. Every sentence answered to your best ideas of the right, the true, the holy, the divine. His grammar, his logic, and his rhetoric were perfect, and all nature seemed to stand by to supply him with apt, and striking, and touching illustrations. And his soul was full of feeling. He seemed to sympathize with every form of humanity, from the helpless babe to tottering age, and to be one with them in all their joys and sorrows, and in all their hopes and fears. And now he would cry with the crying child, and then he would wail with the afflicted mother. All that is great, all that is tender, all that is terrible,—all nature, with all that is human, and much that was divine, seemed incarnated in him. He was the most wonderful embodiment of all that goes to make a great, a mighty, a complete man, and a good, an able, and an all-powerful preacher, it ever was my privilege to see. As a matter of course, his prayers, his sermons, and his public speeches were irresistible. Sinners trembled, and fell on their knees praying and howling. Saints shouted, and lost themselves in transports. His congregations were always crowded, and the dense, mixed masses of men and women, good and evil, old and young, all were moved by him like the sea by a strong wind. All understood him: all felt him; and all were awed and bowed as by the power of God. His sermons were always practical. Whether he spake to the saint or the sinner, he went directly to the conscience. And all that he said you saw. Sin stared you full in the face and looked unspeakably sinful; it rose and stood before you a monster group of all imaginable horrors and abominations. The sinner shook, he shrank, he writhed at the sight, in mortal agony. God, as Dawson pictured Him, was terrible in majesty and infinite in glory. Jesus was the perfection of tenderness, of love, and power, and almighty to save. Thousands were converted under him. His influence pervaded the whole country, and was everywhere a check on evil, and a power for good. The effect of his ministry on me, on my imagination, my mind and my heart, was living and powerful to the last degree, and I remember his sermons, and feel his power, to the present day, and he will dwell in my memory, to be loved and honored, as long as I live.
David Stoner was a travelling preacher. He lived in the same village as William Dawson, and was a member of his class. He was a disciple of Dawson in every respect, but in no respect a servile imitator. He was a man and not a slave. And he had much of Dawson's sense, and much of Dawson's power, though little or nothing of Dawson's natural dramatic manner. He was a fountain pouring forth a perpetual stream of truth and holy influence. The two were one in love, and light, and power, but in manner they differed as much as any two powerful preachers I ever knew. Both live in my soul, and speak with my voice, and write with my pen. Both had an influence in determining both the method of my preaching and the manner of my life in my early days.