“Weel, I had just three fauts to his sermon: firstly, it was read; and, secondly, it wasna weel read; and, thirdly, it wasna worth readin’!”—[Page 91.]
A sweeping criticism, and no mistake.
Dr. Norman Macleod was once preaching in a district in Ayrshire, where the reading of a sermon was regarded as the greatest fault a minister could be guilty of. When the congregation dispersed, an old woman, overflowing with enthusiasm, addressed her neighbour with, “Did ye ever hear onything sae grand? Wasna that a sermon?”
“Oh, ay,” replied her friend sulkily, “but he read it.”
“Read it,” reiterated the other with indignant emphasis, “I wudna hae cared gin he had whustled it.”
How the great Norman would enjoy this we can easily imagine! And yet it was not always plain sailing with the preacher who was a victim to “the paper.”
A certain minister had a custom of merely writing the heads of his discourses on small bits of paper, which he arranged and placed on the Bible before him, to be used in succession. One day, while he was expounding the second head, he became so excited in his manner that by a wave of his arm the ensuing slip was, unperceived by himself, swept over the edge of the pulpit, and, being caught in an air current in falling, was carried right out through the window, which for ventilation sake had been left partly open. On reaching the end of the second, he looked down for the third slip, but, alas! it was not to be found. “Thirdly,” he cried, looking round him with great anxiety. After a little pause, “Thirdly,” he again exclaimed, but still no thirdly appeared. “Thirdly, I say, my brethren,” pursued the bewildered clergyman, but not another word could he utter. At this point, while the congregation were partly sympathising in his distress, and partly rejoicing in such a decisive instance of the evil of using notes in preaching, an old woman came to the minister’s rescue with the remark—“Deed, sir, ye needna fash yersel’, for thirdly gaed oot at the window a quarter o’ an hour syne.”
That clergyman had not the inventive ingenuity of a Perth minister I have heard about. The latter had one really good sermon, which he styled the “White Horse,” and on occasions when he was called out to preach, which were few and far between, he invariably trotted out his “White Horse.” On one occasion he arranged to conduct the forenoon service in a church at some considerable distance, the regular minister of which being from home expected to return in time to preach himself in the afternoon. In the forenoon, the “White Horse” did the usual gallant service, but in the interval of public worship, the intelligence arrived that some untoward circumstance had prevented the native clergyman’s return, and that he (the Perth divine) would require to conduct the afternoon service also. Here was a demand which our Boanerges from the Fair City had not calculated on. He had brought no other sermon with him, and, even although he had, it would not have sustained the impression made by the “White Horse.” What was to be done? A moment’s reflection, and the difficulty was removed. “My dear brethren,” said he, when he stood up in the place of execution in the afternoon, “it was told to me in the interval that some of you when leaving the church were saying that the sermon which I preached from this place in the forenoon was not sound doctrine. I maintain that it was perfectly sound; and as I wish to convince everyone of you that it was so, I now ask you to give me your attentive hearing and I will preach the sermon over again.” And he did.
The hero of the next story was like unto the author of the “White Horse”:—
A Scotch gentleman, previous to a Continental tour, engaged as a travelling companion, a rather dissolute and ignorant Highland student, named Alexander Macpherson. Before they had been long abroad, the gentleman, to his regret, found himself compelled to part with his compagnon de voyage owing to his intemperate habits, and heard no more about him for several years. Happening, however, to drop into a secluded little Dissenting chapel in Wales, presided over by the Rev. Jonas Jones, as the board at the little gate revealed, he was astonished to find his dismissed servitor officiating in the pulpit, and astounded to hear him several times during the reading of the preliminary chapter turn the English into Highland Gaelic, prefacing his translation always in a sententious manner by the words, “or, as it is in the original,” and he was further astonished to hear from several of the congregation that Mr. Jones passed among them as a man of deep learning. After the conclusion of the service, he accosted the minister as he was leaving the church without any signs of recognition on that worthy’s part. “Do you not know me?” cried the gentleman, grasping his hand.