So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed!”
Has our religion been costly to us? Have we given up anything? These converts gave up their money-making sins publicly; and their public and costly repentance was made a great blessing. We wish every Christian who is engaged in any business that has made money for him at the expense of another’s morals, would see it his duty to make a bonfire of it! We have no doubt there are numbers of Christians whose consciences now and then give them a goutlike twinge. We do not doubt their religion because they do not obey their consciences; but we do say the word of God cannot grow mightily, it is stunted, and in consequence they are religious dwarfs, when they might have been giants in righteousness and holy influence.
XXXV. THE WAY TO PREACH TO THOSE WHO SLEEP IN SIN.
“Nathan said to David, Thou art the Man!”
But this was not the first thing he said. He approached the subject very carefully. David would not have allowed anyone to bring that subject home to him without resenting it. It is more than likely that very few were in the secret. Crafty Joab was not the man to let that story get out. It gave him power over the king all the time it was his secret, so that he could put pressure on David whenever he liked. We read, “The Lord sent Nathan unto David.” If we would know how to deal with our congregations, we must have the Lord’s commission.
Men may be on the Circuit Plan, and God leave them without appointments!
Let us never set off to preach without a message from God to the people, then we shall make folks say, what a plain Yorkshire Methodist said of Stoner, “Yon David’s varry thick with the Almighty.”
If the Lord send us, He will teach us how to talk, and most likely He will take us off the pulpit track. Some of us have given up the old “three-decker” style of preaching, feeling that it is as useless as last year’s almanack. Our hearers often knew what was coming, they heard the heads of the discourse, and began to see the end before we got there, wrapping themselves in a habit of indifference which
shielded them from the convictions we had hoped to produce. What “Californian Taylor” calls “Surprise Power,” ought to be in every discourse. David had no idea what the prophet meant to do before he had ended his story, and we should wait upon God until He has given us, not only the subject of our sermons, but the skill we need to take the sinner either by storm or holy subtilty.
The charming story with which Nathan began his address is instructive to those who wish to succeed as preachers. How interested the King became as he heard of the rich man’s greed and the poor man’s loss, until he was so stirred that he threatened the death of the tyrant! May not we preachers learn something here, that is, to interest our hearers, in order that we may profit them? Do we sufficiently care for this matter? Would it not be well, in the preparation of our addresses and sermons, to make sure that we are so interesting that our hearers cannot fail but listen? We should not be content with soundness of faith, or truthfulness of doctrine, but be so interesting as to command the attention of our audience. It is a question whether any man, who cannot make the people listen, should not be content to take his place in a pew. It is better to be able to heat or light the chapel well, than to wear out the patience of a congregation by prosy preaching, and it will be more to our eternal advantage to have been an industrious chapel-keeper than a dull preacher!