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LBCTURES
ON THE
HISTORY OF PREACHING
BY
JOHN A. BROADUS, D.D., LL.D.,
PROF. IN THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, LOUISVILLE, KV.
NEW EDITION.
NEW YORK:
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON
1893.
CAVEN LIBRARY
KNOX COLLEGE
TORONTO
80460
COI YKIGHT,
SHELDON & COMPANY,
1876.
PREFACE.
THESE lectures were delivered at the Newton The
ological Institution, near Boston, in May last. I had
been requested to discuss subjects connected with
Homiletics, and the place of delivery was the lecture-
room of the church. It was therefore necessary
that the lectures should be popular in tone, and
should abound in practical suggestions. Under such
circumstances, I could not fail to perceive the diffi
culty of treating, in four or five lectures, so vast a
subject as the History of Preaching. For this history
is interwoven with the general history of Christianity,
which itself belongs inseparably to the history of Civ
ilization. Yet I greatly desired to develop, however
imperfectly, the leading ideas involved in the history
of preaching ; to show what causes brought about the
prosperity of the pulpit at one time and its decline at
another ; to indicate the great principles as to preach-
IV PREFACE.
ing which are thus taught us. I trust that my at
tempt may be of service to those who have never made
any survey of this wide field, and may stimulate
some persons to study particular portions of it with
thoroughness, and thus gradually to fill up the gap
which here exists in English religious literature.
The principal helps which are accessible, chiefly in
other languages, are mentioned in the Appendix.
While using them with diligence, I have scarcely ever
simply borrowed their statements, and in such cases
have always indicated the fact. Where not giving the
results of my own study and teaching in the past, I
have sought to test by personal examination the ideas
and critical judgments of others, before adopting
them. At some points my knowledge has of necessity
been quite limited. If errors have arisen as to matter
of fact, I shall esteem it a favor to have them pointed
out. As regards the merits of particular preachers,
there is of course much room for difference of opin
ion. The sketches of eminent preachers are usually
very slight, but it could not be otherwise if space wai
to be saved for general ideas and for practical hints.
Some further explanations will be found at the be
ginning and end of the closing lecture.
PREFACE. V
The kind reception given to the lectures at New
ton by a general audience of ladies and gentlemen, as
well as by the Faculty and Students, has led me to
hope that they may find readers who are not ministers,
but who take interest in preaching, in Christianity, in
history.
God grant that the little volume may be of some
real use.
GREENVILLE, S. 0., OCT., 1876.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
SPECIMENS OF PREACHING IN THE BIBLE.
Design of the lectures 5
Judah before Joseph 6
Moses and Joshua 7
Jotham 8
David 8
Solomon 10
The Prophets 10
Elijah 12
Amos 13
Jonah 14
Isaiah 14
Jeremiah 16
Ezekiel 17
John the Baptist 19
Our Lord as a Preacher . . .22-36
Authoritative 22
Relation to the common mind 24
Controversial 25
Repetitions 27
Variety 81
Use of paradox and hyperbole 81
Tone and spirit 33
yiii CONTENTS.
Mel
The Epistles 36
Paul 38
Hia style 39
Adaptation 40
Christian Rhetoric 43
LECTURE II.
PREACHING IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CENTURIES.
First period 44
Second century 45
Informal preaching 46
Lay-preaching 47
Forgotten laborers 49
Not many wise 50
Origen 51
As scholar and teacher. 52
As to allegorizing. . . 53
As a preacher 56
Second period 57
Eusebius 63
Athanasius 63
Ephraem Syrus 64
Macarius 65
Asterius 66
Basil the Great 67
Gregory Nazianzen 71
Chrysostom 73
Ambrose 79
Augustine 81
General remarks, as to entrance on the ministry 84
As to education 86
A Theological Seminary 89
As to Christian classics 91
Blank after Chrysostom and Augustine , 91
CONTENTS. IX
LECTURE III.
MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION PREACHING.
MfU
Reasons for attention to Medieval Preaching 93
Peter the Hermit :... 95
St. Bernard 97
Dominicans and Franciscans ....... 100
Antony of Padua 101
Thomas Aquinas 106
Why all in twelfth and thirteenth centuries 109
Tauler 110
Huss and Savonarola 112
Reformation Preaching 1 13
A revival of preaching 113
A revival of Biblical and expository preaching 114
Of controversial preaching 116
Of preaching upon the doctrines of grace 117
Contrast between Luther and Calvin 118
Yet both great preachers 119
Calvin as a commentator and a preacher 121
Luther as a preacher 122
Personality in preaching 124
Zwingle 127
Public debates 128
Anabaptist preachers, viz
Hiibmaier 129
Grebel 132
Menno 133
Use of printing to aid preaching 188
LECTURE IV.
THE GREAT FRENCH PREACHERS.
Keltic eloquence 185
Ageol Louis XIV 180
X COKTE2STTS.
PAttl
Prosperity of France 137
An age of great intellectual activity 141
Of elegant general literature , 144
Excellence of the French language 145
Art 146
Catholics stimulated by the Reformed and by the Jansenists 147
The king s penchant for eloquent preaching . 148
Fashionable to admire pulpit eloquence 149
Low stage of the Catholic pulpit before Bossuet 151
Able Reformed preachers before Bossuet, viz.
Du Moulin 153
Faucheur 154
Daille 156
Bossuet 158
Bourdaloue 164
Fenelon 170
Du Bosc 171
Claude 172
Massillon 174
Saurin 177
Decline of the French pulpit in the eighteenth century . . . 180
Eloquent French preachers in the nineteenth century .... 182
Certain faults of the great French preachers 183
Letter from M. Bersier . . . 185
LECTURE V.
THE ENGLISH PULPIT.
Five periods 186
Wyclif 188
Colet 191
Latimer 192
John Knox 194
Decline after the Reformation 197
Revival in the next century 20(1
CONTENTS. XI
PAGl
Jeremy Taylor 201
Leighton , 203
Baxter 204
Owen... ... 206
Flavel 207
Bunyan 207
John Howe 209
Barrow 212
South 217
Tillotson 217
Threatened decline in the eighteenth century 219
Atterbury, Watts, Doddridge 221
Whitefield 222
Wesley 222
Robert Robinson 223
Robert Hall 224
Christmas Evans 226
William Jay 227
Chalmers 227
Recent English preachers 228
Expository preachers 229
Importance of reading old books 230
Suggestions for the future, viz.
As to Physical Science and Theology 231
Reaction from skepticism 231
Humanity of Christ 232
Humanitarian and liberal tendencies 233
Freedom as to methods of preaching 233
Love of sensation 234
Genuine eloquence 234
Conclusion . . .235
APPENDIX.
OK THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT.
LECTURE I.
SPECIMENS OP PREACHING IN THE BIBLE,
IT is my purpose in these lectures to offer you
some observations on the History of Preaching. The
subject is obviously too vast to be treated in five
lectures. You will please notice, therefore, that I
shall by no means attempt a systematic discussion of
the history of preaching, but shall only make obser
vations upon some of its most characteristic and
instructive periods. My general plan will be as fol
lows : While giving a brief account of the leading
preachers in one of these periods, I shall concern
myself chiefly with two inquiries; first, what was
the relation of these preachers to their own time,
and secondly, what are the principal lessons they
have left for us. These lessons will in part be
formally stated, but will often come out only in
the way of incidental remark as we go on. I
hope that we shall thus draw from the wide field
of our contemplation some immediate instruction
$ ON HISTORY OF PKEACHING.
and stimulus for our own work as preachers, and
also that you may become so far interested in the
subject as hereafter to occupy yourselves, more
largely than might otherwise have been the case,
with the truly magnificent literature of the Pulpit.
This first lecture will be devoted to Preaching
3 ^ in the Bible. I can only mention some of the
most important examples, including one or two
secular speeches which are of some interest. On
the Old Testament it is necessaiy to be particu
larly brief, in order to discuss somewhat more
fully the preaching of our Lord.
The speech of Judah before Joseph, is unsur
passed in all literature as an example of the sim-
plest,^ tenderest, truest pathos. And if you want
to see the contrast between pathos and bathos as
you will rarely see it elsewhere, just read the *e-
production of this speech by Philo (Works, II,
73, Mangey), elaborated in the starchy fashion of
the Alexandrian school and do by all means
read this as translated and expanded in worthy
Dr. Hunter s Sacred Biography, ironed out and
smoothed down into the miraculous elegance oi
style which belongs to the school of Dr. Blair.
MOSES. 7
That two men of cultivation, one of them a man
of eminent ability, should regard this vapid stufl
as in any sense an improvement upon Judah s
speech, is a phenomenon in criticism, and a warning
to rhetoricians.
We have a Farewell Address from Moses, viz.
the Book of Deuteronomy. And like many English
and German discourses, the sermon ends with a
hymn, composed by the preacher. Some students
of Homiletics would at once fasten on the fact that
this first recorded example of an extended discourse
was a written sermon. Others would reply that
in this case the speaker was aware that he was not,
by training or by nature, an orator, but a man
"slow of speech and slow of tongue." The one
remark would be about as good as the other, each
of them amounting to very little as is the case with
a great many other remarks that are made on botli
sides of the question thus alluded to.
There are two brief Farewell Addresses from
Joshua, which are really quite remarkable, as might
appear if we had time to analyze them, in their
finely rhetorical use of historical narrative, animated
dialogue, and imaginative and passionate appeal.
8 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
The brief speech of Jotham (Jud. ix.) is note
worthy, for although a purely secular speech, it offers
several points of suggestion to preachers. (1) He
had a magnificent pulpit, standing high on the
steep sides of Mt. Gerizim and some people appear
to think the pulpit a great matter in preaching.
(2) He had a powerful voice, for although beyond
the reach of arrow or sling, he could make himself
heard far below. This is not only an important gift
for open-air preaching, but it will be indispensable
for all preachers if we are to have many more of
these dreadful Gothic churches, which are so admir
able for everything except the proper object of a
church, to be a place for speaking and hearing.
(3) He employed a striking illustration, a fable.
(4) He applied the illustration, in a very direct and
outspoken manner, without fear or favor. (5) He
ran away from the sensation he had made.
David possessed such unique and unrivalled
gifts as a sacred poet, that we are apt not to think
of him as a speaker. But in sooth, this extraordinary
man seems to have been a universal genius, if ever
there was one, as well as to have had that for which
Margaret Fuller used to sigh, a universal experi-
DAVID. S
ence. And his speeches to Saul (1 Sam. xxiv and
xxvi), with his reply to Abigail (chap, xxv), do seem
to me, though so briefly recorded, to exhibit elo
quence of a very high order, on which you would
find it instructive and stimulating to meditate. We
ought to notice, too, the singularly skilful and ef
fective speech addressed to David by Abigail. Its
tact and sagacity are truly feminine ; some of the
most destructive German critics have admitted that
this at least is a genuine bit. Persons in search of
Scripture precedents might in this case also imagine
themselves to find one, by noting that we have here
a woman speaking in public. But again there is an
obvious reply, that this was not really a public ad
dress, but a petition addressed to one man, and that
in behalf of her husband, because he was a "fool" and
could not speak for himself. The address of Nathan
to David, the winning and touching parable with
which he stirs the king s feelings and awakens his
sense of right and wrong, and then the sudden and
pointed application, and fierce outpouring of the
story of his crimes, strikes even the most careless
reader as a model of reproof, a gem of eloquence.
Solomon, at the Dedication of the Temple, made
10 OK HISTORY OF PRE1CHIKG.
an address to the people, and then a prayer, th
first reported prayer of any considerable length
a prayer strikingly appropriate, carefully arranged,
and very impressive.
The singular hook of Ecclesiastes is a religious
discourse, a sermon. Its mournful text is often
repeated, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." The
discourse should be read as a whole, or listened to
while another reads, its successive portions ever
coming back, like a certain class of modern ser
mons, to the text as a melancholy refrain, sink
ing ever deeper into your heart with its pain
ful but wholesome lesson, till at last the ringing
conclusion is reached, " Fear God, and keep
his commandments, for this is the whole of man "
the whole of his duty and his destiny, the
whole of his real pleasure, the whole of his true
manliness, the all of man. I think we ought
never to repeat "All is vanity" without adding
Fear God, and keep his commandments, for thia
is all."
But the great preachers of Old Testament times
were the Prophets. You ... are no doubt all awar
THE PROPHETS. 11
that the New Testament minister corresponds not ^
A-" JtlSut^^
at all to the Old Testament priest, but in impor
tant respects to the Old Testament prophet. Alas f
that the great majority of the Christian world so <
early lost sight of this fact, and that many are
still so slow, even among Protestants, to perceive
it clearly. The New Testament minister is not a
priest, a cleric except in so far as all Christians
are a priesthood, a clergy, viz., the Lord s heritage
he is a teacher in God s name, even as the Old_ .
Testament prophet was a teacher, with the peculiar / /
advantage of being inspired. You also know that
it was by no means the main business of tho
prophets to predict the^uture as people are now
apt to suppose from our modern use of the word
prophet but ilial-ihey .spoke of^ the past and the
present, often^much more^ than of ^the _futiire.
The prophets remjndfid^the people of their sins,
exhorted them_tp_repent, ancL_ instructed them in
religious_and moral, in social _and_jperspnal duties ;
jind when they predjctg^ the future, it was almost
jn the_way of warning or encouragement,
gg^jve_to_ .forsake their . sins_ and serve God.
Tlie_^redictive element naturally attracts the chief
12 . ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
attentjon_pf Bible readers to-day .^and yet ii reality,
ag_things_stood then, it was alm^st__alwajs. subor-
dinate, and often comparatively diminutive. Tho
^rophots were preachers.
The earlier prophets have left us no full record
of their inspired teachings. From Samuel we have
a few, brief addresses, wise and weighty ; from the
great Elijah, several single sentences, spoken on
great occasions, and which are flashes of lightning
in a dark night, revealing to us the whole man and
his surroundings. Abrupt, terse, vehement, fiery,
these utterances are volcanic explosions from a fire
long burning within, and they make us feel the
power, the tremendous power, of the inspired
speaker. ILJs true of every born orator, that in his
grandest utterances you yet feel the man himself to
bejgreater than all he has said. And so we feel as
to Elijah. You have doubtless observed that Elijah
has given us a striking example of the use of ridi
cule in sacred discourse. He mocked the priests of
Baal, before all the people. Idolatry is essentially
absurd, and ridicule was therefore a fair way of ex
posing it. In like manner, all irreligion has aspects
and elements that are absurd, and it is sometiiu-*
THE PROPHETS. 13
useful (if carefully done) to show this by irony and
ridicule. In the book of Proverbs, irreligion is con
stantly stigmatized as folly, and frequently depicted
with the keenest sarcasm. Slight touches of irony
and scorn are also observed in the apostle Paul.
We have then a certain amount of Scripture exam
ple for the use of ridicule in preaching. But it
should be a sparing use, and very carefully man
aged.
Notice now the prophets from whom some con
nected teachings are preserved what we call
books of the prophets.
Some of these were highly educated men, per
haps trained, as some writers think, in the Theo
logical Schools begun by Samuel, "the schools of
the prophets." Yet others were destitute of all
such training. Amos says expressly (vii, 14) that
he was " DO prophet nor a prophet s son," i. e., not
trained in the schools as one of the so-called "sons
of the prophets," but that he was a shepherd and
gardener. Accordingly, many of his illustrationa
are rural, and thev_jag /Vis^, as we sometimes find
now in a gifted but uneducated country preacher.
The prophets frequently quote each other, as is well
1*
14 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING.
known, and besides quotations, they often exhibit
such similarity in leading thoughts and favorite ex
pressions as seems to indicate that they had studied
in the same schools. At any rate, they did carefully
study the inspired discourses of their predecessors
and contemporaries. Take now a few examples.
From Jonah, we have apparently only the bur
den or refrain of his preaching in Nineveh, and can
learn very little in the rhetorical sense, but we
catch right impressive glimpses of his character
and feeling. You see him (1) Shrinking from his
task as has been since done by many a preacher,
young and old. (2) Desponding when the excite
ment of long-continued and impassioned preaching
had been followed by reaction ; ready to take un
healthy views of his preaching and its results, of
God and man, of life and of death. (3) So much
concerned for his own credit more, in that morbid
hour, than for the welfare of man or the glory of
God.
The most eloquent _of_ j all the prophets, the
one from whom most can be learned as to preach
ing, is obviously Isaiah. Isaiah was the very oppo
site of Amos, the shepherd and gardener. H
ISAIAH. 15
at court during several reigns, and in that of Heze-
kiah was high in influence. He was a highly edu
cated man, a man of refined taste, and singular
literary power and skill. He enjoyed in the best
sense of that now often misused term, the advan
tage of Culture, with all its light and its sweetness.
His writings, like all the other inspired books, take
their literary character from the natural endow
ments, educational advantages, and social condition,
of the man. They exhibit an imperial imagination,
^ ^controlled by a disciplined intellect and by good
taste. This imagination shows itself in vivid and
rapid description, as well as in imagery. The care
ful and loving study of isaiah has educated many a
preacher s imagination to an extent of which he
was by no means conscious, and few things are so
important to an orator as the real cultivation of
imagination. True, the book of Isaiah presents
the poetic oftener than the strictly oratorical use of
this faculty. But the two shade into each other ;
and we also, when we become greatly excited, and
our hearers with us, do naturally use in speaking
such imaginative conceptions and expressions as gen
erally belong only to poetry. In Part I of the boofc
16 OX HISTORY OF PREACHING.
of Isaiah the oratorical element very distinctly pre
dominates it is direct address, aiming at practi
cal results in those who hear. Sometimes the style
even sinks into quiet narrative, but oftener it risea
into passionate appeal. And in Part IT (from the
40th chapter on), the orator is lost in the poet.
The prophet s soul is completely carried away by im
agination and passion, till we have no longer an
inspired orator directly addressing us, but a rapt
seer, bursting into song, pouring forth in rhythmical
strains his inspired and impassioned predictions. He
is like the angel that appeared to the shepherds,
whose message soon passed into song. Besides the
yet higher blessings which have come to the world
from the devotional and practical, the predictive
and theological contents of this grand prophet s
writings, who can estimate how much he has done
in training servants of God for the highest and
truest forms of religious eloquence !
Jeremiah, whom the Jews of our Lord s time
regarded as perhaps the greatest of the prophets,
has in modern times been much misunderstood, the
popular term "jeremiad "representing him as a dole
ful and weak lamenter, like some of the "weeping
JBBEMIAH. 17
preachers" we occasionally see, whose chief capa
city seems to lie in the lachrymal organs. But Jer
emiah uttered his " Lamentations " upon such great
and mournful occasion as might make the strong
est man weep, if truly patriotic and deeply pious.
And his discourses, like his personal history, recall
no tearful weakling, but a statesman and preacher
of strong character and_intense earnestness, tender
in pity__but resolu^e__of_jpurpose. Such a man s
hursts of passionate grief are a mighty power in elo-
quence. Jeremiah is also an example in the way of
preaching unwritten discourses, and then, by divine
direction, gathering them up into a book, with the
hope of thus renewing and deepening their impres
sion on the popular mind (xxxvi, 2, 3).
Among the other prophets I can only say a word
as to Ezekiel. His high-wrought imagery has little
power to develop our imagination (compared with
Isaiah), because mainly very far removed from our
modes of thought and feeling. But as to the spirit
of the preacher he offers us singularly valuable in
struction. E. g., "And go, get thee unto the chil
dren of thy people, and speak unto them and tell
them Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, whether thej
18 Otf HISTORY OF PKEACHLSfG.
will hear, or whether they will forbear." " When I
say unto the wicked, wicked (man), thou shall
surely die ; if thou dost not speak to warn the
wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die
in his iniquity ; but his blood will I require at
thine hand." Nor are there any sadder words in
all the Bible for a preacher, any that more touch-
ingly appeal to a common and mournful experience,
than the following: "And they come unto thee a!
the people cometh, and they sit before thee as
my people, and they hear thy words, but they will
not do them : for with their mouth they show
much love, but their heart goeth after their covet-
ousness. And lo, thou art unto them as a very
lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and
can play well on an instrument : for they hear thy
words, but they do them not." Alas I how often
still, they come and hear, they are entertained and
pleased, they go off with idle praises, and that is
all!
We cannot stop to speak of Ezra, and his
grand expository discourse "from the morning
until midday;" nor of Malachi, with his sharp com
mon sense, and his home-thrusts of question and an
JOHK THE BAPTIST. 19
swer; nor of that curious production of the Inter-
biblical period called the 4th Book of Maccabees, really
a sort of sermon by a Jew who had become a Stoic
philosopher ; nor of much else that might have
some interest for we must come at once to the
New Testament.
John the Baptist^ the herald of Messiah s ap
proach, presents several good lessons as to preach
ing. Consider (1) His fearlessness. The Pharisees
and Sadducees represented the culture and wealth,
the best social respectability and religious reputation
of the time, and yet when their conduct de
manded it, he boldly called them a brood of
vipers. He was braver than Elijah, who faced
Ahab but was so frightened by one threatening
message from Jezebel that he ran the whole length
of the land, and a day s journey into the desert,
and wanted to die ; while the new Elijah declared
Herodias an adulteress, though he knew her char
acter and must have foreseen her relentless wrath.
(2) His humility always turning attention away
from himself to the Coming One, testifying of him
on every occasion, willing to decrease that he might
20 OS HISTORY OF PREACHING.
increase. (3) His practicalness.. He brought a grand
and thrilling announcement, but brought also a
practical injunction, for which it was to be the
motive. "The reign of heaven has come near
therefore repent." And you have noticed his re
markable directions in Luke iii, to the people at
large, to the publicans, to the soldiers, indicating
to each class its characteristic fault, hitting the
nail on the head at every blow. (4) His striving
after, j.mmediate results^ He did not say, go off
and think about it, and in the course of time you
may come to repentance ; he said, repent now,
profess it now, and show it henceforth, by fruit
worthy of repentance. (5) His use of a ceremony
to reinforce his preaching, and exhibit its results
a ceremony so solemn to those receiving_ii^_o_
impressive to_the spectators. Many a prophet had
preached that men should repent, i. e., should turn
from their sins, many had enforced the exhortation
by predicting the coming of Messiah (though they
could not declare it to be certainly near), but
here was a striking novelty; this prophet bade
them receive, and at his hands, a nvst thorough
purification, in token that they did repent, and
JOHK THE BAPTIST. 21
did wish to be subjects of the kingdom of God.
This striking and novel ceremony gave name,
among all the people, to the man and his min
istry. John the Baptizer, he was universally
called, as we see from the fact that he is so
named in the Gospels and Acts, and in Joseplms
too. And when Jesus in the last week of hia
ministry asked the chief priests and scribes a
question about John, he did not say, the preach
ing of John nor, the ministry of John nor, the
work of John but, "the baptism of John, was it
from heaven, or of men ?" That represented to the
people his whole mission. Now apart from all its
significance in other respects, we can see that this
ceremony had an important bearing on his preach
ing, as picturing what the preaching demanded,
and as an appropriate action by which the people
promptly set forth the effect which the preaching
had produced on them. Many of the measures em
ployed now, by which hearers may show that they
are impressed, and profess their purposes, are but
appeals, more or less wise, to these same princi
ples of human natu/e to which John s baptism
appealed.
22 ON HISTORY OF PEEACHINO.
The central figure of Scripture, for our preeeni
purpose as in all other respects, is the Saviour himself.
We can but touch a few of the many points that
here present themselves. Our Lord as a Preacher,
is a topic that has waited through all the ages for
thorough treatment, and is waiting still.
(1) Every one observes that as a preacher our
Lord was authoritative. You know that the tone
of the ordinary Jewish teachers at that time was quite
different from this. If some question was under
discussion in synagogue or theological school, an
aged man with flowing white beard and tremulous
voice would say "When I was a boy, my grand
father who was a Kabbi often told me how R.
Nathan Bar Tolmai used to say so and so." For
them nothing was weighty till sanctified by anti
quity, nothing could be settled save by the accumu
lation of many ancient opinions. But here came a
teacher who spake,, as one having authority, who
continually repeated, Ye have heard that it was said
to the ancients, but / say to you; in a way which
no one could think of calling egotism, which all
recognized as the tone of conscious and true author
ity. Of course our Lord was unique in this respect^
OUR LORD AS A PREACHER. 23
but in truth every preacher who is to accomplish
much must, in his manner and degree, speak with
authority. And do you ask how we may attain this ?
For one thing, by personal study of Scripture.
What you have drawn right out of the Bible, by
your own laborious examination, you will uncon
sciously state with a tone of authority. Again, by
personally systematizing the teachings of Scripture,
or at any rate carefully scrutinizing any proposed
system in every part before accepting it, so that you
feel confident, as a matter of personal conviction,
that it is true. Further, by personal experience
of the_j3owex of the truth. And in general, by_j)er^
. And the authority drawn from
all these sources will be every year augmented by
the usefulness already achieved, for the French
proverb is here profoundly true, "There is nothing
that succeeds like success."
(2) I shall not dwell upon the originality of oui
Lord s preaching. This has been sufficiently treated
by various popular writers. In fact, I think they
have insisted too much on this point, and I prefer
to urge,
(3) That although so original, he brought hii
24 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
teachings into relation to the common mind. He did
not startle his hearers with his originality, but em
ployed current modes of thought and expression.
E. g. y The Golden Kule was not wholly new tc
the world. Confucius, Isocrates and others had
taught the negative side of it ; our Lord states it
as a positive precept, thus making the rule much
more comprehensive, and more widely important.
Moreover, the essential principle was really con
tained in Lev. xix, 18. So the Golden Eule waa
not presented as something absolutely new. Again,
the thought of the Fatherhood of God was not
alien to the heathen mind, and was sometimes taught
in the Old Testament. Christ brought it out clearly,
and made the thought familiar and sweet. Further
more, he taught much that had to be more fully de
veloped by the apostles ; since men could not under
stand any full account of certain doctrines till the
facts upon which they were to rest had taken place
for example, atonement and intercession. Arid he
acted upon the same principle in his mode of stating
things. He used proverbs and other current mndpa
of_exnressjon. He drew inustrationjL_entirely from
tbings_familiar with his_hearers. Anil what thej
OUR LORD AS A PREACHER. 25
could not then understand he stated in para
bles, which might be remembered for future reflec
tion.
I repeat, then, that our Lord tempered his ori
ginality, so as to keep his teachings within reach
of the common mind. If you are teaching a child,
you do not present thoughts entirely apart from and
above the child s previous consciousness; you try
to link the new thoughts to what the child has
thought of before. Thus wisely did our Lord teach
the human race. But unreflecting followers have
felt bound to insist that his ethical as well as his
theological teachings were absolutely original; and
superficial opposers have imagined they were detract
ing from his honor when they showed that for the
most part he only carried farther and lifted higher
and extended more widely the views of ethical
truth which had been dimly caught by the univer
sal human mind, or had at least been seen by the
loftiest souls. What they make an objection is a
part of the wisdom of our Lord s preaching.
(4) His teachings were to a great extent contro
versial, polemical. He was constantly aiming at
some error or evil practice existing among his
26 ON HISTORY OF PEE ACHING.
hearers. You remember at once how this principle
pervades the entire Sermon . on . . jbhe _ Mount. Ilia
strong words as to wealth and poverty were ad
dressed to the Jews, who believed that to be rich
was a proof of God s favor, and to be poor was
a sure sign of his displeasure. "No man can
come to me except the Father which sent me draw
him, " was said to the fanatical crowd who imagined
they were coming to him and following him because
they were gaping at his miracles and delighted to
get food without work. Like examples abound. In
fact, there are very few of his utterances that have
not a distinctly polemical character, aimed at his
immediate hearers ; and we must take account of
this, as affecting not the principles but the mode
of stating them, or we shall often fail to make
exact and just interpretation of his teachings. The
lesson here as to our own preaching is obvious,
though very important. Truth, in this world op
pressed with error, cannot hope, has no right, to
keep the peace. Christ came not to cast peace upon
the earth, but a sword. We must not shrink fronj
antagonism and conflict in proclaiming the gospel,
publicly or privately; though in fearlessly maintain*
OCR LORD AS A PREACHER. 27
ing this conflict we must not sacrifice courtesy, oi(
true Christian charity.
(5) Our Lord s frequent repetitions are remark
able and instructive. I shall mention some exam
ples, of course not giving mere parallel accounts
from the different Evangelists of the same occasion,
but cases in which the same saying is recorded as
repeated on different occasions.
The Son of man is come to save that which
was lost, was spoken twice. Matt, xviii, 11; Luke xix,
10. If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
etc. (3), Matt, xvii, 20 ; xxi, 21 ; Luke xvii, 5.
Whosoever shall confess me, etc. (3), Matt, x, 32 ;
Luke xii, 8 ; ix, 26. He that finds his life shall
lose it, etc., (4), Matt, x, 38-9 ; xvi. 24^-5 ; Luke
xvii, 33 ; John xii, 25. Take up his cross and
follow me (4), Matt. x. 38 ; xvi, 24 ; Luke xiv, 27 ;
Mark x, 21. Whosoever exalteth himself shall be
abased, etc. (3), Matt, xxiii, 12 ; Luke xiv, 11 ; xviii,
14. Except ye become as little children, etc. (2),
Matt, xviii. 3 ; xix, 14 ; and other modes, besides
these two, of inculcating the same lesson of humil
ity (2), Matt, xx, 26; Jo. xiii, 13 ff. (comp. Luke
xxii, 24, ff.)
28 OK HISTOKY OF PREACHING.
The servant is not greater than his lord (4)
Matt. x. 24 ; Luke vi. 40 ; John xiii, 6, and xv,
20, where he refers to the fact that he had told
thorn this before. In two other cases, John xiii,
33 (comp. vii. 34 ; viii. 21), and x, 26, he speaks
of having before told them what he is now say
ing again.
Where I am, there shall also my servant be
(3), John xii, 26 ; xiv, 3 ; xvii, 24.
To these examples of short sayings (and there
are others) add the fact that considerable portions
of the Sermon on the Mount, as given by Mat
thew, are also given by Matthew and the other
Synoptics as spoken on other occasions. E. g., The
remarkable exhortation to take no thought, etc., ten
verses of Matt, vi, is reproduced with slight altera
tion in Luke xii, the former in Galilee, the latter
probably long afterwards, and in Judea or Perea.
The Lord s Prayer, Matt, vi, 9-13, was given on a
later occasion, Luke xi, 2-4, in a greatly shortened
form (according to the correct text), but with all
the leading thoughts retained. So likewise the in
structions to the 70 disciples (Luke x, 1, ff.) closely
resemble those previously given to the twelve apos-
OUR LORD AS A PREACHER. 29
ties (Matt, x, 5, if.) The lament over Jerusalem was
made three times, and our Lord foretold his death
to hie disciples five times. The parable of the pounds
(Luke xix.) was reproduced a few days afterwards
in the parable of the talents (Matt, xxv.), with
only some special features omitted.
There are numerous other examples. And that
so many should occur in the four extremely brief
memoirs we have, the fourth, too, being almost en
tirely different from the others, is very remarkable.
These repetitions may for the most part be classified
as follows : (1) Diiferentjmdiences, being similar in
condition and wants, needed some of the same
lessons. (2) Some brief, .J>ithy sayings would natu
rally be introduced in different connections. (3)
Some lessons were particularly hard to be learned,
as humility, cross-bearing, etc.; and so as to the
great difficulty the twelve had in believing that the
Messiah was really going to be rejected and put
to death.
And what instruction do we find for ourselves
in this marked feature of our Lord s preaching ?
Here was the wisest of all teachers ; in him was no
poverty of resources, no shrinking from mental exer-
30 Off HISTORY OP PREACHING.
tion. He must have repeated because it was best
to repeat. Freshness and variety are very desirable,
no doubt ; but the fundamental truths of Christi
anity are not numerous, and men really need to
have them often repeated. And many preachers,
carried away by the tendencies of the present age,
our furious 19th century, when the chief reading of
most people is newspapers and books called emphat
ically novels, and the Kaivfaep6v of the lounging Athe
nians pales before the eagerness with which we
rush to bulletin boards to catch the yet later news
that has just girdled the world, many preachers go
wild with the desire for novelty and the dread of
repetition, and fall to preaching politics and news,
science and speculation, anything, everything, to
Refresh. Let the example of the Great Preacher
be to us a rebuke, a caution, a comfort. A preacher
should be a living man, and strive to get hold of
his contemporaries ; yet nearly all of the good that
preachers do is done not by new truths but by old
truths, with fresh combination, illustration, appli
cation, experience, but old truths, yea, and often
repeated in similar phrase, without apology and
without fear.
OUR LORD AS A PREACHER. 31
(6) Inhere _is_np real conflict with all this when
we add : Consider the wonderful variety of our
Loid s methods of_teachjiig. Variety as to glace.
He preached in synagogues, courts of the temple,
private houses ; in deserts, on the mountain side,
by the lake shore, from the boat ; to crowds, or to
single persons ; anywhere, everywhere. Variety, too,
as to occasion. Some of his discourses were delib
erately undertaken, it would seem, with reference
to certain conjunctures in his ministry, as the Ser
mon on the Mount, the instructions preceding the
Mission of the Twelve (Matt, x), the discourse on
the Mount of Olives, the Farewell Address to his
disciples, etc. But most of them appear to have
been suggested at the moment, by particular events
and circumstances, as the visit of Nicodemus, the
woman coming to Jacob s well, the message of John
the Baptist, the application of the rich young man,
the story of the Galileans whom Pilate had slain,
etc.
And variety as to modes of stating truth. He
employed authoritative assertion, arguments of many
kinds, explanation, illustration, appeal and warn
ing. He also used striking paradoxes and hyperbol
32 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHIKG.
ical expressions to wake up his hearers, and make
them listen and remember and think, e. g., "Who
soever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to
him the other also." Let us pause a moment, and
consider. Many persons have been perplexed by
this saying of our Lord, many have misunderstood
it, but one thing is certain, no one ever forgot it,
when once read or heard, and no one ever failed to
reflect that it stands in the strongest antagonism to
our natural feelings of resentment and revenge.
Now remember. Our Lord was for the most part a
street preacher and a field preacher. He had to
gather his audiences and hold them, to awaken their
minds, to lodge some leading and suggestive truths
permanently in their memory. When we recall
these conditions of his teaching, together with the
fact that many of his hearers were indifferent a id
not a few were hostile, we may perceive why he
should have somewhat frequently used what we may
fairly call extravagant hyperboles, sayings which
will mislead if taken literally, but which under
stood as they were intended are in an unrivalled
degree instructive and suggestive, sure to be remem
bered, weighty and mighty.
OUR LOED AS A PREACHER. 33
In thus using pithy, and paradoxical or hyper
bolical statements, our Lord was suiting himself
to the customs as well as the wants of his hearers.
There are scores of the Proverbs of Solomon, that are
really of the same character. E. g., what does this
mean ? When thou sittest to eat with a ruler,
mark well what is before thee ; and put a knife to
thy throat if thou art given to appetite (Prov.
xxiii, 2). Better cut your throat than eat greedily
before his excellency. And so with many other
sayings of the uninspired Jewish teachers, as re
corded in some of the Rabbinical books.*
" But are not such expressions hard to inter-
pret, and likely to be misunderstood ? " Yes, they
require care, breadth of view and sound judgment
to interpret them. And I think it absolutely neces
sary, if we would interpret aright the teachings of
our Lord, to remember that he spoke not as a sci
entific lecturer but as a preacher, a preacher for
the most part to the common people, an open-air
preacher, addressing restless and mainly unsympa-
thizing crowds. In fact one will be all the better
* My attention was called to this last fact by iny colleague
Dr. TOT.
3*
34 ON" HISTORY OF PREACHIKG.
prepared to interpret these discourses if he hai
himself had experience of practical preaching undei
similar conditions. Some of our Lord s paradoxical
and hyperbolical sayings have been often and griev
ously misunderstood. Interpreting them literally,
some good people have tried, for example, to re
frain from all self-defence, to give to all beggars,
etc. ; and other good people, seeing that these
things were impracticable, have sadly despaired of
living in any respect up to the requirements of
him who has so earnestly urged us to hear his
sayings and do them ; while many opposers have
eneeringly said that the morality taught by Jesus
is impossible, and therefore really unwise. Misun
derstood yes, I suppose our Lord has been worse
misunderstood than any other teacher that evei
spoke to the human race. But what of that ?
All powerful things are very dangerous if improp
erly handled. That which can ao no harm though
misused, can it do any good ? Our attempts at
usefulness in this world may always be represented
as to their results by this simple algebraical for
mula: + So much good done So much harm done
~ So much. It is our duty, as far as possible,
OUR LORD Ab A PREACHER. 33
to diminish the harm as well as increase the good;
but ran we ever reduce the harm down to zero,
w tnout reducing the good to zero too ? If we are
too pamfulbf^olicitous to avoid doing harm, we
shall do nothing.
The notions of our " sensation preachers " con
tain an element of truth. And to find that true
and good and mighty something which they grope
after in darkness and do not reach, we have but
to study the preaching of Jesus Christ.
(7) I add but a word as to his .tone and spirit.
These cannot be fully analyzed, hut we must seek
to imitate them as far as we can apprehend, or
can catch by sympathy. We must meditate on his
perfect jBdelity to truth, and yet perfect courtesy
and Jkindliness ; his severity in rebuking, without
any tinge of bitterness ; his directness and simpli
city, and yet his tact wise as the serpent, with
the simplicity of the dove; his complete sympathy
with man, and also complete sympathy with God
bringing beaven down to earth, that he might
lift up earth to heaven.
And so in him we see, as we see in all his
more worthy followers, that materials of preaching
86 ON HISTOKY OF PREACHING.
are important, and methods of preaching are im
portant, but that most important of all is per
sonal character and spirit.
I have time for but a few words as to the
preaching of the Apostles. I regret this, because
we may find in their discourses a greater number
of practical lessons as to preaching, than in other
parts of Scripture. But it is also easier to find
those lessons here than elsewhere, and one who is
interested in the matter will have comparatively
little need of help.
The apostolical Epistles were not in general ex
pected to be read by all or by many of those to
whom they were sent, but were written addresses,
designed to be read out in meeting, and listened to.
Most of them are really written sermons, not writ
ten to be read by the author himself, but sent to
some distant church to be read there by another
person. Especially is this true of 1 Corinthians,
Galatians, Romans, Colossians, and the Circular let
ter or address which we call Ephesians ; also of the
discourses sent out by James, Peter, Jude, John,
Most of all is it true of the epistle or discourse
THE APOSTLES. S
to the Hebrews, which has every n ark of being a
sermon, and concerning the origin of which I de
cidedly prefer the theory of Clement and Origen,
that it was a sermon preached by Paul, and re
ported by some other person, perhaps by Luke,
who has reported so many other discourses of his
in Acts. However that may be, it is clear tha*
many of what we commonly describe as epistles are
really sermons. Nearly all of those to whom they
were originally addressed got their knowledge of
them not by reading them but by hearing them
read, as it is said in the Apocalypse, "Blessed is
he that readelh, and they that hear," etc. It is
important to recall this fact for several reasons.
(1) In the enthusiasm which is now rightly and
nobly felt for popular education, there is danger
of our imagining that the ability to read is indis
pensable to one s being a Christian. Certainly it is
eminently desirable that the freedmen of the South,
for example, should learn to read, and we must all
labor for this; and yet some of them are not only
sincere but somewhat intelligent Christians, simply
oy hearing the Bible read, as among the early
Christians. (2) If the apostolical discourses weie
38 ON HISTOttY OF PKEACHLKTO.
originally designed to be read aloud to congrega*
tions, do they not err who suppose that there ia
little need now of publicly reading the Scriptures,
because " everybody, " as they phrase it, can now
read the Bible for himself ? Still is the saying
true, "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that
hear." (3) "What we call the Epistles can often
be better understood by studying them as dis
courses than as in the strict sense epistles. And
useful lessons can be drawn from them as to the
best methods of preaching.
Besides these great discourses, written verbatim
after the dictation of the inspired authors, we
have in Acts brief and usually condensed reports
of other discourses, chiefly addresses by Peter and
by Paul. From all these there is really much to
be learned as to methods of preaching. Especially
do the discourses, both in Acts and in the so-called
Epistles, of the great apostle Paul, furnish a rich
field for homiletical study.
How profitable it would be to examine nar
rowly his argumentation, as in Galatians, Eomans,
Colossians, Hebrews. Also to study his bursts of
passionate feeling, and vehement exhortations, at
PAUL. Si
in 2 Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, Hebrews.
How instructive would be the collection and clas
sification of his illustrations, which are not often
drawn from nature (as in James), but chiefly from
the practical life of men, their business, their
amusements, etc. And his style is singularly rich
in rhetorical lessons a style consisting not in
quietly earnest and straightforward talk, like practi
cal Peter, and not poetic, pictorial, vivid like James,
but logic set on fire a ceaseless stream of argu
ment and earnest appeal, often swelling into a
torrent which bears everything along, confusedly,
perhaps, but with mighty force, resistlessly. You
see in the various addresses and epistles of Paul the
style of a many-sided man here a Boanerges in
passionate vehemence, and there as tender as a
woman s love hesitating not to break sentences in
twain by sudden bursts or digressions piling strong
words upon each other, like Ossa upon Pelion, in
the struggling effort to reach the height of his
great argument, to give fit expression to his swell
ing emotion scorning the wisdom of words, the
strained and artificial energy and elegance in which
the degenerate Greeks of the day delighted, and
40 ON HISTORY Of PREACHING.
yet producing without apparent effort a gem oi
literary beauty not surpassed in all the world s lit
erature, that oulogiuni upon love, which blazes like
a diamond on the bosom of Scripture. As I said
of Isaiah, so it may be said of Paul, that thousands
have unconsciously learned from him how to preach.
And how much richer and more complete the les
son may be if we will apply ourselves to it
consciously and thoughtfully.
One point as to the great apostle s preaching I
must not omit to mention the striking adaptation
of every discourse to the audience and the occa
sion. You have noticed that in the synagogue at
Antioch in Pisidia he spoke as a Jew to the Jews,
arguing from Scripture and from their national his
tory. At Lystra, among ignorant and barbarous
idolaters, he utters the simplest truths of natural
religion, while at Athens those same truths were
brought out with varied, profound and skilful ar
gument, and with a courtly grace of expression
which came spontaneously to the lips of a culti
vated and refined man in addressing such an audi
ence. Similar examples of adaptation are seen in
the great series of Apologies, before the fanatical
PAUL. 41
Jews who had been trying to kill him in the tem
ple court, before the Sanhedrim, before Felix and
Festus, before Agrippa, and to the Jews_at Rome.
No one of all the apostle s discourses recorded in
Acts would have been suitable to take the place
of any other. So likewise as to his Epistles. Think
of sending Eomans to Corinth, or Colossians to
Rome and so of the rest.
There is here a surpassingly important lesson
for preachers. Every discourse ought to be so care
fully and precisely adapted to the particular audi
ence and occasion, that it would not suit another
occasion or audience without important alteration.
Very rarely is it allowable, if ever, to make a ser
mon so general that it will suit all places equally
well, for then it does not exactly suit any place.
If you do not attempt to imitate Paul in anything
else as to preaching, be sure to follow his exam
ple in this that you try to adapt every sermon
to that time, that place, that people ; and if you
repeat it elsewhere, search eagerly beforehand to
find out at least some points of specific adaptation
to the new occasion and congregation. Even though
these points be sometimes very slight in them
& ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
selves, yet they may act like the delicate tendrils
which hold the vine to its supports, and are essen
tial to its fruitfulness.
I close with one general inquiry. When we note
how many specimens of eloquence the Scriptures
present, and see how instructive they are, even upon
a hurried glance, are we to conclude, as some vir
tually maintain, that the Art of Preaching should
be learned exclusively from the Bible ? I answer,
No, by no means. Men think they put honor upon
the Bible by maintaining this, and by insisting
that Homiletics shall be regarded as essentially dis
tinct from Ehetoric. In like manner some are very
unwilling to admit that Christian sculpture is in
ferior to that of the ancient Greeks ; and I remem
ber an American book in which it is earnestly con
tended that the model of the Parthenon must have
been derived from Solomon s temple through the
Phenicians, to be sure. Justin Martyr, who lived
in Palestine less than a century after the crucifixion,
told Trypho that Jesus, in his carpenter-life at
Nazareth, made ploughs and ox-yokes, and there is
nothing improbable in the statement. Would you
CHRISTIAN RHETORIC. 43
Buppose that he made ploughs of a new pattern,
greatly better than those in use there before ? Why
should he not introduce all our modern improvements
in ploughs, yea, and all those of the ages yet to
come ? You answer, our Lord came into the world
to teach moral and spiritual truth, and not to intro
duce mechanical inventions. Precisely so as to archi
tecture, then, and sculpture, and all the arts, in
cluding the art of Ehetoric. In speaking, our Lord
and the prophets and the apostles have left us no
ble and highly instructive examples, from which
we ought lovingly to learn. But they employed
the methods common in their time, and natural
to the Shemitic races. And we are really follow
ing their example, in the spirit of it, if we employ
the methods best suited to the Aryan races, and to
modern thought and modern feeling.
LECTURE II
ON PREACHING IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN
CENTURIES.
THE ascension of our Lord, according to the
most probable Chronology, was in A. D. 30. Now
in A. D. 430 was the death of Augustine, the
last great preacher of the early centuries. We thus
have a period of exactly four centuries. If we
divide this, the year 230 will fairly represent the
life and work of Origen (died 253), who forms the
transition from the earlier to the later style of
Christian preaching.
We have first to deal, then, with the two cen
turies from 30 to 230, from the Ascension to tho
time of Origen.
For the greater part of this first period, we
know very little of Christian preaching, after the
close of the New Testament ifcself. The few work a
that remain to us from the so-called Apostolic
SECOND CEKTUKT. 45
Fathers, are related to preaching just as were the
Epistles of the inspired Apostles. They are let
ters, but designed to be read in public, and some
of them showing oratorical feeling, though they
have not the oratorical form. Still more is this
true of Justin Martyr, particularly in his Apologies ;
you feel that here is a thoroughly oratorical nature.
Ignatius, Justin, Polycarp, must have been vigor
ous, impassioned, powerful preachers ; and so with
some of the other "Apologists" (besides Justin),
whose writings in defence of Christianity remain
to us. But from none of them does anything re
main that could be called a sermon, nor from any
one else before Origen, except two small fragments
of homilies from the famous Gnostic Yalentinus
(preserved by Clement of Alexandria), which are of
curious interest, but not homiletically instructive.
Irenoeus was a man of great earnestness and force,
but not even in the references to his lost writ
ings is there any mention of sermons. The writ
ings of Tertullian amply show that he was a
born orator. His penetrating insight into subjects,
his splendid imagination, his overpowering passion,
the torrent-like movement of his style, heedless
46 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
of elegance and of grammatical accuracy, his verj
exaggerations, and his fiery assaults upon his an
tagonists, all seem to show the man born to he a
speaker. A lawyer in his youth, it is natural to
suppose that he exercised himself much in oral
Christian teaching, and his great familiarity with
the Bible qualified him for the task. But none of
his writings approach the form of a sermon. We
should not even know from his own works, that
he ever became a presbyter, though Jerome states
that he did.
For this almost entire want of sermons remain
ing from the first two centuries, there are several
reasons, which we need not go far to seek.
The preaching of the time_was_in general quite
informal. The preacher did not make Myot*, dis_-
courses, but only 6/iiMac, homilies, that is cqnversa-
tipns,_talks. Even in the fourth century, there waa
** still retained, by some out of the way congregation*,,
the practice of asking the preacher many questions,
and answering questions asked by him, so as tv
make the homily to some extent a conversation.
And in this period it was always a mere famil
iar talk, which of course might rise into dignity,
SECOND CENTURY. 4?
and swell into passion, but only in an informal
way. The general feeling appears also to have
been that dependence on the promised blessing oi
theParaclete forbade elaborate preparation of dis*
courses. And this feeling would prevent many
from writing out their discourses after they were
spoken, as the same feeling appears to have pre
vented the German Anabaptists of the sixteenth
century, and many American Baptist ministers a
century ago.
But we must by no means imagine there was
but little preaching during the two first centuries,
because no sermons remain. In fact preaching was
then very general, almost universal, among the
Christians. Lay-preaching was not an exception, it
was the rule. Like the first disciples the Christiana
still went everywhere preaching the word. The
notion that the Christian minister corresponded
to the Old Testament priest had not yet gained
the ascendency. We find Irenaeus and Tertul
lian insisting that all Christians are priests. We
learn from Eusebius (History VI. 19) that Origen,
before he was ordained a presbyter, went to Pales*
tine, and was invited by the bishops of Caesarea
48 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
and Jerusalem to "expound the sacred Scripturei
publicly in the church." The bishop of Alexan
dria, who was an enemy to Origen, condemned
this, declaring it unheard of "that laymen should
deliver discourses in the presence of the bishop."
But the bishop of Jerusalem pronounced that no
tion a great mistake, appealing to various examples.
It was still common in some regions, though now
unknown in others, to invite laymen who coulc
edify the brethren, to do so ; and this even ^vlian
sacerdotal feeling was growing strong.
In these first centuries, then, almost all the Chris
tians preached. Thus, preaching was informal,
and therefore unrecorded. Even of the presbyters
at that time, few were educated or had much
leisure for study. And when some able and schol
arly man became a Christian, however he might
occupy himself with profound studies, and the
preparation of elaborate works, as Justin or Cle
ment of Alexandria, Irenseus or Tertullian, yet
when he stood up to preach, then like Faraday in
the little Sandemanian chapel in London, he would
lay his studies aside and speak impromptu, with the
greatest simplicity.
SECOND CENTURY. 49
It is 9 favorite and just idea of recent writers on
hi story, that the historian should not confine him
self, as was so long common, to men in high places,
and to single great events, but should try to re
produce the life of the many, and the numerous
forces affecting that life, and gradually preparing
for the great events. This, however, can never be
fully done, and the shortcoming is of necessity par
ticularly great in the history of preaching. Yet
let us at least bear in mind that the early progress
of Christianity, that great and wonderful progress
to which we still appeal as one of the proofs of its
Divine origin, was due mainly to the labors of ob
scure men, who have left no sermons, and not even
a name to history, but whose work remains plain
before the all-seeing eye, and whose reward is sure.
Hail, ye unknown, forgotten brethren ! we cele
brate the names of your leaders, but we will not
forget that you fought the battles, and gained the
victories. The Christian world feels your impress,
though it has lost your names. And we likewise,
if we cannot live in men s memories, will rejoice at
the thought that if we work for God, our work
shall live, and we too shall lire in our work.
50 ON HISTORY OF FRE ACHING.
And not only are these early laborers now un
known, but most of them were in their own daj
little cared for by the great and the learned, most
of them were uneducated. Throughout the first
two or three centuries, it continued to be true that
not many wise according to the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble, were called to be Christian
ministers or Christians at all. It was mainly the
foolish things, weak things, base things, that God
chose. And what power they had through the
story of the cross, illuminated by earnest Christian
living ! There is a famous passage of Chrysostom
(Homily xix. on the Statues), in which he bestows
generous and exuberant eulogy on the country
preachers around Antioch, many of whom were
present that day in his church. He says, in his
high-wrought fashion, that their presence beautified
the city arid adorned the church, and describes them
as different in dialect (for they were Syrians), but
speaking the same language in respect of faith, a
people free from cares, leading a sober and truly
dignified life. He says they learn lessons of virtue
and self-control, from tilling the soil. "You might
see each of them now yoking oxen to the plough,
ORIGEK. 51
and cutting a deep furrow in the ground, at
another time with their word cleaning out sins
from men s souls. They are not ashamed of
work, but ashamed of idleness, knowing that idle
ness is a teacher of all wickedness. And while the
philosophers walk about with conspicuous cloak and
staff and beard, these plain men are far truer phi
losophers, for they teach immortality and judgment
to come, and conform all their life to these hopes,
being instructed by the divine writings. "
Not only in the first centuries, then, but in
Chrysostom s day also, there were these uncultiva
ted but good and useful men ; and such preachers
have abounded from that day to this, in every period,
country and persuasion in which Christianity was
making any real and rapid progress.
Our first period is divided from the second by
the work of the celebrated Origen, probably A. D.
186 253. He was truly an epoch-making man,
in Bibl^jl_learning, in ministerial jsducation, and
in homiletics. Everybody knows what an impetus he
gave to Biblical learning. All Christian scholars
in the next two centuries, and many in every sub-
53 OK HISTORY OF PREACHIHG.
sequent century, drew largely from the vast stores
of learning gathered in his great works. The zeal
ous studies of the present century in Text-criticism,
present Origen as facile princeps among the leath
ers in that respect, and give constantly new occa
sion to admire the scholarly accuracy and iron dili
gence of the Adamantine student. He was also
the great educator among the early Christians. For
nearly thirty years, beginning when a precocious
youth of seventeen, he was chief Catechist in Alex
andria, or as we should say, Theological professor,
aided, after a time, by one of his distinguished
pupils. And when banished from Alexandria, and
living at Caesarea in Palestine, he there taught as
a private instructor, but with students from distant
lands, and with great e"clat, for about twenty years
more. During a great part of this time, from youth
to age, he also preached every day, while at the
same time laboring over his varied and immense
works, so large a portion of which have long ago
perished. Some glimpse of the subjects and meth
ods of study in his theological school, we shall be
able to get before we close. He was not only a teach
er of preachers, but also a teacher of teachers. He
OBIQEtf. 53
had had predecessors in Alexandria, as Clement and
his teacher Pantasnus, but it was Origen that made
the Alexandrian school the chief seat of Christian
learning for many generations to come. And his
private teaching at Caesarea gave occasion for the
founding of a public school there by the famous
Pamphilus, the friend of Eusebius.
But in respect to methods of preaching also,
Origen made an epoch. As to interpretation of
Scripture, he dignified and appeared to justify the
practice of aUegojizing. It is an utter mistake to
say, though a mistake often repeated, that he was
the father of this practice. His teacher, Clement,
gives us instances of it; Justin Martyr has speci
mens as wild as anything in Origen, and the Epis
tle ascribed to Barnabas contains much allegoriz
ing that seems to us absurd and contemptible. Jn
fact, Qrigen s great master in this respect was
Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, who jwas^ a contem
porary^ of our Lord. Origen did but apply to the
New Testament, and to the Old Testament in a
Christian sense, those methods of allegorizing by
which Philo had made the Old Testament teach
Platonic and Stoic Philosophy Celsus, the shrewd
54 OK HISTORY OF PLEACHING.
and vigorous unbeliever, made it an objection that
the New Testament did not admit of allegorizing.
Origen resented this as a slander, adducing several
passages in which Paul himself had used allegory,
and doubtless feeling all the more called on to
show by his own allegorical interpretations that
the Christian books did have those deep allegori
cal meanings which the Jews claimed for their
books, and the Greeks for theirs. Allegorizing had
long been the rage at Alexandria. Porphyry pre
tended that Origen had only learned it from the
Greek mysteries. Philo himself did but carry
out more fully and ably the method of Aristobu-
lus, his predecessor by a century and a half. Indeed,
recent Egyptologists tell us that fifteen centuries
before Christ, the Egyptian priests were disputing
as to the true text, and allegorizing the statements,
of their Book of the Dead, or Funeral Eites.
But_ while Origen by no means originated^ alle
gorizing, he did do much to recommend it, by pre
senting the striking, though delusive, theory, that
as man is composed of body, soul and spirit, so
Scripture has a threefold sense, the grammatical,
the moral, and the spiritual, and also by actuallj
ORIGEN. 55
working out a spiritual sense for a great p&rt of the
Old and New Testaments, with perverse and absurd
ingenuity. In this way he injured preaching. Men
who held to a deep, esoteric sense, which only the
few could understand, who, like the Gnostics, re
garded themselves as a sort of spiritual aristocracy,
would not only neglect to bring forth and apply
the plain teachings of Scripture, but they habitually
made light of these teachings, and cared mainly
for such hearers as could soar with them into the
"misty mid-regions" of allegorizing. Now it ia
very well as a general principle that we should
preach with some reference to the wants of the
highly cultivated, and should deal in profound
thought, but after all it is the plain truths of Scrip
ture that do the chief good, to cultivated as well
as uncultivated. One who begins to regard him-
^LjSjliMsstiX^L^-HSfe^JS tne intellectual
or the learned, will spoil his preaching as rapidly
as possible.
At a later period, all Christians became accus
tomed to the methods of allegorizing, and it ceased
for the most part to be an esoteric affair, and
became almost universal, with the exception of
56 ON HISTOKY OF PREACHING.
Chrysostom and his associates, in all the subsequen*
centuries till the Keformation.
But Origen did good in teaching men to bring
out the grammatical and the moral sense, though
he understood these. In his early youth a teacher
of grammar and rhetoric, he had a feeling for lan
guage, an jjxegetical sense, and his homilies and other
works form the first examples of any pains-taking
explanation of Scripture, or approach to accurate
exegesis.
As to the form of Christian discourses, he first,
BO far as we know, made them discourses indeed,
and not a mere string of loosely connected observa
tions, dependent for their connection on acciden
tal suggestion or the promptings of passion, and he
first made series of homilies on entire books. This
was a great advance, and prepared the way for f i-
ture improvements. Yet still the homily was with
out unity of structure. Origen does not take the
fundamental thought of the passage, and treat every
verse in relation to that, but he just takes clause
after clause as they come, and remarks upon them
in succession. Not till a century later was this
fault corrected, and only partially then. In fact
ORIGEN. 5?
this lack of unity is still the commonest and gravest
fault in ordinary attempts at expository preaching.
But such feeling does not now prevail, and it ia
more hurtful now than formerly, for the modern
mind demands unity in all discourse. If you would
succeed in expository preaching, let every such sermon
have a genuine and marked unity.
Origen s fame as a Biblical scholar, has over
shadowed his merits as a preacher. And in gen
eral the exegetical element is more prominent in
his homilies, than the oratorical. Yet he has occa
sional passages that are truly eloquent. ^
Our second period of two centuries is from A. D.
230 to 430, or from Origen to Augustine. This
again may be divided into two parts, for the year 330
will roughly represent to us the time of Constan-
tine. Of the first half, from 230 to about 330, there
is comparatively little to say, but the last of our
four centuries is the time when Christian preach
ing springs into exuberant growth, and blossoms into
glorious beauty.
From the time of Origen, a much more consid
erable portion of Christian ministers must have
3*
58 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
been educated men, for there were now several the
ological schools, religious libraries began to be
formed, sermons were taken down in short-hand
and circulated, and (though the persecutions had
not yet ended) there was an increasing number of
intelligent people among the Christians, who would
appreciate and desire an educated ministry. And yet
almost no sermons of that period are now in existence.
The celebrated controversial writer Hippolytus,
a contemporary of Origen, is said to have been very
/
eloquent. One homily and some fragments now
remaining, are represented as showing considerable
oratorical skill. Gregory, afterwards called Thau-
maturgus, to distinguish him from the famous
Gregories of later times, was a pupil of Origen, and
a most enthusiastic admirer. His panegyric on Or
igen, delivered when leaving the theological school,
is a really eloquent production, possessing much cu
rious interest. But the few extant homilies ascribed
to him are not probably genuine. It is evident that
many sermons must have been written down dur
ing this period. It may be that most of them per
ished during the great persecution under Diocletian,
when so great an effort was made to destroy all
THIRD CENTURY. 59
Christian writings. In the "West, among the Latin-
speaking Christians, we still find no sermons at all
that have come down to modern times. Cyprian,
in Carthage, while not an original thinker, but an
avowed imitator of Tertullian, had yet very fine
oratorical gifts, and spent his early life as a popu
lar teacher of rhetoric. The style of his writings
is very pleasing, but he left no sermons. Novatian,
the heretic at Rome, (with whom some of our
Baptist brethren are zealous to establish a de
nominational affinity,) is represented by Neander
as " distinguished for clearness of Christian knowl
edge . . . and for a happy faculty of teaching,"
but the works now doubtfully ascribed to him, and
even the list of his works given by Jerome, com
prise no sermons.
But now we approach a new period. The grand
effort^ of Diocletian had failed, and it became evi
dent that Christianity could not be destroyed by
persecution. Constantino adopted Christianity as
the main plank in his political platform. Being
successful, becoming sole ruler of the world, and
favoring the Christians in every way, he wrought
60 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
a most sudden and complete change in their posi
tion, a change having the most varied and impor
tant results for that age and for the ages to come.
Yea, all Christendom is agitated to-day, by the con
sequences of Constantine s grand stroke of policy.
In no respect were the immediate results more im
portant than in regard to preaching.
The young men who were looking to the minis
try of the gospel could now without difficulty avail
themselves of all the best educational facilities in
the great University cities, before attending their
Christian theological schools. They could now en
joy, not only undisturbed quiet in Christian life,
<k
study, and work, but the best social advantages.
the power for good or evil, in every age and
country, of social position, and social influences.
Before this time Christians could scarcely anywhere
be received into the best society, and if thus re
ceived they would be frequently met by heathen
customs in which all were expected to take part.
But now fashionable society smiled on Christians,
and greatly courted those who were influential. It
became the fashion to attend church. It was a
passport to imperial favor, that one should be a
FOURTH 3E25-TUBY. 61
rery zealous Christian. And fashionable people in
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and hundreds
of smaller towns, began to speak, (so Chrysostom
intimates,) almost as enthusiastically about the favor
ite preacher of the hour, as they spoke of the
favorite horse in the races, or the reigning actor of
the theatre. The number of real Christians who
were intelligent rapidly increased ; and when to
these was added the fashionable world, there arose
a great demand for preachers who were literary, and
eloquent. And if the preacher was a deeply pious
man, his soul would be stirred by observing the
crowds of professed Christians, many of whom had
nothing of Christianity but the name, and he would -/
be moved to the most earnest and passionate warn
ings and appeals.
Besides, all Christendom was rent by the great Ar-
ian controversy. Now that the outside pressure of
persecution was removed, the Christians would not
hesitate to throw their whole soul into controversy.
While a skeptical modern historian may sneer at a
world-shaking dispute over one letter, the differ
ence between fyotofaiov and fyoofocov, yet such a subtle
distinction was well suited to the genius of the Ori-
62 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
entalized Greeks, and Hellenized Orientals. And
although the controversy was largely carried on by
political maneuvering, and courting favor with suc
cessive Emperors, favorites and governors, still
much might be, much often was accomplished by
able and eloquent sermons on the various aspects of
this great question as to the Divinity of Christ,
which touched the very heart of Christianity, and
could be so presented as mightily to stir the souls
of all susceptible hearers. Many of the Arian preach
ers too, were very able, highly educated, acute in ar
gument, and passionately earnest in advocating their
ingenious and plausible theory. Such rivalry must
have powerfully stimulated the orthodox preachers.
Moreover, Christian discourses could now be freely
published, and widely circulated. Thus the ser
mons of the more eloquent preachers speedily became
a model and a stimulus to other preachers every
where, and also helped to create a demand for at
tractive and impressive discourse, on the part of
such private Christians as read the publications.
These glimpses of the situation may give us some
conception of the conditions under which Christian
Preaching blazed out into such splendor, and such
ATHAtfASIUS. 63
real power, in the century which began with Constan
tine and Eusebius, and ended with Chrysostom and
Augustine.
Eusebius himself, the justly famous historian, had
in certain respects good gifts for preaching, and has
left some homilies, besides his extravagant and over
wrought panegyric on Constantine ; but he occupied
himself chiefly with his extensive historical and
chronological studies and treatises.
From Athanasius, the great Trinitarian leader,
we have no genuine homilies remaining. His style
of writing has directness, simplicity, and native
force, a vigorous and manly eloquence, such as one
seldom meets with in that age of stilted rhetoric.
Gregory Nazianzen, his eulogist, declares that Athana-
eius had no literary culture. But this is probably
like Ben Jonson s saying that Shakspeare had small
Latin and less Greek, because he had not been a life
long student like himself. It is, however, worth
notice that in his two remarkable treatises on the
Incarnation, written in all probability when he was
between twenty and twenty-five years old, Athanasius
shows the same excellencies of style as in his later
works, which seems to prove that these excellencies
64 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
were maiiily native. I think that the more Athana
sius is read, the more it will be regretted that he has
left us no sermons.
As to Cyril of Jerusalem, it must suffice to remark,
that his well-known sermons to those about to be
baptized, and to those recently baptized, while not of
remarkable ability, are suggestive examples of a
practice which, with due modifications, might with
great advantage be more largely pursued among us.
The name of Ephraem the Syrian, who died in
378 (five years after Athanasius), has in a singular
manner become familiar to all of us, though we may
not have looked at his works. A MS. of the New
Testament, written in the fifth century, was about
the twelth century written over with some works
translated from Ephraem, and is now known to critics
of the Text as the MS. C, or the Codex of Ephraem
the Syrian. His is the great name among the Syrian
Christians, and he is represented as one of the lead
ing Christian orators of the century of which we are
speaking. As a rare peculiarity among those great
preachers, he was what we call a self-made man.
Yet like all such men who really accomplish much,
he was educated by the ideas and influences of the
EPHRAEM. 68
age, by books, and by personal contact with gifted
contemporaries. He knew little Greek, yet enough to
correspond freely with Basil the Great. I have never
yet found opportunity to read much of his writings,
but I notice that he is very highly eulogized by Ville-
main, and described, by him and others, as a highly
emotional preacher, sometimes intensely solemn. The
portions I have read also show a truly Oriental fond
ness for imagery. He was at the same time a poet,
the earliest Syriac hymns being from his pen.
Shall we give a moment to Macarius, the Egyp
tian monk ? His homilies are without text, desultory,
familiar talks to the monks, and often to a considera
ble extent made up of answers to questions which
they ask, thus being literally homilies. They are
crazy with allegorizing, and wild with mysticism,
but very sweet and engaging in tone, and urging to
all the monastic virtues, prayer, silence, humility
and self-mortification, in a very impressive manner.
Certainly monasticism was a sadly one-sided thing,
but its one side of Christianity has been beautifully
exhibited by some of the earlier and medieval monks,
both in precept and example. Are we not inclined
to be one-sided too, caring only for thought and
66 ON HISTORY OF PREACHIKQ.
practical activity, and neglecting the cultivation 01
religious sensibility, and of the passive virtues ? It
would do most of us good to read some of the best
of the early monastic writers, as every body agrees is
true of the ( Imitation of Christ, and the medieval
Latin Hymns.
I must mention one other of the less famous
preachers of the time, one scarcely ever mentioned
in works of Church History for we know almost
nothing of his life, and his sermons take little part
in the great controversies but who deserves a very
warm commendation. It is Asterius, bishop of
Amasea in Pontus. Of his copious writings, we
have left about ten homilies believed to be genuine,
and some fragments of others, but these are admir
able, some of them really charming. The subjects
are moral or historical ; he has fine descriptive pow
ers; the style is marked by exquisite richness of ex
pression, and not overwrought. His allusions show
that he was familiar with Demosthenes, and his
style has something of the classic moderation and
true elegance. Some of his sermons could be
preached in our churches with little alteration, and
would be well received. If some one of you would
BASIL. 67
make himself thoroughly acquainted with them,
and publish them in a small volume with introduc
tions and notes, I arn persuaded that many persons
would read them with interest, partly because the
name is unknown, and the volume would awaken
curiosity. v
And now how can I speak of the great Greek
preachers ?
Basil the Great (A. D. 329379) possessed__all
possible advantages. His family was rich and of
high social position in Pontus, and from his grand
parents down had been remarkable for piety. Two
of his brothers became bishops, one of them famous
(Gregory of Nyssa); and his older sister, who pow
erfully influenced him, founded and presided over
a monastery. His father, a distinguished rhetori
cian, gave him careful instruction from childhood.
At school he surpassed all his fellow-pupils. Then
he studied at Constantinople, taught by Libanius,
the most famous teacher of rhetoric in that age,
with whom he formed a lasting friendship. After
wards he went to Athens, where his fellow-students
included Julian (afterwards Emperor and Apostate),
C8 OK HISTORY OF PREACHIHG.
and Gregory Nazianzen, his early friend. Gregory
tells us in a well-known funeral eulogium,* that
when he heard Basil was coming to Athens, he gave
the students so high an opinion of his abilities and
eloquence, that they consented, as a special dis
tinction, to exempt Basil from the species of hazing
to which new students were always subjected.
Thus he had every advantage, good- breeding,
and all pious and inspiring home influences, care
ful early training, then life in the great capital city
(giving knowledge of the world), and afterwards at
the chief seat of learning in that age, Athens, with
the ablest instructors and the most gifted fellow
students his intellect disciplined, and his taste
cultivated by the study of classic philosophy and
oratory, and yet his Christian feeling ever warmed
anew by the sympathy and example of his intelli
gent and devout kindred at home.
He died when less than fifty years old (like the
English Dr. Barrow), but his life was crowded with
religious and literary labors.
As a preacher, Basil shows greater skill in the
construction of discourses than any Christian oia*
* Gregory Nazianzen Or. 43, page 781-3 Bened.
BASIL. 69
tor who had preceded him. He usually extempo
rized, but he knew how to put a sermon together, or
to make it grow, in a natural manner. The chief
excellency of his preaching is in the treatment of
moral subjects. He had a rare knowledge of hu
man nature, and you may notice that among all the
changes of preaching in all the ages, two branches
of knowledge possess a universal and indestructi
ble interest, deep knowledge of human nature, and
deep knowledge of Scripture. Basil shows wonder
ful power in depicting the various virtues, and still
more remarkable skill in tracing the growth and
consequences of leading vices. Amid all the admir
able temperance literature of our own age, I have
seen no more just and vivid exhibition of many of
the evils of drunkenness, than is given by Basil in
his sermon on that subject. Yet this and some
others of his discourses seem to me to have a fault
still common in sermons on moral subjects, viz., that
they do not make sufficiently prominent the Gospel
view of the evil, and the Gospel motives to avoid
it. [The Christian moralist should be a Christian
moralist^ It is not strange that Basil s old pagan
instructor could enjoy this sermon on drunkenness
70 ON HISTORY OF PftEACHIXQ.
If the letters * between them, on the occasion are
genuine (and they possess great verisimilitude), we
find that they praise each other in very extravagant
terms. Libanius sends Basil an oration on the ill-
humored man, of which Basil says in reply, te
Muses, and letters, and Athens, what gifts ye be
stow upon your lovers." Then Libanius asks to
see Basil s recent sermon on drunkenness, amd hav
ing read it, says, "Surely, Basil, you live at Athens
unawares, for the Caesarea people (Basil was bishop
of Caesarea in Pontus) could not hear this discourse."
Presently he adds, " I did not teach him. This man
is Homer, yes Plato, yes Aristotle, yes Susarion,
who knew everything." . . . And in conclusion.
"I would, Basil, that you could give me such
praises," etc. Compliments between a professor and
his now famous and very grateful pupil are apt to
be a trifle gushing, but in this case the thing does
seem overdone.
Basil s style has the faults of his age, and I would
not advise your reading him very rapidly or freely,
lest your taste be offended ; but taking just one dis
course at a time, you feel that you are dealing with
* Basil, Epistles 3516, p. 1093 ff. M gne.
GREGORY KAZIAKZEK. 71
a great mind, a noble character, a deeply devout
and truly eloquent preacher.
Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil, is among
the Greek Fathers the profoundest thinker as to
philosophy, as you may see brought out in Ueberweg s
History of Philosophy. As a preacher, he was and
is overshadowed by the fame of his brother and of
his namesake, but so far as a slender acquaintance
enables one to judge, I think him really a more sat
isfactory preacher than the other and more celebrated
Gregory.
This other, Gregory Nazianzen (A D. 329-389),
the friend and fellow student of Basil, was doubtless
at that time considered the most eloquent of all
preachers until Chrysostom became known. Very
ambitious, and enjoying the finest educational oppor
tunities, Gregory was especially a student of elo
quence, and was a man of imaginative and passionate
nature. He was the first great hymn- writer ; and
his hymns became exceedingly popular in the Greek
Church. Yet it has been justly said that his poetry is
too oratorical, and his oratory too poetical. You may
notice that few great preachers have written even a
single good hymn, and no great hymn-writer has been
72 OK HISTOBY OF PREACHIKG.
very eminent as a preac.ier, unless Gregory be the
exception, or Ephraem the Syrian. So more gener
ally as to oratory and poetry. The oratorical and the
poetic temperament seem closely related, yet are
they remarkably distinct. An orator may derive
very great benefit from studying poets, but many
a preacher is damaged by failing to understand the
difference between the poet s office and his own.
Imagination is the poet s mistress, his queen ; for
the orator, she is a handmaid, highly useful, indeed
absolutely needful, but only a handmaid. And
splendor of diction, which for the poet is one chief
end, is for the orator only a subordinate means.
But the very faults of Gregory s style, according
to our taste, were high excellencies in the estimation
of his contemporaries. His wildly extravagant hyper
boles, perpetual effort to strike, and high-wrought
splendor of imagery and diction, were accounted the
most magnificent eloquence, and perhaps did really
recommend the truth to some of his hearers. Thus
while Patriarch of Constantinople, he preached five
discourses (still extant), which are said to have done
much in curing Arianism there, and which pro
cured him the surname of Theologos, discourser on the
CHRYSOSTOM. 73
Deity of Christ, but which you or I can stiW jely read
with any patience. /
The career of John, afterward surnamed Ghry-
sostom (A. D. 347-407), is doubtless somewhat
familiar to you all, and is exceedingly well depicted
in the life by Stephens. He was younger, by fif
teen or twenty years, than Basil and the Gregories.
He was of a distinguished and wealthy family in
Antioch, and under the devoted care of a widowed
mother, received every possible educational advan
tage. The great teacher Llbanius had now returned
to his native Antioch, and found in John a favorite
pupil, whom he would have wished to make his
successor as professor of rhetoric and kindred sub
jects. In the great city John saw the world, and
sharpened that (penetrating knowledge of human
nature for which, like Basil, he was remarkable.
For a short time he practiced law, and Libanius
warmly commended some of his speeches at the
bar. But he turned away, weary and disgusted,
from the thousand corruptions of society and
government, and when his mother s death allowed
he went into retirement with several friends, and
4
74 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
spent several years in the close study of the Scrip
tares. Among other and greater results, it is said
that Chrysostom knew almost the whole Bible by
heart. In these studies they were directed by
Diodorus, the head of a neighboring monastery,
and afterwards a bishop, and author of long famous
commentaries and other works. Here was a turn
ing-point of Chrysostom s life. Diodorus, as we
learn from various sources, founded what then
appeared to be a new school of Biblical interpreta
tion, a reaction from the well-known tendency of
the older school of Alexandria. He_ shrank from
allegorizing, and held closely to "the literal and
historical meaning of the text." His copious writ
ings, which had the honor to be specially attacked
by the Emperor Julian, have perished, except a few
fragments. But Diodorus lives forever in his theo
logical pupil. It is among the greatest distinctions
of Chrysostom, that his interpretation is almost
entirely free from the wild allegorizing which had
been nearly universal ever since Origen. It is a
delightful contrast to turn from the other great
preachers of the time (including Augustine), with
their utterly loose interpretations, and fanciful
CHRYSOSTOM. 7ft
ipiritualizing, to the straight-forward, careful and
usually sober interpretations of Chrysostom. Hia
works are not only models of eloquence, but a trea
sury of exegesis. And for this the world is mainly
indebted to Diodorus. Chrysostom had much na
tive good sense, it is true, but so had Athanasius,
Basil, Augustine. Nay, his early studies of Scrip
ture were directed by a really wise and able instruct
or ; and his good sense enabled him to seize the
just principles of interpretation set before him, and
to develop them still more ably, and recommend
them far more widely than the instructor himself.
Highly favored was such a student, and highly
fortunate such a teacher. It is also believed
(Forster) that Chrysosfom was greatly influenced as to
interpretation, by his fellow student, Theodore,
known afterwards as Theodore of Mopsuestia, and
a commentator of great ability. It is among the
advantages of study in company with others, that
a man of susceptible nature will be powerfully influ
enced by his associates, as well as by the instructors.
Chrysostom long shrank from the work of
preaching, and the office of priest, the difficulties
and responsibilities of which he has so impressively
76 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
state 1 in his little work on the Priesthood. He
wrote this and other valuable works while holding
inferior offices, but was ordained and began preach
ing, only at the age of thirty-nine. He died at sixty,
after three years of exile. Thus his actual career as
a preacher lasted only eighteen years, twelve years
at Antioch, and six at Constantinople. In these
years he preached almost daily, filling the civilized
world with his fame, and leaving about one thousand
sermons (many of them reported by others) that
have descended to us. From no other preacher
have one thousand sermons been published, except
Spurgeon, who has now gone considerably beyond
that number. In our impatient age and country,
when so many think time spent in preparation is
time lost, it is well to remember that the two most
celebrated preachers of the early Christian centuries
began to preach, Chrysostom at thirty-nine, and
Augustine at thirty-six.
I cannot fully discuss the characteristics of Chry-
sostom s preaching. It must be admitted that he
is by no means always correct in his interpretations,
particularly in the Old Testament, being ignorant
of Hebrew, and often misled by the errors of the
CHRYSOSTOM. 77
Septuagmt ; also that he shared many sad errors off
his age, as to baptism and the Lord s Sapper, asceti
cism and virginity, saints and martyrs. It must
also be conceded that his style often wearies us by
excessive copiousness, minute and long-drawn de
scriptions, multiplied comparisons, and piled-up
imagery. But we must always remember that this
did not look to excited throngs as it does to us.
Under such circumstances a certain rhetorical exag
geration and exuberance seems natural, as a statue
placed high upon a pillar must be above life-size.
But admit what you please, criticise as you
please, and the fact remains that Chrysostom has
never had a superior, and it may be gravely doubted
whether he has had an equal, in the history of preach
ing. "He shared the faults of his age," you say.
Yes, and a man who does not, will scarcely impress
his age, or any other. " He does not show such con
summate art as Demosthenes." That is true. But
the finish and repose of high art is scarcely possible,
and scarcely desirable, in addressing the preacher s
heterogeneous audiences, comprising persons so dif
ferent as to culture and interest in the subject.
Demosthenes has everywhere a style as elegant and
78 ON HISTORY OF PREACHIKQ.
purely simple as the Venus del Medici or the Par
thenon ; Chrysostom approaches in exuberance of
fancy, in multiplication of images and illustration s,
and in curiously varied repetitions, to a Gothic
cathedral. Demosthenes is like the Greek Tragic
Drama, strictly conformed to the three Unities ;
Chrysostom is more like the Romantic Drama. I
cannot say like Shakspeare the Shakspeare of
preachers has not yet appeared. But why should
he not some day appear ? One who can touch
every chord of human feeling, treat every interest
of human life, draw illustration from every object
and relation of the known universe, and use all to
gain acceptance and obedience for the gospel of
salvation. No preacher has ever come nearer this
than Chrysostom, perhaps none, on the whole, so
near. A Syrian Greek, and a Christian Greek, he
does in no small measure combine the Asiatic and the
European, the ancient and the modern. The rich
fancy and blazing passion of an Asiatic is united
with the power of intellect and energy of will which
mark Europeans ; while the finish and simplicity of
Greek art are not so much wanting as lost in the
manysidedness of Christian thought and Christian
AMBROSE. 79
lentiment. As to style he certainly ranges the whole
gamut of expression ; for while his style is generally
elevated, often magnificent, and sometimes extrava
gant, it occasionally becomes homely and rough as
he lays bare the follies and vices of men.* Chry-
sostom is undoubtedly the prince of expository
preachers. And he has very rarely been equalled in
the treatment of moral subjects, while two of the
most successful preachers on moral subjects in the
modern centuries, viz., Bourdaloue and Barrow,
were both devoted students of Chrysostom.
Among the Latin preachers of the period there
are but two great names, Ambrose and Augustine
(for their famous contemporary Jerome, though elo
quent in his writings, never preached).
Of Ambrose (A. D. 340-97,) I can say but a
word. Of very distinguished family, carefully edu
cated at Rome, he practised law at Milan with much
eclat for eloquence, became civil^overiior there,
* "The orator must command the whole scale of the lan
guage, from the most eloquent to the most low and vile. . .
. . The street must be one of his schools. Ought not the
ncholar to be able to convey his meaning in terms as short
and strong as the porter or truckman uses to convey lib* ?
Emerson s Letters and Social Ainu.
80 ON HISTORY OF PREA.CHIKG.
and then in a curious and well-known fashion,
was suddenly forced by the vox populi into the office
of bishop. Aware of his ignorance of Christian
truth, he diligently studied Origen, IlijToolytus, and
Basil the Great, and Philo the Jew. From these
he learned the wildest allegorizing, and from them
is said to have in fact derived the greater part of
his thought. This borrowing from the Greeks by
wholesale had been the general practice of Pagan
Eoman writers also, as everybody knows. Ambrose
must have been a man of striking appearance, and
his style is fine and flowing, which fact must have
been the excuse for naming him the Christian Cicero,
which seems to me extravagant praise. But the
influence of his preaching was greatly increased by
his administrative talent. A true Roman, a born
ruler of men, he made himself felt by emperor and
people, by his own and by subsequent ages. He was
a man of noble character, and his hymns (the first
Latin hymns of much importance) have a manly
vigor and directness which are truly Roman. His
character and administrative achievements, and his
eloquent deliveiy, gave prestige to hie writings,
which would otherwise hardly have gained so great a
AUGUSTINE. 81
reputation. But here is a lesson for preachers, who
may so often add immensely to the influence of
their preaching, whether it be good or not, by ad
ministrative tact and toil, and by personal dignity
and worth.
As to Augustine (A. D. 354-430,) you know
that he has mainly impressed himself on the world
as ajheologian. The great theological authority of
the Middle Ages, and nominally though one can
hardly think really the great authority of the Komish
Church to the present day, he is also the father of
the theology of the Protestant ^Reformation.
Luther avowedly put Augustine next to the Bible,
as his chief source of religious knowledge. Calvin
reduced Augustine s doctrines to a religious form,
aided by his own training in the scholastic works
of the Middle Ages. What we call Calvinism is
the doctrine of Paul, developed by Augustine and
systematized by Calvin.
You know too that Augustine has written worka
of very high literary merit, apart from his theolo
gical and homiletical writings. His Confessions
form one of the most unique and strangely impres
sive works in all literature one of the books that
4*
82 ON" HISTORY OF PREACHING.
every body ought by all means to read. His City
of God has been called a "prose Epic," and is a
combination of history, philosophy and poetry that
has a power and a charm all its own. Add that hia
work on Christian Teaching is the first treatise on
Sacred Khetoric and Homiletics, and after all that
has followed, the last of its four books is still
highly suggestive.
But I think that if we had nothing else from
Augustine than his Sermons, of which some three
hundred and sixty remain that are reckoned
genuine, we should recognize him as a great
/ preacher, as a richly gifted man, and should feel
, ourselves powerfully attracted and impressed by
his genius, his mighty will and passionate heart and
, deeply earnest piety. Our historian Paniel, in my
opinion, wrongs Augustine by underestimating him
as a preacher, because of bitter hostility to the doc
trines of grace which Augustine taught. Bromel
does him more justice, and Ebert. He is unsafe
as an interpreter a good many of the great theo
logians have been rather too independent in their
exegesis and wild with allegorizing, like every
other great preacher of the age except Chrysos-
AUGUSTINE. 83
torn. But his sermons are full of power. lie
carefully, if not always correctly, explains his text,
and repeats many times, in different ways, its substan
tial meaning. He deals much in dramatic question
and answer, and in apostrophe ; also in digression,
the use of familiar phrases, direct address to par
ticular classes of persons present using in general
great and notable freedom. Away with our prim
and starch formalities and uniformities ! Yet free-
dom must be controlled, as in Augustine it com
monly is controlled, by sound judgment, right!
feeling and good taste.
The chief peculiarity of Augustine s style is his
fondness for, and skill in producing, pithy phrases.
In the terse and vigorous Latin, these often have
great power. The capacity for throwing off such
phrases is mainly natural, but may be indefinitely
cultivated. And it is a great element of power, es
pecially in addressing the masses of men, if one can,
after stating some truth, condense it into a single
keen phrase that will penetrate the hearer s mind
and stick.
Hurried as this review has been, I have passed
without mention a number of men who are more
84 ON HISTORY OF PREACHIKG.
or less known to us as eminent preachers. An in
teresting topic for inquiry would be, Preaching among
the early "heretics. The enthusiastic Montanism
which won over Terfcullian in his prime, must have
produced impassioned and stirring preachers. The
Manichaeism to which Augustine was so attached
in his youth, was in some respects well suited to
eloquence; and Augustine declares that Faustus the
Manichasan was more eloquent than Ambrose,
whom he greatly admired and loved. I do not
know anything as to the Donatist preachers, but
the mighty Arian party, it has been already in
passing intimated, comprised preachers as well as
scholars of great ability, from most of whom, how
ever, nothing remains bat a name.
I wish now to remark upon two or three of the
many points of general instruction and suggestion
which present themselves in connection with the
preaching of the early Christian centuries.
1. As to entrance on the ministry. You have
noticed that quite a number of the famous men who
have passed rapidly before us, became presbyters or
bishops against their will. E. g., Gregory Thau-
ENTRANCE ON MINISTBY. 85
maturgus (the pupil of Origen), and Gregory Nazi-
anzen, who fled from ordination, and published ai\
Apology for his flight, in which he set forth the re
sponsible and difficult duties of the priesthood.
So Chrysostom s beautiful treatise on the Priest
hood was written to show why he was not willing
to become a priest. Ambrose also, and Augustine
entered the sacred office unwillingly, and many
others that we know of. Partly this was due to
sacerdotal notions, as implied in the very name they
used, priesthood ; partly it was a mere fashion ;
but in the main we must believe that these men
honestly shrank from a calling so solemnly respon
sible, as many others have done in every age, in
cluding our own. Nay, we remember the saying of
Paul, "Who is sufficient for these things?" and
the consolation he has handed down to us, "Our
sufficiency is of God."
You doubtless observed also how many of these
foremost preachers were of families having a high
social position, as Ephraem, Basil, Gregory Nazian-
zen, Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine. This
gives a preacher advantages of no slight importance,
and we should not allow our more favored families
86 OK HISTOKY OF PKEA.CHING.
to suppose that the ministry is to come only from
the poor. Everybody notices too, the pious mothers
of Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom, of Ambrose
and Augustine, while in the case of Basil and his
brother, the whole family were remarkable for piety,
beginning with the grandparents.
2. As to Education, we have seen that after
Constantine, in the blooming period of early Chris
tian eloquence, these distinguished preachers had
nearly all attended at the great centres of secular
instruction, gaining the most thorough general edu
cation the age could afford. The pagan thought
and taste had greatly degenerated, but the noble
old Greek and Eoman literature then existed in its
entirety (not in fragments as we have it), and came
to these students in their own tongues wherein they
were bom. Mr. Grote, in the preface to his Plato,
very unfairly quotes Jerome to show that it was
the tendency of what he calls "Hebrew studies"
to make a man despise ani neglect the heathen
classics. But Jerome had peculiar notions on this
subject. Basil recommended the classic writers to
a student, and Chrysostom and Augustine speak
not so much as loving these writers less, but as
EDUCATION. 87
loving the Scriptures more. Besides, their circuin
stances were very different from ours. We can
admire the statues of deities, without thereby
encouraging idolatry, but they could not ; and so
as to the pagan literature, almost all intimately
associated with idolatry, which was then rapidly
declining, but by no means dead. These considera
tions will account for the terms of disparagement
in which the great Christian writers of the time
sometimes speak of classical studies. But Julian,
the apostate emperor, doubtless understood the
situation, and he forbade Christian teachers to
teach rhetoric and grammar, and to lecture on the
old classic authors. If Christian youth wished to
study these, let them go, he said, to the pagan
teachers. And we are told of distinguished Chris
tian professors of rhetoric who gave up their posi
tions, in obedience to Julian s edict.
We have also seen that a singularly large number
of these great preachers had studied the grand
systems of Greek and Eoman law, which must have
given most important general discipline. Tertullian,
Cyprian and Ambrose, Gregory Thaumaturgus,
Basil and Chrysostom, all studied law, and most of
88 ON HISTORY OF PKEACHIKG.
them for a while engaged in the practice. The
same thing has been true of many eminent preachers
in our own time. Let me remind you, too, of the
great attention which nearly every one of these
great preachers had paid to the study of Oratory,
as a practical art. I will not discourse upon the
importance to ourselves of this now so generally
neglected study. I trust you all read the weighty
words spoken last summer at Amherst College by
an illustrious citizen, whose name recalls the whole
history of American Liberty, and whose character
and public services are worthy of the best days of
the Eepublic, the Hon. Charles Francis Adams.
He declared that in no country at the present day
has public speaking such ample opportunities for
exerting influence as in America, and in no civilized
country is the art of public speaking so little studied.
(I think that in this last respect he ought to have
excepted England.) I would that his exhortations
on that subject might sink into the hearts of our
aspiring American youth.
But besides general education, in all the really
grand curriculum of the age, and at the great schools
of Alexandria and Antioch, of Constantinople and
THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS. 89
Athens, of Rome and many lesser cities, these lead
ing preachers nearly all pursued a long course of
theological study, before entering upon the full
work of the ministry. Going back to the times
of Origen, we happen to have remaining a curious
account of the studies in which he trained his pupils
at Caesarea. Gregory, afterwards surnamed Thau-
maturgus (the miracle-worker), on his way from
Cappadocia to a law-school at Beyrout, met Origen
at Caesarea, was converted by him to Christianity,
and became his pupil there for eight years, though
he had already studied at Alexandria and at Athens.
When at last reluctantly leaving Caesarea, Gregory
delivered a valedictory, commonly known as his
Panegyric upon Origen, which is very interesting
on many accounts, among others because it is the
earliest Christian oration we have.
He tells in this valedictory how Origen at the
outset urged upon him in many conversations,
the advantages and delights of knowledge, as com
pared with what men call practical pursuits, and
soon fascinated him so that he could not leave. He
eays that he and his brother were like uncultivated
land full of briers and thistles, or like wild horses,
90 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
when Origen took hold of them. That he taught
them both in the Socratic manner and by di& courses
that he corrected their errors, and taught them
to distinguish between truth and error, to be critical
both as to language and arguments. The subjects
of their study, he says, were Physics (in the broad
ancient sense of that term), especially Geometry,
which he calls the solid basis of all knowledge, and
Astronomy ; afterwards Ethics, Philosophy, in gen
eral, and Theology. Such was their eight years
course. And now in sadly turning away from this
worshipped teacher and these cherished studies,
Gregory compares himself to Adam driven out of
Paradise, to the prodigal son leaving his father
(only without any portion of goods), and to the
Jews when carried into the Babylonian captivity.
.
Do we mourn thus in leaving a long course of study ?
If not, is it because our teachers are not Origens,
or because we are not Gregories or is it that our
students do not commonly expect to be life-long
celibates, and that thoughts of a domestic Paradise
do often allure them away from the Paradise of
College and Theological school ?
In respect to their style, the great Greek and
THE FATHERS. 91
Latin Fathers are, in general, by no means good
models, as I have before intimated in passing. They
have the overwrought style of their age. We see
this already in Josephus, and Plutarch s Miscella
neous Writings, and the Dialogue on Oratory ascribed
to Tacitus. We see it in Libanius and Julian.
Even Chrysostom shows this tendency of his age,
and often offends our taste. Here is a reason, from
the point of view of Rhetoric, for objecting to the
substitution of Christian Greek and Latin writers
for the classics of the earlier time as text-books.
Boys at school and college are always disappointed
in Demosthenes at first, and they would think Gre
gory Nazianzen far more eloquent. These writers
present precisely those faults of style which youth
ful and untrained minds are too ready to admire
and imitate.
Passing over many other topics, I simply direct
your attention, in conclusion, to the striking fact,
that the Christian preaching of these early centuries
culminated in Chrysostom and Augustine, and
then suddenly and entirely ceased to show any
remarkable power. East or West, after Chrysostom
and Augustine, there is not another really great
92 ON HISTOKY OF PKEACHIXG.
preacher whose sermons remain to us, for seven cen
turies. The reasons for this would appear upon a
little reflection. In the East, the despotism and
worldliness of the Imperial Court left no room for
independence of thought, or for high hope of doing
good by eloquence. Court intrigue had forced Gre
gory Nazianzen to resign at Constantinople, and
driven Chrysostom into exile, and the Greek bishops
afterwards became mere courtiers or mere slaves. In
the West, amid the destruction of the Western Em
pire, and the conflicts of the barbarians, the Koman
genius for government showed itself, and the high
Christian officials went on gathering power and
making Rome in a new sense the mistress of the
world, but this was done by administrative talents
like those of Leo the Great, and Gregory the Great,
and there was no demand for supreme efforts in
preaching. And in both East and West, men s minds
were now turned towards impressive ritual, sacer
dotal functions and sacramental efficacies, and these
left little room, as they commonly do, for earnest
and vigorous preaching.
LECTURE III.
MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION PREACHING
IT is a great mistake, in surveying the history
of Preaching, to pass at once from Chrysostom and
Augustine to the Reformation. Besides the fact,
now so generally recognized, that there were "Reform
ers before the Reformation," it is to be noticed that
among the devoted Romanists of the Middle Ages
there were some earnest, able and eloquent preachers.
The common Protestant fashion of stigmatizing the
"Dark Ages" is unphilosophical and unjust, and has
proven, in some quarters, to be bad policy. Men
who had been reared to think that everything Med
ieval was corrupt or silly, are sometimes so sur
prised by the first results of a little investigation
that they go quite over to the opposite extreme.
But not simply on grounds of general justice and
fairness are we required to notice the Medieval
preaching. The fact is that the history of preach-
94 OX HISTORY OF PREACHING.
ing cannot be understood without taking account of
that period. So far as the form of modern preach
ing differs from that of the early Christian centuries,
the difference has had its origin in the Middle Ages.
It is true that in that period preaching was gen
erally very much neglected. Over wide districts, and
through long years at a time, there would be almost
no preaching. When men assembled in churches
it was only to witness ceremonies and hear chant
ing and intoning. If sermons were given, it was
in many countries still the custom to preach only in
Latin, which the people did not now understand,
even in Southern Europe. Those who preached in
the vernacular, would often give nothing but eulo
gies on the saints, accounts of current miracles, etc.
Most of the lower clergy were grossly ignorant, and
many of them grossly irreligious, while the bishops
and other dignitaries were often engrossed with po
litical administration or manoauvring, perhaps busy
in war, if not occupied with pursuits still more un-
clerical and unchristian.
All this was true. And yet there were notable
exceptions. Let us look for a moment at three or
four leading examples.
PETER THE HERMIT. 95
Certainly Peter the Hermit was a great preacher,
A man of very small stature and ungainly shape,
his speaking was rendered powerful by fiery enthu
siasm, and great flow of words. It is difficult to ex
aggerate the importance to an orator, of vigorous
health; and yet several of the greatest preachers
have been men in feeble health, as, besides Peter the
Hermit, Chrysostom, St. Bernard, Calvin, Baxter
yea, apparently, the apostle Paul. But note that
their diseases were not such as debilitate, not such
as enfeeble the nervous system that they were all
capable of great mental application, and possessed
great force of character, stimulated by burning zeal
and that most of them, though diligent students,
were also much given to physical activity. In the
time of Peter and Bernard, a feeble physique, es
pecially if it appeared to be emaciated by fasting,
rather helped a preacher s oratory with the people;
for first, it seemed to indicate great piety, and sec
ondly, his powerful utterance when excited seemed
in that superstitious age to be preternatural. The
Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, is in thia
respect an anachronism if he had lived in the Mid
dle Ages the fact that so frail a man can speak twc
96 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
, hours and hold a great audience would have stamped
< him as a saint, preternaturally supported, and with
1 more than human claims to attention and belief.
Peter had a most inspiring theme ; for with the
great religious motive he united an appeal to the love
of war, which was so strong in that age, and to the
love of adventure, which is always so strong. But
in addition to the inspiration of his theme, he him
self must have been surpassingly eloquent. We are
told (Michaud I, 43) that he made much use of "those
vehement apostrophes which produce such an effect
upon an uncultivated multitude. He described the
profanation of the holy places, and the blood of the
Christians shed in torrents in the streets of Jerusa
lem. He invoked, by turns, Heaven, the saints, the
angels, to bear witness to the truth of what he told
them. He apostrophized Mt. Zion, the rock of
Calvary, and the Mount of Olives, which he made
to resound with sobs and groans. When he had ex
hausted speech in painting the miseries of the faith
ful, he showed the spectators the crucifix which
he carried with him ; sometimes striking his breast
and wounding his flesh, sometimes shedding tor
rents of tears." Fanatical, no doubt he was, but
ST. BERNARD. 97
our present concern is with his eloquence. Read,
with this in view, the story of his preaching, and
of the prodigious effects produced upon high arid
low, upon men, women and children, and you will
probably believe that seldom, in all the history of man,
has there been such overpowering popular eloquence
as that of Peter. And while we are rejoicing to
study the recorded and finished eloquence of Demos
thenes and Daniel Webster, of Chrysostom and
Eobert Hall, we have also much to learn from the
mere history of great popular orators like Patrick
Henry and Peter the Hermit.
But the case of the great Crusading Evangelist
was very peculiar. We find a little later a notable
example of preaching in the strict sense of the
term.
Bernard of Clairvaux, commonly called St.
Bernard, lived from A. D. 1091 to 1153 in France,
a devoted monk and a fervently pious man. Pale,
meagre, attenuated through much fasting, looking
almost as unsubstantial as a spirit, he made a great
impression the moment he was seen. He possessed
extraordinary talents, and though he made light of
human learning, he at least did so only after acquiring
ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
it. His sermons and other writings do not indicate a
profound metaphysical thinker, like Augustine or
Aquinas, but they present treasures of devout
sentiment, pure, deep, delightful mysticism at its
best estate. His style has an elegant simplicity and
sweetness that is charming, and while many of hia
expressions are as striking as those of Augustine,
they seem perfectly easy and natural. His utterance
and gesture are described as in the highest degree
impressive. His power of persuasion was felt by
high and low to be something irresistible. * Even
his letters swayed popes and sovereigns. This
wonderful personal influence was shown in many
cures, which he and others believed to be miraculous.
Bernard is often called "the last of the Fathers."
If we were asked who is the foremost preacher in
the whole history of Latin Christianity, we should
doubtless find the question narrowing itself to a
choice between Augustine and Bernard. His sermons
show more careful preparation than those of the early
Latin Fathers. He has felt to some extent the sys
tematizing tendencies of the scholastic thought and
method for Anselm s principal works appeared
before Bernard was born, and Abelard was hia
99
Benioi by a dozen years and the effect of this
tematizing tendency we see in the more orderly
arrangement of his discourses, though they do not
show formal divisions. He greatly loved to preach,
and we are told that he preached of tener than the
rules of his order appointed, both to the monks and
to the people. He was accustomed to put down
thoughts, and schemes of discourses, as they occurred
to him, and work them up as he had occasion to
preach a plan which many other preachers have
found useful. His methods of sermonizing have
considerable variety, and his manner of treatment
is free. I need not say that he was devoted to alle
gorizing, which was universal in that ago. I count
in his works eighty-six sermons on the Song of Solo-
mon, and when the series was cut short by his death,
he had just begun the third chapter. In his other
sermons too he quotes the Song of Solomon as often
as Chrysostom quotes Job. Before we speak lightly
of this passionate love for Solomon s Song by medie
val monks, as some Protestants do speak, it may be
well to remember that Richard Baxter and Jonathan
Edwards studied that book with peculiar delight.
Bernard was warmly praised by Luther, Melanc*
100 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
tlion and Calvin. I think that beyond any othei
medieval preacher, he will repay the student of the
present day.
About fifty years after the death of Bernard,
t. e. in the beginning of the thirteenth century, two
new monastic orders were founded, the mendicant
orders of Franciscans and Dominicans. The latter
order was founded for the express purpose of preach
ing. And it is instructive to notice that the imme
diate occasion of its establishment was the observed
popularity and power of preaching among the
Waldenses. Besides settled preachers, Peter Waldo
had recently begun to send out Evangelists, two
by two, who were known as the "Poor Men of
Lyons." Dominic began his order to meet these
heretics just as Protestantism afterwards led to the
Society of Jesus. But in a few years Dominic went
to Home, and preached there with irresistible
eloquence, drawing the highest dignitaries to sym
pathize with his plans. All men could see that
preaching was everywhere greatly needed, and the
idea of a general order of preachers, to be controlled
by the eloquent Dominic, was welcomed, so that
Borne now became its centre. Within a few years
THE DOMINICANS. 101
this order embraced four hundred and seventy dif
ferent monasteries, in every country of Europe.,
and spreading into Asia, making probably twenty
thousand travelling preachers. In the course of
time the Dominicans became worldly, and less zeal
ous in this great work. But for two or three
generations this mighty order of "Evangelists,"
as we should say, made the Christian world ring
with their preaching. They formed also a singular
and very influential outside order of laymen, called
Tertiaries, who were bound by their vow to entertain
the wandering preachers, to spread the fame of their
eloquence, crowd to hear them, and "applaud, at
least by rapt attention." You perceive that several
things have been understood in the world before
our day.
The Franciscans addressed themselves especially
to Foreign Mission work among the Mohammedans
of Spain, Africa and the East, but also comprised
many zealous preachers at home. To these two
orders belonged the other two great medieval preach
ers of whom I shall speak, Antony of Padua being
a Franciscan, and Thomas Aquinas a Dominican.
Antony, a Portuguese, and a Franciscan mis-
102 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
sionary to Africa, afterwards came to Italy, where
lie gained his extraordinary reputation as a preacher,
and died in 1231, at the age of thirty-seven. He is
reckoned by some as the most popular preacher that
ever lived. We read of twenty thousand persons
as crowding at night around the stand where he
was to preach next morning, and after the sermon
making bonfires of their playing cards, etc.; and
sometimes as many as thirty thousand were present
when he preached. In point of mere numbers, this
surpasses Chrysostom, "Whitefield, Spurgeon and
Moody. Yet much of this popularity on the part
of Antony of Padua was due to the superstitious
belief that he had supernatural power, that he could
work miracles. We are told, for instance, that once
he preached to the fishes, "giving them in conclusion
the apostolical benediction, and behold ! they showed
their joy by lively movement of tail and fins, and
raised their heads above the water, bowed reverently
and went under. At this unbelievers were astonished,
and the most dreadful heretics were converted."*
Yet these superstitious follies must not prevent
our observing that he was really a great preacher
* Lent*, i, p. 229.
AHTONY OF PADUA. 103
and some things in his manner of preaching are par
ticularly noteworthy.
(1) Antony of Padua was the first preacher,
so far as I can learn, who made a careful division
of his sermons into several heads which his extant
sermons show that he commonly did, though not
universally. For example, on the text, "Blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord," Apocal. xiv., he
begins thus : " Note that in these words death is
described, about which the apostle John proposes
three things, viz., the debt of nature, where he says,
The dead ; the merit of grace, where he says,
"Who die in the Lord ; the reward of glory, where
he says, * Blessed. . . . "Likewise note that God
gives us three things, viz. to live, to live well, to live
forever. For in creation he gives us to live, in justifica
tion to live well, in glorification to live forever. But to
live, little profits him to whom it is not given, or who
does not strive, to live well ; and to live well would
not suffice if it were not given to live forever." And
BO throughout, everything is formally divided.
These formal divisions, a new thing in the history
of preaching, came from applying to practical dis
course the methods then pursued in the Universities,
104 OK HISTORY OP PREACHIHG.
Most of the great schoolmen were predecessors or
contemporaries of Antony, and all the most vigorous
thought of the time adopted their method. If it
were asked how these methods themselves arose, the
answer would seem to be this. The schoolmen
sought to rationalize Christianity, to make it con
formable and acceptable to human reason, as so
many have done before and since their epoch. But
these medieval thinkers could not rationalize as to
the truth of Christianity, as to its sources, or its
doctrinal contents, for all these were fixed for them
by the unquestionable authority of the Church. So
they fell to applying the processes of the Aristotelian
logic to this fixed body of Christian truth, seeking
by decomposition and reconstruction to bring it into
forms acceptable to their reason. Each new philoso
pher would decompose more minutely and reorgan
ize more elaborately. Thus logical division, formally
stated, became the passion of the age. And while
then and often afterwards carried to a great extreme,
and though there have been many reactions, in preach
ing as in other departments of literature, yet thia
scholastic passion for analysis has powerfully affected
the thought and the expression of all subsequent con
ANTONY OF PADUA. 105
tunes. If any of you wish to examine the first known
specimens of this method in preaching, and have
not access to the rare old folio of Antony s works
in Latin, I have seen advertised a small volume of
translations from Antony of Padua by Dr. Neale,
who has also given some account of him in the
volume on Medieval Preaching. You will notice
that most of Antony s sermons, as we have them,
are really sketches of sermons, published, we are told,
for the benefit of other brethren. Augustine dic
tated some short sermons, to be used by other
preachers, but Antony has left the first collection
of what modern pulpit literature knows only too
well, as "Sketches and Skeletons."
(2) But one would think it must have been some
thing else than formal scholastic divisions that made
Antony s preaching so popular. And we find that
he abounded in illustration, and that of a novel
kind. Anecdotes of saints and martyrs had become
somewhat stale, and Antony preferred to draw
illustration from the trades and other occupations
of those he was addressing, from the habits of ani
mals, and other such matters of common observation.
(3) His allegorizing is utterly wild and baseless,
106 OK HISTOKY OF PKEACHIKG.
beyond anything that I have seen even in the Fathers,
But such stuff seems always to have a charm for the
popular mind, as seen in many ignorant Baptist preach
ers at the present day, white and colored probably
for two reasons, because it constantly presents novel
ties, and because it appeals to the imagination. Strict
interpretation takes away from us for the most part
this means of charming audiences, but we can to
some extent make amends, since strict and careful
interpretation will itself often give great freshness
of view, even to the most familiar passages, while
illustration both affords novelty and appeals to the
imagination.
Thomas Aquinas, the Neapolitan Count, and
Dominican friar, who died six centuries ago (1274)
at the age of fifty, is by common consent regarded
/ as the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, and
one of the greatest minds in the history of philoso-
% phy. It is surely an interesting fact that he was
at the same time very popular as a preacher to the
3 common people, being thus faithful to his Domin
ican vow. Amid the immense and amazing mass of
his works are many brief discourses, and treatises
which were orig nally discoui-ses, marked by clear-
THOMAS AQUINAS. 107
*/ ness, simplicity and practical point, and usually
very short, many of them not requiring more than
ten minutes, though these were doubtless expanded
in preaching to the common people. He has also
r extended commentaries on perhaps half the books
of Scripture, in which the method of exposition is
strikingly like that with which we are all familiar
in Matthew Henry, leading us to believe that in the
former as well as in the latter case the exposition
was, for the most part, first presented in the form
of exosjto_ry sermons. He is not highly imagina-
i tive, nor flowing in expression ; the sentences are
short, and everything runs into division and subdi
vision, usually by threes. But while there is no or-
7 nament, and no swelling passion, he uses many
homely and lively comparisons, for explanation as
well as for argument.
It is pleasant to think of the fact that this great
philosopher and author loved to preach, and that
plain people loved to hear him. And many of us
ordinary men would do well like him to combine phil
osophical and other profound studies with simple and
practical preaching. Thirty years ago, Jacob R.
Scott, a Massachusetts man, and graduate of Browc
108 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
and of Newton, became chaplain to the University
of Virginia, and gave his valued friendship to a
young student who was looking to the ministry.
"When the young man began to preach, unfortu
nately without regular theological education, he
wrote to Mr. Scott for information about books and
advice as to study, and received a long and instruct
ive letter, in the course of which was given a bit
of counsel which has several times since gone the
rounds of the newspapers : "Bead Butler, and preach
to the negroes, and it will make a man of you."
The prediction has certainly been but very par
tially fulfilled, and one of the conditions, it must
be admitted, has not been fully complied with.
While preaching much to the negroes, and other
ignorant people, he has not sufficiently studied
Butler, and other philosophers. I tell the simple
story partly in order to pay a slight tribute of grat
itude to a son of Newton who has passed away, and
partly because it may bring a little nearer to you
the important thought that we ought to combine
profound studies with practical preaching.
You may notice that the great medieval preach
ers I have mentioned all fall within the twelfth and
MEDIEVAL PREACHING. 102
thirteenth centuries. To the same period belong
the greatest of the Latin hymn-writers, Adam of
St. Victor (who is now regarded as the foremost
of them all), and the authors of the Celestial City,
the Stabat Mater, and the Dies Irae. If you in
quire for the cause of this accumulation of emi
nent preachers and sacred poets in that age, the ex
planation would doubtless be chiefly the Crusades.
These had powerfully stirred the soul of Europe,
awakening all minds and hearts. At the same time,
by keeping up a distant warfare, they had given
many generations of peace at home, and thus af
forded opportunity for the work of the great Uni
versities and the rise of the great Schoolmen, and
so likewise for the appearance of great preachers
and hymn-writers. Moreover, the rise of the mid
dle class greatly heightened the aggregate mental
activity of society. And though what we call the
" Revival of Learning" was much later than this,
yet already there was a growing and inevitably in
spiring acquaintance with the Classic Latin authors,
as, for example, in the next generation after Thomas
Aquinas, Dante shows himself familiar with Virgil.
The study of the Komaii Law had also been re-
110 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING.
vived, and there were now professors of Civil Law
in all the great Universities. As regards preach
ing, we can see what causes ended this period of
prosperity. For in the next two centuries (J4th
and 15th) there were again terrible wars in Europe
itself. Scholasticism had run its course, the Papacy
became frightfully corrupt, and the better spirits
were either absorbed in Mysticism, or engaged in
unsuccessful attempts to reform the Church. With
the general corruption the great preaching orders
rapidly degenerated. If Thomas Aquinas was a
Dominican, and Tauler, so also was the infamous
Tetzel, whose proclamation of indulgences called
forth the theses of Luther.
Of the great Mystics I can only mention Tauler,
doubtless the foremost of his class in that age.
Some of you are probably familiar with an admir
able volume containing his Life and twenty-five
sermons, published in New York in 1858. Tauler
lived on the Ehine in the fourteenth century, hav
ing been educated at the University of Paris, then
the greatest of all seats of learning. In a time of
great political and social evils, of protracted civil
TAULEB. Ill
war, followed by a terrible struggle between the Pope
and the Emperor (for German Emperors and Popes
have had many a fierce conflict before to-day), a time
of frightful pestilence, a time of sadly dissolute morals
even among priests and monks and nuns, Tauler
labored as a faithful priest. After years thus spent,
he was, at the age of fifty, lifted to what we call a
Higher Life through the influence of a young lay
man, the head of a secret society which was trying
to reform religion without leaving the Church. It
was after this Higher Life period began with
Tauler that he preached the sermons which were
taken down by hearers and remain to us.
"We ought to study these mystical writings.
They represent one side of human nature, and min
ister, in an exaggerated way, to a want of men in
every age. Our own age is intensely practical.
Yet see how readily many persons accept the idea
of a Higher Life, of the Rest of Faith, etc. Do not
most of us so neglect this aspect of Christianity in
our studies and our preaching, as to leave the natu
ral thirst for it in some hearers ungratified, and thus
prepare them to catch at, and delight in, such ideaa
and sentiments when presented in an extravagant
112 OK HISTORY OF PREICHIXG.
and enthusiastic form ? If we do not neglect the
Scriptural mysticism as found in the writings of
John and also of Paul we shall see less readiness
among our people to accept a mysticism that is un-
scriptural
Let it be added that Tauler did not preach mere
mystical raptures. He searchingly applies reli
gious principle to the regulation of the inner and
the outer life, and urges that ordinary homely
duties shall be performed in a religious spirit.
I must pass with brief mention the preaching of
the now celebrated " Keformers before the Refor
mation." Of Wyclif, who died in England twenty
years later than Tauler, and of his "poor preachers/
we may have time to think on another occasion.
John Huss, who was a little later, and powerfully
influenced by the writings of Wyclif, was an elo
quent and scholarly man, University preacher and
Queen s Confessor in Bohemia, and his "fervid
sermons " in favor of moral and ecclesiastical refor
mation long made a great impression. And to pass
over many others, we must believe that there has
seldom been more impressive preaching than that
of the Italian Dominican Savonarola, who acted
THE REFORMATION. 113
the part of prophet, preacher and virtual ruler in
Florence during the last years of the fifteenth cen
tury, when Martin Luther was a child. A cen
tury before Luther, lived Thomas a-Kempis, in the
Netherlands and Gerson in France. It is much
disputed which of them wrote the tract on " The Imi
tation of Christ." The former is said by historians
not to have been a very eloquent preacher ; Gerson
was a preacher of real power, and highly esteemed by
Luther.
We come now to the preaching of the great EE-
FORMERS. In devoting to them the mere fraction
of a lecture, we have at least the advantage that
here the leading persons and main facts are well
known. Let us notice certain things which hold
true of the Reformation preaching in general.
(1) It was a revival of preaching. We have seen
that in the Middle Ages there was by no means
such an utter dearth of preaching as many Protest
ant writers have represented. Yet the preachers
we have referred to were, even when most numerous,
rather exceptions to a rule. Even the great Mis
sionary organizations, the Franciscans and Domini
114 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING.
cans, poured forth their thousands of mendicai I
preachers to do a work which the local clergy
mainly neglected, and which they were often all
the more willing to neglect because the travelling
friars would now and then undertake it. Peripa
tetic preachers, evangelists, however useful under
some circumstances and worthy of honor, become a
curse to any pastor who expects them to make amends
for his own neglect of duty. In general, the clergy
did not preach. And the Reformation was a great
outburst of preaching, such as had not been seen
since the early Christian centuries.
(2) It was a revival of Biblical preaching. In
stead of long and often fabulous stories about saints
and martyrs, and accounts of miracles, instead of
passages from Aristotle and Seneca, and fine-spun
subtleties of the Schoolmen, these men preached the
Bible. The question was not what the Pope said ;
and even the Fathers, however highly esteemed, were
not decisive authority it was the Bible. The
preacher s one great task was to set forth the doc
trinal a-nd moral teachings of the Word of God.
And the greater part of their preaching was exposi
tory. Once more, after long centuries, people were
THE KEFOtlMATIOtf. lift
reading the Scriptures in their own tongue, and
preachers, studying the original Greek and Hebrew,
were carefully explaining to the people the connected
teachings of passage after passage and book after book.
For example, Zwingle, when first beginning his minis
try at Zurich, announced his intention to preach, not
simply upon the church lessons, but upon the whole
gospel of Matthew, chapter after chapter. Some
friends objected that it would be an innovation,
and injurious; but he justly said, "It is the old
custom. Call to mind the homilies of Chrysostom
on Matthew, and of Augustine on John." And
these sermons of Zwingle s made a great impression.
There was also at the basis of this expository preach
ing by the Eeformers a much more strict and reasona
ble exegesis than had ever been common since the
days of Chrysostom. Luther retained something of
the love of allegorizing, as many Lutherans have
done to the present day. But Calvin gave the ablest,
soundest, clearest expositions of Scripture that had
been seen for a thousand years, and most of the
other great "Reformers worked in the same direction.
Such careful and continued exposition of the Bible,
based in the main upon sound exegesis, and pursued
116 OK HISTORY OP IREACHIHG.
with loving zeal, could not fail of great results,
especially at a time when direct and exact knowledge
of Scripture was a most attractive and refreshing
novelty. The same sort of effect is to some extent
seen in the case of certain useful laborers in our own
day, who accomplish so much by Bible readings and
highly Biblical preaching. The expository sermons
of the Reformers, while in general free, are yet much
more orderly than those of the Fathers. They have
themselves studied the great scholastic works, and
been trained in analysis and arrangement, and the
minds of all their cultivated hearers have received
a similar bent. And so they easily, and almost
spontaneously, give their discourses something of
plan. Accordingly they are in many respects models
of this species of preaching. In general, it may be
said that the best specimens of expository preaching
are to be found in Chrysostom, in the Reformers,
especially Luther and Calvin, and in the sottish
pulpit of our own time.
(3) The Eeformation involved a revival of contro
versial preaching. Religious controversy is unpopu
lar in our day, being regarded as showing a lack ol
charity, of broad culture, and in the estimation of some,
THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS. 117
a lack even of social refinement and courtesy. It ia
possible that a few preachers, even some of our Baptisi
brethren, are too fond of controversy, and do perhaps
exhibit some of the deficiencies mentioned. But it
must not be forgotten that religious controversy ia
inevitable where living faith in definite truth is
dwelling side by side with ruinous error and practi
cal evils. And preachers may remember that contro
versial preaching, properly managed, is full of interest
and full of power.
(4) We must add that there was in the Kefor-
mation a revival of preaching upon the doctrines of
grace. The methods of preaching are, after all, not
half so important as the materials. These great men
preached justification by faith, salvation by grace.
The doctrine of Divine sovereignty in human salva
tion was freely proclaimed by all the Eeformers.
However far some Protestants may have gone at a
later period in opposition to these views, yet Protest
antism was born of the doctrines of grace, and in
the proclamation of these the Eeformation preaching
found its truest and highest power. There are many
who say now-a-days, " But we have changed all that."
Nay, till human nature changes and Jesus Christ
118 OK HISTOKY OF ?REACHlKk
changes, the power of the gospel will still reside in
the great truth of salvation hy sovereign grace. Let
the humanitarian and the ritualist go their several
ways, but let us boldly and warmly proclaim the
truths which seem old and yet are so new to every
needy heart, of sovereignty and atonement, of spiritual
regeneration and justification by faith.
It would be difficult to find so marked a contrast
between any two celebrated contemporaries in all the
history of preaching as that between LUTHER and
CALVIN. Luther (1483-1546) was a broad-shoul
dered, broad-faced, burly German, overflowing with
physical strength; Calvin (1509-64) a feeble-looking
little Frenchman, with shrunken cheeks and slender
frame, and bowed with study and weakness. Lu
ther had a powerful intellect, but was also rich in
sensibility, imagination and swelling passion a man
juicy with humor, delighting in music, in children,
in the inferior animals, in poetic sympathy with
nature. In the disputation at Leipzig he stood up
to speak with a bouquet in his hand. Every constit
uent of his character was rich to overflowing, and
yet it was always a manly vigor, without sentimental
LUTHER AND CALVIN. 1^9
gush. With, all this accords one of his marked faults,
a prodigious and seemingly reckless extravagance,
and even an occasional coarseness of language when
excited, leading to expressions which ever since Bos-
suet have been the stock in trade of An ti- Protestant
controversialists, and some of which it is impossible
to defend. Calvin, on the other hand, was practically
destitute of imagination and humor, seeming in his
public life and works to have been all intellect and
will, though his letters show that he was not only a
good hater, but also a warm friend. And yet, while
so widely different, both of these men were great
preachers. What had they in common to make them
great preachers ? I answer, along with intellect they
had (force of character,) fan energetic nature,) (will/)
A great preacher is not a mere artist, and not a
feeble suppliant, he is a conquering soul, a monarch,
a born ruler of mankind. He wills, and men bow.
Calvin was far less winning than Luther, but he
was even more than Luther an autocrat. Each of
j-
tliem had (unbounded self-reliance) too, and yet at
the same time each was full of (humble reliance on
God.j This combination, self-confidence, such as if
it existed alone, would vitiate character, yet checked
120 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING.
and upborne by simple, humble, child-like faith in
God this makes a Christian hero, for word or for
wo/k. The statement could be easily misunderstood,
but as meant it is true and important, that a man
must both believe in himself and believe in God, if he
is to make a powerful impression on his fellow-men,
and do great good in the world. This force of char
acter in both Luther and Calvin gave^great force to
their utterance.^ Every body repeats the saying as
to Luther that "his words were half battles." But
of Calvin too it was said, and said by Beza who
knew him so well, Tot verba, tot pondera, " every
word weighed a pound," a phrase also used of
Daniel Webster. It should be noticed too that
both Luther and Calvin were drawn into much
connection with practical affairs, and this tended to
give them greater firmness and positiveness of charac
ter, and to render their preaching more vigorous,
as well as better suited to the common mind. Here is
another valuable combination of what are commonly
reckoned incongruous qualities to be a thinker and
student, and at the same time a man of practical
sense and practical experience. Such were the grea
Reformers, and such a man was the apostle Paul
CALVIN. 181
The vast reputation of Calvin as theologian and
church-builder has overshadowed his great merits
as a commentator and a preacher. With the pos-
eible exception of Chrysostom, I think there is,
as already intimated, no commentator before our
own century whose exegesis is so generally satisfac
tory and so uniformly profitable as that of Calvin.
And by all means use the original Latin, so clear
and smooth and agreeable, Latin probably unsur
passed in literary excellence since the early centu
ries. All his extemporized sermons taken down in
short hand, as well as his writings, show not so
much great copiousness, as true command of lan
guage, his expression being, as a rule, singularly
direct, simple, and forcible. The extent of his
preaching looks to us wonderful. While lectur
ing at Geneva to many hundreds of students (some
times eight hundred), while practically a ruler of
Geneva, and constant adviser of the Reformed in
all Switzerland, France and the Netherlands, Eng
land and Scotland, and while composing his so ex
tensive and elaborate works, he would often preach
every day. For example, I notice that the two
hundred sermons on Peuteronomy, which are dated,
6
122 OK HISTORY OF PREACHIKG.
were all delivered on week-days in the course of
little more than a year, and sometimes on four or
five days in succession. It was so with the other
great Keformers. In fact, Luther accuses one
preacher of leading an "idle life; for he preaches
but twice a week, and has a salary of two hundred
dollars a year." Luther himself, with all his lec
turing, immense correspondence, and voluminous
authorship, often preached every day for a week, and
on fast days two or three times.
Luther had (less than Calvin of (sustained in
tensity,) but he had at times an (overwhelming force,
and his preaching possessed the (rhetorical advan
tage of being everywhere pervaded by one idea}}
that of justification by faith, round which he reor
ganized all existing Christian thought, and which
gave a certain unity to all the overflowing variety
of his illustration, sentiment and expression. In
fact, did he not carry his one idea too far, and have
not Protestants yet to recover from following him
in this error ? The apostles speak of loving Christ
and knowing Christ, as securing salvation, but
Luther would in every case by main force reduce
LUTHER. 123
it to believing.* But the undecomposed idea of
loving Christ is certainly more intelligible and prac*
tically useful in the Sunday School, and so there
may be persons who will be more benefited by the
idea of knowing Christ than by that of believing on
him.
Luther shows great realness, both in his personal
grasp of Christian truth, and in his modes of pre
senting it. The conventional decorums he smashes,
and with strong, rude, and sometimes even coarse
expressions, with illustrations from almost every
conceivable source, and with familiar address to
the individual hearer, he brings the truth very close
home. He gloried in being a preacher to the com
mon people. Thus he says : "A true, pious and
faithful preacher shall look to the children and serv
ants, and to the poor, simple masses, who need in
struction." "If one preaches to the coarse, hard
* For example, That ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, etc. Luther :
" This, however, is only to be attained unto by faith. Love has
not anything to do in this matter, although it is an assistance
as being an evidence whereby we are assured of our faith."
So on John xvii. 3, That they may know thee, etc. Luther ;
" For here you see the words are plain, and any one may com
prehend and understand them. Christ giveth to all that be
lieve eternal life."
124 ON HISrORY OF PKEACHItfG.
populace, he must paint it for them, pound it, chew
it, try all sorts of ways to soften them ever so little."
Ho blamed Zwingle for interlarding his sermons
with Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and praised those
who preached so that the common people could
understand. This subject of popular preaching has
been much discussed in Germany down to the present
day. There is a greater difference between culti
vated people and the masses in Germany and Eng
land than in our own country. Yet even in Amer
ica, even in New England, with its noble common
schools and the omnipresent newspaper, the masses
are comparatively ignorant, and need plain preach
ing, and we must not forget it.
Luther is a notable example of intense personality
in preaching. His was indeed an imperial person
ality, of rich endowments, varied sympathies and
manifold experiences. They who heard him were
not only listening to truth, but they felt the man. *
Those who merely read his writings, in foreign lands
and languages, felt the man, were drawn to him, and
thus drawn to his gospel. There are conflicting
opinions as to what is best in regard to the preacher s
personality. Some offensively obtrude themselves,
LUTHER. 125
and push the gospel into the background. Others
think the ideal is to put the gospel alone before
the mind, and let the preacher be entirely forgotten.
"Hide yourself behind the cross," is the phrase.
AVhat is here intended is well enough, but the state
ment is extreme, if not misleading. "What is the use
of a living preacher, if he is to be really hidden, even
by the cross ? The true ideal surely is, that the
preacher shall come frankly forward, in full person
ality, modest through true humility and yet bold with
personal conviction and fervid zeal and ardent love
presenting the gospel as a reality of his own expe
rience, and attracting men to it by the power of a
living and present human sympathy and yet all the
while preaching not himself, but Christ Jesus the
Lord. In the Dresden gallery there is a small por
trait by Titian, of a brother painter. He is in the
foreground, a fine, rugged face, illuminated with the
light of genius, while on one side, and a little in the
background is the face of Titian himself, gazing upon
his friend with loving, self-forgetting, and contagious
admiration. Tims ought we to stand beside the
cross. And observe that with all his boldnessj
Luther often trembled at the responsibility of preach
126 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
ing. He says in one of his sermons, "As soon as I
learnt from the Holy Scriptures how terror-filled and
perilous a matter it was to preach publicly in the
church of God .... there was nothing I so
much desired as silence Nor am 1
now kept in the ministry of the Word, but by an
overruled obedience to a will above my own, that is,
the divine will ; for as to my own will, it always
shrank from it, nor is it fully reconciled unto it to
this hour."
What I have time to say of Luther as to preaching
must end with a paragraph from the Table Talk,
which makes some good hits though very oddly
arranged. "A good preacher should have these
properties and virtues : first, to teach systematically ;
secondly, he should have a ready wit ; thirdly, he
should be elegant ; fourthly, he should have a good
voice ; fifthly, a good memory ; sixthly, he should
know when to make an end ; seventhly, he should
be sure of his doctrine ; eighthly, he should venture
and engage body and blood, wealth and honor, in
the Word; ninthly, he should suffer himself to be
mocked and jeered of every one." The expression,
"he should know when to make an end," recalls a
ZWINGLE. 127
statement I have sometimes made to students, that
public speaking may be summed up in three things :
First, have something to say ; secondly, say it ;
third and lastly, quit.
As to the preaching of the other leading Reform
ers, I cannot speak at any length. Melanchthon really
preached very little. His lectures in Latin on
Sundays were designed for his students. He did not
enjoy preaching to miscellaneous congregations, and
in the vulgar tongue. Zwingle (1484-1531) was a
bold and energetic preacher, a thoroughly energetic
man, and a most laborious student. Like Luther he
was very fond of music, and would set his own Chris
tian songs to music, and accompany them on the lyre.
It is a German peculiarity that men have in every age
so generally been practical musicians, and the neglect
of this in our country is to be deplored. Sing
ing will obviously be of very great profit, in many
ways, to all young ministers, and instrumental music
must not be considered unmanly or worthless in face
of the fact that it has been so much practiced by those
great peoples, the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Ger
mans. Zwingle was not merely energetic and ardent,
128 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
but tenderly emotional, as shown by his sorrowing
tears during the great Conference with Luther at
Marburg. Beyond even the other Reformers, he
made much use of public debates, a practice which
had been made common by the schoolmen. In the
days of chivalry and tournaments, the professors and
students began to hold intellectual tournaments also,
two men being pitted against each other, or one man
fixing his thesis, and undertaking to maintain it
against all comers. You remember that the Refor
mation began with Luther s theses as to Indulgences ;
and through all the period of the Reformation dis
cussions were frequent. In Switzerland more than
elsewhere these discussions appear to have produced
important results. They seem in general to be most
useful where men are unsettled in their opinions
and indisposed to wide reading. Among us, thny
have now almost ceased in the older States, but are
continued with keen relish in some parts of the
West and South-west. Zwingle had one qualification
for public discussions, which has sometimes been con
sidered particularly effective, viz., great readiness in per
sonal abuse as shown, for example, in his writings
against those whom he scornfully calls the Catabaptists.
THE AHABAPTISTS. 12S
Farel, the friend of Calvin, had a blazing French
eloquence. But we cannot begin to enumerate.
It was an age of great preachers, an age that called
spirits from the vasty deep, and in troops they
came. Of John Knox and the English Reforma
tion preaching we may have another opportunity
to think.
I must not stop without a word as to certain
preachers" of that day who have been too much neg
lected. The Anabaptists of the sixteenth century
have so thoroughly a bad name in general literature
that some persons would be surprised at the inti
mation that there were among them preachers of
great power. By the help of my friend Dr. Howard
Osgood, of Rochester Seminary, who has made the
history of the Anabaptists a specialty, I am able
to state a few facts of interest.
The most distinguished preacher among the Swiss
and Moravian Baptists was Balthasar Hiibmaier,
whose name is now beginning to be heard of again,
and concerning whom you will find a very good ar
ticle in Herzog s Encyclopadie. He was educated
at the University of Freiburg in Baden, and pro-
6*
130 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING.
fessor, A. D. 1512, in the University of Ingolstadt
with the celebrated Eck as his colleague, and after-
wards was Cathedral pastor in Regensburg. At
these places he gained the fame of the most elo
quent man of his day. But reading Luther s earlier
works, and then studying the apostle Paul, he
joined the reformed party, and in 1523, was a popu
lar preacher in Switzerland, already beginning to
deny the propriety of Infant Baptism. In 1525 he
was baptized. Then came fierce conflicts with
Zwingle at Zurich, and banishment to Moravia,
where in two years he brought many thousands
into the rising Baptist churches, which then
seemed likely to include the whole population.
But Moravia fell into the hands of Austria, and
Hiibmaier was martyred at Vienna in 1528. A
Reformed contemporary, not a Baptist, called him
"truly a most eloquent and most highly cultivated
man." Zwingle, in replying to Hiibmaier s treatise
on Infant Baptism, uses many hard words as usual,
but shows great respect for his abilities. He calls
Hiibmaier that distinguished Doctor, and admits
(in a passage otherwise highly arrogant) that he has
a greater faculty of speaking than himself. The
THE ANABAPTISTS. 131
writings of Hiibmaier, which are difficult to obtain,
are said to be marked by clearness, directness and
force. They chiefly treat of the constitution and or
dinances of the church. I find a really beautiful
address (A. D. 1525) to the three churches of Ke-
gensburg, Ingolstadt and Freiburg, entitled "The
Sum of a truly Christian Life," to be of the nature
of a sermon. The arrangement is good, and the
divisions distinctly stated. He is decidedly vigor
ous and acute in argument, making very sharp
points. The style is clear and lively when he has
begun you feel drawn along, and want to follow
him. Zwingle bears unintentional testimony to
the excellence, in one important respect, of Hub-
maier s method of argumentation. " You are wont
to cry, I want no conjectures, bring forward Scrip
ture, make what you say plain by Scripture, etc."
To all his later writings Hiibmaier prefixed the
motto, "Truth is immortal;" and certainly the
hopes he expressed by this motto have been strik
ingly fulfilled as to the doctrine of religious liberty,
which it is said he was among the first to announce
and which in a new continent he had barely heard
of has at last attained a glorious recognition.
132 ON HISTORY OP PREACHIHG.
I shall merely mention Conrad Grebel, educator*
at Vienna, and for two years the leader of the Swiss
Baptists, who is said to have been learned, brilliant,
with great power over an audience, an opponent whom
Zwingle feared more than all others. And there were
other Baptist preachers in Switzerland and South
Germany, who were learned and eloquent men.
In Holland, Menno Simon, well known in Church
History, was for twenty-five years (1536-61) "the
greatest of all Baptist missionaries in Northern
Europe, establishing hundreds of churches. He
was a spiritual-minded man, and deeply versed in
the Bible."* A translation of his works has been
published in Indiana, among the "Mennonites."
His contemporary and successor, Dirck Phillips, ia
said by a Eoman Catholic writer to have been " equal
to Menno in eloquence and zeal, and superior in
learning." We may add Bouwens, a very apostle in
Holland and Belgium, whose diary records the bap
tism of near ten thousand persons baptized by himself,
with the places ; and this when a great price was set
on his head by the merciless Duke of Alva.
In conclusion, let us remember that with the
* Oggood. See a good article in Herzog.
FEINTING AND PREACHING. 13S
Reformation began the free and wide use ot printing
to aid the work of preaching. In a few years aftei
Luther took decided position, brief and pointed
tieatises of his were scattered through all Western
and Southern Europe. Colporteurs were employed
especially for this purpose, besides the much that
was done by private exertion. This revived and
purified Christianity seized upon the press as an aux
iliary to the living preacher. The same course has
been more or less pursued ever since, and notably in
our own time. And perhaps few have even yet any
just conception of the varied and powerful assistance
we may derive from printing and this without its
being necessary for each church to set up its own
newspaper. Every now and then some people discuss
the question whether the press be not now more
powerful than the pulpit. But really that is an
unpractical inquiry. It is our true task and our
high privilege, to make the pulpit, with the help of the
press, more and more a power and a blessing.
LECTURE IV.
THE GKEAT FRENCH PKEACHERS.
A COMPLETE history of Preaching in France would
of course go over ground to which we have hereto
fore made some reference. Thus in the medieval
times, Peter the Hermit was a Frenchman, and so
was St. Bernard. The good work done by the
Waldensian preachers in the South of France in
the twelfth century, led the Catholics (as we saw)
to establish the Dominican order of preachers.
And Calvin, though we think of him in connection
with Geneva, was in all respects a Frenchman.
It may seem strange that we have almost no
accounts of eminent preachers in France before the
Middle Ages. And doubtless fuller information
would show us that there were many men of power
and influence, For the French are a nation highly
capable of appreciating and producing eloquence.
The dominant Franks did not materially modify
KELTIC ELOQUEKCE. 135
the character of the old Keltic stock, and the Kelts
were from our earliest knowledge of them, and are
still, an eloquent race. Caesar describes to ns popu
lar orators among the Gauls who must have spoken
with a fiery and passionate eloquence. The Gauls
(or Galatians) in Asia Minor received Paul s early
preaching with unequalled enthusiasm. The Scotch
man who converted the pagan Irish, and whom all
Ireland reveres as St. Patrick, must have been,
to judge from all accounts given, a preacher of
great power over the hearts of men ; and so was the
Irishman Columba, who two centuries later preached
from house to house throughout Scotland. The
Irish to the present day are noted for a peculiarly
imaginative oratory, not only in politics wherever
there has been any political liberty, but also in
preaching, notwithstanding the unfavorable influence
of Eomanism ; and the most eloquent preacher in
the Church of England at the present time is an
Irishman bred and born, the Bishop of Peterbor
ough. The Welsh also have been famous for elo
quent preachers. And everywhere, in Galatians,
Gauls, Irish, Welsh, and modern Frenchmen, there
is the same blazing enthusiasm and mental activity,
136 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
the same impulsiveness and prompt excitability;
the same lively imagination, and (so far as we know)
the same quick movements and passionate vehemence
in del. very.
But instead of searching French history for
proofs that in every age they have had preachers
not unworthy of the Keltic blood, we shall find it
more instructive to come at once to the Golden Age
of the French Pulpit Eloquence and French Litera
ture in general, the seventeenth century, the
latter half of which is dear to Frenchmen as the
age of Louis XIV. Let us carefully note how
thoroughly this period in France fulfilled the condi
tions of highly eloquent preaching. And perhaps
this can be best managed for our purpose by plant
ing ourselves in the year in which Bourdaloue firsf
preached before the king, the year 1670 (a little
over two centuries ago), when the glorious age of
Louis the Great was just reaching its full splendor.*
The king himself, the centre of everything, is
now thirty-two years old, his reign having begun
* I follow usually the dates of the Oxford Tables, from
which some of the facts are derived, and some also from
Voltaire.
AGE Oi LOUIS XIV. i7
when he was a child of five years. While every
great nation around has been losing strength,
France has rapidly gained. Germany must require
many generations to recover from the exhaustion
produced by the terrible Thirty years War, which
ended only twenty-two years ago. Spain, which a
century ago was the mistress of the world, has
lost Holland and part of Flanders, and quite
recently lost Portugal, has made a damaging peace
with Louis, and under the rule of weak kings and
the infamous Inquisition, has sunk into national
weakness and discontent and almost into ruin.
England, after the dreadful Civil Wars and the
brief rule of Cromwell, has now for ten years been
persecuting the Nonconformists and endeavoring
to imitate the wretched vices of Charles II, who
is but a pitiful vassal of France. Italy, divided
into a number of warring states, and busy in the
Levant with the Turks, has herself been again and
again a battle-ground for the French and the Span
iards. Amid this weakness on every hand, France,
long so feeble, has seen her opportunity and improved
it. Conde and Turenne have gained many a splendid
victory over the Germans and over the once invin-
138 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
cible Spanish infantry, covering themselves and
their nation with the military glory in ^hich
Frenchmen so greatly delight, reviving the memory of
that proud time when Charlemagne the Frenchman
was Emperor of all Western Europe, and rendering
themselves the objects of that enthusiastic popular
admiration and love which will some years hence
find expression in lofty funeral sermons.
At home, the two great Cardinals Kichelieu and
Mazarin for forty years carried out with iron firm
ness the policy of Henry IV. and the Duke of Sully,
steadily weakening the old feudal nobility and the
once almost independent clergy, and concentrating
all power in the crown, until fifteen years ago the
young Louis, wise beyond his seventeen years, and
conscious of despotic power, coolly gave his order to
the Parliament, and uttered his memorable saying,
"The State I am the State." Many of the great
nobles had in the previous century adopted the
then powerful and rapidly growing Keformed re
ligion as a means of making head against the
crown, being ready enough, as unscrupulous pol
iticians always are, to patronize any religion that
apparently strengthen their own political
AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 136
power. The Reformed (or as we say, Protestants)
unwisely accepted the support and protection of
these great nobles, and thus religious interests became
subordinate to political interests. The successive
religious wars, ending with the bloody wars of the
Fronde in the early years of Louis, have gradually
weakened the nobles and made them dependent on
the Crown, and shortly before the year of which
we are speaking, many nominally Reformed nobles
went over to the dominant church as for exam
ple Turenne himself, who in 1668 turned Catholic,
at the request of the gracious sovereign who had
made him a Marshal and many from among the
masses of the Reformed, long used to seeking pro
tection and guidance from the nobility, began rap
idly to follow them into the conquering Catholic
communion, the church of the splendid court and
the all-powerful king. The work of the great Car
dinals has been well done, and nine years ago, in
1661, Mazarin was succeeded by Colbert, the gifted
minister of Finance, whose financial genius is now
rapidly enriching the nation and strengthening the
throne. He has introduced from the Low Coun
tries many new forms of manufacture, in which the
140 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
skilful French fingers and the exquisite French taste
are already beginning to surpass their teachers, and
fast preparing for the days when Fashion, the might
iest of sovereigns, will sit enthroned in splendid
Paris and rule over the civilized world. Along
with manufactures Colbert has built up a spreading
commerce and a powerful navy. Together with trade
in the East and West Indies, he is attempting to
rival the Spaniards and English in colonizing Amer-
k-a. Some years ago, Canada was organized as a
colony, and not many years hence the French will
go for the first time down the Mississippi, and up
and down its stream will claim a new and grand
territory, which after the great king they will name
Louisiana. In connection with and by means of
all these financial enterprises, which are rapidly
increasing the wealth of the country, the acute Min
ister confirms the triumphs of his predecessors ovei
the feudal system, by building up a wealthy class of
burghers, who look to the government for protec
tion of business and property, and help by their
financial strength to make the king utterly supreme
over the old feudal nobility. Evil enough from this
centralization and this wealth may come in the
AGE OF LOUIS XIV. 141
future, but at present, France rejoices in her grow
ing population and riches, is stimulated by the lofti
est national pride, and looks with unutterable admir
ation to him who seems the embodiment of all her
power and splendor and glory, the Great Monarch.
Besides this extraordinary national prosperity,
and stimulating national spirit, it is an age of pro
digious intellectual activity. In oar year 1670, it
has been forty-four years since the death of Bacon,
whose ideas and methods are now widely known,
and twenty-eight years since the death of Galileo,
shortly after having (as it has been wittily stated)
"at the age of seventy years, begged pardon for
being right." Just forty years ago died the great
astronomer Kepler, and young Isaac Newton, at
the age of twenty-eight, is already working over
Kepler s laws. Harvey, who discovered the circu
lation of the blood, died thirteen years ago, and ten
years earlier died Torricelli, who learned the weight
of the atmosphere, and invented the barometer.
Just about this time were also invented the air-pump,
the electrical machine, the pendulum. These grand
discoveries and inventions at once indicate and pro
duce great general activity of mind throughout the
OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
cultivated circles of Europe. And this activity ia
seen not merely in physical science, but also in met
aphysics. It is twenty years since the death of
Descartes, the greatest of French philosophers, who
applied the Baconian method of observation and anal
ysis to metaphysics, and has become for France the
father of idealism and of rationalism. Spinoza has
already written most of his great essays in Panthe
istic philosophy, which a few years hence, at his
early death, he will leave behind. Malebranche,
the leading disciple of Descartes, has reached the age
of thirty-two ; and Leibnitz, a brilliant youth of
twenty-four, living on the Khine, has since the age
of seventeen been issuing a succession of remarka
ble treatises on philosophy, law and politics work
ing out, among other things, a curious project
for inducing Louis XIV. to leave Germany and the
Low Countries alone, and turn his ambitious pro
jects towards an invasion of Egypt. Hobbes is
still living, at an advanced age ; and John Locke,
now thirty-eight years old, dissatisfied with the
ethical and political results of Hobbes development
of sensational philosophy, and stimulated by the
writings of Descartes, is profoundly meditating on
AGE OF LOUIS XIV, 143
the faculties of the human mind and the sources oi
human knowledge, and slowly preparing for his great
"Essay on the Human Understanding," which will
not appear till twenty years hence. In this year,
1670, he writes an impracticable constitution for
the American colony which in honor of Charles II.
is called Carolina.
The inquiring and erudite minds of the age
are also drawing together and beginning to act in
association. The English Eoyal Society was char
tered ten years ago on the accession of Charles II,
but had in fact existed in the time of Cromwell;
and Colbert, "jealous of this new glory," has in
the last few years encouraged the formation of like
societies in France, the Academy of Inscriptions,
the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Music,
and also the Koyal Library.
Besides, there are admirable Schools of the highest
order. The University of Paris is perhaps no longer
at the head of Europe, as it was in the later Middle
Ages, but it has a great reputation, and in Theology
there is no school of higher authority than the
Sorbonne. Colleges have been established in numer
ous towns by the Jesuits, who make teaching a spe
144 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
cialty and have reduced it to a science, and the volun
teer teaching at Port Boyal was a few years ago exert
ing a potent influence. The great preachers of the
age are all men of regular and thorough education.
Along with all this activity in physical and meta
physical science, and in education, there has rapidly
arisen a general literature of singular richness and
vigor and consummate elegance a literature that
will be the pride of France for centuries to come.
Corneille, who with all his literary faults has more
elevation and nobleness than any other French
dramatist, is now an old man, and his works are all
well known. Molie"re, probably the foremost writer
of Comedy in all the modern world, has issued nearly
all the plays that will be known as his chefs-d oeuvre.
Kacine is still young, but has published several great
tragedies, especially the Andromache and the Britan-
nicus. Numerous satires of Boileau have been pub
lished, and every body is reading some Fables of La
Fontaine. The Due de la Kochefoucauld five years
ago sent forth into all hands the Collection of shrewd
and witty and often mournfully profound Maxims
in which he essays to show that the motive of all
human action is self-love. Mme. de Sevigne, very
A3KE OF LOUIS XIV. 14
highly educated and wonderfully attractive notwith
standing her lack of personal beauty, is admired and
influential in court circles, and devoutly fond of
pulpit eloquence, and will begin next year the cor
respondence with her daughter which is to make her
the most famous letter writer in the world. Above
all, Pascal, the prince of French prose- writers, the
marvel of precocity, of mathematical knowledge and
physical discovery and philosophical thought, and
the deeply humble and devout Christian, who died
eight years ago, had five years before his death
published his "Provincials," a work of such literary
excellence and charm, such keen and delicious satire,
that all France is reading it ; and even the Jesuits,
though they hate, malign and affect to despise
him, yet secretly read his wonderful book. In con
sequence of Pascal s unpopularity as a Jansenist,
it will be some years before the publication of his
" Thoughts," a collection of papers he has left
behind him, consisting of mere fragments, yet rich
in the profoundest Christian wisdom, and destined
to be lovingly studied for long years to come.
By these great writers the French language has
been developed and disciplined into the very highest
7
146 OJST HISTORY OF PREACHING.
excellence of which it seems capable. In liquid clear*
ness, vivacious movement and delicate grace it is
unsurpassed among ancient or modern tongues,
while not equal to Greek or to English in flexibility
and in energy. Only a few years later than 1670
it will supersede the Latin as the language of Euro
pean diplomacy.
In Art as well as in Literature the age is marked
by great activity and decided excellence. It is but
forty years since the death of Kubens and Van Dyk,
while Kembrandt is still living at the age of sixty-
eight, and Murillo, in Spain, at about the same age.
The great French painter, Poussin, died seven years
ago, and Claude Lorraine, who will long continue to
be regarded as the foremost of landscape painters, is
seventy years old. The art of painting has just
reached its height of power and popularity in France ;
of all the great French Academies the earliest was the
Academy of Painting, established in 1648. In Archi
tecture, Paris already boasts the Louvre, the Palais
Royal, and many other noble structures ; and there is
a youth of twenty- three, named Mansard, who will add
greatly to the architectural glories of Paris and of
Versailles, and will hand down his name to a curious
GREAT FRLNCH PREACHERS. 14?
immortality in connection with a peculiar style of roof
which he has invented
We thus perceive that when Bourdaloue first
preached before the king, in 1670, it was an age well
suited to the attainment of excellence in anything that
belongs to the realm of thought or of art. The nation
was powerful, glorious, wealthy and vigorously gov
erned. A strong sentiment of nationality fostered
national literature in every department. Startling
progress in physical science and novelties in metaphys
ics were stirring men s minds. A popular despotism
left no room for political activity or aspiration,
while a grand outburst of general literature had
awakened an excited interest. It was an Augustan
age.
And certain peculiar circumstances stimulated
French Catholics at that time to the pursuit of pulpit
eloquence.
One of these was the fact that the Reformed, or
Protestants in France had long possessed able and
eloquent preachers. The indefatigable Jesuits, organ
ized to contend against Protestantism in every way,
perceived, now that the Civil Wars were over, that it
W&B desirable to rival the Protestants in preaching,
148 OK H1STOKY 01? PKEACHIflCJ.
aud began to use all their immense influence in the
encouragement of pulpit eloquence.
Another stimulating circumstance was the rise of
the Jansenists, proclaiming much the same truths that
we call the "doctrines of grace," distinguished for
learning, and educational influence, for deep piety and
literary power. In the famous schools at Port Royal
were taught such men as Tilleinont, the Church His
torian, and the poet Racine. Among the teachers was
De Saci, who made the Erench version of the Bible
which has taken fast hold on the popular heart, and
Arnauld, the fruitful and powerful polemic ; and there
was not a Jesuit in all France who did not smart and
burn under the delicate and stinging sarcasms of the
Port Royalist Pascal.
Now the Jansenists did not particularly culti
vate eloquence. But the Jansenists of Port Royal
had great power at Court. And the shrewd Jesu
its, looking around for every means of gaining the
superiority over these hated rivals, perceived that
much might be done through the penchant of the
king for eloquent preaching.
This was the most singular of all the circum
stances I have referred to as stimulating the Frendi
GKKAT FRENCH PREACHERS. 143
Catholic preaching of that age, the fact that Louis
XIV. so greatly delighted in pulpit eloquence. It
was a curious idiosyncrasy. He not merely took
pleasure in orations marked by imagination, passion
and elegance, as a good many monarchs have done,
but he wanted earnest and kindling appeals to the
conscience, real preaching. In fact, Louis was in
his own way a very religious man. He tried hard
to serve God and Mammon, and Ashtoreth to boot.
His preachers saw that he listened attentively, that
his feelings could be touched, his conscience could
sometimes be reached. They were constantly hop
ing to make him a better man, and through him
to exert a powerful influence for good upon the
Court and the nation. Thus they had the highest
possible stimulus to zealous exertions. And although
they never made Louis a good man, yet his love for
preaching, and for preaching that powerfully stirred
the soul, brought about this remarkable result, that
it became the fashion of that brilliant Court to
attend church with eager interest, and to admire
preachers who were not simply agreeable speakers
but passionately in earnest. Not a few in the court
circle were striving like the king to be at once
150 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
worldly and religious, some were truly devout, but
everybody recognized that it was "quite the thing"
to be an admirer of pulpit eloquence. I know of
but one other example in the history of preaching in
which this was the height of the fashion in a splen
did and wicked court. That other instance is
Constantinople, at the time when Gregory Nazian-
zen and afterwards Chrysostom preached there ;
and we remember how brief and unsatisfactory was
their career in the great capital. Here at Paris the
experiment lasted longer. And notice that as most
of the hearers really went only because it was fash
ionable, and must have their taste gratified, and
as the French taste for literature and art was now
very highly cultivated, so the great court preach
ers, while intensely earnest, must also be literary
artists of the highest order.
Such were the general and special conditions undei
which the Catholic pulpit attained under the reign
of Louis XIV. and under that reign alone such ex-
traordinary power and splendor.
Let us now briefly note the principal preachers,
both Protestant and Catholic, of that epoch. We inaj
GREAT fUBKCH P&EAClIEJlS. 151
divide into three periods : (1) The period before Bos-
suet, (2)Bossuet and Bourdaloue and their contempo
raries, (3)Massillon and Saurin.
In the two generations preceding the career of
Bossuet, we find the French Catholic pulpit at a very
low stage. Recent writers have shown that the Cath
olic preachers of that time consisted of two classes.
Some, rhetorical and full of ancient learning but des
titute of devoutness, mingled pagan ism and Christi
anity, even illustrating the Passion of Christ by the
sacrifice of Iphigenia, the bravery with which Mucius
Scevola plunged his hand into the flames, and the
mourning of the Romans over the death of Julius
Caesar. A later French writer said of them, " One
needed prodigious knowledge in order to preach so
badly." Others, rude and vulgar, appealed to the
tastes and passions of the ignorant, very much after
the fashion of what we call hardshell preachers. Thus,
as it has been said, "The court preachers ruined reli
gion by adapting it to the taste of the beau monde,
while the vulgar haranguers ruined it also by adapt
ing it to the taste of the multitude." There were
of course some exceptions. Voltaire mentions one
preacher, Lingendes, about 1630, and mentions him
152 OK HISTOHY OP PKEACHIHG.
us he does so many things, with a malicious purpose*
This Lingendes left among his manuscripts some good
funeral sermons, and Voltaire says that Flechier, in
his funeral discourse for Marshal Turenne, borrowed
from one of these his text, the entire exordium, and
several considerable passages besides. It has been
recently shown that Bourdaloue also borrows from thn
same preacher some ideas and an occasional short pas
sage, and that some of Bourdaloue s plans in Pane
gyrics resemble those of P. Senault, a preacher then
much in vogue for ornate erudition and rhetoric.
But the Eeformed or Protestant pulpit of that
period was, as I have already stated, occupied by some
really able men, whose sermons had such power and
literary merit as to be published and widely read.
These men, long overshadowed by the celebrated
Catholic and, Protestant preachers of the next genera
tions, have received tardy justice from the noble work
of Vinet, " History of Preaching among the Reformed
of France in the seventeenth century," a work con
taining just such biographical notices, representative
extracts and critical estimates as one desires to have,
and a model which I trust some of those present may
one day follow in depicting important periods in the
FRENCH PROTESTANT PREACHERS. 153
history of the English and American pulpit. Draw
ing upon Vinet, let me briefly mention three or four
of these men, who show conclusively that the Protest
ant preachers in this first half of the century were far
in advance of the Catholic preachers.
Du Moulin (Miller), 1568-1658, was a famous
preacher in Paris and afterwards at Sedan. He had
been educated in England, and professor of philosophy
in Scotland. While pastor in Paris, an attempt was
made by James I. of England to use him in a plan for
uniting the French and English Protestants into one
church. Banished for these political complications, he
took refuge at Sedan (which did not then belong to
France), and lived there as professor of theology and
pastor. Du Moulin published more than seventy-five
works, including ten volumes of sermons. He seem?
not to have been a man of the highest genius, but full
of vigor and good sense, powerful in controversy,
practical and pointed. He was regarded by the
Catholics as their most formidable antagonist, and his
works long continued to be bulwarks of Protestantism.
Fenelon undertook to refute one of them, near the
close of the century. The style of Du Moulin is
marked by the homeliness and brusque freedom bo
7*
154 OK ItlSTOfeY
longing to what French critics call the Gallic period
of their language, before the men of Louis XIV. had
reduced it to an elegant bondage. And he was pur
posely simple in the arrangement of discourses, and
direct and downright in utterance, because he re
garded that as the duty of a preacher of the gospel
a view which certainly contains important elements
of truth.
Faucheur (1585-1657) was a man of culture and
taste, and "essentially a preacher." He wrote a
treatise on Oratorical Delivery, which is said to be
elegant in expression and full of wisdom. And yet,
while a careful student of the art of preaching, his
own preaching was direct and simple. Surely this is
as it should be. Faucheur published eight volumes of
sermons. His style is remarkable for movement.
From beginning to end of the discourses he seems
never to touch the ground." There is never a moment
of distraction or cessation, but he presses right on.
Now this may be an excellence, but may be a fault ;
and it is a matter in regard to which Americans of to
day are in some danger of fault, being so restless and
excitable. Good preaching must have movement, but
not uniform in velocity or on the same level. If a dis*
FAUCHEUB. 155
course is to be highly impassioned anywhere, it cannot
be equally impassioned everywhere. Study the great
musical compositions what variety as to rapidity of
movement, and as to passion. So oratory requires a
basis of repose, with alternations of passion and quiet,
of more rapid and less rapid movement. Yet some of
our preachers and Anniversary speakers seem to think,
and some hearers seem to agree with them, that one
must go like the fast mail trains. We do not give a
man a chance to be really eloquent, if we require him
to be always rapid, if we are too restless to tolerate
repose.
Faucheur was a master of language. Vinet main
tains that he anticipated Pascal in using what was
destined to become the modern French ; in know
ing how, "at that moment of crisis, to choose in
the ancient tongue what the future was going to
preserve, and amid the numerous new expressions
those which the future was going to adopt." Pascal
has the glory of having fixed the language. "He
did it, not by introducing new words or constructions,
but by giving the seal of his genius to a language
which existed already, and which we find in hi*
earlier contemporary, Faucheur."
156 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
A professor of philosophy at the age of eigh
teen, and called when Tery young to a leading
pulpit near Paris, was Mestrezat, 1592-1657, of
whom it is said by Bayle, a sufficiently impartial
critic* " There are no sermons that contain a sub-
limer theology than those which he preached on the
Epistle to the Hebrews."
Omitting several others, let us notice Daille,
1594-1670, whose little work "On the right use
of the Fathers" became very popular, and continues
to be valued to the present day. He published
twenty volumes of sermons, which show that while
not a highly eloquent man, he was an able reasoner,
full of good sense, and with a familiar, neat and
flowing style. He was the first Frenchman whose
controversial religious works ever became popular,
and the first Protestant whose literary merits are
known to have been recognized among the Catho
lics.
Balzac, a literary man of distinction (1592-
1654), one of the original members of the French
Academy, and who has left some excellent prose,
appears to have greatly admired Daille. He speaks
in a letter of a visit received from him, in which
DAILLE. 15?
Daille " said such good things and said them so
well that I assure you no conversation ever satis
fied me more than that, nor left in my mind more
agreeable images." In another letter he speaks in
the strongest terms of Daille s sixth sermon on the
Resurrection, saying, "What an excellent pro
duction ! how worthy of the primitive church !
How powerful the preacher is in persuasion !
and how convincing are his proofs !....! have
never read anything more rational and more
judicious ! "
Now it may he observed that these able and
popular Protestant preachers all flourished before
Bossuet began his career, and that Daille, the latest
of those mentioned, died in the year 1670, in which
Bourdaloue first preached before the king. Each of
them preached for many years in Paris, and their nu
merous and spirited controversial writings, together
with the number of Protestant nobility who at
tended their ministrations, must have drawn to them
the constant notice of the Catholic teachers and
preachers.
I think it follows not only that there were eminent
Protestant preachers before the outburst of Catholic
158 ON HISTORY OP PREACHISG.
eloquence, which is manifest/ but that their abilitj
and popularity must have stimulated the Catholics to
rivalry.
We now reach the great Catholic preachers, Bos-
Biiet and Bourdaloue. Of these, every one among us
has some knowledge, and I shall attempt only to pre
sent points of special interest and instruction.
Bossuet (1627-1704) was of good family, and
reared in a house full of books, of which he early be
came passionately fond, delighting in Latin and Greek
literature. One day, in the library, the boy came
across a copy of the Bible, which he had never read.
It was open at Isaiah, and, fascinated with the sub
lime poetry, he went on eagerly reading, and at length
burst forth and read aloud to his father and uncle,
who had been talking politics, and who now "listened,
half awe-struck, to the boyish reciter." From thii
1 Compare the dates :
Du Moulin 15681658.
Faucheur 15851657.
Mestrezat 15921657.
Daille 15941670.
Claude 16191687. Bossuet 16371704.
Da Bosc 16231692. Bourdaloue 16321704
Fenelon 16511715.
Saurin 16771730. Massillon 16631742.
BOSSUET. 15
time the book he most loved was the Bible. Through
life he always carried a Bible with him on his jour
neys, and almost every day, his secretary says, made
fresh notes on the margin. He knew by heart almost
the entire text (for he had a prodigious memory), and
yet seemed always to read with as much attention and
interest as if he had never read it before. His preach
ing abounds in felicitous Scripture quotation and
remark. And who can tell how much this passion for
Scripture, beginning with Isaiah, did to foster his elo
quence to develop that chastened splendor, that sub
lime but subdued magnificence of imagery and diction,
which makes him the very perfection, the beau ideal
of French eloquence ? This story of his finding the
Bible might remind one of Luther ; and it is to be
noticed that these greatest of Catholic preachers all
showed loving familiarity with the Bible. But the
difference also is great and characteristic. Luther
found Eomans, and finally learned from it justifica
tion by faith ; Bossuet found the book of Isaiah, and
was fascinated by its poetry. And through life this dif
ference was maintained. Bossuet drew from the Bible
sublime sentiments ; Luther drew from it the centra!
truths, the very life-blood, of the gospel of salvation.
160 ON HISTORY OE PREACHING.
At fifteen Bossuet was profoundly studying at
a college in Paris the philosophy of Descartes,
whose writings were just becoming generally known,
he being thirty years older than Bossuet.
At sixteen he maintained a " thesis of philosophy
with such distinguished success, that he received the
foolish invitation to come suddenly, at 11 p. M.,
to a house in Paris which was a centre of literary
fashion, and there before a brilliant audience to
preach upon a text assigned. The result made him
at once a celebrity. All this was very unhealthy,
but it shows the kind of artificial relish for pulpit
eloquence which already (1641) pervaded the court
circle, and what sort of atmosphere was breathed
by these great preachers. Some other young men
had become popular preachers in Paris before tak
ing orders, and Bossuet was saved from this by the
advice of a bishop, who urged him to turn away
from such premature popularity and become mature
in culture and character before he preached much
in the capital. This was doubtless the turning-
point of Bossuet s career, which decided that he
was not to be the meteor of a moment but an abid
ing luminary. How often are brilliant young men
BOSSUET. 161
spoiled by the applause bestowed on a few early
efforts silly admirers persuading them that their
gifts lift them above all ordinary dependence on
training and experience. It is precisely such men
who most imperatively need thorough discipline.
Bossuet finally graduated at twenty-one, making &*
a remarkable address in the presence of the great
Prince of Conde, who from that time was his friend.
He spent some years of faithful labor as archdea
con of Metz, (how strangely sound these names,
Metz and Sedan, after recent occurrences,) and at
the age of thirty-three began to preach before the
king. For the next ten years he preached regu
larly in Paris, and often before the court. Then
Bourdaloue came ; Bossuet was made bishop of
Meaux, and afterwards seldom preached in Paris, ex
cept his great Funeral Orations. I cannot speak of
his subsequent work as instructor to the Dauphin,
for whose use he wrote the Discourse on Universal
History, the first attempt at a Philosophy of History.
Nor of his great work on the Variations of Protest
antism, probably the most effective polemic against
Protestantism that has ever been written acute,
adroit, a trifle unscrupulous, and in style most attractive
162 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING,
Bossuet was capable, as he had shown when a
lad, of absolutely improvising with great power,
but he was very unwilling to preach without some
written preparation. Most of his sermons were
preached from a brief sketch, often in pencil
jotting down the "points, and the prominent les
sons he wished to teach." Some of them were writ
ten and rewritten, with the greatest care, and then
recited. Yet he yery earnestly condemned those
who in preparing a sermon think more of "its i*
after effects in print " than of its effect in the act
of preaching.
He possessed in the highest degree the physical
requisites to eloquence having a fine, in fact a
strikingly handsome and majestic person, with a
voice powerful and pleasing, and perfect grace of
manner. His style is the perfection of French, the
glory of French literature clear, vivid, drawing
you on from beginning to end, with skilful variety
in topic, imagery, and passion or repose of expres
sion, and throughout a grace, a felicity, a charming
elegance, that in all the world has scarcely been
rivalled. A gifted pupil of mine once said, " I read
Bossuet with admiring despair." This is not an
fcOSStJEi. 168
unhealthy feeling at the first blush of acquaintance,
for it may be presently followed by admiring study,
not with the hope of rivalling, but with longing to
enjoy more fully, and to learn sweet lessons of
refined taste, and love of the truly beautiful in
literary art.
Yet I cannot concur in the opinion now almost
universal among French critics, that Bossuet is the
greatest of their preachers. I think that honor
belongs to Bourdaloue (1632-1704), whom the
French now place even lower than Massillon.
Bourdaloue appeals especially to the intellect and
the conscience, and while also highly imaginative
and impassioned he is not in these respects equal to
the others. Bossuet appeals especially to the imagi
nation and the taste, and so the most characteristic
and the most popular of his discourses are the Funeral
Orations, in which the requisites are graceful narra
tion, high- wrought imagery and delicate sentiment.
These, together with his charming style, are what
the average French writer of to-day most highly
appreciates. It is precisely in these things, as seen
in his Funeral Orations and Panegyrics, that Bourda
loue is least successful. Bossuet is also honored
104 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
by the modern litterateur because of the great and
lasting distinction of his other works, while Bourda-
loue has left almost nothing but sermons. Massillou,
on the other hand, has marvellous power in touching
the feelings, in awakening tender emotions, together
with great clearness, ease and beauty of style.
Secular critics relish that which excites emotion,
which is sweetly pathetic or awe-inspiring, much
more than that which, through convictions of the
intellect, makes its stern demand on the conscience.
These considerations may account for the fact that
such a change has occurred in the judgment of
critics. Their own contemporaries regarded Bour-
daloue as decidedly superior to Bossuet.
Bourdaloue s father was a lawyer, of good family,
and a gifted speaker. The son was educated at a
Jesuit college, and naturally became a Jesuit not
withstanding his father s opposition. In his studies
he showed a special talent for mathematics, which
easily connects itself with the prominence of analysis
and argument in his preaching. After graduating,
he was directed, according to the wise Jesuit usage,
to spend some years in teaching, which is often a
particularly good preparation for the life-work of
T50URDALOUE. 105
preaching. He first taught grammar, classic litera
ture and rhetoric, afterwards philosophy, and finally
theology. During this period, he wrote a brief trea
tise on Ehetoric. For ten years, including the
later years of his teaching, he preached as a sort
of home missionary. While thus preaching at
Rouen, his sermons- drew great crowds, and the
Jesuit authorities began to understand his power
and value. A Jesuit associate says: "All the<
mechanics left their shops, and the merchants their
business, the lawyers left the palace and the doctors -
their patients." And he good-humoredly adds :
"For my part, when I preached there the next year,
I
I put everything straight again ; nobody left his
business any more."
So at the age of thirty-seven, after this long
course of study, teaching and provincial preaching,
Bourdaloue is brought to Paris. In a few months
we hear that the church overflows, and a caustic
letter-writer adds that " these good Fathers of the
Society proclaim him as an angel descended from
heaven." They see that here is a man who will do
them honor, and strengthen their position in the
rivalry with the Jansenists. The next year, 1670,
166 OK HISTORY OF
he preached before the king, and Madame de Sevign6,
who was from first to last his ardent admirer, says
he acquitted himself "divinely." For thirty-four
years from that time Bonrdalone was the leading
court-preacher, only in the last five years outshone
by young Massillon. He preached the Advent and
Lent series by turns before the king and in the prin
cipal parishes in Paris, in the former case "making
the courtiers tremble," as we are told by Madame
de Se"vigne, and in the parish churches "attracting
such crowds that the carriages were coming for
hours in advance, and trade was interrupted in the
neighboring streets." He also frequently preached
in the humble village churches, and it is said that
the people were astonished at the simplicity of his
language, and would say, " Is this the famous Paris
preacher ? Why, we understood all he said." A
like story is told of Tillotson, of Archibald Alexander,
and of various others.
Bourdaloue, as already observed, is remarkable
for profound thought and forcible argument. Vol
taire says, " He appears to wish rather to convince
than to touch the feelings ; and he never dreams of
pleasing." And yet he does please, in a high degree,
BOURDALOUE. 167
and does sometimes deeply move. Is not this a
preacher of the highest order occupied with noble
thoughts, aiming to move through instruction
and conviction, and pleasing without an effort, and
without diverting attention from truth and duty ?
It is especially in treating moral subjects that
Bourdaloue is a model. There had been no preach
ing of great merit in this respect since Basil and
Chrysostom, and perhaps no one in later times has
treated moral subjects in so instructive and admirable
a manner as Bourdaloue. He analyzes the topic
with conspicuous ability, and depicts with a master
hand the beauty of virtuous living, and the terrible
nature and consequences of vice. It is interesting
to compare his pictures of life with those of his con
temporary Moliere, the latter presenting always the
ludicrous side, which entertains but seldom greatly
profits, while the preacher, with his mind all on
sin and eternity and God, will not let you think of
vice as amusing, but makes you shudder at its wick
edness and its awful results. There is no more
remarkable example of Bourdaloue s excellence
in this respect than his sermon on Impurity. At
any time it would have been difficult to treat this
1G8 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
subject in that licentious capital and court, witl
that shameful example in the king himself, but
there were special difficulties at the moment.
There had recently been discovered, in the case
of a countess, a series of the most frightful poison
ings and other crimes, in connection with the
most shameless and incredible debauchery. All
Paris shuddered. It was then that Bourdaloue
spoke, with a boldness that amazes and almost
alarms us, and yet without a touch of real indelicacy,
without a word to awaken prurient curiosity.
There are many other instructive examples among
his numerous discourses on subjects of morality.
It has appeared to me that few preachers treat this
class of subjects with decided skill, or so frequently
as is to be desired ; and I think Bourdaloue is in
this regard eminently worthy of early and careful
study. If I might add a slight suggestion, it would
be as follows : To eulogize virtues is often more
useful than to assail vices. And in attempting to
depict vices, have a care of two things : (1) That
you do not seem to know more of these matters than
a preacher ought to know ; (2) that you do not excite
curiosity and amusement rather than abhorrence.
BOURDALOUE. 169
The famous story that Bourdaloue one day do-
scribed in his sermon an adulterer, and then look
ing at the king, solemnly said, " Tu es ille vir," is
pronounced by the most recent biographer an in
vention ; but he does not present the evidence and
we cannot judge. At any rate Bourdaloue was con
stantly saying very pointed things, which the king
could not but feel were meant for him, and yet
Louis had so much of good sense and conscience,
and saw so clearly the preacher s sincerity and
honesty, that he took no offence. In fact, strict
morality is not really an unpopular theme. People
feel that the preacher ought to say these things,
and that they ought to hear them. So once when
some courtiers suggested that Bourdaloue spoke too
boldly and pointedly, the king replied: "The
preacher has done his duty; it is for us to do ours."
Bourdaloue was a great student, but was also
fond of society, and himself sprightly and even
humorous in conversation. It was thus that he
came to know so well the character and wants of
his time. He often met Eacine, Mme. de Sevigne",
Boileau. Let a preacher seize every opportunity
of free conversation with the most cultivated and
8
170 OK HISTORY OF PREACHIHG.
the most ignorant, being more solicitous in both
cases to hear than to speak, and then he may be
able in preaching to bring home his message to the
" business and bosoms" of all.
"We can say but a word of Fe"nelon (1651-1715,)
who was a younger contemporary of Bossuet and
Bourdaloue, Both gifted and good in an extraor
dinary degree, educated with the greatest care, per
haps the foremost of all French preachers in that
unction in which the French so greatly delight,
with the highest charm of style, and great actual
popularity as a preacher, he has left us to conjecture
his pulpit power, with the help of four sermons
which are believed to have been written in his
early life, and which are not of remarkable excel
lence. This was certainly carrying to a great ex
treme the preference for unwritten preaching, which
he has so eloquently exhibited in his beautiful Dia
logues on Eloquence. Why did he not write at
least some discourses after preaching them, like
Chrysostom and like Kobert Hall ? He severely
condemns Bourdaloue s method of strict recitation,
and as a matter of general theory the condemna
tion is undoubtedly just, but why refuse to write
fcU BOSC. 171
at all ? In all practical matters he who prefers
one plan noad not utterly abjure others. And as
to methods of preparing and delivering sermons,
the highest and noblest standard is that privately
stated by a living preacher, "I wish to be master
of all methods, and slave of none."
Two Protestant contemporaries of Bossuet and
Bourdaloue were men of distinguished ability.
Du Bosc (1623-1692,) was of good family, and
highly educated. You notice that, as already re
marked, all the great preachers of this epoch, Pro
testant and Catholic, were thoroughly educated, and
most of them reared in good society. Besides great
clearness of thought, fertility of invention and rich
ness of imagination, Du Bosc had singular physical
advantages, being extremely well-made, with a voice
at once agreeable and powerful, and vigorous health.
In 1668 he appeared before the king, to entreat that
he would not, as proposed, take away certain rights
of the Protestants. After hearing him through,
the king went into the queen s chamber and said,
"Madame, I have just listened to the best speaker
in my kingdom." And turning to the courtiers he
repeated. "It is certain that I never heard any
172 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
one speak so well." He had then often heard Bos-
suet, though never Bourdaloue. The address of
Du Bosc is given in full by Vinet, together with
copious extracts from sermons, and is a truly noble
specimen of eloquence, worthy to be generally known.
Du Bosc early became pastor at Caen, in Normandy,
and three several invitations to churches in Paris
could never draw him away from the flock he loved.
The most famous Protestant preacher of the time
was Olaude (1619-1687). His father was a minis
ter of great knowledge, who carefully educated him
at home, and then sent him to study philosophy
and theology at Montauban. For some years he
was pastor of a small church, where he could devote
a great part of his time to study. A young minis
ter who wishes to make the most of himself must
give at least one-third of his time to studies which
look not to next Sunday but to coming years; and
this can usually be best done in a small charge.
Claude became pastor in Paris at the age of forty-
seven, and from that time was the soul of the Ke-
formed party, being especially vigorous in oral and
written controversy with the Catholics. A book of
his in reply to a work by the Jansenists Arnault!
CLAUDE. 173
and Nicole, was eagerly circulated by the Jesuits, who
were ready for anything to damage the Jansenists.
Claude s oral controversy with Bossuet attracted
great attention. The high-born Protestant lady who
brought it about was already disposed to go over
as so many of the Keformed nobility were then
doing and she soon after became a Catholic. But
Claude sustained himself with great ability against
the most splendid polemic in France. Even Bos-
suet s report shows that his arguments were acute
and powerful, and the great bishop says, "I feared
for those who heard him."
When the edict of Nantes was revoked, in 1685,
Claude was especially named, and required to quit
the kingdom in twenty-four hours. He knew it
some days in advance, and his farewell to his flock
is a noble and affecting monument of that time
of trial. His ordinary discourses, of which but one
volume was left, seldom show intense passion, and
were very carefully wrought out and revised ; yet
with all their careful composition and purity of
style, there is rapid movement that spirited dash
which belongs alike to French soldiers and to French
orators, and which is so admirable in both.
174 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
Claude s Essay on the Composition of a Sermon
was for a century and a half the favorite Protestant
text-book. The editions of Eobert Robinson and
Charles Simeon are well known. Its great fault
is that it teaches the construction of sermons on
too stiff and uniform a plan. Both by example
and in precept Claude protests against the extreme
rhetorical brilliancy in which the national taste of
the time delighted, which his great Catholic con
temporaries cultivated as necessary in court-preachers,
and to which some of the Protestant preachers had
become a little inclined. The general feeling among
the Reformed was that a preacher should eschew
oratory. When this fact is taken into the account,
I think it becomes clear that Claude and Du Bosc,
though inferior in splendid eloquence and in real
power, are yet worthy to be named even with Bossuet
and Bourdaloue.
As to the remaining period of that great age,
a briefer account must suffice. There are two con
spicuous names, Massillon and Saurin.
Massillon (1663-1742) had an early history quite
eimilar to that of his great predecessors. Obscure
MASSILLOK. 175
origin, but college education, monastic retirement,
then professor of Belles-lettres and of Theology, and
at the age of thirty-six named court-preacher, in
1699, five years before the death of Bossuet and
Bourdaloue. He greatly admired Bourdaloue, but
avowedly determined to pursue a very different
course. His theory, as given by the nephew who
edited his works, was as follows : The preacher
must not go into much detail upon points of charac
ter and life which concern only a part of his hearers,
as particular callings, ages, etc., but must aim at
universal interest, and this is found chiefly in the
passions. Accordingly Massillon habitually assumes
principles as granted, or establishes them very
briefly, and then proceeds to analyze and depict the
reasons why men do not conform to these principles,
as found in their passions (in the broad sense),
including appetites, sloth, ambition, avarice, etc.,
and to expose the numerous self-deceptions by which
men quiet conscience. Now this certainly represents
one very important department of preaching. But
observe two things as to what he condemns.
(1) What is addressed to one class of persons may
le made very interesting anl profitable to others.
176 OH HISTORY OF PREACHING.
as for example, sermons to the young may interest
the old, sermons to Christians may impress the
irreligious, and vice versa. (2) It would not be
well if all preachers took principles for granted.
It is necessary for some minds, and interesting to
many, to have principles established and confirmed
by the preacher.
In fact, Massillon seems to have been too much
influenced by the desire to take a different tack
from Bourdaloue, and thus to have made his own
methods one-sided. But all the world knowa
what wonderful power he had in exciting emotion.
Appealing to the passions is an important part
of the preacher s work, though not the highest part ;
and no finer example of it can be found than in
Massillon, together with a style of singular ease
and sweetness. But when he is lauded as one of
the very greatest of preachers, then I say, compare
his most famous sermon, " On the small number
of the Elect," with the somewhat similar sermon of
Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the hands of an
angry God," and you will feel that the one is super
ficial and artificial, compared with the tremendoui
power of the other.
SAUBIK. 177
Massillons nephew says his sermon* were not
composed, as one might suppose, with slow toil,
but "with a facility akin to the miraculous; not
one of them cost more than ten or twelve days."
His delivery was not declamatory, like that of
Bourdaloue and most Frenchmen, but comparatively
quiet ; yet he seemed to be completely possessed and
penetrated by his subject which is often far more
impressive than "tearing passion to tatters/ while
in the French Court it had the charm of novelty.
In 1718 he preached before Louis XV., then nine
years old, ten sermons in Lent, which are commonly
known as his Petit Careme, "Little Lent." They
are probably the earliest examples of sermons
addressed to a child, and are admirable for their
simplicity and sweetness.
The great Protestant preacher Saurin (1677-1730)
was a contemporary of Massillon, but connection
between them was impossible, for Saurin was a
child of but eight years when the revocation of the
Edict drove him and his father to Geneva. His
father was a lawyer, famous for his elegant style.
At Geneva, then "the capital of the Protestani
world," the youth had great advantages for educa*
8*
178 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
tion. At seventeen he enlisted in a volunteer corpa
of refugees to help William of England against
Louis XIV., and proved a gallant young soldier,
at the same time often conducting religious worship
and even preaching to his comrades. After three
years, when peace was made, he returned and
studied three years longer at Geneva, gaining great
distinction as a student. His exercises in oratory
"drew a crowd, for which on one occasion it was
necessary to open the doors of the cathedral."
His five years as a pastor were spent in London,
with a small church of French refugees. Here,
like a true Protestant, he married a wife. Yet,
though a real love affair, this union did not turn
out very well. Unexampled as the case may be,
the minister s wife was of an unlucky disposition ;
and being blessed with the company of a mother-in-
law, sister-in-law, and two brothers-in-law, she made
the house too hot to hold them. A bad manager she
was, too, while he, for his part, was negligent and
wastefully generous.
Well, well, but he was a great preacher, and when
London fogs proved unhealthy, they created him a
new position at the Hague, where he spent his
SAURIN. 179
remaining twenty-five years in extraordinary popu
larity and usefulness. Places in his church were
engaged a fortnight in advance by the most distin
guished persons, and people climbed up on ladders
to look in at the windows. The famous scholar
Le Clerc (Clericus) long refused to hear him, en
the ground that a Christian preacher should have
nothing oratorical, and he " distrusted effects pro
duced rather by a vain eloquence than by force of
argument." One day he consented to go, on condi
tion that he should sit behind the pulpit, so as not
to see the oratorical action. At the end of the ser
mon he found himself in front of the pulpit, with
tears in his eyes.
For Saurin was a true orator. While not devot
ing himself, like the great Catholic preachers, to the
art of eloquence, he possessed an energetic nature,
a powerful imagination, a good person and voice, and
his delivery, though commonly quiet, often swelled
into passionate earnestness. And he was also a great
thinker, beyond even Bourdaloue, probably beyond
any other French preacher except Calvin. The
doctrinal views we call Calvinism compel men to think
leeply, if they are capable of thinking at all. It ia
ISO OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
then not strange that the published sermons ol
Saurin at once gained a great reputation throughout
the Protestant world, and exerted a most wholesome
influence. In Germany, where preaching was then
at a low ebb, it is believed that Mosheim and his
Bchool derived much inspiration from Saurin, and at
a later period Keinhard frankly acknowledged great
indebtedness to this noble French model. There
were numerous English translations, but that of
Robert Robinson has, I believe, superseded all the
others. Among all these great French preachers,
I should say, read mainly in Bourdaloue and Saurin.
His last years were saddened by the harsh assaults
of some ministers who were envious and jealous.
Alas ! that old and bitter, that too often repeated
story of ministerial jealousy.
But why did French pulpit eloquence so sudden
ly fail, after rising so high ? Why is it that after
Massillon and Saurin you do not know the name of
any French preacher for almost a century ? * We
can easily see, as we saw before in the time of Ohry-
sostom and Augustine, the cause of this decline.
* Except Bridaine, who flourished 1750, and is eulogized
by Maury (Principles of Eloq.)
FRENCH PREACHERS 181
Piotestantism was crushed in France, its best ele
ments banished, and the few who remained and cou
tinned faithful, were destitute of the means of cul
ture, for ministers and for people, while the refu
gees in foreign countries would generally continue
to worship in French for only one or two genera
tions. The Catholics, for their part, not <mly_J.pst
the stimulating rivalry of Protestant preaching, but
also the artificial stimulus of Louis XIV. s love for
pulpit eloquence. Massillon, after preaching the aged
king s funeral, and trying to make some impression
on the child that succeeded him, retired to his dio
cese, and for many years preached faithfully there,
but never revisited the court. And now that Jan-
pemsm^^aiid ^Protestantism were gone, infidelity and
corruption struck deep and spread widely and rapidly
through the nation. There can be no true elo
quence where there is not hope of carrying your
point, and preachers could have little hope of doing
good in the days when Voltaire and his associates
led the national thought, and when the king could
say, "After me, the deluge." About 1775 a Jesuit
preacher at Notre-Dame did give several sermons
that manifestly had something in them. A biograph-
182 OX HISTORY OF PREACHING.
ical sketch at a later period mentioned that thii
preacher s discourses had a rather peculiar character,
and that "people thought they saw errors in them."
It has since come to light that the worthy Jesuit
preached a whole volume of extracts from Saurin,
word for word.
These things being considered, we have little
occasion to concur in Voltaire s explanation of the
decay of pulpit eloquence, viz., that the subject had
been exhausted, and nothing was now possible but
commonplace.
And how is it that of late we have eloquent
French preaching again ? Napoleon gave the Pro
testants toleration and support, which the subse
quent governments have not disturbed. About the
same time there was in Switzerland a reaction to
evangelical sentiments, producing Vinet, D Aubigne,
and Caesar Malan. As soon as there was time for
educational opportunities to show their effect among
the French Protestants, we hear of Adolphe Monod,
a man of rare eloquence. James W. Alexander,
hearing him on two different European journeys,
each time declared him the most eloquent preacher
living; and it seems to me doubtful whether, with
FBEXCH PEEACHEBS. 183
tlie exception of Eobert Hall, the century has pro
duced his equal. About the same time came the
elder Coquerel, a man of great power in the pulpit.
It is difficult to gain information upon the question,
but my impression is that in this century as in the
seventeenth, effective preaching in Prance began
with the Protestants. I know not whether this
Protestant movement had produced any conscious
effect on the erratic Lacordaire, who thirty years
ago began to revive at Notre-Dame the traditions
of the old Dominicans as a preaching order ; or on
the Jesuit Father Felix, who followed him in that
celebrated pulpit, to be succeeded himself a few
years ago by the well known Father Hyacmthe.
Of Protestants the most famous at the present time
are the younger Coquerel, and Bersier, whom I heard
repeatedly in Paris some years ago, who has pub
lished several volumes of sermons, and whom not
many living preachers equal in true eloquence.
In conclusion, let us briefly notice certain faults
in the French preachers, especially in the great
Catholic preachers of the seventeenth century.
They never suggest much beyond what they say
184 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
This is a general defect of French style, arising from
the passion for clearness. "Whatever is not clear
is not French," they repeat with a just pride. But
by consequence, they avoid saying anything that can
not be said with entire clearness. And so we find
little of that rich suggestiveness, which is common
in the best English speaking and writing, and even
more in the German.
There is a monotonous uniformity of elegance.
They are never familiar, never for a moment homely.
There is nothing of anecdote, scarcely anything of
narrative illustration. Like the court of Louis XIV.,
they never appear save in full dress. And so many
elegant discourses finally weary us with their glitter,
like the pictures in the galleries of the Louvre.
In fine, these sermons, with all their merit, are too
plainly a work of art. The art is very perfect, such
as in a drama or a romance we might regard witli
unalloyed satisfaction. But for preaching it is too
prominent. We sigh for something unmistakably
natural, real, genuine.
As artists, then, the great French preachers may
be to us most instructive and inspiring masters.
But when it comes to actual preaching, then the
FRENCH PBBAOHEKS. 185
highest art nay, the old maxim is itself superficial
and misleading, for our aim should be not simply to
have art and conceal it, but to rise above art or,
if we must state it in Latin, summa ars artem
superare.
NOTE. Since the lecture was delivered, a letter has been
received from M. Bersier (see above, page 183), in reply to some
inquiries, and I take the liberty of extracting as follows :
"The Catholic pulpit is singularly sterile at our epoch in
France. We may say that since Lacordaire, Ravignan, and
Father Hyacinthe no orator has appeared of real excellence.
Father Felix, of the order of the Jesuits, has preached with a
certain success for several Lent seasons at Notre Dame, and
just now they are trying to bring into vogue the name of
Father Monsabre. But neither of them rises to the height of
his task. Their fundamental characteristic is the ultramontane
logic, developing inflexibly the principles of the Syllabus, hurl
ing them as a defiance against contemporary society, and say
ing to it : Submit to Rome, or thou art lost. No profound study
of the Scriptures, no psychology, nothing truly interior, or
persuasive. It is the method of outward authority brought
into the pulpit, with the arid procedures of the scholastic
demonstration a thing at once empty and pretentious.
" In the Protestant Church of France, one may name M.
Coulin, of Geneva, who has made at Paris remarkable sermons
on the Son of Man; M. Dhombres of Paris, a highly practical
orator and full of unction ; and in the Liberal party Messrs.
Fontanes and Viguier, who, since the death of Athanase
Coquerel the younger, are its most distinguished preachers."
M. Bersier has abstained from mentioning his own associate
among the Independent Reformed Churches, M. de Presseuse.
LECTURE V.
THE ENGLISH PULPIT.
IN this brief course of lectures you have seen that
the periods embraced are far too vast for satisfactory
treatment; and yet some important departments in
the History of Preaching have to be left entirely ou t
of view. Besides the Greek preachers of medieval
and modern times, the Spanish and Portuguese and
later Italian preachers and others, we have taken no
account of the German pulpit since Luther. It
seemed better, for various reasons, to treat of tho
French rather than the German preachers. And
for this final lecture I choose the English pulpit,
which, even if we should not glance at Scotland or
America, presents a field of immense extent and
sufficiently embarrassing in its richness.
The History of Preaching in England comprises
five specially noteworthy periods : (I) Wyclif, (2)
THE ENGLISH PULPIT. 187
The [Reformation, (3) The Puritan and Anglican
preachers of the seventeenth century, (4) The Age of
Whitefield and Wesley, (5) The Nineteenth Century,
of which there is an earlier and a later division.*
Before Wyclif, we find little in English preaching
that is particularly instructive. The missionaries
Augustine and Paullinus, who converted the heathen
English in the seventh century, must have spoken
with power, but their eloquence is not preserved.
Let us frequently remind ourselves that the history of
recorded preaching is but a small part of the history
of preaching. The venerable Bede has left us some
very brief discourses, supposed to have been imper
fectly written down by his hearers, which show life
and spirit, but would have been forgotten but for
his famous History.
* Although English pulpit literature is so rich, it is remarka
ble that we have no treatise whatever on its history. The well
known aversion of the English to rhetorical art might in this
case have been overcome by their love of history. Of late
years America has greatly surpassed the mother-country in the
production of numerous and valuable works on Homiletics, and
in like manner it may be that Americans will take the lead in
writing the history of the English Pulpit. Corresponding
works exist already among the French, and are somewhat
numerous in Germany. But even the German writers confine
themselves almost entirely to their own country, being ap
parently quite unacquainted with the English preachers.
188 Otf HISTOEY OF PLEACHING.
Wyclif (1324-82), the first great Protestant, the
first who not merely condemned some evils in the
Catholic^church, but struck at the very heart of the
Papa^system, was a preacher of great power. He does
- not exhibit much imagination, and so is not in the
full sense eloquent. But he is singularly vigorous
and acute in argument, and has the talent for
X " putting things " which belongs to a great teacher of
men. His bold antagonisms, hard hits and unsparing
sarcasms, his shrewd use of the dilemma and the
reductio ad dbsurdum, show the master of popular
argumentation. In his development from a scholas
tic divine, a student and teacher of dry philosophical
theology, into a pungent, stirring preacher and popu
lar leader, he is a representative man ; for these two
sides of character and life must in some measure
be combined in every man who is to achieve great
usefulness as a preacher of the gospel. Yet with
all this popular power and skill, Wyclif did his
chief work not by his own preaching, but through
others. He gathered around him plain and devout
men, filled with his ideas and his spirit, and sent
them forth as home missionaries, and it was chiefly
by their humble and zealous preaching, publicly
WYCLIfl. 189
and from house to house, together with the circula
tion of Wyclif s tracts, written in the language of
the people, that the new doctrines spread like wild
fire through all England, till a hostile contemporary
complained that " a man could scarcely meet two
people on the same road but one of them was a dis
ciple of Wyclif." These "simple priests," as they
were called, corresponded to the Dominican order
of preaching friars as it was when first constituted
also to Wesley s circuit riders, and to the often
illiterate but devoted men who have done so much
in the establishment of Baptist churches throughout
the United States. We see in this work of Wyclif
and his friends an example of the fact that a pro
fessor may sometimes do more through his pupils
than he could have done by personal labor as pastor
and preacher. In fact, every gospel worker should
strive to infuse the spirit of work into others. The
wisest and most useful pastor is not he who ac
complishes most by his individual exertions, but
rather he who can gather the largest number of true
helpers, being himself the nucleus around which their
labors may crystallize into a compact and effective
whole.
190 OX HISTORY OF PREACHING.
Wyclif s reformation contained the germs of that
which one hundred and fifty years later proved so
grandly successful ; and yet in a few years after his
death it was crushed, leaving of manifest results
only his translation of the Bible, and the marked
influence of his writings upon John Huss, in distant
Bohemia, which at that time was connected with
England by a royal marriage. England s first great
reformer, and her first great poet, Chaucer who
was Wyclif s younger contemporary and friend had
no successors for many weary generations, during
which the nation was enfeebled and demoralized by
the hundred years struggle with France, and after
ward by the Wars of the Koses at home. When all
this had passed, and there was again peace and
orderly government and returning prosperity, then
again the English were ready to think of curing the
dreadful evils which disgraced the clergy and the
church, and just then came the spread of the New
Learning, with Erasmus Greek Testament and Tyn-
dale s English Bible, the stirring ideas of Luther, and
the political and connubial schemes of Henry VIII. ,
all of which concurring forces produced the English
Keformation.
COLET 191
There is no doubt that the Revival of Letters
formed one leading occasion of the Reformation,
both in Germany and in England. And already
before the Reformation began, this revived study of
Greek literature was producing some wholesome effect
upon preaching. As early as 1510 we read of Colet,
Dean of St. Paul s, as " the great preacher of his
day, and the predecessor of Latimer in his simpli
city, directness and force." He had gone to Italy to
study Greek, and then for several years had taught
Greek at Oxford, awakening the enthusiastic admi
ration of Erasmus, who said, " When I heard him
speak, methought I heard Plato himself talk."
Notice then that this earliest of the great Greek schol
ars of England was as a preacher remarkable for
"simplicity, directness and force." It is another sig
nificant fact that Colet, vvho had lectured at Oxford
on the Greek Testament, with all the other profes
sors of the University taking notes, was perhaps the
first preacher of the time that regularly expounded
the Scriptures on Sundays. Good popular exposi
tion always rests on loving study of the Sciiptures,
and usually upon study of the original.
Everybody knows that the most notable preacher
192 ON" HISTORY OF PREACHING.
of the English Keformation was Latimer (about 1490
to 1555). The superficial reader of his sermons
would probably at first regard Latimer as a sort of
oddity, with his homely humor, queer stories and
quaint phrases, his frank egotism and general famil
iarity. But read on carefully, and you soon become
convinced that you are dealing with a powerful mind
and an elevated character. He was well educated
at Oxford, but never forgot his experiences as the
son of an humble yeoman, and while brought into
relation to the great and learned, never lost sympa
thy with common life and the common mind. A
student of books, you see that he has been still
more a keen observer of men and things. He
does not speak of life as one who has seen it dimly
mirrored in literature, but as one who has eagerly
looked upon the vivid original. His utterances are
as fresh as morning air, or the morning song of the
birds. He grasps truth with vigor, handles it with
ease, holds it up before you in startling reality. It
is pleasant to say that some of his best sermons
have recently been made accessible to all, in one
of the small volumes of " English Keprints," sold
for a trifle. I think that persons who occupy them-
LATIMEB. 193
selves much with the study of pulpit eloquence,
who are hunting in every age for "Masterpieces,"
and setting up lofty standards of homiletical art,
would find it most wholesome to read several sermons of
Latimer, to feel the power of his careless vigor and in
tense vitality, and remind themselves that not quite all
the great preachers of the world have been perpetually
engaged in the production of masterpieces of eloquence.
How many of the most influential Eeformers
were men of much the same stamp. Luther, Zwingle,
Wyclif , Latimer, Knox all intellectual and educated,
but all men of the people, in full mental sympathy
with the people, and thus able to command popular
sympathy, and to send great electric thrills through
the community, the nation, the age. Some of our
American Baptist ministers of a hundred years ago
had all these qualities, except education. If John
Leland had been thoroughly educated in his youth,
he might have shaken the continent. Great is
refined culture and literary taste, but greater far is
shrewd mother-wit, and racy humor, and wide and
varied sympathy, and close, personal observation of
the strangely mingled life we men are living in
this strange world.
194 OX HISTORY OF PREACHING.
Two years after Latimer preached the "Seven
Sermons before Edward VI." which remain to us,
there was added to the number of the king s chap
lains (1551) the other most remarkable English
preacher of the time, John Knox (1505-1572).
Professor Lorimer, in his "John Knox and the
Church of England," published last year from newly
discovered materials, has conclusively shown that
the great Scotchman exerted a powerful influence
in England, and did more than Bishop Hooper to
develop and shape that Puritan sentiment which a
century later became so powerful. In his preach
ing, as already intimated, he somewhat resembled
Latimer, being an educated man but quite superior
to pedantry and formality, and remarkable for force
of thought and stirring earnestness. Like Latimer
too, he usually preached without written prepara
tion ; and as he seldom wrote out his sermons
afterwards, we have to judge of his powers as a
preacher mainly from his other works. I think
you will best get the impress of his character and
catch his spirit by reading his " History of the
Reformation in Scotland." His was " the martial or
lo-battle style of pulpit oratory," in fact he waa
JOHN KKOX. 195
particularly fond of martial figures. Ihis was natu
ral in those stormy times, and in a preacher whose
life was often in sore peril, but at whose grave the
Regent Murray pronounced the now well known
eulogium, "There lies he, who never feared the
face of man." Fearlessness is a quality scarcely
less needful for preachers in the "piping time of
peace," than in time of persecution, scarcely less
needed by us, for example, than by our fathers of
a century ago. How many now are afraid of social
influence, or afraid of being stigmatized as wanting
in "culture," or ignorant of "science," or worst
of all as lacking in "charity." While eschewing
bitterness, let us covet boldness.
Knox is a notable example of entering upon
the ministry late in life. Educated for the Catholic
priesthood, but early deposed because of Protestant
heresy, he meant to spend his time as professor and
public lecturer, but was pressed into the ministry
at the age of forty-two. There is a further lesson
in the fact that about this time he learned Greek,
and at the age of forty-nine we find him at Geneva,
busily studying Hebrew. Let it not be forgotten
amid our elaborate processes of ministerial educa-
196 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
tion that a man of competent intelligence may
begin to preach when he is growing old, and be
very useful ; but also that such a preacher, if he
has the right spirit, will be eager to supply, as far
as may be, his educational deficiencies.
The martial style of thought and expression
which characterized Knox, was fitly attended by
a most impassioned delivery. One who often heard
him in his old age, afterwards described him as
lifted by two servants up to the pulpit, " whar he
behovit to lean, at his first entrie ; but er he haid
done with his serinone, he was sae active and vigorous,
that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in Mads, and
flie out of it." One of the pulpits he pounded is
still preserved in Stirling ; I remember standing
in it, and while not presuming to aspire after
an imitation of his delivery, yet longing to catch
something of his bold and zealous spirit. It is
a fact which might be worth some reflection, that
the Scotch preachers, though living farther North,
have as a rule been more fiery and impassioned
than the English.
As to other preachers of the [Reformation period,
we can say but a word. Bishop Hooper, the martyr,
THE ENGLISH PULPIT. 101
and the first Englishman who distinctly represented
the Puritan tendency, was very zealous in preach
ing, for we are told by Burnet that at one period
he preached four, or at least three times every day.
Cranmer s sermons show force of argument, and an
agreeable style, but little of the imagination anc
passion which are necessary to eloquence. Bishop
Jewell was a learned man, and sometimes eloquent,
but with little that was characteristic or very highly
impressive. Archbishop Sandys was hot enough
in his numerous quarrels, but not warm in preach
ing.
Between the Reformation and the time of Crom
well, including about a century, there were many
able ecclesiastics, many learned divines, and some
striking preachers, but none of the highest eminence.
Hooker is immortal for his philosophical work on
Ecclesiastical Polity, but was not attractive as a
preacher. Dr. Donne is said to have been a man of
learning and remarkable for brilliant imagination
and tender sentiment ; but his sermons are spoiled
by those conceits, which abound in his poetry also.
Let all fanciful and brilliant men remember that
perpetual efforts to strike and dazzle soon weary and
198 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
fail of their end. Bishop Andrewes was a learned
and able man, worthy of his position as one of King
James translators of the Bible, but his sermons
are so laden with learned quotation and discussion
that they lack movement, and I cannot read them
with profit or patience. Bishop Hall is seen to best
advantage in his justly celebrated "Contemplations
on the Old and New Testaments," which every
preacher will find exceedingly instructive and sug
gestive, and from which I have observed that some
recent German preachers borrow striking remarks,
sometimes giving them verbatim without acknowl
edgment.
No preacher of the highest power or of lasting
reputation for three-quarters of a century, and yet
this was precisely the age of Shakspeare and Bacon.
The fact certainly calls for explanation. It will not
do to say that the national mind was too much occu
pied with the Armada and the new trade with the
Indies. These did not prevent the grand literary
outburst, represented by Raleigh and Sidney, Spenser,
Shakspeare and the other great dramatists, and Ba
con. The comparative inferiority of preaching must
be referred mainly to two causes. (1) There was in
THE ENGLISH PULPIT. 190
all Europe a reaction, more or less marked, from the
excitement which had accompanied the early stages
of the Reformation ; and as a natural consequence
of this reaction, preaching would become less
intensely earnest. (2) There was in England at
this time a great lack of religious freedom, and with
out this we can hardly anywhere find examples of
the highest pulpit eloquence. The more radical
reformers, nicknamed " Puritans," who insisted that
church government, ceremonies, and religious life
must all be strictly conformed to the "pure Word of
God," and not controlled by the crown or by old
Catholic usage, were from the time of Edward VI.
numerous and earnest, but by no means agreed
among themselves as to the length to which they
would carry their opposition to Episcopacy, Catholic
ceremonies, and Royal supremacy over the church.
These unorganized and varying radical tendencies
were sternly repressed by Elizabeth, and with no small
success, both because of her immense personal popu
larity and by reason of her comparative moderation
and regal tact. Still, while the reaction from the
early zeal of the Reformation was lessening the zeal
of the dominant churchmen, these Puritan tenden-
200 ON IlISTOKY OF PHEACHIKG.
cies continually, though slowly, gathered strength
Under James I., who was unpopular and unwise,
the persecution grew much more harsh and irritating,
and therefore the Puritans became stronger. It
began to appear to them that both political and
religious freedom depended on the maintenance
and triumph of their Puritan principles. Under
Charles the two parties became more and more antag
onistic and embittered, each party hating whatever
doctrines and customs the others maintained, and the
Puritans gradually became willing to die for their
tenets, fearless of persecution and because fearless,
free in heart. Meantime the Koyalists had taken up
the new theory that Episcopacy was Scriptural, of
Divine appointment, like the Divine right of kings,
and so their civil and religious loyalty mingled and
strengthened each other. Now again there was burn
ing religious earnestness and zeal, and thus it became
possible that there should be intensely earnest and
truly eloquent preaching.
Meanwhile, the thoughts of men were aroused
and widened, as the seventeenth century went on.
Voltaire thinks the French Calvinistic refugees car*
ried eloquence into foreign countries. But this is
JEREMY TAYLOB, 20 J
iiousense as regards England, for the first Huguenot
refugees found the great age of English pulpit elo
quence almost at an end. In fact, every one of
the great English preachers, Puritan and Anglican,
with x ;he single exception of South, was older than
Bourdaloue, and several of them were twelve or
fourteen years older than Bossuet. 1 Clearly they
did not learn eloquence from the French. The truth
is that both English and French were &fcirred and
moved by the spirit of the age, as I tried to describe
it in the last lecture. And in England this spirit
of the age combined with the fierce conflict between
Puritan and Churchman, to quicken religious thought
and kindle religious zeal, and thus to create the
noble English eloquence of the seventeenth century.
The great preachers of that age are so well
known that a brief reference to each of them may
be at once intelligible and sufficient.
Jeremy Taylor (1613-77), a graduate of Cam
bridge and always a zealousJLoyalisi, was silenced
1 Examine the following table:
Baxter 1615-1691 Leighton. . . .1611-1684 Bossuet 1627-1704
Owen 1616-1683 Jer. Taylor. .1613-1677 Bourdaloue .1632-1704
Flavel 1627-1691 Barrow 1630-1677 Fe"nelon 1651-1715
Banyan 1628-1638 Tillotson.... 1630-1694 Massillon.... 1663-1742
Howe 1630-1705 South 1638-1716 Saurin 1677-1730
202 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
during the Protectorate of Cromwell, and twice im
prisoned, just as Bunyan was afterwards imprisoned
by the other side. Supported by a nobleman as pri
vate chaplain, he spent those stormy years in dili
gent study and writing, and Charles II. made him a
bishop. The "poet preacher," as he is often called,
would be intolerable now were it not for his fervent
piety. His style is almost unrivalled among orators
for its affluence of elegant diction, and its wealth of
charming imagery. It is the very perfection of that
species of eloquence which so many Sophomores
are disappointed at not finding in Demosthenes,
which they so fondly admire in Society speeches that
go forever curling like blue smoke towards the skies.
With the modern love for directness and downright-
ness of expression, we are apt utterly to condemn this
high-wrought splendor of ornamentation, even as we
should consider one of Sir Walter Raleigh s doublets
of bright-hued velvet, slashed with lace, to be very
pretty no doubt but a trifle ridiculous. Even Dr.
South already ridiculed Taylor s poetic imagery with
merciless severity ; and at the present day I think
few persons of mature age can read long in his glit
tering pages without weariness. And yet if one s
LEIGHTON". 202
style is naturally dry, he would find it a tery prof
itable thing to interest himself in Jeremy Taylor,
not only the Sermons (which may be had in a single
volume), but still more the famous treatises on Holy
Living and Holy Dying.
Similar to Taylor in fervor and sweetness, even
surpassing him in unction, and at the same time
remarkable for his clear and engaging style, is Arch
bishop Leighton (1613-84). Learned, deeply devout,
and of kindly and loving nature, his pages reflect
his character. If you ask why he is so much praised
and so little read, the answer would be, I think,
that his writings, like his character, are lacking in
force. He was not a man of decided nature and
positive convictions. He consented to leave the
Scotch Presbyterian ministry and become a bishop,
with the sincere hope that he might mingle the fire
and water of the two great religious parties, and
sadly mourned over his failure to overcome stubborn
convictions which he was constitutionally unfitted
to comprehend. Now there is a corresponding want
of decision, positiveness, power, in his works, and
this is a want for which nothing can make amends.
Leighton was fifty years old when he changed
204 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
his denomination, and the credit of his eloquence
might be claimed by both sides. But exactly con
temporary with him and Jeremy Taylor were two
Puritan preachers of great eminence, Baxter and
Owen.
Baxter (1615-91) was not regularly educated,
as were nearly all the distinguished preachers of
that age, but from youth was a great reader, and
through life a voluminous writer. His controversial
works are said to show great metaphysical subtlety,
and a good deal of hot-headed unfairness. His
schemes for ecclesiastical union or "comprehension"
were spoken of last summer by Dean Stanley with en
thusiastic admiration, as might have been expected,
but to ordinary mortals they seem much more credita
ble to his heart than his head. But as preacher, and
as pastor, Baxter s powers have seldom been equalled.
The general reader cannot be advised to study his
sermons, for with all their power they are to our
taste very wearisome by their great length and their
immense and confused multiplication of divisions
and particulars. The scholastic method of dividing
and subdividing without end reappears in these great
Puritan preachers as nowhere else. Besides the
BAXTER. 205
demand which high Calvinism always makes for
close thinking and careful distinctions, these inter
preters were influenced by the desire to find every
thing in Scripture, and to draw out from every pas
sage the whole of its possible contents; and they
were restrained in their analytical extravagances by
no such sense of artistic propriety as marked the
French Calvinistic preachers, and in a less degree
the Anglican preachers of the same age. It may
be added that none of the Puritan divines seem to
have given the slightest attention to finish of style,
caring only for copiousness and force a torrent of
speech. These facts may help to account for the im
mense extent of their writings. Every possible ques
tion, of religion and of politics, was then hotly dis
cussed with fresh and present interest ; each of these
questions the writer would treat under every possible
aspect and with a studious multiplication of partic
ulars ; and not a moment s thought was bestowed on
elegance of expression or artistic symmetry of ar
rangement. No wonder they wrote so much.
But while the great mass of Baxter s works
have lost their interest, and his sermons are unat-
tracti?e, every minister ought carefully to read
806 OK HISTORY OF PREACHING.
his practical treatises which have gained so wide
a fame, the Call to the Unconverted, Saints Eest,
Narrative of his own Life, Dying Thoughts, and
Reformed Pastor. These exhibit the great and singu
larly profitable characteristic of Baxter s preaching
and writing, viz., his burning, earth-shaking, tre
mendous earnestness. In this high quality of preach
ing he has hardly anywhere an equal. Read these
volumes, again and again, and let them kindle
anew in your soul the zeal of the gospel. John
Angell James tells of an "Earnest Ministry" in
such a way as to make one desire earnestness ; but far
more will Baxter do towards making us really earnest.
Owen (1616-83) was a scholar in both classical
and Rabbinical learning, worthy to be the contem
porary of Lightfoot and Walton, ambitious as a
boy student at Oxford, prodigious in life-long study
and authorship, and at the same time a simple,
earnest, and highly impressive preacher. His great
exegetical and theological works were the favorite
study of Andrew Fuller, who regarded his character
also with admiring reverence. Fuller was a very
noble example of the "self-made" theologian and
preacher, but he made himself with the help of
BUNYAtf. 207
the great scholars who had preceded him as self
made men commonly must do. A convenientlj
accessible and good specimen of Owen s sermona
may be found in the volume on Forgiveness, which
is a series of discourses on the 130th Psalm.
A dozen years younger than Baxter and Owen
was Flavel (1627-91). He also was educated at
Oxford, and a good scholar. While not equal to
Owen in vigor and depth of thought, or to Baxter
in overwhelming earnestness, he is pre-eminent for
tenderness, unction, and also excels in clearness,
both of arrangement and of style. He constructs
discourses after the fashion of the time, but in
striking contrast to those of Baxter and Howe, his
plans are lucid, and even to our altered taste are
not unpleasing. It was by hearing a pious lady
read Flavel that young Archibald Alexander, a
schoolmaster in the "Wilderness, near Fredericksburg,
Va., was brought to Christian faith and hope.
Bunyan (1628-88) was not only without regular
education, but was not even a great reader like
Baxter. Yet his sermons are quite & la mode, full
of divisions and subdivisions, and their tone of
thought shows intellectual sympathy with the best
808 Otf HISTORY OF PREACHING.
minds of the age. Even in those few cases in which
really great "self-made" men have not learned much
from books, they are always educated by the thought
of their time, the ideas and aspirations which fill
the intellectual atmosphere. When Bunyan began
to preach, at the age of twenty-eight, Ovven and
Baxter were forty years old, Milton forty-eight, and
it was only two years before the death of Cromwell.
How much there was to stimulate and educate the
susceptible and vigorous mind of the young tinker.
Bunyan s sermons, though often wearisome in length
and in minute analysis, yet show clearness of arrange
ment and great fulness of thought, with singular
practical point and consuming earnestness. His
language in preaching cannot be expected to exhibit
that high poetic grace, that exalted and charming
simplicity into which his fancy was lifted amid the
inspiring dreams of Bedford jail, but it is language
not unworthy of the immortal dreamer. He abounds
in lively turns and racy phrases, in a vivid dramatism
that no preacher has surpassed, and his homeliest
expressions are redeemed from vulgarity by a native
elegance, an instinctive good taste. The brief story
of his early life and conversion given in the treatise
JOHN HOWE. 209
jailed " Grace Abounding" is worthy to be placed
beside Augustine s Confessions, and his allegory of
the Holy War has been unjustly obscured by the
lastre of its great rival. But the "Solomon s Temple
Spiritualized" shows tho same creative imagination
gone crazy with wild allegorizing, because unrestrained
by any just principles of interpretation. Only a
great genius could produce such nonsense.
It remains to mention, among the foremost
Puritan preachers, John Howe (1630-1705). The
Life of Howe, by that admirable writer, Henry
Rogers, is of late accessible in a cheap form. As
there was very little of incident to relate, the biogra
pher has made his work all the more valuable to us
by discussing many related matters in the religious
history of the time.
Howe was graduated both at Cambridge and at
Oxford. It is to be noticed that in that age men who
held to Calvinistic doctrine and non-episcopal church
government could have the benefit of the English
Universities; and that most of the great Puritan
divines were graduates, as were Henry Dunster, and
others of those who established the civilization and
culture of New England. This fact is suggestive,
210 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
and yet we are warned not to push too far our infel.
ences from it by the cases of Baxter and Bunyan.
At Cambridge, Howe was intimate with Cudworth,
More, and other famous Platonists, and became a
devoted and appreciative student of Plato. He was
a great philosophic theologian, and at the same time
a very earnest and eloquent preacher. With extraor
dinary power of intellect he had also remarkable
power of imagination. Robert Hall said to a friend :
"I have learned far more from John Howe than
from any other author I ever read." Henry Rogers
states that in conversation with him Hall once went
so far as to say, "as a minister, he had derived
more benefit from Howe than from all other divines
put together." This fervid admiration is in part
accounted for from the fact that Howe ably wrought
out and powerfully stated, as in his treatise on
"The Divine Prescience," precisely that scheme of
moderate Calvinism which alone suited Mr. Hall s
mind. But notice that Hall added, to the friend
first mentioned : " There is an astonishing magnifi
cence in his conceptions." Of this "magnificence"
no one could better judge than Robert Hall. For
two reasons mere cursory readers are in danger of
JOHN HOWE. 21 J
not appreciating Howe s eloquence. He is so ad*
dieted to metaphysical thinking that we often have
difficulty in following him, and so are apt to be
engrossed with his philosophical theology. The
other reason is the ruggedness of his style. Mr.
Hall says: "There was, I think, an innate inapti
tude in Howe s mind for discerning minute graces
and proprieties, and hence his sentences are often
long and cumbersome. Still he was unquestionably
the greatest of the Puritan divines." Both the ob
scurity and the awkwardness of style must have been
partially relieved for his hearers by the delivery.
But for us it is necessary in approaching the study
of Howe to expect difficulty, and the consequent
careful reading will bring us into acquaintance with
many of the noblest thoughts the human mind
can conceive.
The changes since Howe s time have in no respect
been greater than in regard to the length of religious
services. His contemporary Calamy says, with ref
erence to the public fast days which were common
during the Protectorate : Mr. Howe " told me it was
upon those occasions his common way, to begin about
nine in the morning, with a prayer for about a
OK HISTORY OF PREACHIHG.
quarter of an hour, in which he begged a blessing
on the work of the day; and afterwards read and
expounded a chapter or psalm, in which he spent
about three-quarters of an hour; then prayed for
about an hour, preached for another hour, and
prayed for about half an hour. After this, he
retired and took some little refreshment for about
a quarter of an hour (the people singing all the
while), and then came again into the pulpit and
prayed for another hour, and gave them another
sermon of about an hour s length ; and so concluded
the services of the day, at about four of the clock
in the evening, with about half an hour or more in
prayer. " Seven hours of continuous services, with
an intermission of fifteen minutes for the poor
preacher, and none at all for the poor people ! But
in our restless age, have we not gone quite to the
opposite extreme ?
In the same year with Howe were born Barrow
and Tillotson. Barrow (1630-77) was not only a very
great man, but in many respects peculiar. His ex
traordinary physical strength and his force of charac
ter led to a youthful fondness for fighting, and in
general he was so wayward and violent as to extort
BARROW. 213
from his despairing father the singular wish, that
" if ifc pleased God to take away any of his children,
it might be his son Isaac." This famous saying
ought to be repeated on all occasions, as it is such
a comfort to all young men who were bad boys. The
physical strength deserves special notice, for great
literary achievements require uncommon power of
bodily endurance, and this is usually attended by
corresponding bodily strength. Few men have pro
duced numerous and able works who were not strong
in body. But trusting in his bodily strength,
Barrow indulged excessively in the use of tobaco a
species of indulgence which (I venture to suggest)
is particularly injurious to persons of sedentary,
studious and anxious life, unsafe even for healthy
ministers, and inevitably hurtful to those who are
at all feeble and nervous. Imprudent in various
respects, he lived to the age of only forty-seven.
His early attainments were wonderful. He was
made Fellow of Trinity at nineteen, and would have
been appointed Greek Professor at twenty-four, but
for the unpopularity, at that time, of his Armin-
ianism. He then spent five years in continental
travel, practicing rigorous economy, and engaged
214 ON HISTORY OF PKEACHINOK
in diligent study and intercourse with learned men.
Do our American youth of to-day possess quite enougi
of that spirit which for sweet learning s sake has so
often faced the most serious difficulties and prac
ticed the sternest self-denial ? I think Barrow and
his contemporary Bourdaloue were the first great
preachers of modern times who had been careful
students of mathematics, and Barrow of the physical
sciences also. There is something inspiring in the
bare mention of the fact that Isaac Barrow resigned
a mathematical chair at Cambridge to his pupil,
Isaac Newton. But with all his devotion to these
subjects he also laboriously studied the Classics and
the Fathers, reading, for instance, the entire works
of Chrysostom during a year s sojourn at Constanti
nople.
As your examinations are approaching, I will tell
the story of Barrow s examination for orders. The
aged bishop, wishing but little trouble, placed the
candidates in a row, and asked three questions.
First, Quid est fides? Barrow, near the end of the
row, had time to think, and when it came to his
turn answered, Quod non vides. Excellenter, said
the bishop. To the second question, Quid est spesl
BARROW. 21ft
he answered, Nondum res, and the old man cried
Excellentius. The third was Quid est caritas? and
Barrow answered, Ah I magister, id est raritas.
Excellentissime, shouted the bishop, aut Erasmus
est, aut diabolus.
But while really a prodigy of attainments and
intellectual achievements, Barrow was never a work
ing pastor, and most of the sermons he left were in
fact never preached. Hence he was lacking in prac
tical point and directness, in the tact of the experi
enced preacher. His sermons are really disquisitions
on some topic, written to satisfy his own mind, and
designed to be read to others if he should find occa
sion. As disquisitions they are wonderfully com
prehensive and complete, fully unfolding the subject
proposed, and accumulating a wealth of interesting
particulars. These particulars are sometimes weari
somely numerous, but, unlike the Puritan discourses
we spoke of, they are in general naturally arranged,
and each of them really adds something to the train
of thought. His style is ill described by Doddridge
as " laconic, " for it is in the highest degree copious,
but it is condensed, compact. Every paragraph seems
a treatise, each long sentence is crowded with ideasL
216 ON HISTORY OP PREACHING.
And yet the whole has movement, vigorous and ma
jestic movement, with the energy of profuseness, like
a broadly rolling torrent.
Barrow is decidedly Arminian. The church of
England was at first Calvinistic in doctrine, as the
Articles show, but royalist hostility to the Puritans
had gradually extended to a rejection of the doc
trinal views especially associated with them, and
Churchmen were by this time generally foes to Cal
vinism. Barrow however shows little enthusiasm
for doctrine. His best sermons are on moral sub
jects, embracing all the leading topics of Christian
morality. I know not where else in our language
there can be found sermons on this important class
of subjects so complete, forcible, satisfactory as those
of Barrow. We have heretofore noticed the fact that
he and Bourdaloue, both excelling in this respect,
were both loving students of the early master on
moral topics, Chrysostom. Bead Jeremy Taylor to
enrich the fancy, but Barrow to enrich the intellect
and to show how the greatest copiousness may unite
with great compactness and great energy of movement.
Of two other Anglican preachers in that age
I shall speak but briefly.
TILLOTSOK. 217
Dr. South (1638-1716) cannot be recommended
for doctrine, nor yet for spirit, as he is unloving.,
harsh in his polemics, and delights in a savage style
of sarcasm. But he shows great vigor of thought,
and skill in argument, particularly in refutation.
The discussions are relieved by racy wit, the plan
of discussion is simple and clear, for that age,
and the style is condensed, direct and pungent.
Mr. Beecher speaks of having found special pleasure
and profit in an early study of South.
Archbishop Tillotson (1630-94), on the other hand,
was a kindly and loving man, kind even to Noncon
formists which is much to say for a Churchman of
that period. Like Barrow and South, he does not
preach the "doctrines of grace," but his polemics
against Popery, and against the growing infidelity,
are models of manly vigor, unstained by bitterness.
Tillotson was by many of his contemporaries con
sidered the foremost preacher of the age, and yet
at the present day is far less admired than Jeremy
Taylor and Barrow. I think this can be accounted
for. As to the fact itself, Saurin, the French Pro
testant, who came to London six years after the good
Archbishop s death, and was doubtless all the more
10
218 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
attracted to his works by hearing of his kindnes?
to the Huguenot Kef u gees, speaks with great enthu
siasm of his writings, calling him my master/ as
Cyprian used to call Tertullian. Bishop Burnet,
who survived Tillotson only twenty years, says :
"He was not only the best preacher of the age, but
seemed to have brought preaching to perfection ;
his sermons were so well liked, that all the nation
proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after
him." The explanation is, I think, that Tillotson
satisfied the yearning of the age for greater clear
ness and simplicity, both in arrangement of dis
course and in style, a yearning doubtless strengthened,
though not caused, by the French taste that prevailed
in the court of Charles II. From the quirks and con
ceits of the Elizabethan prose, the involved, elaborate,
sometimes stupendous sentences found even in Milton
and Barrow, and the wearisome divisions and subdivis
ions of the Puritan preachers, and their contemporary
Anglicans, to the easy and careless grace of the Addi-
sonian period, the transition is made by Tillotson.
Macaulay relates that Dry den was frequently heard
to "own with pleasure that, if he had any talent
for English prose, it was owing to his having often
TILLOTSOtf. 219
read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson."
But of this simplicity in arrangement and style we
have long had numerous examples, some of them
comparatively free from the faults of negligence
which are noted in Tillotson and in Addison. As
to topics, Tillotson s arguments against infidelity are
of course superseded now, and his able polemics
against the Papacy have no general interest. Thus
it comes to pass that we find little profit, and little
ground for special admiration, in works which were
long considered the noblest models of composition.
Much depends on peculiarities of taste, and on
felt personal need, but if I were required to recom
mend two of the great English preachers of the
seventeenth century as likely most richly to reward
thorough study at the present time, I should name
Barrow among the Churchmen, and among the Puri
tans John Howe.
When this splendid group of preachers, with their
contemporaries whom we hare not been able to no
tice, had passed away, there threatened to be as com
plete a collapse of the English pulpit as was at the
same time occurring in France. The Puritans, who
Off HISTORY OF PREACHING.
formed the vital element of the preceding century
had fallen into popular disfavor, and the Act of Toler
ation under William and Mary took away the stimu
lus of persecution. What was worse, they were
cut off from the universities, an unjust deprivation
to which all Nonconformists were condemned until
within the last few years. Their opportunities of
education during the eighteenth century were con
fined to inferior " Academies/ and the Scotch Uni
versities. Many an aspiring youth, as for example,
Joseph Butler, was tempted into conformity by the
prospect, sometimes even the offer, of an education
at Oxford or Cambridge. And it was only as the
Dissenters Colleges in England, and the Scottish
Universities began to do vigorous teaching at the close
of the century, that there was again a Nonconformist
ministry of great power. As to the Churchmen,
they had lost the stimulus of Puritan rivalry in preach
ing, and were now engaged in a life and death strug
gle for the truth of Christianity with that rising
infidelity which had sprung on the one hand from
the rationalizing philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes,
and on the other from, the reaction into immorality
which ensued upon the fall of the Commonwealth
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
This struggle for the truth of Revelation was power
fully maintained by Bishop Butler and others, while
Richard Bentley was carrying classical learning to a
height never surpassed in English history.
In this state of things, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, English preaching did not rise
above mediocrity. Bishop Atterbury, learned and
elegant, but not strong, was the leading preacher of
the day in the Establishment. Among the Dissent
ers, Watts had considerable ability and some elo
quence, but would now be utterly forgotten were it
not for his hymns. And Doddridge, worked to death
with his Academy, his pastorate, his correspondence
and authorship, has left good sermons and good books,
but nothing of the highest excellence. In Scotland
there was Maclaurin, whose sermon on " Glorying in
the Cross " is truly one of the " Masterpieces of
Pulpit Eloquence." And in far New England lived
the foremost preacher of the age, one of the very no
blest in all history for intellect, imagination, and pas
sion, for true and high eloquence, Jonathan Edwards.
Towards the middle of the century two men be
came known who have made illustrious the English
preaching of their day. Whitefield and Wesley were
222 Off HISTORY OF PREACHING.
both Oxford men, and used their cultivation in that
preaching to the masses which had been the glory of
the Puritan period. While Bolingbroke assailed
Revelation, and Chesterfield politely sneered at every
thing unselfish and good, and Christian Apologists
vainly strove to convince the intellect of the upper
classes, Whitefield and Wesley began to preach to the
consciences of men, and thus felt no need of confining
their discourse to the cultivated and refined. In this
preaching to the conscience must always begin, I
think, the reaction from an age of skepticism.
The biographies of Whitefield (1714-70) are full
of instruction. The sermons we have were mere
preparations, which in free delivery were so filled
out with the thoughts suggested in the course of
living speech, and so transfigured and glorified by
enkindled imagination, as to be utterly different
from the dull, cold thing that here lies before us
more different than the blazing meteor from this
dark, metallic stone that lies half buried in the
earth.
The sermons of Wesley (1703-91) require study,
and will reward it. As printed, they were commonly
written out after frequent delivery. They are too
WESLEY. 222
condensed tc have been spoken, in this form, to
the colliers and the servant girls at five o clock in the
morning. But they must be in substance the same
that he habitually preached, and they present a
problem. Wesley had nothing of Whitefield s im
passioned oratory. He spoke with simple earnest
ness, and remained quiet while his hearers grew
wild with excitement. What was the secret ?
Where the hidden power? We can only say that
it was undoubting faith and extraordinary force
of character, together with a peculiarity seen also
in some generals on the field of battle, that their
most intense excitement makes little outward noise
or show and yet subtly communicates itself to others.
"No man can repeatedly make others feel deeply who
does not feel deeply himself ; it is only a difference
in the way of showing it. Of course this subtle elec
tricity resides in the soul of the speaker much more
than in the recorded discourse. But read carefully
these condensed and calm-looking sermons, and see
if you do not feel the power of the man, and find
yourself sometimes strangely moved.
Late in the century, and dying just before Wesley,
was Robert Robinson (1735-90), who has left numer-
224 OX HISTORY OF PREACHING.
ous sermons that are full of life, with flashes of
genius. His erratic and uncertain course as to
doctrine has caused him to be neglected. But a
volume of his selected sermons, with a statement on
the title-page that he was the author of the hymn,
" Come, thou fount of every blessing," ought to find
sale, and would be interesting and useful.
We come now to the nineteenth century, in which
English pulpit literature is not only abundant but
shows real power, and which must be divided, for
our purpose, into an earlier and a later portion. It
is obvious that we can only mention the principal
names, and that very briefly.
In the early part of the century the leading
preachers were Hall, Chalmers, and Jay.
The deeply interesting history of Robert Hall
(1764-1831) is generally familiar, and remains as a
choice morsel for those who have not read it. His
precocity in childhood, his education, his inner life
and character, and the origin of his works, are all
topics full of interest. He was equally studious of
thought and of style, and in both he reached the high
est excellence. Take any one of his greatest sermons
and you will see an exhibition of the noblest powerai
ROBERT HALL. 225
There is a thorough acquaintance with his subject;
and a vigorous grasp of it. There is great knowledge
of human nature, and this not in the way of mere
crude observation but of profound reflection. He who
at nine years of age delighted in Edwards on the
Will and Butler s Analogy, has ever since been a
profound student of metaphysics, ethics, and philo
sophical theology like that of Howe, and in this deep
sense has studied human nature. He shows great
analytical power, dissecting every part of the subject,
and laying it open ; and at the same time adequate
power of construction, giving the discourse a clear,
simple and complete plan. We also perceive singular
power of argument. The whole sermon is often an
argument, and upon a view of the subject well chosen
for general effect ; and the arguments, though usually
profound, are made level to the capacity of all intelli
gent hearers. His imagination is exalted, imperial,
but constantly subordinated to the purposes of the
argument. Nowhere is there imagery that appears
to be introduced for its own sake. The most splendid
bursts, the loftiest flights, seem to come just where
they are natural and needful. And the style well,
it is a model of perspicuity, energy, and elegance
10*
ON. HISTOKY OF PREACHING.
The terms are chosen with singular felicity. The
sentences are never very long, nor in the slightest
degree involved, and longer and shorter sentences
are agreeably mingled, while the rhythm is greatly
varied, and always harmonious. Do we mean to say
that Mr. Hall s style is perfect ? No, there are
palpable, though slight defects, in his most finished
productions, as there are in every work of every
writer. And in one important respect Mr. Hall s
style is, if not faulty, yet quite opposed to the taste of
our own time. It has a dignity that is too uniformly
sustained. Though not at all pompous, it is never
familiar, and thus its range is restricted. There is
the same difference with regard to style, between
that age and this, as with regard to dress and man
ners. And while we are sometimes too free and
easy, in all these directions, yet upon the whole we
have gained. If Robert Hall lived in our time, he
would have greater flexibility, and thereby his noble
sermons would be sensibly improved. Whether he
would not, if reared in our age, have been lacking in
more important respects, is another question.
Christmas Evans, the Welshman (1766-1838), is
ft notable example of untutored eloquence. His undis-
CHALMERS. 22?
clplined imagination rioted in splendors, his descrip
tive powers captivated the enthusiastic Keltic moun
taineers, and the whirlwinds of his passion bore them
aloft to the skies. For such a man, thorough educa
tion might have hampered the wings of soaring fancy,
and made him really less effective a Pegasus har
nessed to the plough.
William Jay (1769-1853) was not a man of shining
gifts, but is an excellent model of sermonizing, in
respect to his fresh, ingenious and yet natural plans,
and in his copious, often strikingly felicitous quota
tions from the Bible. Read his sermons, and also
his admirable Morning and Evening Exercises, which
are sermons on a small scale.
Robert HalFs most gifted contemporary in the
pulpit was Chalmers (1780-1847), whose rare genius
and unique method in preaching one would find
pleasure, if there were opportunity, in attempting
to depict. No student of English preaching must
fail to read the magnificent Astronomical Sermons,
nor at least a part of the expository Lectures on
Romans. He will find that the one thought of each
discourse is not merely presented in ever varying
beauty, like the kaleidoscope to which Hall com-
12$ OH HISTv-iT OF PREACHItfG.
pared Chalmers preaching, but as in our stereoscope
it is made to stand out in solid form and full propor
tions. His religious philosophy is elevated and
satisfying. His style is beautiful, but any imitation
of it would be unpleasing if not ridiculous.
I could wish to speak at some length of the
English preachers who have attained distinction
in the last thirty or forty years. I should want to
commend Melvill for his numerous and suggestive
examples of rich discourses drawn by legitimate
process from the most unlikely texts ; and to tell
of John Henry Newman, with his deep, magnetic
nature, whose plain and intensely vital discourses
make the soul quiver with solemn awe. To recom
mend Frederick Kobertson would be a work of
supererogation, for everybody has been reading him,
but there might be profit in attempting to discrimi
nate, as he himself could not, between the true and
false elements which had grown up together in his
thought, and between the strength and the weakness
of his so attractive discourses. I should direct
special attention to Canon Liddon, now the leading
preacher in the Church of England, whose elaborate
sermons show us how the most difficult fundamental
ENGLISH PREACHERS. 2>
questions of religion, questions of Providence and
prayer, of sin and atonement, of the soul and im
mortality, may be treated with reference to the
ablest attacks of disbelief and doubt, and yet without
making the sermon unintelligible, in general, to any
hearers of fair capacity and cultivation. And there
is a whole class of recent preachers in England and
Scotland, who have given new power and interest
to expository preaching, bringing to bear the methods
and results of modern Biblical learning, and not
disregarding, as did Chrysostom and in a less degree
Luther, the absolute need, in order to the most effect
ive discourse, of unity and plan. Alford s other ser
mons are not of great power ; but his Sunday after
noon lectures in London, with many hearers holding
their Greek Testaments, were, according to the testi
mony of Bishop Ellicott* and others, surpassingly
instructive and engaging. Dr. Vaughan s expository
sermons on the Book of Eevelation are quite good.
Johnstone on James and on Philippians meets exactly
the wants of a highly educated but gospel-loving
congregation. And Candlish, the foremost Scottish
preacher of the century except Chalmers, has in his
* See the Bishop s excellent paper in the Life of Alford.
230 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
Genesis, First Epistle of John, and fifteenth chap
ter of Corinthians, taught a new and high lesson iu
pulpit exposition.
The time would fail to speak of strong Dr. Binney
and Newman Hall and Joseph Parker, all deservedly
famous; of Bishop Wilberforce and Bishop Magee,
whom one of his colleagues on the Episcopal bench
described to me as the finest extemporaneous speaker
in England ; of Guthrie and Caird, Gumming and
Ker ; of Landells and Maclaren, whose little volumes
of brief, fresh and spirited discourses are very suggest
ive to city pastors ; and of Spurgeon, a model in
several respects, but whose greatest distinction, to my
mind, is the fact that he has so long gathered and
held vast congregations, and kept the ear of the read
ing world, without ever forsaking the gospel in search
of variety, or weakening his doctrine to suit the
tastes of the age.
But I have purposely spoken chiefly of both the
English and the French preachers who lived before
our own time. I think that young men should be
specially exhorted to read old books. If you have
a friend in the ministry who is growing old, urge
him to read mainly new books, that he may freshen
CONCLUDING SUGGESTIONS. 231
his mind, and keep in sympathy with his surround
ings. "But must not young men keep abreast of
the age ?" Certainly, only the first thing is to get
abreast of the age, and in order to this they must
go back to where the age came from, and join there
the great procession of its moving thought.
Can I suggest anything, in conclusion, with refer
ence to the character and demands, as to preaching,
of the time to which you will belong, the coming
third or half of a century ? I shall barely touch a
few points, without any expansion.
(1) It becomes every day more important to draw
a firm line of demarkation between Physical Science
and Theology, and to insist that each party shall work
on its own side the line in peace. Even where there
appears to be ground of antagonism, it will commonly
be best not to court conflict, but to work quietly
on in the assurance that we have truth, and that
as new scientific theories pass out of speculation
into matured truth also, it will then become plain
enough in what way the two departments of truth
are to be reconciled.
(2) As the past generation has witnessed a pain-
232 OK HISTUEY OF PKEACHING.
fully rapid growth of religious skepticism in England
and America, so it is to be expected that your gen
eration will see a great and blessed reaction. Unless
I am mistaken, that reaction has already in some di
rections begun to show itself. You will promote the
healthier tendencies by preaching the definite doc
trines of the Bible, and by abundant exposition of
the Bible text. Men grow weary of mere philosoph
ical speculation and vague sentiment, and will listen
again to the sweet and solemn voice of the Word of God.
(3) Our age has made remarkable progress as
to one great doctrine of Christianity progress, not
in apprehending the doctrine, but in realizing its
truth. As the fourth century made clear the Divin
ity of Christ, so the nineteenth century has brought
out his Humanity. The most destructive criticism
has unconsciously contributed to this result. It will
henceforth be possible to present more complete and
symmetrical views of the Lord Jesus Christ and his
work of salvation than the pulpit has generally
exhibited in any past age. Picture vividly before your
hearers Jesus the man, while not allowing them to
forget that he was Christ the Son of God, and you
will mightily win them to love and serve him.
CONCLUDING SUGGESTIONS. 233
(4) Ifc will be important to sympathize with and
use the humanitarian tendencies which have become
so strongly developed. Show in a thousand ways
what Christianity has done and can do for all the
noblest interests of humanity, and how all this is
possible only because Christianity is itself divine.
The one true gospel of humanity is the gospel of
the Son of God.
(5) You must know how to unite breadth of
view, and charity in feeling, with fidelity to truth.
The age is in love with liberality, and allows that
word to cover many a falsehood and many a folly.
But the age will feel more and more its need of
truth, and "speaking truth in love" will meet its
double want.
(6) As to methods of preaching, you are entered
upon a time of great freedom in composition, a time
in which men are little restrained by classical models
or current usage, whether as to the structure or the
style of discourse. This is true in general litera
ture, and also in preaching. You may freely adopt
any of the methods which have been found useful
in any age of the past, or by varied experiment may
*ea*n for yourselves how best to meet the wants oa
234 ON HISTORY OF PREACHING.
the present. Freedom is always a blessing and a
power, when it is used with wise self-control.
(7) It is scarcely necessary to caution you against
the love of sensation which marks our excitable age.
We see this in many writers of history and romance,
even in some writers on science, to say nothing of nu
merous politicians and periodicals. A few preachers,
some of them weak but some really strong men, have
fallen in with this tendency of the time. Where
they have done much real good, it has been rather
in spite of this practice, than by means of it, and
they should be instructive as a warning.
(8) In your time, as in all times, the thing needed
will be not oratorical display but genuine eloquence,
the eloquence which springs from vigorous thinking,
strong convictions, fervid imagination and passionate
earnestness ; and true spiritual success will be at
tained only in proportion as you gain, in humble
prayer, the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
I trust, brethren, that these observations on the
History of Preaching for the abounding imperfec
tions of which I shall not stop to apologize may by
God s blessing be of some use in preparing you for
the difficult and responsible, yet sweet and blessed
23S
work to which your lives are devoted. I trust you
will feel incited to study the instructive history and
inspiring discourses of the great preachers who have
gone before you, and will be stimulated by their ex
ample to develop every particle of your native power,
and to fill your whole life with zealous usefulness.
Themistocles said the trophies of Marathon would
not let him sleep. May the thought of all the noble
preachers and their blessed work kindle in you a
noble emulation. And when weary and worn, stir
yourselves to fresh zeal by remembering the rest that
remaineth and the rewards that cannot fail. " to
shine," said Whifcefield one night as he stood preach
ing in the open air and looked up to the brilliant
heavens, " to shine as the brightness of the firma
ment, as yonder stars forever and ever."
APPENDIX.
WITHOUT attempting anything like a complete
account of the Literature belonging to those depart
ments of the History of Preaching which are treated
in these lectures, it may be useful to mention some
of the principal works in each case, so far as known
to the author.
LECTUBB II. (Preaching in the Early Chris
tian centuries).
L Works of the Fathers, with the Lives, Prefaces.
Monita, etc., of the Benedictine and Migne editions.
Works on Church History.
Gibbon.
Bingham s Antiquities, and Smith s Diet, of Chris
tian Antiquities.
IL Paniel, Geschichte der christlichen Beredsam-
APPENDIX. 237
keit und der Eomiletik, 1839. (Much the most
thorough work on the General History of Preaching ;
but only a fragment, ending with Augustine. Most
of the chapter on Chrysostom was translated in the
Bibliotheca Sacra, 1847.)
JEJbert, Gesch. der christlich-lateinischen Liter-
atur, 1874. (Extends to Charlemagne, and designed
as Introduction to General History of the Literature
of the Middle Ages in the West. A work of great
learning, vigor and freshness, in which, however,
the history of preaching necessarily occupies a sub
ordinate place.)
Villemain, Tableau de 1 Eloquence Chre tienne au
IV e Si6cle. (New edition, 1870. A series of very
entertaining essays.)
Moule, Christian Oratory during the first five cen
turies. London, 1859. (A prize essay of consider
able interest and value.)
Bromel, Homiletische Charakterbilder, 1869-74.
(Begins with sketches of Chrysostom and Augustine
Well written and fair.)
Fish, Masterpieces of Pulpit Eloquence. New
York. (Contains sermons, with brief historical
sketches of periods and of individual preachers. It
238 APPENDIX.
would be easy to point out faults in this work, but it
is convenient and useful.)
III. On the Life of Chrysostom, Neander is still
valuable, Perthes not worth much ; Stephens (London,
1872) is the fullest and best work ; Forster (Gotha,
1869) treats ably of Chrysosfcom in relation to Doc
trine-history ; " The Mouth of Gold, " by Edwin
Johnson (New York, 1873), a sort of dramatic poem
on the life and times of Chrysostom, is worth reading.
Martin, Saint Jean Chrysostome, ses oauvres et son
siecle. Paris, 1875, three volumes, 8 vo., I have
not seen.
LECTUKE HI. (Medieval and Keformation Preach-
Works on Church History, and special works on
the Reformation.
Works of St. Bernard, Antony of Padua, Thomas
Aquinas, Tauler.
Lives and Works of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle.
Lenz, Geschichte der christlichen Homiletik,
1839. (Useful, though meagre.)
Necde, Medieval Preaching. London, 1856. (Not
thorough, but serviceable.)
APPENDIX. 239
Baring- Gould, Post-Medieval Preaching. London,
1865. (A mere collection of curious odds and enda
about second-rate preachers. )
Bromel, Charakterbilder (as above).
Histories of German Preaching, especially those
by Schenk and Schmidt, give accounts of Luther aa
a preacher.
Msh, Masterpieces (as before).
LBCTUEE IV. (Great French Preachers.)
Works of the Preachers in question, especially of
Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Saurin, A. Monod,
Bersier.
Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV.
Vinet, Histoire de la Predication parmi les R6-
forme s de France au Dix-Septime Si Sole. Paris,
1860. (A remarkably good book, containing sketches,
representative extracts, critical discussions, and prac
tical hints.)
Feugere, Bourdaloue : Sa Predication et son
Temps. 2 me eU Paris. 1874. (Thorough and
able.)
Bossuet and his Contemporaries. New York*
840 APPENDIX.
1875. (By an English lady. Keadable, and of some
value.)
Berthault, Saurin et la Predication Protestante
jusqu a la fin du rSgne de Louis XIY. Paris, 1875.
(Pretty good, but not like Feugere or Vinet. )
Bungener, The Preacher and the King, or Bourda-
loue in the Court of Louis XIV. (A new edition
of the translation is just issued. Well known as an
interesting and instructive story.)
Alexander } Thoughts on Preaching. Art. " Elo
quence of the French Pulpit." (Quite good.)
Turribull, Pulpit Orators of France and Switzer
land. New York, 1848. (Several sermons from the
first half of this century, with brief sketches of the
preachers.)
Fish 9 Masterpieces (as before), and also his Pulpit
Eloquence of the nineteenth century. (The trans
lation he gives of Bourdaloue is faulty, and that of
Massillon is very bad.)
LECTURE V. (English Pulpit.)
Lives and Works of the Preachers in question.
Works on English History.
APPENDIX. 241
Works on Ecelesiastical History of England,
especially Burnet, Fuller, Wordsworth s Eccl. Biogra
phy, Stoughton.
Fish s two works (as above).
Alexander, Thoughts on Preaching. Art. "The
Pulpit in Ancient and Modern Times."
Great Modern Preachers. London. 1875. A
small volume, containing a dozen pleasant sketches
of English Preachers.
Our Bishops and Deans. By Kev. F. Arnold.
London, 1875. 2 volumes, 8vo. Hastily written, but
entertaining.
d. 7ft.
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