p. 86 | Nutritious Preaching

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 5, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 6

Nutritious Preaching.

“Do you like Dr. S—— as well as ever?” was the question once addressed to a member of the A—— Street Church. “Oh, yes; his sermons are roast beef and plum pudding to us for a whole week.” This was high praise, surely, and bespoke a full larder, as well as no small skill in setting out the feast. It gives us at once an idea of the man, and of his sermons, and of the study, too, whence such sermons came. We catch a glimpse of a quiet room, better stocked with standard works than with the literature of Tupper and Gilfillan—of a patient, prayerful man, rising from his knees to adjust his manuscripts for the day; and of an open Bible on the study table. The hat and cane are laid aside, for he has already paid a visit to the suffering family in the adjoining alley, or to the sick bed of a dying parishioner; and “it is well before preaching to look over the verge.” While such a man writes, let no one needlessly intrude, for the robbery of his hour is the plundering of a whole congregation. In a minister’s study-hours, the “talk of the lips tendeth to penury.”

Of the discourses of Dr. S——, on which such a savory encomium was pronounced, we had no personal knowledge; but we can easily conjecture some of the qualities which made them so nutritious.

1. They must have had a great deal of Bible in them. Not an occasional scrap, or a dainty passage culled out to beautify a sentence and round off a period, but wholly saturated with the word of God. Hamilton tells us that Dr. Chalmers’ discourses “held the Bible in solution.” The strong meat is found in the Scriptures alone. The preacher who never “wears out,” or wears his people out either, is he who delves daily in gold mines of revelation.

2. These nutritious discourses must have had a great deal of prayer over them. There are other men besides the staid Quakers who believe that he who preaches aright must preach “as the Spirit moves him.” And through Divine aid comes down the invisible ladder by which the prayer of faith ascended to the heavenly Intercessor. McCheyne never wrote a line without previous petition to God. Holy John Welch rose at night, and spent hours in pleading

for the celestial baptism. “I am convinced,” writes an eminent clergyman, “that even æsthetically considered, one hour of prayer is a better preparation for sermon-writing than a whole day of study.”

3. They had a great deal of every-day religion in them. They were practical. There is a painful lack, with many ministers, of knowledge of human nature in its daily actings. They are not ignorant men. They are tolerably familiar with John Owen, and Matthew Poole, and Francis Turretin, know all about the Council of Trent, and many even aspire to an acquaintance with the Magdeburg Centuriators. But to the living, acting, laughing, weeping, tempted, and sinning world around them, they are well nigh strangers. During the week their parishioners have been driving a plough, or hammering a lapstone, or pleading a cause, or have been “up to their eyes” in cotton bales and sugar casks. When the Sabbath comes, these parishioners bring to the sanctuary their every-day wants and trials, as citizens, as men of business, as parents, as husbands, or as children. They want preaching that shall tell them how to live as well as what to believe. They want plain instruction. They want doctrine, but doctrine made portable and practical. They hunger for truth, but truth simplified, and purged of scholastic technicalities. We once heard a young licentiate of great promise preach a sermon in which he talked about the “governmental theory of the atonement,” and garnished his discourse with such words as “predicate,” and “potential,” and “subjective.” The whole discourse smelled strongly of the class-room, and had probably been “sat upon” by an inquest of theological students during the author’s senior year. We would like to have whispered into the brother’s ear, “You will burn that sermon up before you have been in the ministry twelve months.” The Sabbath teachings which are carried into the week are those which treat of every-day wants and every-day duties—which meet the Christian, and tell him how to grow in grace and holy living—which soothe the afflicted with gospel consolations—which tell the young how to shun daily temptation, and the aged how to prepare for death—which point the anxious inquirer to that cross beneath which he may quiet his aching heart. And the simpler these teachings, the better. A discourse which a minister would not be willing to read to his children and domestics, with a good hope that they would understand it, is not usually a safe sermon to take into the pulpit. “It takes all our learning,” said Archbishop Usher, “to make truth simple.”

4. Another excellence of the preacher, of whom I am writing, probably was that he seldom went beyond his “thirdly.” Neither will we; so we will close with the remark once made to Dr. Green by a poor woman of his parish. “Mr. Green,” said she, “what do you think is the great business of the shepherd?” “To feed the flock, madam!” was his reply. “That is my notion, too, sir, and therefore I think he shouldn’t hold the hay up so high that the sheep cannot reach it.”