Itinerant preacher

“ Perhaps I can not better exhibit this subject in the little space allowed me than in noticing some of the traits which should characterize the missionary preacher, and while the truth is general and applicable to all parties, I trust that we may be under the direction of the Spirit and take to heart these great traits we shall be looking for in the preacher of the future in the South.
The missionary preacher is a man who, to be effective, should be a man of spiritual morality, a man of irreproachable character. ”

“ We might say with almost equal truth, "Like people, like preacher." Are there no signs of such a belittling of preaching in our congregations as may have the effect of lowering the preacher's ideals of his labours, or, at least, of damping his enthusiasm and spoiling the joy with which his heart should always run over? Do we never hear it said that "it does not so much matter in our circuit whether we have a preacher or not"? Have we never been told that really the man most needed is "a visitor," or "an organiser," or "someone who can raise the wind"? ”

“ The second essential in the missionary preacher, if he is to be successful, is a mind which is spiritually illuminated, a man who is intelligent in the truth. I presume the great characteristic of the old-time preacher in the South is his ignorance, and if we should select one point at which a change needs to take place, it is at this point of instruction. He needs to be intelligent. ”

“ It ensures against sameness. Instead of growing stale, the preacher becomes more rich and varied in his range of thought and illustration with every added year. It gives, moreover, familiarity with the forms of Scripture thought and expression, and thus adds simplicity and force in addressing the Christian heart. Above all, it brings the preacher’s soul into constant, living communion with the spirit of the Bible, and the study becomes in this way a fountain of religious life ever flowing into his heart, and out of it into the hearts of the people. ”

“ Phillips Brooks was as great in pastoral work as in preaching. He said in his "Lectures on Preaching," delivered at the Yale Divinity School, in January and February, 1877, "The preacher needs to be pastor, that he may preach to real men. ”

“ And this passion for preaching will be a passion for preaching for its own sake. To the true preacher preaching, and everything connected with preaching, will be things in which his soul delights. He will glory in sermon making and sermon preaching more than in any of his life's other activities. It is not implied that he will always approach his task without fear, or even without shrinking, or, at times, a passing desire to shun the duty devolving upon him. ”

“ My neighbours offered their assistance. But no, said I; God has given me enough to do his work, without your aid, and, as he has put it into my heart to do, so I will do. And who, it was asked, will be your preacher? I answered, God will send me a preacher, and of a very different stamp from those, who have heretofore preached in my house. The preachers, we have heard, are perpetually contradicting themselves; but that God, who has put it into my heart to build this house, will send one, who shall deliver unto me his own truth; who shall speak of Jesus Christ, and his salvation. ”

“ The preacher may perform his oratorical [Pg 14] ministry through knowledge of populations long since dead and by description of foreign and alien countries. It is possible to preach acceptably about kingdoms that have not yet existed. But the work of a pastor is the development of ideals out of situations. It is his business to inspire the daily life of his people with high idealism and to construct those aspirations and imaginations out of the daily work of mankind, which are proper to that work and essential to that people. ”

“ To his evangelicalism and popularity as a preacher is attributed the fact that comparatively few among his parishioners left the established church at the disruption. Earnest and affectionate in his manner he was not only admired as a preacher, but he also commanded in a high degree the attention of his pupils in his academical lessons. ”

“ What I have heard often said is this, "Nothing easier than to preach!" "Ah! they are always preaching at us, it is a pity that they do not preach to themselves." "Ah! if they would only practice what they preach, we would listen more readily."
SUBJECT.—To-day I am going to preach to the preacher, to myself, at least in the first part of my sermon, and you may sit and listen. After that, I will have a word with you. ”

“ A Methodist pastor is a solecism; Methodism is a moving evangelism. When it settles down for a life pastorate it will need a new name.”
“However, Mr. North, it seems to me, that a preacher should bring every possible adjunct to aid him. The advantages of a reputation for piety, wisdom, and social sympathy are quite denied to a man who is only a preacher.” ”

“ The preacher's relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his ministry. These must be clear, conclusive, unmistakable. No common, surface type of piety must be his. If he does not excel in grace, he does not excel at all. If he does not preach by life, character, conduct, he does not preach at all. If his piety be light, his preaching may be as soft and as sweet as music, as gifted as Apollo, yet its weight will be a feather's weight, visionary, fleeting as the morning cloud or the early dew. Devotion to God—there is no substitute for this in the preacher's character and conduct. ”

“ A young pastoral preacher was once, in my hearing, warmly and lovingly thanked for his pulpit-work, on the eve of his quitting his Curacy; and the point on which his humble friends dwelt was that he had always preached Christ, and always showed them how to make use of His presence and power in the actual circumstances of their lives. Eloquent words, aye and true words, spoken in vacuo, will be dull to most hearers; eternal truths laid alongside the weekday work and temptation will always be interesting. ”

“ This is always most noble when the mind of a preacher rises to the highest truths in the Christian scheme. A great deal of our preaching, in the present day, well deserves the name of pretty: how many men, whose volumes of sermons are upon our shelves, both in England, and America, seem as if their preachers had been students in the natural history of religion, gathering shells, pretty rose-tinted shells, or leaves, and insects for a theological museum! ”

“ The pulpit is very weak today in this respect, and hence the pew is weak. We have a weak religion, and unless we return to God’s way, it will grow weaker still. This requires a thorough Bible training on the part of the preacher. The minister should know his Bible, and then he should preach it. It demands great faith in the Word of God, and great courage to proclaim its saving truth. A preacher is sent out into the world to tell it of sin, Satan, self and hell. He is commissioned to proclaim salvation from these things, and to set before the people an upright, godly life. ”

“ The sermon, if it is to be what it should be, should be affected at every point by the facts of the preacher's own inner life, and by those of his intercourse with his people. Those facts must, of course, be thoughtfully weighed and handled. The tact which is so important in a Pastor, and which is best learned and developed in the school of Christ's love, will see instinctively how to apply in preaching the experience gained in prayer, in conversation, in every branch of ministering life. ”

“ There are many thousands of people who rarely, if ever, hear a sermon [Pg 251] from an educated minister. These people have strong and well-defined notions as to the kind of preaching that suits them. If the preacher ranges extensively over the Bible, and quotes a great deal of Scripture without any regard to its appropriateness or connection with the text, they say of him approvingly: "He's a Scripter preacher. He's not a larnt man, but he's a real Scripter preacher." ”

“ Such evangelical Confession and Absolution establishes and maintains the true relation that should exist between an evangelical pastor and the members of his flock. Instead of a mere preacher, a platform orator, he becomes a true spiritual guide, a curate for the cure of souls. ”

“ The preacher who has never learned in the School of Christ the high and divine art of intercession for his people will never learn the art of preaching, though homiletics be poured into him by the ton, and though he be the most gifted genius in sermon-making and sermon-delivery. ”

“ And when the Church has had that possession of the Spirit, has it not been especially her inspiration to cry out with the Gospel message? The great figure in this Association work in the past has been the teacher. We have had a gifted line of men and women in this work, and to them all honor be given. It would be impossible for us to give them the honor which is their due; but in the future the great figure is to be the missionary preacher, the man who can reach masses of men with the Gospel message. We are lifting this race, and what has been true in the past will be true in the future. ”

“ So long as imagination creates a god to rule the destinies of men; so long as ignorance can be made to believe that the preacher or priest is in some way a go-between, or agent, between men and the powers in the clouds—that he is a “sky-pilot,” directly commissioned by deity to attend to God’s affairs on earth, and that the priest’s person and office are sacred—just so long will there be possible such a profession as that of the modern priesthood. ”

“ When the preacher sinks down into a condition so abject as this, he has lost sight of the true meaning of the Gospel, he becomes the most pitiable object under the sun, and is exposed to the scathing vengeance of heaven. To preach the Gospel with clearness, with intrepidity, and with irresistible persuasiveness, that he “may make it manifest, as he ought to speak,” demands the best energies of the soul, and, above all, the special endowments of the Holy Ghost. A minister is mightily aided in preaching by the wrestling intercessions of a holy and sympathetic people. ”

“ There, men and women have walked a lifetime in the fields, they have seen the sun rise and set, the stars shine, the rain fall, the corn grow—all by the will of God. And at the very last they are crowded by their great thoughts of Him, excited by the encroaching fact of His tremendous nearness. They need a priest, some one who has been "ordained" to lead them into the Presence. They have a sense of their ruggedness, their unkempt earthiness and their general unfitness for the great ceremony. The preacher must hold their hands until they cross the doorsill of the Audience Chamber. ”

“ For the effective delivery and application of his message, then, we insist that the preacher needs to be in touch with every aspect of the lives of those who come beneath the influence of his preaching. He must know them; the conditions under which they live; the thoughts upon which they feed from day to day. Oh, if only we knew more about the people, how much more could we help and bless them! ”

“ His sermons were always prepared with the greatest care, and, except on rare occasions, were delivered without a note and with wonderful beauty of diction and irresistible logic to the audiences of two thousand cultured people who hung on his words every Sabbath and who regarded him, not without good reason, "the greatest preacher in America." ”

“ You must use prayer to fetch strength out of Christ, like the homer to carry home the manna in, or the water-pot of the woman of Samaria. Without the prayer of faith, the preacher will have ‘nothing to draw with,’ from the well that is deep,—even the deep things of God. Temptation is requisite, to prove the nature of the metal of the preacher’s character, and doctrine,—‘approved of God.’ The piece of gold, in every true minister’s ministry, must be tried in some furnace, prepared by Divine Providence. ”

“ For neither eloquence nor depth of thought make the truly great preacher, but such a life of prayer and meditation and spirituality, as may render him a vessel meet for the Master's use, and fit to be employed both in the conversion of sinners and in the edification of the saints. ”

“ If the preacher is a man of enterprise, he can have an engagement for a sermon, a lecture, a meeting for prayer, or something of the kind almost every night, either in the church, or some place in a short distance in the community, where he may be waking up some interest among the people. ”

“ The preacher must get out and about. A recluse he cannot afford to be. Pale-faced piety cultivated in the cloister may be admirably adapted for Sunday exhibition, but is apt to prove rather ineffective when brought into active service in week-day tasks. Wisdom waits to be gathered in every place where men do congregate. Earnestly must the preacher listen in those moments—and they come to all true teachers of the things of life—when some fellow-mortal, compelled by very need, opens to him the secret chambers of his soul. Great, also, is the knowledge the preacher may win from self-dissection. ”

“ No, said I, as I firmly believe, that all mankind are equally dear to Almighty God, they shall all be equally welcome to preach in this house, which I have built. My neighbours assured me, I never should see a preacher, whose sentiments corresponded with my own; but my uniform reply was, that I assuredly should. I engaged, the first year, with a man, whom I greatly disliked; we parted, and, for some years, we have had no stated minister. My friends often ask me, "Where is the preacher, of whom you spake?" And my constant reply has been, He will by and by make his appearance. ”