MODERN CLAIMS UPON THE PULPIT.

IT has become a fashion of society to speak of the weariness and emptiness of preaching. To listen to a sermon is jestingly recommended as the surest soporific. Sermons are declared to be a great trial to intellectual laymen. We hear men of the world say to each other, "I do not object to going to the church service once on a Sunday, but I cannot stand the sermons"; and sermons-their asserted dullness and foolishness—are often made the excuse for not going to church at all.

age.

Now it is idle to deny that many sermons are empty and commonplace; that they are below the mark and behind the They have cost the writers no thought. They are jejune in style and devoid of matter. Not only are they entirely destitute of originality-which of course must be the case when we bear in mind how many millions of sermons are being constantly preached but they are often taken, boldly and bodily, from skeleton outlines, heavy "practical" practical" commentaries, and (as Milton says) "such loitering gear," with little or no effort to assimilate or even thoroughly to understand the borrowed material. But let it not be supposed that in saying this I am passing a sweeping condemnation on the ordinance of preaching. Multitudes of the clergy suffer from overpressure; too much is expected of them; a great part of the work which ought not to be regarded as distinctively theirs, but which belongs to the common duty of all Christians, is devolved upon them. Little time is left them for the labors of thought or of composition. The minister who might be listened to with pleasure and high advantage if, like the great French orators of the Conférences, he had only a dozen sermons to preach at Lent or Advent, is placed at an immense disadvantage when, in the midst of other occupations necessary to his calling, he has to produce more than one hundred discourses every year. Laymen, when they treat sermons and preachers disdainfully, show a want of reasonable

tolerance, and act after the manner of reviewers who assume cheap airs of superiority by the easy trick of finding fault. The ordinary clergyman and the ordinary layman stand on the same footing. Let them change places and the results would be exactly the same. The average oratory of the senate, the bar, or the public meeting is no whit better than the average oratory of the pulpit. Neither the clergy nor the laity have any monopoly of the art of sinking; and it is the common doom of all but the very few to spend life in efforts which, in comparison with those of the great and gifted, cannot but seem poor and ineffective. But in admitting this, I add a testimony which I believe to be quite impartial when I say, that I am much more surprised at the average goodness of sermons than at their average futility. Not one sermon in ten thousand pretends to aim at eloquence or profundity; it is not needful or possible that it should do so, since not to one man in ten thousand is it given to be an orator or a deep thinker. But the sermons are exceptional from which some modicum of profit or instruction may not be deduced by any one who listens with that "meek heart and due reverence" which are natural in a scene of worship, and which ought to be accorded, if not to the preacher's office, yet at least to the subject with which he deals. Laymen will have much less reason to find fault with sermons if they will meet the preacher half-way. Is the failure of the sermon always the fault solely of Paul who preaches? Must not the blame at least be shared by Eutychus who sleeps?

Let it be remembered that preaching is an ordinance, and almost a distinctive ordinance, of Christianity. The temples of Paganism were almost exclusively houses of sacrifice, not houses of exhortation or of prayer. Although addresses which partially resembled our "charity sermons were not unknown in the later days of the Roman Empire, yet direct religious and practical exhortations scarcely entered into the common life of the Greek and the Roman world. In Judaism there were prophets who were commissioned at rare intervals to deliver to the multitude their impassioned harangues; but to preach was no part of the function of the priests and levites, and the sermon proper hardly began to exist before the days of Ezra and of the synagogues. But Christianity has relied from the first on the living voice of

her apostles and pastors. The questions asked in the dawn of the gospel were: "How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach except they be sent ?" To preaching, therefore, was due the conversion of the world; and to preaching also have been due the maintenance of the faith and the purification of national and individual aims. What would have become of the treasure of regenerating doctrine without such work as was done by Origen at Alexandria and Cæsarea, by St. Ambrose at Milan, by St. Chrysostom at Antioch and Constantinople, by St. Basil in his wide diocese, by St. Gregory among the peasants of Nyssa, by St. Augustine among the fishermen of Hippo; and not only by these mighty orators, but no less by multitudes of the faithful who were not famous, and "whose work was precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious though they fall on the desert or the sea"? And has there been any age since theirs in which preaching has not been the most powerful agent in converting the ignorant or winning back the faithless? Can we estimate how different the course of the world's history might have been-how dead might have been the truths of Christianity, how impoverished the aspirations of christendom-if souls had never thrilled to the lofty utterances of St. Leo and St. Gregory the Great; if Florence had never been awakened by the thunderings and lightnings of Savonarola; if the voice of St. Bernard had never been reverberated through the world from the humble chapel of Citeaux; if St. Francis, and St. Dominic, and St. Thomas of Aquino had never preached in the cities of Italy and France; if Europe had not been shaken by the lion roar of Luther; if the seventeenth century had not heard the oratory of Fénelon and Bossuet; if Wesley and Whitefield had never risen "to wake a greedy age to nobler deeds," and to show that there was still a hunger for the bread of life among the sheep who looked up and were not fed? Yet it is not too much to say that an aggregate effect immeasurably greater has been produced by myriads of discourses, spoken in humble gatherings by men who perhaps were never heard of half a mile from home." The "proud and haughty scorners" who "deal in

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proud wrath" against sermons, are doubtless little aware that the agency which they treat with so much contempt possesses a value simply inestimable for countless multitudes of simple and faithful souls. But times change, and institutions should change with reference to the needs of those for whom they exist. The pulpit, vast as is the power which it has exercised, is doomed to inanition, if not to gradual extinction, unless it is careful to take note of the changing conditions of the age in which it works. I will point out some of the circumstances of which the modern preacher must take account.

It is true that the laws of morality are eternal; that the great essential, fundamental truths of the gospel are unalterable. To deal adequately with these topics demands little more than the fervor of sincerity, and the emphasis given to them by convictions which have borne the test of experience. There will always be room for sermons which have no pretense to learning or novelty, which are plain and even homely, and which yet may warm the heart and elevate the spiritual condition of their hearers because there rings through them that accent of genuineness which will be powerful to the end of time. But it is not given even to the best of men to preach such sermons continually. In sermons, as in all other addresses, there must be variety of topic, freshness of illustration, novelty of enforcement. The preacher must therefore bear in mind that in these days he must be something more than a teacher of the ignorant or a feeder of babes. The days have long since come when many run to and fro, and knowledge has been increased. We live in times when nearly all know how to read, and when excellent books are within the easy reach even of the poorest. Nothing is more fatal to the pulpit than that in the very subjects with which it deals, it should be surpassed in knowledge by the pew. The printing-press must inevitably be a formidable antagonist to the autocratic dogmatism of the sermon. In days when a preacher might fairly be convinced that his training placed him immensely above the standpoint of his hearers, and that in learning and knowledge he was necessarily a Triton among minnows, he might be excused for adopting a somewhat dictatorial tone, and for assuming that his ipse dixit was sufficient to dominate over the opinions of his auditors. But

when a preacher chooses to adopt such a style in these days a few are sure to be found, even in village congregations, who have a right to say to him, “Oui, autrefois; mais nous avons changé tout celà." Nothing is more offensive in the modern preacher, especially when he is young and raw and ignorant, than the assumption of any right to lay down the law on disputed topics. He should rather endeavor to convince, and to illustrate, and to persuade, and to win. The pulpit is no longer a coward's castle. The preacher can be answered, if any one thinks him of sufficient importance to make it worth while to do so. His most self-important assertions will be taken only for what they are worth. Exposure will sooner or later await his incompetence. His most aggressively ignorant dogmatism will be listened to with a smile, and will be taken as a measure, not of his authority, but of his conceit. Nothing will tell more powerfully and more deservedly against the modern preacher than for him to give himself the airs of the medieval inquisitor or the domineering priest.

Against greed and oppression, against falsehood and uncleanness, against robbery and wrong the humblest preacher may set his face as a flint. If he be faithful even in this region of his teaching, he may find an unlimited sphere of usefulness and abundant opportunities for martyrdom. And when he is maintaining with modest conviction the central truths of the christian faith, enshrined in the Nicene and Apostolic creeds as the primitive heritage of Christianity, he may lean his feebleness upon the vast authority of the universal church. But when he leaves these solid bases for the quagmires of questions respecting which all Christians may lawfully differ, and when he mistakes the consent of popular ignorance or the current of fashionable opinion for truths which he may try to enforce by the vulgar methods of ecclesiastical controversy, he renders himself ridiculous and base. He may easily succumb to the temptation of degrading a sacred ordinance into a coarse engine for personal aggrandizement and party intrigue. Let us look back through the ages, and observe for our warning how enormous is the aggregate of sermon instruction which has been devoted to the service of exploded errors, blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits. So