John Robert Paterson Sclater (1876-1949) served pastorates in Derby, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Toronto, Canada. Ralph G. Turnbull says of Sclater: “He was grounded in theology and church history, and had a special feeling for the conduct of public worship with reverence and devotion. Standing in the holy place he preached in the grand tradition of his generation.” Reprinted here, with permission of Baker Book House, are excerpts from one of the Sclater’s Lyman Beecher lectures published in THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF GOD, Baker Book House; Grand Rapids, Michigan; 199 pages; $2.95.
First of all, I want to ask a plain question, to which I should like (but shall not get) a plain answer. Do you, in your heart of hearts, believe in preaching? There is a vast deal of it done every week, and nothing particular seems to happen to the world as a result. It is not in the least unreasonable to enquire, if, consequently, you really think that there is very much in it; or whether you do not believe that the honest men, who toil in its preparation and perspire in its delivery, would not be more fruitfully occupied in some other way.
Quite a lot of people, nowadays, would unite in disparagement. “Is he a good preacher?” a Scottish professor was asked. “Admirable,” was the reply: “he does remarkably little harm.” “Am I a D.D.?” indignantly queried an American scholar. “No, sir: I am not. Why, they give the wretched degree for preaching.” High Churchmen are often frankly scornful: though not quite as scornful as certain highbrow students of my acquaintance in the old days, who regarded a popular preacher as almost certainly a charlatan. If preaching was to be permitted, their ideal setting for it was a dirty church in a back street, where a long-haired scholar discoursed on the Hexateuch to the intellectually elect. So, I quite seriously want to know—do you young ministers or students, who may read this, believe in the importance and the power of the spoken word? For my own part, I do so believe: and for the belief I see reasons and reasons.
a) In the first place, it was the chief task of om Lord. 1t was His own way of advancing the kingdom. “He departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities,” we read. And what was good enough for Him is surely good enough for us.
(b) Further, great periods in the history of the Church have been marked by great preaching. After Christianity had laid hold on the Empire under Constantine, and the Church began to spread widely, both East and West flung up men whose names as preachers stand high in the roll of fame; for, in the East, Chrysostom appeared and, in the West, Augustine. So much, indeed, was preaching an agency for the spread of Christianity, that Julian the Apostate (when, after Constantine, he attempted to restore the pagan culture) organized preachers to commend the old faith. An imitation of that kind is not only the sincerest form of flattery, but a proof of the power of the method imitated.
In the thirteenth century, after an arid period in the Church’s life, when Christian Europe felt the sudden shock of the mighty personalities of St. Dominic and St. Francis, and when learning reawakened and, afar off, there might be heard the beginning of the stirring notes of the Reformation, it was by preaching that the Dominicans and the Franciscans—but particularly the former—carried their new energy amongst the people. So great was the reputation of the Dominican as a preacher, that it persists to this day. I have seen an Italian village church, amongst the hills, crammed to the doors on a lovely spring afternoon to hear a Dominican friar.
And when the Reformation burst, in all its storm and majesty, upon Europe, once more preaching came into its own. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox these, indeed, were names to conjure with in pulpits, as in the council-rooms of kings.
In England, when the commonwealth was divided by convictions, partly religions and partly political, so real that men were prepared to die for them, both the Cavaliers and the Puritans produced a race of preachers stronger, some would say, than any who have succeeded them. On the one hand, Hooker, Donne, Thomas Fuller and Jeremy Taylor: on the other, Cartwright, Richard Baxter, John Owen, John Bunyan, Thomas Goodwin—these formed a galaxy of power that is still our pride.
Even a civilization such as that of Louis XIV, because it was a great civilization tinctured with Christianity, produced pulpit artists. Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon and Fenelon attested at least the culture of that notable time.
And, nearer our own day, when the mind of Scotland was Hung into a ferment by the controversy that issued in the Disruption, and the Church was a living thing in men’s thoughts, the leaders were preachers also. Chalmers and Candlish themselves would have said that the pulpit, rather than the Assembly platform, was their throne. When, in the brilliant, dead eighteenth century, the flame of religion in England was kept alive by Methodism, it was as a preacher that John Wesley went forth; and when, in the nineteenth century, there arose in the Church of England the movement toward Catholic practice which breeds such fruits today, it was the compelling voice of Newman in St. Mary’s, Oxford, that gave it its impetus and direction. And who has ever heard of a revival that had no preaching-man in its centre? Your revival assumes your Moody.
But we need not go so far afield for our evidence. The ordinary well-filled church in Britain, or Canada, or the States, has a man in its pulpit, who can preach decently. “A house-going ministry makes a churchgoing people,” is one of those statements which have the colour of truth without the reality of it. If it means that you must know your people and preach to them, well and good. But if it means that you can chatter inanities from the pulpit, and still have your church full, provided you have knocked at a sufficient number of doors during the week, it is plain nonsense. Your people prefer to have your best out of your head rather than out of your heels. On the whole, we may agree that history and present experience alike are against the superior modern who sneers at the spoken word.
But I do not suppose that it is necessary to labour this point to the majority of those who may read this. We are already convinced, by that potent argument, personal experience. We know for ourselves the effect of “truth strained through a human personality;” as a sermon may well be defined.
For myself; I have been at great festivals of the Church, in some of the stateliest fanes of Christendom—and they remain vague, if noble, memories. But, sharp and clear-cut in the storehouse of the mind, stand one or two occasions, when men, who for themselves had tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is, spoke of the love that had set them free. No one, who can remember any such occasion, can doubt the possibilities of the preacher. Wherefore, let all ministers of our branches of the Church, hold to the old view, that this is their main job. To it they must give their steady application, refusing to be drawn aside by the multifarious, busy-idle distractions of this fussy age.
A writer in an English paper, not long ago, wrote this comment on a promising divine: “Mr. ______ is still well on the sunny side of forty, and if he resists the temptation to let himself be melted down for the tallow trade, in a day of movements and causes, he will make a distinctive contribution to the religious life of his generation.” An admirable hint, this, for the young.
Conference-itis is a devastating fever. It melts down for the tallow trade those that should be letting their light shine in that little corner, which is their own pulpit. The weekly instruction, as good as we can make it, is the proud tradition and contribution of our Church. Let us see to it that we give the best we have.
The fact remains that the condition of sustained. effective preaching is wide knowledge and good, hard thinking: and that young ministers must scorn the sophistry that tells them that their congregations will not listen to theological sermons. The truth is the exact opposite—they will not listen long to anything else.
Of course, the language must not be the technical language of the classroom of a by-gone age: but theology expressed in comprehensible speech is essential. After all, what is theology but considered common sense applied to the meaning of life and the relations of God and man? Let us pay our congregations the very slight compliment of believing them to be rational beings who want to know, and who hold that “thought is the citadel.” Unless we stiffen our preaching, and replace the iron of argument in it, the Reformed Church will die of pernicious anaemia.
Moreover, we shall do well to keep in mind the old, old wisdom that the changed society will come through changed men and women. The declaration of social righteousness is undoubtedly a duty of the Christian pulpit, but it is neither the whole, nor the chief, duty. In any case, we have all to be as sure as we can that the social schemes we propound are both righteous and reasonable.
Before we talk too largely and emphatically about social reconstruction, it is not unseemly to have a knowledge of economics—a singularly recondite and difficult subject. Inasmuch as hardly any of us possess the requisite knowledge, it behooves us to speak with due modesty and restraint.
Meantime, we have the fundamental religious principles of the Bible to declare; we have Christ Himself to proclaim; and we need not have any fear that men who take discipleship to Him seriously will rest content with a system which inflicts unnecessary injury or injustice on the least of these His brethren.
And, if ever we feel that we are beating the air, and that all our toil is futile, let us call to mind that, in all this business we are “labourers together with God.” It is rather wonderful work about which a thing like that can be said.
First of all, I want to ask a plain question, to which I should like (but shall not get) a plain answer. Do you, in your heart of hearts, believe in preaching? There is a vast deal of it done every week, and nothing particular seems to happen to the world as a result. It is not in the least unreasonable to enquire, if, consequently, you really think that there is very much in it; or whether you do not believe that the honest men, who toil in its preparation and perspire in its delivery, would not be more fruitfully occupied in some other way.
Quite a lot of people, nowadays, would unite in disparagement. “Is he a good preacher?” a Scottish professor was asked. “Admirable,” was the reply: “he does remarkably little harm.” “Am I a D.D.?” indignantly queried an American scholar. “No, sir: I am not. Why, they give the wretched degree for preaching.” High Churchmen are often frankly scornful: though not quite as scornful as certain highbrow students of my acquaintance in the old days, who regarded a popular preacher as almost certainly a charlatan. If preaching was to be permitted, their ideal setting for it was a dirty church in a back street, where a long-haired scholar discoursed on the Hexateuch to the intellectually elect. So, I quite seriously want to know—do you young ministers or students, who may read this, believe in the importance and the power of the spoken word? For my own part, I do so believe: and for the belief I see reasons and reasons.
a) In the first place, it was the chief task of om Lord. 1t was His own way of advancing the kingdom. “He departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities,” we read. And what was good enough for Him is surely good enough for us.
(b) Further, great periods in the history of the Church have been marked by great preaching. After Christianity had laid hold on the Empire under Constantine, and the Church began to spread widely, both East and West flung up men whose names as preachers stand high in the roll of fame; for, in the East, Chrysostom appeared and, in the West, Augustine. So much, indeed, was preaching an agency for the spread of Christianity, that Julian the Apostate (when, after Constantine, he attempted to restore the pagan culture) organized preachers to commend the old faith. An imitation of that kind is not only the sincerest form of flattery, but a proof of the power of the method imitated.
In the thirteenth century, after an arid period in the Church’s life, when Christian Europe felt the sudden shock of the mighty personalities of St. Dominic and St. Francis, and when learning reawakened and, afar off, there might be heard the beginning of the stirring notes of the Reformation, it was by preaching that the Dominicans and the Franciscans—but particularly the former—carried their new energy amongst the people. So great was the reputation of the Dominican as a preacher, that it persists to this day. I have seen an Italian village church, amongst the hills, crammed to the doors on a lovely spring afternoon to hear a Dominican friar.
And when the Reformation burst, in all its storm and majesty, upon Europe, once more preaching came into its own. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox these, indeed, were names to conjure with in pulpits, as in the council-rooms of kings.
In England, when the commonwealth was divided by convictions, partly religions and partly political, so real that men were prepared to die for them, both the Cavaliers and the Puritans produced a race of preachers stronger, some would say, than any who have succeeded them. On the one hand, Hooker, Donne, Thomas Fuller and Jeremy Taylor: on the other, Cartwright, Richard Baxter, John Owen, John Bunyan, Thomas Goodwin—these formed a galaxy of power that is still our pride.
Even a civilization such as that of Louis XIV, because it was a great civilization tinctured with Christianity, produced pulpit artists. Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon and Fenelon attested at least the culture of that notable time.
And, nearer our own day, when the mind of Scotland was Hung into a ferment by the controversy that issued in the Disruption, and the Church was a living thing in men’s thoughts, the leaders were preachers also. Chalmers and Candlish themselves would have said that the pulpit, rather than the Assembly platform, was their throne. When, in the brilliant, dead eighteenth century, the flame of religion in England was kept alive by Methodism, it was as a preacher that John Wesley went forth; and when, in the nineteenth century, there arose in the Church of England the movement toward Catholic practice which breeds such fruits today, it was the compelling voice of Newman in St. Mary’s, Oxford, that gave it its impetus and direction. And who has ever heard of a revival that had no preaching-man in its centre? Your revival assumes your Moody.
But we need not go so far afield for our evidence. The ordinary well-filled church in Britain, or Canada, or the States, has a man in its pulpit, who can preach decently. “A house-going ministry makes a churchgoing people,” is one of those statements which have the colour of truth without the reality of it. If it means that you must know your people and preach to them, well and good. But if it means that you can chatter inanities from the pulpit, and still have your church full, provided you have knocked at a sufficient number of doors during the week, it is plain nonsense. Your people prefer to have your best out of your head rather than out of your heels. On the whole, we may agree that history and present experience alike are against the superior modern who sneers at the spoken word.
But I do not suppose that it is necessary to labour this point to the majority of those who may read this. We are already convinced, by that potent argument, personal experience. We know for ourselves the effect of “truth strained through a human personality;” as a sermon may well be defined.
For myself; I have been at great festivals of the Church, in some of the stateliest fanes of Christendom—and they remain vague, if noble, memories. But, sharp and clear-cut in the storehouse of the mind, stand one or two occasions, when men, who for themselves had tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is, spoke of the love that had set them free. No one, who can remember any such occasion, can doubt the possibilities of the preacher. Wherefore, let all ministers of our branches of the Church, hold to the old view, that this is their main job. To it they must give their steady application, refusing to be drawn aside by the multifarious, busy-idle distractions of this fussy age.
A writer in an English paper, not long ago, wrote this comment on a promising divine: “Mr. ______ is still well on the sunny side of forty, and if he resists the temptation to let himself be melted down for the tallow trade, in a day of movements and causes, he will make a distinctive contribution to the religious life of his generation.” An admirable hint, this, for the young.
Conference-itis is a devastating fever. It melts down for the tallow trade those that should be letting their light shine in that little corner, which is their own pulpit. The weekly instruction, as good as we can make it, is the proud tradition and contribution of our Church. Let us see to it that we give the best we have.
The fact remains that the condition of sustained. effective preaching is wide knowledge and good, hard thinking: and that young ministers must scorn the sophistry that tells them that their congregations will not listen to theological sermons. The truth is the exact opposite—they will not listen long to anything else.
Of course, the language must not be the technical language of the classroom of a by-gone age: but theology expressed in comprehensible speech is essential. After all, what is theology but considered common sense applied to the meaning of life and the relations of God and man? Let us pay our congregations the very slight compliment of believing them to be rational beings who want to know, and who hold that “thought is the citadel.” Unless we stiffen our preaching, and replace the iron of argument in it, the Reformed Church will die of pernicious anaemia.
Moreover, we shall do well to keep in mind the old, old wisdom that the changed society will come through changed men and women. The declaration of social righteousness is undoubtedly a duty of the Christian pulpit, but it is neither the whole, nor the chief, duty. In any case, we have all to be as sure as we can that the social schemes we propound are both righteous and reasonable.
Before we talk too largely and emphatically about social reconstruction, it is not unseemly to have a knowledge of economics—a singularly recondite and difficult subject. Inasmuch as hardly any of us possess the requisite knowledge, it behooves us to speak with due modesty and restraint.
Meantime, we have the fundamental religious principles of the Bible to declare; we have Christ Himself to proclaim; and we need not have any fear that men who take discipleship to Him seriously will rest content with a system which inflicts unnecessary injury or injustice on the least of these His brethren.
And, if ever we feel that we are beating the air, and that all our toil is futile, let us call to mind that, in all this business we are “labourers together with God.” It is rather wonderful work about which a thing like that can be said.