For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart
or pierces the conscience but what comes from a living conscience.
-- William Penn In the morning was more engaged in preparing the head
than the heart. This has been frequently my error, and I have always felt
the evil of it especially in prayer. Reform it then, O Lord! Enlarge my
heart and I shall preach. -- Robert Murray McCheyne
A sermon that has more head infused into it than heart will not borne
home with efficacy to the hearers. -- Richard Cecil
PRAYER, with its manifold and many-sided forces, helps the mouth to utter
the truth in its fullness and freedom. The preacher is to be prayed for,
the preacher is made by prayer. The preacher's mouth is to be prayed for;
his mouth is to be opened and filled by prayer. A holy mouth is made by
praying, by much praying; a brave mouth is made by praying, by much praying.
The Church and the world, God and heaven, owe much to Paul's mouth; Paul's
mouth owed its power to prayer.
How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the preacher
in so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great value is, it
helps his heart.
Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the preacher's
heart into the preacher's sermon; prayer puts the preacher's sermon into
the preacher's heart.
The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers. Men
of bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The hireling and
the stranger may help the sheep at some points, but it is the good shepherd
with the good shepherd's heart who will bless the sheep and answer the full
measure of the shepherd's place.
We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the important
thing to be prepared -- the heart. A prepared heart is much better than
a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.
Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of sermon-making,
until we have become possessed with the idea that this scaffolding is the
building. The young preacher has been taught to lay out all his strength
on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a mechanical and intellectual
product. We have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the people and
raised the clamor for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of piety,
rhetoric instead of revelation, reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness.
By it we have lost the true idea of preaching, lost preaching power, lost
pungent conviction for sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian
character, lost the authority over consciences and lives which always results
from genuine preaching.
It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do not
study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the right
way to show themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack is not
in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but lack of
holiness is our sad and telling defect -- not that we know too much, but
that we do not meditate on God and his word and watch and fast and pray
enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching. Words pregnant
with divine truth find in our hearts nonconductors; arrested, they fall
shorn and powerless.
Can ambition, that lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of Him
who made himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant?
Can the proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of him who was
meek and lowly? Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish, hard, worldly
man preach the system which teems with long-suffering, self-denial, tenderness,
which imperatively demands separation from enmity and crucifixion to the
world? Can the hireling official, heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel
which demands the shepherd to give his life for the sheep? Can the covetous
man, who counts salary and money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned
his heart and can say in the spirit of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley:
"I count it dung and dross; I trample it under my feet; I (yet not
I, but the grace of God in me) esteem it just as the mire of the streets,
I desire it not, I seek it not?" God's revelation does not need the
light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy
of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but
it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child's
heart.
It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the divine
and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the apostles. It was
this which gave Wesley his power and radicated his labors in the history
of humanity. This gave to Loyola the strength to arrest the retreating forces
of Catholicism.
Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: "He
who has prayed well has studied well." We do not say that men are not
to think and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who
cultivates his heart most. We do not say that preachers should not be students;
but we do say that their great study should be the Bible, and he studies
the Bible best who has kept his heart with diligence. We do not say that
the preacher should not know men, but he will be the greater adept in human
nature who has fathomed the depths and intricacies of his own heart. We
do say that while the channel of preaching is the mind, its fountain is
the heart; you may broaden and deepen the channel, but if you do not look
well to the purity and depth of the fountain, you will have a dry or polluted
channel. We do say that almost any man of common intelligence has sense
enough to preach the gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so. We
do say that he who has struggled with his own heart and conquered it; who
has taught it humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy, courage; who
can pour the rich treasures of the heart thus trained, through a manly intellect,
all surcharged with the power of the gospel on the consciences of his hearers
-- such a one will be the truest, most successful preacher in the esteem
of his Lord. |