The Lutheran visitor. (Columbia, S.C.) 1869-1904, January 09, 1902, Image 12
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THE LUTHERAN VISITOR
HINTS OH SERMONIZING.
Written for Young: Preachers.
From Preachers Journal.
‘ ‘At church, with meek and unaffected
grace,
Ilia looks adorn’d the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with
doubt’s to sway.
And fools who came to scoff remained
to pray. ’ *
I.
Necessity of Preparation.
It can hardly be disputed that
many preachers say things in their
sermons every Sunday which if
taken down word for word, and
submitted to them afterwards,
wonld surprise them very much;
and probably each of them would
be inclined to say soinethng like
this: “What! Do yon mean to tell
me I talk such trash as that! Sore
ly I can never have said anything
of the sort. I may not be clever,
bnt I am not fdolish enough to talk
snch nonsense.” Nevertheless, it
wonld be quite true that he had
preached just “such trash as that.”
Why is it, then, that so many
preachers say things in the pnlpit
which, if repeated to them some
time after, they conld scarcely be
lieve they had ever ottered f
Doubtless the chief reason is that
they do not pay sufficient attentidn
to the preparation of their sermons.
This neglect is something against
which the yonng preacher cannot
be too mnch on his guard, for few
things tend more to mar his efforts
at being useful. He should re
member that a sermon worth listen
ing' to does not spring np spontan
eously in the mind without pre
vious study,nor will it naturally fall
from his lips in.well turned peri
ods unless great pains have been
bestowed upon its composition.
The greatest preachers of ancient
or of modern times most, as is
evident from the ; courses, have
spent mnch tim n vished great
care npon the s *eparation;
and this should surely oe a lesson to
the yonng preacher who would not
have his sermons of the most eph
emeral character, always to pre
pare carefully, but particularly at
the beginning of his career. In
deed no matter what a man’s call
ing may be, his snecess depends
greatly on the spirit and the man
ner in which he commences. Care
lessness at the outset is almost
enough to doom him to failure.
This is especially true of the
preacher; and therefore he should
never allow any obstacle, unless it
be insuperable, to interfere with
the preparation of bis sermon for
. Sunday. Something else is almost
certain to demand his attention;
bnt unless, it be of the utmost im-
~ portance, such as visiting the sick
or dying, bis weekly sermon should
have his first attention.
No matter how obscure his field
of labor or how uncultivated bis
congregation, he should never say
to himself that as he is stationed
in some ont-of the-way place, where
the people are neither very clever
nor cultured, he need not be par
ticular about the sermons he gives
them; for, besides the wrong spirit
by which snch a thought is
prompted, the preacher should re
member that in almost every con
gregation there are two or three
who are above the avearage—the
teacher, the doctor, the lawyer and
possibly a few others—and these,
rather than the most uncultivated,
are those whom he should take as
the intellectual standard of the
people to whom he preaches. Not
forcing the higher to come down,
but raising the lower, should be
his object. Moreover, he ought to
have snch a respect for bis work,
—not to mention his love of it—
and such a respect for himself on
account of his office as either to
give up preaching altogether or else
prepare his sermons as well as he
possibily can, no matter who are to
hear them, or even though they
should never be preached at
all. It is said that the very best
of Cicero’s orations against Cata-
line was never delivered ;and many
a sermon, thongh very good when
first prepared and preached, has
been revised and rewritten half a
dozen times until it came up to the
preacher’s conception of what it
ought to be, thongh, for anything
he knew at the lime, it might never
be preached again. A really good
builder, one who takes pride in
bis work, one who knows that he
can do a piece of work as it ought
to be done, will, if called on (o
erect a bouse in the ice-bound re
gions of Labrador, or on the path
less prairies of Minnesota, or
amongst the almost inaccessible
wilds of the Rookies, try to do
as well, will be jnst as particular
about every part of it as if he
were building it in the most
fashionable quarter of such a city
as New York or London. In fact
it is easier for snch a man to do a
good piece of work than a bad
piece of work. So should it be
with the preacher, so indeed it is
with the conscientious and enthusi
astic preacher, no matter how plain
his people may be; and whilst be
is very careful that bis sermons
shall not be much beyond the aver
age ability of his congregation, he
takes as great pains with them as
if they were to be preached to an
audience of the highest culture.
Indeed it is more difficult to pre
pare sermons for the former sort
of congregation than for the latter.
But, above all, no matter where
he is stationed, whether in the city
or in the backwoods, the preacher
should never forget, but always
realize, that he is an ambassador
for the King of kings; and once
throughly imbued with this belief,
he will think, no troubles too great,
no time too precious, to be be
stowed npon the preparation of the
message he has been commissioned
to deliver, so that its meaning can
not be mistaken by those who hear
it, and that it may prodnee the de
sired effect.
Let g preacher, at the outset of
his career, be earless about his ser
mons, and he will soon form a slov
enly habit of thinking, jaet as a
slovenly habit of thinking leads to
a slovenly habit of speaking; the
hypothesis in the one ease be
comes the predicate in the other
as legitimately and as trnly as
in any two converse propositions
in Euclid’s Elements. In this state
of things it cannot be long before
snch a man’s sermons will be but
little better than a jumble of stale
re-bashes of what has been said by
somebody else, or an unconnected
string of inspired platitndes, or a
confused mass of pions twaddle; and
then farewell to success. It is re
lated of the famons Daniel Web
ster that he once refused to speak
in favor of a certain measure be-
cause he had received only a fort
night’s notice; and when the de
putation that had been sent to wait
on him pressed him to accede to
their request, stating that even a
few words from him would, on ac
count of his great reputation, be
almost enongh to seeure the success
of the measure, he replied some
what in this fashion: “Gentlemen,
you are very kind to pay me such
a compliment, for which allow me
to thank you. But from the com
mencement of my public life up to
the present moment I have never
yet spoken npon any subject with-
being thoroughly prepared. Such
has been my invariable rule, and
I have never broken it. In this
way I have built up the reputation
you are kind enough to speak of,
and I am not going to endanger it
January g, 1902
now by pnrsuinga different course.
I am sorry to refuse you, bnt I can
not prepare in a conple of weeks
such a speech as I ongbt to make
on the measure you wisn to have
carried.” If snob a man was so
careful not to speak npon even a
secular subject without due pre
paration, how careful the young
preacher should be before address
ing an audience upon a topic of
mnch greater importance. There
fore, impromptu preaching should
be most religiously eschewed.
After carefully preparing his ser
mons for several years the preacher
may, in an emergency, venture to
preach without special preparation ;
and if he is more than ordinarily
clever, he may, even under such
circumstances, snooeed in preach- <
ing a very good sermon. But the '
habit of preachiog extempore is a
vicious one; and, whatever confid
ence it may show in one’s own fan
cied ability, it certainly shows a
gnat want of respect for one’s
hearers. What right has any
preacher to offer his congregation
a erode and undigested mass of
very inferior thought, devoid of
systematic arrangement and pre
sented in a slovenly manner!
Who is the young preacher, fresh
from the seminary, that he should
attempt to teach people, many of
whom may be old enough to be his
parents, npon subjects of the
highest character and of the great-
importance, without having first
made the best preparation m his
power! His experience and bis un
consciousness of a lamentable lack
of modesty are the only things
which can save him from being
justly charged with colossal im
pudence. If great preachers in
past days, such as Bossnet and
Bourdalone, Taylor and Berkely,
BlairandChalmers, never preached
extempore sermons unless absolute
ly necessary, is there any reason
why young and experienced men
should do so now! It is as trne
of preaching as of some other
things, that “fools rnsh in where
angels fear to tread.” It may jnst
be remarked here that extempore
preaching does not necessarily
mean preaching without a manu
script, but preaching withontprop
er preparation. Many a sermon '
preached without a manuscript is
anything bnt extempore; and in
deed one can easily understand that
many a manuscript sermon may be
virtually an extempore sermon.
A duty is not to be shirked be-
eause it is disagreeable.