BETTER PREACHING
By THE REV. JOHN A. PATTEN If much has always been demanded of the preacher, more is demanded today. It is not sufficiently realised that congregations are now more exacting than they once were, and that for per- fectly understandable reasons. Broadcasting House is partly re- sponsible for this higher demand upon the pulpit. Throwing stones at that redoubtable building is a popular pastime indulged in by professionals and amateurs alike. It is easy to pick holes in pro- grammes that go on from early morning until midnight, but con- sider the general influence of broadcasting—the enlargement of the ordinary man's mental world. News, music, drama, politics, science, philosophy, religion—every department of knowledge, every human interest, is taken account of, and specialists in all these realms come to the microphone to make their contributions to the edifica- tion and amusement of the listener. It is impossible to exaggerate the difference wireless has made in the life of the common man in no more than twenty years, by broadening the range of his interests and developing his critical faculties.
What has this got to do with preaching? Much. If people listen to competent speaking on all kinds of subjects during the week, they will ask for equal competence from the pulpit on Sunday. The public taste, more informed than formerly, is con- sequently more fastidious, and the demand upon the pulpit is to that extent the greater. Preaching must be " stepped up." Prob- ably more people are reading now than in the old days. While many war-workers have such long and strenuous hours that they have little leisure for reading and little energy left for it in such free time as is theirs, the early black-out keeps many people at home in the evenings, and the hours between six and ten or eleven provide an opportunity for getting down to good solid reading. Moreover, the war itself, with its unfoldment of the human tragedy on the widest scale, stirs the mind and causes it to ask questions that go to the root of things. Once this deep-going curiosity is aroused, books come into their own. Men and women want to know what the great thinkers of the past have to say, what the great poets have to reveal, and what the spiritual leaders of other days have to give of guidance and encouragement ; and we may confidently assume not merely that there are now more readers but more readers of the best that literature has to offer.
Here then is an exhilarating challenge to the pulpit. In one way or another people have received such a deepening and such an enrichment of their education that they ask more of their clergy and ministers. What may have done well enough once will do no longer. The neat little essay on some aspect of religious thought has had its day ; the extemporaneous harangue with more heat than light in it is doomed ; the political address meets with no happier fate—our leader-writers do this kind of thing so much better ; even the well-prepared discourse, if lacking in force and vision, evokes but a listless response ; in short, the average sermon is scarcely equal to modern requirements.
To say that political sermons are not wanted is not to rule out sermons that apply the principles of Christianity to present-day problems—witness the immense and uplifting influence exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury through pulpit utterances that stimulate thought even when they do not win full approval. But a word of caution is needed here. Dr. Temple, with his wealth of learning and statesman's grasp of affairs, speaks with an authority denied to the average preacher, and admiration for these bold pronouncements should not necessarily lead to imitation. The politi- cal amateur in the pulpit can be as irritating as a gadfly, and when we go to church it is disconcerting to find that "the debate con- tinues." It may be mentioned incidentally that prophetic preaching on the vast issues of international politics is powerfully reinforced from outside the pulpit. Mr. Churchill, President Roosevelt and General Smuts are preachers on the grand scale, and their sermons, unlike most, are listened to by the whole world.
To come back to the question as it affects the rank and file of the Christian ministry, what is to be done in face of the higher demands upon the pulpit? The history of preaching has many lessons to teach, and the chief is this: the preacher who can make the Bible live will never lack a hearing. The princes of the pulpit wielded the Scriptures with a master's hand, and applied them to life with such cogency that none could ignore their force. The second half of the nineteenth century was an Augustan age for the English pulpit, and who were the preachers who attracted and en- thralled the multitude? Spurgeon, Liddon, Parker, Stanley, Maclaren, Farrar, to mention but half a dozen of the foremost, and all of them were superb expositors of the Bible. With amazing skill they not only expounded its message but related it both to the perennial needs of the souls of mm and the wider problems of the community and the world. For them, the Bible was the spring-board of truth.
It may be objected that not every age produces persona!ities so richly endowed with preaching power, and that in any case they are in a class by themselves. This is true. Exceptional men render exceptional service, but the way they do it offers a clue to their secret. The preacher, to be effective, must be at home in two worlds—the world of spiritual truth and the world of practical affairs—and his task is to show how the former can transform the latter. If God has work to be done He is well able to prepare His workmen to do it, and perhaps is even now calling those who preach to a new awareness of the world in which we live, and a fresh realisation of the spiritual powers at our disposal. When Jeremiah received his call to the prophetic office, he had a twofold vision—a seething cauldron and a rod of an almond tree. That is to say, he was made aware both of the tragic world of strife and war in which his ministry would be exercised, and the spiritual world of truth and love that would subdue it and outlast it.
The preacher of today must be both realist and idealist. The cauldron of war is seething furiously, and he cannot and must not ignore it ; but neither must he lose sight of, or faith in, the almond tree, the harbinger of a better world.
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