Modern Preaching by Wm Penniman

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 17, 1872

Modern Preaching.

By Wm Penniman

We cannot more forcibly illustrate the difference between ancient and modern preaching than by imagining the translation of a preacher of fifty years ago to a modern pulpit. The dry and formal essay, the long homilies, the dogmatism and controversy that then formed the staple of public religious teaching, would be to-day altogether unsatisfactory in the hearing, and unfruitful in the result. Experience has proved that Christians are more rarely made by arguments addressed to the reason than by motives addressed to the heart. The reliable and satisfactory evidences of Christianity are found less in the sacred records than in its transformations of character and its inspirations of life. Though a thousand Strausses and Renans were at work endeavoring to undermine the historical basis of the Christian scheme, their efforts would prove nugatory when met by the practical results of that scheme in reforming character, in substituting benevolence for selfishness as the dominant motive in human commerce, in sustaining the heart in trial, in comforting it in sickness, and supporting it in dissolution. With the results of Christianity before him and in him, the Christian may confidently say to all his enemies: “If a lie can do all this, then a lie is better than all your truth, for your truth does not pretend to do it; and if our lie is better in every possible legitimate result than your truth, then your truth is proved to be a lie and our lie is the truth.” The argument is not only fair, but it is unanswerable, and saves a world of trouble. Of all “short methods” with infidelity, this is the shortest. It is like the argument of design in proving the existence of an intelligent first cause. The man who ignores or denies it, is either incapable of reason or viciously perverse.

So the modern preacher preaches more, and argues less. He declares, promulgates, explains, advises, exhorts, appeals. He does more than this. Instead of regarding Christianity solely as a scheme of belief and faith, and thus becoming the narrow expounder of a creed, he broadens into a critic and cultivator of human motive and character. We do not assert that modern preaching is entirely released from its old narrowness. There are still too many who beat over the old broth, and ladle it out in the same old way which they learned in the seminary. This “preaching of Jesus Christ” is still to multitudes the preaching of a scheme of religion, the explanation of a plan, the promulgation of dogmata. But these men, except in the most ignorant and unprogressive communities, preach to empty walls, or contemptuous audiences. The man who preaches Christ the most effectively and acceptably, in these days, is he who tries all motive and character and life by the divine standard, who applies the divine life to the every-day life of the world, and whose grand endeavor is not so much to save men as to make them worth saving. He denounces wrong in public and private life; he exposes and reproves the sins of society; he applies and urges the motives to purity, sobriety, honesty, charity, and good neighborhood; he shows men to themselves, and then shows them the mode by which they may correct themselves. In all this he meets with wonderful acceptance, and, most frequently, in direct proportion to his faithfulness. This, after all, is the kind of talk men are willing to hear, even if it condemns them. All truth relating to the faults of character and life, if presented in a Christian spirit, by a man who assumes nothing for himself, and who never loses sight of his own weakness and his brotherhood with the erring masses whom he addresses, is received gladly.

The world has come to the comprehension of the fact that, after all that may be said of dogmatic Christianity, character is the final result at which its author aimed. The aim and end of Christianity is to make men better, and in making them better to secure their safety and happiness in this world and the world to come. The Christianity which narrows the sympathies of a man, and binds him to his sect, which makes the Christian name of smaller significance to him than the name of his party, which thinks more of soundness of belief than soundness of character, is the meanest kind of Christianity, and belongs to the old and outgrown time. It savors of schools and books and tradition. The human element in it predominates over the divine. The typical modern preacher mingles with men.

He goes into the world of business—into its cares, its trials, its great temptations, its overreachings, its dangers and disasters—learns the character and needs of the men he meets there. He sits in the humble dwelling of the laborer, and reads the wants of humanity he finds there. In workshops, in social assemblies, in schools, among men, women, and children, wherever they live, or meet for labor or for pleasure, his presence is familiar. Human life is the book he reads preparatory to his pulpit labors, and without the faithful reading of his book he has no fitting preparation for his task. No matter how much a preacher knows of the divine life, if he has not an equal knowledge of the human, his message will be a barren one.

The great mistake of the modern preacher is not keeping up with the secular thought of his time. It is quite as essential to the preacher to know what men are thinking about as what they are doing. Comparatively few preachers are at home in the current progress of science, and too many of them look coldly upon it, as upon something necessarily inimical to the system of religion to which they have committed their lives. They apparently forget that their indifference or opposition wins only contempt for themselves and their scheme. There are few laymen so devoid of common sense as to be unable to see that any scheme which is afraid of scientific truth—nay, any scheme which does not gladly welcome every new realm won to the grand domain of human knowledge—is unworthy of confidence. An unreasoning loyalty to old interpretations of revealed truth is a weakness of the pulpit that becomes practically a reproach to Christianity itself. If the God of nature undeniably disputes the God of revelation, as the preacher interprets him, let him give up his interpretation gladly, and receive the correction as from God himself. It is only in this way that he can maintain his hold upon his age and win honor to the religion he tries to serve. All truth is divine, and the mode of utterance makes it neither more so nor less. A man who denies a truth spoken to him by the God of nature is as truly and culpably an infidel as if he were to deny a plainly spoken truth of the Bible.—J. G. HOLLAND, in Scribner’s for September.

The above requires little or no comment, as it speaks in unmistakable language, and clearly represents the great mass of popular preachers of the present day, as well as the work of the true preacher.

The idea that the grand endeavor of the true preacher should be “not so much to save men as to make them worth saving,” seems to be good. Said one of our preachers to me, speaking of a certain man, “Is he worth saving?” The remark seemed singular, and a little hard, but there is considerable truth, if not poetry, in the thought; for when we look at men who are perfect Gallios, caring for none of these things; and not to be compared to him in point of intellect; whose only argument is, “I don’t let such things trouble my head,” men low in moral sentiment, steeped in tobacco, tea, coffee, condiments, swine’s broth, and whose throats are open sepulchres, mouths the miniature craters of volcanoes, belching forth liquid fire, mingled with the perfumes of tobacco and alcoholic drinks, emitting a stench so horrible as not to be compared to that of the sulphureous lava; we are led to exclaim, Alas! Are such men worth saving? Taking this view of the picture, we can see the idea that the preacher should aim to make men worth saving. Hence all can see the importance of the great work of health reform which is going on among our people. It is a sort of John the Baptist, which makes men worth saving.

In regard to plain preaching, the writer is very forcible when he says, “This, after all, is the kind of talk men are willing to hear, even if it condemns them.” This fact is forcibly illustrated in Bro. Downer’s report, where he says, “We have always had a falling away when we came to the fall of Babylon, pride in churches, testing on the Sabbath, &c., but here the more we preach cutting truth, the closer hungry souls seem to cling.”

Let men only be convinced that the preacher lives out what he preaches, and earnestly seeks their good, and although what he says may cut like a two-edged sword, they will bear it, at least if they are worth saving. Wm Penniman.