The Eloquent Preacher by Charles Lee

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1873

The Eloquent Preacher.

By Charles Lee

As fashion, the great idol of millions, is worshiped in all kinds of ways and by all classes of people, it has not failed to affect the hearts and minds of mankind to desire and call for fashionable individuals to present to them the holy word of God in a fashionable way. This is carried out under the name of “eloquence.” How often do we hear from the lips of even such as profess to be the children of the Most High God: “Is he a man of great eloquence?” “He was a splendid orator!” etc. It seems to be the prevailing spirit of the present time, so even the honest and upright before God have to guard against its influence, especially the young preachers. I will relate an instance how I was once deceived by that delusion of Satan, and how it affected me, and the cause of God, that other young preachers in our ranks may beware of the deception.

Somewhere about a year ago, as I stopped in a city over one Sunday, I went to a Methodist meeting to hear a “smart” and “eloquent” speaker. A great crowd of fashionable people was present, and the speaker did all in his power to call the hearers’ attention and to suit their tastes. As I was listening to the “well-sounding phrases” and looking at the “pretty ways” in which his body was turned at every emphatic word in a sentence, I began to make up my mind that I was no preacher at all, and I had now either to quit preaching entirely, or to become as eloquent as the speaker before me. I resolved within myself to choose the last. As I came back to my Advent friends, among whom I had formerly labored, I proceeded in carrying out, as nearly as I could, the eloquence that I so highly admired in the speaker, and his pretty manners. My friends looked at me kind of strangely, but no one said anything to me. I thought within myself that I, from time to time, gained more “eloquence,” and began to wonder why my friends did not say anything to me in regard to it. There was a true-hearted old lady who always used to come to me after the meetings were closed and shake my hand, and thank me for the good meeting we had had. She did not now act at all as she did before, and that rather awakened me on the subject. I began to realize that there was something wrong; and, as I read in the book of God about Jesus, the great heavenly preacher, how his sermons were based upon the simple way of nature, and that his greatest aim was to make God, his Father, known unto his hearers, I could plainly see that instead of presenting the God of the Bible to my hearers, I had tried all I could to present myself, and as a consequence turned the preaching of the truth of God into mere farce. May God forgive me my sin.

CHARLES LEE.