A “Magnificent Preacher.”
By Editor
The North-Western Christian Advocate thus discourses about popular pastors. All can discover the point in this, and all must acknowledge that it is apt and correct. But it is unfortunate that nine-tenths of those who will read this and appear to appreciate its force, would dismiss a good, faithful, pious, but not brilliant, pastor, and “call” such an one as is here described. The current is in the direction of oratorical, frothy preaching, and few have strength of principle to make any effort to turn it into a better channel. “A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means [take into their hands]; and my people love to have it so.” Jer. 5 : 30. 31. But here is the discourse:— “Like his prototype of old, Apollos is ‘an eloquent man.’ He was born so. When he was a small boy he used to astonish his fond parents and teachers by his wonderful eloquence in spouting Rienzi’s address and the celebrated philippic of Patrick Henry. Apollos conceived the idea of preaching as the vocation in which he might excel all competitors. His parents were surprised by the announcement of his intention, for, though he had been a member of the church from infancy, and had some inclination to piety, he was not aggressively religious. But the assurance of his college professor of moral philosophy that he had a remarkable genius for moral ideas and that he would be sure to take the highest rank as a pulpit orator, decided the question; and so, after passing through the theological school, Apollos entered the ministry. There is a peculiar flavor in the preaching of Apollos. He has wonderful personal magnetism. Indeed, the personnel of the man, his fine figure, striking attitudes and gestures, are so forcibly ‘posited in your consciousness’ that you cannot forget them. The subject matter of his preaching is not specially solid or scriptural, though he never fails to take a text from the Bible, and that is a mark of his good sense, worthy of note in these days of progress. But he has such a brilliant imagination and such fertility of invention that you feel it unreasonable to require him to stick to his text. And there is such a glamor of beauty and poetic halo in his thoughts and manners, and such rhetorical finish in his language, that you go away filled with enthusiasm—for the man. When you come to try to recall what he said, in order to sift it and get the residuum of truth in it, you are at a loss, and feel persuaded that there is something so ethereal about Apollos as to elude the grasp of ordinary mortals. You cannot exactly identify that ethereal something with the Holy Ghost; nor do you feel specially fortified and strengthened in your religious life; but of this you are certain: That Apollos is a great man; that he is emphatically what the daily papers in this city call him—‘a magnificent preacher.’”