Ministerial Reading Course by J. L. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 5, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 6.

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Ministerial Reading Course

By J. L. S.

Reading Schedule for February

THE Reading Course for February includes the following sections in Part I of "Preparing to Preach:"—

VI. The Introduction.

VII. Sermon Body.

VIII. The Conclusion.

IX. Materials.

X. Ministerial Senility.

XI. Originality.

XII. Instruction.

The Value of Prayer

The value of prayer in the preparation of a sermon cannot be overestimated. The minister should be much in secret prayer. It is in communion with God that, as a messenger, he receives the message from God. We are living in an age of great intensity and activity, and one of the chief dangers of the Lord's servant today is the many forms of activity in the church, keeping the worker from the hours of prayer and meditation so necessary to a successful ministry. In "Pastoral and Personal Evangelism," by Dr. Goodell, we read:—

"Before one undertakes actual evangelistic work there must be thorough preparation. The first preparation is that wrought by prayer.

"It is of the utmost importance for Christian people to have clear ideas concerning prayer, that they may neither minimize its power nor charge God foolishly. The most of the men who have moved this world toward God were men of prayer. If we turn to the Word of God, there stands Abraham interceding for the worldly Lot, and Jacob wrestling with the angel till the break of day. There is Moses praying for his people, and Elijah opening and shutting the gates of heaven by the leverage of prayer. The psalms themselves are little more than communion and petition with accompanying ascriptions of praise for answered prayer. Here is the Master himself, the greatest of all examples, spending whole nights in wilderness and mountain, transformed by prayer, that he may be transfigured through faith. As Dr. Watson says, 'One remembers in modern times the multitude of believing men who have wrought marvels by prayer; how the more Martin Luther had to do, the more he prayed; how Cromwell on his deathbed interceded for God's cause and God's people in the finest prayer ever offered by a patriot; how it is written of the "Saints of the Covenant" in Scotland that they lived "praying and preaching" and that they died "praying and fighting." What possessed those men that they undertook no work till they had first met with God, that they turned unto him in every hour of defeat, that they carried to his feet the trophies of their victories?'

Of the purpose of prayer, the same author says:—

"The great purpose in prayer is that we may change eyes with God, that we may lay down our plans at his feet, and receive instead his perfect will. Jesus himself becomes our example in the garden of Gethsemane. Under the spell of prayer the cry, 'Let this cup pass,' changes to, 'Thy will be done.' . . .

"What is the agony of Gethsemane if a man can get out of it a victory like that? Many of us are not insistent in our prayers. We pray and run away. We do not wait to see if God is not handing down some great gift for us. Manton, the old Puritan preacher, quaintly says, 'Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness will not stay till somebody cometh to open to them; but a man that hath business will knock and knock again until his call is answered.' When we use our telephones, we are not content until we hear the voice of the one we seek. There are many who undertake to talk with God, but they hang up the receiver before the answer comes. Wait until there is an answer from the responsive heavens; wait until there is borne in upon your soul the fact of God's abiding love and care for you. Then you can arise from your knees and go forty days, if necessary, in the strength of that revelation of the heart of God.

"The value of prayer in evangelistic work would be hard to overestimate. Nothing is so productive of that indefinable power which is felt better than described, but which gives unspeakable unction to the proclamation of the truth. But we are persuaded that many utterly misapprehend the part which prayer is to play in the prosecution of revival work. They seem to think that one has only to retire to his study and spend his time in supplication before God, and that in answer to that supplication a strange spirit will pervade the community, hardened men will grow tender, and those who have never gone to the house of the Lord will be constrained to turn their faces thither. We would not for a moment deny that miracles of grace are wrought through prayer, but we are persuaded out of our experience that prayer will be unavailing unless we go out ourselves to answer, at least in part, our own petitions."

Sermon Plans

Henry Ward Beecher says of conventional plans in sermon building:—

"Much of the effectiveness of a discourse, as well as the ease and pleasure of delivering it, depends upon the plan. Let me earnestly caution you against the sterile, conventional, regulation plans that are laid down in the books, and are frequently taught in the seminaries. There is no one proper plan. You are not like a bullet mold, made to run bullets of the one unvarying shape. It is quietly assumed by the teachers of formal sermonizing that a sermon is to be unfolded from the interior, or from the nature of the truth with which it deals. That this is one element, and often the chief element, that determines the form of the sermon, is true; but it also is true that the object to be gained by preaching a sermon at all will have as much influence in giving it proper plan as will the nature of the truth handled, perhaps even more. Nay, if but one or the other could be adopted, that habit of working which shapes one's sermons from the necessities of the minds to which it is addressed is the more natural, the safer, and the more effective."

Great Sermons

Among the many helpful suggestions to Yale students, Mr. Beecher gave the following caution on the subject of "great" sermons:—

"The themes you will handle are often of transcendent greatness. There will be times continually recurring in which you will feel earnestly the need of great power; but the ambition of constructing great sermons is guilty and foolish in no ordinary degree. I do not set out to do that thing. Sermons that are truly great come of themselves. They spring from sources deeper than vanity or ambition.

"When the hand of the Lord is laid upon the heart, and its energies are aroused under a divine inspiration, there may then be given forth mighty thoughts in burning words, and from the formative power of this inward truth the outward form may be generated, perfect, as is the language of a poem. Perhaps I should have said show sermons, rather than great sermons,—sermons adapted to create surprise, admiration, and praise, sermons as full of curiosities as a peddler's pack, which the proud owners are accustomed to take in all their exchanges and travelings as their especial delight and reliance. Often they are baptized with fanciful names. There is the 'Dew Upon the Grass' sermon, and the 'Trumpet' sermon, and the sermon of the 'Fleece,' and the 'Dove and Eagle' sermon, and so on. Such discourses are relied upon to give men their reputation. To construct such sermons, men oftentimes labor night and day, and gather into them all the scraps, ingenuities, and glittering illustrations of a lifetime. They are the pride and the joy of the preacher's heart; but they bear the same relation to a truly great sermon as a kaleidoscope, full of glittering bits of glass, bears to a telescope, which unveils the glory of the stellar universe. These

are the Nebuchadnezzar sermons, over which the vain preacher stands, saying, 'Is not this great Babylon, that I have builded for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?' Would to God that these preachers, like Nebuchadnezzar, might go to grass for a time, if, like him, they would return sane and humble!" J. L. S.