05. THE MAN IN THE PULPIT

THE MAN IN THE PULPIT

IT is proposed to devote this chapter to a considera­tion, not only of the message F. B. Meyer delivered, but to the manner of its presentation and delivery. The opportunities given me for formulating the estimates which follow were many, and cover a span of years, the length of which renders me far from comfortable, when I hold them in contemplation. It is sufficient to say, however, that one end of that span rests in the far-off nineties, the other in some recent memories of two years ago.

I once knew an old Lancashire shoemaker, incor­rigibly given to what is known as religious gipsying. Whenever a preacher of reputation came to his town (which was pretty frequent), the old man was always on hand to hear him. As a matter of course, this habit took him away from his own church services quite a good deal, and one day his minister took him to task.

"John," he said, "nobody admires your many excel­lent qualities more heartily than I. But this habit of wandering around the churches---a form of spiritual dissipation, by the way---both concerns and irritates me. Why do you practice it?"

"Well, sir," replied the old man, "I’m only an ould shoe-cobbler, an’ I havna much book-larnin’. But I’m th’ same about preachin’ as I am about eatin’. I like things nicely served!"

"Nicely served!" How instinctively these two words suggest F. B. Meyer! No preacher in Protestant Christendom excelled him in the art of presenting finished material. Nothing crude, broken, ill-considered, half-digested, or amateurish found place in his pulpit efforts. There were no hammer-marks. And the cumu­lative effect was to deservedly earn for F. B. Meyer the enviable reputation of being, for many years, one of the most popular preachers in the English-speaking world.

Writing, some fifteen years ago, of Meyer’s pulpit style, Hugh Sinclair said: His preaching is expressive of his personality, suggesting spiritual fastidiousness, and a sweet, sun-washed serenity of soul. So simple and intimate is his utterance that many hearers will scarcely divine the art that conceals art, but the practiced will soon realize with what consummate ease and subtle mastery of effect he handles speech and thought, and how enchantingly he plays upon an instrument whose limitations are known and accepted by him.

Quite often on a Sunday evening, in the years when this century was at its dawn, I made a long trip, right across London, to Christ Church to hear Dr. Meyer, and never once regretted the journey. I would go, intending to make copious notes of his sermon, for journalistic purposes. Yet I never took them. Once the spell of this splendid Christian’s pervasive person­ality was laid upon me, pencil and notebook were alike forgotten. No other man I ever listened to was so completely able to hold my unflagging attention as was F. B. Meyer. I always found him able to bid me draw near and look---often, reluctant and dismayed---into the bare truth of things. Under his preaching I saw my poor pretences tossed aside, the embroidered robe in which I had striven to drape my leanness torn from me; yet always with the prayer that the vision be not withdrawn, until some perfecting work should be wrought within me. Then, with energies renewed, I have set out again, headed toward the other side of London and a new stretch of spiritual pilgrimage, happy in this at least, that I no longer mistook the arbor of refreshment for the goal, nor the quiet hour of welcome that received me in the hour of weariness for the heavenly city, with its bright mansions and radiant palaces. And yet another thing he was always able to do for me---something best expressed, perhaps, in a brief phrase which, in later days, came to have a tremendous significance unattached to it before the World War. He always gave me a fervent heartfelt desire to "Carry on!" Of course there were, during the progress of his long and wonderful ministry, certain changes in the outlook and tone of the messages he delivered. Something of the sort was inevitable, unless the man desired to remain hopelessly static and stationary amid a moving world. But from first to last---this much can be con­fidently asserted---F. B. Meyer was, and remained, an incorruptible Evangelical. By an Evangelical, I mean, premeditatedly and definitely, one who faithfully fol­lows the teaching of the gospel of salvation and makes living union with a living Christ the core of Christ­ianity, and maintains that this can only be attained by personal repentance and personal faith. The emphasis in his teaching is placed on, and in, the Cross---the death of Christ. He may find place, in the foreground of his message, for the postulate that God is a Spirit, and that true worship and authentic service, to be acceptable to Him, must be in spirit and in truth. Nevertheless, the message, itself, is centered in the Cross, leads up to the Cross, and has the Cross for its para­mount theme. And such, for sixty long and strenuous years, was F. B. Meyer. In the commonly accepted sense of the term, F. B. Meyer was not a pulpit orator. Nor was he a scholar as that word is generally used. But he was a scholar in the sense that he read the great books of the language and knew much of the best that had been thought by the thinkers and said by the poets and prophets. And he had outstanding qualities that offset academic lack. He was a saintly, mystical, lovable man. His heart was big enough to feel for all the sufferings and failings of humanity, and he had keen insight into the processes of the human soul. He knew the consolations of religion, and he knew, also, the inspirations of its life. He knew, too, the struggles of the aspiring heart and, vicariously at least, the adversities of life. Conse­quently there was a note of tenderness in his voice that was like the caress of a mother for her child. His sermons healed the wounds of the heart. There was in his utterances an all-inclusive sympathy that brought all sorts and conditions of men to hear him. His preaching was near, intimate, and personal, and made religion a very real and personal thing. He shed the light of the eternal on the common ways of life, and made the infinite Father accessible to men on the street, in the home, the counting-house, the fac­tory, the store. He made God as real to people as he---winsome, wholesome, hearty---was himself, when he took one’s hand in his own warm grasp.

Reference has been made to the influence which Charles Birrell exercised over Meyer, and to his freeing himself therefrom. But this related only to methods of preparation and delivery. The fact is, that Birrell led him to become what, as a preacher, he always remained---an expositor of Holy Scripture. His own account of the matter is as follows:

Mr. Birrell and I were walking home one Sunday evening, after I had preached. "That was quite a good sermon you gave this evening," he said, "but it was a topical sermon, and if you are going to make topical sermons your model, you will presently come to the end of your topics, and where will you be then? I advise you to do as I have done for the last thirty years---become an expositor of Scripture. You will always retain your freshness, and will build up a strong and healthy church." That sentence---I remember the spot where I heard it---distinctly changed my outlook and habit, and, by God’s blessing, its effect has molded my pulpit and literary work, and has enabled me to sustain my pastorates with perpetual zest and freshness all my days.

There is great need, these days, for such preaching as that which F. B. Meyer gave to his hearers the world over. To a very large extent, expository preach­ing has been permitted to go out of fashion, and the result is a general impoverishment of the pulpit ministry. If preachers would the more generally follow F. B. Meyer’s example, it would be to the profit of their own souls and to the spiritual enrichment of their hearers. The method he followed was to take a Book of the Bible and closely study it for two or three month---reading it again and again until its central lesson---as, under God, he conceived it---became clear. The next step was to plan out the line of treatment, dividing the book into sections and sub-sections, taking care that each sub-section, whether chapter or paragraph, contained a full-orbed thought. When the whole was surveyed, and divided into its component parts, he sought for what he called the pivot text in each part. This, he held, should be terse and crisp, bright and short, easily remembered and quotable. When the pivot text was chosen, he wove into the fabric of his sermon all the main elements of the related context.

Just as all the objects in the field of vision focus in the lens of the eye [he writes], and, finally, in the minute filament of the optic nerve, so the thoughts, images, and suggestions of the context should pass through the chosen text to the heart of those who gathered to hear.

Among other reasons, F. B. Meyer believed in expository preaching because it saved the preacher from getting into ruts, from the danger of dwelling on one’s favorite topics to the exclusion of others equally important. The expositor handles big themes, not mere snippets of truth. Preaching of the expository order ranges over great tracts of truth, through wide areas of life and thought, scaling the lofty heights of the mighty texts of the Word. "In the course of my ministry", Meyer says, "I have found that the old Hebrew prophets would say for me all that I wanted to say on social economics." This statement carries the more weight when it is recalled that, although F. B. Meyer chose to be an expository preacher, there was not a man in the whole of London better equipped for preaching "popular" sermons---sermons calculated to attract curious crowds---had he elected to do so. With the possible exception of Silvester Horne---on second thought, not even ex­cepting him---no Free Church minister in the British capital knew so much concerning the throbbing heart­break, gigantic evils, and appalling tragedies of the giant city, as F. B. Meyer. What spectacular subjects could he not have chosen! What sensational sermons might he not have preached! And with what flaming posters announcing them could he not have plastered the hoardings! What he did, however, was something very different. He broke unto the people---wistfully, pleadingly, illuminatingly, savingly---the Bread of Life, and they are, and were, abundantly satisfied. And yet his sermons had in them those qualities that make sermons great. After their own fashion, they were big spiritually, dealing in a masterly way with great themes, while at the same time they were in­tensely practical, touching life at every point, and illumining the commonest duties with heavenly light. They were also couched in beautiful language---the tongue of fields and forests, brooks and seas. There was a poet in his soul, and his sermons had the glamour of the poet on them, and a fine imagination infused them with a lambent glow. He was a mystic, knowing God, not by hearsay, but face to face; yet he made Christ the great eIder Brother who walked the streets and sat at tables and broke bread with the sons of men. Furthermore, he was good to look upon. To see him in the pulpit was an aid to health and helpfulness.

Writing in the Western Daily Mail, Principal Thomas Phillips, of the Baptist College, says: "I have heard him preach many times. Sometimes his stuff was great, but, whether great or ordinary, he always ’got it across’. He wove a spell over his audience. I do not think he ever declined an opportunity of service. Not so learned as Dr. Clifford, not so human as Mark Guy Pearse, not so concentrated as Hugh Price Hughes---he was undoubtedly one of the great preachers of the generation."

Richard Brinsley Sheridan once remarked: "I often go to hear Rowland Hill, because his ideas come red­hot from the heart." This word of the famous Irish­man expresses precisely one of the most important characteristics of good preaching. It expresses, more­over, something that was eminently true of F. B. Meyer. Despite his tranquil method of delivery, no one could listen to him without being made aware of his possession of what somebody once declared to be the secret of Chalmers’s power---blood-earnestness. Meyer felt the truths he uttered; they warmed his own blood and heart; and they warmed those of his hearers. As soon as Meyer began to preach, he discovered to a listener what it was that ailed much of the preaching of his time, and ours---lack of fervor. One recalled---that is, I did---men whose sermons, although almost faultlessly prepared, lost more than half their power by reason of the listless, deliberate method employed in their delivery. Cold sermons, like cold meals, may be carefully, even skillfully, prepared, but they lack the relish of the warm "spread", and invite criticism such as that passed on a famous, yet icily academic divine, of whose preaching it was once remarked, that "he gave one a passable meal, as good as he could expect to get---prepared cold". But this could never truthfully be said of Dr. Meyer. Men and women, as they gave themselves over to the keen, spiritual exercise of the hallowed hour, came to realize that it was no commonplace business which engaged their attention, but one far from the world of mundane things in which they perforce had to live, and move, and have their being. To be sure, this exaltation of spirit could have been---probably was---induced in some measure by the eminently befitting surroundings---the superlatively reverent environment---yet it was not intrinsically of them. It was an immortal theme that occupied them; they were being initiated into the mysteries of high heaven. The keynote of the expe­rience of every genuine worshipper at a service con­ducted by this man of God was a "soul-sense", a realization of the infinite significance of things which brought into active prominence the hidden self, which enveloped the outer man, as it were, in a garment of sweet and solemn worship. Everything-preacher, message, environment, one’s own poignant sense of association and connection with things eternal---was in fine accord. The atmosphere grew soft and aromatic, as it were, with spiritual odors; one waited for---­almost expected to hear---the breathing of lute and viol. The sanctuary became, in very truth, as the secret place of the Most High, shadowed and benisoned by the presence of the Almighty---as none other than the house of God, as the gate of heaven to waiting souls.

I have said that a poet dwelt in F. B. Meyer’s soul. It could not have been otherwise. A man that has no poetry has no idealism. The prophet must not only see the naked fact; he must have the visionary power. In some of his moods Meyer was all poetry. Some­times he bade his hearers listen as to a wind on a heath sometimes as to a simple lyric told in cool and cloistral calm. His was a nature whose roots were kept watered, whose branches kept green. And this best of all: Dr. Meyer lived in the high altitudes of his spoken words, and that man is never wrong whose life is in the light. And this eminent master of pulpit effectiveness was, always, a great spiritual teacher and guide. Analysis, exegesis, comment, were aimed at assisting men and women to the grasp and assimilation of a Truth that could make them free. This great spiritual impetus, this warmth of sentiment, is precisely what is lacking from the work of the representatives of other schools of Biblical criticism. These as a rule speak of piety, rather than possess unction. Even although we have no specific right to expect it in them, we are kept con­tinually conscious of a lack of spiritual sentiment, and are kept always reminded that the relations of man to God, and vice versa, have been with them a matter of study, but not of personal experience. All this was from Meyer as the poles asunder. Always he conveyed the impression that the truths he taught were the out­come of an experience of the power of God in his own life---an experience which enabled him to say, without hesitation: "This one thing I know." The intensity which unified his powers and marked his preaching was created by experience. And so there was never any note of peradventure in his message. In the sum, it amounted to this: "We have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken." Charles H. Spurgeon, who held him in high regard, once remarked: "Meyer preaches as a man who has seen God face to face."

Moreover, he brought the experience of high spirit­ual attitudes down to the levels of common day. He was not a seer, merely offering purer and keener lights in return for an ever more arduous effort and sacri­fice, but a man who believed that life may be turned to immeasurable beauty by every hand that works and every heart that feels. His achievement was art; and his art, as one explores and strives to analyze it, is always rewarding us with fresh aspects of its charm. Under its stimulus, a soul holding itself ready to hear the call of the Highest learned to perceive much that was hidden from the less expectant. There came to a man an accentuated realization of the Eternal in every­thing-in himself, in his temporal surroundings, in his fellows. He found himself a partaker of those pure, spiritual delights which attest progress towards all that is nobler and holier; he found himself having access to a means of grace whereby he could obtain such a quickening of spiritual vision, that twinkling points of heavenly light, hitherto but dimly perceived, reddened into the luster of perfect day. A word must be found for the quite exceptional faculty Meyer had when aiming to make it easier going for the faithful, yet troubled heart. In this regard he moved in the freest, clearest atmosphere of any preacher of his time. He stood, as it were, under the arch of a great sky, and beckoned to those of his hearers who stood in shadowed places where tones were grey or spiritual facts obscure, to stand by his side. And he did it all so deftly, so brightly, as to constantly remind one of that sentence of Swift’s, which Matthew Arnold made famous- "sweetness and light". I recall the following example: Speaking one evening of the way in which spiritual reality can certify its own pres­ence to the soul, even while many questions regarding it are unanswered by the intellect, he told the following delightful little story of Thomas E. Brown, who wrote A Garden is a living thing.

Brown, in one of his little poems, tells us that one bright spring day he was in a pleasant valley in Derbyshire. There he met a little lad and, pointing in its direction, asked the name of a certain hill. Very promptly the lad replied, "Top o’ th’ hill." "But," said Brown, "hasn’t it some other name, such as Kin­derscout or Fairbrook Naze?" The boy shook his head. "Top o’ th’ hill it gets with us," he said simply. "Yes, yes," insisted the poet. "But hasn’t it some other name as well; what did your father call it?" But he could get nothing else out of the child; he saw it was not use trying, and then said to himself that, after all, the lad had a wholesome doctrine. And 0, the weary knowledge!
And 0, the hearts that fill!
And 0, the blessed limit-
Top 0’ th’ hill! Top 0’ th’ hill!

There were many things about that hill the boy did not know; but he knew one thing, and nothing could move him from that knowledge. That was his blessed limit. It reminded one of the story of the man born blind, to whom Jesus gave sight. The Pharisees might argue whether Jesus was a sinner or not; they might have this theory, or that; the man who had received his sight had no theory at all. But one thing he knew: that whereas he was blind, now he saw. That was his blessed limit. If one has a blessed limit corresponding to that, in his life, he has strong and assuring ground, no matter what he may happen not to know.

I have said that Meyer preached Christ crucified. He did; but he also preached a risen and glorified Lord. Into the presentation of no theme did he put more heart than into that of an ever-present, all­-sufficient Savior. The same Jesus who suffered in man’s behalf, Meyer declared, had carried with Him to the skies a heart that could be touched with a feel­ing of man’s infirmities. By personal experience, He knew what it was to fail, in the world’s estimation; to miss the applause of the multitude; to be hungry, homeless, forlorn, and desolate; to be counted by the mass of men a fanatic and a fool. And out of this knowledge He could enter most intimately and sym­pathetically into the troubled experiences of all who suffered for the cause of truth, or perhaps---less nobly -because of their own lack of moral initiative, power of will, or spiritual constancy. The failures which men felt most keenly were, after all, those which lay in themselves, and for even these Christ had a word of comfort and of cheer. Had a man in some crisis proved a coward? Jesus Christ held out the assurance that he could again hold up his head in honor. Had another blundered in a way cruelly to mortify his own self-respect? The Master could give him wisdom for the coming days. Had another man lost a prize which seemed almost in his hand, by some strange aberration of moral sense, or some base betrayal or shameful denial? Christ could take firm hold of such an one, true him up, adjust him to his environ­ment, and help him to be His own disciple again. And what of those whose day was over, who were crippled, and could never again leap like the hart upon the mountains of Bether; who were sick; who knew that, for them, health must be but a memory, who had no more strength for life’s combats or place in its pro­cession? For all such there was the Master’s sweet and blessed invitation, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!" Such was Christ’s triumphant, living power, out of which He could vouchsafe strength to all who, having fallen by the way, and lying crippled on the edge of things, could but faintly cheer, as the multitude swept by. And, when they came to the dark, swiftly moving river, which ran across the end of the way, there they would find the Lord of life and death, by whose power they would be enabled to pass over dry-shod into that sweet and blessed Country, whose shores in sunlight stretch away.

There was one quite significant feature of Dr. Meyer’s pulpit ministry which, one supposes, every­body who "sat under him" must have remarked---the brevity of his public prayers. They were always ex­quisite deliverances, ranging, as it seemed to me, the whole gamut of human need; but they were never long. The following beautiful example is a prayer uttered by Dr. Meyer, one Christmas Sunday, during war-time. It has lain among my press clippings for more than twelve years; but it is still fragrant, redolent of the spirit of a sweet and gentle saint of God:

We pray this morning, Oh Lord [it runs], for a very definite sense of Thine hallowed Presence. When Thou art with us, our midnight turns to dawn, our dawn to noonday. No road is too long, or heavy, or weary, if Thou art by our side. We come to Thee at this joyous season, but amid our song of rejoicing, there is the wail of a deep complaint. Yet we dare to bring to Thee the world’s need and the world’s sin, believing that both may be carried into the bosom of the Father---that infinite love can find for us a way out of our entanglements and our sin. May the soldier on the field, the sailor on the deep, the statesman in his council-chamber, and the editor in his office be charged with the true spirit of Christmas, so that it may yet be possible to speak, this Yuletide, with definite and proper meaning, of God’s sweet peace on earth, and good-will to men.---Amen. For many years F. B. Meyer was specially associ­ated with Keswick, the world-famous institution in the Cumberland hills, where ministers and laymen gather for consecration and deepening of spiritual life. In this relation, he proved himself to be of the greatest value to the British Free Churches. He brought to them, in his preaching, some fresh winds of the Spirit, which was as life-giving as the breezes from the lakes and mountains of Keswick itself. He taught and brought men to realize that what they needed more than anything else was, that Christ should be made to them a living Person, a present Power, and that the old words should be the vehicle of His grace. He declared that spiritual life did not really begin until it passed beyond a business transaction, and had a mystical element. Meyer caused hundreds of people to feel this, and whereas they thought that they were increased in goods and had need of nothing, he imparted to them a longing, a yearning, a holy dissatisfaction, and they listened to him with dimmed eyes and a sob in the heart.

Then came a certain revision, or modification, of his attitude and outlook. The first announcement of it was in 1902, at Edinburgh, when he definitely adopted the role of the Christian social reformer. Some of his Keswick friends, who regarded the polling booth with aversion, became alarmed and even grieved. But there was no need; Meyer believed in Keswick as much as ever he did, and continued so to do, until the end. As time went on, he came to hold with the belief that the world was growing worse and that the day was becoming darker. He thought that shortly Christ would come to crown the Church with triumph. Under the pressure of this idea, Meyer gave himself year after year to rescue work at the prison gates, and to plead­ing with the people in the open air or from the platform and pulpit; while to the Church his message was that of Keswick, full consecration and surrender to Christ.

It is certain that the passing years brought no departure from these convictions and beliefs. Indeed, it was his fidelity to them which was the mainstay of his advancement from ministry to ministry, from one usefulness to another. In witness of this, it can be recalled that, in recent years, he was the President and Chairman of the Advent Testimony and Preparation Movement of Great Britain, and, in November 1917, together with a number of other prominent preachers, issued a remarkable manifesto, declaring that the signs of the times pointed towards the close of "the times of the Gentiles". He took a leading part, moreover, in the great gatherings which used to assemble in the Queen’s Hall during the closing month of that event­ful year. In attempting this very inadequate review of the factors which made Meyer so effective and popular a preacher of the Gospel, I have not forgotten the great part played by his reality and sincerity. He was what he professed to be. The story is well known of the man who followed Meyer about [says Dr. Shakespeare] and put his life beneath an almost microscopical examination, but was unable to detect a flaw. I sympathize with that man. I felt that no one could always be so good, so sweet, and so full of the milk of human kindness. But after continuous intercourse with him since he became our President [of the English Baptist Union] I attest that he is more and better than even he appears to be. He is a citizen of heaven, and his heaven is here and now, in the constant presence of Christ. A preacher who is really to move the people to whom he is called to minister---move them, as Meyer did, to high impulse, broad charity, a deep spiritual experience-must himself be one of them, in the fullest sense the term implies. His flock must be for him one flock, undivided by any discriminating distinctions, consequent on straitened means or affluent circum­stances. He must be the careful, loving shepherd. And those who really knew, assured me, years ago, that such relations existed in the happiest sort of fashion in all the churches to which Meyer ministered. No carping critic, without outraging the last tenet of common justice, could deny his splendid pulpit and platform equipment---voice, manner, power of clear thinking, choice phrasing, real eloquence, and the rest. But behind all this, and (in a sense) counting for even more than all this, when it came to an appraisement of his ministry, was his possession of something not quite so general among ministers of the Gospel as is commonly supposed. And this "something" was an impeccable, adamantine adherence to the principle of absolute equality in church life and organization. Dr. Meyer made no favorites, and brooked none. All members looked alike to him. Yet this unvarying attitude towards each and all was not merely civility, or sterling good temper, or diplomatic courtesy, but the sheer spirit of brotherliness and Christly good will. At bottom, and at all times, Meyer was a man of the people, of all the people, holding to the Jeffersonian dictum that men are born equal, or, at any rate, are born men; and as a follower of his Lord, to Paul’s sweeping inclusion, that all were one in Christ Jesus. And so this great veteran of the Cross, this devoted minister of Jesus Christ, continued year after year advancing in influence and spiritual strength, strong in faith, clear in vision, heroic in venture, achieving results of immeasurable value and breadth of range, winning men for the kingdom, strengthening and enheartening believers, bringing forth fruit in his old age, standing firmly in his lot at the end of his days, and passing, at length, from mortal vision, giving as he went, rich and glorious promise of still further growth and usefulness in the ever-expanding joy of his Lord.