14 He Taught Them As One Having Authority and Not As the Scribes
XIV HE TAUGHT THEM AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY AND NOT AS THE SCRIBES
Preaching has fallen low enough in our own church and country sometimes, but it has never sunk to such depths of imbecility as the preaching of the Scribes. Their own books, preserved to this day, prove to us that the New Testament, plain-spoken as it is, has not told us the half of the scandal of the life and the teaching of the Scribes and the Pharisees. You would simply not believe the frivolities, and the superstitions, and the downright immoralities of the teaching and preaching of the Scribes and Pharisees, as all these things stand written in their own records. And it was the grace and the truth, it was the wisdom and the beauty of our Lord’s teaching and preaching, all taken together with the heavenly holiness of His life, that led Matthew to give us such a full report of the Sermon on the Mount, and then to add to it this conclusion that our Lord did not preach as the Scribes. To begin with, we see our Lord always practicing an ancient rule of the Greek and Roman oratory, though He had never learned the rules of any oratorical school. Out of the native wisdom of His mind, and out of the pure love of His heart, our Lord always captivated the ears of His audiences at the very opening of all His discourses. What could be more conciliating, and indeed captivating, than the opening words of His very first sermon? What could take hold of a congregation better than the beautiful beatitudes with which He began His great Sermon on the Mount? And what could more completely quiet and console a company of downcast disciples than the whole of that conversation which commenced with the words, Let not your heart be troubled? Let all His servants imitate their Master even in such elementary things as the openings of their sermons. Let them all study the oratorical and evangelical rule of captivating their congregations by the very way they commence. By the psalms they open with. By the Scriptures they open with. And by the first beginnings both of their prayers and their sermons. "For in giving an exordium at all," says Quintilian, "there is no other object but to prepare the hearer to listen to us the more readily in the subsequent part of our pleading. And this object, as is agreed among most authors, is principally effected by three means: by securing the goodwill of the hearer, by securing his attention, and by securing that he shall be desirous of further information. In those ways the ears of our audience must be propitiated by the exordium of our discourse." Quintilian’s "Education of an Orator" is to my mind about the delightfulest book of all Greek and Latin antiquity, the most modern also, and the most useful to ministers. And it is full of first-class instruction, cultivation, and entertainment for both old and young.
Cato the censor has this saying on this same subject. "A great orator is just a good man skilled in speaking; but especially a good man." And the author of the Institutes of Oratory takes that saying of the great censor for a text and composes one of his most beautiful chapters upon it. A chapter that all intending pulpit orators would do well to have by heart. And the other day, when my mind was occupied with this subject, I came on this kindred saying of Phillips Brooks, himself one of the greatest pulpit orators of our time. "All really great preaching," he says, "must have in it both truth and personality." If that be so, then no wonder that our Lord was such a great preacher. For He was the Very Truth itself. And as for His Personality, you all know what that was. And, then, added to all that, the spotless holiness of His human life as He went out and in among His hearers, completed the authority He had over His hearers. It was not so much His mighty works; it was far more His daily walk and conversation that carried home His preaching with such authority and such winning-nests and such subduing power. How often your ministers undo both their preaching and themselves by their walk and conversation. By their disproportion, as Richard Baxter calls it in his Reformed Pastor. How often their Sabbath day’s work is destroyed by their own hands before they are well out of their pulpits. But our Lord’s hearers who supped with Him on Sabbath night almost forgot His sermon in the never-to-be-for-gotten impression of His presence in private. And you will sometimes even in our own land and day come upon a poor enough preacher as far as mere pulpit eloquence goes, who in spite of that has a large and a happy congregation under him, and has a life-long authority over them. It is his walk and conversation that does it. It is his character, like his Lord’s character, that does it. Every congregation cannot have a brilliant preacher in their pulpit. Brilliant preachers are not born of their mothers in sufficient numbers for that. And brilliant preachers must be born, they cannot be made to order. But on the other hand, the Roman censor’s "good man skilled in speaking" should not be so rarely to be found, surely. And to return to Phillips Brooks, whose two qualifications were truth and personality in a preacher. Well, every New Testament preacher has all the truth that our Lord preached, and more, if he chooses. And as for his personality, that will grow in weight, and in impressiveness, and in authority, just in the measure that he becomes a partaker of His Master’s holiness. Every preacher, in the measure he preaches the truth as it is in Jesus, and puts on the Lord Jesus Christ, will become clothed with more and more of his Master’s authority, and will wield his authority for the same high ends.
But, genially and winningly as our Lord always began His sermons, He had not gone far till He suddenly plunged into the conscience of every hearer. Our Lord being the Lord of the conscience passed in when it pleased Him and took possession of every hearer’s heart and conscience. And that was the reason why our Lord was so pleased with the preaching of John the Baptist. John the Baptist saw little or nothing in his hearers but their sins, and in his preaching he drove at nothing but their guilty consciences. Our great Scottish preachers used to be great at "law-work," as it was called; and they had the example and the precept of their Master in that. John the Baptist first, and then our Lord after him, and then Paul after them both, made the law-work more and more to enter the consciences of their hearers. Paul himself would often be like John Bunyan in this that he often went up to his pulpit laden with the chains of the law. But as he went on and preached Christ, his chains melted till he ended his sermon with another Gospel doxology. And whatever else he may be he is no true preacher who does not seize upon his hearers’ consciences in every sermon of his. He will drive away all those hearers who have no conscience, and who do not wish to have a conscience, and they will find their way to preachers like themselves of whom there are plenty. But then when they are well away, he will only be the better able to feed those who remain on the marrow of lions, with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock. Pericles, Plutarch tells us, always left a sting in the conscience of his hearers. And much more will every true preacher do that, as long as there is any secret and unforsaken sin in his hearer’s heart and conscience. The conscience was the real seat of our Lord’s authority over His hearers, and that preacher’s pulpit is planted on the sand who does not preach home in the same way. To other things, also, in their turn, and in their measure; but always to the conscience. In his delightful lecture on University Preaching, Dr. Newman puts earnestness in the foremost place, even in a University pulpit. Talent, logic, learning, words, manner, voice, action,--all these things, he admits, are required for the perfecting of a preacher. But he holds that there is one thing, very different from all these, but which is absolutely indispensable if the preacher is to have any real influence over his hearers, and is to do his hearers any real good. He must be in earnest. Nor must he aim at earnestness. He may of course work himself up into a pretense, nay into a paroxysm of earnestness. But he who has before his mental eye the Four Last Things will have the true earnestness. His countenance, his manner, his voice, all speak for him, in proportion as his view of the Four Last Things has been vivid and minute. Yea, this man’s brow, like to a title-leaf, Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.
Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thine errand. And the Four Last Things were all so many sources of our Lord’s earnestness and authority in His pulpit. He had the Four Last Things continually before His mental eye. The Four Last Things had brought Him down from heaven to earth. The zeal of the Four Last Things ate Him up. Till they were the four nails that fastened His hands and His feet to the Cross. For the Four Last Things--what could they be but Death, and Judgment, and Heaven, and Hell? With what earnestness, and with what authority, our Lord preached, as often as He took death, or judgment, or heaven, or hell for His text, we all know. Now let every preacher, whatever his talent, whatever his logic, whatever his learning, whatever his manner, whatever his voice, whatever his action; let him, with all these adjuncts or without any one of them, have but his eye sufficiently close upon the Four Last Things, and you will hear of that preacher. Let him stand up in your university pulpit, or at your street corner, and the passer-by will be convinced and judged. The secrets of his heart will be made manifest. And so falling down he will worship God and report that God is in that preacher of a truth. Let the preacher but see in imagination, as his Lord saw, the awful things he preaches about, and that will kindle him into the true earnestness, and the true earnestness will always clothe him with the true authority. But I have been so taken up with our Lord and His preaching that I have forgotten you, and the lessons that this Scripture teaches to you. And till I have only time left for one word to you out of this text. And that one word is this. Go and search up and down the whole city and seek out for yourselves and for your children a preacher of authority over you. A preacher who, whatever his Church, and whatever his creed, preaches home to your conscience. If he awakens your conscience in you the first time you hear him, take sittings for yourself and for your children before you go home. And, at any cost and any inconvenience, hold you by his ministry as long as he lays hold and keeps hold of your conscience, and lays bare to you the thoughts and the intents of your heart. That is the true preacher for you; and if I were you, I would go a long Sabbath day’s journey to sit under his preaching. And if, in addition, he is made the means of enlightening your mind and the minds of your children in the knowledge of Christ, and of sanctifying and comforting your heart, then the lines have fallen unto you in pleasant places; yea, you have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel, you will in these ways learn to say like the Psalmist himself.