1.I 14. Great Sermons

Great Sermons.

There is one temptation of which I have spoken to you before; but I must be allowed to give you a special and earnest 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 believe that any man ever made a great sermon who 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 travellings 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 labour 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 the 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 honour 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! A sermon is a weapon of war. Not the tracery enamelled upon its blade, not the jewellery that is set within its hilt, not the name that is stamped upon it, Lut its power in the day of battle, must be the test of its merits. No matter how unbalanced, how irregular and rude, that is a great sermon which has power to do great things with the hearts of men. No matter how methodical, philosophic, exquisite in illustration, or faultless in style, that is a poor and weak sermon that has no power to deliver men from evil and to exalt them in goodness.