1.C 01. Different Classes of Hearers

Different Classes of Hearers. The hard reasoner says, “ No tears for me; don’t colour your preaching; I want it pure as the beams of light, and as transparent; and the calmer and more inexorably logical its propositions, and the more mathematical its proof, the better I like it.” But there are in any community probably six to one who will watch for the emotional and impassioned part of the sermon, saying, “ That is the preaching I want; I can understand what I feel.”

They are fed by their hearts. They have as much light to 1)0 led by their hearts as the others have to be fed by their reason.

You should strive, in setting the table in your church, wherever you may be, to do as the hotel proprietor does. He never says to himself, “ What dish do I like best -. that will I put on the table; “ or, “ What dishes do Lawyer A. and Physician B. like best?” He spreads his tables for the benefit of the community at large--- something for everybody; and he docs wisely. The man who means to catch men, and to catch all of them, must prepare bait for those that bite purely by the understanding,_and just as much bait for those that bite largely by their emotions. Ill it there is another class. I recollect my dear old father talking about persons that worshipped God in clouds, and saw the hand of God in beauty.

He would say, “ It is all moonshine, my son, with no doctrine nor edification nor sanctity in it at all, and I despise it.” I never knew my father to look at a landscape in his life, unless he saw pigeons or squirrels in it. I have seen him watch the stream, but it was invariably to know if there were pickerel or trout in it. He was a hunter, every inch; but I never could discern that he had an aesthetic element in him, so far as relates to pure beauty.

Sublimity he felt. Whatever was grand he appreciated very keenly. I do not think that he ever looked at one building in his life except the Girard College. When he came suddenly upon that, and it opened up to him, he looked up and admired it; and I always marvelled at that, as a little instance of grace in him. That is laughable to you, I have no doubt; and since these addresses are the most familiar of “all talks, I will give you a little more of my amusing experience with him at home. When he became an old man, he” lived six months in my family, and became during that time much interested in the pictures hanging on the walls of the house. One which particularly attracted his attention, and with which he was greatly pleased, represented a beautiful lake, with hunters ensconced behind trees, shooting at ducks on the lake. He would look at that picture every day; and I, not thinking of the sportsmen, but only of the charming landscape, said to myself, “ Well, it is good to see him breaking from the spell of some of his old ideas, and, now that he has become old, to see these fine gifts growing and coming out to behold him ripening into the {esthetic element in this way.” One day I stood behind him, as he was looking at the picture, unconscious of my presence.

Said he, “ He must have hit one, two, three and, I guess, four!”

Now, it is not strange that a person should, under such circumstances, having no appreciation of the beautiful in his nature, laugh to scorn the idea that beauty could ever lead a man to God, or bring him within the influence of the Lord Jesus Christ, or in cline him to climb from a selfish to a spiritual life; but, I tell you, there is many a mouth that requires to be fed by the aesthetic element.

. It is not a vain thing to hear men say that they feel more like worshipping in music than in any other thing. The best organist in America for extemporaneous music is Mr. John Zundel. When ho was converted, and came into the church, he said to me one morning: “It seems that everything in the world is new. Last night I prayed, but not as you do.” I asked him what he meant, and he answered, “I do not speak my prayers.” “ Well,” asked I, “how do you pray?” “On the piano always,” said he. That was true. He would sit down at his piano, when in a worshipping mood, shut his eyes, and pray with his fingers. I did not wonder at it when I heard his music. When I entered the first gallery of any magnitude in Europe, it was a revelation to me; I was deeply affected. It was at the Luxembourg. I had never imagined such a wealth of glory. The sense of exhilaration was so transcendent that I felt as if I could not stay in the body. I was filled with that supersensitiveness of supernal feeling which is true worship; and I never seemed to myself so near the gate of heaven. I never felt capable of so nearly understanding my Master; never in all my life was I conscious of such an earnestness to do his work, and to do it better than I did, as while under the all-pervading influence of that gallery of beauty.

I find a great many persons who say, “I do not much enjoy going to church, but if I am permitted to wander out into the fields, along the. fringes of the forests, and to hear the birds sing, to watch the cattle, and to look at the shadows on the hills, I am sure it makes me a better man.” Some others, like my dear old father, would say, “ That is all moon shine; there is nothing in it, no thought, no truth, and no doctrine of edification.” But there is truth in it. There are minds that open to spiritual things through that side of their nature more readily and easily than through any other. This should be recognized.

Then there is another class. There are a great many persons who are keenly sensitive on the side of irnagination, and they never really receive any thing as true, until the fact or principle is, as it were, enveloped in a little haze. They need the mystic element. They do not want sharp outlines.

There is something in mystery which is attractive to them. And yet some preachers insist that truth should be set before all men in its most accurate and exact form. You might just as well attempt to reduce the clouds to triangles and circles, in order to mathematically demonstrate their beauty to the eye of an artist.