1.C 07. External Hindrances
External Hindrances. A man may spend one half the strength of his life trying to overcome obstacles that interpose between himself and men, which is absolutely unnecessary. I told Brotherston’s in his church edifice that, with all his splendid success, I thought one full third of his life was spent in overcoming the natural resistance of that church structure to the gospel; not be cause it was beautiful, for I think a beautiful church is a help, but because it was constructed on the principle of isolation or wide separation, as though a man should sit one side of a river and try to win a mistress on the other side, bawling out his love at the top of his voice. However she might have been inclined, one such shout would be too much for tender sentiment.
Churches are built now on the same principle as they formerly were, in the days of the founders of the old cathedrals. Then the services turned on the effect of music, and the production of awe by the shimmering lights, by the dimness and vagueness.
They turned on the presentation of gorgeous apparel and all kinds of things for the eye to behold; but there was very little preaching, very little. Because they built their churches on a cruciform plan, we who have revolutionized old theories, who believe that a church is a household, and that a preacher has a personal influence upon men, and is not a mere machine build our churches just like them. You will see, in every cultivated community, churches built for modern preaching purposes on mediaeval principles.
We will take the church in New York called the Broadway Tabernacle. In it there arc two lines of columns which hide a range of six pews, on each side straight from the pulpit clear through to the corner of the church, where the men and women cannot see the preacher on account of these architectural adjuncts which run up to the ceiling and make the church so beautiful. There the people can sit and look at the columns during the whole of the sermon time. In Dr. Storrs’s church in Brooklyn* there was formerly a space of from fifteen to twenty feet between the pulpit and the pews. It has been changed. But formerly you could see the minister only down to his chest. He stood in that box, stuck up against the wall, and then came a great space, like the desert of Sahara; and over on the other side of it began to be his audience. Before he can fill such a space the magnetic influence of the man is all lost. He has squandered one of the best natural forces of the pulpit. That is not the worst of it. When a man is made by God he is made all over, and every part is necessary to each and to the whole. A man’s whole form is a part of his public speaking. His feet speak, and so do his hands. You put a man in one of these barrelled pulpits, where there is no responsibility laid upon him as to his body, and he falls into all manner of gawky attitudes, and rests himself like a country horse at a hitching-post. He sags down, and has no consciousness of his awkwardness. But bring him out on a platform, and see how much more manly he becomes, how much more force comes out! The moment a man is brought face to face with other men, then does the influence of each act and react upon the other. I have seen workmen talking on the street, stooping, laughing, and slap ping their hands on their knees. Why, their very gestures were a good oration, although I did not hear a word that was said. A man who speaks right before his audience, and without notes, will speak, little by little, with the gestures of the whole body, and not with the gestures of one finger only.