03.02. The Perils of the Preacher

LECTURE II THE PERILS OF THE PREACHER "Lest . . . I myself should be a castaway"

I begin our consideration of the perils of the preacher by quoting this startling word of the Apostle Paul. "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly: so fight I, not as one that beateth the air; but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." And, as you well know, the word which is here translated "castaway," and in the Revised Version is translated "rejected," is applied to things that cannot bear the standard test, that reveal themselves to be counterfeit and worthless, like coins which have no true "ring" about them, and which are flung aside as spurious and base. And the Apostle Paul foresees the possible peril of his becoming a counterfeit coin in the sacred currency, a spurious dealer in sublime realities, a worthless guide to "the unsearchable riches of Christ." He sees the insurgent danger of men who are busy among holy things becoming profane. A man may be dealing with "gold thrice refined," and yet he himself may be increasingly mingled with the dross of the world. He may lead others into the heavenly way, and he may lose the road himself. He may be diligent in his holy calling and yet be deepeningly degenerate. It is the ominous forecast of what is perhaps life’s saddest and most pathetic tragedy, the spectacle of a man who, having "preached to others," should himself become "a castaway."

Now the Apostle Paul foresaw the peril, and studiously and prayerfully provided against it. And you and I have been chosen to walk along his road, and we shall encounter all the dangers that infest it. None of us will be immune from their besetment. Perils are ever the attendants of privilege, and they are thickest round about the most exalted stations. I suppose that every profession and every trade has its own peculiar enemies, just as every kind of flower is attacked by its own peculiar pests. And I suppose that every profession might claim that these distinctive microbes are most subtle and plentiful in its own particular sphere of service. And yet I strongly believe that the artisan who works with his hands, or the trader who is busy in commerce, or the professional man who labors in law, or in medicine, or in literature, or in music, or art, is not able to conceive the insidious and deadly perils which infest the life of a minister. The pulpit is commonly regarded as a charmed circle, where "the destruction that wasteth at noonday" never arrives. We are looked upon as the children of favor, "delicately appareled," shielded in many ways from the cutting blasts that sweep across the common life. It is supposed there is many a bewitching temptation that never displays its shining wares at our window! There is many a gnawing care that never shows its teeth at our gate! We are told we have the genial times, and the "soft raiment," and that for us life is more a garden than a battlefield.

But, gentlemen, the fatal defect in the statement is this: it reasons as though "privilege" spells "protection," and as though soft conditions provide immunity. It reasons as though a garden is a fortress, and as though a favored life is a strong defense. It reasons as though a garden can never be a battlefield, when after all a garden was the scene of the hardest fighting in the battle of Waterloo. Privilege never confers security: it rather provides the conditions of the fiercest strife. I gladly and gratefully recognize that the minister is laden with many privileges but I also recognize that the measure of our privileges is just the measure of our dangers, that the inventory of our garden would also give an inventory of the destructive pests that haunt every flower, and shrub, and tree. It is literally and awfully true that "where grace abounds" death also may abound, for our spiritual favors may be either "a savoir of life unto life or of death unto death." We may lead people into wealth and we ourselves may be counterfeit: we may preach to others while we ourselves are castaways. I propose, therefore, to examine some of these perils which fatten upon privilege, these enemies which will haunt you to the very end of your ministerial life. The first peril which I will name, and I name it first because its touch is so fatal, is that of deadening familiarity with the -sublime. You will not have been long in the ministry before you discover that it is possible to be fussily busy about the Holy Place and yet to lose the wondering sense of the Holy Lord. We may have much to do with religion and yet not be religious. We may become mere guide-posts when we were intended to be guides. We may indicate the way, and yet not be found in it. We may be professors but not pilgrims. Our studies may be workshops instead of "upper rooms." Our share in the table-provisions may be that of analysts rather than guests. We may become so absorbed in words that we forget to eat the Word. And the consummation of the subtle peril may be this: we may come to assume that fine talk is fine living, that expository skill is deep piety, and while we are fondly hugging the non-essentials the veritable essence escapes.

I think this is one of the most insidious, and perhaps the predominant peril in a preacher’s life. A man may live in mountain-country and lose all sense of the heights. And that is a terrible impoverishment, when mountain-country comes to have the ordinary significance of the plains. The preacher is called upon to dwell among the stupendous concerns of human interest. The mountainous aspects of life are his familiar environment. He lives almost every hour in sight of the immensities and the eternities--the awful sovereignty of God, and the glorious yet cloud-capped mysteries of redeeming grace. But here is the possible tragedy: he may live in constant sight of these tremendous presences and may cease to see them. They may come to be mere "lay-figures" of the study, no longer the appalling dignities which prostrate the soul in adoration and awe. That is our peril. We have to be constantly talking about these things, and the talking may be briskly continued even when the things themselves have been lost. We may retain our interest in philosophy, and lose our reverence. We may keep up a busy traffic in words, but "the awe of the heights" no longer makes us tremble with urgent actuality. We may talk about the mountains, and we may do it as blind insensitive children of the plains. The plentifulness of our privileges may make us numb. "Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon?" The calamity is that we may do so and never know it. The second peril in the preacher’s life which I will name is that of deadening familiarity with the commonplace. I have mentioned the possibility of our becoming callous to the presence of the heights: there is an equally subtle peril of our becoming dead to the bleeding tragedies of common life. Dark presence’s which come to others only as occasional and startling visitors are in our fellowship every day. They move in our daily surroundings. Experiences which move and arrest the business-man, because they are unusual, are the ordinary furniture of our lives. And the ever possible danger is this, that in becoming accustomed to tragedy we may also become callous.

There is, for example, our familiarity with death. I know there is something about Death so mysterious, so imperious, that he never passes as quite an ordinary presence. The chill air of his passing is never altogether lost. And yet you will find it is possible to be strangely unmoved in the house of death. There will be breaking hearts around you, among whom Death has come like some cruel beast, heedlessly breaking and crushing the fragile reeds on his way to the water-courses, and they are feeling that they will never be able to lift themselves again into the sweet sunny light and air. And you may be like an indifferent Outsider in the tragedy! I know that it may be one of God’s merciful dealings with us, as a necessity of our labor, to put the gracious cushion of custom between us and the immediate blows of dark and heavy circumstance. No man could do his work if the vital drain were to be unrelieved. If custom gave us no defense we should faint from sheer exhaustion. The impact of the blow upon us is restrained in order that we may minister to those upon whom it has fallen with naked and staggering force. But that possible ministry becomes impossible if the cushion becomes a stone. If familiarity implies insensibility then our powers of consolation are lost.

Now this is one of our perils, and it is very real and immediate. The peril can be avoided, but there it is, one of the possible dangers in your way. Familiarity may be deadly, and we may be as dead men in the usually disturbing presences of sorrow, and pain, and death. The pathetic may cease to melt us, the tragic may cease to shock us. We may lose our power to weep. The very fountain of our tears may be dried up. The visitations which arouse and vivify our fellowmen may put us into a fatal sleep. A stupor begotten of familiarity may make us remote from the common need. To use the apostle’s phrase, we may become "past feeling." The third ministerial peril is the possible perversion of our emotional life. The preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ demands and creates in the preacher a certain power of worthy emotion, and this very emotion becomes the center of new ministerial danger. For the emotions can become perverted. They may become unhealthily intense and inflammatory. They may become defiled. The emotional may so easily become the neurotic. I do not know just how to express the danger I see. A preacher’s emotion may be so constantly and so profoundly wrought upon that his moral defenses are imperiled. Exaggerated emotion can be like a flood that will overwhelm and submerge his moral dykes, and plunge him into irretrievable disaster.

I remember one very eventful day when I had a long walk with Hugh Price Hughes through the city of London. In the course of our conversation he suddenly stopped, and gripping my arm in his impulsive way, he said, "Jowett, the evangelical preacher is always on the brink of the abyss!" There may be excessive coloring in the judgment, but it indicates a grave peril which it is imperative to name, and against which we should be on our guard. I think I know what he meant. Preaching that sways the preacher’s emotions, moving him like a gale upon the sea, makes great demands upon the nerves, and sometimes produces nervous exhaustion. That is to say, the evangelical preacher, with his constant business in great facts and verities that sway the feelings, may become the victim of nervous depression, and in his nervous impoverishment his moral defenses may be relaxed, the enemy may leap within his gates, and his spirit may be imprisoned in dark and carnal bondage. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear," and "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." And now let me mention a peril which will be more evident than the one I have just named, because we meet it along every road of life, and because we make its acquaintance long before we take up the actual work of the ministry. I mean the perilous gravitation of the world. I say you may meet that danger everywhere, but nowhere will you meet it in a more insidious and persistent fashion than in the Christian ministry. It is round about us like a malaria, and we may become susceptible to its contagion. It offers itself as a climate, and we may be led into accepting it as the atmosphere of our lives. I suppose that one of the deepest characteristics of worldliness is an illicit spirit of compromise. It calls itself by many agreeable names, such as "expediency," "tactfulness," "diplomacy," and it sometimes ascends to higher rank and claims kinship with "geniality," "sociability," and "friendship." But, despite this fine borrowed attire, the worldly spirit of compromise is just the sacrifice of the moral ideal to the popular standard, and the subjection of personal conviction to current opinion. There is a half-cynical counsel given in the Book of Ecclesiastes which exactly describes what I am seeking to express. "Be not righteous overmuch. . . . Be not overmuch wicked." I think this moral advice enshrines the very genius of worldliness. Worldly compromise takes the medium-line between white and black, and wears an ambiguous grey. It is a partisan of neither midnight nor noon. It prefers the twilight, which is just a mixture of midnight and noon and is equally related to both. It is, therefore, a very specious presence, fraternizing with all sorts and conditions of men, nodding acquaintedly to the saint, and intimately recognizing the sinner, at home everywhere, mixing with the worshippers in the temple, or with the money-changers in the temple courts. Grey is a very useful color, it is in Keeping with a wedding or a funeral. And yet the word of Holy Writ is clear and decisive, raising the most exalted standard: "Keep thy garments always white."

Now you will meet that spirit of worldly compromise, and you will meet it in its most seductive form. It will seek to determine the character of your personal life. It will entice you to wear grey habits when you mix with the business-men of your congregation, and to "talk grey" in your conversation with them. A certain suavity or urbanity will offer itself as a medium, and you will loll about with relaxed moral ideals. This is no idle fancy. I am describing the road along which many a minister has passed to deadly degeneracy and impotence. We are tempted to leave our "noontide lights" behind in our study, and to move among men of the world with a dark lantern which we can manipulate to suit our company. We pay the tribute of smiles to the low business standard. We pay the tribute of laughter to the fashionable jest. We pay the tribute of easy tolerance to ambiguous pleasures. We soften everything to a comfortable acquiescence. We seek to be "all things to all men" to please all. We "run with the hare" and we "hunt with the hounds." We try to "serve God and mammon." We become the victims of illicit compromise. There is nothing distinctive about our character. It is neither one thing nor another. We are of the kind described by the Prophet Isaiah: "Thy wine is mixed with water," or like those portrayed by Jeremiah: "’Reprobate silver shall men call thee." But in the perilous gravitation of worldliness there is more than an illicit spirit of compromise: there is what I will call the fascination of the glittering. All through our ministry we are exposed to the temptations which met our Lord in the wilderness, and which met Him again and again before He reached the cross. "All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." It was the presentation of carnal splendor, the offer of an immediate prize. The tempter used the lure of the "showy," and he sought to eclipse the vision of reality. He used the glittering to entice the eyes away from the "gold thrice refined." That peril will meet you on the very day your ministry begins. Nay, it is with you now in the days of preparation. Even now you may be arrested by fireworks and you may lose the vision of the stars. On your ordination day you may be the victim of worldliness, and your soul may be prostrate before Mammon. You may be seeking "the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them"; in quest of "glitter" rather than true "gold." We are tempted to covet a showy eloquence rather than the deep, unobtrusive "spirit of power." We may become more intent on full pews than on redeemed souls. We may be more concerned to have a swelling membership-roll than to have the names of our people "written in Heaven." We may be more keen for "the praises of men" than for "the good pleasure of God." These are the perils of worldliness. Our besetting peril is to go after the "showy," to "strive," and "cry," ’’to let our voice be heard "in the streets," to follow the glitter instead of "the gleam," and to be satisfied if our names are sounded pleasantly in the crumbling halls of worldly fame.

I have thus mentioned many perils which will meet you in your calling, and they have this common and fatal tendency, to snare you away from God. They will lead you away from "the snows of Lebanon," from the great gathering-ground of your resources, where the mighty rivers rise which bring to men the dynamic of a strong and efficient ministry. And, surely, of all pathetic sights on God’s earth there is none more pathetic than a preacher of the gospel who, by the benumbing power of custom, or by the wiles and guile’s of the world, has been separated from his God! For when a preacher, by an unhallowed absorption in the mere letter of truth, or by a successful invasion of worldliness, gets away from God, the direful consequences are immediate and destructive. Let me mention some of the results.

First of all, our characters will lose their spirituality. We shall lack that fine fragrance which makes people know that we dwell in "the King’s gardens." There will be no "heavenly air" about our spirits. Atmospheres will not be mysteriously changed by our presence. We shall no longer bring the strength of mountain-air into close and fusty fellowships. And, surely, this ought to be one of the most gracious services of a Christian minister,--by his very presence to create a climate by which the faint and overburdened are revived. There is an exquisite line in Paul’s portrayal of his friend Onesiphorus which describes this very characteristic of ministerial service. "He oft refreshed me," and the refreshment is just the bringing of fresh air, a vitalizing breath, a restoring climate for faint and weary souls! The coming of Onesiphorus was like the opening of a window to one held in close imprisonment. He brought an atmosphere with him, and he himself had found it in the breathing of the Holy Ghost. My brethren, it is our spirituality that pro-rides that atmosphere of refreshment, and it is active in our silences as well as in our speech. If we are snared away from God that atmosphere is devitalized, our personal "air" loses its power of quickening, and no "faint-heart" calls down blessings as we pass by. But a second thing happens when, for any cause, we ate separated from the Lord whom we have vowed to serve. Our speech lacks a mysterious impressiveness. We are wordy but we are not mighty. We are eloquent but we do not persuade. We are reasonable but we do not convince. We preach much but we accomplish little. We teach but we do not woo. We make a "show of power" but men do not move. Men come and go, they may be interested or amused, but they do not bow in penitent surrender at the feet of the Lord. We go on talking, talking, talking, and the haunts of "the evil one" ring with scorn of our futility. Our words are just the "enticing words of man’s wisdom," they are not "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." And as it is with our preaching so it is with our enterprises. If our perils overwhelm us our enterprises become pastimes rather than crusades. We are busy but we are futile. We may be always active but the strongholds do not fall. We pass multitudes of resolutions but nobody quakes. We form clubs and societies but there is no vital movement towards God. The central fact of the matter is this: when a preacher is snared away from God and from the good-pleasure of God he does not count, and he is, therefore, not counted, and evil dances flippantly along the open road heedless of his presence, because he has no magic weapon by which it can be either crippled or destroyed. But I turn to a more positive aspect of my theme. How can all these perils be avoided? Nay, how can we make our perils minister to a richer, stronger, and more fruitful life? For that is life’s true victory, not to ignore dangers but to despoil them. It is possible to take the strength of a peril and enlist it in our own resources. That is the privilege of temptation: we can sack it and transfer the wealth of its strength into the treasury of our own will. That is a great principle! The minister’s life has many perils, and he has, therefore, many possible stores of enrichment. We cannot affirm this to ourselves too often and too confidently: conquered perils become allies: in every victory there is a transfer of dynamics. Perils may indicate our possible impoverishment: they equally indicate our possible enrichment.

How, then, is it to be done? By studious and reverent regard to the supreme commonplaces of the spiritual life. We must assiduously attend to the culture of our souls. We must sternly and systematically make time for prayer, and for the devotional reading of the Word of God. We must appoint private seasons for the deliberate and personal appropriation of the Divine Word, for self-examination in the presence of its warnings, for self-humbling in the presence of its judgments, for self-heartening in the presence of its promises, and for self-invigoration in the presence of its glorious hopes. In the midst of our fussy, restless activities, in all the multitudinous trifles which, like a cloud of dust, threaten to choke our souls, the minister must fence off his quiet and secluded hours, and suffer no interference or obtrusion. I offer that counsel with particular urgency now that I have come to labor in this country. I am profoundly convinced that one of the gravest perils which beset the ministry of this country is a restless scattering of energies over an amazing multiplicity of interests, which leaves no margin of time or of strength for receptive and absorbing communion with God. We are tempted to be always "on the run," and to measure our fruitfulness by our pace and by the ground we cover in the course of the week!

Gentlemen, we are not always doing the most business when we seem to be most busy. We may think we are truly busy when we are really only restless, and a little studied retirement would greatly enrich our returns. We are great only as we are God-possessed; and scrupulous appointments in the upper room with the Master will prepare us for the toil and hardships of the most strenuous campaign. We must, therefore, hold firmly and steadily to this primary principle, that of all things that need doing this need is supreme, to live in intimate fellowship with God. Let us steadily hold a reasonable sense of values, and assign each appointed duty to its legitimate place. And in any appointment of values this would surely be the initial judgment, that nothing can be well done if we drift away from God. Neglected spiritual fellowship means futility all along the road. But the discipline of the soul must be serious and studious. This high culture must not be governed by haphazard or caprice. There must be purpose and method and regularity. And you may depend upon it, that when you give yourselves to soul culture in this serious way, it is a travail and not a pastime. If it were easy it might, scarcely be worth counseling: it is tremendously difficult, but its rewards are infinite. One of the most cultured spirits in modern Methodism, a man whose style is as strong as his thoughts are lofty, has recently given this judgment as he looked back upon the years of his ministry: "I have not failed to study: I have not failed to visit: I have not failed to write and meditate: but I have failed to pray ....Now why have I not prayed? Sometimes because I did not like it: at other times because I hardly dared: and yet at other times because I had something else to do. Let us be very frank. It is a grand thing to get a praying minister I have heard men talk about prayer who never prayed in their lives. They thought they did: but when you have heard them, they made their own confession in a ruthless way." These sentences lift the veil upon a naked experience, and they expose the solemn fact that prayer is very costly, even at the expense of blood, and that Churches which have praying ministers may not realize the travail by which the power is gained. We are permitted to look upon our Master as He prays. "In the days of His flesh He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears." It was a holy and a costly business. "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." There was something here which we can never share, and yet there is something which we must share if we are leagued with the Lord in the ministry of intercession, and enter into "the fellowship of His sufferings."

Perhaps I cannot better illustrate the costliness of this intensive soul-culture than by the example of Dr. Andrew Bonar. Dr. Bonar labored in Scotland a generation or two ago, and he adorned his ministry by a very saintly life and by very fruitful service. He kept a private diary or journal, contained in two small volumes, containing regular entries from 1828 to within a few weeks of his death in 1892. His daughter has permitted this most priceless record of a soul’s pilgrimage to be given to the world, "in the belief that the voice now silent on earth will still be heard in these pages, calling on us as from the other world to be ’followers of them who, through faith and patience, are inheriting the promises.’"

Let me give you one or two extracts from this journal. "By the grace of God and the strength of His Holy Spirit I desire to lay down the rule not to speak to man until I have spoken to God: not to do anything with my hand until I have been upon my knees: not to read letters or papers until I have read something of the Holy Scriptures." . . . "In prayer in the wood for some time, having set apart three hours for devotion: felt drawn out much to pray for that peculiar fragrance which believers have about them, who are very much in fellowship with God." . . . "Yesterday got a day to myself for prayer. With me every time of prayer, or almost every time, begins with a conflict."... "It is my deepest regret that I pray so little. I should count the days, not by what I have of new instances of usefulness, but by the times I have been enabled to pray in faith, and to take hold upon God." . . . "I see that unless I keep up short prayer every day throughout the whole day, at intervals, I lose the spirit of prayer." . . . "Too much work without corresponding prayer. To-day setting myself to pray. The Lord forthwith seems to send a dew upon my soul."... "Was enabled to spend part of Thursday in the church, praying. Have had great help in study since then." . . . "Last night could do little else but converse with the Lord about the awakening of souls, and ask it earnestly.’’ . . . "Passed six hours to-day in prayer and Scripture-reading, confessing sin, and seeking blessing for myself and the parish."

Words like these, written for no eye but God’s to see, give deep significance to the sentence I quoted from our distinguished Methodist friend: "It is a grand thing to get a praying minister." And another thing becomes evident in the light of this journal: real prayer is the sharing of "the travail which makes God’s Kingdom come." Andrew Bonar was a strong minister of "the grace of the Lord Jesus," ant in the wrestling communion of prayer he became mighty with God and man. Men of his type, whose souls are elevated and refined by lofty fellowships, approach everything" from above," and not "from beneath." The trouble with many of us is just this,--we come to our work from low levels, from the common angle, with the ordinary points of view. In that way we come to our sermons, and to our pulpits, and to our pastoral work, and to the business affairs of the Church. We are "from beneath." We do not come upon our labors "from above," with the sense of the heavenly about us, with quiet feeling of elevation, and strong power of vision, and the perception of proportion and values. Men who are "from beneath" belittle and degrade the things they touch. Men who are "from above" elevate them, and give distinction and dignity to the meanest service. And if any minister is to live "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," and to have this lofty hearing and this uplifting constraint in his common work, if he is to be pure and purifying, he must learn to "pray without ceasing." And I would add one further word in reference to the discipline of character by the culture of the soul, and it is this: it is only by this primary culture that we gain those secondary virtues which play so vital a part in our moral defenses, and in the effectiveness of our work. The fragrance of character usually rises from the apparently subordinate virtues, the very virtues which are commonly neglected or ignored. All the ten lepers had faith, only one had gratitude, and he is the one who remains beauteous and winsome in the regard of the Lord. And this very grace of gratitude fills a great part in a minister’s life, and so do courtesy, and patience, and that wonderfully beautiful thing we call considerateness, and forbearance, and good-temper. I have called them secondary virtues, but I am afraid I have degraded their rank, so high and so princely a place do they fill in the shining equipment of the Christian ministry. And I name them here in order to reaffirm my conviction that such strong and attractive graces are not "works "; they are "fruits," the natural and spontaneous growth of much communion with the Lord. We may be fragrant in character, having "beauty" as well as "strength," if we abide in the King’s gardens. Gentlemen, I have mentioned our perils, and I have suggested our resources, and the one is more than sufficient for the other. A calling without difficulty would not be worth our choice. You will have traps and enemies, allurements and besetments, all along your way, but "grace abounds," and "the joy of the Lord is your strength."