06.10. Chapter 10: The Sermon-Series
WE HAVE given our attention to the more ordinary forms of sermons: the theme, the topical, and the expository; to sermon specifics, and finally to the soul-winning sermon. Each of these in its turn is important, but beyond the value of any individual discourse stands the sermon-series. This fact will become increasingly clear as we consider its implications. As no individual can claim an interest equal to that which is found with the multiplication of men, so no single sermon can possibly include the values that may inhere in the sermon-series. On that account a considerable proportion, perhaps larger than we have ever imagined, of all the Christian discourses created come to us in the serial form. This fact both explains and accounts for its popular use.
If one inquires why ministers veer to the series, the answer will be discoverable in the circumstance of willful choice, wonted advantages, and absolute demands. We might consider the subject, therefore, under the topics: Their Deliberate Employment, Their Decided Advantages, and Their Definite Requirement. THEIR DELIBERATE EMPLOYMENT The series of sermons comes as a mental demand. The minister is faced week by week with the necessity of one or two or even more original productions. His personal meditations, his devotional and secular readings, his observations upon the conduct of his fellows, or the course of nature—these all tend to bring to his thought subjects of such magnitude that no single discourse could possibly compass them. The result is a series, with a view to more complete and satisfactory consideration. For instance, I went as a young preacher to a pastorate, and learned upon my arrival that my predecessor had proved a liberal theologian, with strong Unitarian tendencies. Naturally, as a conservative, I wanted to save that people from the effects of such a theological philosophy. I knew full well that it could not be accomplished in any single discourse. Consequently, after a year in the pastorate, when I knew my position to be well-established and my doctrinal views to be respected, I announced a series on “The Greater Doctrines of Scripture.” In itself that sounds not only innocent enough, but eminently desirable as a study for any people, and in that series I spoke on “The Inspiration of Scripture; The Nature and Character of the True God; The Nature and Character of Satan; The Fall of Man; The Plan of Salvation; The Necessity of Repentance and Faith; The Constitution of the Church; The Number and Order of the Ordinances; The Final Estate of the Righteous and Wicked,” etc. In other words, the local and church conditions clearly demanded what could not be accomplished in a single discourse. There are scores of instances involving almost an innumerable number of circumstances which will clamor for kindred and extensive studies of subjects. To illustrate this statement and to show how remote those general themes may be, let me refer to my early experience in the Minneapolis pastorate. There my predecessor had been an orthodox man and such a course was not required; but I arrived in the city on a morning when a foul murder, with the purpose of financial gain, had been committed; and when a mayor of lax moral convictions had appointed a brother of similar sort chief of police, and the disregard of the law was the city’s disgrace. Once more I found myself convinced of the necessity of a series which was delivered under the general title, “Messages for the Metropolis,” twelve sermons, every one of which dealt with some phase of the city’s maladministration. The citing of these two instances, involving subjects so remote from one another, naturally suggests the multiplied series that a life ministry might demand, and adequately explains why they were decided upon, prepared and delivered.
However, the series is not at all limited to the end of correction. It has equal occasion in the whole realm of teaching. All the greater topics that clamor for pulpit consideration are more effectually treated by a series than by a single discourse; and as for the minister himself, there are urgent reasons for its employment. For instance, the series simplifies the task of topic choosing.
Task, did I say? Yes, for the young and inexperienced minister particularly; not only a task, but a veritable test of wits weekly.
Dr. John A. Broadus, my great and capable teacher in homiletics, used to tell us that by Tuesday morning, at the latest, we should be selecting the text or topic for the next Sunday morning’s sermon; and that if two sermons a day were required, the Sunday night subject should be determined upon by Friday at the latest.
If any man imagines that that is a problem of easy solution, he is either a layman with no obligation to discharge it, or a preacher of such indifference to his Sunday task as to be set for signal failure.
If the delivery from the sacred desk is the solemn task our great preacher-forefathers believed it to be, of “standing between the living and the dead,” and by the single performance, contributing to the miracle of regeneration, then the choice of subject with its consequent task of preparing for public deliverances is one that might challenge the judgment of angels and archangels, much more that of mortal man. And to have to repeat that delicate and at times terribly difficult mental process twice a week is nothing short of staggering in its implications. The moment, however, a series is decided upon, mental endeavor is simplified. To sit down and analyze a great subject, assigning its various features to five or even ten statements will require a brief period of concentrated thought; but that task accomplished, the question of what next is answered for weeks, and the mental processes and resources are now left free to think not for them but on them instead. The result is instead of being wearied with interrogation, we are exhilarated by construction. The man who stands before several paths, knowing not which one to choose, is always in a distressing quandary; but the man who has a marked highway ahead of him is absolutely free to drive on. For instance, how much easier it was to the author to speak for seven weeks on “Seven New Testament Converts,” selected in advance of the first deliverance upon the subject, under the titles, (1) “Nicodemus or the Conversion of a Ruler,” (2) “The Sycharite or the Conversion of a Harlot,” (3) “Bartimaeus or the Conversion of a Blind Begger,” (4) “Simon or the Conversion of a Sorcerer,” (5) “The Eunuch or the Conversion of a State Treasurer,” (6) “Cornelius or the Conversion of a Roman Centurion,” (7) “Lydia or the Conversion of a Saleslady,” than it ever would have been to think up, with the arrival of seven successive Fridays, a suitable subject for the following Sunday nights. That’s why it was done that way! A man who can save himself the mental trial of reiterating debates conserves his mental strength and resources for constructive work.
Furthermore, the series has an inherent advertising value.
It requires little more space and costs but little more money to put into your newspaper the series of seven weeks that would be the charge for a single Sunday’s ad, and people reading it will have the interest of that particular topic that makes a personal appeal to them. To return to the series above-named, the mayor of the town might want to hear you on “Nicodemus or the Conversion of a Ruler.” Some poor fallen woman, seeing that you are speaking on “The Sycharite or the Conversion of a Harlot,” would be naturally attracted. A blind brother or sister would be especially interested in the salvation of Bartimaeus, and the spirit-medium ought at least to respond when the conversion of a sorcerer was considered. State treasurers, and even treasurers of lesser institutions, would pay a little more attention to the eunuch’s conversion than to the average theme, while a ranking military officer would feel a natural appeal to hear about the Roman centurion, and the woman from behind the counter of your department store might say, “I am going on the night he speaks on ‘Lydia, or the Conversion of a Saleslady,’ to hear what he has to say about us.” This leads naturally to, in fact it impinges upon, our second suggestion. THEIR DECIDED ADVANTAGES
Here, however, we are not so much considering why the minister chooses them as we are the good results that come from having employed the series form.
We have no expectation of compassing them all.
They are almost like the demons of Gadarenes, a legion in number, but we do select certain and most manifest ones. The series renders possible the proper treatment of vital subjects. For instance, when my successor in office, Dr. Robert L. Moyer, wanted to get before his audience of the First Baptist Church his personal views of the great fundamentals of the Christian faith, he was too wise to attempt it in a single discourse. On the other hand, he announced that he would speak for many weeks on “The Apostle’s Creed,” and for not less than a dozen or fifteen Sundays he took up the successive sentences of that somewhat hoary and popularly-approved statement of faith.
I knew a man who had a lecture on the books of the Bible, and he touched everything from Genesis to Revelation; and, as a bird’s-eye view, it was really interesting and capable. But it left you with the identical feeling that you have when you fly over a continent in an airplane—you have seen the ground, but you haven’t studied it; you have glanced at it, but you haven’t comprehended it. Such a discourse could never accomplish what sixty-six lectures on the books of the Bible could do. In fact, within the limitations of a single discourse, only the briefest books of the Bible can be brought within adequate comprehension. And when one has given to its greater books five, ten, and fifteen discourses, or as Spurgeon did on the Psalms, has produced volumes of hundreds of pages and hundreds of thousands of words, he still feels, and feels deeply, that his treatment of his subject was far from full, and a single discourse becomes but a tiny fragment by comparison.
Great, vital subjects demand extended series. Harwood Pattison in his Making of a Sermon (page 7), speaking on the attempt to treat “all creation” in a single discourse, inveighs against attempting all from the Garden of Eden to New Jerusalem in one sermon, saying, “only by implication or indirectly can one treat the doctrines of Christianity, fall of man, redemption, the Holy Spirit, in a sermon.” Maclaren in Cure of Souls says, “If a preacher thinks it wise he may, in an hour, compass the circle of Christian doctrine, but it goes without saying that no subject will be more than touched.” The series also incites to and rewards special research. When one starts on a series of sermons, his daily reading and his literary research take on new meanings. Any page from a book, any article from a magazine, any illustration coming to him by way of eye or ear, may, and possibly will, fit in somewhere before this extended series is completed. All he has to do, therefore, is to make mental, or better yet, an index reference to the material that will merit his demands three or five weeks from now, when he reaches that phase of the subject to which this incident or illustration refers. It renders stored wealth accumulative; it amounts to what a bank deposit means to the business man; its value awaits the time of its need. That minister is poor indeed who lives as some indolent and irresponsible people live, using up entirely his daily accumulation; and that preacher is rich indeed who has an inexhaustible storehouse upon which he can draw at will, and an Index Rerum that will enable him to lay his hand upon his accumulated resources when his time of personal need, or for passing out public benefits, has arrived.
I somewhat prize my library. It is not the greatest, nor is it the most valuable from the standpoint of volumes of the highest merit, but it has one feature that could scarcely be exceeded in all America: eighty-five scrapbooks, from one hundred to three hundred pages each, the depository of full sixty years of possible sermonic material; three-and-a-half shelves are needed to hold these volumes. To me, at least, they have more value than any dozen shelves found round about them. In fifty years never a sermon prepared and delivered without appeal to this reservoir, and in fifty years never a disappointment. In some instances after a quarter or half a century of waiting the time to arrive, the peculiar illustration or incident thus laid up, was needed; but what relief and joy when the hour arrived to find it waiting there! And yet again, The series of sermons contributes to education and publication.
We have already spoken of its educational advantages. There is no mental training that equals the comparatively full treatment of vital subjects. That is why textbooks are written and why they must be employed. They all partake of the form of series of discourses or discussions on special subjects; but over and above this educational value is the book-result.
People have often asked me the question, “How does it happen, Dr. Riley, that with the weight of the pastorate upon you and the responsibility of the schools over which you have presided so long a time, together with your extensive lecture and evangelistic engagements, you find time to prepare books for publication?” The answer is not difficult, and the seventy odd published volumes that have been brought from the press to date and a dozen waiting manuscripts are almost all series that have first been utilized in the pulpit, or in the classroom. It took, therefore, only a modicum of additional labor to whip them into shape for publication. They went from the pulpit or the classroom, by way of the press, to the public. Forty of them involved a series on the books of the Bible, and the rest of them, subjects or series chosen from time to time to meet what seemed to be special demands; and when finished and delivered, they were turned over to the press to be put into permanent form.
There are instances, however, in which you discover your series after having accomplished it. The volumes on Revival Sermons and The Perennial Revival were not originally delivered as a series at all. They were separate and utterly independent sermons, preached in the natural course of a pastorate; but on the discovery of natural relationships, selected out and related in their final form. The Perennial Revival is exactly what one might have sat down and deliberately planned in advance. Each of the sixteen sermons would seem to have been created with a view to the whole. To such an extent is this true that some competent critics have said that “as a textbook on THE REVIVAL it holds no superior,” and it has already passed through four editions, and a fifth is now required. It has been adopted by not a few theological schools. The same general statement applies to the twelve sermons constituting Revival Sermons. There were but three of them prepared in a series; namely, “Presumptuous Sins,” “Our Besetting Sins,” and “The Unpardonable Sin.” However, they were assembled because of their logical relationship, and they have enjoyed even the high compliments of a theological opponent in magazine form, The Christian Century.
It will be remembered, however, that the two volumes referred to as assembled in a series after their completion rather than conceived before any commitment was made, cost the author far more Tuesday morning debates and mental concern than would have been required had the subjects been selected at one time and stated in advance of preparation task. THEIR DEFINITE REQUIREMENT For many subjects there is no other way!
It is the series or practically nothing. Who would think, for instance, of disposing of the great subject of prophecy with a single discourse? Or who would dare to attempt the greater doctrines of the Bible in a single discourse? Or who would imagine that he could set before his audiences Biblical evangelism in a single discourse, or make his people to be familiar with the books of the Bible in a single discourse, or interest them in the great Book of the Revelation with a single discourse?
What professor in the university would attempt to set before you psychology, or philosophy, or sociology, or natural science, with one lecture? The utmost that can be done with some subjects within the limitations of an hour is merely an introduction. It is equally so with the great themes that are found in the varied portions (some of them running like a scarlet thread through the library) of the sixty-six books called the Bible. The series way is the only way. For the purpose of education, there is no equal.
We have long understood that in education ‘line must be laid upon line, precept must be added to precept,’ statement must follow statement, facts must be assembled and logically related. We are told that “time and tide wait for no man,” but education is never a hurried process. It is a plodding; it is a repetition; it is addition; it is multiplication! It depends not upon the day, except to redeem it; not upon the hour, save as a segment. It counts upon a lifetime and demands a never-ending application.
Upon the series the divine approval seems to rest.
Go back into Christian history, and from the days when Christ indulged in a series—the parables—in teaching; then Paul employed a series of letters addressed to the churches; when Polycarp and Tertullian and the early church fathers indulged in a series of debates and delivered their souls in series of discourses, down to modern times when the Spurgeons, Parkers, Maclarens, Finneys, Torreys and Chapmans all enjoyed the favor of God upon the great series of sermons they preached, and the late I. M. Haldeman series on “The Second Coming” attracted annual audiences of sanctuary capacity and excited an international interest, and God’s favor has not failed this method of presenting truth. As the great old prophet Isaiah said, “Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts.
“For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little” (Isaiah 28:9-10).