There are two antagonist perils to which all evangelical Churches, whether established or unendowed, are exposed in an age in which men’s minds are so stirred by the fluctuations of opinion, that though there may not be much progress, there is at least much motion. They lie open, on the one hand, to the danger of getting afloat on the tide of innovation, and so drifting from the fixed position in which Churches, as exponents of the mind of Christ, possess an authoritative voice, into the giddy vortices of some revolving eddy of speculation, in which they can at best assume but the character of mere advocates of untried experiment; or, on the other hand, they are liable to fall into the opposite mistake of obstinately resisting all change––however excellent in itself, and however much a consequence of the onward march of the species––and this not from any direct regard to those divine laws, of which one jot or tittle cannot pass away, but simply out of respect to certain peculiar views and opinions entertained by their ancestors in ages considerably less wise than the times which have succeeded them.

An evangelistic Church cannot fall into the one error without losing its influential voice as a Church. It may gain present popularity by throwing itself upon what chances to be the onward movement of the time; but it is a spendthrift popularity, that never fails in the end to leave it exhausted and weak. The political ague has always its cold as certainly as its hot fever fits: action produces reaction; 359 great exertion induces great fatigue; the desired object, even when fully gained, is sure always, like all mere sublunary objects of pursuit, to disappoint expectation; and the Church that, forgetting where its real power lies, seeks, AntÆus-like, to gather strength in this way from the earth, contracts in every instance but the soil and weakness inherent in those earthy and unspiritual things to which it attaches itself. It, too, comes to have its cold ague fits and its reaction––periods of exhaustion, disappointment, and decline. And the opposite error of clinging to the worn-out and the obsolete produces ultimately the same effect, though it operates in a different way. A Church that, in behalf of some antiquated type of thought or action, opposes itself to what is in reality the onward current of the age, is sure always to fare like stranded ice-floes, that, in a river flooded by thaw, retain the exact temperature under which they were formed, when the temperature all around them has altered. The ice-floes and the obsolete Church may be alike successful for a time in keeping up the ancient state of things within their own lessening limits, but both are eventually absorbed and disappear. While the more versatile ecclesiastical body, tossed by the cross currents and eddies of novel and uncertain change, loses its true course and makes shipwreck, the rigidly immoveable one, anchored over the worn-out peculiarities of bygone days, is borne down by the irresistible rush of the stream, and founders at its moorings.

The Free Church, as a body, is, we trust, not greatly in danger from either extreme. They are the extremes, however, which in the present day constitute her true Scylla and Charybdis; and it were perhaps well that she should keep the fact steadily before her, by laying them down as such on their chart. Not from the gross and earthy fires of political movement in the present day, or from the cold grey ashes of movement semi-political in some uninspired age of the past, must that pillar of flame now ascend which 360 is to marshal her on her pilgrimage through the wilderness, at once reviving her by its heat and guiding her by its effulgence. The light borrowed from the one would but flicker idly before her, a wandering and delusive meteor; the other would furnish her with but an unlighted torch, unsuited to cast across her way a single beam of direction and guidance. Her light must be derived from an antiquity more remote than that of the uninspired ages, and her heat from a source more permanent than that of present excitement, social or political: the one direct from the unerring record of those times when God walked the earth in the flesh; the other from that living spirit without whose influence energy the most untiring can be influential in but the production of evil, and earnestness the most intense may be profession, but cannot be revival. Strength must be sought by her, not in the turmoil of evanescent agitation, nor in the worn-out modes of an age the fashion of which has perished, but in the perennial verities of the everlasting gospel. While so far adapting herself to the times as to present an armed front to every form of error, she must preach to her people as if the prisoner of Patmos had but just completed the record of Revelation.

There is one special error regarding this the most important portion of her proper work––the preaching of the word––to which it may be well to advert. It has become much the fashion of the time––most unthinkingly, surely––to speak of preaching as not the paramount, but merely one of the subsidiary duties of a clergyman. ‘He is not a man of much pulpit preparation,’ it has become customary to remark of some minister, at least liked if not admired, ‘but he is diligent in visiting and in looking after his schools; and preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister’s duty.’ Or, in the event of a vacancy, the flock looking out for a pastor are apt enough to say, ‘Our last minister was an accomplished pulpit man, but what we at present want 361 is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister’s duty.’ Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths’ standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the remark, as if it embodied a self-evident truth; and while they dare tell, not without self-complacency, that their discourses––things written at a short sitting, if written at all––cost them but little trouble, they add further, as if by way of apology, that they are, however, ‘much occupied otherwise, and that preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister’s duty.’ We have some times felt inclined to assure these latter personages in reply, that they might a little improve the matter just by making preaching no part of their duty at all. But where, we ask, is it taught, either by God in His word or by the Church in her standards, that preaching is merely one of the minor duties of the minister, or indeed other than his first and greatest duty? Not, certainly, in the New Testament, for there it has invariably the paramount place assigned to it; as certainly not in our standards, for in them the emphasis is ‘especially’ laid on the ‘preaching of the word’ as God’s most ‘effectual means’ of converting sinners. If it be a truth that preaching is but comparatively a minor part of a minister’s duty, it is certainly neither a Scripture nor a Shorter Catechism truth; and, lest it should be not only not a truth at all, but even not an innocuous untruth, we think all who hold it would do well to inquire how they have come by it.

We have our own suspicion regarding its origin. It is natural for men to exaggerate the importance of whatever good they patronize, or whatever improvement or enterprise they advocate or recommend. And perhaps some degree of exaggeration is indispensable. In order to create the impulse necessary to overcome the vis inertiÆ of society, and induce in the particular case the required amount of exertion, the stream of the moving power has––if we may so 362 speak––to be elevated to the level of hopes raised high above the point of possible accomplishment. To employ the language of the mechanist, the necessary fall would be otherwise awanting, and the machine would fail to move. If, for instance, all men had estimated the advantages of free trade according to the sober computations of Chalmers, the country would have no Anti-Corn-Law League, and no repeal of the obnoxious statutes. And yet who can now doubt that the calculations of Chalmers were in reality the true ones? In like manner, if it had been truly seen that the ‘baths for the working classes’ could have merely extended to the humbler inhabitants of our cities those advantages of ablution which the working men of our sea-coasts already possess, but of which––when turned of forty––not one out of a hundred among them ever avails himself, we would scarce have witnessed bath meetings, with Dukes in the chair; nor would the baths themselves have been erected. But the natural exaggerative feeling prevailed. Baths for the working classes were destined somehow to renovate society, it was thought; and so, though Chartism be now as little content as ever, baths for the working classes our cities possess. And, doubtless, exaggeration of a similar kind has tended to heighten the general estimate of the minor duties of the clergyman; and were there no invidious comparisons instituted between the lesser and the paramount duties,––between what is secondary in its nature magnified into primary importance, and what is primary in its nature diminished into a mere secondary, and standing as if the one had been viewed by the lesser, and the other through the greater lens of a telescope,––we would have no quarrel whatever with the absolute exaggeration in the case, regarded simply as a mere moving force. But we must quarrel with it when we see it leading to practical error; and so, in direct opposition to the common remark, that preaching is but a small part of the minister’s duty, we assert that it is not a small, 363 but a very large, and by far the most important part of it; and that it is not our standards or the Scriptures that are in error on this special head, but the numerous class who, taking up the antagonist view, maintain as a self-evident proposition what has neither standing in the New Testament, nor yet guarantee in the experience of the Church.

No apology whatever ought to be sustained for imperfect pulpit preparation; nay, practically at least, no apology whatever has or will be sustained for it. It is no unusual thing to see a church preached empty; there have been cases of single clergymen, great in their way, who have emptied four in succession: for people neither ought nor will misspend their Sabbaths in dozing under sermons to which no effort of attention, however honestly made, enables them to listen; and what happens to single congregations may well happen to a whole ecclesiastical body, should its general style of preaching fall below the existing average. And certainly we know nothing more likely to produce such a result than the false and dangerous opinion, that preaching is comparatively a small part of a minister’s duty. It is supereminently dangerous for one to form a mean estimate of one’s work, unless it be work of a nature very low and menial indeed. ‘No one,’ said Johnson, ‘ever did anything well to which he did not give the whole bent of his mind.’ It is this low estimate––this want of a high standard in the mind––that leads some of our young men to boast of the facility with which they compose their sermons,––a boast alike derogatory to the literary taste and knowledge and to the Christian character of him who makes it. Easy to compose a sermon!––easy to compose what, when written, cannot be read; and what, when preached, cannot be listened to. We believe it; for in cases of this kind the ease is all on the part of the author. We believe further, we would fain say to the boaster, that you and such as you could scuttle and sink the Free Church with amazingly little trouble to yourselves. 364 But is it easy, think you, to mature such thoughts as Butler matured? And yet these were embodied in sermons. Is it easy, think you, to convey in language exquisite as that of Robert Hall, sentiments as refined and imagery as classic as his? And yet Hall’s noblest compositions were sermons. Is it easy, think you, to produce a philosophic poem, the most sublime and expansive of any age or country? And yet such is the true character of the Astronomical Sermons of Chalmers. Or is that spirituality which impresses and sinks into the heart of a people, independently at times of thought of large calibre or the polish of a fine literary taste, a thing easily incorporated into the tissue of a lengthened sermon? Think you, did Maclaurin’s well-known Sermon on the Cross cost him little trouble? or the not less noble sermon of Sir Matthew Hale, on Christ and Him crucified? Look, we beseech you, to your New Testaments, and see if there be ought slovenly in the style, or loose and pointless in the thinking, of the model sermons given you there. The discourse addressed by our Saviour from the mount to the people was a sermon; as was also the magnificent address of Paul to the Athenians, where he chose as his text the inscription on one of their altars, ‘To the unknown God.’ There may be a practical and most mischievous heterodoxy embodied in the preacher’s idea of sermons, as certainly as he may embody a heterodoxy theoretic and doctrinal in the sermons themselves.

The ordinary course of establishing a Church in any country, as specially shown by New Testament history and that of the Reformation, is first and mainly through the preaching of the word. An earnest, eloquent man––a Peter in Jerusalem––a Paul at Athens, on Mars Hill––a John Knox in Edinburgh or St. Andrews––a George Whitfield in some open field or market-place of Britain or America––or a Thomas Chalmers in some metropolitan pulpit, Scotch or English––addresses himself to the people. 365

There is a strange power in the words, and they cannot but listen; and then the words begin to tell. The heart is affected, the judgment convinced, the will influenced and directed: ancient beliefs are, as the case may be, modified, resuscitated, or destroyed; new or revived convictions take the place of previous convictions, inadequate or erroneous; and thus churches are planted, and the face of society changed. We limit ourselves here to what––being strictly natural in the process––would operate, if skilfully applied, as directly on the side of error as of truth. It is the first essential of a book, that it be interesting enough to be read; and of a preacher, whatever his creed, that he be sufficiently engaging to be attentively listened to; and without this preliminary merit, no other merit, however great, is of any avail whatever. And when a Church possesses it in any great degree, it is sure to spread and increase. Are there churches in the Establishment which, though thinned by the Disruption, have now all their seats let, and are crammed every Sabbath to the doors? If so, be sure there is popular talent in the pulpit, and that the clergyman who officiates there does not find it a very easy matter to compose his sermons. Nay, dear as the distinctive principles of the Free Church are to the people of Scotland, with superior pulpit talent in the Establishment on the one hand, and in the ranks of the disendowed body, on the other, a goodly supply of those youthful ministers who boast that they either never write their sermons, or write them at a short sitting, we would by no means guarantee to our Church a ten years’ vigorous existence. These may not be palatable truths, but we trust they are wholesome ones; and we know that the time peculiarly requires them. It is, however, not mainly with the Establishment that the Free Church has to contend.

We ask the reader whether he has not marked, within the last few years, the dÉbut of another and more formidable 366 antagonist, with which all Christian Churches may be soon called on to grapple?

Our newly-instituted athenÆums and philosophical associations form one of the novel features of the time,––institutions in which at least the second-class men of the age––Emersons, and Morells, and Combes––with much that is interesting in science and fascinating in literature, blend sentiments and opinions at direct variance with the great doctrinal truths embodied in our standards. The press, not less formidable now than ever, is an old antagonist; but, with all its appliances and powers, it lacked the charm of the living voice. That peculiar charm, however, the new combatant possesses. The pulpit, met by its own weapons and in its own field, will have to a certainty to measure its strength against it; and the standard of pulpit accomplishment and of theological education, instead of being lowered, must in consequence be greatly elevated. The Church of this country, which in the earlier periods of her history, when Knox was her leader, and Buchanan the moderator of her General Assembly, stood far in advance of the age in popular eloquence, solid learning, and elegant accomplishment, and which, in the person of Chalmers in our own days, was vested in the more advanced views and the more profound policy of a full century hence, must not be suffered to lag behind the age now. Her troops must not be permitted to fall into confusion, and to use as arms the rude, unsightly bludgeons of an untaught and undisciplined mob, when the enemy, glittering in harness, and furnished with weapons keen of temper and sharp of edge, is bearing down upon them in compact phalanx.

We know what it is to have sat for many years under ministers who, possessed of great popular talent and high powers of original thought, gave much time and labour to pulpit preparation. We know how great a privilege it is to have to look forward to the ministrations of the Sabbath,––not 367 as wearinesses, which, simply as a matter of duty, were to be endured; but as exquisite feasts, spiritual and intellectual, which were to be greatly relished and enjoyed. And when hearing it sometimes regretted, with reference to at least one remarkable man, that he did not visit his flock quite so often as was desirable––many of the complainants’ sole idea of a ministerial visit, meanwhile, being simply that it was a long exordium of agreeable gossip, with a short tail-piece of prayer stuck to its hinder end––we have strongly felt how immensely better it was that the assembled congregation should enjoy each year fifty-two Sabbaths of their minister at his best, than that the tone of his pulpit services should be lowered, in order that each individual among them might enjoy a yearly half-hour of him apart. And yet such, very nearly, was the true statement of the case. We fully recognise the importance, in its own subordinate place, of ministerial visitation, especially when conducted––a circumstance, however, which sometimes lowers its popularity––as it ought to be. But it must not be assigned that prominent place denied to it by our standards, and which the word of God utterly fails to sanction.

It is, though an important, still a minor duty; and the Free Church must not be sacrificed to the ungrounded idea that it occupies a level as high, or even nearly as high, as ‘the preaching of the word.’ To that peculiar scheme of visitation advocated by Chalmers as a first process in his work of excavation, we of course do not refer. In those special cases to which he so vigorously directed himself, visitation was an inevitable preliminary, without which the appliances of the pulpit could not be brought to bear. Philip had to open the Scriptures tÊte-À-tÊte to the Ethiopian eunuch, for the Ethiopian eunuch never came to church.

But even were his scheme identical with that to which we particularly refer, we would say to the young preacher who sheltered under his authority, ‘Well, prepare for the 368 pulpit as Dr. Chalmers did, even when he had the West Port congregation for his audience, and we shall be quite content to let you visit as much as you may.’ The composition of a sermon was never easy work to him. He devoted to it much time, and the full bent of his powerful mind; and even when letting himself down to the humblest of the people, the philosopher of largest capacity might profitably take his place among the hearers, and listen with an interest never for one moment suffered to flag.

May 3, 1848.