We are often told that our sermons are wearisome to cultivated people, and just as often that they are wearisome to the poor. The two charges seem to point to opposite errors, each needing its own remedy. “One class of men must be found,” it is said, “who can treat all the subjects that interest scholars and men of science. Another class, with few acquisitions and little to distinguish them from the mass of the people, must understand the people’s wants and speak to them simply and broadly.”
These remarks sound very plausible. They are true and profitable so far as they point to our failure among both the cultivated and the uncultivated. They are also true so far as they call us to examine our ways and admit that the cause lies in ourselves and not in God, and so far as they assume that everyone’s service is needed to evangelize the land, each having a gift another lacks. But I am convinced they are full of fallacy and mischief when they suggest that our great want has been skill in adapting ourselves to the tastes and habits of particular congregations. They are equally mischievous when they tempt us to cultivate tricks of oratory to win favour. Such arts begin in vanity and end in disappointment. The preacher says, “I am addressing literary or scientific people; I must show I can meet them on their own ground.” They answer, “We might have had a better edition of that lecture at the Royal Institution. Had the preacher no sense to guess that in our own field we might find he was not infallible?” Or he says, “This is a congregation of mechanics; I must stoop to their level.” They answer, “Could he not give us credit for being a little like himself?”
Yes, that is what both classes require: that we give them credit for being like ourselves, for needing what we need and being able to receive whatever is most precious to us. What the noble, the doctor and the peasant long for in their heart of hearts is the common and the human, not the peculiar. The first two must give up something each prizes in order to reach that common blessing, and the sacrifice is often very hard. The wish to make it is often slight, and the attempt clumsy and insincere. Yet the wish is in everyone, and fostering it should be a chief business of every preacher. Though he be neither noble nor doctor, he must know in himself what the struggle is. He must have felt the bitter bondage of being shut up in particular tastes and habits, unable to feel himself a man. And surely the man who has fought that battle is fittest to speak to the peasant or the mechanic. For the hardest penalty of toil, whatever blessings it brings, is that the toiler is enclosed in a circle of narrow tastes and class customs, and escaping into the freedom of a human being seems almost impossible. Noble, doctor and mechanic are right, then, to reject the boast of a messenger from Heaven who recognizes them only by their heraldry, degrees or crafts, and whose word is not addressed to something above and beneath all these.
But how can this be avoided? The disheartened clergyman says: “I can tell all men they are equally sinners before God. They accept that all too readily and plead it against my entreaties to live a better life. I am driven out of generalities into charges of specific evils. If I am honest I must tell the rich man his sins and the poor man his, and then surely I must adapt myself to their circumstances. The common humanity you speak of may be a fine thing. But if it means common wickedness, that must be dissected into its elements before anyone will recognize it or care. If it means anything other than wickedness, explain what, and how it can be anything but the most shadowy of abstract names, an ideal for the rich and idle to amuse themselves with, and which the poor and their preacher can have nothing to do with.”
Imaginary abstractions and vague generalities certainly should be got rid of as soon as possible. There is no greater hindrance to manly and effective preaching of the gospel; they are bad for every hearer and worst for the minister. So it is a healthy desire in those who find that people patiently endure talk about sin and therefore speak of sins. They strike directly at the particular sins of lawyers, shopkeepers and craftsmen, and they expose the priest’s sins most prominently of all. There was a preacher in old times, set before us in Advent as the specimen of preachers, who spoke more than any other both of sin and of sins. He called multitudes to repentance and took careful account of Pharisees, Sadducees, publicans and soldiers. We might do well to ask what his method was, and how he aroused the consciences we find so dead.
The answer is very distinct: “He preached, saying, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” I do not want a definition of the Kingdom of Heaven, which I think would help very little. I would only urge all clergymen to keep asking themselves what these words mean, and to be sure that they, at least, are not vague or abstract. They cannot mean “Repent, for Hell is at hand.” John’s preaching may contain terrible warnings of punishments close at hand and threatening the whole land. He may be as much an example in denouncing them as in this fundamental part of his message. We may understand those denunciations better once we have felt the force of his first words, but the two cannot be confused. Shall we reduce “the Kingdom of Heaven” to “the Christian dispensation”? That is to explain the concrete by the abstract, using a scholastic and indistinct phrase so as not to be troubled by a popular and living one. Would it be strange to believe John meant at least this: “The King you believe is coming to you from Heaven is at hand; He is near; He is claiming dominion over you”? If that were true, would it not ground a call to repent and turn to Him? Would it not explain what repentance is, and how it is possible, better than most digests of divinity? It would be a common message to the open wrong-doer and the self-righteous hypocrite. It would encourage the first if his evil has become a burden to him, and it would be an infinite humiliation to the other, unless his evil is to grow into an ever heavier burden. Would not the man who delivered it be exalting valleys and levelling hills? He would have to testify that there is One mightier than he, a King over spirit and will, who comes to baptize men with His Spirit. He would be certain to say that the One who sends that renewing life will also send a fire to burn up what is false and evil. He would testify that the fire was already kindled and would not cease until it had burnt up the chaff of that most religious and most wicked nation.
I have given only two or three hints, such as readers of this course of sermons have often met before, to guide the young clergyman who aspires to teach the poor, about the model the Church sets before him. When he has considered them, I would ask him two things. First, if he could follow this model accurately, might he not have a better chance of escaping the unreality he so reasonably dreads and keeps falling into? Second, can he give himself any good reason why this should not be his model, and why he should depart from it, not in accidents but in its main features?
Belief in a Kingdom of Heaven established over men, and in a King of Heaven ruling in the midst of them, must be the safest ground for appealing to consciences about their special callings and transgressions. We might say: “The righteous All-seer knew the cheats you practised on your own heart in His sanctuary, priest of the congregation. He knew your vanities and falsehoods while you spoke His words and prayed in His name. He knew your frauds, advocate, as you made the worse appear the better reason. He knew how you adulterated your goods, tradesman. He knew your cheats against employers, benefactors and fellow-workers, poor labourer. He saw these lies. Every lie separates you from Him and unites you to the devil; it is damnation now, as the habit of lying and the service of lies is deep damnation hereafter. But since the King of Heaven is at hand and hates this lying with a perfect hatred, repent. Turn round to Him as He bids you, and be delivered from it as He can deliver you.” If we followed John the Baptist, this might be our way of dealing with lies of act and lies of the heart. It might be our message to the seducer and the murderer, no less than to the most respectable self-deceiver. The word would go out to each man, witnessing of One who knew him, governed him and could set him right. It would be a revelation of terror and a gospel of deliverance.
But it would involve no cunning accommodation to the fancies of particular classes. It would search individuals, yet it would be essentially human. Yes, human. Our angry clergyman had a right to be offended if he suspected me of passing off a mere school formula about a general Humanity. But if he reads the Gospels he must hear of a Son of Man. He will meet that phrase in every chapter, almost every verse. He must ask God (the devil will already have given his own answer) whether it is only a form of speech, or whether it denotes a living Person, an actual Ruler, the Head of every man. Let him grudge no toil or agony that brings him to a clear conviction on that point, and let him not think he can preach to rich or poor until he knows. Then let him consider, for I will not tell him, whether the word Humanity is still a shadow or has become substantial. Are men merely a collection of nobles, doctors, tradesmen and mechanics, to be gathered under the general term knaves or liars? Or are they creatures bearing the image and superscription of the Son of God, who may therefore be invited, in whatever place or condition on earth, to cast away lies, believe the Truth, and put on the man created after Christ in righteousness and true holiness?
But all this supposes that we have a right to say the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand in the sense the Baptist meant. Many will say plainly that we cannot. Have we made up our minds about the time of Christ’s appearing? If not, how can we use the language of one who came to testify of His appearing? I would to God that clergymen would torment themselves with this question this Advent and find no rest from it. If it dwells on their minds with any earnestness, and they resolve that it is the most practical question their work raises, I am not afraid that they will suppose the answer depends on settling controversies about dates. They will leave such investigations to leisurely men without the least wish to intrude on them. For they will be certain that if Christ has come and the King of the World has been revealed, He must be at hand now exactly as John said He was then. He rules over men, dwells among them and knows their secret acts and thoughts. To tell men this in John’s own words must be right now if it was right then, and wrong then if it is wrong now. Let us learn this lesson by heart. If it is not true, and may not be spoken out as true, we have been believing a cunningly devised fable all along. The Gospel is no Gospel if it is not a Gospel of the Kingdom of God, if it does not say that this Kingdom is in the midst of us and that we shall one day know it has been.
But can we separate this part of John’s words from the latter part, which clearly referred to an approaching judgment on the Jewish nation? I have already hinted that I do not think we can separate the words about the axe laid to the roots of the trees and the thorough purging of the floor from those about the Kingdom of Heaven and repentance. I admit that those words applied to the Jewish nation and were fulfilled in it. Therefore I believe they apply to us and will be fulfilled in us. If the same King is at hand, baptizing now as of old with the Spirit and with fire, He will apply the same processes to the present witnesses and stewards of His Kingdom that He applied to those of former days. Now as of old He is able to raise up children to Abraham out of stones. So now, as then, it is perilous to say within ourselves, “We have Abraham to our father.” It is perilous to boast that we are different from others, or more loved, because we have the privilege of witnessing to God’s love for all the families of the earth.
What the method of our sifting may be I do not know. But I do not think that in any age of the Church a strong effort to evangelize the outlying parts of society has occurred without a shaking of the whole of society. It has forced the inquiry: “Have we anything to tell these people that deserves to be called good news? If we have, what is it? Do we believe it?” Again and again an orthodox no-belief has prevailed in the schools which clearly could not be delivered to the people. It consisted of mere lumps of opinion and practically assumed that men can know nothing of God, only receive notions or guesses about Him. The doctors deduced these from the Book that speaks of His Son as the express Image of His person, come into the world precisely to reveal His Father to men. Such, in essentials, was the doctrine of the Church in the thirteenth century when the Mendicant preachers arose. It was the same in the fourteenth, when the Wycliffites and German Mystics appeared to restore some of the human faith the Mendicants had once kindled. They also came to undo the practical unbelief the Mendicants had spread by their scholasticism and popular legends. It was the same in the sixteenth, when Luther declared that there was actually a way from man to God and that the humblest might walk in it. At all these periods a dead weight of theological and philosophical opinion was crushing men’s hearts and spirits. The discovery that the people could hear and understand what the doctors said no human beings as such could hear and understand was the reformation of the Church, of philosophy and of theology.
I do not believe it will be otherwise in our day. Let those clergymen or laymen who dread such a result beware of encouraging these experiments in popular teaching. They will not end in the opening of a few rooms or cathedrals. The shock will be felt in the hall of learning, the palace of art, on every ecclesiastical throne, and on those higher thrones from which journalism sends its mandates to the universe. It will be felt specially and immediately by all our religious parties. If they enter this movement they will have to abandon a thousand cherished conceits and traditions, the very badges that distinguish them from one another. These cripple their efforts and divide them hopelessly from the people. They may be listened to for an hour while they expose each other’s weaknesses and absurdities. But men who want bread will not long be content with stones, and will hurl them back at those who gathered them for their neighbours. Denunciations of Romanism may delight the comfortable shopkeeper, who would rather hear about the Scarlet Lady than about the bag of deceitful weights and the scant measure which is abominable. The working man will soon tire of them, or will draw inferences that would startle his teacher. Denunciations of Protestant Dissenters may please some well-dressed congregations. To the masses they will only suggest the natural reflection that Churchmen have as much of the spirit of dissent, if that is the spirit of contradiction and denial, as their opponents. Denunciations of Infidels and Atheists will be, if possible, still more helpless and mischievous. The merely disputatious and negative will become more so. Hearts crying out in doubt and anguish for a living and gracious God will have the thoughts He awakened stifled by a dead argument or an ungracious sneer, or will be thrust into despair.
But there are Churchmen who pray secretly in their chambers and in the house of God: “From the hardness and coldness of our Orthodoxy and of our liberal Philosophy; from the frivolity, meanness and helplessness of our religious parties; from all the infidelity that comes out of the dogmas of our schools and the vanity of our popular discourses; by the mystery of Thy holy Incarnation; by Thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by Thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation; by Thine agony and bloody sweat; by Thy Cross and Passion; by Thy precious Death and Burial; by Thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord deliver us.” The agitation about a Gospel to the people is the pledge and foretaste of an answer to these petitions. It assures us that the chaff of all parties must be burnt up. It equally assures us that what is sound in each, what each received from on high and not by mixture with the earth, shall be quickened with new and divine life. The High Churchman must give up his puerile attempts to force Englishmen’s minds into foreign practices, or into any rule or custom that interferes with the sanctity of domestic life or with personal responsibility. By that sacrifice he will gain tenfold power to enforce reverence for the past and the acknowledgment of a Kingdom which God established and not man. That proclamation will perhaps be effective with no class so much as the one that has felt the inequalities of a rule whose authority is only convention. The Evangelical Churchman must withdraw his denial that anything in man can be appealed to against the Adam nature that is destroying him. He must give up phrases about depravity taken from books before depraved men will hear his message or believe he has one. He may lose the respect and praise of newspapers, but he will feel that he understands far more deeply and practically than before what Luther meant, and what the men of the last century whom he most admires meant. He will find that spirits respond to his voice as they did to theirs. And neither will be listened to more earnestly, or meet more earnest desires and give them a better direction, than the Millenarian. He is the messenger concerning not the past or the present but the future. Once he casts off his slough and leaves times and seasons to the All-wise, he testifies with undoubting confidence, on the warrant of Revelation, that no promise of God shall fail, that the evil Spirit is judged, and that all enemies of Righteousness and Truth shall be put under Christ’s footstool.
When the Gospel comes forth in all these aspects, each man speaking what the Spirit has taught him and none contradicting another, it will be as true in England as I have said it is in Hindostan: all men in all lay professions who do their own work faithfully will be preaching it. Medical men have preached it to the poor in their houses and in hospitals far better than we have, and have witnessed far more of Christ the Healer of Sicknesses. Every sanitary reformer who declares that disease and death can and ought to be resisted in every alley and cabin shames us by his faith in the Conqueror of Death. Is it wonderful that many think a clergyman might better devote himself to such works, to encouraging saving habits among the poor, or to giving them a living interest in their country’s politics, than to uttering words that often become mere sounds and seem to spread death rather than life? None can tell how strong that temptation is in some minds. But it can and must be fought. The messenger of God’s will and of God’s Redemption is needed so that the work of the Physician, the Sanitary Reformer and the genuine Politician may not lose all its energy and reward. All alike must combat pride, selfishness and the forms of vice and corruption they breed. A Baptism of the Spirit and of fire is needed as much for the physical as for the moral regeneration of the earth and of man. It must begin in the highest region of the Will, and it cannot cease until it has purified all the forms of Society, of Nature and of man’s inventions. In daring to say we have a Gospel to the poor, we affirm that nothing in His creation is so low that He does not design to raise it, and nothing so marred that He would not restore it to perfection. A hard, notional, scholastic orthodoxy, or an artificial uniformity, may shut the poor man out of the Kingdom Christ’s death opened to him. But the living name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the One God, excludes none and embraces all. While we declare that Name to men, we justify their highest and boldest desires after the knowledge of that which is, and encourage them to seek it in every region where men have ever longed for it. We also meet the necessities of the humblest wayfarer, telling him that there is a blessing on all his Work, and that he has a Rest and a Home.