The Preacher and His Models: The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891Stalker, James
Religion
The Preacher and His Models: The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891
Stalker, James
Preaching
called the truth the foundation on which the whole structure of life
is built. All that a man is and does depends, in the last resort, on
what he knows and believes. It will be a calamity for your hearers, if
from your preaching they are not able by degrees to put together in
their minds a conception of Christianity both true and elevating,
which will supply them with the fundamental principles of their life.
Besides this sacred obligation to our people, there is the obligation
to the truth itself. This was felt by St. Paul profoundly. A
revelation of Christianity had been committed to him, and he had to
present it in all its splendour and apply it to all the details of
life. So the Word of God is committed to us, and we are responsible
for delivering its whole message. If we take up a single text of the
Bible, our merit as preachers lies in bringing out attractively and
comprehensively the truth which it contains. It would be considered
still more meritorious to present the whole message contained in a
book of the Bible; and it would be quite in accordance with the
theological fashion of the time if a preacher were able to show that
he was master of some single section of Scripture, say, the Prophets
of the Old Testament or the writings of St. John. I do not know why we
should hesitate about the next step, which, if we have gone so far, we
are logically bound to take--the mastery of the message of the Bible
as a whole. This is what we are responsible for. The Bible is the
message of the mind and will of the loving and redeeming God; and this
we are bound to deliver in such a way that neither its truth nor its
glory will suffer in our hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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