I
The work of the ministry labours under one
heavy disadvantage when we regard it as a profession and compare it with other
professions. In these, experience brings facility, a sense of mastery in the
subject, self-satisfaction, self-confidence; but in our subject the more we
pursue it, the more we enter into it, so much the more are we cast down with
the overwhelming sense, not only of our insufficiency, but of our unworthiness.
Of course, in the technique of our work we acquire a certain ease. We learn to
speak more or less freely and aptly. We learn the knack of handling a text, of
conducting church work, or dealing with men, and the life. If it were only
texts or men we had to handle! But we have to handle the gospel. We have to
lift up Christ--a Christ who is the death of natural self-confidence--a
humiliating, even a crushing Christ; and we are not always alive to our
uplifting and resurrection in Him. We have to handle a gospel that is a new
rebuke to us every step we gain in intimacy with it. There is no real intimacy
with the gospel which does not mean a new sense of God's holiness, and it may
be long before we realize that the same holiness that condemns is that which
saves. There is no new insight into the Cross which does not bring, whatever
else come with it, a deeper sense of the solemn holiness of the love that meets
us there. And there is no new sense of the holy God that does not arrest His
name upon our unclean lips. If our very repentance is to be repented of, and we
should be forgiven much in our very prayers, how shall we be proud, or even
pleased, with what we may think a success in our preaching? So that we are not
surprised that some preachers, after what the public calls a most brilliant and
impressive discourse, retire (as the emperor retired to close his life in the
cloister) to humble themselves before God, to ask forgiveness for the poor
message, and to call themselves most unprofitable servants--yea, even when they
knew themselves that they had "done well." The more we grasp our gospel the
more it abashes us.
Moreover, as we learn more of the seriousness of
the gospel for the human soul, we feel the more that every time we present it
we are adding to the judgment of some as well as to the salvation of others. We
are not like speakers who present a matter that men can freely take or leave,
where they can agree or differ with us without moral result. No true preacher
can be content that his flock should believe in him. That were egoism. They
must believe with him. The deeper and surer our gospel is the more is our work
a judgment on those to whom it is not a grace. This was what bore upon the
Saviour's own soul, and darkened His very agony into eclipse. That He, who knew
Himself to be the salvation of His own beloved people, should, by His very
love, become their doom! And here we watch and suffer with Him, however
sleepily. There is put into our charge our dear people's life or death. For to
those to whom we are not life we are death, in proportion as we truly preach,
not ourselves, but the real salvation of Christ.
How solemn our place is! It is a sacramental
place. We have not simply to state our case, we have to convey our Christ, and
to convey Him effectually as the soul's final fate. We are sacramental
elements, broken often, in the Lord's hands, as He dispenses His grace through
us. We do not, of course, believe that orders are an ecclesiastical sacrament,
as Rome does. But we are forced to realize the idea underlying that dogma--the
sacramental nature of our person, work, and vocation for the gospel. We are not
saviours. There is only one Saviour. But we are His sacraments. We do not
believe in an ecclesiastical priesthood; but we are made to feel how we stand
between God and the people as none of our flock do. We bring Christ to them,
and them to Christ, in sacrificial action in a way far more moral, inward, and
taxing than official preisthood can be. As ministers we lead the sacerdotal
function of the whole Church in the world--its holy confession and sacrifice
for the world in Christ.
We ought, indeed, to feel the dignity of the
ministry; we must present some protest against the mere fraternal conception
which so easily sinks into an unspiritual familiarity. But still more than the
dignity of the ministry do its elect feel its solemnity. How can it be
otherwise? We have to dwell much with the everlasting burnings of God's love.
We have to tend that consuming fire. We have to feed our life where all the
tragedy of life is gathered to an infinite and victorious crisis in Christ. We
are not the fire, but we live where it burns. The matter we handle in our
theological thought we can only handle with some due protection for our face.
It is one of the dangerous industries. It is continually acting on us,
continually searching our inner selves that no part of us may be unforgiven,
unfed, or unsanctified. We cannot hold it and examine it at arm's length. It
enters into us. It evokes the perpetual comment of our souls, and puts us
continually on self-judgment. Our critic, our judge, is at the door.
Self-condemnation arrests denunciation. And the true apostle can never condemn
but in the spirit of self-condemnation.
But, after all, our doom is our blessing. Our
Judge is on our side. For if humiliation be wrung from us, still more is faith,
hope, and prayer. Everything that rebukes our self-satisfaction does still more
to draw out our faith. When we are too tired or doubtful to ask we can praise
and adore. When we are weary of confessing our sin we can forget ourselves in a
godly sort and confess our Saviour. We can say the creed when we cannot raise
the song. He also hath given us the reconciliation. The more judgment we see in
the holy cross the more we see it is judgment unto salvation. The more we are
humbled the more we "roll our souls upon Christ." And we recover our
self-possession only by giving our soul again and again to Christ to keep. We
win a confidence in self-despair. Prayer is given us as wings wherewith to
mount, but also to shield our face when they have carried us before the great
white throne. It is in prayer that the holiness comes home as love, and the
love is established as holiness. At every step our thought is transformed to
prayer, and our prayer opens new ranges of thought. His great revelation is His
holiness, always outgoing in atoning love. The Christian revelation is not "God
is love" so much as "love is God." That is, it is not God's love, but the
infinite power of God's love, its finality, omnipotence, and absoluteness. It
is not passionate and helpless love, but it has power to subdue everything that
rises against it. And that is the holiness of love--the eternal thing in it. We
receive the last reconciliation. Then the very wrath of God becomes a glory.
The red in the sky is the new dawn. Our self-accusation becomes a new mode of
praise. Our loaded hearts spring light again. Our heavy conscience turns to
grave moral power. A new love is born for our kind. A new and tender patience
steals upon us. We see new ways of helping, serving, and saving. We issue into
a new world. We are one with the Christ not only on His cross, but in His
resurrection. Think of the resurrection power and calm, of that solemn final
peace, that infinite satisfaction in the eternal thing eternally achieved,
which filled His soul when He had emerged from death, when man's worst had been
done, and God's best had been won, for ever and for all. We have our times of
entrance into that Christ. As we were one with Him in the likeness of His
death, so we are in the likeness of His resurrection. And the same Eternal
Spirit which puts the preacher's soul much upon the cross also raises it
continually from the dead. We overcome our mistakes, negligences, sins; nay, we
rise above the sin of the whole world, which will not let our souls be as good
as they are. We overcome the world, and take courage, and are of new cheer. We
are in the Spirit. And then we can preach, pray, teach, heal. And even the
unclean lips then put a new thrill into our sympathy and a new tremor into our
praise.
If it be not so, how shall our dangerous work not
demoralize us, and we perish from our too much contact with holy things.
The minister's holiest prayer is hardly lawful to
utter. Few of his public would comprehend it. Some would dismiss it with their
most opprobrious word. They would call it theological. When he calls to God in
his incomprehensible extremity they would translate it into an appeal to Elijah
(Matt. xxvii. 47). For to them theology is largely mythology.
We are called at the present day to a
reconstruction of the old theology, a restatement of the old gospel. We have to
reappropriate and remint the truth of our experienced Christianity. But what a
hardship it is that this call should search us at a time when the experimental
power of our Christianity has abated, and the evangelical experience is so low
and so confused as it often is! It must be the minister's work to recover and
deepen this experience for the churches, in the interest of faith, and of the
truth in which faith renders account of itself. Theological inadequacy, and
especially antagonism to theology, means at root religious defect. For the
reformation of belief we must have a restoration of faith. And a chief engine
for such recovery of faith is for us what it was for Luther and his
like--prayer. And it is not mindless prayer, but that prayer which is the
wrestling of the conscience and not merely the cry of the heart, the prayer for
reconciliation and redemption and not merely for guidance and comfort, the
prayer of faith and not merely of love.
I saw in a friend's house a photograph from (I
think) Durer--just two tense hands, palms together, and lifted in prayer. It
was most eloquent, most subduing. I wish I could stamp the picture on the page
here and fit it to Milton's line:
The
great two-handed engine at our door.[5]
Public prayer is, on the whole, the most
difficult part of the work of the minister. To help the difficulty I have
always claimed that pulpit notes of prayer may be used. "The Lord's Prayer"
itself is of this nature. It is not a prayer, but a scheme of prayer, heads of
prayer, or buoys in the channel. But even with the use of all helps there are
perils enough. There are prayers that, in the effort to become real, are much
too familiar in their fashion of speech. A young man began his prayer, in my
own hearing, with the words, "O God, we have come to have a chat with Thee." It
was gruesome. Think of it as a sample of modern piety for the young! No
prayers, certainly no public prayers, should be "chats with God." Again, other
prayers are sentimental prayers. George Dawson's volume has this fault. The
prayers of the Church should not be exposures of the affectional man. The
public prayer of the Church, as the company of grace, is the saved soul
returning to God that gave it; it is the sinner coming to the Saviour, or the
ransomed of the Lord returning to Zion; it is the sanctified with the
sanctifier; it is not primarily the child talking to the Father--though that
note may prevail in more private prayers. We are more than stray sheep
reclaimed. We are those whose defiant iniquity has lain upon Christ for us
all.
But the root of the difficulty of public prayer
lies further back than in the matter of style. It lies in the difficulty of
private prayer, in its spiritual poverty, its inertia, its anemia. What culture
can deal with the rooted difficulty that resides there, out of sight, in the
inner man of the heart, for lack of the courage of faith, for sheer spiritual
fecklessness? Yet the preparation for prayer is to pray. The prayer is the
practice of prayer. It is only prayer that teaches to pray. The minister ought
never to speak before men in God's name without himself first speaking to God
in man's name, and making intercession as for himself so for his people.
Intercession! We are properly vigilant that the
minister do not sever himself from his people in any sacredotal way. But for
all that, is the minister's personal and private prayer on exactly the same
footing as a layman's? It is a question that leads to the distinction between
intercessory and vicarious prayer. The personal religion of the minister is
vicarious even when it is not intercessory. Great indeed is the spiritual value
of private intercession. The intercessory private prayer of the minister is the
best corrective of the critical spirit or the grumbling spirit which so easily
besets and withers us to-day. That reconciliation, that pacification of heart,
which comes by prayer opens in us a fountain of private intercession,
especially for our antagonists. Only, of course, it must be private. But the
minister is also praying to his people's good even when he is not interceeding
on their behalf, or leading them in prayer. What he is for his Church he is
with his whole personality. And so his private and personal prayers are
vicarious for his people even when he does not know it. No Christian man lives
for himself, nor believes for himself. And if the private Christian in his
private prayers does not pray, any more than he lives, unto himself alone, much
more is this true for the minister. His private prayers make a great difference
to his people. They may not know what makes his spell and blessing; even he may
not. But it is his most private prayers; which, thus, are vicarious even where
not intercessory.
What he is for his Church, I have said, he is
with his whole personality. And nothing gives us personality like true prayer.
Nothing makes a man so original. We cannot be true Christians without being
original. Living faith destroys the commonplaceness, the monotony of life. Are
not all men original in death? "Je mourrai seul." Much more are they
original and their true selves in Christ's death, and in their part and lot in
that. For true originality we must be one, and closely one, with God. To be
creative we must learn with the Creator. The most effectual man in history was
he who said, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." What a reflection on
our faith that so much piety should be humdrum, and deadly dull! Private
prayer, when it is real action, is the greatest forge of personality. It places
a man in direct and effective contact with God the Creator, the source of
originality, and especially with God the Redeemer as the source of the new
creation. For the minister personality is everything--not geniality, as it is
the day's fashion to say, but personality; and prayer is the spring of
personality. This impressive personality, due to prayer, you may often have in
"the peasant saint." And in some cases its absence is as palpable. Hence comes
vulgarity in prayer, essential vulgarity underlying much possible fineness of
phrase or manner. Vulgarity in prayer lies not so much in its offenses to good
taste in style as in its indications of the absence of spiritual habit and
reality. If the theology of rhetoric destroys the theology of reality in the
sermon, how much more in prayer!
Prayer is for the religious life what original
research is for science--by it we get direct contact with reality. The soul is
brought into union with its own vaster nature--God. Therefore, also, we must
use the Bible as an original; for indeed, the Bible is the most copious spring
of prayer, and of power, and of range. If we learn to pray from the Bible, and
avoid a mere cento of its phrases, we shall cultivate in our prayer the large
humane note of a universal gospel. Let us nurse our prayer on our study of our
Bible; and let us, therefore, not be too afraid of theological prayer. True
Christian prayer must have theology in it; no less than true theology must have
prayer in it and must be capable of being prayed. "Your theology is too
difficult," said Charles V to the Reformers; "it cannot be understood without
much prayer." Yes, that is our arduous puritan way. Prayer and theology must
interpenetrate to keep each other great, and wide, and mighty. The failure of
the habit of prayer is at the root of much of our light distaste for theology.
There is a conspiracy of influences round us whose effect is to belittle our
great work. Earnest ministers suffer more from the smallness of their people
than from their sins, and far more than from their unkindness. Our public may
kill by its triviality a soul which could easily resist the assaults of
opposition or wickedness. And our newspapers will greatly aid their work. Now,
to resist this it is not enough to have recourse to prayer and to cultivate
devotion. Unfortunately, there are signs in the religious world to show that
prayer and piety alone do not save men from pettiness of interest, thinness of
soul, spiritual volatility, the note of insincerity, or foolishness of
judgment, or even vindictiveness. The remedy is not prayer alone, but prayer on
the scale of the whole gospel and at the depth of searching faith. It is
considered prayer--prayer which rises above the childish petitions that
disfigure much of our public pietism, prayer which issues from the central
affairs of the kingdom of God. It is prayer with the profound Bible as its book
of devotion, and a true theology of faith for half of its power. It is the
prayer of a mind that moves in Bible passion, and ranges with Bible scope, even
when it eschews Bible speech and "the language of Canaan."
And yet, with all its range, it is prayer with
concentration. It has not only thought but will in it. The great reason why so
many will not decide for Christ is that Christ requires from the world
concentration; not seclusion and not renunciation merely, but concentration.
And we ministers have our special form of that need. I am speaking not of our
share in the common troubles of life, but of those specially that arise from
the ministerial office and care. No minister can live up to his work on the
casual or interjectional kind of prayer that might be sufficient for many of
his flock. He must think, of course, in his prayers--in his private
prayers--and he must pray his faith's thought. But, still more, in his praying
he must act. Prayer is not a frame of mind, but a great energy. He must rise to
conceive his work as an active function of the work of Christ; and he must link
his faith, therefore, with the intercession which covers the whole energy of
Christ in His kingdom. In this, as in many ways, he must remember, to his great
relief and comfort, that it is not he who is the real pastor of his church, but
Christ, and that he is but Christ's curate. The final responsibility is not
his, but Christ's, who bears the responsibility of all the sins and frets, both
of the world and, especially, of the Church.
The concentration, moreover, should correspond to
the positivity of the gospel and the Bible. Prayer should rise more out of
God's Word and concern for His kingdom than even out of our personal needs,
trials, or desires. That is implied in prayer in Christ's name or for Christ's
sake, prayer from His place in the midst of the Kingdom. Our Prayer-book, the
Bible, does not prescribe prayer, but it does more--it inspires it. And prayer
in Christ's name is prayer inspired by His first interest--the gospel. Do not
use Christ simply to countersign your egoist petition by a closing formula, but
to create, inspire, and glorify it. Prayer in Christ's name is prayer for
Christ's object--for His Kingdom, and His promise of the Holy Ghost.
It we really pray for that and yet do not feel we
receive it, probably enough we have it; and we are looking for some special
form of it not ours, or not ours yet. We may be mistaking the fruits of the
Spirit for His presence. Fruits come late. They are different from signs. Buds
are signs, and so are other things hard to see. It is the Spirit that keeps us
praying for the Spirit, as it is grace that keeps us in grace. Remember the
patience of the missionaries who waited in the Spirit fifteen years for their
first convert. If God gave His Son unasked, how much more will He give His Holy
Spirit to them that ask it! But let us not prescribe the form in which He
comes.
The true close of prayer is when the utterance
expires in its own spiritual fullness. That is the true Amen. Such times there
are. We feel we are at last laid open to God. We feel as though we "did see
heaven opened, and the holy angels, and the great God Himself."[6] The prayer ends itself; we do not end it. It mounts to
its heaven and renders its spirit up to God, saying, "It is finished." It has
its perfect consummation and bliss, its spiritually natural close and
fruitation, whether it has answer or not.
[5] Lycidas.
[6] Handel's words, on completing the Messiah.