James Stalker - The Preacher and His Models

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

TO

THE REV. ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D

PREFACE.

r I ^HKSE nine Lectures on Preaching were delivered, on the Lyman Beechcr Foundation, to the divinity students of Yale University in the spring of this year. With the kind concurrence of the Senate of Yale, five of them were redelivered, on the Mcrrick Foundation, to the students of Delaware University, Ohio.

In the Appendix an Ordination Address is repro duced, which I wrote when I had been only four or five years in the ministry, and which I have been requested to reprint. My friend, the Rev. Dr. Walker, how was present when it was delivered, having pub lished it in The Family Treasury, another friend, noticing it there, had it printed as a pamphlet at his own expense and distributed to all the ministers of the Church to which he and I belong. It was a very characteristic act ; and I have ventured, as a memorial of it, to dedicate this volume to him. I

PREFACE.

do so, however, not for this reason only, but also because there has been no one in this generation who has done more than he has done, by the example of his own impressive ministry and by his generous encouragement of younger ministers, to promote the interests of preaching in his native land.

My thanks are due to the Rev. Charles Shaw, who on this as on former occasions has kindly assisted me in correcting the press.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE VII.

PAGE

THE PREACHER AS A CHRISTIAN . -179

LECTURE VIII.

THE PREACHER AS AN APOSTLE.. 2O5

LECTURE IX.

THE PREACHER AS A THINKER .. 237

APPENDIX.

AN ORDINATION CHARGE...265

LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY

LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY.

ENTLEMEN, it would be impossible to begin this course of lectures without expressing my acknowledgments to the Theological Faculty of this University for the great honour they have done me by inviting me to occupy this position. When I look over the list of my predecessors and observe that it includes such names as Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. John Hall, Dr. W. M. Taylor, Dr. Phillips Brooks and Dr. Daleto mention only those with which it opensI cannot help feeling that it is perhaps a greater honour than I was entitled to accept; and I cannot but wish that the preaching of the old country were to be represented on this occasion by some one of the many ministers who would have been abler than I to do it justice. It is with no sense of having attained that I am to speak to you ; for I always seem to myself to be only beginning to learn my trade; and the furthest I ever get in the way of confidence is to believe that I shall preach well next

time. However, there may be some advantages in hearing one who is not too far away from the diffi culties with which you will soon be contending yourselves; and the keenness with which I have felt these difficulties may have made me reflect, more than others to whom the path of excellence has been easier, on the means of overcoming them.

I warmly reciprocate the sentiments which have led the Faculty to come across the Atlantic the second time for a lecturer, and the liberality of mind with which they are wont to overstep the boundaries of their own denomination and select their lecturers from all the evangelical Churches. It is the first time I have set foot on your continent, but I have long entertained a warm admiration for the American people and a firm faith in their destiny; and I welcome an opportunity which may serve, in any degree, to demonstrate the unity which underlies the variety of our evangelical communions, and to show how great are the things in which we agree in com parison with those on which we differ.

The aim of this lectureship, if I have apprehended it aright, is that men who are out on the sea of practical life, feeling the force and strain of the winds and currents of the time, and who therefore occupy, to some extent, a different point of view from either

INTRODUCTORY.

students or professors, should come and tell you, who are still standing on the terra finna of college life, but will soon also have to launch forth on the same element, how it feels out there on the deep.

Well, there is a considerable difference.

The professorial theory of college life is, that the faculties are being exercised and the resources collected with which the battles of life are subse quently to be fought and its victories won. And there is, no doubt, a great deal of truth in this theory. The acquisitions of the class-room will all be found useful in future, and your only regret will be that they have not been more extensive and thorough

o *

The gymnastic of study is suppling faculties which will be indispensable hereafter. Yet there is room amidst your studies, and without the slightest dis paragement to them, for a message more directly from life, to hint to you, that more may be needed in the career to which you are looking forward than a college can give, and that the powers on which success in practical life depends may be somewhat different from those which avail most at your present stage.

Thejre are two very marked types of intellect to be observed amongst men, which we may call the receptive and the creative. Receptive intellect has the power of taking fully in what is addressed to it by others. It separates its acquisitions and distributes

THE PREACHER AND HIS MODELS.

them among the pigeon-holes of the memory. Out of these again it can reproduce them, as occasion requires, and even make what may be called permu tations and combinations among its materials with skill and facility. The creative intellect, on the contrary, is sometimes anything but apt to receive that which people attempt to put into it. Instead of being an open, roomy vessel for holding things, it may be awkwardly shaped, and sometimes difficult to open at all. Nor do things pour out of it in a stream, as water does from a pitcher ; they rather flash out of it, like sparks from the anvil. Instead of possessing its own knowledge, it is possessed by it ; it burns as it emits it, and its fire is contagious.

The former is the serviceable intellect at college, but it is the latter which makes the preacher. There may, indeed, here and there, be miraculous professors who attach more importance, and give higher marks, to the indications of the creative intellect than to the achievements of the receptive intellect. But few can resist the appeal made by the clear, correct and copious reproduction of what they have themselves supplied. Indeed, they would not, as a rule, be justified in doing so; for the first indications of originality are often crude and irritating, and they may come to nothing. The creative intellect is fre quently slow in maturing; it is like those seeds which