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There he would sit down on the draw-side and help her watch her cattle. All the settlement was talking about it. The Norwegian preacher’s wife went to Lena and told her she ought not to allow this; she begged Lena to come to church on Sundays. Lena said she had n’t a dress in the world any less ragged than the one on her back.
They had not thus assembled at an early hour, deserting their mills and their shops, their boats and their nets, renouncing their chances of gain, to hear a preacher’s eloquence or to listen to fine music, but merely to pay their annual visit of respect to their Spiritual Master. Why should we aliens intrude upon so private a gathering?
Charles’s direction: “Id omnino studebit, ut quod in concione dicturus est antea bene cognitum habeat.” Nay, is it not expressly conveyed in the Scripture phrase of “preaching the word”? for what is meant by “the word” but a proposition addressed to the intellect? nor will a preacher’s earnestness show itself in anything more unequivocally than in his rejecting, whatever be the temptation to admit it, every remark, however original, every period, however eloquent, which does not in some way or other tend to bring out this one distinct proposition which he has chosen.
“No Christian home, no pastor’s eye, No preacher’s vocal zeal, Moved Thy dear martyr to defy The prison and the wheel. “Forth from the heathen ranks she stepped The forfeit throne to claim Of Christian souls who had not kept Their birthright and their name. “Grace formed her out of sinful dust; She knelt a soul defiled; She rose in all the faith and trust And sweetness of a child.
What he feels himself, and feels deeply, he has to make others feel deeply; and in proportion as he comprehends this, he will rise above the temptation of introducing collateral matters, and will have no taste, no heart, for going aside after flowers of oratory, fine figures, tuneful periods, which are worth nothing, unless they come to him spontaneously, and are spoken “out of the abundance of the heart.” Our Lord said on one occasion “I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?” He had one work, and He accomplished it. “The words,” He says, “which Thou gavest Me, I have given to them, and they have received them,… and now I come to Thee.” And the Apostles, again, as they had received, so were they to give. “That which we have seen and have heard,” says one of them, “we declare unto you, that you may have fellowship with us.” If, then, a preacher’s subject only be some portion of the Divine message, however elementary it may be, however trite, it will have a dignity such as to possess him, and a virtue to kindle him, and an influence to subdue and convert those to whom it goes forth from him, according to the words of the promise, “My word, which shall go forth from My mouth, shall not return to Me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please, and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it.”
So far is clear at once, that the preacher’s object is the spiritual good of his hearers. “Finis prædicanti sit,” says St. Francis de Sales; “ut vitam (justitiæ) habeant homines, et abundantius habeant.” And St. Charles: “Considerandum, ad Dei omnipotentis gloriam, ad animarumque salutem, referri omnem concionandi vim ac rationem.” Moreover, “Prædicatorem esse ministrum Dei, per quem verbum Dei
They must issue fresh and fresh, as from the preacher’s mouth, so from his breast, if they are to be “spirit and life” to the hearts of his hearers.
Her name was White, and we had not talked long before she said: “Mother says you’ve made a man of father.” Captain White had crossed the river, quit his drinking associates, but I have never seen him since the day we shot it out. This duel gave Cole Younger a reputation in that section which was of value to a poor preacher’s widow near Bayou Macon some time later.
Eloquence, I repeat, is a gift; but most men, unless they have passed the age for learning, may with practice attain such fluency in expressing their thoughts as will enable them to convey and manifest to their audience that earnestness and devotion to their object, which is the life of preaching,—which both covers, in the preacher’s own consciousness, the sense of his own deficiencies, and makes up for them over and over again in the judgment of his hearers.
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