IS PREACHING A LOST ART?

Shannon News, 29 April 1924, Page 4

IS PREACHING A LOST ART?

ELOQUENCE OF THE PAST. “A generation ago no one who visited London failed-to include in the attractions to be seen and heard the pulpit giants ol’ those days. They were undeniable giants. To name only three were Spurgeon at the Tabernacle, Lid. dori at St. Paul’s, - and Parker at the City Temple. It was part of the programme of any visitor who desired to taste the best that London had to offer in any medium to hear one or all of them,” writes “Alpha” of the “Star ( ” on a subject suggested by the recent death of Dr. Jowett.

Veteran sermon-tasters like the late Lord Fisher' would often contrive to bear all three 4 - of them in one day. In their several ways; they were probably greater masters of their craft tl\an any three who have filled the pulpits of London since fiheir time; but it may be doubted whether, if their equivalents were to appear amongst us, they would attract the extraordinary attention ; which the originals commanded. Something of the decline in the appeal of thg pulpit is no doubt due to the failure of personality, but more, of it is due to the mind of the public to what the pulpit stands for. The two causes'' react against each other. The changed outlook in regard to orthodoxy has diverted from the pulpit much of the most spiritual and intellectual elements that in other days -would have given it fame and distinction. ‘ They have withdrawn into other channels of activity, worldly channels or social channels. And the consequent improverishment has in turn diminished the appeal of the pulpit to the general public. The sermon can only flourish in a society that lias faith, and that is profoundly concerned with spiritual things. Its golden age was tire seventeenth century, - when ■ men got as excited about predestination as we-get to-day about the capital levy or a fight between Carpcntier .and Dempsey, and when they were ready to slay or be slain for a comma in a creed. The , gorgeous pulpit eloquence of those "days— —of Donne, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter/and the rest—comes down to me likd music from another sphere. Sor. mons cofild ,not then be too long. John Howe won Cromwell’s heart by turning the hour-glass in the pulpit and going gravely bn to the second haUr; and the records of physical feats' of Puritan preachers read like the achievements of another order of creation.

Is the pulpit doomed to. extinction? Have the printing press, with its torrent of books and newspapers, the kinerna, the broadcasting agency, and other appeals to the popular mind disestablished the preacher and reduced the sermon to obsolescence? I do not think so. We are in the trough, of a great wave of reaction, but there will be a revival of interest in the things of the spirit, and the preacher will come back oiii the flow of the tide. He will not charm,us with the olu aerial music, nor will he lash us into frenzy over the dead dogmas that kept the Puritans enthralled by ' the hour.’ It is significant of the preaching of the' future, and the response that awaits it, that the most conspicuous figure in the London pulpit to.day is a hian who faces the problems of life with a/freshness and intrepedity that give religion a vital relation to everyday existence. The great preacher of other days “raised a mortal la the skies”;the preacher of the future will “draw an angel down.” In the revival of the pulpit the appeal to mere emotion will not serve. “Every attempt in a sermon,” said Coleridge, “to cause emotion, except as the consequence of an impression made on the reason, or the understanding or the will, I hold to be fanatical and. sectarian.” And for this reason he expressed his preference for the sermon that was honestly read rather than for the extemporised sermon. “I never yet heard,” he said, “more than one preacher without a book who did not forget his argument in three minutes’ time, and tall into vague and unprofitable declamation.”