The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1929 “IF I WERE A PREACHER”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1929 “IF I WERE A PREACHER”

kind of sermon would you preach if you could, or if you had the opportunity to preach at all? This question,* as answered by distinguished laymen and several novelists in Great Lntain, has provided a book with the title given to this article. The volume, one fears, will not become a “best seller.” Most of the answers show quite clearly that there is as much dullness of religious thought outside the church as a whole as there is within it, also, that it is much easier to criticise a poor preacher than it is to write the good sermon any layman would like to preach to a discontented, if not yet a deaf, generation. One of the most singular facts concerning the standard of preaching from pulpits nowadays is the emphasis with which critics, who never go to hear sermons, denounce preachers as being either too dull or too doleful. Such commentators apparently form their hollow conclusions on the principle that the best way to know a distant eountry is not to visit it. Their opinions, of course, are valueless, though probably they would be the first to believe that, if a chance were given them to preach, their sermons would be so pointed and so perfect as to put the whole world right again in a single Sunday evening. One imaginatively can hear them divide each community into two classes—the Predatory class and those less alert folk who represent the Prey—and go on with enthusiastic confidence to create a new heaven and a new earth inhabited only by great preachers and patient listeners.

"Unfortunately, the perfection desired everywhere is not so easily acquired. Those who are doing their best all the time to preach well and wisely find it difficult to satisfy their congregations whose patience and eagerness must be considered flawless because their number is not multitudinous. In Auckland this week several representatives of associations for the guidance of youth bluntly told the Council of Christian Congregations that modern girls, in particular, were critical of the Church, and found the sermons tedious, the prayers rambling and the church architecture dismal. There was plain talk of boredom and of a wistful discontent. “The minister of today secured loyalty, not because of his profession, but in spite of it, and his ministerial status was not an asset but a liability.” It is well, no doubt, that spiritual leaders in every community should know what each serious thinker in their congregations would say in a sermon on “if I were a Preacher”; but some old-fashioned people may be tempted to think of what a frank preacher could say if his theme were: “If I were a Modern Girl or a Modern Boy.” Let us glance at English opinion on the problem of preaching the right kind of sermons. A famous doctor, Sir Thomas Horder, believes that experience in his profession provides a good opportunity for effective preaching. He confesses that doctors occasionally feel like saying with Job, “How small a whisper do we hear of Him,” and also that they sometimes become a little impatient with those who view this life as a mere antechamber to a life to come. Still, doctors cannot afford to be materialists. Faith is a fundamental factor in their work, and they must interpret an inexorable law to their patients. Thus the secret of health and happiness is a medical sermon to the effect that there must be harmony between moral and physical laws of life. Not a bad sermon, that, and probably an exceptionally good prescription for most individuals, sick or well. If novelists were preachers (most of them are nowadays and preaching dull sermons) they would plead for clear teaching and the abandonment of moralising on the sins of weaker brethren. “If only our teachers would give us instruction in the history and philosophy of our religion” (pleads Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith) “then there is a chance that we should pass from these vain struggles in the sand to a firm foothold on the rock.” The benignant King’s Counsel, Mr. Augustine Birrell, would preach nothing else but tolerance, “not the easy-going, flippant toleration that is the sickly fruit of indifferentism, but that very difficult virtue of the mind and temper that is the only guarantee of honesty and freedom of thought.” A common sin would be assailed by that staunch crusader, Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton. “If I had only one sermon to preach,” he declares, “it would be a sermon against pride.” In a multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, but apparently it does not always follow that among them there will be a perfect sermon. Of course, the true perfection already has been attained, but its practice is not yet perfect. There never has been anything better than the Sermon on the Mount, and if the older generation, together with modern girls and modern boys, and modern preachers as well, accept it as the best sermon and attempt to obey its wisdom, it really would not matter much whether worshippers went in plus fours to church or wore sackcloth. “But ah! not yet, not yet!” Meanwhile, youth and their elders, easily could inspire preachers to be less tedious and rambling. They need only go to church more frequently than most of them do, and convince themselves that there is something more in life than an endless pursuit of pleasure. It seems rather too much to expect enjoyment of the best of everything in both worlds without deserving it. °