50 APOLOGETIC PREACHING by nobler laws and by a mightier power for good than all others set before them. God's present creation. Let them see it springing up in the midst of modern society; let them see His divine kingdom revealing to all men a merciful God, a saving Christ, a sanctifying Spirit; let them see it in your homes and families, your words and deeds, etc. POINT 4: CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM.-Have you ever thought how strangely and marvelously Christianity is at once the most pessimistic and most optimistic of all the philosophies of life? In one aspect it is essentially pessimistic. What can be more pessimistic from the view of humanity than this, that it was so utterly lost that it needed the Omnipotent to come. to its rescue? What can be more optimistic than the thought that the Divinity has allied itself with humanity in order that humanity may be made partakers of the Divine nature? Yes. Christianity is pessimistic. We see that human nature can descend from the glory of a Paul or a John to the foulness of a Whitechapel murderer, and rise to the height of a Father Damien. Between these two extremes who can frame a theory that will fit both? Who can tell us why there is so much of the ape, the tiger, and yet so much of the angel in men? Christianity can tell us. In the redemption and glorification of humanity through Christ humanity has lost itself in Christ as its regenerator. PERORATION.-You, the pessimist, tell me of the sorrow, the suffering, the misery of humanity, and I tell of the time when death shall be destroyed and when sorrow and sighing shall be done away with, and when men will weep no more. You tell me here of mystery and difficulty and perplexity, and I tell you of the time when we shall know even as we are known; doubt and mystery, like sin and sorrow and shame, shall fade away in the white light around the throne on which sits the Lamb that died for mankind. There, in the future, lies the completed optimism of Christianity. Here, in the Christian life, though working feebly and imperfectly as it does, is to be seen the evidence of the truth of Christianity that we may take home to our hearts. Let us strengthen this evidence, each one of us, in our daily Christian life, and meanwhile we can patiently await the time when the day of full unclouded vision shall dawn, and the shadows of our fears and doubts shall flee away for ever. CHAPTER II THE PREACHER'S AIM I. THE NEED OF AN AIM BEFORE we can profitably discuss the means by which we may hope to become useful preachers, it is necessary to form some definite conception of our end or aim in preaching. For without a clear conception of our end we cannot judge whether the means we adopt in training ourselves for the sacred task which God has laid upon us are the right and the best possible means for attaining our end. It is from the neglect of a clear conception of our end that we lose innumerable opportunities, and that so much preaching can only be described as a tragedy of aimlessness. II. INADEQUATE ENDS We may note two ends which seem inadequate to satisfy the ideal of a Christian preacher: (a) The first is to be found in many books which are written from the Protestant point of view. They boldly declare that the one end of preaching is the salvation of man's soul, that the conversion of the individual soul is the one and only end of preaching. "The aim of the sermon is the salvation of men.” Of course, there is an element of truth in this, but it is a truth which needs to be supplemented by another truth, without which the half truth may become wholly false. If the one and only aim of the preacher is the conversion of souls, has he then no message for those who are already converted? Have those who think that they are converted no further need of listening to preaching? Is edification no longer needed? Such an inadequate conception seems to lie at the root of the decay of Protestantism, and its steady deterioration in spiritual values. For if the one and only aim of preaching is the salvation of men, then it is necessary to attract them 52 THE PREACHER'S AIM to listen, and the preacher's aim soon becomes to fill his church or chapel. Thus an inevitable deterioration takes place in the tone of the preacher's message, for people like to go where they can find a preacher who will acquiesce in their sins and flatter their vanity, or stimulate their jaded emotions by sensational methods. To modify our message in order that we may attract and please man is to betray the preacher's commission, which is to preach the Word of God, "whether they will hear or whether they will forbear." (b) In contrast with the mere individualistic aim of Protestant preaching, we may place the other extreme of mere submission-the ecclesiastical dogmatism which assures salvation to those who submit to the Church. If the conversion of the individual soul to a living and intelligent response to the Church's teaching is neglected, is there not a peril of the Church becoming a stagnant apathetic body of persons who have never taken the trouble personally to appropriate the Faith which they profess to believe? May not such preachers incur the condemnation of our Lord: "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte: and when he is become so ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves?" (S. Matt. xxiii. 15). History seems to condemn both these inadequate ends— the merely individualistic, and the merely corporate. For souls who profess to be "converted" have often nourished a repulsive spiritual selfishness in a pietism which has been tolerant of the grossest social iniquity, while the over-emphasis of the corporate aspect of religion has tended to paralyze the Church by substituting conformity for holiness. If we turn to the record of our Lord's preaching we find the harmonization of these two aims. For He came preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and the need of repentance. "Now after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the Gospel of God and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the Gospel" (S. Mark i. 14). CORPORATE AND INDIVIDUAL III. THE HEAVENLY PLACES 53 1. THE UNION OF CORPORATE AND INDIVIDUAL.-In this Gospel, which unites the corporate and the individual, the kingdom which demands a moral and spiritual response, the salvation from self which can only be won by willingly losing the individual life in the larger self of a Divine Fellowship, we find the solution of that problem which meets us on every plane of thought-how to harmonize the best interests of the individual with the needs of corporate life. Rightly to grasp this truth is so vital to a preacher that it is necessary to dwell for the moment on this subject. In our search for truth it seems that every branch of study and department of thought finds it difficult to transcend that dualism which fails fully to satisfy the soul, and yet which is the farthest point to which reason can conduct us. But in God we find the unification of this dualism and the full satisfaction of our nature; and in the heavenly places,' in fellowship with God, we find the unity of life, the home of reality, the shrine of absolute values, and the rock upon which the whole edifice of our thinking may be firmly built. In this fellowship with God in the heavenly places -philosophy no longer oscillates between finding reality in subject or in the object alone-reality is in relationship, in the relationship of subject to object-i.e., in the heavenly places. Here on earth the deepest truths have to be expressed in paradox: there, in the heavenly places, is the vision of the whole. Metaphysics having won its way by the light of reason to a dualism of being and in substance,2 lifts up its heart, and finds their unity in God. 2. ABSOLUTE VALUES.-The true artist passionably disclaims the utilitarian and the merely hedonistic explanation of beauty, refuses to recognize either the profiteer or the sensualist as the inspiration of his genius, and, lifting up his eyes, finds beauty to be the very radiance of the face of God. The scientist cannot tell us why the truth is to be preferred to what is false, and yet consecrates a lifetime of strenuous labor to the revelation of truth, which is enthroned in heavOf course "places" does not occur in S. Paul's phrase, nor does it represent his meaning, as it implies space and locality. "The heavenlies” suggest states, spheres, conditions, circles of being; but "places" seems best for conventional use. 1 2 See H. H. Slesser's "The Nature of Being," a study in ontology. 54 ABSOLUTE VALUES enly places in the Person of Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. So the saint cannot demonstrate his values, and yet knows that the good is the very life of his living, and love the very breath of his soul. In the kingdom of heaven everything that has absolute value the good, the beautiful, and the true, the ideal of the saint and artist and scholar, every thought of love, every word of kindness, every deed of self-sacrifice, the splendor of chivalry, the heroism of patient endurance, the courage of faith which stakes its life upon its highest impulse, the humility of the poor in spirit-find their home. The good, the beautiful, and the true are not like lovely flowers, which for a moment crown the upward striving of human effort and desire, and then fade away. They are, as seen by us, the manifestation in time of that which has its home and birthplace in eternity, the manifestation in space of that which knows no limit, the immortal whispering hope to a perishing world, the Real revealing itself in glimpses of the heavenly vision amidst the changing shadows of a transitory world. The angel's whisper to a maiden's heart, the angels' song upon the hills of Bethlehem, which have won from the ages an eternal echo, belong to the real and abiding world, the world of wills, while the sights and sounds which assail our senses belong to the transitory, ever-changing world which is for ever passing away. IV. THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE Man is a being who lives at the same moment on two planes of existence. His birthplace and his home is in the world of wills (the heavenly places); his school and pilgrimage and battlefield, where he is to make his soul, is in the world of the phenomenal, the world of appearances. Made of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, by his body he belongs to the animal creation, and inherits from them many of the instincts, impulses, passions, emotions, and desires which have survived the process of evolution; by his soul, in his power to think and will and love, he is made in the image of God. By his body he belongs to the things of time; by his soul to the things of eternity. By his body he is confined to the things. of space; by his soul he can play about in infinity. By his |