|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 65
And that brings us to the theme of this final discussion. For I am one
of those who believe that great preaching is doctrinal preaching and
that it is particularly needed at this hour. The comparative neglect
of the New Testament in favor of the Old in contemporary preaching;
the use and nature of the expository method--no less than the
unworshipful character of our services--appear to me to offer a final
and conclusive proof of the unreligious overhumanistic emphases of our
interpretation of religion. And if we are to have a religious revival,
then it seems to me worshipful services must be accompanied by
speculative preaching and I doubt if the one can be nobly maintained
without the other. For we saw that worship is the direct experience
of the Absolute through high and concentrated feeling. Even so
speculative and, in general, doctrinal preaching is the same return
to first principles and to ultimate values in the realm of ideas.
It turns away from the immediate, the practical, the relative to the
final and absolute in the domain of thought.
Now, obviously, then, devout services and doctrinal preaching should
go together. No high and persistent emotions can be maintained without
clear thinking to nourish and steady them. There is in doctrinal
preaching a certain indifference to immediate issues; to detailed
applications. It deals, by its nature, with comprehensive and abstract
rather than local and concrete thinking; with inclusive feeling,
transcendent aspiration. It does not try to pietize the ordinary,
commercial and domestic affairs of men. Instead it deals with the
highest questions and perceptions of human life; argues from those
sublime hypotheses which are the very subsoil of the religious
temperament and understanding. It deals with those aspects of human
life which indeed include, but include because they transcend, the
commercial and domestic, the professional and political affairs of
daily living. We have been insisting in these chapters that it is that
portion of human need and experience which lies between the knowable
and the unknowable with which it is the preacher's chief province to
deal. Doctrinal preaching endeavors to give form and relations to its
intuitions and high desires, its unattainable longings and insights.
There is a native alliance between the doctrine of Immanence and
expository preaching. For the office of both is to give us the God of
this world in the affairs of the moment. There is a native alliance
between expository preaching and humanism which very largely accounts
for the latter's popularity. For expository preaching, as at present
practiced, deals mostly with ethical and practical issues, with the
setting of the house of this world in order. There is also a native
and majestic alliance between the idea of transcendence and doctrinal
preaching and between the facts of the religious experience and the
content of speculative philosophy. Not pragmatism but pure metaphysics
is the native language of the mind when it moves in the spiritual
world.
But I am aware that already I have lost my reader's sympathy. You do
not desire to preach doctrinal sermons and while you may read with
amiable patience and faintly smiling complacency this discussion,
you have no intention of following its advice. We tend to think that
doctrinal sermons are outmoded--old-fashioned and unpopular--and we
dread as we dread few other things, not being up to date. Besides,
doctrinal preaching offers little of that opportunity which is found
in expository and yet more in topical preaching for exploiting our
own personalities. Some of us are young. It is merely a polite way of
saying that we are egotistical. We know in our secret heart of hearts
that the main thing that we have to give the world is our own new,
fresh selves with their corrected and arresting understanding of the
world. We are modestly yet eagerly ready to bestow that gift of ours
upon the waiting congregation. One of the few compensations of growing
old is that, as the hot inner fires burn lower, this self-absorption
lessens and we become disinterested and judicial observers of life and
find so much pleasure in other people's successes and so much wisdom
in other folk's ideas. But not so for youth; it isn't what the past or
the collective mind and heart have formulated: it's what you've got
to say that interests you. Hence it is probably true that doctrinal
preaching, in the very nature of things, makes no strong appeal to men
who are beginning the ministry.
But there are other objections which are more serious, because
inherent in the very genius of doctrinal preaching itself. First:
such preaching is more or less remote from contemporary and practical
issues. It deals with thought, not actions; understanding rather than
efficiency; principles rather than applications. It moves among the
basic concepts of the religious life; deals with matters beyond and
above and without the tumultuous issues of the moment. So it follows
that doctrinal preaching has an air of detachment, almost of seclusion
from the world; the preacher brings his message from some pale world
of ideas to this quick world of action. And we are afraid of this
detachment, the abstract and theoretical nature of the thinker's
sermon.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|