honestly applied to ourselves, cannot fail of the human touch if we make no demand of our hearers that we have not first made of our own hearts only, we must not make the mistake of applying the rule of thumb to the visions and agonies of prophets and apostles; we must not imagine that "the mystery of godliness" can be wholly sphered in our personal experience of it. A truer knowledge of the inner life of men, especially the right interpretation of our own experience, will certainly give to the pulpit a closer touch with the human heart. "Perhaps the chief value of the study of human growth and development is in the reinforcement which comes to the central truths of Christianity when they are interpreted in terms of life. Many theological difficulties are to be solved, not by the pathway of metaphysics, but by a deeper understanding of the spiritual life of man. Perhaps the chief advance which preachers like Robertson of Brighton and Phillips Brooks made on their predecessors lies here. We cannot claim that these modern prophets excel their great forbears in philosophic grasp, in logical acumen, but they clearly do excel in their psychological power, in their capacity for intuition into the hopes and fears and remorses and aspirations of humanity. They lay bare our hearts; they flash a torch in the secret chambers of imagery; they expose our deepest motives to our startled gaze, and interpret our confused struggle with a seer's insight." (Faunce, p. 183.) 3. The human touch comes from faith in the Christ to meet the nature of man and faith in man to respond to the truth. Its spirit is hopefulness. It believes in the sonship of man and calls it forth. There is no place for censoriousness in a pulpit that is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and knows the struggles and fears of the human heart. A critical mind is necessary that can separate the false from the true, the accidental from the essential. But a positive, hopeful, constructive preaching is that which knows the real nature of man, lays hold of his deepest needs, and awakens and sustains in him the life of the spirit. The human touch the brotherhood of the preacher will express itself in the most subtle and effective ways. It will permeate the message of the sermon, and make it felt as a word of life. Truth will be regarded not as something thought out, but also felt out, and lived out. The effort will be not so much to give the opinions about truth, as to connect the message with every man's life. The sermon is not a mere thoughtful and suggestive discussion about some truth of Christ, but the effort, as a messenger, directly to convey his word. Its supreme aim is not the giving of knowledge, but the giving of life. So, inevitably, the preacher of a broad and sympathetic humanity will not magnify local and individual peculiarities, but dwell upon those truths that are for all men. He will be forever trying to get beneath that form of truth which is temporary and arbitrary, to that which is natural and essential and eternal. Here, I take it, is the special power of the message of Phillips Brooks. It is so fitted to man, so human in the divinest sense, so essential in its nature, that it has the power of the great heart from which it comes, and adaptation to every man. The preacher with the human touch will constantly make his appeal to life, will show his kinship with men. His first thought will be to find the point of contact with his audience, and all he says and does will have the aim of helpfulness. Explanation, processes of reasoning, illustration, will have one I test applied, will it commend the word to the hearts of men? Its speech will be human, the best speech of daily life. It will not wear the garments of a profession, it will not speak a peculiar dialect, known to the religious; it will be instinct with life, using such speech as will quickest convey the message to the hearts of men, such speech as you use with men when you discuss matters of common interest. However, let it be remembered that it is no mark of genuine sympathy with men, and never commends the Gospel of the Son of Man, to use careless, irreverent speech. The spirit of humanness is seen in the whole attitude of the preacher to his people. He is a brother-man, unable to condescend, and too brave to flatter, a man of like passions, strong to rebuke evil and quick to pity the sinner, commanding by virtue of his manhood, and persuading by the reasonableness of his word and the tenderness and sincerity of his feeling. |