Preaching and Preachers

Preaching and Preachersinterested in preaching as they used to be; but I am quite certainthat it was this over-attention to the literary style and perfect formof the service towards the end of the last century, and the beginningof this century, that did such grievous harm to preaching and thewhole cause of preaching.This brings us to the question of the use of quotations. This againcan be quite an involved and difficult matter. It is certainly a moreacute problem today than the previous one. This is because we allthink we are more learned, and that our congregations are morelearned and better educated and have more knowledge. And thetemptation is to think that the proof of learning is the number ofquotations used. This is particularly true, as you know, with regardto books. How do you decide whether a man is a scholar or not? Thesimple answer is-by the number of footnotes. Ifhe has no footnotesand copious references to other writers and quotations from them, heis not a scholar, he is not a thinker, and vice versa. This of course isjust ridiculous. What we should be interested in is a man's quality ofmind, his capacity for thinking, and his originality; not the number offootnotes. But this is the whole tendency at the present time. Butwhen it comes into preaching it becomes a deadly menace. Nothingcan militate more against true preaching than this.Why do I say this? One answer is that the real object in usingquotations should not be to show your learning or to call attention toyourself. If it is, you had better not use a single quotation becauseyour motive is entirely wrong. I remember the Principal of a theologicalcollege who had a considerable vogue as a popular preacher forsome few years in Britain. One day he was asked to preach asermon on the radio in about two months' time. He immediatelybegan to read through the Oxford Bookof ReligiousVerse and similarbooks. What for? To find a striking quotation with which to start thesermon. He not only did that himself, he got some of his favouritestudents to do the same thing; he urged them to read such poetry onhis behalf. He told them what his theme was going to be, and theywere to look for some striking quotation to give an arresting opening220