Preaching and Preachers

Preaching and Preachersit comes to your mind and when it seems to you to be inevitable. Or,if you like, only use a quotation when it seems to say perfectly thething that you were trying to say. It says it better than you can say it,it says it in what seems to you to be an almost perfect manner. Youmay think that I am making too much of this matter, but I can assureyou that I am not. Too many quotations in a sermon become verywearisome to the listener, and at times they can even be ridiculous. Iremember having a conversation one day with a man who had beenprofessor of poetry at Oxford and who was also a clergyman. We weretalking about this very matter and the way in which it was becomingquite ridiculous. He told me that the previous week he had beenlistening to a sermon in Westminster Abbey in London. The learnedpreacher having produced a mass of quotations (showing his profoundreading!) actually said at one point in his sermon, 'As EvelynUnderhill has been reminding us recently, God is love.'There is no need to comment. Everything has to be stated in theform of a quotation, and so we reach this position in which the truthis being concealed and the preacher makes himself ridiculous anddisgusts the people.A sermon is meant to be a proclamation of the truth of God asmediated through the preacher. People do not want to listen to astring of quotations of what other people have thought and said. Theyhave come to listen to you; you are the man of God, you have beencalled to the ministry, you have been ordained; and they want to hearthis great truth as it comes through you, through the whole of yourbeing. They expect it to have passed through your thought, to be apart of your experience; they want this authentic personal note. I canassure you that if your sermons are nothing but a string of quotations,some, probably the more ignorant people, win say, 'What a learnedman that was'; the others, and especially any preacher who may bepresent, will know exactly what you are doing. But what is invariablytrue is that there will be no power in your preaching. I can guaranteethat statement. There is never any power in sermons that consistsimply of 'as So-and-so has said', or 'So-and-so has reminded us' and222