Preaching and Preachers

Preaching and Preachersfinal undoing. I have remembered that sermon, showing thereby thatsometimes even though a man does not always keep to the ruleshe gets his lesson home! All I am concerned to say is, watch yourstrength whatever it may be, your hair or anything else. Do not makea display of it.The sum total of all this is that the greatest of all the temptationsthat assail a preacher is pride. Pride, because he is set up there almoston a pedestal. He is standing in a pulpit, he is above the people, all ofwhom are looking at him. He has this leading place in the Church, inthe community; and so his greatest temptation is that of pride. Prideis probably the deadliest and the most subtle of all sins, and it canassume many forms; but as long as one realises this all is well. ThoughI have already said something about how to deal with it let me add afurther word because it is so important. The best way of checking anytendency to pride-pride in your preaching or in anything else thatyou may do or may be-is to read on Sunday nights the biography ofsome great saint. It does not matter which, or to which century orbranch of the Church he belonged as long as he was a saint. Ifyou aretempted to think that you have done unusually well, and that nobodyever preached like that before, well justdip intoWhitefield's Journals;and I guarantee that you will be cured in less than five minutes. Ortake up a biography of David Brainerd or someone like that; and ifthat does not bring you to earth then I pronounce that you are just aprofessional and beyond hope. But that is the antidote; bring yourselfdown.•Those then are some of the special dangers confronting the preacher.But now with regard to the sermon. I bring that in here because whenI was dealing with the preparation of the sermon I was anxious to doso in general. There are further special points or refinements inaddition to what we have been saying. With regard to the sermonitself, therefore, beware of too much intellect. I put that first, particularlyto those who are somewhat more gifted especially in the realm of256