Preaching and Preachers

Preaching and PreachersAbove all; do not puton a 'parsonic' voice.What a terrible thing thatis, and yet how common. Young men develop this bad habit; theyhear others and they begin to use the same affected parsonic unnaturalvoice. It offends people. Still worse is to put on a false appearance ofpiety -sanctimoniousness. What a horrible thing that is! According toa famous story Spurgeon once ridiculed this, rightly or wrongly, inthe case of certain people whom he felt were somewhat guilty of thisin his day. Adapting those words in Acts I : I I he said, 'Yemen of ...why stand ye there looking up into the heavens.' He was out to ridiculethe type of person who looks upwards with a sanctimoniousexpression, persuading himself that he is very pious. He also saidanother very wise thing in the same connection. He said that wheneveryou see a man who has a reputation of looking very saintly, andwho rather enjoys that reputation, you can be quite sure that heprobably has a bad liver. I agree one hundred per cent! The NewTestament tells us that when we are fasting 'to anoint the face withoil'; indeed to do everything you can not to give the impression thatyou are fasting. You must not call attention to yourself and what youare and what you are doing.Another footnote-avoid chattiness and the so-called easy style.How unworthy all this is in connection with these things. Again:never be histrionic. Do not cultivate or practise gestures. Everythingthat is histrionic should be avoided.What is the rule then? It is: be natural; forget yourself; be soabsorbed in what you are doing and in the realisation of the presenceof God, and in the glory and the greatness of the Truth that you arepreaching, and the occasion that brings you together, that you are sotaken up by all this that you forget yourself completely. That is theright condition; that is the only place of safety; that is the only way inwhich you can honour God. Self is the greatest enemy of the preacher,more so than in the case of any other man in society. And the only wayto deal with self is to be so taken up with, and so enraptured by, theglory of what you are doing, that you forget yourself altogether.