ART. IV.-SAINT PAUL: A STUDY FOR PREACHERS

IT is not unusual to hear Browning spoken of as the preacher's poet, though the exact reason for his selection is not easily determined; for he is often obscure to the point of density, frequently so ambiguous as to be open to almost any interpretation, and always so involved and convoluted as to be beyond the reach of the ordinary mind. By many Emerson is regarded as the preacher's essayist, but, though his writings occupy a place all their own, he is impractical, indefinite, transcendental; no more adapted to the eager, virile work of the pulpit than sails of fine lace for a ship in winter storms. Carlyle, the sage of Chelsea, the stern preacher of righteousness and England's mentor for many years, has been held up as a model, but his pages are full of the turgid, bombastic, declamatory, and his style, though stimulating at times, has little that is worthy of imitation. But is it not singular that, in our search for studies and examples under which the preacher may be inspired to nobler work, Saint Paul has been practically ignored? He has been lauded as a missionary, and his tours have been graven on maps and charts without number; he has been admired without stint as a writer, and men have vied with each other in paying tribute to the purity of his style, the force of his logic, the vigor yet elegance of his pen; he has been revered as a saint, and his wonderful devotion to the cause of Christ, his unswerving loyalty to the gospel, his life of toil and sacrifice, have been so dwelt upon in public discourse that his name is now a world-wide possession; but as a preacher he is rarely spoken of. Yet in many respects he ought to be both a study and example for the preachers of this generation.

He had a definite conversion. And just as the keel underlies the ship, making possible the hull and decks; or as the foundation supports the house, giving form and substance to the entire structure, so with Saint Paul's conversion and his ministry. It was so clear, so positive, so absolute, that, from that day on the Damascus road, until that other day when he was led from he

Roman dungeon to the place of martyrdom, we never once find in him a doubt, or a fear, or a misgiving, regarding the gospel he had been called to preach. It may be that God in these later years needs no longer to send such a vision as that given to Saint Paul when the heavens blazed with light, when a Voice divine and commanding spoke from the shining sky, and when the glory was so overwhelming that the stricken, helpless man fell, blinded, to the earth. But the conversion of the one who would minister in holy things in these days must be just as positive as in the case of Saint Paul. Anything else means vagueness, doubt, and ultimately drifting into mere speculation and mysticism. Unless a preacher knows by personal experience that Christ is a Saviour from sin, how can he preach salvation? Unless he has had an actual vision of Jesus, one that has translated him from darkness to light, changed the world to him and changed him to the world, how can he preach a gospel which demands a new life, a renewed heart, a transformed character, the forsaking of everything pertaining to sin, and the completion of manhood in Jesus Christ? The reason there is so much uncertainty in our preaching is because we have not had a vision of Christ, we have not stood face to face with him as Paul did on the Damascus highway; we have not met him as consciously as Moses met God on Sinai and Elijah on Horeb. Hence we are often as one that beateth the air, the message we bring is only as sounding brass or tinkling cyınbal, no mysterious unction accompanies the word. Not having seen or felt the awful reality of spiritual and eternal things, we are unable to make these things real to those who hear us. We may have seen the bush in the wilderness but not the divine flame in which it was enwrapped, nor heard the Voice speaking from the fire. So the sermon is dull and unprofitable.

Paul had a divine call. Of this he speaks when before Agrippa and he refers to it many times in his epistles. With him the ministry was not a profession in which he might exercise his varied gifts, a vocation adapted to his mental resources and acquirements. It was not a position to be sought after or ambitiously desired, but a high, solemn office to which one could only

be called by the direct grace of the Holy Spirit. And he is careful to state that when he was called to this ministry he conferred not with flesh and blood. In this he was wise; eminently so. When a young man, under the influence of God's Spirit, is beginning to feel "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel," the less he confers with flesh and blood the more certain he is of entering into and understanding the divine will. For friends, even the best and wisest, are not free from unworthy motive; they are partial, prejudiced, liable to mistake, and will sometimes advise contrary to the purpose of God. Flesh and blood have too much influence in this matter. Because a young man has certain gifts of speech, is fluent, ready, confident, has had some advantages by way of education, shown a measure of ability in church work or the leadership of meetings, because he may have been born in a parsonage, or have blood relationships to a university, it is often assumed that he has been called to the ministry; so he enters it as a business, or a profession, with no assurance of a distinct divine call to that work. What is the result? Having no overwhelming, all-absorbing consciousness that he is rendering the service assigned him by the divine Head of the church, he cannot speak with authority, he cannot announce himself as a man sent from God, he cannot declare that he is a herald bearing a message from the King. Soon, very soon, the people to whom he ministers realize his position. So they listen to him as a lecturer, an essayist, a public speaker, a pulpit entertainer, not as a prophet of the King immortal, eternal, and invisible. After a time, when the vivacity of youth has departed, the fires of early eloquence died down, the poetic phrase worked out into common prose, he becomes tiresome, monotonous, a dead weight upon the church, without energy, without enthusiasm, with no power to awaken a community or arouse men who are dead in trespasses and sins. And then of what use is he? Possibly he may assist in paying off church debts, repairing church property, canvassing for church papers, but as a preacher, a thrilling, mighty, convincing preacher, who makes men think, compels them to hear, startles them from their lethargy, brings the truth with amazing force to their con

science, and finally leads them to Christ-in all these things he is a failure too deep and serious for human thought to estimate. And more serious still is the effect upon the people. For in many instances they have come to regard the ministry as a profession and the preacher a professional, so they treat him as a hireling; a man who may be hired at a salary to supply the pulpit; just as a sexton may be hired to take care of the church property or an organist to play the organ. Without a divine call, a clear, definite expression of the Holy Ghost, no man can ever hope to be a successful minister of the gospel of the grace of God.

Paul had special preparation. This does not refer to his training in the schools of Tarsus nor to his pupilage at the feet of Gamaliel. So peculiar is the work of the Christian minister, so mysterious are the results he must labor to secure, so farreaching are the effects of his preaching, and so solemn are the matters over which he has control that, altogether apart from the schools-however high-there must be a special tuition, a distinct preparation, before he takes his place as an accredited ambassador of God. We see this in the case of Moses, for though he was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians yet he must needs have the revelation of the burning bush to qualify him for leadership. We see it also with Isaiah, who could not enter on his prophetic office until he had seen God in his temple and beheld him high and lifted up. Hence we find Paul, soon after that memorable day on the Damascus road, going, not up to Jerusalem to receive ordination at the hands of the elders, but into the wilderness, to the region known as Arabia, in which stood the holy mount where God gave to men the revelation of his will. Under the shadow of Sinai, wind-swept, fire-scorched, storm-shaken, down whose granite crags the voice of God as a terrible trumpet had sounded, this man sat in awesome silence listening for the echoes of that mysterious day when heaven flashed something of its glories upon earth and when the mountain trembled to its base at the touch of the Almighty. No wonder that he afterward could write of the mountain that was touched with fire and smoke, or of the veil which shrouded the face of Moses when God spoke to him out of

the bending sky. From that desert experience Paul came to men with a supreme reverence for the law of God and an overwhelming sense of the majesty and purity of that law. Nor do we ever once find in him a doubt regarding the obligations of that law or the validity of the evidence on which it rests. He had no trouble as to the authorship of the Pentateuch. He had no apparent concern with the dual writings of Isaiah. The thought of the Book of Job as only a splendid dramatic poem had seemingly not entered his mind. He raised no question respecting the Psalms, and never gave an opinion that would tend to controversy. At no time did he claim for one prophet a larger measure of inspiration than for another. These things he left for men who have a genius for trifles; who would rather dig among Greek and Hebrew roots than eat of the tree of life. He may not have used the daring phrase of Elijah, "Thus saith the Lord," nor always spoken with the splendid vehemence of Isaiah, but there was no faltering, no attempt at parley or compromise. To him the Scriptures were a revelation of God's will. Through them God had spoken to men and so he studied them profoundly. He knew them thoroughly. Their inner and deeper meanings became plain to his mind. He saw in the allegory, the incident, the ceremony, what God intended. The word therefore was to be received without question. It was absolute. It was not a subject of doubt or gainsay, for God at sundry times and in divers manners had spoken unto the fathers by the prophets. Possibly much of the doubt now disturbing the public mind, the uncertainty under which many labor, the latent, if not positive, unbelief regarding the Scriptures, is owing to the lack of special preparation on the part of the preacher. True, he has gone to the schools of Tarsus and can show the parchment with seal and ribbon, and he has also taken a full course under Gamaliel, but has he spent years of deep, earnest study in the word of God-reaching to its inner meanings, absorbing its mysterious spirit, realizing its divine purpose-until there has come into his soul a profound conviction, fixed, firm, immovable, that the law of the Lord is perfect, and that, though the heavens and the earth may pass away, the Word of the Lord abideth forever?