OVERSEER COURSE LESSON SEVENTY-NINE

THE POWER OF A GREAT SERMON

The Preacher and the hearer

Henry Epps
founder
HARVEST LIFE
GLOBAL NETWORK
Overseer Course Lesson 79
 Lesson Seventy-Nine

The preacher and the Hearer

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The Preacher and his Hearer

Summary
Eloquent hearing as necessary as eloquent speaking.
Importance of Obtaining such a Hearing
This is possible. Illustrations from the History of Preaching.
It is essential to our doing our best work.
Yet there are hindrances to effectual hearing: (1) A natural repugnance to religion; (2) Natural
inattention of most hearers; (3) An indisposition to think consecutively; (4) The hearer's lack of
previous information as to the subject of the discourse; (5) A poor sermon or a prejudice against
the preacher.
How Such a Hearing May be Obtained
1. By attention to the preparation of the sermon. Prepare it with the audience in view: (1) In the
choice of a theme; (2) In the composition of the sermon: First, interest. (a) Do not create a feeling
of distaste; (b) Aim to interest all classes; Second, instruct; Third, convince; Fourth, inspire.

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2. By attention to the delivery of the sermon: (1) It should be suitable to the occasion; (2) It should
be sympathetic; (3) It should be earnest.

Conclusion
Up to this time we have been chiefly interested in the preacher and his sermon. Before we close
our discussion it will be well that something should be said as to the third essential to a successful
presentation of truth, I mean the congregation. Eloquent hearing is needed to-day no less than
eloquent hearing. This no doubt is what is meant by the injunction so often on the lips of Jesus,
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Matthew 11:15; Mark 4:9, 23; Luke 8:8). When Dr. F. J.
A. Hort writes of F. D. Maurice, "I have thought for years that he is intelligible and profitable to a
person so far as that person needs him and no farther," he expresses a truth which is capable of
very wide application. We also must stimulate the craving for truth, and alike in stimulating and
satisfying we shall find our reward in what for our present purpose we will call eloquent hearing.
I. First, then let us glance at the importance of obtaining an attentive and responsive hearing. How
important this is will be evident if we consider that more perhaps than any other form of address
the sermon is of immediate moment, because, as Richard Hooker says, the sermon "spends its life
at its birth"; with the preacher it is "now or never."
1. The whole history of the Christian pulpit furnishes abundant proof that it is possible for the
preacher to obtain the hearing of which we are now speaking. Jesus had it. Preaching at Nazareth,
in his early ministry, as he spoke, the eyes of all that were in the synagogue were fastened on him;
and when that ministry drew to its close, as he walked with two of his disciples and opened to them
the Scriptures, their hearts burned within them. The apostles and first preachers had it. To this the
sermons of Peter and Paul, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, bear witness. Later preachers have
had it also. "Better that the sun should cease to shine," cried the throngs at Constantinople, "than
that our Chrysostom's mouth should be stopped." As Savonarola exposes the evils which threaten
Florence, the disciple who is taking notes of his master's discourse can write no longer. "At this
place I was so overcome by weeping that I could not go on." The church, wardens of St. Margaret's
Church, Westminster, find themselves under the necessity of paying the carpenter "for mending of
divers pews that were broken when Dr. Latimer did preach." A Cambridge student gives a boy a
few half-pence to hold his horse while he follows a crowd of peasants on the village green who
are flocking to hear "one Bunyan, a tinker, prate." As he listens he vows that he wishes never to
hear any other preacher than he. To the Connecticut farmer pushing his way to the place where
Whitefield is preaching "like one of the old aposels," "every horse seemed to go with all his might
to carry his rider to hear the good news from Heaven for the saving of their souls."
2. Such a hearing is essential if our ministry is to do its best work. The minister shows his wisdom
when he guards against the subtle and plausible vanity "which courts a compliment or is fed by
it." When some one told John Bunyan at the close of a religious service that he had preached a
good sermon, the answer was "Yes, the devil told me that before I came down from the pulpit." "It
is not good," says manly Phillips Brooks, "that the minister should be worshiped and made an
oracle. It is still worse that he should be flattered and made a pet." But the knowledge that in his

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congregation he has devout and intelligent hearers who listen for his sake as well as for their own,
is unspeakably helpful to the preacher if he is a true man. Happy indeed is he who can with reason
cherish it. John Foster, detailing to a correspondent his early experience in the pulpit, writes: "I
have involuntarily caught a habit of looking too much on the right hand side of the meeting. 'Tis
on account of about half a dozen sensible fellows who sit together there." To his mend John
Greene, Robert Hall said, with his wonted frankness, "O sir, I could always tell when my people
were pleased and when the subject told, from their manner of hearing." It was the general fervor
of the congregations which gave such acceptance to the sermons of the preachers during the
evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century, and this in a large measure accounts for the
eagerness with which discourses were then received, which are "curiously flat, formal, and
unimpressive" to us when we occasionally disturb the dust of a century in order to get at them.
Spurgeon reveals the secret of their efficacy when he says, "I have listened to many sermons from
preachers called poor, in all corners of the country, and I never heard one which did not teach me
something, if I was in the spirit to profit by it." The mediaeval legend commemorates a popular
preacher under whose sermons numbers were converted, and to whom it was revealed that not to
what he said were these effects due so much as to the prayers of a poor and obscure peasant who
sat on the pulpit steps, and poured out his heart in prayer for a blessing on the message which was
being delivered. And George Herbert, in his own quaint way, points our thoughts even higher than
the pulpit steps when he sings of preachers:

The worst speaks something good; if all lack sense,

3. Yet it is evident that there are many hindrances in the way of this effectual hearing. Let us
inquire what causes conduce to make it a thing so rare to find and so hard to retain as it seems to
be.
(1) Perhaps we must mention first among these, a natural repugnance to religion. To a parishioner
who told Archbishop Whately that he thought a person should not go to church to be made
uncomfortable, the apt reply was, that while this was true, yet whether it was the sermon or the
man's life that should be altered so as to avoid the discomfort must depend on whether the doctrine
was right or wrong. And be it remembered that however much the claims of religion are neglected,
despised, or challenged, it has remained an incontrovertible fact all through time that there is no
other subject of such widespread, profound, and abiding interest as religion.
(2) Something should also be granted on account of the natural inattention of most hearers. No
doubt the great preachers to whom we have referred succeeded in absorbing the attention of their
congregations so that for the time they held them spell-bound; but the large majority of speakers,

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whether from pulpit or platform or stage, have this trouble of inattention to contend with. The mind
is very easily turned aside by external circumstances. Even Chrysostom needs to remonstrate: "I
am expounding the Scriptures, and you all turn your eyes to the lamps, and to him who is lighting
them. What negligence is this to forsake me, and fix your minds on him!" But Chrysostom should
have understood human nature better than to lose his temper. Sydney Smith wittily said what every
preacher knows to be true: "A sparrow fluttering about the church is an antagonist which the most
profound theologian in Europe is wholly unable to overcome." There is a certain sequence in the
very inconsequence of Samuel Pepys when he wrote in his diary one Lord's Day in January, 1660:
"To church in the afternoon, where a lazy poor sermon. This day I began to put on buckles to my
shoes." A little later when Dr. Samuel Johnson looks over a London congregation, he says in his
gruff way: "The men are thinking of their money, I suppose, and the women of their mops." Even
courteous Longfellow has to acknowledge to himself in his journal: "I cannot always listen to the
clergyman." Luther preached a duty which he himself would have been the last man to practice
when he said: "If God speaketh to thee as he did to Balaam—by the mouth of an ass—thou must
have so much patience as to hear him." With much more reason Professor Huxley, who had not
the hearing of sermons in mind either, wrote: "An ineradicable tendency to think of something else
makes me an excellent test-object for orators." Probably in the discussions which are periodically
waged on the decline of the pulpit, not enough allowance has been made for obstacles to good
hearing other than those which are furnished by either the preacher or the discourse. Something
needs to be said as to the physical condition of the hearer, and still more on the state of mind in
which he comes to church. The heavy meal, the hurried pace due to Sunday lateness, the
multifarious and often ignoble contents of the morning newspaper, a thermometer which registers
in the eighties, a close, ill-ventilated building, these are hindrances to effectual hearing for which
no preacher ought to be held wholly responsible.
(3) To this may be added a certain inability to think long upon anyone subject. The spirit of Martha
may enter into Mary at the very time when she sits at the Master's feet. With its many petty details,
much serving diverts the mind from much thinking. It is not so much lack of interest in the subject
upon which the preacher is speaking as it is lack of power to think on anything whatever
consecutively. James Mill, for so many years in the service of the East India Company, says that
his intercourse with the directors taught him to cultivate "the mode of putting a thought which
gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared for it by habit." The majority of devout persons
in our congregations have probably felt much more than they have thought about religion, and
sometimes they seem to resent an appeal to their intelligence almost as though they suspected the
preacher of an attempt to impose upon them a duty which they have paid him to perform for them.
(4) We need. further, to make full allowance for the fact that as a rule the hearer is entirely in the
dark as to what subject the preacher has selected for his discourse. What he has been revolving for
a week, is to the congregation altogether new. It is unreasonable to expect that they will be able at
once, on the announcing of his text and theme, to adapt their pace to his. He moves with the
velocity acquired by hours of previous study. Dr. R. W. Dale, it is said, allowed himself fifteen
years to get a new idea into the minds of his congregation; and yet as a consequence of long and
careful listening to the best kind of sermons, his people were better prepared than are most hearers
to grasp a thought and apprehend its various bearings.

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(5) Honesty compels me to add that a poor sermon or perhaps a not altogether groundless prejudice
against the preacher himself, may account for his not gaining the attention of a congregation. An
uninteresting theme, or unworthy treatment of it, an awkward or unseemly delivery, a failure on
the part of the speaker to commend himself to his hearers—are all of them obstacles to be
numbered among the hindrances to effectual hearing.
In what has been said under this division of our subject my aim has been to impress the preacher
alike with the importance and the difficulty of winning "the hearing ear." Unquestionably it is one
of the prime elements in his power in the pulpit. We refuse to take Luther seriously when he says
that as he stands in the pulpit he imagines that all heads before him are simply blocks of wood.
To think that would be fatal to successful speech. Cicero's maxim is perpetually true, "Non est
magnus orator sine multitudine audiente." As an orator, Mr. Gladstone rarely failed to illustrate
his own words, "The speaker receives from his audience in a vapor what he pours back on them in
a flood." Beecher is of the same mind: "An audience always puts me in possession of everything I
have got. There is nothing in the world that is such a stimulus to me. It wakes up the power of
thinking and of imagination in me." The man who listens to a discourse which, although probably
in words far better than he could command, expresses his own experience, or perhaps discovers to
him some train of thought which has been in his own mind before, although he was only dimly
conscious of its presence, seeing all the while to be hearing his own better self. This was what the
church-goers of an earlier generation meant when they said in commendation of a sermon that they
"heard well"; and it is what Lowell puts into homely verse when he writes:

To him 'tis granted

II. How may such a hearing be obtained? Briefly, we answer, By paying the proper attention to the
preparation and delivery of the sermon.

1. In dealing first with the preparation of the sermon let me repeat that the preacher must learn to
prepare it with his audience in view.
(1) Do this, for one thing, in the choice of your theme. Take subjects upon which either light or
leading is needed. Select topics that are of immediate interest. "The man who is out of gear with
his own times, cannot interest others." Learn to set aside your own tastes and instead to consult

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those of what Phillips Brooks happily calls that "strange composite being, the congregation."
Remember that the limitations of Scripture are the only boundaries which you need to respect in
this important matter of finding something to speak about. Be like the Scottish preacher of whom
it is written: "He stood always at the foot of the Cross, but from that center he swept the
circumference of active life" By all means let your selection be made with an eye to the highest
interests of the congregation. Commenting on the words "For you Gentiles" , Dr. R. W. Dale notes
how they suggest the personal element in Paul's work. "It was for the sake of persons—Gentiles,
living men and women—that he preached the Gospel, and for their sakes he was a prisoner." And
then he adds: "In a book on preaching by a distinguished French priest, which I read some years
ago, it was laid down as the first essential that the preacher should love his congregation. There
is truth in that." So to a popular preacher with whom he was conversing, Doctor Bonar said, "You
love to preach, don't you?" and when he received the answer, "Yes, I do," put this further question,
"But do you love the men to whom you preach?" It is this affectionate solicitude for the true
interests of his congregation that we catch in Andrew Fuller's soliloquy in his study:
"I am expected to preach, it may be, to some hundreds of people, some of whom may come several
miles to hear; and what have I to say to them? Is it for me to sit here studying a text merely to find
something to say to fill up the hour? I may do this without imparting any useful instruction, without
commending myself to any man's conscience, and without winning, or even aiming to win, one
soul to Christ It is possible there may be in the audience a poor miserable creature, laboring under
the load of a guilty conscience. If he depart without being told how to obtain rest for his soul, what
may be the consequence? Or, it may be, some stranger may be there who has never heard the way
of salvation in his life. If he should depart without hearing it now, and should die before another
opportunity occurs, how shall I meet him at the bar of God? Possibly some one of my constant
hearers may die in the following week; and is there nothing I should wish to say to him before his
departure? It may be that I myself may die before another Lord's Day: this may be the last time,
that I shall ascend the pulpit; and have I no important testimony to leave with the people of my
care?
He who girds himself for his task in such a spirit as this will not fail to preach sermons in which
as Longfellow said, "One can hear the heart beat."

(2) The preacher should also realize his audience in the composition of his sermon. There are four
things certainly which you should aim to do in every discourse that you compose. Let me
enumerate them. First, interest your hearers. I put this first because unless a sermon interests, it
fails to receive attention, and no profit can come from it. Like the picture in the gallery which
catches no eye, it is there and yet not there. What Wilkie Collins says of books is just as true of
sermons. "I never get any good out of a book that did not interest me in the first instance." On the
other hand, what a testimony Arthur Stanley, then a schoolboy of fourteen at Rugby, paid to Doctor
Arnold's power to interest, when, after hearing him preach, he returned to his room, and wrote the
sermon out from memory. In the composition of your sermon, therefore, do nothing to offend a
reasonable taste. Choose your words so as to respect the proper limit of pulpit discourse. Handle
solemn subjects with solemnity, and delicate subjects delicately. Often suggest rather than paint.

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Leave the imagination to supply details when physical conditions are to be touched upon. Nothing
can be more repulsive than an elaborate description of the crucifixion, or of the suffering on a
death-bed, or of the terrors and torments of the lost.
Let it be your ambition to interest all classes of hearers. Aiming below rather than above the
average intelligence of your congregation, see to it that thought is clear and language plain. Instead
of saying "Do you understand me?" implying that there is a lack of quickness on the part of your
hearers, say rather, "Do I make myself understood?" and so lay the blame of obscurity where in
all likelihood it belongs. No doubt it is "the mixture of people who are to be fed with the same
food which in reality constitutes the great difficulty of sermons." But this difficulty may be met
and overcome if you remember to appeal in your sermon to the intuitions of the soul, to the dictates
of the conscience, and to the practical habits of daily life. These three-aspiration, righteousness,
usefulness—if they are well handled never fail to touch the great majority of those who are
listening to you. It is not enough, however, to interest. You must, secondly, endeavor to instruct.
"The only real point of preaching," as Francis de Sales says, "is the overthrow of sin and the
increase of righteousness." And yet in order to attain to this consummation we need to regard, first
of all, the truth of what we are saying, and then, as a secondary matter, the effect which we think
it will produce." By all means have a distinct purpose in each sermon that you compose. Pulpit
power comes not as a cause but as a consequence. It follows from first enriching the hearer with
knowledge. "Feed the flock of God." It is indeed well that the intellect be reached by way of the
heart; but it is necessary that it should be reached somehow. Our congregations have minds as well
as hearts. Dr. Archibald Alexander does well to warn us against too hastily assuming that in what
would be considered an intelligent congregation "all the members are well-informed persons." It
is far wiser courteously to assume that our congregations are ignorant as to the matters about which
we discourse in the pulpit, than complimentarily to assume that they are thoroughly acquainted
with them. There is always more advantage when we presume upon ignorance than there is when
we presume upon knowledge.
While interesting and instructing, the preacher, during the composition of his sermon, should also,
thirdly, aim to convince. I may be allowed to quote again from Francis de Sales. His father, who
had very lofty conceptions of the dignity of sermons, remonstrated with his son for preaching
often. "Even on week days the bells go. It used not to be so in my day. Sermons were much rarer.
But then, to be sure, God knows those were something like sermons—full of learning, well got up,
more Latin and Greek in one than you stick into a dozen." The answer of Francis gives us the key
to his great success as a missionary preacher: "My test of the worth of a preacher is when his
congregation go away saying not 'what a beautiful sermon,' but' I will do something.' "If this
impulse to do something is the evidence that the preacher has persuaded by convincing, the most
solid and satisfactory results will be likely to follow. The hearer will be built up, and will continue
in the faith as one who is grounded and settled. It was said of Dr. R. W. Dale, as contrasted with
his predecessor, John Angell James, that while they both aimed to persuade, the older man would
use any method in order to succeed in doing this, while the younger "believed that no persuasion
was of lasting value which was not based on intellectual conviction."

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If you interest, instruct, and convince your hearers, it is safe to say that the fourth requisite to a
successful sermon will not be wanting in your composition. It will inspire. Is not this where so
many sermons fail? They do not quicken, stimulate, and uplift. So congregations complain that
with all its excellence the discourse is often a weariness to the flesh, and the satirist, incarnating
the sermon, puts his own sneer into its lips:

With sacred dullness ever in my view,

This power to rouse, this vitality which makes the sermon, as Luther says, "a thing with hands and
feet," will come as a consequence of the oratorical temperament of the speaker, and of the skillful
choice which he makes of his material for pulpit use, and of the lofty plane which he assumes in
his ministry and the momentous themes upon which he discourses, and of the spiritual power, the
unction from on high, which he himself enjoys. So preaching will become not only what Vinet
called it, "an action," but what he himself often succeeded in making it, an inspiration.
2. The eloquent hearing depends not alone on the preparation of the sermon. As much, and perhaps
more, it depends on its delivery.
(1) For one thing, the delivery of the sermon should be suitable to the occasion. Pulpit decorum—
the taste which is so grateful when it is found and the lack of which many of our hearers perceive
although unable to account for their feeling of dissatisfaction—has not been sufficiently
considered in enumerating the elements of a preacher's power or the secret of his failure. It is
possible that a deficiency in early training, or some personal peculiarities, or a natural indifference
to minor matters, may make the word as we preach it unfruitful. Neglect no legitimate means which
lie in your power for seeing yourself as others see you. Never suffer yourself to become careless
as to what may seem only trifles in your pulpit manners. Abstain from allusions to yourself.
Assume no ministerial airs or pulpit tone of brief authority. Above all, aim to be hidden behind
your theme in the spirit of one whose highest; honor it is to preach not himself but Christ Jesus;
his Lord. No pulpit is small enough for the preacher who brings into it himself alone, and none
large enough for him who brings into it not himself but his Master. Here let me add as a practical
suggestion that in addressing your audience you use no one form invariably, and any form
sparingly. The Scripture terms, "My friends" , My "brethren" , "Men and brethren" , "Sirs" will
probably answer all ordinary purposes.
(2) While the preacher's delivery should be suitable to the occasion, it is equally important that it
should be sympathetic. Assume that your hearers have come prepared to listen, as on your part you
have come prepared to speak (Acts 26:1). Be more and more in touch with your congregation as
the discourse proceeds. At first it is natural that you should be concerned chiefly with the sermon,

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but as you warm to that you should find yourself coming into closer and closer contact with all
who are listening to you. If the first third of the half-hour belongs to the sermon and the
congregation, the two-thirds which remain should belong rather to the congregation and the
sermon. Happy is the preacher who is able to individualize his hearers, so that each one believes
that he himself is especially addressed. An honest scholar hearing Zwingli preach, felt "as if the
preacher was pulling him by the hair." As he spoke, the congregation would often grow restless
under the spell of this conviction, and sometimes one and another would even make his resentment
manifest. "Neighbor," Zwingli would interpose, "I did not mean it for thee more than for myself."
Of Rowland Hill it was said, in the same way, that if you sat in the back seat in the gallery while
he was preaching, you would be persuaded that what he said was directed especially to you. No
doubt this effect is due in part to a sympathetic tone in the voice, but far more is it owing to a
sympathetic chord in the heart.
(3) So, in conclusion, I would say, let your manner be earnest as well as suitable and sympathetic.
Avoid all flippancy, jesting, and trifling. Covet the "blood earnestness" which characterized
Bunyan and Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Chalmers. Preach as did Francis of Assisi,
"compelled by the imperious need of kindling others with the flame that burned within himself";
and as did Richard Baxter,

As though he ne'er would preach again,

Thus will you belong to the last of the three classes into which Archbishop Magee divided
preachers: First, the preacher you cannot listen to; Second, the preacher you can listen to; Third,
the preacher you cannot help listening to. And by you—dealing with a loftier theme and speaking
for a vaster future—the tribute which Ben Jonson pays to Lord Bacon may be not undeserved: "No
man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness
in what he uttered. The fear of every man who heard him was lest he should make an end."
The Making of the Sermon: For the Classroom and the Study.