One Thing I Do! 3

III. I now consider the MANNER in which Whitefield carried out his one purpose into action. One thing I do—and how did he accomplish it?

Never was the joyful sound sent over the world by a more magnificent VOICE. All his biographers labor, as do the historians of Greece, in describing the power of Demosthenes, to make us understand his wondrous oratory. Perhaps, after all, that which gives us the most vivid idea of it is, not the crowds it attracted, moved, and melted—but that it warmed the cold and calculating Franklin, and fascinated the philosophical and skeptical Hume.

Heaven rarely ever gave, or gives to man, the faculty of speech in such perfection. But what is particularly worthy of notice is, that he trusted not to its native power—but increased that power by assiduous cultivation. His matchless elocution was not only an endowment—but an acquirement. If he preached a sermon twenty times, he went on to the last, improving his method of delivering it, both as to tones and action—not for theatrical display, (no man was ever more free from that,) but to carry out his "one thing," the salvation of souls. He knew, and deeply and philosophically entered into, the meaning of that text, "Faith comes by hearing;" and he also knew that attentive hearing comes by the power of speaking.

With such a theme as the Gospel; with such an object as salvation; with such an aim as eternity, and such a master to serve as Christ, he would not give utterance to such subjects, and for such purposes, in careless and slovenly speech. He studied to be the orator—that he might thus pluck souls as brands from the burning. In this let us imitate him. Of all our faculties, that of speech is, perhaps, least cultivated, yet is most susceptible of cultivation, and pays best the pains bestowed upon it.

My brethren, speech is the great instrument of our ministerial labor. Our assault upon the rebel town of man's soul is to be carried on, and our entrance to be effected, to use the language of Bunyan, at ear-gate. The tongue, rather than the pen, is the weapon of most of us. For the love of souls, let us endeavor to be good speakers. With the loftiest themes in the universe for our subjects—let us endeavor to speak of them in some measure worthily. It is an instructive and astounding, and to us humiliating and disgraceful fact, that the stage-player, whether he plays in comedy or in tragedy, takes ten times more pains to give effective utterance to his words of folly or vice, for the amusement of his audience, than we to eternal and momentous truths for the salvation of ours. The stage seems the only arena where the power of oratory is much studied. Should this be?

A few characteristics of Whitefield's manner deserve emphatic mention, and particular attention, as connected with the execution of his one great purpose. The first I notice is SOLEMNITY. He never, as did some of his followers, degraded the pulpit by low humor and low wit; abounding in anecdote, and even in action, he was uniformly solemn. His deep devotional spirit contributed largely to this, for his piety was the inward fire which supplied the ardor of his manner. He was eminently a man of prayer; and had he been less prayerful, he would also have been less powerful. He came into the pulpit from the closet where he had been communing with God, and could no more be trifling, merry, or humorous at such a time, than could Moses when he came down from the mount to the people; or the high priest when he came out from the blazing symbols of the Divine presence between the cherubim in the holy of holies; or Isaiah when he saw the Lord Almighty, high and lifted up, with his train filling the temple. Happily the age and taste for pulpit buffoonery is gone, I hope never to return. "It is pitiful to court a grin when you should woo a soul."

It was the stamp and impress of eternity upon his preaching that gave Whitfield such power. He spoke like a man who stood upon the borders of the unseen world, alternately enrapt in ecstacy as he gazed upon the felicities of heaven, and convulsed with terror as he heard the howlings of the damned, and saw the smoke of their torment ascending from the pit forever and ever. His maxim was to preach, as Apelles painted, for eternity. He said if ministers preached for eternity they would act the part of true Christian orators. And tell me, my brethren, what are all the prettinesses, the beauties, or even sublimities of human eloquence; what are all the similes, metaphors, and other garniture of rhetoric, what are all the philosophy and intellectualities which many in this day are aiming at, to move, and bow, and conquer the human soul—compared with "the powers of the world to come?"

But there was another characteristic of Whitefield's manner, and that was its TENDERNESS. Our Lord, as to his humanity, was a man of sorrows, and, therefore, of tears; so was Paul, so was Whitfield. Perhaps the last somewhat too much so, at any rate far too much so for any preaching but his own; and with him the fountain of his tears was somewhat too full and flowing. But oh, what an apology for this, and what a stroke of pathetic eloquence was that appeal, when on one occasion he said, "You blame me for weeping—but how can I help it, when you will not weep for yourselves, although your immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and for anything I know you are hearing your last sermon, and may never more have an opportunity to have Christ offered to you."

Man is an emotional as well as an intellectual creature, and sympathy is one of the powers of our physical and mental economy. The passions are of an infectious nature, and men feel more in a crowd than in solitude. The maxim of the ancient poet is still true, "If you wish me to weep, weep yourself." Whitefield's tears drew forth those of his audience, and his pathos softened their hearts for the impressions of the truth. It is forgotten by many preachers that they may do much by the heart—as well as by thehead. We are not the teachers of logic, mathematics, metaphysics, or natural philosophy, which have nothing to do with the heart. We are teachers of true religion, the very seat of which is there in the heart; and we address ourselves not only to the logical—but to the aesthetical part of man's complex nature. I know we must convince by argument—but we must not stop in the judgment—but go on to reach the heart, and we ourselves must feel as well as reason. Clear—but cold, is too descriptive of much modern preaching. It is the frosty moonlight of a winter's night, not the warm sunshine of a summer's day. A cold preacher is likely to have cold hearers. Cold! What when the love of God, the death of Christ, the salvation of souls, the felicities of heaven, and the torments of hell are the theme? Enthusiasm here is venial compared with lukewarmness.

Need I say that EARNESTNESS was characteristic of Whitefield's preaching? Yes, that one word, perhaps, more than any other in our language, is its epitome. An intense earnestness marked his whole career, and was carried to such a pitch as to incur, as did that of Paul, the imputation of madness. The salvation of souls was so entirely the one thing that engrossed his soul, his time, his labors, that not a step deviated from it. Every moment, every day, was an approximation to it. His devotions, his recreations, (if he had any,) his journeys, his voyages, his sermons, his correspondence, all referred to this one end. His exertion never relaxed for a moment, and he, with his great compeer, Wesley, made the trial so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which, in the way of saving souls, may be granted to any one preacher of the gospel in any age or country.

What may not be done, and is not done, by earnestness? It gives some success to any error, however absurd or enormous, and to any scheme of wickedness, however flagrant and atrocious. What is it that has given such success to popery, to infidelity, to Mormonism? Earnestness! And shall the apostles and advocates of error be more in earnest than the friends of truth? Whitfield often quoted Betterton the actor, who affirmed that the stage would soon be deserted if the actors spoke like the preachers. And what would empty the playhouse, that is, dullness and coldness, does often empty the meeting-house.

"Mr. Betterton's answer to a worthy prelate," says Whitfield, "is worthy of lasting regard. When asked how it is that the clergy, who speak of things real, affected the people so little, and the actors, who speak only of things imaginary, affected them so much, replied, 'My Lord, I can assign but one reason—we players speak of things imaginary as though they were real, and too many of the clergy speak of things real as though they were imaginary."

It is not always so. Many a preacher, even in our own day, by the unaffected earnestness of his manner, carries away his audience upon the tide of his own feeling. They hear what he says, they see what he feels, his eye helps his tongue, the workings of his countenance disclose the secrets of his heart; his manner is a lucid comment upon his matter, breaks down the limits which words impose upon the communication of ideas, and gives them not only an apprehension of their meaning—but a sense of the importance of his subject, which unimpassioned language and manner never could have done.

I mention but one thing more characteristic of this great man, and which it would be well for us to imitate, and that is, his dauntless COURAGE. See him not only facing mobs, defying threats, and even setting up his pulpit amidst the wild uproar of a London fair, (the boldest achievement that a speaker ever accomplished,) but holding on his noble career unterrified, and working amidst the storm of defamation that came upon him from so many quarters.

What but guilty cowardice is it, false and pusillanimous shame, that keeps us in these days from some novel and bolder method of aggression upon the domain of darkness?

Are we not lacking here in that moral courage which would make us, when conscious we are doing right, indifferent to the stare of the ignorant, and the wonder of the timid; to the shaft of ridicule and the malignant censure of the cynic? How sadly we are fettered by custom and trammelled by conventionality. How little are we disposed to go out of the usual track even in saving souls. Very few are disposed to imitate the boldness, ingenuity, and novel thought of that noble hearted brother, who hired a theater in the city where he dwelt, and for four months preached there, to listening and well behaved crowds, the gospel of salvation; and for his reward had very many given to him, who are his joy now and will be his crown of rejoicing in the presence of Christ at his coming.

Who can see Paul on Mars' Hill, addressing himself to the sages and their followers of all sects, and preaching to them a doctrine so repugnant to the mythology of the temple and the philosophy of the schools—as Christ, the last judgment, and the resurrection of the body, without being impressed with the moral courage of such an act? It is this spiritual heroism which is needed in our modern preaching, and, indeed, which was no less needful when the Methodists commenced their preaching.

Nor is it only in this unwillingness to go off from our own ground for saving souls that our guilty cowardice is seen—but in the disposition to shirk the more solemn and searching truths of revelation. Are we not too much giving way to the fastidiousness of modern taste and refinement, which is craving after smooth things; which desires the sentimental, the picturesque, the imaginative; but turns with disgust from the solemn, the alarming, the awakening? Are we not too gentle and courteous to mention such a word as "Hell" to modern polite ears? Are we not too fearful to break in with the thunders of a violated law upon those who are at ease in Zion? I do not ask for a gross revolting method of describing the punishment of the wicked, as if the preacher delighted in harrowing up the feelings of his audience.

This is as disgusting as if, in order to keep men from crime, our judges and magistrates were ever and always giving a minute detail of the process of an execution, and the convulsive pangs of an expiring wretch suspended to the beam of the gibbet. We ask not for a harsh, scolding, and denunciating style of preaching; but we do want more of the unflinching boldness, and the dauntless courage, which are necessary to fidelity, and absolutely essential to him who would win souls to Christ. It is too generally forgotten, that our Lord Jesus, who was incarnate love, was the most solemn and courageous of all preachers. He whose gentle spirit so often breathed out itself in invitation, and whose compassion melted into tears, at other times robed himself in terror, and uttered the most alarming peals of divine indignation. What we need for our ministry is this mixture of tenderness and solemnity, which entered so deeply into the ministry of Christ, and was so characteristic of his servant, whose labors we this day commemorate and commend.

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