The G. Campbell Morgan Archive

From an address delivered by Dr. G. Campbell Morgan to the Students at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, February 3, 1930.
hrough all the years I have worked under certain convictions about preaching. The first is that a preacher is a messenger. The preacher in his preaching is not a seeker after truth. I am not a seeker after truth. I am a disciple to the truth, but for me the truth is final in Christ; and I think that conviction is the true secret of Christian preaching. Of course I am a seeker after truth in a way. There are things within the sum totality of truth that was presented in Christ, and is all contained in Him, in whom it was the good pleasure of the Father that the pleroma should dwell, which I do not yet know. There are heights that we have never reached. There are vastnesses we have never embraced. Of course I am a seeker in that sense; but I am a seeker in the sense of being a disciple to the truth. I have felt all the way through that the work of the preacher is that of delivering a message. It is a very interesting thing to take the New Testament, your Greek New Testament, and watch the different words that are used to express the witness and the testimony of the early disciples and leaders, as they apply to the work of preaching. There are eight or ten of them, but there are two that are supreme, that run all through. The one is the verb kerusso, and the other is the verb euaggelizo; and the two words, as I believe, reveal the genius of preaching. Kerusso always means to proclaim as a herald. That is to say, behind the herald is the authorized King. Before the herald those to whom the king is sending His message. That is preaching. The preacher is a herald with a message from a King. It is good news. He proclaims with authority. The preacher does not go to speculate, and if he speculates before he goes, he had better not take the result of his speculation, or he may have no living, vital message. I will remind you in this connection of something Goethe said of preaching, “If you have any certainties give them to us. We have doubts enough of our own.” I think the world is saying that to us today. I sometimes wonder if some preaching has not lost the note of authority. I am not pleading for the dogmatism or ignorance. That is a very different thing. But I never face a congregation, but that I feel my only right to be there, is that I might preface the thing I am saying, as the old prophets prefaced their messages, with “Thus saith the Lord.” That is the difference between the debater and the prophet.
gain, I have never sought my messages by listening to the voices of the age. Through the years, and increasingly as the years went by, and one passed from boyhood to youth, and from youth to manhood, and on to the maturer years; I have always listened to the voices of the age, but I have not listened to them to get my message. Mark well the distinction! I have attempted to keep up with the things that were being said, the real things that were being said by thoughtful men, inside the Church or outside the Church, by men looking at life, and attempting to look at it as a whole. I have wanted to know what was being said and written, and I have attempted to keep myself en rapport through the years with such things. I have listened to the voices of the age, but I have not sought my messages from them. On the contrary, I have sought to find the bearing on these voices, of the Word of God; and constantly rather than catching the spirit of the age, I have found it necessary, so much as in me lay, to correct the spirit of the age. I am told sometimes today, that if a man is to be successful in preaching, he must catch the spirit of the age. Never! Our business is not to catch it. Our business is to know it, and correct it. In the majority of cases it needs correcting, rather than catching. John Wesley said, “I read my newspaper to see how God is governing the world.” Somebody may be inclined to say the newspapers must have been very different then than today! My reply is they are much better now than they were then! The man, the preacher who reads his paper in that way, never begins his day with his newspaper, but his Bible. John Wesley was familiar with the Revelation and with his God; and consequently he picked up the newspaper, and for his eyes the light of the Revelation of Truth was upon the page. If we read our newspaper that way, we can always see how God is governing the world; listening to the voices of the ages, but always with the Voice of all ages correcting or directing, and enabling us to deliver the correct message. That is what I mean when I sayi have never sought my messages by listening to the voices of the age. I have ever listened to the voices of the age to know the needs of the age.
have never found an hour- I am now thinking of things in life generally, quite apart from the individual- I have never found an hour in my ministry in which the Bible has no message. It never was my habit in the pastorates, and never will be wherever my life may be cast, to preach on current events. But there have been hours when it was necessary that from the pulpit there should sound the prophetic voice to some national or international situation. I never found an hour when I had to go anywhere except to my Bible to find the message for such an hour. The Bible is the most living literature, absolutely up-to-date- I apologize to it- ahead of any date man has ever reached, waiting for us, guarding and keeping us in the true perspective, if we are familiar with it. But if a local situation occurs and a man thinks he ought to preach on it, and desire to preach on a text from the Bible, God help him if he goes to the concordance to find out what to say! There must be familiarity. We must live in the literature all the time, if we are to be ready when the special occasion arises.
till further, I have tried to remember that a phase of truth is not the whole of Truth. I do think that is important. I need not stay to stress it, but so many men I have known have squinted at one thing, and seen nothing else! There are some men who think that if you do not say something about the pre-millennial Coming every time you preach, you are unsound! I think I will take my courage in both hands, and tell you a story. A good brother, a Baptist, gave out his text one morning- “Adam, where art thou?” and then said, “There are three lines that we shall follow. First, where Adam was; secondly, how he was to be got from where he was; thirdly and lastly, a few words about baptism!” Some of the worst heresies in the history of the Christian Church have been truth, distorted out of proper proportion and balance and relationship. I have striven therefore, to remember that a phase of truth is not the whole of truth.
inally, I have sought, often failing I know, but I have sought, to live by the thing I have preached; and I know that the measure of failure or of weakness at any point has largely been the measure of failure to correspond in life to the thing preached. That is one striking evidence to me of the spiritual authority of the Bible, that I have never been able to trifle with it morally. I cannot study it without feeling its moral appeal. Its ethical demand; and I have never been able to disobey that, without finding an arrest in my ability to go on studying the Bible. I do not feel that about Shakespeare. I think I could lecture on the moral drift of Macbeth, without losing my power to study Shakespeare, if I failed to observe the implications of that drift; but I have never been able to do that with my Bible. As surely as something in the study of the Bible leaps out, and talks to me, calling me to further loyalty in life; if I disobey, my eyes are sealed; I cannot go on. I have felt, all the way through, the relation between the Literature and life. Unless my interpretation, by lip was reinforced by an interpretation in life, my preaching was very little use.
he question is sometimes asked, How do you make your sermons? Do you ever find a man who can tell you? It is a difficult question. I can only give some very general statements as to my methods. Two things are vital; first personal first-hand work on the text; and then, all scholarly aids obtainable. I never take down a commentary until I have done personal, first-hand work, and have made my outline. Sometimes after consulting scholarly aids I have to alter the outline; but at any rate I have had the benefit of first-hand work. We make a mistake when we have a text that has gripped us, or better, that has found us; and turn to commentaries first. To do that is to create a second-hand mentality. The first thing is to work on the text itself.
hen sometimes I am asked about the methods of my delivery. Well, all I can say is, as a rule, I have a brief. I never prepare sentences. I do not know when I rise to preach, what my first sentence will be as to form. I know what the thing I want to say is. I speak from a brief most carefully prepared, and give myself freedom of utterance.
he last thing I want to say is this. There is a sense in which preaching is a conflict, a conflict with your hearers. I do not like the word conflict, but I do not know a better. The preacher is not merely asking a congregation to discuss a situation, and consider a proposition, or give attention to a theory. We are out to storm the citadel of the will, and capture it for Jesus Christ. Whether evangelizing or teaching does not matter. The appeal is the final thing. The sermon powerful in its matter and delivery up to a certain point demands application. So many preachers fail in that they say to their congregations, “But beloved, I am persuaded better things of you.” Then the people go home comfortable in their self-satisfaction, when they ought to be groveling in the dust, as they have been brought back to the point, “Thou art the man.” “Thus saith the Lord.”
hus I have tried to talk out of my experience through the years. I have always felt, and never more so than today that the work of preaching is not that of debating difficulties, or speculating, or considering philosophies, but that of proclaiming the Word of God.