^ A. C. Benson, Euskin : A Stvdy in Personality, 221, * Richard Burton.
ROMANS IX. 3 183
of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all things." The urgency of his message burned like a fire in his bones ; his passion to win men was like a Divine con- straint which gave him no rest.
2. The passion for souls, the spirit of true preaching. — Is not this passion to win men the very heart of preaching? It is the ultimate fountain of the prophetic preaching, the secret of both the pathos and the splendours of its style. "To the prophets preaching was no mere display, but a sore battle with the hard hearts of their contemporaries, in which the messenger of the Lord worked with the pity of his weakness upon him, at a supreme cost to himself and conscious that he must summon to his desperate task every resource of feeling and of art."
^ It must be a passion : a fire burning with the steady flame of anthracite fed by a constant stream of oil. If it be less we will be swept off our feet by the tides all around, or sucked under by their swift current. And many a splendid man to-day is being swept off his feet and sucked under by the tides and currents of life because no such passion as this is mooring and steadying and driving his whole life. It must be a passion for win- ning men ; not driving or dragging, but drawing. Not argument or coercion, but warm winsome wooing. To-day the sun up yonder is drawing up toward itself thousands of tons' weight of water. Nobody sees it going, except perhaps in very small part. There is no noise or dust. But the water rises up irresistibly toward the sun because of the winning power in the sun for the water. It must be something hke that in the higher sphere — winsomeness in us will win men to us, and through us to the master.^
^ Whitefield's favourite maxim was that a preacher, whenever he entered the pulpit, should look upon it as the last time he might preach, and the last time his people might hear. Or, take Wesley's Journal. " There is hardly any book like it," says Dr. Kobertson Nicoll ; " its shrewdness, its wit, its wisdom, its know- ledge are bordered with a pale edge of fire — the spiritual passion of the great apostle's soul." Let one revealing sentence speak for the whole book. In 1742 Wesley visited Newcastle-on-Tyne for the first time. Never, he says, had he witnessed so much drunken- ness, cursing and swearing, from the mouths of little children fiis well as of adults, in so short time. " Surely," he writes, " this
' S. D. Gordon.
i84 ANATHEMA FROM CHRIST
place is ripe for " — what ? judgment ? no, but — " for Him who came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." ^
3. The inspiration of this passion. — This passion for souls is the true apostolic spirit of preaching ; and, be it remembered, it springs only from the true apostolic faith and experience. No man can know this vehement fervour of desire to win men for Christ who is not himself wholly swayed by that faith, and in whose soul that great experience has never repeated itself. " God give to us preachers," said one the other day, " a perpetual sense of glad, wonderful surprise at our own salvation." And when that prayer is answered, and we who preach preach as Brownlow North was sometimes said to preach — like one who had just escaped from a sacked and burning city, his ear still frtung with the yell of the dying and the roar of the flame, his heart full of gratitude at the thought of his own wonderful escape — deaf ears will be unstopped and dead souls raised to life.
^ The great actor, Garrick, was asked by a clergyman why the stage seemed to have more power than the pulpit. This was his answer: "Too many preach truth as if it were fiction; we act fiction as if it were truth." ^
"With grief his head was bow^d low. His heart, that heart so dear to me.
"Give him Thy light, 0 God," I cried, (I love him so: I love him so.)
"Give him Thy light, whate'er betide.
Let all the shadow fall on me: And if my spirit faileth so.
Then let me die. (Lord, Thou hast died.)" It may not be.
"Since sorrow is our lot below I bow my head to Thy decree.
In darkness, then, let me abide, (I love him so: I love him so.)
I will not fail although the tide
In whelming flood pass over me: Let me but share his cross of woe.
(They pierced Thy feet and hands and side.)" It may not be. * G. Jackson. * Francis Pigou, Odds and Ends, 153.
ROMANS IX. 3 185
"Through the dread darkness must he go Alone? Ah God, the agony
To see a soul made white and tried, (I love him so: I love him so.)
To see a spirit purified
By Thy pure fires ! — I ask of Thee But this one gift — a heart to know