Across all our thoughts how to secure attractiveness, as a co-ordinate line which fixes attention to the true point, runs the word "Faithfulness." The preacher is to be attractive while faithful, faithful while attractive. And he is to be attractive not for the sake of so being, but in order that he may win an entrance for the words of faithfulness, to his Master's praise.
Yes, this is what we are to be as preachers. We are to seek "mercy of the Lord to be faithful." [1 Cor. vii. 25.] We are not popular leaders, looking for a cry, or passing one on. We are not speculative thinkers, feeling out a philosophy, communicating our guesses at truth to a company of friends who happen to be interested in the investigation. We are "messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord." We are in commissioned charge of a divine, authentic, and unalterable message. We are the expounders of a "Word which liveth and abideth for ever," [1 Pet. i. 23.] a Word which man is always trying to judge and to disparage, but which will judge man at the last day. [Joh. xii. 48.] We are the bondservants of an absolute Master, who is at once our Sender and our Message, and who overhears our every word in its delivery.
It is a grave mistake, as we saw in our last chapter, to think that faithfulness means a repellent utterance of "the faithful Word." [Tit. i. 9.] But it is at least an equal mistake to think that attractiveness means a modification of that Word, which to the end of our world's day will still be a "folly" and a "stumbling-block," [1 Cor. i. 23.] in some respects, to the unconverted soul, and will always have its searching point and edge for the converted soul also.
But this consideration here is only by the way. I return from it to the matter of a right and faithful attractiveness and some of its higher conditions.