Ver. 1.-77ie mission "of preaching. "Preaching in the wilderness of Judma." John Baptist was not a teacher; he was precisely a preacher, in the first and proper sense of that word. Everywhere in the New 'l'estament it implies proclaiming after the manner of a herald. It is the term used in the Old Testament of the witnessing work of the prophets (see Neh. vi. 7; Is:i. lxi. 1; Jonah iii. 2, etc.). 'l'here is a dis- tinct place for the preacher and for the teacher. They may be combined in one man, and the processes of preaching and teaching may go on together; but usually, if a man has the one gift, he has not the other; and we are constantly making the mistake of expecting a man to have the one gift because we seo plainly that he has the other. 'l'wo things are gathered up in the term "preaching." I. PREACHING AS PBO0LAIMING A MESSAGE. The preacher is but the agency, or medium, by means of which a message is conveyed. So John calls himself a" voice," because what he said was the all-important thin~. This is the idea of the prophet, who was the medium through which a message of God was carried into the minds of men. It is essential to every preacher that he should have something to proclaim; therefore what Christian preachers preach is called the "gospel," or "good news." 1. But the preacher must be sure of his message. Compare the expression used by prophets, "The word of God came to me." A preacher proclaims, not what be thinks, but what he knows; what he grips as the truth of God given him to declare. The "accent of conviction" is the test of the true preacher. 2. And they who hear must. Jil'A'l'TliEW. B 98 THE GOSPEL AOCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [oa. 111, 1-17,
feel convinced of the authority of the messenger. Not an authority arising out of his offioe, but out of the evidence that he holds a commission, and has a messngc. In what sense can preachers nowadays be ea.id to have their messages direot from God? II. PRBAOHING AS PERSUADING TO RESPOND TO THE MESSAGE. This brings to view the personal force of the preacher. To be a herald he need but be a voice. To be a persuader he must be a voice with a tone in it; and that tone is the persona.I clement. See, then, the kind of preachers that become men of power. They are men who "tell the trntb;" bnt they are much more than this-they are men who, like John the Ba.ptist, can "make the truth telL"-R. T. Ver. 2.-The plea by which 'l'epentance is urged. "For the kingdom of heaven is at hand." There seems to be evidence that Judrea was in a very low moral condition when John the Baptist appeared. Ceremonial religion took the place of practical righteousness, rabbinical rules covered personal indulgence and iniquity, luxury enervated the wealthy, and restlessness led to crime among the masses. It was a. time when a moral reformation was needed, and John was, first of all, a na.tional reformer. Wha.t John sought was the national repentance-the change of mind of the nation (compare Jonah's preaching to Nineveh). He dealt with individua.ls, not in relation t.o their privat.e concerns, but as representa.tives of the nation; so we fii,d tba.t he convicts of the sins of dasse,s, not of personal sins. From this point of view John's work can be effectively compared with that of the ancient prophets (e.g. Elijah), who were essentially national reformers. Those old prophets had demanded national repentance as a preparation for some special manifestation of the delivering or restoring power of God. The revelation of grace could not come unless men were morally pre- pared to receive it. So John pleads that the Messianic manifestation is close at hand, is at the doors; and there should be readiness to 'l'eceive it. Illustrate by the Eastern custom of demanding that the roads should be repaired when an Ea.stem king proposed t.o visit a. district. I. WE CLAlll BEPEJ,"TANC~ JIECAUBE Goo WILL JUDGE. Our plea is the sinfulness of sin, the certain consequences of sin, the future judgment on eins. "Knowing there- fore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." This is right for the individual. Pe.rtly right. But even for the individual it may be doubted whether the revelation of Divine grace is not a more truly humbling force. "A sense of blood-bought pardon soon dissolves a heart of stone." IL JoHN CL.AlllED REPENTANCE DE0AUSE Goo WILL SAVE, The "kingdom of heaven " is the manifestation of God's delivering grace and power, the fulfilment of the national hope. He says, because God is gracious, therefore repent. The apostle ventures to declare that the" goodness of God" should" lead to repentance." .And that is true to human nature, though doctrinal theologies have tended to obscure the truth. Love is the !7e&t melting, humbling power. God's redemption is the true convicter of sin.-B. T. Ver. 3.-The law of Divine p'l'eparation. God never acts suddenly. He who sees the end from the beginning never needs to act suddenly, for he never can be taken at unawares. It is easy to grasp this thought when we consider only miLterial things; but it is not so easy when we take account of the complications introduced by the ever-varying human will Do man's impulsive actions never call for Divine promp- titude in response to them? To this we e.nswer-No. God's omniscience is to be thought of as including, as anticipating, every movement of the human will. Illus- trate by showing how science has corrected the older notion of the suddenness of creation. We now know that preparing the earth for the probation of man wn.s the work of long millenniur:.d, and was arranged in stages, each one of which prepared the way for thP llther. The older geology explained many things by the theory of sudden cata6tropbies; the newer geology traces the long preparations for what t~kes climactic form at last. So it is prophesied that the Lord shall suddenly come to his temple, but the suddenness is only an outward seeming, a sensible impression; really the long a.gee prepared for his comin<>, Then it follows that God must always have servants engaged in pepa;ring work, who never can have the cheer of results; and are al ways in danger oH, Ill, 1-17.J THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BT. MATTHEW. 99