Selected from: “On the Distinction Between the Mode in which Theology Should Be Learned at the Hall and the Mode in which It Should Be Taught from the Pulpit,” Institutes of Theology (Edinburgh, 1849).
One prime object of your studies here is to fix and ascertain what the doctrines of Christianity really are. For this purpose you have to take a comprehensive survey of the words of revelation—you have to compare Scripture with Scripture—you have to penetrate the meaning of obscure or doubtful texts—you have to reconcile apparent contrarieties, and from a crowd of kindred and consistent testimonies on any given topic, you have to elicit some general proposition as one of the articles of our faith. Perhaps ere the conclusion was fully made out a long and laborious proof had to be gone through; and as the final result of the process, you at length came to a thorough and well-grounded belief that the doctrine in question has the sure and authentic seal of heaven’s divine authority set upon it.
Now, though this be the way in which you have received your argumentative conviction of some certain truth in theology, it follows not that this is the very way in which you should deal it forth again among the people. The very utterance of your text will generally be enough for gaining their assent to the doctrine which it enunciates, or, at most, the concurrence of a few decisive testimonies from other parts of Scripture will abundantly suffice in the way of argument. This is not because I look upon the people as less of reasonable beings than ourselves, and that therefore less of reasoning should serve them. But I would curtail the formal proof of a doctrine, that room might be left for an object ulterior to that, and in which the mere verifying of the proof terminates. The ultimatum of a proof is conviction, the end of what I have already called the first process. But beyond this there is a second process to stimulate and set forward, which should be the main object of every sermon. Now the danger of lengthening out the first process, is, that it may leave less than enough of room for the second process. And really there is no practical necessity for lengthening out the formal proof of a doctrine in the pulpit, in the same way that it is in the classroom; because, generally speaking, in the obviousness of the many Scripture testimonies, and the manifestation of the truth itself to the conscience, the people are abundantly possessed with what may be called the effective proof of it.
It really is not half, it is not a tenth part the business of a sermon to establish any proposition in Christianity as a mere dogma, and leave it thus. Only imagine this done with the doctrine of the universal judgment, and that the preacher gave over, as if acquitted of his task, after that by arguments from Scripture and arguments from reason he had fully made out and settled it as the article of a creed. It would have been far better, we say, if instead of proving the doctrine at all, he had from the outset of his address proceeded upon the doctrine, or, at most, if he had taken up the length of the introduction on the statement of the truth with a few decisive testimonies in its favour, and then given the great bulk both of his strength and of his space, not to the establishment, but to the enforcement of the truth. It is an appalling doctrine, and fitted in the pulpit to be an effective weapon for the pulling down of strongholds. But what we say is, that instead of first fabricating the weapon before the eyes of his people, or showing the process of its fabrication, he should proceed immediately to use it. Instead of a doctrine to be proved argumentatively, he should regard it as a doctrine to be instantly taken up and wielded executively. Knowing the terrors of the law, he should therewith persuade men. The awfulness of that coming day—the speed and certainty of its arrival—its searching examinations into the recesses of every heart, and the now unknown deeds of every history—its fearful exposures in the presence of an assembled world, calling down the awful sentence and the everlasting contempt which are to follow—these with powerful and urgent and awakening appeals to the consciences of your hearers, accompanied by entreaties to flee from the coming wrath, and the denunciations of a heavier doom on those who reject the offers of the gospel, should form the burden of every sermon on this article of our faith—not a formal demonstration of its truth like that given by a professor in his classroom, but a persuasion founded upon its truth, and by which the minister plies the hearts of his people with the calls and the considerations of practical earnestness. The proof of the doctrine being that which is chiefly exhibited in the one—the practical uses of the doctrine being that which is chiefly expounded and enforced in the other.
We say, that even in reference to the plainest and most unquestioned doctrines of religion, there is to be observed a difference of treatment between the congregation and the classroom; but there is a still wider difference to be observed when, from the generally admitted truths of the simply and purely didactic, you pass to the much agitated truths of the controversial theology. For the mere conviction of a general audience, either a lengthened formal proof or an elaborate vindication may be as little called for in a controverted doctrine as in those that are uncontroverted, there being often the same obviousness of Scripture testimony for the latter as for the former, and often the same or a superiorly vivid manifestation of the truth of them to the conscience. The Atonement is such a doctrine. The Divinity of our Saviour is another. Both of these have passed through the fiercest conflict of the theological warfare, so that if in the pulpit a polemic discussion was super-added to the didactic or the Scriptural derivation of them, that process were still more lengthened out whose terminating result after all were but the conviction of the understanding that the articles in question were doctrinally true. This in itself is to be deprecated as an evil, seeing that it interdicts the space and liberty which the preacher otherwise might have for the outgoings of the second process, and there are special and distinct reasons besides, why, unless there be an obvious practical necessity, controversy should be refrained from in the pulpit. It may lead you to exchange the Scriptural for the scholastic nomenclature, so that instead of propounding a doctrine in those words which were devised by God for the direct instruction of the teachable, you may propound it in those words which have been devised by men for putting down the heresies of the gainsayer. Now this last, however well adapted for its special object, is not adapted for the object of the pulpit, which is not so much to vindicate truth, as to bring men under its power. That language and that mode of putting which are best fitted for the one end, may not be the best fitted for the other end; and so under this translation from the style of a Scriptural to that of a polemic theology, the proper work of the pulpit may suffer in efficiency.
Moreover, the attention of the people is turned the wrong way. Instead of being led to entertain the message as announced directly to them by God, they are led to hold parley with men contending for their own interpretations, and engaged in debate on the terms of the message. The minister may triumph in the debate, and the people in kindred sympathy may triumph along with him. The controversy, to the satisfaction of all, may be settled; but to avail ourselves of a familiar phrase, what is held to be settled is often set by. There is a delusive feeling as if their concern with the matter was now ended, when in fact it ought to be only beginning. They may think it enough to have been made intellectually right, as it seems the great ado to bring about that—whereas, mainly and generally speaking, they were all intellectually right at the outset, and the great ado should be to make this intellectual rightness germinate into the morally right and the spiritually right. If this latter be not accomplished, the kingdom of God may have come to them in word, or come to them in reason, e)n tw| logw| being significant of both; but it comes not e)n tw| du&namei, it comes not in power: and there is great hazard of such a result if the decision of the controversy be the achievement which they rest in. Just as in mathematics, the feat is perfected if you make out the proposition—so in theology, there is a subtle imagination, too, that you have reached the great and desirable ultimatum by making out the proposition. Now what is the end in mathematics is but a mean in theology. The Christian revelation does not end with the intellect, but begins with it. The intellect is but a medium through which to reach the religious influence to the heart and the character, and its design is utterly frustrated and perverted by those who make orthodoxy the landing-place instead of the outset of their Christianity. Now we think it is the part of a sermon not to conduct the people to orthodoxy as a landing-place, but to start along with them from orthodoxy as the outset; and that therefore it may well keep clear of the controversies—they lying in the way of the first and not in the way of the second process.
The truth is, that with very few exceptions indeed, the orthodoxy may with all safety be assumed and proceeded on, from the commencement of your address, or at most a statement, with a few of the best Scriptural corroborations, will suffice to put the whole auditory intellectually right on the doctrine of the text. The great business should be to enforce the doctrine on the susceptibilities of their moral and practical nature; to present the truth in such connexions or with such applications as might best awaken the right and correspondent emotions in their heart; to make it bear on their own personal condition, so as that it shall powerfully tell on their feelings and purposes; to press it not so much upon their conviction by proofs, as to press it upon their consideration by the earnest representations which you make of its importance as well as of its verity; to conquer not the oppositions of heresy by argument for the doctrine, but to conquer by means of the doctrine itself, the indifference, and the irreligion, and the death-like torpor, and the earthly affections of the people who are before you.
It were the strong and universal feeling, we believe, that a preacher had not done enough with the doctrine of the universal judgment, who, instead of taking it up and wielding it as an engine of moral and practical influence, had merely reasoned it on the understandings of his people, and so put them in possession of it merely as a dogma. Yet we fear that there is no correspondent feeling to this in reference to another doctrine, we mean the Divinity of Christ. In regard to the latter, we doubt it to be the more prevalent impression, that our great concern is with the truth of the dogma, and not with its practical influences. The great ado is all about making out and settling the orthodoxy of the question. In as far as the one doctrine is concerned, that is, of the universal judgment, we do not make the truth of the doctrine our resting-place, but carry it forward to its practical outgoings. In as far as the other doctrine is concerned, we are very apt to take up our resting place in the truth of it, to stop there and terminate there. The only way in which I can explain this difference of treatment between the two doctrines, is, that the one has been much controverted and the other not. When the great point to be contended for is the truth of the doctrine, then let the point be gained, and the heart is satisfied. The one follows as naturally upon the other, as that repose should come after victory—and more particularly if it be victory at the close of a perilous and prolonged warfare. If for the acquisition of any object the mind had to go forth on the work of inquiry, and to fight its way through many obstacles, then in the acquisition of that object will it as naturally sink into a state of quiescence, as if it had now reached the ultimatum of its wishes, or gotten all it laboured and all it aspired after.
We feel quite sure that the controversies have aggravated this tendency on the part of Christian students and inquirers to regard sound doctrine as the end, instead of being what it in truth is, but the commencement of their labours. And in as far as they have this tendency, they lead to a pernicious deviation from the sense and the design of Scripture. When a doctrine is introduced there, it is for a moral and a practical effect. The ultimate design even of its most peculiar, and hence its most controverted revelations, is not to inform the understanding, but through the understanding to effect a salutary and transforming influence upon the character. The doctrine is not brought forward for its own sake, but for the sake of a something ulterior. The credenda are not the landing-place, they are only a stepping-stone to the agenda. And this is true of its most peculiar, or what has been styled the very highest of its doctrines.
The Divinity of Christ, instead of being regularly chronicled in the Bible as one of the articles in a system of well-arranged orthodoxy, is brought forth not as the principle of a theory, but as a persuasion to moral conduct. It is employed by the Apostle as an argument to enforce the virtue of mutual condescension. With the exception perhaps of the first chapter of John, which, by the way, seems, in accordance with the historical account of its composition, to have been framed for the special object of presenting the Church with an authoritative manifesto against the heresies of the time, the Godhead of Christ is nowhere proposed in the shape of a mere dictatorial article, or as a naked dogma for the understanding alone, and at one place it is introduced as an episode for the enforcement of a moral virtue. In this famous passage, the practical lesson occupies the station of principal, as the main or capital figure of the piece, and the doctrine on which so many would effervesce all their zeal, even to exhaustion, stands to it but in the relation of a subsidiary. The lesson is, “Let nothing be done through strife or wrangling, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others”; and the doctrine, (here noticed by the Apostle, not to the end that he may rectify the opinion of his disciples, but primarily and obviously to the end that he may rectify their conduct), the doctrine for the enforcement of the lesson is, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross” (Phil. 2:5–8). In these verses there is a collateral lesson for our faith; but the chief, the direct lesson, is a lesson of charity, which is greater than faith. Scripture is profitable for doctrine; but ulterior to this there is another end, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished to all good works.
You will understand that it is not our object to banish the didactic, nor yet wholly to banish the controversial theology from our pulpits. In reference to the former, there must be a statement of the truth expressed or implied in your text, and that, too, accompanied by enough of argument for gaining the intellectual assent of the hearers; and in reference to the latter, I can imagine times and occasions when, to ward off some menacing heresy, the polemic arm must be lifted even in the house of God to quell the mischief, and the work of exposing it be the burden of many a Sabbath ministration. Whatever the ulterior services of the truth may be, it is an indispensable preliminary that the people shall believe it. Until you have secured this vantage-ground nothing can be effected. But what we affirm is, that without an extended demonstration, and without the full and finished controversial treatment which are proper here in the business of training students for all the services of the Church, you may, by a far shorter process, enlist the understandings of a congregation on the side of all that is most important and influential in the truths of Christianity. In the vast majority of instances, that is done already before you have begun your sermon, or if not, a few suitable texts will suffice to recall the doctrine of the day to their conscience and memory, or to impress it on their convictions. It is not necessary to expend time in the establishment of a doctrine, if their minds be already established in the truth of it.
And the plain reason why we grudge unnecessary time in argumenting the truth of the doctrine, is, that really there is too much else to do with it. You have to urge the truth upon their consciences. You have to open a way for its influence upon their hearts. You have to address it to their hopes or their fears, or their purposes of obedience. If the doctrine, for example, be the Divinity of Christ, you may therefrom expatiate on the worth of the sacrifice, and so hush the alarms of a guilty bosom; or on the enormity of sin that called forth so costly an expiation, and so arouse from the slumbers of their conscience both the ungodly and the backslider; or on the weight of gratitude earned by this illustrious sufferer, and so press on all who believe the devotedness of their whole lives to the Saviour who died for them; or on the power which inherently belongs to Him, of completing the redemption which He hath begun, and so animating their confidence in the sustaining and sanctifying influences of that grace by which he upholds His disciples in the work and the warfare of their practical Christianity; or, finally, on the danger of rejecting overtures brought to our world by a Divine messenger, and sealed by His blood, and so ground on the very magnitude of the condescension and the mercy a louder appeal of terror to all who shall despise it.
But on this topic I have dwelt longer than I anticipated. What I principally aimed at and had hoped to overtake, was another distinction between the exposition that is usually given of Christianity in the Hall, and the exposition that should be given of Christianity in the pulpit. Here it is propounded as a theory, with a view to your theoretical understanding of it; there, if I may use the expression, it is more practised as an art, with a view to a certain practical fulfilment. So to instruct men as to make them comprehend the scheme of Christianity is one sort of achievement; so to influence men as to make them personally and actually Christians, is another and a very different sort of achievement. The one is the proper achievement of a theological professor, the other the proper achievement of a Christian minister. Their objects are different, and corresponding to this they should go differently to work. In particular, they should begin differently. The dogmatic is essentially different from the hortatory, but not more so than the commencement and the order of your studies in the Hall should differ from the commencement and the order of your sermons in the pulpit.
Very generally in the framing of a theological system, there is first an ascent made to the fountainhead of being, to the primal source as well as object of all religion. The outset is with mysterious and high speculations, and these not about the character alone, but the constitution of the Deity, where, in the prosecution of a sound and a scriptural path, it is difficult to clear one’s way through the crudities and the ambitious imaginations of the men of all sects and of all ages. To guide the Christian scholar along this hazardous walk, among what may be called the heights and the transcendentals of his subject, there is need not of the light only of Biblical criticism, but of that sober and cautious philosophy which is observant of its own limits, and which knows how to separate between the findings of experience or Scripture, and the fancies of unauthorized speculation.
After that the question of the Trinity has been laboriously scrutinized throughout the Bible in its original language, and brought safe through the manifold controversies of the Church in the condition of a leading article in our systematic divinity, the same process has to be repeated successively with the following articles, which are often made to come after each other in the chronological order of the history of the Divine administration. After this recondite speculation on His nature and constitution, there is another equally recondite on the purposes or decrees of a predestinating Deity, whence going forth, as it were, from the darkling recesses of a past eternity, this process of doctrinal exposition goes downward to the creation of the world, if not to the previous creation of angels and higher orders of intelligence, to the original innocence of our nature—to the law of God for the government of the human family—to the fall of man, the introduction of sin, the condemnation and moral ruin of our species—to the undertaking of the great Mediator, who bore in His own person the penalties of heaven’s outraged authority, that He might deliver us from the wrath of our offended Lawgiver, and so effect a reconciliation between God and a sinful world—to the repentance and the faith, the calls of which accompanied those overtures of the gospel—to the special provision made for the sanctification of believers, so that they may be delivered from the tyranny of their present evil affections, as well as from the terrors of the wrath that is to come—to their progressive holiness here, and their triumphant preferment hereafter, among the joys and the exercises of heaven’s high sanctuary; lastly, to the day of judgment, when this wondrous scheme shall have its full and final development, and all its mysteries shall be opened, to the endless the irrecoverable distance of the good and the evil, the pains of the everlasting hell, the delights and the glories of a blissful immortality.
Now the whole of this progression may be gone through in right synthetic order, beginning with the decrees of the past, and ending with the destinations of the future eternity. Altogether, it may be a perfect theoretical exposition of the science: and we employ the term theoretical, not that it might imply aught of the doubtful or the imaginative in the account that has thus been rendered. Although designed a theory, it may be a just and solid theory notwithstanding, based throughout on the evidence of Scripture, and defensible in all its parts and positions against every opposing heresy. It may be a true exhibition of Christianity, and yet not the exhibition that should be made of it in the work of Christianisation. But if this be a true exhibition, will not another and a different exhibition be a false one? No; and for this I have to intreat your consideration. In a complicated scheme of doctrine, you may change the whole aspect of the scheme; you may change the order and the apparent locality of all its parts simply by changing the point of view from which it is contemplated. Meanwhile the doctrine itself continues the same, and there is no change whatever upon it. The representation of the mundane system from the centre of the sun is not the same with the representation of the mundane system from the surface of a planet, yet it is the same mundane system notwithstanding. And the same is true of the scriptural, or, if you will, of the spiritual system; of all that part of the moral world which is accessible to us. It may be viewed from the highest and most commanding station of all, from the fountainhead of the Divine mind; and so beginning with the plans and purposes of the Deity, it may pass onward in historical order through the forthgoings of a Divine administration, having for its principle the will and authority of God, and for its subject the aggregate mass of our species; or it may be viewed from another station—from the heart or the homestead of a single individual in that species, whether as sunk in the moral lethargy from which the calls of Christianity might arouse him, or as awakened to a sense of danger, and labouring to realize, in the asylum which Christianity has opened, a place of safety and of enlargement.
What we affirm is, that the representation of Christianity, taken from the one station, is different from the representation of Christianity taken from the other, and yet the thing viewed from both is one and the same Christianity. They differ not as one object does from another, but only as the scheme or projection of an object seen from one point differs from the scheme or projection of the same object seen from another point. The change is not in the truth, the only change is in the perspective. If the representation of the hortatory differs from the representation of the systematic theologian, it is just as one picture of the same landscape differs from another, because of the different sides from which they have been taken, and so different bearings in which the whole and every part stand to the eye of the spectator. It is thus that we may have two different representations of the same Christianity; and if the one is the proper representation to be given from the chair, the other is certainly the proper representation to be given from the pulpit.
The nearest approximation in Scripture to the first of these occurs in the eighth chapter of the Romans: “Whom he did foreknow, them he did predestinate; whom he did predestinate, them he also called; whom he called, them he also justified; whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Paul appears at this place in the character of a systematic theologian; but none was practically more successful than he in the work of the hortatory theologian, in acquitting himself of which he would begin not at the first step of the progression which I have now laid before you—not with God’s foreknowledge or God’s predestination, but at an intermediate step, with God’s calling on all men everywhere to repent, and to do works meet for repentance. It was not so that Peter began: not most assuredly with a dissertation on the Trinity—not with the decrees of a predestinating God, but with other truths that came more nearly home to the personal interest of his hearers, and by which he might arouse them to an immediate practical movement, with the doctrine of a ready-offered forgiveness, and a promised regeneration to all who would, and, grounded upon these, with a call to repent, and be baptized every one of them in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and that they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.
In whatever way you may receive the truths of Christianity here, this is the way for conducting the business of pulpits. You should first impress the consciences of men with the demonstration of sinfulness, even as Peter did: you should then exhibit the open door of an accepted Mediatorship, which all are invited to enter, and where they may be admitted to behold their offended Lawgiver in this most winning yet impressive attitude, God waiting to be gracious: and then the promised aids of grace and strength from on high might be made known to them, and intermingled with statements of doctrine as in the voice of a teacher, there should be an urgency, an imperative urgency, in the voice of a commander—“Turn to me, and I will pour out my Spirit upon you”; and there should be a constant enforcement of the new obedience of the gospel with as constant an appliance of the truths and the motives which constrain it; and one doctrine after another should be propounded as they are able to bear it, or as it admits of pertinent and practical application to the actual progress they have made in the moral history and moral experience of a believer; and while all Scripture should be expounded because all Scripture is profitable, it should never be forgotten that in Scripture doctrinal truth is continually brought forward as a stepping-stone to practical efficiency, and that the ultimate object of all its revelations is, that the man of God might be perfect, and thoroughly furnished to all good works.
There is just one distinction more between the systematic and the hortatory that I have time at present to notice, and which has been suggested by an expression made use of a little while ago. We said that in the systematic theology the administration of God is exhibited as it bears upon the mass of the species, or perhaps rather on two distinct masses, the children of light and the children of this world. It is thus made to assume in a great degree the character of a distant and general speculation. The sense of one’s own personal interest is lost among those universalities of statement and doctrine, and theology altogether is in this way more regarded as a thing of intellectual entertainment than as a matter of individual concern. Now for a practical effect it is a mighty object so to shape the representation as to isolate each of your hearers and make him feel that the matters wherewith you are charged are addressed distinctly and specifically to him. Now there are certain terms associated everywhere in the New Testament with God’s overtures to the world, and which fully warrant this pointed, this personal direction of them to each individual; and the most important transition is made from the systematic to the hortatory, from the style of a professor in his chair to the style of a minister in his pulpit, when availing yourselves of these terms you pass from a mere general and didactic exhibition of the subject to such an application of it as might lead each individual to take it home to his own case and his own conscience. There is a fine example of this isolation of each hearer given by the Apostle Peter, when he says—Repent every one of you; and, by our Saviour when he says, Come to me all; or when He says, Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any man open, I shall enter; or when He says, Whosoever cometh to me shall in no wise be cast out. Ministers still may, after these high examples, charge, or entreat, or hold out the encouragements of the gospel to each and every man within the reach of their voice; and thus the difference between the gospel in its generality and the gospel in its specific bearing on each individual of the great family of man, forms one capital distinction between the didactic and the hortatory management of the subject, between, in short, your present studies as collegians, and your future preparations as ministers of parishes.
