that the preachers and expositors of any one age monopolize all the excellences of their vocations. As a preacher, Leighton lends his influence to those who hold that sermons should not be read by the preacher. In this respect he can hardly be considered as an extempore speaker. His practice seems to have been a memoriter speaking. "I know," he said, "that weakness of memory is pleaded in excuse for this custom [viz., reading the sermon]; but better minds would make better memories. Such an excuse is unworthy of a man, and much more of a father, who may want vent indeed in addressing his children, but ought never to want matter. Like Elihu, he should be refreshed by speaking." He, in a number of his sermons, has an introduction before announcing the text. The practice has this merit at least-it serves to rivet attention on the text. It is difficult to see why preachers should be so bound by hard-and-fast rules. There is no law requiring them to "give out" the text first. Leighton used his common sense, and brought his text in when and where it would best serve the purpose of a text. In fact, the business of preaching from single texts may be somewhat overdone; and the minister will find that if he occasionally departs from a stereotyped method he will be the more likely to gain the attention of his hearers from the start. Coming now to the elements of his sermons which best deserve and repay study, they are: The contrast between Nothing of the latter's None of the former's excess 1. They are, in style, plain pure English, clear as sunlight, simple in their diction, models of lucidity and purity. Leighton and Jeremy Taylor here is striking. soaring rhetoric is ever found in the former. in learned quotations ever appears. Leighton's only aim is to be plain and weighty. He says nothing for effect. So, on the other hand, he is in contrast, so far as style goes, with preachers like Howe and Baxter, who are careless and involved in style; whose weighty or burning sentences have yet a certain cumbrousness about them which impedes their full effect. A style like that of Leighton resembles far more closely that of the late Cardinal Newman, the praise of whose noble English is in the mouth of all the critics. The resemblance is so close, indeed, that one is tempted to think Newman must have studied Leighton carefully. It is in the thought as much as it is in the style. This severe simplicity of style stands in absolute contrast with what is called in modern phrase sensational preaching." This, in both its good and its bad sense, has had full sway among us. But there are some signs of reaction. Sure we are that preaching, to reach its best ends, must have a style more like Leighton's and less like that of some modern pew-fillers. There is an essential difference between the two-a moral as well as an intellectual difference. Space does not allow of any quotations to illustrate points; but readers are referred to such sermons as that on "Christ, the Light and Lustre of the Church," or that on or that on "Hope Amid Billows" as examples. 2. The other quality for which Leighton should be studied is his spirituality. It is not only the sermon, it is the man behind the sermon who determines the spiritual force in any given preaching. In Leighton's time preachers in the English Church were, as a rule, worldly prelates, whose words from the pulpit were cold and dead; and in the Scottish Church they were busy "preaching up the times," with here and there such an exception as Samuel Rutherford of Anworth. If in the sermons of Dr. Robert South, with all their magnificent force and bold indictments of prevalent immorality in the Court, we see a lack of evangelical warmth, we find Leighton's all aglow with it. The spirituality of the preacher's life affects the structure, the thought, the language of his sermons. It gives them intense reality of conviction. He sees into things with a spiritual eye; and we have the vision in the sermon. It is no narrow evangelicalism, harping on a few phrases and dealing with a few topics. It illumines everything. The richness of Leighton's evangelical thought is seen everywhere in his writings; but his sermons especially are full of it. Here is power, but it is power gained not by sheer force of his intellectual perceptions as these were found in a soul born again. It is power gained in a godly life. We have had so much talk about the importance of a minister's being a man among men" that we may have forgotten the truth that a minister must have a deep spiritual experience if he is to be a preacher in the sense which Leighton embodied, and not a mere filler of pews. And the study of his sermons is a good training school for this divine gift. Leighton as an expositor of Scripture belongs of course to the goodly company of the older commentators. But we make a great mistake if we think these are wholly superseded by the biblical scholars of the present day. Undoubtedly the latter have far more full and accurate knowledge of the sacred languages. The difference is represented at once in the difference between the grammars and lexicons of that day and this. The older exegetes cannot for a moment compare with those of this century in all the minutiae of biblical scholarship. Must they then be shelved? Is Matthew Henry only an antiquarian curiosity-fossil remains of an extinct method? Or have biblical expositors like Henry and Leighton something of permanent value? 66 1. These men have a way of getting at the "gist" of scriptural teaching which does represent the core and substance of inspired truth. They have what Professor Stuart, of Andover, used to call the "logic of commentary." I am free to say, at the risk of being thought behind the times, that if I wanted to get at the full scope and the whole context in the First Epistle of Peter, I would rather depend on Leighton for it than on Lange. If I wanted light on a vexed passage I should seek Lange rather than LeighThe reason for this comprehension of the kernel and substance of inspired truth is that they-the older commentators-brought to the study of the Word of God a spiritual illumination, something altogether apart from knowledge of New Testament Greek or Hebrew philology. They were no mean scholars in their day; but to their scholarship they added a ton. 1 spiritual illumination, an enlightening by the Holy Spirit gained through deep devotion, in which they saw the "mind of the Spirit" as that mind was expressed in the Scriptures they explored. Men like Leighton were, by the very fact of their deep spirituality, brought into such sympathy with inspired truth that their comprehension of it acts like an intuition and is akin-I am not afraid to say it-to inspiration itself. 2. Leighton is of special value in the matter of expository preaching. It is said by one of his biographers that his commentary on the First Epistle of Peter was originally preached to his parish at Newbattle. This seems altogether probable from the form in which it is cast. He has left also other specimens of expository preaching in his expository lectures on Psalm xxxix. and on the first nine chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel. While they may be said to lack an illustrative element needful to a mixed audience, they lack nothing which the "spiritual mind" can desire. They would strike deeply responsive chords in any weekly service where Christians come to be built up in their most holy faith. It would be unjust to Leighton to say that he is wanting in imagery. On the contrary, though sparingly used, it is always of an effective kind. Thus in the expository lecture on Romans xii. 3-12, on the first clauses of verse 3 he uses three telling illustrations. They are not so often sprinkled over his discussions, but they are always apt, and shed light on the passage, as when he says: "Alas! it is an uncomfortable and commonly an unprofitable thing to speak of Christ and the graces of His Spirit only as having heard of them or read of them, as men that travel in their studies do of foreign countries." 3. If for nothing else, Leighton richly repays study for his stimulating power in cultivating a true thoughtfulness on spiritual things. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with his quick insight into authors, discerned this power in Leighton. Hence his use of aphorisms taken from this divine in his "Aids to Reflection," a book which has powerfully moulded such minds as those of President James Marsh and Dr. William G. T. Shedd. One cannot read long in any of Leighton's writings without coming upon some statement of a truth which will impel him to think; never because it is paradoxical nor strained, but because it is-what Coleridge called itaphoristic. A specimen of this is found in the opening sentences of the lecture on Romans xii. 3-12: "He that gives rules of life without first fixing principles of faith offers preposterously at building a house without laying a foundation; and he that instructs what to believe, and directs not withal a believer how to live, doth in vain lay a foundation without following out the building." This will bear a good deal of thinking on. It contains in short compass a whole philosophy of religious training. One word of caution as to the handling of such an author. Cursory reading will not do. If he be not studied somewhat carefully his excellences will not be recognized. As in some of the masterpieces of art, glances will not reveal their beauties, only a steady gaze. So with Leighton. But they who do study him rejoice over hid treasure. SERMONIC SECTION. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO AMOS. BY REV. E. T. JEFFERS, D.D. [PRES BYTERIAN], OIL CITY, PA. My subject this morning is somewhat indefinite The Gospel according to Amos. Amos was not a prophet, he was not a clergyman, he had never been a theological student. He tells this himself in his own way: "I am neither a prophet, nor am I one of the sons of the prophets." That is, he was not one who had been in training for a prophet; but he spoke God's message. He was the original of Moody, he was a lay preacher; and this may account for the directness and conciseness of the mes sage which he delivers, and the entire absence of any attempt to round off the clear-cut corners of unpleasant truth. He speaks directly, and speaks as though he intended to present God's message as a matter of business. He said in one place, "When the Lord has spoken, who can but prophesy?" and it is because he has this message which he cannot but deliver, that he speaks. Not because of any professional necessity, but because of the burden that rests on his heart and fills his mind. Another point: this Gospel of Amos was not intended exclusively for Gaza, and Tyre, and Ammon, and Moab, and Damascus, and Judah, and Israel. Had it been, the memory of it would have perished with the memory of Amos, and his name even would not have come down to us. The herdsman of Tekoa, who cultivated the figs, would never have been heard of beyond his native plain, and would not have been remembered beyond his generation. It is because his message suits all times and peoples that it has been written and when God writes the names of the nations that take the place and ought to listen to the message that was sent to Israel, and Judah, and Edom, and Ammon, and Gaza, and Tyre, we shall not be surprised to find England, and America, and Germany, and France, and Russia, because the same sins that were prevalent in those old nations are just as prevalent in these modern nations; and when God writes in the names that shall be spelled out in place of that of Jeroboam the Second and others who were associated with him, we need not be surprised to find some who are not kings-possibly but railroad kings—who monopolize the earnings of multitudes when they steal a railroad according to law and by the modern methods of the exchange. We need not be surprised if we find some names that are quite prominent among benevolent people and among Church people; and we need not be shocked if we should find there even our own names. This Gospel according to Amos comes right home, and I think if every man understands himself, he will find something here worth listening to. I. What is this Gospel of Amos? Here is the first point in it: Sin will certainly be punished. Your sin, not the sin of Amos, the contemporaries of Amos, not the sin of Israel, who set up golden calves in Bethel and Gilgal and Beersheba, but your sin; and that is what Amos is saying to us all to-day. You may think to escape, “but if you escape the lion, the bear will eat you." That is his own figure; "and if you get out of the way of the outside danger into the house, and lean up against the wall, a serpent will bite your hand.” That is a figure also of his, and belongs to the Eastern country, where serpents frequently found refuge in the peculiar walls of their uncomfortable houses. that sin is punished, because sin is a bad thing for us, and He wants to root it out of our nature and keep it out of our lives. There is no Canada or South America to which a man can escape from the penalties of his sins, though he may escape from the judicial punishment of his crimes. God's government has an extradition treaty with every kingdom under the sun, and you can never escape from the penalties of sin. This the Gospel of Amos; the Gospel according to Amos is the Gospel for all times. Christ says, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Sin has in it some elements of punishment. "Rest yourselves on your ivory couches," Amos says to the luxurious Israelites. The day of Amos was a day of luxury, a day of wealth, a day of almost unlimited wealth. Stocks were high in those days, money was plenty, houses were luxuriously furnished. They had each his winter house and each his summer house, and they went from the one to the other. They rested quietly in their long vacations in the splendid mountain districts of Palestine. God is no enemy of luxury. But look into your houses, study the elaborate furnishing of your rooms, observe whether or not there is the trace of injustice found in one of them. If there is a figure there that stands for the defrauding of laborers, or if there is a sign there that indicates that that luxury has been bought at the expense of unpaid labor; if you have defrauded any poor man, if you have put your heel on the neck of any one who is down, "the Lord will take you away with hooks, and your prosperity with fish-hooks." Your palaces will be destroyed. That spot of unpaid labor which represents unrighteousness will grow into a cancer that will eat into the heart of your luxuries, and into your own heart, and take all the heart out of life. Now, this isn't hate, this isn't malice, this isn't hard feeling and unfeeling threatening; not at all. It is God's kindest message to the sinner, to warn him of an inevitable fact. II. A second point in Amos' Gospel is this Mercy postpones punishment, but does not set it aside. God will never forget; that is not mercy. God will never forget your injustice, your fraud, your deception, your robbery, your violence. Ye have filled your palaces with robbery and with violence, and therefore your palaces shall be spoiled;" they go together. There is a "therefore" that links them together, and that binds them with a bond tenfold stronger than tempered steel; you can never separate the two. You can't forget; God won't forget. Mercy postpones punishment; but some one will say to Amos, "We have listened to this kind of a prophet before, and Israel still stands. It has been a hundred years since this thing started in Israel, and we are still rich, and we are growing richer, and our boundaries never went so far east, and they never went so fai south, and they never were so strong in the north. We are rich; there is an abundance of money and everything that ministers to life. Your prophecies are evidently ill-timed." And after Amos died fifty years passed on and not a sign of any fulfilment of them; and they would say, "What a strange old fanatic that Amos was! He told us in the midst of our wealth and intelligence and refinement and luxury that all this was destined to destruction; and see, it goes right on, and the summer palaces are grander, and the trade is stronger, and the poor are held down more firmly, and money increases more rapidly. Why, we understand how to run the world. Amos was mistaken." And Amos would say quickly, if permitted to speak, “Mercy holds up the judgment and waits; but it doesn't mean that God is slack concerning His promise, but only that He is long-suffering, and waiting in order that none may perish, but that all may repent, that all may come to repentance." This is inevitable, this is the eternal principle upon which God acts. In the gallery of a photographer you |