Chapter IV
THE PREACHER'S TECHNIQUE
"What skill doth every part of our work require, and of how much moment is every part! To preach a sermon, I think, is not the hardest part; and yet what skill is necessary to make plain the truth, to convince the hearers; to let in the irresistible light into their consciences, and to keep it there, and drive all home; to screw the truth into their minds, and work Christ into their affections; to meet every objection that gainsays, and clearly to resolve it; to drive sinners to a stand, and make them see there is no hope, but they must unavoidably be converted or condemned: and to do all this so for language and manner as beseems our work, and yet as is most suitable to the capacities of our hearers. This, and a great deal more that should be done in every sermon, should surely be done with a great deal of holy skill. So great a God, whose message we deliver, should be honoured by our delivery of it."—Richard Baxter.
I
THERE was a day when that flaming prophet of the eighteenth century, George Whitefield, was preaching to a vast throng on the power of saving faith. The pride of reason and worldly wisdom, he declared, would lead the soul downward to inevitable destruction: only faith in Christ led heavenward. To drive the point home to his hearers' minds, he used an illustration. He begged them to imagine a blind man, with a dog, walking on the brink of a precipice. So vividly did the preacher describe the scene, so acute became the tension as he brought the blind man nearer and nearer to the fatal edge, that suddenly Lord
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