THE PREACHER'S INNER LIFE
When Gehazi went at Elisha's command to resurrect the dead, he took the prophet's staff with him, but no miracle happened; for the virtue of the staff was negatived by the hands that held it. "I was confirmed," wrote John Milton, "in the opinion that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem." Homiletics may indeed be taught by books and lectures; but at the heart of everything stands the personal equation, and the real work is done, not on the level where a man acquires a knowledge of technique and rules and devices, but on the deep levels of self-commitment where he rigorously disciplines his life for love of Jesus Christ. One hesitates to say anything on a matter so intimate and sacred: here words can be but few and faltering. Yet it would be a poor service to analyse the elements of preaching and be dumb about what matters most. "Anything destined to be strong and efficacious in action," Father Martindale reminds us, "needs a drastic preparation of character." And if there is truth in the saying pectus facit theologum, it is no less true that the inner life makes the preacher.
Sometimes it will happen that your most carefully prepared sermon discomfits you by missing fire completely—a salutary if humbling experience. Then is the time to put some searching questions to your own soul: "Why did it fail so palpably? Was it because I had neglected the flame on my own altar? Can it have been that I was so busy preparing my sermon that I
191
