HERALDS OF GOD
ficant account of the effect produced by a great nineteenth-century preacher on two of the most acute and discriminating minds of his day. "We have just been to hear Spurgeon," wrote Principal Tulloch, describing a visit paid by Professor Ferrier the metaphysician and himself to the Surrey Gardens Music Hall one Sunday morning in 1858, "and have been both so much impressed that I wish to give you my impressions while they are fresh. As we came out we both confessed, 'There is no doubt about that,' and I was struck with Perrier's remarkable expression, 'I feel it would do me good to hear the like of that; it sat so close to reality.' The sermon is about the most real thing I have come in contact with for a long time." That focuses the basic element of the true preacher's power. "It sat so close to reality." O si sic omnes!
To make this quite concrete, let me urge upon you the following maxims.
Be real in worship. If you are to lead others in worship, you must be truly sharing in the act of worship yourself. No doubt this sounds self-evident: yet it does need to be emphasized. It means, for instance, that you are not to occupy the time of hymn-singing conning the Scripture lessons or fidgeting with a sheaf of intimations or moving restlessly about the pulpit or scanning the congregation for absentees. It is unnatural to bid your people lift up their hearts to the Lord and then fail to join your voice with theirs in the common act of praise. Moreover, it is by realizing the attitude of worship in your own spirit that you will
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