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Appendix — Miscellaneous Articles
PREACHING, PREACHERS AND PULPITS. — THE FIRST PREACHER. —
ENOCH, NOAH, ABRAHAM, MOSES. — THE PROPHETS. — EZEKIEL, EZRA. — THE FIRST
PULPIT.
"THE history of the pulpit is curious and entertaining. It
has spoken all languages, and in all sorts of style. It has partaken of all the
customs of the schools, the theaters and the courts of all the countries where
it has been erected. It has been a seat of wisdom, and a sink of nonsense. It
has been filled by the best and the worst of men. It has proved in some hands a
trumpet of sedition, and in others source of peace and consolation. But on a
fair balance, collected from authentic history, there would appear no proportion
between the benefits and the mischief's which mankind have derived from it, so
much do the advantages of it preponderate. In a word, evangelical preaching has
been, and yet continues to be, reputed foolishness — but real wisdom, a wisdom
and a power by which it pleases God to save the souls of men.
"The first voice that imparted religious ideas by discourse
to fallen man, was the voice of the Creator, called, by the inspired historian,
The voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
Whether he, who afterwards appeared so often in human shape, and at last
actually put on a human body, descended into the garden, assumed a form and
conversed with our first parents on this occasion, or whether the air was so
undulated by the power of God, as to form articulate, audible sounds, certain it
is, Adam and Eve literally heard a voice, and had the highest reason for
accounting it the voice of God. The promise to the woman of a son, who should
bruise the serpent’s head, was emphatically and properly called The word
of God. It was a promise which they had no right to expect; but, when revealed,
the highest reason to embrace.
"It is natural to suppose, God having once spoken to man,
that mankind would retain, and repeat with great punctuality, what had been
said, and listen after more. Accordingly, infallible records assure us, that
when men began to associate for the purpose of worshiping the Deity, Enoch
prophesied. We have a very short account of this prophet and his doctrine;
enough, however, to convince us that he taught the principal truths of natural,
and the then revealed religion, the unity of God and his natural and moral
perfections, the nature of virtue and its essential difference from vice, a day
of future, impartial retribution.
Conviction of sin was in his doctrine, and communion with God was exemplified in
his conduct. He held communion with God by sacrifice, and St. Paul reasons from
his testimony that he pleased God, that he had faith in the promise of
the Mediator, for without faith it would have been impossible even for
Enoch, to have pleased God.
"From the days of Enoch to the time of Moses, each patriarch
worshiped God with his family; probably several assembled at new moons, and
alternately instructed the whole company.
"Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and by him, as an
instrument, Christ, by his Spirit, preached to the disobedient souls of men,
imprisoned in ignorance and vice, and continued, with great long-suffering, to
do so all the while the ark was preparing.
"Abraham commanded his household after him to keep the way
of the Lord, and to do justice and judgment; and Jacob, when his house
lapsed to idolatry, remonstrated against it, and exhorted them, and all that
were with him, to put away strange gods, and to go up with him to Bethel, to
that God who had answered him in the day of his distress. In all these records
of matters of fact, we perceive, short as they are, the same great leading
truths that were taught by Enoch, the general truths of natural religion, and
along with them, the peculiar principles of revelation.
"How charming, upon a primitive mountain, beneath the shade
of a venerable grove, must the voice of Melchisedeck have been, the father, the
prince and the priest of his people, now publishing to his attentive
audience, good tidings of salvation, peace between God and man, and the
lifting up holy hands and calling upon the name of the Lord, the everlasting
God! A few plain truths, proposed in simple style, addressed to the reason,
and expounded by the feelings of mankind, enforced by nothing but fraternal
argument and example, animated by the Holy Spirit, and productive of genuine
moral excellence, accompanied with sacrifices, comprised the whole system of
patriarchal religion. Such was the venerable simplicity of hoary antiquity,
before statesmen stole the ordinances of religion, and hungry hirelings were
paid to debase them.
"Moses, although slow of speech, is the next preacher I shall
name. This great man had much at heart the promulgation of his doctrine. He
directed it to be inscribed on pillars, to be transcribed in books, and to be
taught both in public and in private by word of mouth. Himself set the example
of each; and how he and Aaron sermonized, we may see by several parts of his
writings. The first discourse was heard with profound reverence and attention;
the last was both uttered and received in raptures.
"Public preaching does not appear, under this economy, to
have been attached to the priesthood. Priests were not officially preachers, and
we have innumerable instances of discourses delivered in religious assemblies by
men of other tribes besides that of Levi. The Lord gave the word, and great
was the company of those that published it. Joshua was an Ephraimite, but being
full of the spirit of wisdom, he gathered the tribes to Shechem, and
harangued the people of God. Solomon was a prince of the house of Judah; Amos a
herdsman of Tekoa; yet both were preachers, and one, at least, was a prophet.
"Before Moses, revelation was short, and might safely be
deposited in the memory. But when God saw fit to bless the church with the large
and necessary additions of Moses, a book became necessary. This book was the
standard, and they who spoke not according to this word were justly
accounted to have no light in them. Hence the distinction between
scrip-rural instructors, who taught according to the law and the
testimony, and were called seers, and fanciful declaimers, who uttered
visions out of their own hearts, and were deemed blind, and thought to be in a
dream, that is, under deception.
"The sermons of the old prophets often produced amazing
effects, both in the principles and the morals of the people. Single discourses,
at some times, brought whole nations to repentance, although, at other times,
the greatest of them complained, Who hath believed our report? All day long
we have stretched forth our hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.
In the first case, they were in ecstacies, such was their benevolence; in the
last, they retired in silence, and wept in secret places. Some, in first
transports of passion, execrated the day of their birth, and, when deliberation
and calmness returned, committed themselves, their country and their cause to
God.
"Ezekiel was a man extraordinarily appointed ˘o preach to the
captives, and endowed with singular abilities for the execution of his office.
He received his instructions in ecstacies, and he uttered them generally in
rapturous vehemence. He had a pleasant voice, and the entire management of it;
he could play on the instrument, that is, he knew how to dispose his
organs of speech, so as to give energy, by giving proper tone and accent to all
he spoke. The people were as much charmed with his discourses as if they had
been odes set to music. He was a lovely song in their ears, and they used
to say to one another, Come, and let us hear what is the word that cometh
forth from the Lord. The elders and the people assembled at his house, and
sat before him, and there, sometimes in the morning, and at other times in the
evening, he delivered those sharp and pointed sermons which are con-rained in
his prophecy.
"When the seventy years of the captivity were expired, the
captives were divided in their opinions about returning. Some traded and
flourished in Babylon, and, having no faith in the divine promise, and too much
confidence in their sordid guides, chose to live where idolatry was the
established religion, and despotism the soul of civil government. The good
prophets and preachers, Zerubbabel, Joshua, Haggai and others, having confidence
in the word of God, and aspiring after their natural, civil and religious
rights, endeavored, by all means, to extricate themselves and their countrymen
from that mortifying state into which the crimes of their ancestors had brought
them. They wept, fasted, prayed, preached, prophesied, and at length prevailed.
The chief instruments were Nehemiah and Ezra; the first was governor, and
reformed their civil state; the last was a scribe of the law of the God of
heaven, and addressed himself to ecclesiastical matters, in which he
rendered the noblest service to his country and to all posterity.
The first Pulpit of which we have any account in the
Scriptures.
"We have a short, but beautiful description of the manner of
Ezra's first preaching. Upwards of fifty thousand people assembled in a street,
or large square, near the watergate. It was easy in the morning of a Sabbath
day. A pulpit of wood, in the fashion of a small tower, was placed there on
purpose for the preacher, and this turret was supported by a scaffold, a
temporary gallery, where, in a wing on the right hand of the pulpit, sat six of
the principal preachers, and in another on the left, seven. Thirteen other
principal teachers, and many Levites, were present also, on scaffolds erected
for the purpose, alternately to officiate. When Ezra ascended the pulpit, he
produced and opened the book of the law, and the whole congregation instantly
rose up from their seats, and stood. Then he offered up prayer and praise to
God, the people bowing their heads, and worshiping the Lord with their faces to
the ground; and at the close of the prayer, with uplifted hands, they solemnly
pronounced Amen, Amen. Then, all standing, Ezra, assisted at times by the
Levites, read the law distinctly, gave the sense, and caused them to
understand the reading. The sermons delivered, so affected the hearers, that
they wept excessively, and about noon, the sorrow became so exuberant and
immeasurable, that it was thought necessary by the governor, the preacher and
the Levites to restrain it.
"Plato was alive at this time, teaching dull philosophy to
cold academics. Bat what was he, and what was Xenophon, or Demosthenes, or any
of the Pagan orators, in comparison with these men!" *
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* Most of this chapter, and a part of the next, is taken from
Robinson’s Dissertation on Public Preaching. It is prefixed to the second
volume of Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon.
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Fifty Years
Among The Baptist