Editorial July 12, 1913 Issue

EFFECTIVE PREACHING

John B. Willis

Long-time familiarity with the sermonic feature of the customary religious service is likely to bring one a great surprise when he discovers, on first attending a Christian Science church, that personal preaching has been eliminated from the order of exercises. As a constant church attendant in earlier years, and as a long-time preacher herself, Mrs. Eddy knew full well the value of the opportunity presented by the pulpit, and always expressed herself in the most appreciative terms respecting it. She had come to see, however, that the personal factor was not essential to effective gospel preaching.

In this connection it is interesting to note that the order which has obtained for centuries among Christians of every faith, is very far removed from that of the first Christian congregations. Speaking of this matter, an authority on the organization of the primitive churches has said: "We are apt to transfer our own conditions back to the first century and to assume that the elders and bishops, like the modern pastor, existed primarily for teaching and preaching. But religious utterance was then the common right of all Christians. . . . The officers of the primitive churches were executive and administrative officers and not preachers. ... It was only toward the close of the second century that the bishops added the control of the teaching function to their other growing powers."

This fact, that in the early church the preacher was one who proved himself "possessed of God," capable of "prophesying," as they described his spiritual declaration, is of the greatest interest to Christian Scientists as it is becoming of the greatest significance to all the world. The preacher came upon the scene under a divine impulsion. The personal element was thus reduced to its minimum, and the inspired word became the teacher. The hazard of the personal element inheres in the fact that erudition, oratory, enthusiasm, emotional appeal, etc., — all that goes to make up that rather indefinite somewhat called personal magnetism, — frequently comes to have a place and influence which intensifies a sense of the ministry that was not the original sense, and that has proved a handicap rather than a help to the spiritual interests of all concerned.

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