Preaching with Power

The following is to aspiring preachers whose word, like their Master’s, shall be “with power.” 

Power, energy, efficiency, that is the endowment to be communicated showing great care, attention, and effort by the ministers of Christ’s church.   

By the power of which I have spoken, I mean that strong action of the understanding, conscience, and heart on moral and religious truth, through which the preacher is quickened and qualified to awaken the same strong action in others.

 I mean energy of thought and feeling in the minister, creating for itself an appropriate expression, and propagating itself to the hearer and able to arrest attention, rouse emotion, and give a new spring to the soul. 

Knowledge when accumulated, as it often is, 

with no strong action of the intellect, 

no vividness of conception, 

no depth of conviction, 

no force of feeling, 

is of little or no worth to the preacher. 

We want force of thought and feeling, and purpose. What profits it to arm the pupil with weapons of heavenly temper, unless his hands be nerved to wield them with vigor and success? 

The word of God is indeed “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword:” but when committed to him who has no kindred energy, it does not and cannot penetrate the mind.  

We want powerful ministers, not graceful declaimers, not elegant essayists, but men fitted to act on men, to make themselves felt in society.

 I mean power to act on intelligent and free beings, by means proportioned to their nature. 

I mean power to call into healthy exertion the intellect, conscience, affections, and moral will of the hearer. 

The loose conceptions of Christianity which prevail among the high as well as the low, do not deserve the name of “knowledge.” 

The loftiest minds among us seldom put forth their strength on the very subject for which intelligence was especially given. 

A great revolution is needed here. 

The human intellect is to be brought to act on religion with new power. It ought to prosecute this inquiry with an intenseness with which no other subject is investigated. 

And does it require no energy in the teacher to awaken this power and earnestness of thought in others, to bring religion before the intellect as its worthiest object, to raise men’s traditional, lifeless, superficial faith into deliberate profound conviction?

And is energy not needed to break through the barriers of pride and self-love, and to place the individual before a tribunal in his own breast as solemn and searching as that which awaits him at the last day?  

The preachers in Christ’s church are to give Spirit led vitality to the thought of God in the human mind; to make His presence felt; to make Him a reality, and the most powerful reality to the soul. 

Is it easy, in a world of matter and sense? 

amidst crowds of impressions rushing in from abroad, amidst the constant and visible agency of second causes, 

amidst the anxieties, 

toils, 

pleasures, 

dissipations, 

and competitions of life, 

in the stir and bustle of society, and in an age when luxury wars with spirituality, and the development of nature’s resources are turning men’s trust from the Creator, -- is it easy, amidst these gross interests and detracting influences, to raise men’s minds to the invisible Divinity? to fix impressions of God deeper and more enduring than those which are received from all other beings, to make Him the supreme object, spring, and motive of the soul? 

It is the minister’s duty to inculcate a piety characterized by wisdom as much as by warmth;  

The minister is to teach an earnest but enlightened religion:” a piety which, far from wasting or eradicating, will protect, nourish, freshen the mind’s various affections and powers; 

which will add force to reason, as well as ardor to the heart; which will at once bind us to God, and cement and multiply our ties to our families, our country, and mankind; which will heighten the relish of life’s pleasures, whilst it kindles an unquenchable thirst for a purer happiness in the life to come. 

Religion does not mutilate our nature. It does not lay waste our human interest and affections, that it may erect for God a throne amidst cheerless, and solitary ruins, but widens the range of thoughts, feeling, and enjoyment. 

But it is the minister’s duty to rouse men to self-conflict. To warfare with the evil in their own hearts. This is in truth the supreme evil. The sorest calamities of life – sickness, poverty, scorn, dungeons and death – form a less amount of desolation and suffering than is included in that one word, sin. 

In revolt from God, in disloyalty to conscience, in the tyranny of passions, in thralldom of the soul’s noblest powers. 

To redeem men from sin was Christ’s great end. 

To pierce them with a new consciousness of sin, so that they shall groan under it and strive against it, and through prayer and watching, master it: this is an essential part of the minister’s work. 

Let him not satisfy himself with awakening by his eloquence occasional emotions of gratitude or sympathy. He must rouse the soul to solemn, stern resolve against its own deep and cherished corruptions, or he only makes a show of assault, and leaves the foe intrenched and unbroken within. 

We see then, the arduousness of the minister’s work. He is called to war with might of the human passions, with the whole power of moral evil. He is to enlist men, not for a crusade, nor for extermination of heretics, but to fight a harder battle within, to expel sin in all its forms and especially their besetting sins, from the strongholds of the heart. 

I know no task so arduous, none which demands equal power.

And finally, with this purifying purpose of duty, pray for the Holy Spirit and you will receive it. A secret influence will aid your efforts after oneness with God. 

I believe too, that you may be favored with those blessed seasons of universal light and strength, of which good men have often spoken, in which the mind seems warmed by a new flame and quickened by a new energy from on high, and which, though not miraculous, will bring a near consciousness of Christ and bring the very breath of God upon your soul.” 

William Ellery Channing.