There is a famous story about Dr
Thomas Guthrie when he was visiting the studio of an artist. An unfinished picture lay on an easel and
Guthrie suggested one or two adjustments that might improve the painting. The artist responded: ‘Dr Guthrie, remember
you are a preacher and not a painter.’
With his usual rapier wit Guthrie responded: ‘Beg your pardon, my good
friend, I am a painter; only I paint in words, while you use brush and colours.’
While Guthrie’s enduring legacy
is his work as a social reformer, his highest calling was always
preaching. His colleague, Rev Dr Hanna,
said of him: ‘No readier speaker ever stepped on a platform.’ Whatever Guthrie may have lacked in fine
theology he made up for in passion and imagery.
One anonymous writer said: ‘His oratory wanted none of the polish that
distinguished Chalmers’ wild whirlwind bursts, or Hall’s grandly ascending
periods, but it had qualities entirely of its own. More, perhaps, than any other preacher of his
time, he had the power or knack of fixing truths on the memory. He sent them home as if they had been
discharged from a battery, and fixed them there by a process peculiar to
himself.’
Like many ministers Thomas
Guthrie matured into a great preacher over time. Unlike other students, Guthrie had taken
extra elocution lessons while studying divinity and realised that the manner as well as the matter was important in preaching: ‘the
manner is to the matter as the powder is to the ball. I had heard very indifferent discourses made
forcible by a vigorous, and able ones reduced to feebleness by a poor, pith
less delivery.’ He was inspired by great orators of the past and mentions
Demosthenes, Cicero and Whitfield in his Autobiography as those who inspired
him in his desire to be the very best communicator of sacred truth.
Guthrie had to wait five years
for a call to his first charge in Arbirlot in 1830. During his ‘wilderness years’ of travelling in
France and working in his father’s bank he battled with doubts about his
calling. Even once he was settled into
his first charge he saw little response from the largely church-going parish of
Arbirlot. As one writer says of
Guthrie’s early frustration: ‘He had thundered in their ears the terrors of
Mount Sinai; he had sounded the Gospel trumpet with a blast loud enough to
rouse the dead; he had implored, threatened, and almost scolded them: but
nothing seemed to permanently arrest their attention – they went to sleep under
his most fervent and heart stirring appeals.’
One day, almost by accident rather than design, the young Guthrie told
an anecdote in his sermon. The effect
was electric and when he came home he told his wife that he had discovered how
to keep his congregation awake. From
then on, he wove into his sermons the imagery of nature and history. As Guthrie says in one of his many letters:
‘A thing is easily remembered which is striking, and retained which is
striking; and what does not impress your own mind in these ways, and therefore
is committed with difficulty, you may be sure won’t tell on the minds of your
hearers. An illustration or an example
drawn from nature, a Bible story or any history, will, like a nail, often hang
a thing with would otherwise fall to the ground. Put such into your passage and you will
certainly mend it.’
Guthrie’s pattern of preparation
was mainly to study in the early morning.
After breakfast he would retire to the vestry where he could be heard
rehearsing his sermon. He believed in
‘committing’ his sermon to memory and was scathing of ‘readers’ (those who
rigidly read from a script). Like all
great preachers, Guthrie spent many hours in preparation and believed ‘that God
does not give excellence to men but as the reward of labour.’ Even once his sermons were finished he would
revise them: ‘After my discourse was written, I spent hours in correcting it;
latterly always for that purpose, keeping a blank page on my manuscript opposite
a written one, cutting out dry bits, giving point to dull ones, making clear
any obscurity, and narrative parts more graphic, throwing more pathos into
appeals, and copying God in His works by adding the ornamental to the useful.’
Despite a deep grasp of truth as can
be seen in his published sermons, Guthrie believed in simplicity in his
sermons: ‘I used the simplest, plainest terms, avoiding anything vulgar, but
always, where possible, employing the Saxon tongue – the mother tongue of my
hearers. I studied the style of the
addresses with the ancient and inspired prophets delivered to the people of
Israel, and saw how, differing from the dry inquisitions or a naked statement of
truths, they abound in metaphors, figures, and illustrations.’ As with his character, Guthrie blended a
perfect mix of truth and love, passion and solemnity. As he says in a letter to
Rev Laurie of Tulliallan: ‘The easier your manner, without losing the character
of seriousness and solemnity, so much the better. Vigour and birr, without roaring and
bellowing, are ever to be aimed at.’
Interestingly and perhaps rather controversially,
Guthrie was not a fan of ministers, particularly new ministers, preaching 3-4
times per week and felt that this was an impossible burden to place on men with
large congregations. Rather amusingly
Guthrie quotes in his Autobiography Robert Hall who was once asked how many
sermons a preacher could deliver in a week.
Hall replied: ‘If he is a deep thinker and great condenser, he may get
up one; if he is an ordinary man two; but if he is an ass, sir, he will produce
half a dozen!’ Guthrie dispensed with
two services in his first charge at Arbirlot and replaced the evening service
with a catechism class. Far from
detracting from the centrality of preaching, Guthrie used this class to make
sure his hearers had understood what was preached in the morning. Given that it was mainly young people aged
15-25 Guthrie tried, as much as possible to make things as simple as possible: ‘the
sermon or lecture, delivered in the forenoon, was gone over head by head,
introduction and peroration, the various topics being set forth by
illustrations drawn from nature, the world, history, etc., of a kind that
greatly interested the people such as would not always have suited the dignity
and gravity of the pulpit.’
The Rev George Hay recounts a
story of hearing Guthrie pleading with sinners.
His vivid description of a shipwreck and the launching of a lifeboat to
save those who were perishing was so vivid that a sea Captain in the front seat
of the gallery was convinced he was in physical danger and had to be comforted
by his mother. Dr Guthrie leaves a
wonderful legacy of passionate gospel preaching. He laboured to communicate deep gospel truths
in a way that was relevant to the society he lived in. How we desperately need such passionate
preaching in Scotland today!
No comments:
Post a Comment