Let me suggest a really great question. Is it enough for a preacher to preach the truth? In a place where I was quite unknown, I turned into a church one day and enjoyed the rare luxury of hearing another man preach. But, much as I appreciated the experience, I found, when I came out, that the preacher had started a rather curious line of thought. He was a very gracious man; it was a genuine pleasure to have seen and heard him. And yet there seemed to be a something lacking. The sermon was absolutely without surprise. Every sentence was splendidly true, and yet not a single sentence startled me. There was no sting in it. I seemed to have heard it all over and over and over again; I could even see what was coming. Surely it is the preacher's duty to give the truth such a setting, and present it in such a way, that the oldest truths will appear newer than the latest sensations. He must arouse me from my torpor; he must compel me to open my eyes and pull myself together; he must make me sit up and think. 'Keep up your surprise-power, my dear fellow,' said my companion that evening in the bush, speaking out of his long and rich experience.
'The pulpit,' he said, 'must never, never lose its power of startling people!' The preacher, that is to say, must keep up his stock of explosives. The Bishop of London declared the other day that the Church is suffering from too much 'dearly beloved brethren.' She would be better judiciously to mix it with a few bombshells.
And yet, after all, I suppose it was largely my own fault that the sermon of which I have spoken seemed to me to be so ineffective. There are tremendous astonishments in the Christian evangel which, however baldly stated, should fire my sluggish soul with wonder, and fill it with amazement. The fact that I listened so blandly shows that I have become blasé. I am like the soldier in the trenches who no longer notices the bursting shells about him. I am like the auditor who occupies a seat at the conjuring entertainment, but has fallen asleep just as the thing is getting sensational.
In one of his latest books, Harold Begbie gives us a fine picture of John Wyclif reading from his own translation of the Bible to those who had never before listened to those stately and wonderful cadences. The hearers look at each other with wide-open eyes, and are almost incredulous in their astonishment. Every sentence is a sensation. They can scarcely believe their ears. They are like the baby on the floor. The simplicities startle them. If only I can renew the romance of my childhood, and recapture that early sense of wonder, the world will suddenly become as marvellous as the prince's palace in the fairy stories, and the ministry of the Church will become life's most sensational sensation.