The Preacher's Emotional Condition, #1

Introduction to the Preacher's Emotional Condition

0:02 Now we return this morning to the subject which forms the focus of our concern for this semester, namely, the essential elements of effective preaching as they pertain to the act of preaching itself. Having underscored in the previous lectures the importance of this division of our study, some of the major principles operative in it, I then proceeded to give you a general overview of the subject, suggesting that the act of preaching can be understood in terms of five basic categories. In the act of preaching, there is the relationship that the preacher sustains to God as he preaches, and we dealt with four lines of thought pertaining to that subdivision. And then there is, secondly, the act of preaching in relationship to ourselves, and that's the area we're presently developing. And then, eventually, we'll come to the matter of the act of preaching in relationship to our hearers. And then the fourth division will be the act of preaching in relationship to our paper, the whole subject of the relationship of notes or manuscripts to the act of preaching, not to preparation for preaching.

1:20 And then, finally, the act of preaching in relationship to the general physical context in which we find ourselves preaching. Now, having dealt with this subject, the act of preaching in relationship to God, we've taken up one dimension of the act of preaching in relationship to ourselves, namely, the whole matter of our physical condition, appearance, and bearing as we come before the people of God to minister the Word of God. Now, we take up a second major division under this heading, the act of preaching in relationship to ourselves, namely, our emotional constitution, and activity. Our emotional constitution, and emotional activity. Now, I confess, brethren, that once again I have an inward sense of trembling as I approach this vast and complex issue. That sense of trembling is augmented by the fact that those who've gone before me and left the tracks of their thinking in the books on preaching have been relatively spartan, in addressing themselves explicitly to this subject. But, since even a surface analysis of our God-given humanity reveals the vital place of the emotions in all living communication,

2:46 and since the scriptures record the emotional attendance of preaching, and since our own experience confirms the powerful influence of the emotions in preaching, we dare not scourge, the issue. We cannot afford the luxury of dim or indistinct views concerning the legitimate or illegitimate activity of the emotions in reference to the proclamation of the Word of God. And so what I propose to do this morning in opening up this subject is really to set before you a general introduction to the subject by considering four lines of thought. So if you want to make some division to this material, the general heading is the act of preaching in relationship to yourself, namely your emotional constitution and activity. Today's lecture is what we might call introductory definitions and principles, and then, God willing, next week we'll take up an outworking of those definitions and principles. seek to lay out some very, what I think, clear biblical and exegetical materials. Well, the first

Defining and Describing Emotions

4:03 thing we need to do in taking up this subject is to address ourselves to the whole matter of the definition and description of the emotions. When I say that we're going to discuss the place of the emotions in preaching, what am I talking about when I speak of the emotions? Well, I'm sure that all of us is aware of the importance of the definition and description of the emotions in preaching. God has constituted us not only rational thinking creatures, but he has also constituted us emotional or feeling creatures. And we all know what our emotions or feelings are, but when we try to define them, we get into trouble. And perhaps the best thing I can do is to read a section of the article on emotion in the Baker's Dictionary of Theology. You perhaps are surprised to find the word emotion dealt with in a dictionary on theology, but I've often commended to you the worth of this volume, and this simply underscores that commendation. After dealing with the derivation of our English word emotion in relationship to the Latin, the writer of this article goes on to say, they, that is the emotions, are an aspect of the mind. They

5:23 are experienced within the soul, but they are not experienced in the mind. They are experienced in emotion. It's a saying that is said about knowing who God is . If we willing to judge a person's emotions in accordance with God's divinity, then we should be concerned in the name of God Himself, as He says in Ephesians 6.

5:36 Three steps must be taken to understand emotion, follow flatly whether you feel it or find it to be a mainstream word or a fresh word. You may become too exact to understand the meaning of all the emotions in relation to Christ you oh if you think of God as the life components of pottery, whether a piece of wood, either a Nurius Kapitsky, or or half a��ix. But instead, we must find the moments that determine our feelings.

5:53 Bro vá exactly unidecinal. Your emotions exist, and you do not reach them without being careful and over-examining these emotions. with normal processes of body and mind may cause physical or mental ailments or even death. Emotions, like sensations, elude precise definition. And to that I'm sure we all would say our amen. As the idea of sweetness, sourness, or bitterness can be conveyed only by reference to an object which possesses these qualities, bitter as a lemon or sour as a lemon, bitter as gall, sweet as sugar, so the meaning of a specific emotion can be communicated to another only by a reference to that emotion. Everyone knows what is meant by love, fear, anger, worry, etc., but it is most difficult to convey the meaning of any one of these emotions by an attempted definition. However, all emotions have in common the general idea

6:53 of being stirred up, excited, or perturbed. And for our purposes, I'm going to define the emotions or describe them as the conscious, diversified sensibilities of the soul. The conscious, diversified sensibilities of the soul. The definition for emotion in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is the state or capability of having the feelings of the soul. The state or capability of having the feelings of the soul aroused to the point of awareness. The state or capability of having the feelings aroused to the point of awareness. Now, you see why I've used the word conscious. The conscious, but diversified sensibilities of the soul. What the nerve endings are to the contact we have with

7:55 the world of physical reality. The state or capability of having the feelings of the soul. The state or capability of having the feelings of the soul. What the nerve endings are to the state or capability of having the feelings of the soul. What the nerve endings are to the contact we have with with earth and sunshine, or walking on down spidernee foot, or walking down dead standards of to the soul's aconteceu contact with living beings. What the nerve endings are to the surface. The state is conscious and I feel your presence and you feel those feelings. What are the emotions sustain in your body from those feelings that you're in contact with when you need to say it so that you can force it to put someone up in to your gewoon core. What does interest mean?

8:11 the feelings, the emotions are with reference to the soul's content, contact with realities. When it's raining and I feel wettness at my fingertips I'm conscious through the sense organs of the fingers that it's raining. If I touch a hot stove I know what hotness is. Well, Well, in some way that is analogous, the feelings, the emotions, are the conscious, diversified sensibilities of the soul.

Origin and Moral Quality of Emotions

8:30 And within that broad description or definition can be placed such things as joy and grief, love and anger, anxiety, pathos, enthusiasm, and even a sense of dullness is an emotion, a conscious sensibility of the soul. Now, that's all I can say by way of definition and description of the emotions, and I think you at least get a feel for what we're talking about. Now then, in the second place, and so vital to any discussion of this in relationship to preaching, we must concentrate our attention for a while on the origin and the moral quality of the emotions. The origin and moral quality of the emotions. Now, it is abundantly clear. It is abundantly clear that the emotional constitution of man is a created reality. Man made in the image of God was made an emotional, a feeling creature.

9:35 And the presence of his emotions is in itself an aspect of his image-bearing capacity. Man feels because a feeling God made him. And so whenever you read, God is without parts or passions, whatever it means, don't read into that. God is without feelings.

9:59 The Bible again and again asserts that God feels, God experiences emotions, and supremely in the God-man. And whenever you're thinking of the attributes of God, you're generally kept from all kinds of philosophical and theological abstractions. If you view God as He is, is exegeted in the theanthropic person. The only begotten, he has exegeted him. So when we turn to the God-man Christ Jesus, we see, as Warfield has so masterfully demonstrated in his classic essay, The Emotional Life of Our Lord, the full range of the emotional state expressed in our blessed Lord. Joy, grief, anger, disappointment, dread, love, compassion, pity, all of those emotions are attributed to our Lord, and attributed not because the gospel writers, as Warfield again so convincingly demonstrates, were given some psychological insight to the inner condition of

11:12 the Lord's soul, but because those emotions registered in some discernment, of our Lord. And that point is so powerful in Warfield, that the emotional state of our Lord is described in the gospel records in terms of some manifestation of it in his words, in his physical action, in his physical bearing. He looked around upon them with anger, being grieved for their hardness of heart, is the language of Mark. Mark's gospel. Jesus looked upon them with compassion. When he beheld the city, he was moved with compassion, and he wailed over it. His emotion of grief was red in the tears that splashed down from his cheeks. His anger was red in the gleam of his eye as he looked upon those

12:16 whose unbelief was being manifested. Now, prior to the fall, and in our Lord alone, all of the activities of man's emotions were virtuous. They formed part of his total conformity to the will of God. Man thought God's thoughts after him, willed his will after him, and felt his feelings after him.

12:48 Now, I want to enlarge a bit on this. I've been working this over in my own mind, and I think perhaps I've been able to crystallize things a little bit more in my own thinking. In his pre-fallen state, Adam perceived reality accurately, and with that accurate perception of reality was joined a will positively committed to a course of righteousness in the light of that reality. Therefore, all of his emotional states were virtuous.

13:23 When he perceived reality as reality existed, if that reality should have created an emotion of joy, Adam's emotional reaction was joyful. When God brought Eve to Adam, I cannot read that passage stripped of its emotional content. It's impossible to think that when the text says, let me read it, Acts, I'm sorry, Genesis chapter 2, Then he took the root, and brought her to the man, and the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman. She was taken out of man. It's impossible to strip that passage of the strong overtones of joy. The same Adam had

14:16 looked upon all of the beasts, and had named them, had intelligently ascribed to them specific functions, and had named them, and had named them, and had named them, and had named them, and had given them names commensurate with their God-intended role in creation, now sees for the first time his counterpart. And in seeing her, he rejoices, because he beholds reality as reality exists, and his emotions are virtuous emotions. There was excitement and joy as he beholds the gift of Eve. No doubt there was delight, as we considered in the previous hour, as he labored in the garden. He would go out to his day to dress the garden and keep it. And as he gave expression to his own aesthetic sensitivity, and backed off, and beheld the fruit of his work, he mirrored God, who beheld all that he made. And behold, it was good. God was made glad by the work of his hands. So Adam would be glad with the fruit of his sanctified labors expended in obedience to God. And when Adam would think of the fruit of his work, he would be glad with the fruit of his

15:24 ogni. Instead of easily believing in God, he would be manified and always Brush him when he saw something handsome. Adam would lament, but not be pleased with the fruit. Sorry he was as那個 God would Crook!

15:54 were wholly virtuous. But now it was only when intruded into that Edenic scene there was this subtle work of the devil to pervert in Eve's mind and judgment the nature of reality. And when there was a perversion of her perception of the nature of reality, there was a disruption in her whole emotional life as well as her volitional life. You see, once she began to look at the tree in a non-realistic context, the tree should have been something that was dreaded because reality was such as to cause dread. Now she begins to look at it in terms of what? Something to make one wise. Well, isn't it a desirable thing to be wise? You see, there could be no

16:51 emotional change in the nature of reality. There could be no emotional change in the nature of the nature of reality. There could be no emotional change in the nature of reality. There could be no affinity for the tree until the judgment was perverted with respect to the nature of that tree.

17:00 Right? So in the whole psychology of the temptation, there had to be a distortion of reality which in turn drew in its train a distortion or a perversion of the emotions. And part, we may say, of Eve's seduction was this drawing away, this enticing, of her affections, of her emotions. And then, of course, the tragedy of the fall ensues. And so, in thinking of this whole matter of our emotions, we must on the one hand recognize that the devil is not the author of our emotions. God is an emotional being. He created man in his image, an emotional being as well as an intellectual being. In our blessed Lord, we see the full range of human emotion in the nature of the tree. And so, in thinking of this whole matter of our emotions,

17:53 sinless expressions, albeit in a sin-cursed situation, in the reality and ugliness of sin and its influences upon men. However, we must recognize that when sin entered, it immediately affected man's emotional constitution. And now, with this doctrine of total depravity that is set before us in the scripture, we find that no little part of man's depravity is the depravity of man. And so, in thinking of this whole matter of our emotions, we must on the one hand recognize that the he loves what he ought to hate, and he hates what he ought to love. He fears what he ought not to fear, and he refuses to fear what he should fear. And because his judgment is distorted with regard to the nature of reality, because his will is committed to a course that is in opposition to the will of God, we see mingled with all of that the perversity of the nature of man. And so, in thinking of this whole matter of our emotions, we must on the one hand recognize that we are of his emotions, and it comes out very clearly in such text as James 4.9, and we're going to open that up in greater detail next week. But God says, you people are laughing when you ought to be

19:05 weeping. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness. Get in touch with reality, and when you do, there'll be a total reversal of your emotional state. Get in touch with reality to such an extent that reality impinges on you. And so, in thinking of this whole matter of our emotions, we must on the one hand recognize that we are laughing when you ought to be weeping. And when the grace of God comes to a man, when the regenerating work of the Spirit touches a man, it touches the whole man. And it's interesting that when the Bible describes the fruit of the regenerating work of God, much of it is in terms that encompass conscious emotional activity. Take, for instance, the Beatitudes.

19:54 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. That inward sense of grief and mourning for sin and sinfulness is no little part of the evidence of the work of grace in the soul. And then our Lord calls to a certain emotional response at the end of the Beatitudes. Rejoice and be exceeding glad. Why? Here is reality. You have a great reward in heaven. Focus upon that reality. And it will take you from heaviness and oppressiveness to a state of holy dancing. Let your mind focus upon reality. Furthermore, Romans 14, 17, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Peace and joy are conscious

20:48 sensibilities of the soul. Galatians 5, 22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Those are dimensions of the ninefold fruit of the Spirit that come within this orbit of the conscious, diversified sensibilities of the soul. And furthermore, no little part of Christian duty is what we might call emotional empathy. Romans 12, 15. Weep with those who weep. Come in such sympathetic, empathetic contact with the reality of their situation.

21:26 But that reality produces in you a corresponding emotional response that proves you have really empathized. Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice. That's not a call to some kind of an artificial flipping of a tear switch or a laughter switch. It's a call to such empathetic identification with the reality that impinges upon my brother and my sister, that that is the reality of the world. And that is the reality of the world. And that is the reality has an effect upon me that parallels its effect upon them. Well, surely then, brethren, the Bible is abundantly clear that neither is the devil the author of emotions, nor does grace neuter the emotions. It purifies them, regulates them, and sublimates them to the Spirit of God

22:21 and to the objective truth of the Word of God.

Strategic Place and Function of Emotions in Oral Communication

22:26 And every other aspect of the Spirit's work, it is not perfect in this life. And remaining sin touches all departments of our humanity, including our emotions. And therefore, remaining sin operating in the realm of our emotions is ready to betray us. And that reality does not escape us simply because we stand in a pulpit.

22:57 and often our emotions can betray us in the very act of preaching and we must understand that and have some biblical grasp upon both the origin of our emotions and the moral quality of those emotions. Well, I've given you what may appear to be some disjointed, rather essay-like thoughts but this subject can't be broken down as far as I'm concerned into the kind of precision that other things can be. Well, having worked a little bit at definition and description of what we mean by the emotions having addressed ourselves briefly to the subject of the origin and moral quality of the emotions both before and after the fall now, I want you to think with me in the third place concerning the strategic place and function of the emotions in oral communication. The strategic place and function of the emotions in oral communication because that's what preaching is, is it not? It is oral communication and here I have three sub-points. The first one is this.

24:14 It is an indisputable fact that the emotions cause great physiological effects in general. It is an indisputable fact that the emotions cause great physiological effects in general.

24:30 The one who wrote the article in Baker's Dictionary of Theology underscored that fact. Fear affects the adrenal glands, the rate of breathing and our heartbeat, involuntarily.

24:43 You're sitting some night studying, concentrating and all of a sudden you hear a thump that sounds like someone has thrown your window open or something like that. You don't tell. Now, heart, don't beat. Adrenal gland, don't pump adrenaline.

24:56 I mean, it's an involuntary response. Any kind of sudden fear has this powerful physiological effect. Anxiety affects the flow of the digestive juices until sometimes it eats holes in the stomach, a la the ulcer syndrome. The anxiety, releasing those juices and eating away at the lining of the stomach.

25:18 Grief opens up the tear ducts and has other effects upon us physiologically. Now, that's an indisputable fact that the emotions cause great physiological effects, in general. But now, secondly, here's our second point. It is an equally indisputable fact that the emotions exert a powerful influence.

25:39 The emotions exert a powerful influence on all the elements of oral communication in particular. You see, we're moving from the general now to the more particular. Emotions cause great physiological effects, in general. The emotions exert a powerful influence, a powerful influence on all the elements of oral communication in particular.

26:07 For example, the voice. When a person is afraid, there are times the fear actually causes a form of paralysis in the use of the vocal cords. You said, I was so afraid I couldn't even yell for help.

26:23 Now, we can all relate to that. It was this emotion of fear that influenced the vocal cords, the breath control, the whole apparatus of speech, the whole matter of volume. When in danger, I have seen some of the most reserved people whose voices generally would never get above 1.2 decibels crank it up to 55 or 70 when they were in a situation that necessitated that cranking up of the volume.

26:54 The intensity. All you need to do is go to a ball game and see people, even our reserved English friends, with the stiff upper lip and watch them at a football match when 80 or 100,000 people are there in a stadium and suddenly there is this tremendous abandonment in the use of the voice and the shouting and all of the rest. Why? Because they become emotionally involved with what's happening down there with those 22 men kicking a little ball up and down a 120-yard field.

27:25 So we see that there is this powerful influence of the emotions on this element, the empowerment of the voice. Likewise with the vocabulary.

27:36 Here's a spurned lover seeking to woo back the woman who has spurned him and it's amazing how the engagement of the emotion of love and desire for that woman can cause him to reach back and draw up resources from the whole matter of his vocabulary and the structuring of argument and all this. He didn't even know existed.

28:01 And it's that emotion of love. That affects the vocabulary. The manner in which he structures argument. A loving father pleading with a son to avoid danger will affect the vocabulary that he uses.

28:16 The language that he uses. An angry kid rebelling against his parents' counsel. It affects, again, the vocabulary, the manner in which he speaks. And then, of course, even the whole area of physical activity in speaking.

28:29 I like to watch occasionally the differing responses. I don't watch a lot of television at all. And yet, occasionally, I picked up, for instance, the other night, about 15 minutes of an Islander hockey game. And I had to laugh my head off when one of those guys stuck the puck into the net.

28:47 And then he began, literally, to run on his skates. You know, just right across the hole with a red coat and his stick high. And then, of course, the various things that people go through when they've made a touchdown in football, dance their little jig, jump up, and slam dunk the ball. Over the crossbar and all of the rest.

29:05 What is that? But the physical activity that is born, for the most part, some of them are just hot-dogging and they're probably completely dead on the inside. But if anyone's really competitive, that's born of the exhilarating emotion of having scored the goal, having made the touchdown, having stuck the puck in the net. And it's an involuntary response because the emotion of joy, elation, that has come, precipitates that, action.

29:35 Now, you see, it is in this area that there is a tremendous difference between man and the computer.

29:42 And you've heard some of these sophisticated computers that can actually carry on conversations. But one of the marks of that computer is there is nothing to indicate the presence of emotion. The computer can say whatever it says with exactly the same flat, computerized response. And so the computer can give us a fax in its flat voice and it could speak of the greatest tragedies.

30:12 It could say to a man, today is Friday, the fourth day of June, and you are here standing in front of me, and by the way, your wife has just died. No difference between the fact of the day of the month and the tragedy that someone has lost their wife. Why? Because the computer cannot feel.

30:31 It is simply spitting out ideas that have been programmed into it. And so, it can be and brethren, when preaching becomes a form of computerized spitting out of programmed information, it's time we stop preaching. And one of the most pathetic things in our day is computerized preaching. That what have our Lord, as it were, say in the language of John 7, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.

31:03 He didn't say it that way. When our Lord stood there and saw what he saw in the temple and knew and felt what he knew and felt was in touch with reality, the reality of the needs of men's souls, the reality of himself as the great fulfillment of all the types and shadows. When the scripture says he stood and he cried and you cannot get out of that Greek word kradzo that he just said off the cuff. He cried saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink and poured into those words was all of the pure and holy emotion of our Lord's mingled compassion and yearning for the souls of men, his desire to fulfill the mission on which his father had sent him. And as we shall see again in our study next week, I'm just sort of touching the highlights of the main principles today. It's an indisputable fact that the emotions exert a powerful influence on all of us and all the ingredients or elements of oral communication in particular. The voice, the vocabulary and even the physical activity.

The Contagion of Human Emotion in Group Communication

32:17 Then the third principle under this general heading the strategic place and function of the emotions in oral communications is this. It is an indisputable fact that there is a contagion of human emotion in groups of people. In group communication or in communicating to a group. That would be a better way to state it.

32:50 It is an indisputable fact that there is an emotional contagion in communicating to a group. For good or for evil, with truth or with error, he who moves men's affections and emotions moves men.

33:11 Now like it or not, that's a fact. He who moves men's affections or emotions moves men. Now the spirit does not bypass or negate this aspect of created reality, namely the contagion of emotion, but rather in the mystery of his gracious and sovereign work he seizes this avenue to man's soul and uses it to accomplish his own purposes. Now Dabney has what I feel is the most helpful treatment and I have not read widely in this area but what I have read Dabney and then McElvain whom I do not have in my possession anymore I loaned it borrowed it from the Princeton Library and had to return it but Dabney addresses himself to this whole matter of the contagion of human emotions and in his discussions Evangelical and Theological Volume 1 in his treatment of 1 Corinthians 3 10-11 a very searching and powerful treatise he is dealing with some of the ways in which men build wood, hay and stubble into the church of Christ and he says one of the ways is when they bring people to Christian profession by the manipulation of their emotions without the enlightenment of their minds with the truth. All right? Now in that context he has a marvelous treatment

34:41 of this whole subject of the contagion of human emotions and he says and I want to read rather extensively he says it is the habit page 557 of endeavoring to promote religious feelings by other means than the application and enlightening and saving truth to the soul while that truth is also presented with a great degree of fidelity with those who do not truly preach Christ we have nothing to do just now for they cannot even claim to be building their spurious and perishable trash on the apostolic foundation and that's what he calls those who try to build up the church who don't even regard the Bible but he said we're talking about those who have a semblance of affinity for the Bible and some substance of the Bible in their preaching but their primary appeal to men is at the level of the emotions all right? Emotions merely religious may be compatible with the most depraved and atrocious state of character and with creeds utterly false to think of future welfare to be goaded by a guilty conscience to be full of feeling and passion about eternal realities may be just as congruous with paganism as with Christianity indeed these contagious accesses of feeling are so natural to the human race

36:10 that they may occur about many other subjects besides religion we've seen our political I think revivals fostered by inflammatory speeches songs badges marches which were as truly revivals and perhaps little less worthless than many religious excitements it is not enough then to produce feeling about the soul we must aim to produce right feeling and this is only produced by revealed truth intelligibly presented to the understanding and applied by a supernatural agent all else no matter how genuinely warm or intense is only that sorrow of the world that works death and needs to be repented of the whole label of the wise minister therefore will be to replace this natural religious feeling by the supernatural all right let us next advert to the principle of sympathy in the human soul we so habitually limit the operations of this in our thoughts to the sorrowful emotions that we almost forget its universality the creator has formed man with this law of feeling that the mere witnessing of any human emotion colors the soul of the spectator with a similar emotion in a less degree you see what he's saying when we

37:40 behold in another human being a certain emotion we are colored by that emotion for instance and then he illustrates this if you were to walk out of here and go into the next room and there find an adult male bent over sobbing his heart out tears splashing on the table just standing there beholding him what would that create in you some feeling of grief you'd say I don't know what he's crying over but there is an element of contagion now if you begin to question him and find out that he's crying over the fact that he just lost the bobby pin then suddenly your grief would be cut off and you'd say I'm dealing with a madman he's weeping his eyes out over a bobby pin once you find what is produced is emotion and there is some intelligent apprehension of what lies behind it then your emotions may be shut off but just being in the presence of such a person the same way we've seen this some of you have heard the laughing record how many have ever heard the laughing record have you heard it well a person just starts laughing and he goes and before long it's almost impossible not to find yourself falling off the chair laughing your full head off just the contagion of the laughter some of you have heard it and I've tried I've sat there stubborn and said I'm not going to let it get to me well I've made it about halfway through on one or two occasions that's as far as I can go and I thought I had a pretty good reign on my emotions but there's that contagion now Dabney's

39:09 point is our creator has formed us with this law of feeling this is the way God has made us in a word our sympathetic feeling is provoked not by the rational cause of the feeling we behold but by the mere beholding of the feeling again it should be remarked that sympathy is involuntarily and immediate the senseless passions of mobs where men are suddenly led to clamor or fight with vehemence for objects of which they are utterly ignorant and careless are familiar and trite illustrations of this power guys having a real Donnybrook balls you grab one and say what are you fighting about I don't know but I mean it has no rational he's just been caught up in this mad passion of taking a poke at someone all right all right now then Dabney makes the point having established the principle it will now at once be seen that we have here an engine which may be used to a slight extent as occasion of genuine gracious emotions but which admits of indefinite and tremendous abuse for the excitement of spurious senseless religious feeling it is usually called into use by rash ministers in two ways of which one is the rhetorical painting of startling or moving pictures in their discourses and the other is the parade or display of the religious passion in those who are already inflamed with it

40:39 and then he goes on to show how that this tragic thing has gone on again and again particularly in seasons of so-called revival and then he comes back to his fundamental point it is a sheer impossibility that these feelings can be sanctifying because the Holy Spirit the sole agent of sanctification only works on reasonable souls by the instrumentality of truth intelligently comprehended the understanding is the only channel through which the sanctifying means can reach the heart now having established that and the abuses of the great principle he then says now we're perhaps prepared to give an answer to the question how far sympathy may legitimately be employed as a lever for moving the careless concerning the things of God in other words he says does this have no legitimate use this contagion of emotion that God has given that is often abused to the destruction of men's souls is it only something to be looked upon as an abused created faculty or is it something that can be sublimated to the work of the spirit who always works in conjunction with the truth and then beginning on page 561

42:08 he opens that subject up and the summary statement that gives you an idea of his thesis is this again the exhibition of genuine religious emotion which is the just fruit of right views of truth held by the understanding may have a valuable sympathetic effect on others as when that exhibition is properly made in the daily duties of a holy life in the approaches to the throne of grace in the tender expostulations of the Christian with his impenitent neighbor the sympathetic softening may make way for the teachings of instructive example or discourse to the mind which before was inattentive you see what he's saying there are people who may not initially be moved to consider truth for truth's sake but when they see what that truth is producing in a fellow human being namely a real solicitous concern for their soul that may express itself in tears something of that sympathy that contagion of emotion may predispose them to give a consideration of the truth which is producing it now understanding that principle now I think we're in a position to begin to think scripturally and realistically with respect to this whole subject of the place

43:37 and function of the emotions in our preaching there is this contagion of emotion there are proper emotional overtones with respect to the God's truth and therefore it should be unthinkable that a man can stand before other mortals with a mind impregnated with truth his own affections warmed by that truth and then under the peculiar influence of the spirit's ministry in communicating that truth feeling its weight and power and then have no emotional energy indicated in his preaching I find that utterly unthinkable for in preaching we are setting forth those changeless realities that are of the highest concern to ourselves and our fellow mortals God sin heaven hell the blood of the incarnate redeemer the gift of the spirit all of these realities now if our emotions are healthy they are responding to those realities as our judgment comes in contact with them in the scriptures so our emotions respond to them accordingly now in preaching we are seeking to convey those dimensions of reality embodied in the pages

The Necessity of Felt Truth in Preaching

45:06 of this book and if we have really perceived them and believed them we have felt them and if we have felt them then we cannot preach them as though we have not felt them and are not presently feeling them it's unthinkable utterly unthinkable now granted the manner in which the emotional energy is expressed will differ in every preacher the manner in which that emotional energy will express itself will differ in terms of voice tone and volume in terms of physical reaction in terms of discernible elements of that emotion seen in the glint of the eye in the gesture all of those things will differ but there will be the consciousness in that person or in his presence that the emotional energy surrounds as it were and is the climate in which he handles these great realities who accuses a distraught mother of excess when she stands outside a burning building wringing her hands and pleading for someone to help her to rescue her precious children who may be burned to death if no help comes who accuses a woman of excess who

46:35 standing before the reality of a burning building and the impending destruction of her children is carried out of herself with earnestness who accuses fanaticism or attributes fanaticism to a wildly cheering crowd welcoming home a conquering army that is delivered it , delivered the nation from a vile oppressor who accused anyone of excess some of us were alive when second world war ended we're that ancient and we can remember the tongues of ticker tape that cascaded down streets of New York and the multitudes that thronged the streets and the shouting and the yelling went on for hours no one came out with a lead story the whole population is gone freaky bananas it's perfectly legitimate people were in touch with the reality of a struggle in which all of our future liberties were in the balance and when that struggle was over the emotional response none considered it excessive whom aligns the sobs of a bereaved husband or wife who stands by the casket of the one who has been part of them for 15 20 30 40 years now they must take the last earthly remains and put them in the cold earth who calls that emotional excess well brethren if those realities

48:03 of the burning building and the impending destruction of one's offspring the deliverance of a nation from an oppressive tyrannical rule the broken heart of one who's lost a loved one if those things are not considered emotional excesses but the expected responses to reality why should there be any less of the emotional full range of human emotion manifested when we are dealing with realities that make those things appear by comparison as fantasy now they are not fantasy but by comparison we're dealing with heaven we're dealing with hell we're dealing with god and the claims of the almighty we're dealing with the tragic realities of the fall and the destruction and the marring and disfigurement of the soul these are the issues in which we traffic we after week after week and that's no little part of the burden of the ministry and I'm convinced it's one reason why many times preachers wear out before their ears I'm convinced of it because the current of those realities running over their frail humanity continually in a way that is not the lot of the ordinary Christian takes its toll upon that frail humanity and one of the writers on this subject makes that very observation that this is probably

49:32 the explanation for the early death of men such as Brainerd and Henry Martin and others and McShane that God just gave them such an unusual measure of that emotional response to felt I'm sorry to biblical reality that their frail humanity simply couldn't take it simply couldn't take it now yes it's Gardner Spring who makes some perceptive comments and I want to read a few of these to you brethren just to sort of bend over the nail on this observation that I've made in his excellent work Power in the Pulpit quoting from page 243 and several other places he says this the highest intensity of feeling ever brought to the truth of God falls below the great and exciting theme he says whatever you have felt to the highest is short of what the theme deserves whatever is lucid in statement vivid or great in conception powerful in argument accurate in discrimination in a word all that is concentrated or discursive which the preacher himself is able to command may be employed and exhausted on the great and varied subjects with which his mind is officially familiar there is no vigor of thought

51:01 and no tenderness of heart and feeling however elevate evaded subdued or subduing but finds here an appropriate place every passion of the human mind may here be expressed from the more tranquil to the more agitated from the tears of compassion and grief to the thrilling emotions of joy and triumph from hallowed indignation to transporting delight it is not possible to feel too deeply or too intensely on such themes it is not possible to feel too deeply or too intensely on such themes Moses when he came down from the mount with his face radiant and shining from the power of sacred thought and sentiment Paul in the third heavens were but exemplifications of that state of mind which the truth of God is capable of producing even in creatures whose foundation is in the dust and who dwell in clay it is one of the great peculiarities of God's truth that the most vigorous and sensitive minds never become weary in contemplating it except from their own infirmity the more and the longer they pursue these mighty thoughts the more labor they devote to their pursuit the greater the interest the freshness with which the pursuit is conducted angels stoop

52:30 down to look into these things their mighty minds cannot fully grasp them they are amazed and confounded before them and in the contemplation of them they cover their faces with their wings I have heard preachers poetical beautiful preachers whose tongue was smoother than oil and whose pencil was cold and faint as the star beams that dance on the icy sea I've also heard those whose heart was so absorbed by their theme that they hurried along the mind of their hearers till they kindled a congenial enthusiasm you see that contagion of emotion Griffin did this and so did Larned Brainerd and Payson were victims of the deep and unrelieved interest which they felt in the subjects which they presented with so much success to their people it actually crushed them to a premature grave no man could long survive this intensity of desire where it felt to the full extent which the subjects themselves are capable of imparting we are not in much danger in this age of declension of that interest which shall diminish our usefulness by curtailing our period of labor in other words he said we're not in much danger of being burned out our minds and our hearts are sufficiently sluggish inertness of spiritual thought and feeling is our besetting

54:00 sin we have no fear that the machinery will be overworked by a too powerful stimulus on the other hand there are so many difficulties in maintaining that interest in the services of the sanctuary which their importance requires that our danger lies in dying rather from the opposite cause or lingering under a slow paralysis of all right and vivid emotion the youthful ministry have not indeed so much to struggle with in this respect as those who are in the heyday of human life and those upon whom the sun is going down the first vivid impressions of truth are still fresh upon the minds of the younger there is no such decay of that natural ardor which when brought into the service of Christ is so beautifully impressive and enchanting the novelty of their work is not gone and even deficiencies in grace are ostensibly supplied by the redundancies of nature yet are we all deficient here we are guilty both young and old for this strange insensibility to the claims of God's truth upon our best and warmest affections and our most ardent zeal then he goes on to say in one other section that I'll quote every minister loves to preach to an attentive congregation there must be two constituent

55:29 elements in the preacher himself without which the attention of his audience cannot be secured they are the subject matter of his preaching and the interest which he himself takes in what he speaks the late doctor emmons was once asked by one of his brethren what is the best remedy for an attentive audience his characteristic reply was give them something to attend to by this but this is not all he must feel his subject it is as marvelous as it is mournful that the weighty and thrilling truths of God's word lose so much of their force from the little interest the preacher himself feels in his theme brethren that should make us weep the weighty and thrilling truths of God's word lose so much of their force from the little interest the preacher himself feels in his theme Whitfield was probably the most remarkable man in this respect whom the world is I ever seen rich as his discourses were they do not compare with the discourses of some other preachers in richness of thought but in intensity of feeling he had no equal he enchained his audience by his own intense interest in his subject a ship carpenter

56:59 once remarked that he could usually build in his mind a ship from stem to cern during any one sermon but under Mr. Whitfield lay a single plank it is of themselves ministers should frequently complain rather than of their hearers it is they who are cold and lifeless a drowsy pulpit makes an inattentive and drowsy congregation let a strange preacher enter any pulpit in the land and from the attentive or inattentive habits of the people he will not fail to form some just conceptions of its regular ministry a preacher who feels an interest in his subject will always be listened to his hearers may not believe his doctrine they may be critical fastidious but they will hear he cannot have an inattentive audience it is impossible few eyes will wander few minds will be listless few hearts will be indifferent those to whom he preaches may complain they may listen and hate but they will listen no preacher can sustain the attention of people unless he feels his subject nor can he long sustain it unless he feels it deeply if he would make others solemn he himself must be solemn he must have fellowship with the truths he utters

58:29 he must preach as though he were under the eye of God as though his own soul were bound up in the souls of those who hear him he must preach as though he were in sight of the cross and heard the groans of the mighty supper of Calvary as though the judgment were set and the books were opened as though the sentence were just about to be passed which decides the destinies of men he must preach as though he had been looking into the pit of despair as well as drawing aside the veil and taking a view of the unutterable glory of God now brethren that cannot be done without the emotions being fully engaged in the preaching it cannot be done now you know well our view of the centrality of truth and the total and constant engagement of the mind in all of its most sanctified endeavors but as surely as the first commandment is to love God with all the heart the mind and the soul surely it is proper for us to obey the first commandment in preaching that we preach in a present relationship that engages the totality of our being now let me give you a couple of more quotes that I have found so helpful again I

Quotes on Passionate Preaching and the Union of Logic and Emotion

59:58 can refer you to a section in sacred rhetoric by Dabney that whole section pages 233 to 260 you had to read at the end of last semester on persuasion he has some marvelous insights there pages 233 to 260 let me close with giving this account of the man who combined this element of the white light of clear perception of truth coupled with the warmth and passion of genuine emotional involvement and contagion it's in Palmer's life of Thornwell on page 548 and I read this on a previous occasion in another connection and I'm going to read it again you can't hear it too frequently describing Thornwell as a preacher he says turning his back on all effort to work upon the superficial emotions or to play upon natural sympathies he addressed himself in earnest to present the whole truth of God and to discuss its fundamental principles before men his analytic power was fully displayed in the pulpit the clear statement of a case is often one half of the argument stripping his subject of all that was extraneous he laid

61:28 bare to the eye the single principle upon which it turned so single and so bare that the most untrained were compelled to see precisely what was to be elucidated then followed a course of argument close logical clear profound bending forward to one conclusion towards which the hero was carried with his will or against it led captive in chains of logic that could nowhere be broken when the truth had won its way and the mind was brought into a state of complete submission the argument was gathered up in its weighty and practical conclusions and hurled upon the conscience compelling either the confession of guilt on the one hand or a complete stultification of reason on the other then he goes on to say but he was not merely argumentative in his preaching the feature most remarkable in this prince of pulpit speakers was the rare union of vigorous logic with strong emotion he reasoned always but never coldly he did not present the truth in what Bacon calls the dry light of the understanding clear indeed but without heat which warms and gives life Dr. Thornwell wove his arguments in fire his own mind warmed with the friction

62:58 of his own thoughts glowed with the rapidity of its own motion and the speaker was borne along in what seemed to others a chariot of flame one must have listened to him to form an adequate conception of what we mean filled with the sublimity of his theme you see the mind the soul the emotions in touch with reality reality as embodied in this book feeling in the depths of his soul its transcendent importance he could not preach the gospel of the grace of God with the coldness of a philosopher as set in one could perceive the ground swell from beneath the heaving tide of passionate emotion which rolled it on kindling with a secret inspiration his manner lost its slight constraint all angularity of gesture and awkwardness of posture suddenly disappeared the spasmodic shaking of the head entirely ceased his slender form dilated his deep black eye lost its drooping expression the soul came and looked forth lighting it up with a strange brilliancy his frail body rocked and trembled as under a divine afflatus as though the impatient spirit would rend its earthly tabernacle and fly forth to God and heaven upon the wings of his own impassioned words until his fiery eloquence rising with the greatness

64:27 of his thought burst upon the hearer in some grand climax overwhelming in its majesty and resistless in its effect in all this there was no declamation no histrionic mummery that is no play acting no straining for effect nothing approaching to mere rant it was all natural and the simple product of thought and feeling wonderfully combined one saw the whirlwind as it rose and gathered up the waters of the sea saw it in its headlong course and in the bursting of its power however it was justified by the thoughts which engendered it and in all the storm of his eloquence the genius of logic could be seen presiding over its elements and guiding its course you see what he's saying you never sensed that his emotions ran ahead and then began to pull the mind behind them it was always the mind harnessing the emotions and pulling them along with it and the more lofty and weighty the conception of the mind the more heat and fire and passion which the redeemed humanity felt now I must say brethren we're speaking of someone who is a rare gift one in a generation so we don't set a false standard but the principle is there the principle is this that

Emulating Genuine Emotional Engagement in Preaching

65:57 though Thornwell's native gifts and the peculiar cultivation would mean that someone could write accurately in such glowing terms of him in a way they could never write accurately of us yet the great principle that we must emulate is to have the whole of the emotional life as it were impregnated with the truth we are to preach to others and not to be satisfied in our preparation unless we feel something of that impregnation and then in preaching as

66:33 we are preaching knowing that what we are giving is the truth of God we are not going to offer strange fire upon God's altar we are not going to try to whip up and create some feeling but in the very engagement of our minds with that truth there is almost at times the simultaneous prayer Lord may the light of that truth create the heat and fire of holy passion in my own soul so that you open as it were your entire inner being to feel in the act of preaching the impress of that truth that you're conveying to others and brethren that's costly because it involves an element of the giving of your very self we were pleased to impart to you Paul says not the gospel of God only but our very souls and there's a sense in which you've got to be willing to pay that price of losing something that you know will never be gained back again when you truly engage the whole of your inner being in the act of preaching now as I've said the way in which this will express itself will differ in every man the manner in which the energy will manifest itself will be different but the principle is there and this is the thing that Whitfield abhorred and you'll remember in his biography again and again he speaks of this he said I fear that the majority

68:02 of creatures even though they are orthodox preach an unfelt Christ now that's what he was talking about by an unfelt Christ he meant that they preached without that inescapable attendant of genuine emotion that must be present wherever the truth is truly believed and those are wonder people can sense in a man's presence whether he's trafficking in shadows or whether he's trafficking in realities he has his hands on substances and they may not feel as deeply as he does but it's doubtful it's doubtful that they're ever going to feel much at all if he doesn't feel and so this is not a matter of manipulating people's feelings it's not a matter of trying to play tricks it's a matter of coming to grips with something of a sound biblical theology of the place of the emotions in our human constitution in general and then their peculiar place and activity in the work of preaching and as you've heard again and again in this place in preaching particularly the act of preaching this interplay of the natural and the supernatural the divine and the human is continually with us and we see it in this very area God does not cast aside that element of the contagion of human emotion in preaching when we see a man taken up with his theme we're automatically inclined to give him a hearing we feel

69:32 what he's saying is obviously something important to him it might be important to me ought to at least give him a hearing but if he can't be stirred up to self interest in what he's talking about why bother me with it why bother me with it it doesn't move you you know life's too busy too many responsibilities why should I be concerned even to give a hearing and so far better brethren to have some ragged edges now it's not either or but if it were far better to have ragged edges homiletically some ragged edges in many areas but to preach in such a way as to evidence that we have come to grips with the proper involvement of our emotions than to have preaching that is polished homiletically exegetically and all of the rest but is as cold and lifeless as a tablet of marble someone said commenting on why preachers were not heard he said well it's my observation the reason the theaters are filled this was back in the day when they had great actors like garrick and others he said the reason the theaters are filled and the churches are empty is the actors engage in speaking fiction as though it were fact and preachers deal with facts as though they were fiction that was the comment of someone who was an astute observer of the theater and of the pulpit he says

71:02 the theaters are filled because the actors speak fiction as though it were fact and that's true a good actor is not someone who plays with his emotions he so becomes the person whom he's projecting that he literally feels the emotions of that person that's why most actors and actresses are such mixed up people because they don't have any sense of identity for six months they're this person and for seven months they're someone else if they play a Broadway for two years they're that person and I've deliberately read some of the interviews with people who've had to play unusually strong character parts and when they've been interviewed on this whole matter they acknowledge that they've actually become emotionally and psychologically like the person they're playing that's the only reason they play them convincingly because in their own minds that's reality they are King Lear they become Othello they become that individual so it's not like they say at this point I turn on hatred at this point I turn on fears they live with that person they do all the study of the background and what the author was concerned to convey and then they as it were become incarnate in that person well in a very real sense brethren that's what we must do with every single exercise

72:24 even as Mary gave herself up to be an instrument in the hands of God the whole of her humanity was involved in giving birth to the son of God in an analogous sense the whole of our humanity is involved in giving birth to the truth of God in the hearts and lives of others now some of us who are more volatile emotionally maybe we pay a greater price in terms of our spent humanity but you have to make a choice do I want to preach for 50 years and never really preach or preach for 30 years and go home early with a good conscience now most people have an image of Professor Murray that is entirely contrary to fact and you know what Professor Murray said about this matter and this is my last quote and it's a very brief one I think it's page 39 in this lovely little biography that Ian Murray has done about Professor Murray he's giving a chronicle of that period of his time when early in the days of his identification with the OPC Church he says it was not until the formation of the OPC Church in 1936 that John Murray became committed to one congregation in Philadelphia in the six years prior to that day he most frequently attended the ministry of his Princeton classmate David Freeman who was then minister of Grace Presbyterian Church

73:53 not far from the Pine Street in Central Philly the hospitality of the Freeman's home afforded the two bachelor members of the faculty already mentioned earlier in this chapter by Dr. McRae I well remember Murray wrote in a later year the joy of listening to faithful and impassioned delivery of the

74:17 Grace Presbyterian Church Professor Murray was by no means a critic of preachers but one thing he did require was that a man felt what he preached and this is a quote of Professor Murray to me preaching without passion is not preaching at all end quote it was the presence of this qualification which also led him at this period to be present occasionally at the church of a certain black preacher and concerning that Professor Murray said he would say some excellent things of course there were some things I could not agree with but I can take Methodism from a Methodist end quote so apparently the professor was so concerned that occasionally he'd go to hear a black man whose theology had much to be desired but who preached with passion and I know that this was one of the great burdens that he carried to his grave that there were not more passionate preachers raised up in his own generation as the fruit of his own labors as a theologian at the seminary well you've been very patient as I've gone on for an hour and twenty minutes but I thought the material would lose something if I tried to break it up so we can break here now you need to stand and stretch your legs before we take up any discussion or clarification amplification and if some of it

75:46 anticipates next week's lecture I'll just tell you to hold your horses and wait