Those were the days. Old Etonian, gout-ridden master-wordsmith Henry Fielding gave London its first police force, the Bow Street Runners. That was in 1749. He played many roles in life, was a student at Leiden university, a playwright (who upset the government so much that they passed legislation curbing what could appear on the stage), magistrate and – his greatest achievement – producing literary works hardly seen before: novels.
In one of his novels he has a clergyman on his way to London to see if he can sell three volumes of his sermons to a publisher. This was not such an unusual thing to do. I have somewhere on my shelves a slim volume of sermons composed by a predecessor of mine in the 19th century. The fact that I cannot find it is some indication of the fact that whereas it was once customary for people to read sermons as well as hear them – along with the Sunday reading of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘Paradise Lost’ – the market for that genre has evaporated.
Not that the nineteenth century had no time to listen to sermons. Spurgeon, Alexander Whyte, Moody and others preached to attentive congregations – at some length. Theirs was a punchy style of oratory differing from that of predecessors like Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne, who bequeathed the sermon as an art form. Large numbers flocked to hear Donne in the open air by St Paul’s cathedral. Similar numbers gathered in the Tabernacle near the Elephant and Castle to hear Spurgeon. Spurgeon’s sermons were read well into the 20th century. Andrewes gets a couple of quotations in a dictionary of quotations. Spurgeon gets none. In one case we have the sermon as a piece of craftsmanship; in the other we have a preacher hoisting a sail and going where the wind takes him.
The sermon has become an acquired taste. Today it is usually short (a concession to a limited attention-span of the hearers) and more like a decorous lecture than an electioneering call to arms. It expounds the Scriptures. It points the way to respond to the Gospel. The sermon is delivered. It serves its purpose and is put away. That purpose could be described as ‘A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life’ to borrow the title on William Law’s notable composition that so greatly influenced John and Charles Wesley.
Those of us who aim to win a public hearing have to remember E.M. Forster’s dictum: ‘Only connect.’ To achieve that, feed-back is essential. We must listen, to agnostic observers as well as to Christian activists, and take note.
LONGEST SERMON
It seems to be the case that the longest known sermon ever preached came from a 31-year-old Florida Pastor at 53 hours, 18 minutes. Why, I ask myself.
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