Charge against religious ministers.
"The prophet is a fool, and the spiritual man is mad." What the prophet means here seems to be this—that when the predicted retribution had come Israel would learn that the prosperity which some of the prophets had predicted (Ezekiel 13:10) proved them infatuated fools. Although some render the expression, "the spiritual man is mad," a mad man the man of spirit, the man of the spirit is frantic, the idea seems to be the same as that conveyed in our version, viz. that the man pretending to have spiritual inspiration and prophesying was mad. We may take the words as a charge against religious ministers, and make two observations.
I. IT IS A CHARGE THAT IS SOMETIMES TOO TRUE. There have been religious ministers in all ages, and there are still in connection even with Christianity, who are foolish and "mad."
1. There are men of weak minds. There are men in the ministry utterly incapable, not only of taking a harmonious view of truth, but even of forming a clear and complete conception of any great principle. We say not a word in disparagement of men of small cerebral power and feeble understanding. Heaven made them what they are; but they were never intended for the ministry. In the ministry they do enormous mischief. Their silly sentimentalities, their crude notions, their inane conceptions, bring the pulpit into contempt. They are "fools."
2. There are men of irrational theologies. There are men who, though not always naturally weak-minded, nevertheless propound theological dogmas which are utterly incongruous with human reason, and therefore unbiblical and un-Divine. The doctrines that multitudes of men are predestined to eternal misery, that Christ's death procured the love of God, that all that men require to make them good and happy for ever is to believe in something that took place eighteen hundred years ago,—such dogmas as these are often propounded in pulpits, and they are utterly foolish; they strike against the common sense of humanity, and have no foundation in the teaching of him who is the "Wisdom of God." The prophet that talks such things is a "fool," and the spiritual man is "mad."
3. There are men of silly rituals. The crossings, the kneelings, the bowings, the robings, the upholstering, the grimacings, which constitute much of the ministry of a large number of what are called Protestant ministers, justify the people in calling them fools and madmen. The outside world is constantly pointing to the pulpit, and saying, "The prophet is a fool, and the spiritual man is mad." Alas! that there should be any cause for ill.
II. IT IS A CHARGE THAT IS OFTEN A SCOFFING CALUMNY. The unregenerate world have from the beginning identified preaching with folly and fanaticism. The general impression today in England is that preachers are intellectually a feeble folk, effeminate, lackadaisical, unfit for the business of the world. Now, an ideal preacher of Christianity, instead of being a "fool" or "mad," is the wisest and most philosophic man of his age, and that for three reasons.
1. He aims at the highest end. What is that? To make himself and his fellow-men what they ought to be in relation to themselves, in relation to society, in relation to the universe, and in relation to God. Men are wrong in all these respects, and their wrongness is the cause of all the crimes and miseries of the world.
2. He works in the right direction. Where does he begin this work of moral reformation? At the heart. "Out of the heart are the issues of life." All human institutions, conduct, actions, flow from the likings and dislikings of the human heart, He deals therefore as a philosopher with the fontal sympathies and antipathies of the soul. To clear the stream he goes to the fountain, to strengthen the tree he goes to the roots, to improve the productions of the world he works upon the soil.
3. He employs the best means. What are the best means to touch the heart effectively, to give its sympathies a new and right direction? Legislation, art, poetry, rhetoric? No; LOVE. What love? Human, angelic? No; too weak. Divine love. Divine love, not merely in nature, nor in propositions, but in example, the example of God himself. This is moral omnipotence, this is the Cross, this is the power of God unto salvation. Let no man say that the ideal minister is a fool; the man who says it is a fool
"I saw one man, armed simply with God's Word,
Enter the souls of many fellow-men,
And pierce them sharply as a two-edged sword,
While conscience echoed back his words again,
Till, even as showers of fertilizing rain
Sink through the bosom of the valley clod,
So their hearts opened to the wholesome pain,
And hundreds knelt upon the flowery sod—
One good man's earnest prayer the link 'twixt them and God."
(Caroline Norton)
D.T.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR