City preaching.
In Palestine there were no great cities. The population was scattered through pastoral regions or gathered in small and unimportant towns. This fact gave a character to the national life of the Hebrews and to their national religiousness. It was a strange experience for a Jew like Jonah to be brought into contact with city life upon a grand, colossal scale. We modern Englishmen are more familiar with, this development of human existence and activity. We need to study the relations of religion to city life, its occupations, temptations, and opportunities.
I. THE PREACHER IN A GREAT CITY NEEDS TO HAVE HIS IMAGINATION AND HIS HEART FILLED WITH AN IMPRESSION OF ITS MAGNITUDE AND IMPORTANCE. In the view of the Almighty all things earthly may well seem diminutive; yet Jehovah is represented as commissioning Jonah to preach unto Nineveh—"that great city." The population, the wealth, the industry, the political importance of a metropolis should be pondered by one who is required to discharge a public ministry among its inhabitants. Thus he will be more likely to rise to the due height of seriousness, of sympathy. He who labours in "an exceeding great city" needs to fill his soul with a conviction of the spiritual necessities and the spiritual possibilities of such a population.
II. THE PREACHER IN A GREAT CITY NERDS TO FULFIL A MINISTRY OF WITNESS. "Cry unto it the cry." Such is the exact language in which Jehovah commissioned his servant. In the university, the private chapel, the select and cultivated congregation, there may be room for argumentative, emotional, poetical, or philosophical preaching. What a great city needs is a voice, a cry, a preaching, in the proper sense of that word. A plain and powerful witness to man's sin and need, to God's grace and power to save, a summons to repentance and surrender,—such is what the population of a great city for the most part needs.
III. THE PREACHER IN A GREAT CITY NEEDS AN UNMISTAKABLE DIVINE COMMISSION AND MESSAGE. "The preaching that I bid thee,"—such was to be the burden of the prophet's utterances. It is only the Word of the Lord which should be proclaimed by the minister of religion in any position, in all circumstances. But when standing in the midst of a great metropolis, how can a man, justly sensible of his own ignorance and powerlessness, proceed in his ministry, unless he is assured that the Lord has sent him, unless he can commence his testimony with the preface, "Thus saith the Lord"?