The Power Behind The Throne ( F W Boreham)
Rowland Croucher
Here's another F. W. Boreham chapter. I have received many verbal and
emailed comments from grateful people about previous offerings - on
newsgroups or on our website - by this outstanding preacher and author.
(One or two have wondered about the accuracy of my comment 'F W Boreham is
Australia's only collectible religious author.' I stand by that - until
someone can give me the name of any other Australian religious writer whose
rarest books fetch a four-figure sum in U.S. dollars!)
Shalom!
Rowland Croucher
http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm
~~~
THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE
(From F.W. Boreham, The Ivory Spires (Epworth press, 1934) pgs 135-146)
The card-face is an artificial face, an unnatural face, a mere mask. It
frustrates the very purpose for which faces were created. In the lounge of a
hotel, in the saloon of a ship or in a compartment of a railway train I
sometimes see a man, engrossed in a game of cards, looking for all the world
like a statue of Julius Caesar. His countenance is utterly destitute of all
expression; never a gleam of excitement, never a glimmer of satisfaction,
never a shadow of disappointment. I know that that man is fighting, and
fighting desperately, against Nature. Nature would wreathe his face in glee
when things are going well and would pucker his brows in annoyance when the
luck turns against him. But, for reasons of his own, he refuses to let
Nature have her way.
The beasts of the field and the fowls of the air display, in their hairy or
feathered faces, little or no evidence of joy or grief; but we humans are
built on a very different plan. We are endowed with faces so sensitive that,
like the seismograph, they reflect and register the slightest internal
tremor or disturbance. There is an appropriate outward expression for each
inward emotion; and any attempt to prevent that facial mechanism from
fulfilling its proper function is a defiance of one of the basic laws of
life.
The soul was equipped to carry very few secrets. Its impulses readily become
both visible and audible. In moments of ecstasy, the face lights up, and, in
speech or song or laughter, the gladness becomes vocal. In moments of gloom,
the countenance clouds, and, in murmur, lamentation or weeping, the sorrow
makes itself heard.
Herein lies the subtle significance of Paul's declaration: 'We believe and
therefore speak'. The master-passions must become articulate. If a man
receives news of some happening on which his entire weal or woe depends, it
is the most natural thing in the world for him to talk it over with
somebody. If a man sincerely believes in the tremendous verities of the
everlasting gospel, silence is practically impossible. The adoption of the
principle of the card-face will stultify-and eventually slay-the finest
instincts of his soul. Believing, he must speak; and the intensity of his
faith will be the measure of his eloquence
I
A man may, of course, preach, in a languid, perfunctory, professional kind
of way, a gospel that has never made any profound appeal to him-a gospel
about which he has no strong personal convictions. In his Up from Slavery,
Booker Washington says that when the educational institutions that he had
established for the benefit of the newly-emancipated slaves began to turn
out their first crop of students, it was difficult to decide upon the
vocations that they should then adopt. Naturally, most of them, exulting in
their freshly-acquired erudition, aspired to become preachers and teachers.
But, whilst some were eminently fitted for these responsible callings,
others embraced them merely as an easy way of earning a living. "I remember
one," adds Mr. Washington, "who was asked as to the shape of the earth.
What would he teach the children on this important subject? He explained
that he was quite prepared to teach either that the earth was flat or that
it was round, according to the preference of the majority of the parents!"
The trouble about this sort of thing-both in teaching and in preaching-is
that, as passion becomes articulate in speech, so does the absence of it.
Many years ago, after a visit to England, I so far forgot myself as to
prepare a lecture on my experiences overseas. I suppose I delivered Afloat
and Ashore at least a hundred times. Whenever I accepted an invitation to
give this lecture, I suggested that, half-way through, an interval should be
taken during which somebody should sing The Dear Homeland.
As a result I heard that particular solo some scores of times in the course
of a year or two. And, hearing it so frequently, I developed a faculty which
never once failed me. I could tell, before the soloists were half-way
through, whether they had emigrated from the Old Country or had been born
and reared under the Southern Cross. The words and the music were in every
case the same, but a certain indefinable undertone of poignant emotion was
sometimes present and sometimes absent. And the presence or absence of that
subtle quality could be readily sensed. The pew quickly acquires the knack
of submitting the pulpit to the same searching test.
At the bar, I know, it is necessary that a man should sometimes argue along
a line in which he has no personal confidence. The question is often asked:
Can an advocate conscientiously defend a prisoner whom he strongly suspects,
or secretly believes, to be guilty? I frequently marvel that the question is
so consistently stated in this way. We are never asked : Can an advocate
conscientiously prosecute a prisoner whom he strongly suspects, or secretly
believes, to be innocent?
Yet, if I were a barrister-and, failing the ministry, no calling would more
powerfully attract me-this second question would give me far greater
uneasiness than the first. All the most compassionate impulses of my soul
would lead me to place before the Courts, in the least unfavourable light,
the case of the poor wretch who had possibly yielded to a more terrible
temptation than I myself had ever known. But I should encounter a good many
internal scruples in setting myself to besmirch the character of a man who
was very possibly as innocent of the crime with which he was charged as I
was. I wonder why it is always the defending, and never the accusing,
advocate whose probity we question.
But between the case of the barrister and the case of the preacher there is
all the difference in the world. If I were a barrister I should feel no
hesitation whatever in defending a man whom I strongly suspected to be
guilty. To begin with, my private suspicions have nothing whatever to do
with the case and ought not to be allowed to prejudice in any way the man's
position. Experience has taught me that I have frequently suspected people
to be guilty of offences of which they were-as was subsequently
proved-entirely guiltless. This man whom I am asked to defend is in a
terrible position. He is charged with a shocking crime. Obviously, he ought
not to be punished for that crime unless his guilt is established beyond all
reasonable doubt. But how can the Court be sure that his guilt has been so
proven if only one side has been heard? In fairness to the Judge and jury,
the man's own case should be presented to them as effectively as it is
possible to present it. How can the Court feel that there is any element of
finality in the evidence and speeches presented by the prosecution unless
somebody, skilled in such matters, has had the opportunity of rebutting that
evidence and replying to those speeches? You cannot be sure of a thing until
it has been adequately tested; the jury cannot estimate the strength of the
case for the prosecution until it has been tested by an able defence. In the
case of a guilty man, the prosecution is strengthened and the duty of the
Court simplified, by the ability of the defending barrister. In the
interests of justice, therefore, and in order that the Court might be
absolutely sure that no miscarriage was taking place, I should feel it my
duty-apart altogether from my pity for the prisoner-to defend any man whose
case was committed to my care.
But the point is that, whilst the Court thoroughly understands that a
defending barrister does not commit himself to a personal conviction of the
innocence of his client, a congregation has every right to assume that the
preacher is presenting a case in which he has the most implicit confidence.
They take it for granted that he is preaching a gospel of which he himself
has had vital and personal experience. Without absolute certainty concerning
the virtue of his message, he has no right in the pulpit. The pulpit, it has
been said, is the preacher's throne. That being so, his own secret delight
in the sweetness and grace of his gospel is the power behind the throne. We
believe and therefore speak.
II
Again, a man may preach, and preach with sincerity and fervour, a gospel
that holds for him all the glamour of an impressive and encrusted tradition.
He believes because others, by whose personal charm he has been captivated,
or whose honoured names he has learned to venerate, have believed before
him. Some of the most eminent thinkers and preachers have frankly adopted
this intellectual attitude. Newman is a case in point. Cardinal Newman
possessed one of the most acute end penetrating minds known to
ecclesiastical history; yet he ingenuously confessed that a good deal of his
faith was founded on the faith of others. How, for example, could he believe
in the crude and grotesque miracles attributed, in some of the Italian or
Spanish churches, to certain medieval saints? How could he believe that the
blood of St. Pantaloon, preserved in a bottle at Ravello, becomes liquid of
its own accord whenever, in the month of June, the holy day of the saint is
celebrated? How could he believe that the house that he visited at Loreto
was the very house in which the Holy Family dwelt in Palestine, having been
magically transported thither in three hops? Yet Newman firmly believed all
this and much more of the same kind. "If," he says, "if you ask me why I
believe it, it is because every one believes it at Rome, cautious as they
are and skeptical about some other things."
There is something very childlike, and therefore very beautiful, about all
this; but there is also something very dangerous. Dr. Stalker says that the
most solemn and appalling circumstance in the whole tragedy of the life of
Christ is that the men who rejected, hunted down and murdered the Saviour
were the best men in the nation-its teachers and examples, the zealous
conservators of the Bible and of the traditions of the past, men who thought
they were obeying the dictates of conscience and doing the will of God in
treating Jesus as they did. And the reason? The reason simply was that they
had become the victims of a second-hand faith.
Jewish history, Dr. Stalker shows, passed through two distinct stages. In
the first stage, its peril had been the peril of idolatry; the chastisement
of the Exile corrected that tendency for ever, and thenceforward the Jews,
all the world over, were uncompromising monotheists. In the second
stage-the stage that immediately succeeded the Exile-the peril became the
peril of orthodoxy. There sprang up the synagogue with its rabbis. The
rabbis brought into existence an ever-growing hoard of sacred tradition.
Little by little, this increasing store of tradition came to be regarded as
of equal value with the inspired oracles themselves.
Now the trouble about "believing because everybody believes" is the trouble
that arises in a child's copybook. The top line-the line nearest the copy-
is approximately like the copy. The second line is approximately like the
first; the third approximately like the second-and so on. But, with all
these approximations, there is a constant leakage of exactitude. The lines
get less and less like the copy at the top. My son, believing because I
believe, will believe just a little differently. Between my faith and my
grandson's faith there will be a still greater discrepancy. Therein lies the
treachery of tradition.
The scribes handed the Jewish traditions from generation to generation; but
with each generation there was some addition, or some subtraction, or some
slight departure from the original type. It is proverbial that a tale loses
nothing in the telling. Like a snowball, it grows as it goes. And so it came
to pass that when, in the fulness of time, the Messiah appeared, the very
people to whom the sacred oracles had been committed rejected and crucified
Him. He came unto His own but His own received Him not. He was cast out, not
because of any failure on His part to conform with the descriptions given by
the prophets, but because His teaching and behaviour ran counter to the vast
mass of tradition that had gathered around those prophetic documents.
The history of the English Puritans offers a striking illustration of the
singular circumstance that orthodoxy often waxes as faith wanes. In the
golden age of Puritanism no two Puritans thought exactly alike. It did not
occur to any man to adjust his beliefs to the creed of other people. As a
result it happened that a great body of ideas came to be held in common,
whilst, on minor matters, those who held those ideas differed widely. There
was no such thing as orthodoxy; but faith was general. Then came the
tragedy. The spirit of Puritanism vanished : the body alone remained. The
later Puritanism consisted, not in a beatific vision and a glowing faith,
but in an inflexible creed and an intolerant spirit. Each separate Puritan
was required to believe as all other Puritans believed, and had to express
his faith in the same phraseology and even in the same tone of voice. When
orthodoxy came in at the door, faith flew out at the window.
So was it with Judaism. Like a fungus that over-spreads and buries the root
from which it sprang, the rabbinic orthodoxy battened upon and eventually
smothered the sublime revelation that gave it birth. And the result
was-Calvary! The tragedy of the Cross is the supreme condemnation of the
tendency to believe a thing, not because of a firmly-grounded conviction of
the rightness or the authenticity of that thing, but merely because faith in
that thing is the mode of the moment. A man endangers his everlasting
soul-and other people's-whenever he believes a thing in order to conform
with the general attitude. Nietzsche used mockingly to say that religion is
ruled by the natural law that ordains that animals shall take the colour of
their environment. And, whenever a Christian man adapts his faith to the
prevailing fashion, he proves himself worthy of that ugly jibe.
The history of the Scribes and the Pharisees, the history of the
ecclesiasticism of the Middle Ages, the history of the Puritans and the
story of men like Newman prove conclusively that a man whose faith is
grounded in tradition may nevertheless preach with extraordinary intensity
and fervour. But his passion is the passion of party prejudice rather than
the passion of personal conviction. It is the enthusiasm of a scholar for
his own school. It is the expression in religion of the Conservative temper.
Not thus, Paul says, must the preacher preach. Before venturing into a
pulpit, let him possess a faith of his very own; a faith at which he has
arrived by reasoning of his own; a faith that he expresses in ways of his
own ! We believe and therefore speak.
III
From all this I turn with relief to the thought of my old friend John
Broadbanks. In many respects John was an ideal preacher. He was a plain
blunt man; he had few tricks of rhetoric; his style was purely a
conversational style; yet he held the congregation spellbound from the first
word to the last. He never shouted or screamed, never resorted to dramatic
gestures, and very seldom betrayed any external evidence of passion or
emotion. Yet somehow he made you feel that he was speaking from the very
depths of his soul, that every word he uttered meant all the world to him,
and that he was longing to communicate to you the treasure in which he
himself was luxuriating.
Although not cocksure, he was always perfectly certain. There is a
difference. In the privacy of our heart-to-heart talks as we sprawled in the
grass on the banks of the Silverstream, he would tell me of his doubts and
uncertainties. There were many points on which he was extremely hazy. He
could never be sure as to the part played by evolutionary processes in the
creation of the world; he had theories of his own as to the authorship of
some of the books of the Bible; and he was very much at sea as to the
precise significance of many of the apocalyptic visions. But he never
carried his doubts up the pulpit-steps. He carefully eschewed there the
subjects on which he was not himself perfectly clear. On the greatest themes
of all-the matters on which human happiness and human destiny depend-he was
sublimely confident. And, infecting his hearers with his own fine faith, he
exercised through all the years a vigorous, inspiring and effective
ministry. He radiated faith, peace and comfort; and his people blessed him
for it.
It is for such ministries that human hearts are aching. In his Darkened
Doors, Sir Philip Gibbs has given expression to this thought. Adrian
Mallard, K.C., a brilliant though sceptical lawyer and sportsman, who finds
that he is a victim of angina pectoris is chatting with his friend.
Professor Boyd, a distinguished psychologist. The Professor is singing the
praises of the open mind.
"Is that good enough?" asks Mallard, rather impatiently. "An open mind is
all very well, but it doesn't get you anywhere. I'm beginning to want-
certainty!" Boyd is amused by this desire, which seems to him hopelessly
unscientific.
"Certainty?" he replies, "Certainty! I'm surprised at you ! What do you want
to be certain about?"
Mallard answers without flippancy. "About life- about death-about what
happens afterwards. What's the good of you scientists if you can't tell us
that?"
In this tense morsel of dialogue. Sir Philip Gibbs sets his finger on one of
the nerve-centres of our human make-up. There is no craving in the human
heart more persistent or more passionate than the craving to lay a firm hand
upon something-something vital, something real, something eternal. And only
the preacher whose eyes are lit by the inner fires of profound conviction,
and in whose voice men catch the accents of serene and unwavering assurance,
can hope to lead those groping pilgrims to their shining goal.