biblical preaching: a pastor’s look at homiletics hr503 lesson … · 2019. 9. 13. · biblical...

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics

Transcript - HR503 Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 13 of 20HR503

The Historical Ideal: Charles Simeon (1759–1836)

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics

Let’s pray then. Our heavenly Father, as we lift our hearts to You, we thank You for the great preachers of past years and centuries. We thank You for the way in which You have raised up men in every place and in every generation to study, to expound, and to relate Your Word. Thank You today especially for Charles Simeon and the inspiration that he remains to many of us more than 100 years after his death. We bless You for Your sense of every age and what they can teach us. Help us to learn at the feet of Simeon today for the glory of Your name, amen.

Well on Tuesday, we looked at a biblical ideal of pastoral ministry. Today we look at a historical ideal in Charles Simeon. Now Charles Simeon was one of the greatest and most influential preachers that the Church of England has ever known. His collected sermons entitled Horae Homileticae (Homiletical Hours) number about 2,500 and are collected in twenty-one volumes, so that if you read one a day, it would take you seven years. In the opinion of Lord Macaulay, the son of Zachary Macaulay who was a friend of Simeon, “As to Simeon, if you knew what his authority and influence were and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway over the church was far greater than that of any primate” meaning, of course, an archbishop in that context. An earnest Christian in Cambridge University until comparatively modern times was known in undergraduate slang as a “sim,” that is, a fellow of Simeon.

Now let me outline his career. He was born in 1759, the same year as William Wilberforce, who was responsible for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. And Wilberforce was Charles Simeon’s lifelong friend. Simeon’s parents were affluent, and he was brought up as a young, English aristocrat of the eighteenth century. At the tender age of seven and a half, he was sent to the Royal College of Eton and six years later to the Foundation of Eton. That’s the senior school. (I suppose you’ve all heard of Eton.)

John R. W. Stott, D. D.Experience: Founder, Langham

Partnership International



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In appearance, he is said to have been plain and even eccentric. But he had a great fondness for smart clothes, especially for flashy shoe buckles and silk waistcoats. He was athletic and a very accomplished horseman. But he also had an ungovernable temper and a total lack of interest in the things of God. And one would hardly guess that in the providence of God he was to become a powerful preacher of the gospel which at that time he neither knew nor cared for. So I want to ask, and in this lecture try to answer, what were the secrets of his effectiveness? And I want to give you five of them.

One, his personal faith in Christ crucified. Simeon came up to King’s College Cambridge as a student in 1779 still godless and carefree. Within three days of his arrival at Cambridge University, he received a note from Provost Cook, the head of the college, informing him that by an ancient college rule he was absolutely required to attend a terminal Holy Communion service. And Simeon knew that he was totally unprepared. “Conscience told me,” he wrote later, “that Satan was as fit to go there as I and that if I must go, I must repent and turn to God unless I chose to eat and drink to my own damnation.” Well he had three weeks in which to prepare. So he went down to the town into a secondhand bookstore, and he bought a copy of William Law’s Whole Duty of Man. He said, “The only religious book that I’d ever heard of. And I made myself quite ill with reading, fasting, and prayer.” Well he attended communion still only half prepared and still very depressed. A few weeks later during the week before Easter, he bought Bishop Thomas Wilson’s book on the Lord’s Supper. And in it, he says,

I met with an expression to this effect that the Jews knew what they did when they transferred their sin to the head of their offering. The thought rushed into my mind. What? May I transfer all my guilt to another? Has God provided an offering for me that I may lay my sins on His head? Then God willing, I will not bear them on my soul one moment longer. Accordingly, I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus. And on the Wednesday, I began to have a hope of mercy. On the Thursday, that hope increased. On the Friday and Saturday, it became more strong. And on Sunday morning, Easter Day, I awoke early with those words upon my heart and lips: Jesus Christ is risen today, hallelujah. And from that hour, peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul. And at the Lord’s Table in our college chapel I had the sweetest access to God through my blessed Savior. A load had been taken off my soul.



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Well that’s the lovely story of Simeon’s conversion. Now, this personal faith in Christ crucified remained with him all his life. Forty years later, he could write,

It is now a little over forty years since I began to seek after God. And within about three months of that time after much humiliation and prayer, I found peace through that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. From that time to the present hour, I have never for a moment lost my hope and confidence in the adorable Savior. For, though alas I’ve abundant cause for humiliation, I never cease to wash in that fountain that was opened for sin and uncleanness or to cast myself upon the tender mercy of my reconciled God.

And then on his deathbed, he said, “I wish to be alone with my God and to lie before Him as a poor, wretched, hell-deserving sinner, yes, as a poor, hell-deserving sinner.” And then he added very slowly and calmly that “I would also look to Him as my all-forgiving God and my all-sufficient God and as my all-atoning God and as my covenant-keeping God. I have not a doubt or a fear about the sweetest peace. I cannot have more peace.” That was on his deathbed. And after he died, a tablet was erected in the church that he’d served for fifty-four years, Holy Trinity Cambridge. I’ve often looked at it myself. It’s still there on the south wall, and it commemorates his life and work in these words. That “Charles Simeon who, whether as the ground of his own hopes or as the subject of all his ministrations, determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Well there is the first thing: his personal faith in Christ crucified. He lived under the shadow of the cross, and he never left it. He never ceased to know himself as a hell-deserving sinner dependent on grace alone for salvation.

Two, my second point about him is his willingness to suffer for Christ. Now Simeon was elected a fellow of King’s College Cambridge in 1782. And a fellow, as I’m sure you know, means a teacher and often a research person with special privileges in the college. And he was ordained the same year on Trinity Sunday, and he began his ministry in a church in Cambridge called St. Edward’s Church, which was where Hugh Latimer used to preach at the Reformation. Indeed, he preached in what he called “good old Latimer’s pulpit.” I have some idea of Simeon’s sense of isolation as an evangelical, for he was already, do you see, so wholly dependent upon grace and obligated to the cross that he was an evangelical in his deepest conviction. And a sense of his isolation as an evangelical may be gained from the fact that he



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wrote this:

I longed exceedingly to know some spiritual person who had the same views and feelings with myself. And I had serious thoughts of putting into the papers an advertisement to the following effect. That a young clergyman who felt himself an undone sinner and looked to the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation and desired to live only to make known that Savior unto others was persuaded that there must be some persons in the world whose views and feelings on this subject accorded with his own.

But though he had now lived three years without finding so much as one and that if there were any minister of that description he would gladly become his curate (that is, his assistant minister) and serve him gratis (for nothing).

Well that gives you a sense of the state of the church in those days and the fact that he couldn’t find any in the Church of England, that is, especially a minister of his own evangelical views. Well he had now become a minister in St. Edward’s Church. And his biographer says that “Within four to six weeks, the church became quite crowded, and a considerable stir was made among the dry bones.” And William Berridge wrote to John Newton, the former slave trader, “Simeon preaches at a church in the town which is crowded like a theatre on the first night of a new play.” Now later the same year, he was appointed to Holy Trinity Church where had been the pulpit of the great Puritans Richard Sibbes and Thomas Goodwin. And this church is right in the heart of the campus of the university. It’s still there, and it’s right in the heart of Cambridge University. And when he had walked past it previously, he used to think to himself, “How should I rejoice if God were to give me that church that I might preach His gospel there and be a herald for Him in the midst of the university.”

Well God did give him that church, and there he continued for fifty-four years. But little did he anticipate the violent opposition that awaited him at the beginning of his ministry because of his known evangelical views. Evangelicals were suspected and feared in those days as dangerous enthusiasts. There is a church bell in Cambridge which still bears an inscription to protest against Simeon with the words, “Glory to the church and damnation to enthusiasts.” Now first of all, as he began to preach, the seat holders—because you know in those days they used to hire the pews. And when they’d paid so much a year for the pew, it was theirs. So the seat holders boycotted the services refusing to attend



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themselves and locking the doors of their high, old-fashioned pews so that nobody else could occupy them. Then when Simeon put benches into the aisles of the church, the church wardens dragged them out into the street and into the churchyard. And for more than ten years, the congregation had to stand, for there was nowhere for them to sit. The church wardens even tried several times to lock Simeon out of his own church while rowdy students tried to break up the services. Sometimes both the church and the adjoining streets were scenes of what were described as the most disgraceful tumults. Filth and stones were flung, and Simeon’s face was seen streaming with rotten eggs as he left the church. And if the students showed their disapproval in what I might venture to call typical student ways, the faculty also treated him with contempt. They slandered him and ostracized him. And that went on for nearly a decade.

But Simeon determined to win his way, his biographer says, “by faith and patience.” And a text which was never far from his thoughts was 2 Timothy 2:24, “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but gentle to everyone.” And once, in great distress over the opposition to his ministry, he went for a walk in the countryside with the Greek New Testament in his hand. And he prayed that God would comfort him from Scripture. He opened his New Testament, and he read, “And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simeon by name. Him they compelled to bear his cross.” “When I read that,” he wrote, “I said, Lord, lay it on me. Lay it on me. I will gladly bear the cross for Thy sake.” Well gradually the tide turned. Students came in growing numbers to hear him, impressed by his learning and his courage and his sincerity. The pew-holders began to unlock their locked seats. And as the years passed, his reputation grew throughout the university. He soon became the dean of his college and the vice-provost of his college. And several times, he was what is called “select preacher” before the whole university. And as I said, for fifty-four years he remained vicar of Holy Trinity Church. When he died, so great had his reputation become that all the shops of the town closed although it was market day. All lectures in the university were suspended, and the mourners queued four deep all around the great court of King’s College. Now this whole story I think is a signal example both of the inevitability of persecution, if we are faithful to the gospel, and of the fulfillment of God’s promise in Proverbs 16:7 that “when a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” So that is the second thing I wanted to draw out from the biography about Simeon, first, his personal faith in Christ crucified and, second,



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his willingness to suffer for Christ.

Thirdly, his dedication to the ministry of preaching. Now under this head I include several characteristics of his ministry which contributed to his power as a preacher. But I’m going to reserve the chief until later.

(a) He took trouble to prepare. He was a lifelong student of Scripture. And he not only studied, he prayed for illumination. I think I may have quoted this already. But he said, “For the attainment of Divine knowledge, we are directed to combine a dependence on God’s Spirit with our own researches. Let us then not presume to separate what God has thus united.” Now in his preparation, his biographer says, “Few sermons cost him less than twelve hours of study, many twice that time, and some several days. And when his sermon had been written out, he read it over half a dozen times at the least in order to make it his own.” He took trouble to prepare.

(b) He conserved his strength. Simeon refused to be an activist and to exhaust his resources and damage his ministry by a great deal of other activity. He once wrote about thirty-five years after his ordination, “My own health through mercy is as good as at any period of my life. And by means of constant and extraordinary caution, my voice in public is as strong almost as ever.” We must remember of course there was no public address system in those days. “But I’m silent all the week besides. I think I once told you that I compare myself to bottled, small beer. Being corked up and opened only twice a week, I make a good report. But if I were opened every day, I should soon be as ditch water.” So that’s (b), he conserved. Now I’m not suggesting we should literally be silent all the week. But what he meant is that he had such a conviction of the importance of his Sunday ministry of preaching to the university that he didn’t accept a large number of outside speaking engagements. Although he did of course accept some.

(c) He had a clear objective. In the doctrinal preface to his Helps to Composition, a book of his, he wrote “The author would wish his work to be brought to this test. Does it uniformly tend to humble the sinner, to exalt the Savior, to promote holiness?” Now those are three tremendous objectives. Does it uniformly tend to humble the sinner, to exalt the Savior, and to promote holiness? He had a clear objective.



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(d) He cultivated a direct and simple style. The preachers of his own day were mostly dry and academic. But Simeon started a new tradition of biblical exegesis. And he aimed, he said, “At unity in his subject, perspicuity in his arrangement, and simplicity in his diction.” Again I think that every sermon should have, like a telescope, but one object in the field. And as another commentator Arthur Pollard, who’s written about him, has said, “There is in his work a clarity, orderliness, and directness that is all too rare in the writings of our own time.” So that’s (d), he cultivated a direct and a simple style.

(e) He was in dead earnest. Nobody, even his worst enemies, could question his deep sincerity. William Carus, his main biographer writes, “His whole soul was in his subject, and he spoke and acted exactly as he felt. Occasionally indeed, his gestures and his looks were almost grotesque. But his action was altogether unstudied and always sincere and serious.” Canon Abner Brown asked, “Who ever heard a dry sermon from Simeon’s lips?” And the story is told of a little girl who was taken to his church by her mother on one occasion for the first time. And after he’d started preaching, she turned to her mother and said, “Oh mama, what is the gentleman in a passion about?” He was in dead earnest. So those are various subdivisions of my third point, his dedication to the ministry of preaching.

Now fourthly, his faithfulness to Scripture. And this really was the outstanding characteristic of Simeon’s preaching, and it is on this that I want to concentrate. And let me subdivide it again.

(a) He always sought to be submissive to Scripture. In his preface to Horae Homileticae, he wrote (and again I may have quoted this before), “My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there but not what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head.” Now this led him to be wonderfully impartial and open-minded in his approach. He wanted to divest himself of all preconceptions. Listen to this. “I have long pursued the study of Scripture,” he wrote, “with a desire to be impartial. I call myself neither a predestinarian nor an anti-predestinarian. But I commit myself to the teaching of the inspired writing whatever complexion it may assume. In the beginning of my inquiries, I said to myself, ‘I am a fool.’ Of that I am quite certain. One thing I know assuredly, that in religion, of myself I know nothing. I do not, therefore, sit down to the perusal of Scripture in order to impose a sense on the inspired writers but to receive one as they give it me. I pretend (that is, I claim) not to teach them. I wish



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like a child to be taught by them.” Or again he said on another occasion,

I love the simplicity of the Scriptures. And I wish to receive and inculcate every truth precisely in the way and to the extent that it is set forth in the inspired volume. For again I soon learned that I must take the Scriptures with the simplicity of a little child and be content to receive on God’s testimony what He has revealed whether I can unravel all the difficulties that may attend it or not. For again the author has endeavored without prejudice or partiality to give to every text its just meaning, its natural bearing, and its legitimate use.

So that’s (a), he sought always to be submissive to Scripture and to draw out what was there with faithfulness.

(b) He was wary of all human systems of theology. Now Simeon lived in days when the Calvinist Arminian controversy was very strong and very heated. And in his preface to the Horae Homileticae, he wrote this,

The author is no friend to systematizers in theology. He has endeavored to derive from the Scriptures alone his views of religion. And to them it is his wish to adhere with scrupulous fidelity, never wresting any portion of the Word of God to favor a particular opinion but giving to every part of it that sense which it seems to him to have been designed by its great Author to convey. He is aware that he’s likely on this account to be considered by the zealous advocates of human systems as occasionally inconsistent. But if he should be discovered to be no more inconsistent than the Scriptures themselves, he will have reason to be satisfied. He has no doubt that there is a system in the Holy Scriptures. The truth cannot be inconsistent with itself. But he is persuaded that neither Calvinists nor Arminians are in exclusive possession of it.

So in one of his conversation parties, and he used to have a tea party every Sunday afternoon for students, especially seminarians or people hoping to go into the ministry. And in one of his conversation parties, he said, “Be Bible Christians, not system Christians.” Now the reason he was suspicious of systematizing was not that he would despise Dr. Clark Pinnock for example or that he would despise the necessity of systematic theology. And indeed he had a systematic theology himself, though that isn’t the point. The reason he was suspicious and wary of systematizing was that people so easily subordinate Scripture to their system.



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And that is the danger of systems. You create what you think to be a biblical Christian system, and then when you find some verse that doesn’t quite seem to fit into it, instead of adapting your system to accommodate the Scripture, you tend to trim the Scripture to fit into your system. Now that is the danger he saw. And he said somewhere else:

The author is disposed to think that the Scripture system, be it what it may, is of a broader and more comprehensive character than some very exact and dogmatical theologians are inclined to allow. And that just as wheels in a complicated machine may move in opposite directions and yet subserve one common end, so truths apparently opposite may be perfectly reconcilable with each other and equally subserve the purposes of God in the accomplishment of man’s salvation. It is an invariable rule with him (that is himself, the author) to endeavor to give to every portion of the Word of God its full and proper source without considering one moment what scheme it favors or whose system it is likely to advance. Of this he assured (I’ve always liked this quotation) that there is not a decided Calvinist or Arminian in the world who equally approves of the whole of Scripture. He apprehends that there is not a determined votary of either system who, if he had been in the company of St. Paul whilst he was writing his different epistles, would not have recommended him to alter one or other of his expressions. But the author would not wish one of them altered. He finds as much satisfaction in one class of passages as in another. He is content to sit as a learner at the feet of the holy apostles and has no ambition to teach them how they ought to have spoken.

I think there is a very valuable warning to be heeded here still today, because those of us who have tidy minds, we like to systematize our theology. So that’s b. I’m still talking about his faithfulness to Scripture, and (a) as he sought always to be submissive to it. And (b) is, he was wary of all human systems of theology.

(c) He emphasized that the truth lies in both extremes. In his preface to the Helps to Composition, which is the title given to two volumes of skeletons of his sermons, he wrote this about the Calvinist controversy: “As for names and parties in religion, the author equally disclaims them all. He takes his religion from the Bible and endeavors as much as possible to speak as that speaks. Hence as in the Scriptures themselves, so also in this work there will be found sentiments not really opposite but apparently of an opposite tendency.” Then he goes on to quote and enlarges on the



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text in John 5:40, “You will not come to me that you might have life.” And John 6:44, “No one can come to me except the Father draws him.” He goes on,

While too many set these passages at variance and despise the one in opposition to the other, the author dwells with equal pleasure on them both and thinks it on the whole better to state these apparently opposite truths in the plain and unsophisticated manner of the Scriptures than to enter into scholastic subtleties that have been invented for the upholding of human systems. It may be asked perhaps, how do you reconcile these doctrines? But what right has any man to impose this task on the preachers of God’s Word? God has not required it of them nor is the truth or falsehood of any doctrine to be determined absolutely by this criterion. The truly scriptural statement will be found not in an exclusive adoption of either extreme nor yet in a confused mixture of both but in the proper and seasonable application of them both.

Now there’s a very valuable truth again for us there to learn. This of course is summed up in the antinomies. I’m not sure how far that word was common in Simeon’s day. But this is the word; and if any of you have read Dr. Packer’s little book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, you’ll know that he has. It’s a very valuable essay, in the relation between divine sovereignty and the preaching of the gospel, and therefore, between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. And he begins with some wise words about antinomies as being these opposites and the difference between an antinomy and a paradox. In the paradox, the contrast is only a verbal thing. In an antinomy, it is a substantial thing. And the human mind is not able to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

Now this, I think—my next quotation in a letter from Simeon to I forget who, I think his publisher in 1825—but I think this in many ways, this next quotation is the most important of them all because he sums up this idea about the truth being at both extremes. He says,

The truth is not in the middle and it is not in one extreme, but it is in both extremes. Here are two extremes: Calvinism and Arminianism. How do you move in relation to these, Paul? In the golden mean? No. To one extreme? No. How then? Answer: to both extremes. Today I’m a strong Calvinist, tomorrow a strong Arminian. Well, well, Paul, I see thou art beside thyself. Go to Aristotle and learn the golden mean. But my brothers, I’m



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unfortunate. I formerly read Aristotle and liked him much. I’ve since read Paul and caught somewhat of his strange notions oscillating, not vacillating, from pole to pole. Sometimes I’m a high Calvinist, at other times a low Arminian, so that if extremes will please you, I am your man. Only remember it is not one extreme that we are to go to but both extremes.

Is that so good that you’d like me to dictate it to you or not? You don’t think that’s good. All right, well you can pick it up on the tape then afterwards if you want it.

Now it’s interesting that Charles Smyth, who was a former Anglican scholar in the Church of England, quoting that saying in his book Simeon and Church Order, says it’s a saying which is so naturally disconcerting to the English mind. I think it is disconcerting to the Anglo-Saxon mind including, therefore, the American mind. But we like to get things taped and reconcile these apparent opposites, and to live with tension is very difficult for all of us. Yet when you come to think of it, if I may pause a moment, this is so true of so much biblical teaching that it’s in an antinomy, I think. I suppose the nearest and most obvious equivalent is in the two natures in the one person of Christ, there to say that Jesus of Nazareth was and is man and that He was and is God. Now really in the early three centuries of the Christian church, the church was wrestling with this antinomy and saying it is impossible. Now as you know if you’ve done your history of theology in your early church teaching, you know that some of them went to the one extreme and said, well we know for certain that He was man. He was fully a human being; so well, He can’t have been God as well if He was man. So He must have been man with divine qualities or a man who’d been adopted into the Godhead. That is, after His birth, the Spirit or the Logos or the Christ came upon Jesus of Nazareth and adopted Him into the Godhead for a few brief years and then maybe flew back to heaven before He died (that was Cerinthianism), or that He was adopted into the Godhead after He was born in some sense. But He was really man.

But then on the other hand there were people who said well no, we’re quite certain that He was God. He was Divine. But if He was God, well He can’t have been man. So He must have been God in human disguise. And this was Docetism, that He seemed to be a man. He gave the appearance of being a man, but He was really God in disguise as a man, you see. So some went to the one extreme and some to the other; and some tried to find a confused mixture between the two and said He was semi, demi, human, Divine sort



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of half-and-half, you know. Whereas it’s only when you get to the Chalcedonian definition and to Pope Leo the Great that you get the great statements of orthodoxy, that He was man and He was God. He was perfect in manhood and perfect in Godhead, deriving His manhood from the Virgin Mary and His godhead from God the Father; deriving His manhood temporally in the virgin’s womb and His Godhead eternally from the Father, you know, truly man, truly God, and no track at all with trying to say He was one or the other or half-and-half. He was both. So I think this is good for all of us to try to learn again with Divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Man is responsible. God is sovereign. “You will not come to me that you may have life.” “You cannot come unless the Father draw him.” In the will not and the cannot there is again this tension that the human mind really is not able to systematize. So there he emphasized that the truth lies in both extremes.

All right, well now I came to the fifth and the last characteristic of Simeon, and that is the discipline of his private life because hidden behind his public ministry was a stern, self-discipline. He was incidentally another of these unfortunate bachelors. That may have contributed to his discipline. I don’t know. But especially in prayer and in Bible reading, he was very disciplined. With regard to his daily meditation, he said in one of his sermons, “There is nothing in the whole universe to be compared with the Scriptures of truth, nothing that will so enrich the mind, nothing that will so benefit the soul. To treasure them up in our mind should be our daily and most delightful employment. Not a day should pass without adding to their blessed store and not only in memory and mind but in heart and soul as well.” So, it was his invariable custom to rise every morning at 4 o’clock, and of course he went to bed very early too. They had no electricity you must remember in those days. And they tended to go to bed early because they lacked too much light to keep them burning the midnight oil or the midnight current. But he did get up at 4 o’clock in the morning. And after lighting his fire in his college rooms, he devoted the first hours of the day until eight to private prayer and the devotional study of the Scriptures.

But if any of you visited Cambridge, you will know that it’s in one of the eastern counties of Cambridge, and it’s very flat. And the Fenland is exposed to the cold, east winds which blow straight, I have no doubt, from Siberia. And it can be extremely cold in the winter. And so Simeon had a fondness of bed especially in the winter mornings when it was cold. So, he resolved that he would pay a self-imposed fine for every offense of not getting



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up at the time he’d set himself and that he would give his fine, half a crown it was going to be, to his servant. He had a woman, what in Cambridge University is called a bedmaker or a “bedder,” she’s known as still to these days. And he’d give half a crown to his bedder. Well one morning as he lay warm and snug in bed, he caught himself rationalizing that the good woman was poor and could do with half a crown. So, he determined on the next offense that he’d walk down from King’s College to the River Cam, which is only a few hundred yards away, and throw a guinea into the river. And so he did, though not without a struggle as guineas were scarce. But he never did it again. Well if you’re short, I guess it’s still there in the muddy bottom of the river, if you’d like to go and dive for it. But I admire—you may think it’s slightly eccentric all right—but here is a man who was determined to get himself up in the morning with this self-discipline.

I don’t know whether discipline is a Cambridge tradition or not. But there have been a number of slight, if you like, eccentrics who have found their mechanical means of getting themselves up in the morning. And I take the liberty of digressing a moment about Douglas Thornton who was in Cambridge also, not at King’s but at Trinity College, which is my old college, in I think the 1880s. And he was a tremendously strong Christian after his conversion. He ate an austerity diet. He stripped his room bare. And in order to get himself up in the morning, he invented a kind of Heath Robinson contraption so that when the alarm clock went off, the vibrations of the alarm clock set fishing tackle in motion which was clipped to his bedclothes and lifted the sheet and blankets up to the ceiling off the sleeping figure of Thornton. And apparently, Thornton was to be seen at the end of the term, when vacation had begun, driving to the railway station in a cab with this contraption strapped to the roof so that he took it with him on vacation as well. Well this is simply an example of men who were determined to conquer this problem. Of course, I would say to you that the only secret to getting up in the morning is going to bed at night, which is maybe too simple to state. But it seems to me that we’ve all of us got to discover how many hours of sleep we need normally speaking and work backwards from the time when you want to get up in the morning. And I’ve always admired— again talking from a few personal anecdotes—I can remember again as a student how impressed I was when an ordinary, secular guy (when one was out at a party in somebody else’s rooms), when 10 o’clock struck would get up and say, “Well goodnight, fellows, I’m in training.” And when he was in training for rugby or whatever it was, the training rule said you’ve got to go to bed at



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10:00 or 10:30. So he’d get up and go, because he was in training. And I have sometimes thought if a man can be in discipline when he’s in training for a material end of that kind, how much more important it is for us to be in training. Anyway, the results of this disciplined study of Scripture were seen not only in his ministry but in his character.

Now I said at the very beginning that Simeon was hot-tempered and brusque. Indeed, by temperament, he was really slightly eccentric in his mannerisms and so on. There are pictures of him that you may have seen which indicate this, that although by nature he was hot-tempered and brusque, by grace he had been wonderfully humbled. And I finish with two quotations. First from one of his conversation parties when somebody asked him, “What, sir, do you consider the principle mark of regeneration?” That is, what is the principle indication that somebody’s been born again? And this is his answer.

The very first and indispensable sign is self-loathing and abhorrence. Nothing short of this can be admitted as an evidence of a real change. I want to see more of this humble, contrite, broken spirit among us. It is the very spirit that belongs to self-condemned sinners. This sitting in the dust is most pleasing to God. Give me to be with a brokenhearted Christian, and I prefer his society to that of all the rest. And were I now addressing to you my dying words, I should say nothing else but what I’ve just said. Try to live in the spirit of self-abhorrence and let it habitually mark your life and your conduct.

Now that is his idea, you see, of the guilty, hell-deserving sinner sitting at the feet of Christ and Him crucified. But then my second example is of his own character. He was proud; he was impetuous. Now on his first visit to a great man called Henry Venn, whose son John Venn was the rector of Clapham, when the Clapham Sect was in existence, of Wilberforce and the rest. When he first visited Henry Venn at Yelling, his eldest daughter wrote these words: “It’s impossible to conceive anything more ridiculous than Mr. Simeon’s look and manner were. His grimaces, the expressions on his face, were beyond anything you can imagine. So as soon as we were gone, we all got together in the study and set up an amazing laugh.” Why she was a little girl, of course, although the oldest daughter. But then their father who was a vicar summoned them into the garden. And though it was early summer, he asked them to pick him one of the green peaches. When they showed surprise, he said, “Well, my dears, it is green now and we must


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The Historical Ideal: Charles Simeon (1759–1836)Lesson 13 of 20

wait. But a little more sun and a few more showers and the peach will be ripe and sweet. So it is with Mr. Simeon.” And so it was, he became a great man of God, sanctified by the grace of God from a very unpromising start in his character and his disposition. May God’s grace do the same with us.

One last thing, do read—I haven’t quoted from it actually, but Bishop Handley Moule wrote a brief biography of Simeon, and it’s been published by InterVarsity. And I think it’s available by InterVarsity Press in this country just called Charles Simeon, a biography by Handley Moule. And you’ll find a number of these quotations in that, and it’s the best brief biography there is. And I think it’ll give to you, as it gave to me, a great desire to emulate some of the characteristics of his life and his ministry. Thank you very much.

biblical preaching: a pastor’s look at homiletics hr503 lesson … · 2019. 9. 13. · biblical...

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