Ecclesiastes 12:11

The words of the wise are as goads.

A wise preacher aims to move his hearers

I. A wise preacher will aim to impress the minds of his hearers.

1. Every wise preacher knows that unless he impresses the minds of his hearers, he can do them no good by his preaching. Hearers must feel what they hear, or what they hear will be like sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2. Every wise preacher knows that his hearers will not feel the truth and importance of what he says unless he makes them feel it. Hearers look upon it as the part of the preacher to make them feel. They mean to be passive in hearing, unless he makes them active.

II. How he will preach in order to attain this desirable object. When any person proposes a certain end, the end which he proposes naturally suggests the proper means to accomplish it. This holds with respect to a wise preacher, who makes it his object to penetrate and impress the minds of his hearers.

1. This end will naturally lead him to use the most proper style in preaching. He will choose the best words, and place them in the best order, to enlighten the mind and affect the heart.

2. His design to penetrate and impress the minds of his hearers will lead him to exhibit great and interesting truths. He will bring much of the character, perfections and designs of God into his public discourses. He will preach Christ in the greatness of His nature, and in the glory and grace of His mediatorial character and works. He will exhibit man in the dignity of his nature, and in the importance of his destination. And he will unfold the scenes of a general judgment, and of a boundless eternity, in their own native awful solemnity.

3. For the same purpose he will explain Divine truths and describe Divine objects.

4. The wise preacher, who intends to impress the minds of his hearers, will arrange Divine truths, and exhibit Divine objects, in such an order as to reach every power and faculty of the soul, in its proper turn. Instruction should always go before declamation. It can answer no valuable purpose to inflame the passions before light is thrown into the understanding and conscience; but rather serves, on the other hand, to produce the most fatal effects.

5. The wise preacher, who means to impress the minds of his hearers, will always apply his discourse according to their particular characters. What belongs to saints, he will apply to saints; and what belongs to sinners, he will apply to sinners.

III. Improvement.

1. We learn from what has been said, the importance of ministers being good men. Piety is necessary, both to dispose and enable them to penetrate and impress the minds of their hearers.

2. We learn from what has been said, the importance of ministers giving themselves wholly to their work. If they mean to penetrate and impress the minds of their hearers, they must exhibit, in the course of their preaching, a rich variety of Divine truths. But they will soon lose a variety, and fall into a sameness in preaching, unless they constantly improve their minds in the knowledge of the doctrines and duties of religion by reading, meditation and prayer.

3. We learn from what has been said, the manner in which a minister should appear and speak in the pulpit. His voice, his looks, his gestures, and his whole deportment, should be wholly governed by his ultimate end, which is to penetrate and impress the minds of his hearers.

4. We learn from what has been said that it is not very material whether a minister preaches with notes, or without. If he aims to impress the minds of his hearers, he may attain his end by either of these modes of preaching.

5. We learn from what has been said, the great absurdity of those ministers who studiously avoid penetrating and impressing the minds of their hearers. Solomon and Christ, the prophets and apostles meant to penetrate and impress the minds of their hearers; and, by the manifestation of the truth, to commend themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. These are examples, which it is wise in preachers to follow, though it Should give pain and even offence to their hearers.

6. If it be the wisdom and duty of ministers to penetrate and impress the minds of their hearers, then they have no reason to complain of the most close and pungent preaching. They always desire such plainness and fidelity in other men, whom they employ to promote their temporal good. They wish their attorney to examine their cause with care, discover every flaw, and tell them the plain, naked truth. And they heartily desire their surgeon to probe their wounds to the bottom, and apply the moss effectual remedies, though ever so painful and distressing to endure. Why, then, should they complain of their minister for dealing plainly and faithfully with their souls? This is an absurdity in its own nature, an injury to their minister, and may be eternal destruction to themselves.

7. If it ought to be the aim of the minister to penetrate and impress the minds of his hearers, then there is blame somewhere if their minds are not penetrated and impressed. Either the minister does not aim to impress their minds, or they mean to resist the impressions of Divine truth. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

The words of the wise

I. They are stimulating, “as goads.” Wise teaching, however attractive (Ecclesiastes 12:10), is never pointless. It is penetrating, incisive. It stimulates to--

1. Hatred and opposition. Ahab. (1 Kings 21:20; 1 Kings 22:8). The Pharisees (Mark 12:12).

2. Conversion. Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9:5. See also Psalms 45:2; Psalms 45:5).

3. Progress and effort (2 Peter 1:12; 2 Peter 3:1 :l).

II. They are abiding, “as nails,” etc. “Masters of assemblies,” either those who assemble persons together to hear them, or perhaps “masters of collections,” those who collect and arrange wise words. In either case they are teachers, by word of mouth or in writing. A nail “fastened” or “planted,” not only penetrates, but abides. The impression made by wise teaching is lasting. It abides--

1. To be pondered. The Blessed Virgin (Luke 2:19; Luke 2:51. See also Luke 1:66, and Genesis 37:11).

2. To be acted upon, as fixed principles, regulating the conduct. “Having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit,” etc. (Luke 8:15; see Psalms 119:11).

3. To be added to; a nail (a “peg,” as we say) on which to hang much else. Compare the promise to Eliakim (Isaiah 22:23).

III. They have essential unity, “given from one shepherd.”

1. The human teacher making his own (so giving harmony and unity to “words of the wise”), drawn from many sources.

2. God, the Author of all wisdom (Proverbs 2:6), the Great Prophet and Teacher of the Church (John 16:13; 1 Corinthians 2:9). Harmony and unity of truth, as taught by inspired writers, and those whose teaching accords with them.

IV. Conclusion. In this description we have a rule by which--

1. The teacher should guide himself.

2. The hearer should try himself. (Archdeacon Perowne.)

The Christian ministry of literary men

There is a Christian ministry wider than that to which men are consecrated through ecclesiastical offices. They also belong to the “great company of preachers,” or teachers, who explore the heavens, or who decipher the records graven on rocks, or who analyze material forms, or who trace the evolutions of life, with those who delineate or embody the beautiful in art; all these are co-workers with “the apostles and prophets” in the service and worship of God the Father. Some of God’s servants stand nearer to the altar than others, but the sacrifice and service of these in the outermost range are ever and everywhere acceptable to Him when offered or done “in an honest and true heart.” And among these diverse gifts of God’s Spirit, who divides to men “severally as He will,” we may surely count the gift of the genius which has enriched the world with so many sweet and inspiring thoughts in the varied forms of literature. Charles Lamb has said, in his own quiet, quaint way, “I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, for a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts--a grace before Milton, a grace before Shakespeare, a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the ‘Faery Queen’?” For literature, even in its lowlier forms, has been a ministry of comfort and help to millions. It has filled days in the lives of multitudes with solace or with sunshine which otherwise had been “dark and dreary.” Many devout people have a horror, I know, of what they call works of “fiction”: nor am I insensible of the demoralizing influence of the baser sort of such literature. But let us discriminate here, as we do in music and in painting and in poetry, nor condemn that which is wholesome with that which is vicious in books of amusement or recreation; for the greatest writers of so-called fiction have done good and blessed service often in the cause of morality and religion. There is more “pure gospel,” in the substantial sense of that cant phrase, in the writings of Charles Dickens, for instance, than in seven-tenths of our prinked sermons. Think of the gentleness, the pathos, the Divine charity which pervade his books! while even the homely, the ludicrous and the seemingly profane are always friendly to virtue. What a power he has been in the regeneration of English manners! Then think of a similar service done by his great compeer in English letters; by him who lashed the follies and the vices of “Vanity Fair,” doing a work which the pulpit was impotent or afraid to do in rebuking the fashionable extravagance and profligacy of the age; for literature could find audience in circles which were closed to homilies and Episcopal pastorals, insinuating truths which had been resented coming in dogmatic shape. And the results are marked in every sphere of English life, for it is not to an increase of ecclesiastical activity that the improved manners and morals of the English people are to be solely or chiefly traced. The influence of the press has become supreme; our greatest prophets speak through books. No man can estimate the debt which modern civilization owes to the men the weapon of whose warfare has been the pen. They have been ever forward to expose hypocrisy, to resist the tyranny of power, to plead the cause of the oppressed, and sometimes at a bitter cost. Of all powers merely human, poetry has been the most potent over the cultivated thought and feeling of the world. It holds more condensed wisdom, it speaks more directly to the primal affections, it incites the soul to grander aims, it is more nearly akin to the unction of the Divine Spirit than any other instrument or influence controlled by man. The art of making verses may be acquired, but the true poet is inspired, having deeper insight into men and things with finer faculties of interpretation: the teacher at whose feet all other men sit to catch the flow of harmonious wisdom. All gifts of genius are from heaven, but the brightest and the best is “the vision and the faculty Divine” of the poet. He is the teacher of teachers. The best thoughts of the cultivated world had birth in poetry. Every other species of intellectual power has been inspired by it. Religion, morals, government have all been penetrated and purified by it. Take one name and all it represents out of the literary annals of England, and what a void would be visible wherever the English tongue has gone! “Take the entire range of English literature,” says the late Canon Wordsworth; “put together our best authors who have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we Shall not find, I believe, in them all united so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used as we have found in Shakespeare alone.” Who can take his thoughts and reflections into the study or the closet without coming forth with deeper and diviner feelings in him--without a more awful estimate of life and its great issues? (J. H. Rylance, D. D.)