PT Forsyth on Preaching

Positive Preaching and Modern Mind. I was stirred by these statements about the Gospel preacher's call to un-originality:

The preacher makes discovery in the Gospel, not of the Gospel. Some preachers spoil their work by an incessant strain after novelty, and a morbid dread of the commonplace. But it was one no less original than Goethe, who said, the great artist is not afraid of the commonplace. To be unable to freshen the commonplace is to be either dull or inexperienced in the Gospel...

The preacher must be original in the sense that his truth is his own, but not in the sense that it has been no one else's. You must distinguish between novelty and freshness. (89)

God forbid that I should say a word to seem to justify the dullness that infects the pulpit. Alas! If our sin crucifies Christ afresh, our dullness buries Him again! ...the cure for pulpit dullness is not brilliancy, as in literature. It is for the preacher to experience the reality of the old cross. (91)

[The pastor's] charge is to educate those people not in a correct theology, old or new, but in a mighty Gospel. It is not the preacher's duty to tell everything he knows about the Bible; but it is his duty to tell everything he knows about the Gospel... (108)