Lectures to My Students, Volume 3 — Second Series · Lecture 4 — Charles H. Spurgeon
THERE are some customs for which nothing can be pleaded, except that they are ‘very old. In such cases antiquity is of no more value than the rust upon a counterfeit coin. It is, however, a happy circumstance when the usage of ages can be pleaded for a really good and scriptural practice, for it; invests it with a halo of reverence. Now, it can be argued, with small fear of refutation, that open air preaching is as old as preaching itself. We are at full liberty to believe that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, when he prophesied, asked for no better pulpit than the hillside, and that Noah, as a preacher of righteousness, was willing to reason with his. contemporaries in the ship-yard wherein his marvelous ark was builded. Certainly, Moses and Joshua found their most convenient place for addressing vast assemblies beneath the un-pillared arch of heaven. Samuel dosed a sermon in the field at Gilgal amid threader and rain, by which the Lord rebuked the people and drove them to their knees. Elijah stood on Carmel, and challenged the vacillating nation, with “How long halt ye between two opinions?” Jonah, whose: spirit was somewhat similar, lifted up his cry of warning in the streets of Nineveh, and in all her places of concourse gave forth the warning utterance, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shah be overthrown! “To hear Ezra and Nehemiah “all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate.” Indeed, ‘we find examples of open air preaching everywhere around us in the records of the Old Testament. It may suffice us, however, to go back as far as the origin of our own holy faith, and there we hear the forerunner of the Savior crying in the wilderness and lifting up his voice from the river’s bank. Our Lord himself, who is yet more our pattern, delivered[ the larger proportion of his sermons on the mountain’s side, or by the sea shore, or in the streets. Our Lord was to all intents and purposes an open air preacher. He did not remain silent in the synagogue, but he was equally at home in the field. We have no discourse of his on record delivered in the chapel royal, but we have the sermon on the mount, and the sermon in the plain; so that the very earliest and most divine kind of preaching was practiced out of doors by him who spake as never man spake. There were gatherings of his disciples after his decease, within walls, especially that in the upper room; but the preaching was even then most frequently in the court of the temple, or in such other open spaces as were available. The notion of holy places and consecrated meeting-houses had not occurred to them as Christians; they preached in the temple because it was the chief place of concourse, but with equal earnestness “in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.” The apostles and their immediate successors delivered their message of mercy not only in their own hired houses, and in the synagogues, but also anywhere and everywhere as occasion served them. This may be gathered incidentally from the following statement of Eusebius. “The divine and admirable disciples of the apostles built up the superstructure of the churches, the foundations whereof the apostles had laid, in all places where they came; they everywhere prosecuted the preaching of the gospel, sowing the seeds of heavenly doctrine throughout the whole world. Many of the disciples then .’dive distributed their estates to the poor; and, leaving
their own country, did the work of evangelists to those who had never yet heard the Christian faith, preaching Christ, and delivering the evangelical writings to them. No sooner had they planted the faith in any foreign countries, and ordained guides and pastors, to whom they committed the care of these new plantations, but they went to other nations, assisted by the grace, and powerful working of the Holy Spirit. As soon as they began to preach the gospel the people flocked universally to them, and cheerfully worshipped the true God, the Creator of the world, piously and heartily believing in his name.” As the dark ages lowered, the best preachers of the gradually declining church were also preachers in the open air; as were also those itinerant friars and great founders of religious orders who kept alive such piety as remained. We hear of Berthold, of Ratisbon, with audiences of sixty or a hundred thousand, in a field near Glatz in Bohemia. There were also Bernards, and Bernardines, and Anthonys, and: Thomases of great fame as traveling preachers, of whom we cannot find time to speak particularly. Dr. Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, being short of other arguments, stated, as a proof that the Methodists were identical with the Papists, that the early Friar Preachers were great at holding forth in the open fields. Quoting from Ribadeneira, he mentions Peter of Verona, who had “a divine talent in preaching; neither churches, nor streets, nor market-places could contain the great concourse that resorted to hear his sermons.” The learned bishop might have easily multiplied his examples, as we also could do, but they would prove nothing more than that, for good or evil, field preaching is a great power. When Antichrist had commenced its more universal sway, the Reformers before the Reformation were full often open air preachers, as, for instance, Arnold of Brescia, who denounced Papal usurpations at the very gates of the Vatican. It would be Very easy to prove that revivals of religion have usually been accompanied, if not caused, by a considerable amount of preaching out of doors, or in unusual places. The first avowed preaching of Protestant doctrine was almost necessarily in the open air, or in buildings which were not dedicated to worship, for these were in the hands of the Papacy. True, Wycliffe for a while preached the gospel in the church at Lutterworth; Huss, and Jerome, and Savonarola for a time delivered semi-gospel addresses in connection with the ecclesiastical arrangements around them; but when they began more fully to know and proclaim the gospel, they were driven to find other platforms. The Reformation when yet a babe was like the new-born Christ, and had not where to lay its head, but a company of men comparable to the heavenly host proclaimed it under the open heavens, where shepherds and common people heard them gladly. Throughout England we have several trees remaining called!” gospel oaks.” There is one spot on the other side of the Thames known by the name of “Gospel Oak,” and I have myself preached at Addlestone, in Surrey, under the far-spreading boughs of an ancient oak, beneath which John Knox is said to have proclaimed the gospel during his sojourn in England. Full many a wild moor, and lone hill side, and secret spot in the forest have been consecrated in the same fashion, and traditions still linger over caves, and dells, and hill tops, where of old time the bands of the faithful met to hear the word of the Lord. Nor was it alone in solitary places that in days of yore the voice ,of the preacher was heard, for scarcely is there a market cross which has not served as