e was preaching before
Pentecost. The prophets were preachers, and mighty was their
proclamation of the divine message--so mighty that though addressed
primarily to their contemporaries it lives and burns to-day. Later, in
the period lying between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning
of the New, there were notable preachers in Israel who kept alive the
Messianic hope and sought to "prepare the way of the Lord and make His
paths straight." There was preaching in the synagogues in our Lord's
own day, and He but observed an established custom when, "entering into
the synagogue" at Nazareth, as was His practice "on the Sabbath day,"
"He stood up for to read," and "there was brought unto Him the book of
the Prophet Esaias." He had a text that day, and He preached from it,
and, if the end of His discourse was that He was thrust out of the
synagogue and was like to have been put to death, it was because of the
unwelcomeness of the word He spoke, and not because He had introduced a
new order of service into the sanctuary of an intensely conservative
people. He preached in the synagogues of Capernaum, too, "and they
were astonished at His doctrine, for the word was with power." John
the Baptist was a preacher who was more than a prophet, and to his
preaching doubtless the Lord Himself listened more than once. "And
John began to say unto men everywhere repent." Such seems to have been
the burden of his message until that hour when he suddenly found his
sweetest music and cried "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the
sin of the world." Yes, there were preachers before Christ, and long
previous to His coming "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching"
to save them that believed. Jesus, however, gave to the order of the
preacher a new institution. He put upon the lips of His servants a new
message. They were to go, no longer to the children of one favoured
nation only, but "out into all the world, and preach the Gospel to
every creature." From all classes did He gather the men upon whom He
put this glorious burden. Here was a fisherman fresh from his toil
upon the deep; here a publican newly come up from the receipt of
custom; here a husbandman from distant farm or vineyard, and each was
commanded to go "in My name." Each was the representative, the
ambassador of the King. Each was promised His help; each the baptism
through which memory was to be quickened to recall the words He had
spoken--the b