so mysterious and obscure that I doubt whether it would be edifying to read it as the lesson.” “A revelation,” said Luther, “ought to be revealing.” While he was comfortable with a good deal of picture language and in using vivid description to fill out a context, he found apocalyptic somewhat daunting, as did Calvin, who wrote commentaries on everything in the New Testament except Revelation, and Luther, who had doubts about the book’s usefulness in the canon.
Wesley, who in the Preface to his notes on Revelation found in his Notes on the New Testament, (which Kingsley certainly knew and used), offered something of a disclaimer as follows: “It is scarce possible for any that either love or fear God not to feel their hearts extremely affected in seriously reading either the beginning or the latter part of the Revelation. These, it is evident, we cannot consider too much; but the intermediate parts I did not study at all for many years; as utterly despairing of understanding them, after the fruitless attempts of so many wise and good men: and perhaps I should have lived and died in this sentiment, had I not seen the works of the great Bengelius. But these revived my hopes of understanding even the prophecies of this book; at least many of them in some good degree: for perhaps some will not be opened but in eternity. Let us, however, bless God for the measure of light we may enjoy, and improve it to his glory. The following notes are mostly those of that excellent man; a few of which are taken from his Gnornon Novi Testamenti, but far more from his Ekklarte Offenbarung, which is a full and regular comment on the Revelation. Every part of this I do not undertake to defend. But none should condemn him without reading his proofs at large.”8 As I say, CKB was in good company in being somewhat puzzled by Revelation and due to his practical bent, not keen to deal with apocalyptic texts he found obscure.
A further feature of Kingsley’s preaching is his striving to be as crystal clear and plain in his speech as humanly possible, so that as many people as possible will catch his meaning. This, I would surmise, he got from reading a lot of John Wesley who was constantly talking about a “plain account” of this or that, or “plain speech” as opposed to the sometimes verbose and tedious speech used by Anglican preachers of the eighteenth century to show off their learning. Clearly, Kingsley doesn’t like preaching that reflects a person overcome with the exuberance of his own verbosity, too in love with his own words and the sound of his own voice. He also frequently mentions his own dislike of over-emoting not merely in the pulpit, but in the Christian life, stressing “faith seeking understanding” (Anselm) rather than pursuing certain sorts of peak religious experiences. In fact, at one juncture in these sermons, he candidly admits that emotive religious exuberance frightened him a bit,9 and here again he sounds like Wesley who finds it necessary to parse out “good enthusiasm” for the faith from mere sentimentality and emoting. Wesley it will be remembered talked about religious zeal tempered by “the spirit of a sound mind.”
Perhaps one revealing anecdote will be worth repeating. I was there on the occasion of J. D. G. Dunn giving the Lightfoot lecture at Durham, and as it happened, the lecture was more on the manifestation of spiritual gifts in modernity (speaking in tongues, prophecy), which Professor Dunn did not dismiss, than on what the biblical text had to say on the matter. Walking away from the lecture with Professors Cranfield and Barrett I remember hearing them agreeing that they were a bit surprised that the lecture did not focus so much on the interpretation of the ancient use of such gifts (as manifested in 1 Corinthians 14 and elsewhere), and they found the endorsement of such gifts in modernity a bit worrying.
The tenor of these sermons reflects the character of the man, and clearly enough despite all his accomplishments, CKB was a humble person all too aware of his own limitations. This comes across over and over again in these sermons. Partly this is because he is imitating the example of Christ who humbled himself and served all, but partly it is just a reflection of who Kingsley was. Repeatedly he will refer to himself as “just a plain preacher” and much less frequently as a historian, and just occasionally as a “professional theologian.” This is how he sees himself, and I suspect that had he lived in the eighteenth century the Wesleys would have admired and enlisted him to do the very things he did do for seven decades in the Methodist circuits in the UK.
Though these sermons are clear, and in some ways plain, they are also by turns eloquent and it is interesting to see what literary sources he likes to quote, besides the numerous partial quotations of favorite hymns. There are numerous uses of Shakespeare quotes, not surprisingly, and perhaps second most is the use of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. There are quotations from novels he enjoyed reading, and often from the Times or the Guardian when the news was germane to the sermon. As for poetry, sometimes we get Kipling, but more often we get that World War I chaplain Studdert-Kennedy. Perhaps most effective are the personal anecdotes where his humor comes through, and the examples from the myriad of people he met and experiences he had in preaching all over the place and spending so much time in Methodist Chapels. But while the vast majority of these sermons were written for presentation in such chapels, I have also included a goodly number of his addresses in college chapels, or to whole universities, or even to public schools of various sort. Clearly, he was in demand as a speaker in all sorts of venues.
I will simply add this personal word of testimony. I’ve listened to preachers thousands of times over the course of my more than six decades of life, mostly to Methodist preachers, as I was a cradle Methodist, and someday I will be a grave one, and honestly I have never found or heard a better example and combination of biblical, Protestant (particularly Wesleyan), practical preaching than can be found in these sermons. I hope they will be as illuminating and enriching for you as they have been for me.
BW3—Christmas 2016
1. He wrote this in 1973.
2. This quotation is found in the homage on the Methodist Church in Britain webpage. See http://www.methodist.org.uk/news-and-events/news-archive-2011/remembering-c-k-barrett.
3. Editor’s Note: The 100 sermons in the first volume were preached 1732 times. That makes just a few less than 4,000 individual preaching engagements between these two volumes, and these are not all the sermons in these notebooks.
4. See https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/04/ck-barrett-obituary
5. Editor’s Note: For the most part. In his sermon on the proverb, “acknowledge God in all your ways . . .” He does insist to his Christian audience that for “God,” they should read “Christ,” even though the author of that proverb was surely thinking of Yahweh.
6. Editor’s Note: See for example the sermon on Hebrews 12.18–24.
7. Editor’s Note: This is especially interesting since the obituary in the Guardian mentions that Kingsley was raised in a “Primitive (Calvinistic) Methodist” home. CKB did however have a strong affinity for Barth, as is clear from his Romans commentary where he lauds Barth’s earlier Romerbrief as a great work.
8. Editor’s Note: The Jackson edition of Wesley’s works is in the public domain and available in various places online, including here—http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/john-wesleys-notes-on-the-bible/. Bengelius, is Jacob Bengel. I have added the emphasis to Wesley’s last sentence.
9. Editor’s Note: See the candid admission in the sermon on Romans 10 below where he says——“Probably
