His exquisite little book of sermons entitled He Is Able begins with a gem simply entitled “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” His message when he was president of the Methodist Conference—on “Offering Christ to the People”—left his hearers breathless but buoyant. In my nominations for the “Fifteen Most Significant Sermons in Church History” I have included his powerful “This Britain: What Would a Revival Do for Britain,” which made front-page headlines in large type at an especially vexing time for the nation. Sangster was unquestionably part of the royalty of the pulpit in the last century; and though long silenced, we would profit by reading him.

Reflectiveness on the preaching craft

Not all gifted preachers are self-conscious about their craft. They just do it! But Sangster was an avid student of the art and gave us two sterling volumes that were widely circulated.

In his The Craft of Sermon Construction, Sangster analyzes why preaching and preachers were moving into the shadows of the culture. Anchored strongly in Scriptural authority, he takes after weak theology and stoutly defends evangelistic preaching. He is most uneasy with topical and life-situation preaching; he champions the teaching sermon and fidelity to the text. He warns against “the fatal plague of saying something new” and warns against the “what the text really means” approach as a discouragement to reading the Scripture. His strictures on “stealing other people’s sermons” and the dangers of irony are much needed in our time. His attention to the emotional outline of the sermon is most refreshing. There was little output on homiletics in Britain in the last century; but this is abiding, quality stuff and merited publication.

The companion volume, although now supplanted by the work of Bryan Chappell in our time, was titled The Craft of Sermon Illustration. He was a master at illustration, a talent we would all seek (although a few have been utterly indifferent to it). In 1950 he was already seeing the reduced value of biblical illustration because of mounting biblical illiteracy. His work on sources and variety of illustration and the dangerous illustration are most helpful, and his practical suggestions on gleaning illustrations from our reading are trenchant and relevant. Who of us couldn’t improve here?

Incisiveness as a theologian

Adding luster to the constellation of his giftedness was his theological perspicacity. While in the bomb shelters, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation for London University on The Path to Perfection: An Examination and Restatement of John Wesley’s Doctrine of Christian Perfection. He excavates the 30 biblical passages which gave shape to Wesley’s doctrine of “Perfect Love” (showing that Wesley himself never claimed to have attained it). He honestly faces the counter-arguments that Warfield detonated in his Perfectionism.

He is troubled that the average Christian’s experience is so far below normal and is convincing to the point that Christ would not leave us wallowing in sin. “He breaks the power of cancelled sin!” Sensitive to some inconsistencies in Wesley, he comes close to the “moment by moment life,” which many of us have found congenial in the Keswick message. He adroitly interacts with both philosophy and psychology in his rejection of eradication. He builds a wise and balanced theology of experience out of careful handling of Scripture and “sound doctrine.” “Our permanent address is ‘in Christ,’” he demonstrates.

Bottom line: Sangster was a remarkably versatile servant of Christ for his times and may well be, more than we realize, something of a man for our times as well. Ad Gloriam Dei.