There is a real danger in our failure to remember that Easter follows Good Friday and in making the crucifix our symbol. Gazing at the cross alone and too long tends to kindle a queer inferiority complex in our minds that often leads to shrinking from the powers that are arrayed against us as against him, and that breeds a cowardice in which we lose heart and fling away our weapons. Bring in the upper thought that he conquered in death and we gain courage and become sure of the triumph of the good and true.
In some cases, and with some types of piety, continued meditation on the cross has led only to the luxury of grief, to vapid, lachrymose sentimentalism. By all means remember that he died for you and that will bring you to your knees in grief and gratitude. Remember that he rose again and is abroad in the world, then you will get up from your knees and follow his footsteps as he goes forth to seek and save. You will keep coming back to the cross for inspiration, but you will not “seek the living among the dead.”
In his following sermon, Fred adds that the phrase “Christ and him crucified” should not be seen as a limitation but rather a concentration for good preaching, but he emphasizes that the word Christ means “the risen Christ.” The death and resurrection must both be emphasized, but since life rather than death has the last word in the gospel, perhaps the resurrection should have preeminence.
As with Kingsley’s sermons there are various literary allusions in Fred’s sermons (e.g., a reference to Milton’s “Samson Agonistes,” and to Tennyson’s “Sir Galahad” in the “Samson” sermon), but what we seldom find is allusions or quotes from twentieth-century theologians or biblical scholars (there is a reference to George Adam Smith or F. J. Foakes-Jackson and a few others occasionally), or for that matter early Reformers such as Luther, both of which things occur quite regularly in Kingsley’s sermons.2 Fred does not go down that road.
Two other things stand out. Fred references many nineteenth-century hymns, often revival hymns, and somewhat less frequently refers to the hymns of Charles Wesley or Isaac Watts, unlike his son. And then there is this surprise—he overwhelmingly chooses lines from hymns by nineteenth-century female hymn writers such as Fanny Crosby or Elizabeth Clephane, and many others. Indeed, I can find only two references to any hymns written in the twentieth century, even though Fred ministered into the middle of the twentieth century. He stuck to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century hymns that populated the Methodist and Revivalist hymnbooks. Further, his sermons often read more like revival sermons “preaching for a verdict” in a hurry to get to the application and get the audience to change their lives, or increase their devotion, or fully live out the faith. That is to say, Fred’s sermons have more of a regular ethical focus or thrust, whereas the sermons of Kingsley are often more theological and even philosophical in character.
For example, Fred Barrett’s preaching of the Old Testament mostly focused on its ethical content, and indeed, he does more justice to the ethics of the Old Testament than his son, not only because he focused more on it, but also because he plumbed its depths to a greater degree. For example, consider these remarks about some of the Mosaic Law in Exodus:
Here is a pretty problem in ethics for you. Is a man morally responsible, not only for what he does, but for what results from his action? Must he be held accountable for consequences he did not intend resulting from his conduct? In my judgment, there are consequences of our actions, or of our failure to act, at a given moment which are altogether unexpected; by no knowledge accessible to us could we foresee them. For these consequences, it seems to me, we are not guilty. But there are cases in which we might have known that certain results would follow our action or our neglect. In such cases, we are not guiltless though there was no ill intent in our minds. We might have known that evil would follow a certain course of conduct and we ought to have found out. The text [Exod 22:6, about a fire which damages a neighbor’s property] presents the case of a man who did not intend to cause damage. The law held him guilty because he was careless of consequences and did not take necessary precautions.
These sermons were preached from 1922 to 1952, and interestingly one of them was preached at both the first and the last of these dates. Fred, however, dates his ministry from 1906 according to the sermon “The Full-Orbed Gospel.” This means that the sermons in this volume do not reflect his earliest efforts but come from during the time he was already an experienced pastor and evangelist. Like his son, Fred Barrett recycled his sermons, and some he preached as many as thirty times. But there is no evidence he preached as many times over as long a period as Kingsley. And it is to be noted that while Kingsley seems to have been often the especially chosen preacher for the high holy days in the calendar (and so there are many more Christmas and Easter and Watchnight and Pentecost sermons from him than from his father), one is hard pressed to find a lot of “high holy day” sermons from the pen of Fred Barrett, though there are some. I attribute this to Fred being a parish minister primarily throughout his ministry, while Kingsley was often a special days preacher, as well as a regular circuit preacher during his academic tenure between 1945 and the early 1980s.
Two tendencies also characterize the preaching of both father and son. Neither did expository preaching, going verse by verse through a text. Both would take a key idea, or a memorable phrase or thought and milk it for all it was worth. And both had a penchant for finishing a sermon with a line or lines from a favorite hymn. They knew their Methodist audiences would know the source of most of those quotes or allusions. It is, however, right to ask the question how many of these sermons Kingsley actually heard, since the bulk of them seem to have been preached in the 1930s and ’40s, when he also was on the Methodist circuit, and not sitting in a congregation listening to his father. As for the sermons from the ’20s, he likely heard many of those before he went off to school at Shebbear. In any case, Fred Barrett was a remarkable preacher, and I trust you will find his sermons interesting, challenging, and edifying and not infrequently eloquent and even poetical.
1. It is interesting that he did not share the reluctance of his son to deal with either the apocalyptic in the book of Revelation, or purple passages like Isaiah 53.
2. Luther is cited once in these sermons, and none of the old catechisms are cited, unlike in some of his son’s sermons.
INTRODUCTION
By Penelope Barrett Hyslop
My grandfather, Fred Barrett, spent the last couple of years or so living with us in Durham. As I was only twelve when he died, my personal memories of his life and preaching in particular are limited. I remember him as a very jolly grandpa and I know my mother much appreciated his skill in arranging party games for children’s parties. She was able to concentrate on the catering of party food while Grandpa kept us all thoroughly amused. I also remember that he never seemed as quiet as he perhaps should have been when he was a member of a congregation. We could always hear him rattling the change in his pocket during the sermons! I do also have some memories of him in the pulpit. He never wore a dog collar but always had a white tie. In retrospect, it is clear that he had a real evangelical zeal and a good connection with his congregation.
Luckily, in order to be able to give a fuller picture of my grandfather I have found some pages that he wrote about his life. He was born in 1880 in Leeds, the second child of five. His father was a fellmonger (a dealer in hides and skins) and he praises his parents for the fun that he remembered from his childhood. He says his parents made sure that they were kept tidy and fed and brought up to be respectable and honest.
My grandfather only attended one school and left school at the age of thirteen. He recalls how he used to recite at school concerts and states how this helped him later because he was used to facing an audience and also trained his memory. My father did exactly the same thing while he was at Shebbear (a Bible Christian Methodist boarding school.) My father took parts