Leslie Weatherhead, Great Protestant Preacher
– Jesus in the Wilderness speaking to the tempter
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From The Autobiography of Jesus: What He Said About Himself, by Leslie Dixon Weatherhead*:
“Man (sic) feeds and satisfies and nourishes not on bread alone, but on other expressions of God’s meanings. You see, a ‘word’ is an expression of meaning. Mountains express God’s meaning. So do lilies and so do birds, so does beautiful music, so does kindness, and so does love. They are all words of God because they all express his meaning. There is no truer sentence in the world than this: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’
“So quite simply we come to the Word made flesh. In the sense in which I have been using the word ‘eat,’ this Man has given us his flesh to eat. It his his human nature that means so much to us. His life in the flesh reveals a supreme meaning of God. It is a Word translated into flesh, and because we must take it into ourselves, just as we feed on music, it is indeed the Bread of Life which came down from heaven. We must ‘eat’ him. . . .
“For just as the body needs food for its strength and the mind needs food for its buoyancy, so the soul needs food, and the food of the soul is God.”
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*FROM WIKI:
Leslie Dixon Weatherhead (1893-1976) was an English Christian theologian in the liberal Protestant tradition. Renowned as one of Britain’s finest preachers in his day, Weatherhead was noted for his preaching ministry at City Temple in London and for his books, including The Will of God, The Christian Agnostic and Psychology, Religion, and Healing.
Weatherhead trained for the Methodist Ministry at Richmond Theological College, in south-west London. The first world war cut short his training, and he became Methodist Minister at Farnham, Surrey, in September 1915. After serving in India, Manchester, and Leeds, Weatherhead was called, as a Methodist Minister, to be Minister of the City Temple, a Congregational Church on Holborn Viaduct in London. He served there from 1936 until his retirement in 1960. . . .
His book This is the Victory was first printed in 1940 (preface dated November 1940) and reprinted in March 1942. In the space of time between these two editions, the City Temple was “gutted by fire from incendiary bombs dropped from enemy aeroplanes”. He was able to continue his ministry thanks to the nearby St Sepulchre church. After the war, Weatherhead raised the funds to rebuild the City Temple, largely from John D. Rockefeller. The City Temple stands to this day and is a congregation of the United Reformed Church.
His son A. Kingsley Weatherhead, a professor of English, wrote Leslie Weatherhead: A Personal Portrait. At least three other biographies of Leslie Weatherhead have appeared since his death, most recently in 1999 Doctor of Souls: Leslie Dixon Weatherhead by John C. Travell
