Peter Marshall • Former United States Senate Chaplain
Peter Marshall originally preached both “WERE YOU
THERE?” and “COMPROMISE IN EGYPT” from the pulpit
of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washing-
ton, D. C. However, the recordings reproduced here were
made in Detroit, Michigan, during Lenten Services con-
ducted there by Dr. Marshall during the week of March 5-10,
1944. Those who recorded the sermons would have been
shocked had they known how soon the living voice would
be stilled. Nor could they have guessed the crucial part those
same recordings would eventually play in taking Peter
Marshall’s message around the globe.
Toward the beginning of 1954, 20th Century Fox was casting
the leads for the motion picture based on Peter Marshall’s
life. The Welshman, Richard Todd, was their first choice for
the male lead. But correspondence and trans-Atlantic tele-
phone calls revealed that Mr. Todd was not interested in
the role.
Then Samuel G. Engel, the producer, remembered that it had
been the hearing of some tapes of Dr. Marshall’s preaching
which had inspired him to want to dramatize this man’s
story for the screen. He reasoned that the impact of the
Scottish preacher’s personality through his voice might
well have as telling an effect on Dick Todd. A tape was
therefore promptly air-mailed to Mr. Todd in London where
he was completing work on a film. The tape sent was “Were
You There?”
Months later Richard Todd told me what happened . . .
without much enthusiasm he agreed to listen to the sermon
at the end of a day’s shooting. The setting was the usual
warehouse-studio atmosphere—steel beams overhead, cam-
eras on cranes, stage sets piled in corners. Out of curiosity,
a few cameramen, technicians, wardrobe mistresses, and
make-up people gathered round. Peter Marshall had proba-
bly never preached to as strange a congregation in so
unlikely a setting.
The voice with near-perfect diction and the trace of a Scot-
tish burr began with none of the usual introductory sermonic
material. Most of those listening were old professionals in
the world of the theatre, a little hardened to emotional con-
tent.
“Yet”, Mr. Todd told me later, “all of us stood there, soon
caught up in the raw drama of the most momentous public
execution in history. The last sentence had not died away
before I knew that I wanted the role of Peter Marshall,
wanted it very much. It challenged me.”
The rest is motion picture history. While the film was being
made, no one in the industry would have predicted that
“A Man Called Peter” would be Fox’s most successful box
office venture for 1955 both in the United States and abroad.
Peter Marshall’s own ideals for the art of
preaching are the best analysis of his own
pulpit work. “Gentlemen”, he once advised
the ministerial students of the Gettysburg
Theological Seminary, “logic will never
prove the spiritual.
The problem of the poet
the playwright
the artist
the prophet
and the preacher has always been
to make people see.
Somehow we must rekindle the im-
aginations of our people.
Pictorial preaching is a piece of life . . .
a film from the world’s big
drama . . .
a newsreel from the Scrip-
tures ...”
It is interesting that in the same lecture
Dr. Marshall then illustrated such a Scrip-
tural “newsreel” with the word picture of
Moses before Pharoah taken from “Com-
promise In Egypt.”
But then he went on to say:
“The gospel we have to preach is emo-
tion at its highest.
That is the message our people are hungry
for in their deepest need.
For what could be more emotional than
the idea of a suffering God?
How could we speak of the cross without
emotion?
Calvary is the story of a man who took
things terribly to heart. ..
It is the privilege and penalty of the
preacher that he must take the gospel
terribly to heart.
He must take terribly to heart the things
that are happening to our world,
and in the lives of his people.
If, when you write your sermons, yoii
can see the gleaming knuckles of
a clenched fist...
the lip that is bitten to keep
back tears ...
the troubled heart, suffering
because it cannot forgive . . .
the spirit with no joy because
it has no love.
If you can see the big tears running
down a mother’s face—
If you can see these things—preach to them,
preach for them,
and get down deep.
But whatever you preach, preach only
what you believe, and gentlemen,
preach it as if you believed it.
Preach to reach the hearts of your
people.
Preach to reach their wills, the spring
of all their action.
Above all, preach to win men and
women to the way of life Christ
taught...”
In “WERE YOU THERE?” and “COM-
PROMISE IN EGYPT” we can hear this
kind of preaching at Peter Marshall’s best.
—Catherine Marshall