25-The Minister's Study

CHAPTER XXV THE MINISTER’S STUDY

EXCEPT in comparatively rare instances the minister’s study is a combination of library, office, and place of prayer.

Here he retires to enrich his mind, to do the “paper work” necessary in administering the church organization, and to worship. Ideally, the office work should be cared for elsewhere in order that the hours of study and devotion may be protected from interruption. When this is not possible, the working day must be divided so that each phase of his task may receive his whole attention in its own time. i. THE MINISTER AS STUDENT. The growing minister must be an earnest student throughout his whole life. Unceasing intellectual effort will be required to master the truth which he is to teach, and to acquire the skill to express it effectively. This is not a denial of the fact that God may communicate his wisdom immediately to men. It is only asserting that his revelation is more likely to come to the man who is honestly using his mind to discover it than to the intellectual loafer who regards study as superfluous. The race has been strangely obsessed with the idea that the movements of the Holy Spirit are erratic and capricious, despising the ordinary instruments of knowledge and employing always unique and mysterious methods. This view identifies God with the irregular and the extraordinary, but not with the usual and the commonplace. As a matter of fact, the “natural” cannot be explained without him any more than the “miraculous/’ and there is much to suggest that he will not use a miracle if a sufficiently perfect natural instrument is at hand by which to communicate his will It is sometimes asked, “Why does God speak through certain individuals and not through others?” The probable 257 358 THE PASTORAL OFFICE answer is, “The primary reason why more of the Word of God has come to us through Isaiah and Paul than through other men is that the minds of Isaiah and Paul were better fitted to receive these sublime truths than the minds of other men. This fitness may have been due in part to providential causes, but it must have been largely explained by the thoroughness with which they had prepared themselves for such mediumship.” 1 The pearl of great price in the parable was not discovered by a shiftless vagabond who hugged a comfortable grate-fire, but by a traveling jeweler, restless, eager, constantly searching for precious stones. The buried treasure was not uncovered by a man who never worked the field, but by the conscientious tenant who held himself to the prosaic business of plowing that soil year after year until at last he had his reward. In similar fashion the priceless pearl, the hidden treasure of divine inspiration, is discovered, not by the man who neglects the drudgery of study, but by him who regularly and continuously applies himself to the hardest of intellectual labor. By mastering the truth which others have proclaimed about God, he is making his own mind and heart fit instruments for detecting the divine will. The diligence with which the great preachers of the past gave themselves to hard study is instructive. Jonathan Edwards said, “My method of study, from my first beginning the work of the ministry, has been very much by writing; applying myself in this way to improve every important hint... when anything in reading, meditation, or conversation has been suggested to my mind that seemed to promise light on any weighty point; thus penning what appeared to me my best thoughts on innumerable subjects for my own benefit.” Samuel Hopkins studied fourteen hours a day, generally rising at four in the morning, occasionally as late as five in the winter. Doctor Chalmers, in the most active portion of his life, secured five hours *Gladden, op. cit f p. 87! THE MINISTER’S STUDY 259 daily for study. F. W. Robertson studied German by making written translations of the best German authors. He said, “I read hard, or not at all never skimming, never turning aside to many inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution.” His biographer says of him: “It was his habit, when dressing in the morning, to commit to memory daily a certain number of verses of the New Testament. In this way, before leaving the university, he had gone twice over the English version, and once and a half through the Greek.

... He said, long afterward, to a friend, that, owing to this practice, no sooner was any Christian doctrine or duty mentioned in conversation, or suggested to him by what he was writing, than all the passages bearing on the point seemed to array themselves in order before him.” His idea of study was to have some plan, even if a poor one, which prevented discursiveness in his own words, “the steady habit of looking forward to a distant end, unalterably working on until he had attained it the habit, in fact, of never beginning anything which is not to be finished.” 3 But even if the message could be received directly through prayer and faith without mental toil, the problem of expressing it clearly would remain. And the significance which this truth has for others will be determined very largely “by the dimensions and furniture of the mind through which it is communicated.” A mind well equipped with a good vocabulary of words, abundantly stored with illustrative material gathered from wide reading, and skillful at sifting out the irrelevant and nonessential, will be able to pass on this truth to others as one cannot do which is furnished with nothing but good intentions. No one has put this matter more effectively than Gladden. “Language is the instrument by which the greater part of the minister’s work is done. If he has a message to deliver, it will be con *See J. M. Hoppin, Pastoral Theology, pp. 164-169. Reprinted by permission of Funk and Wagnalls Company.

260 THE PASTORAL OFFICE veyed in the forms of human speech. The Word of God must reach the minds of men through the language of men.

All revelation, all inspiration, is conditioned by this fact.

There can be no more revelation than there is language to convey... It goes without saying that the better a man understands the instrument, the more familiar he is with its structure and its possibilities, the more perfectly he can convey his own conceptions to the minds of other men... The laws which govern the inspiration of the prophet must be in many respects similar to those which govern the inspiration of the artist. The artist must become familiar with the forms by which beauty, the beauty of which his art is the vehicle, finds its best expression. Long and painful courses of discipline are needful in order that he may gain the power of utterance... We have been told that poets are born, not made; but if this implies that all their powers are the gift of nature, and that none of them is due to training, it is far from the truth. The poet, for his part, was first compelled to learn the language in which he writes; a great deal of patient training was expended on him by his mother, and his nurse, and all the household, before he was able to articulate the simplest words of our common speech.

Later he was led by many tutors through the mysteries of the alphabet and spelling-book and grammar; there is no royal road even for poets through these mysteries; the knowledge must be gained by toil. After the rudiments of the language have been mastered, there is a great deal more for him to learn of the idioms and forms by means of which the spirit of beauty finds expression in language. And after the technique of his art, so to speak, has thus beenacquired, if he is to be an interpreter of nature and life and this, as we are taught, is the poet’s function there will be room for long years of patient study of nature and of life before he will be able to interpret them to any clear purpose... Of every kind of art this principle holds true. The musician must prepare himself by the same kind of discipline. There is a certain manual facility which can be THE MINISTER’S STUDY 261 gained only by the most patient toil..., The principle is not different in the case of the minister, even when we are thinking of his prophetic function. Prophecy is the divine word spoken by the human voice, and the voice must be trained for speaking. Inspiration is not caprice; it must follow the law which conditions all divine intervention in behalf of men,... The grace of God is not given to relieve us from effort or to discharge us from responsibility, but to supplement our powers and to stimulate our activity.’^ In mastering language it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of writing. One who always speaks extemporaneously, never undertaking the drudgery of painstaking literary composition, will not make language a perfect instrument for expressing thought. Rather he will incline to wordiness which may conceal thought when it is not a substitute for it. The church suffers greatly from this “vice of extemporaneity.” Words are merely symbols of ideas. Many men create the impression when they speak that there is some especial virtue in using as many symbols as possible. But if one sign by the roadside points the way clearly, why should the landscape be cluttered up with ten others? The first characteristic of good literary style is clearness, and in saying a thing clearly one will use the fewest possible words, selecting them with the utmost care so that each will convey the precise shade of meaning which the speaker intended. The extemporizer in public address does not have time to choose his words with discrimination. The demand for continuous movement forbids pausing to search for just the term he wishes. One who halts thus wearies an audience quickly. He must take the word nearest at hand, whether it is the right one or not, and unless he has expressed previously that thought in writing, searching the dictionary through for better terms than those which first offered their services, the right one will seldom ’Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons. Gladden, op. cit. f pp. 86-89. Italics are the atithor’s.

262 THE PASTORAL OFFICE be available. The one within reach will say more, or less, than he wished to say, and it will be necessary to seize another, and another, to soften or sharpen the meaning of the first; whereas if he had written carefully in the study when he had time to wait until the word he needed came to mind, that very word would have been found lying on the surface of his mind when he called for it in extemporaneous address. And this applies to figures of speech and illustrations as certainly as to words. The “vivid metaphors,” “the felicitous phrase,” “the vital analogy” are seldom the product of sudden inspiration but, rather, the handiwork of the patient craftsman who wrought them out carefully on paper before he used them in public speech.

Thus the relation between writing and concise, impressive public utterance is that of cause and effect. There is no easier way to enrich one’s speech. The minister should write completely at least one sermon each week for the first ten years of his ministerial life. He need not, he should not often, take the manuscript into the pulpit. The writing, nevertheless, will affect profoundly his expression. As aids in enlarging his vocabulary he should read the best literature, noting carefully the manner in which others declare themselves. New words, as well as new ideas, should attract him, and he should keep a good dictionary at hand to define accurately each unfamiliar term. To make them his own, he should learn to use these new words accurately as rapidly as he acquires them. They will seem awkward at first, but after two or three trials they become a part of his own mental equipment so that he employs them almost unconsciously. A new word a day added thus to one’s vocabulary will enhance greatly his power of speech in a single year. The study of synonyms is important too in the enrichment of utterance. Ideas must be repeated frequently, but they should be clothed in new words each time they appear, to avoid a sense of monotony. The larger dictionaries give the equivalent terms of every important word. A good thesaurus or book of synonyms and antonyms THE MINISTER’S STUDY 263 should be found on every pastor’s study table, and show evidence of frequent consultation. The minister’s reading should be determined by the nature of his work. He is preeminently a teacher of the Christian religion and his chief studies should ever have to do with his professional interests. In a general way it may be said that he will always be digging into the subjects to which he was introduced by the theological school or the Conference course of study. Four or five hours of every working day should be spent in this kind of toil. From four to six hours will yet remain which can be devoted to correspondence, administration, and pastoral visiting. This implies that he should have access to books, many of which must be purchased. In this way he will gradually assemble a professional library. The limited financial resources of most pastors make it imperative that books should be selected with the greatest care. Few can afford to spend more than two hundred dollars a year on their libraries. Many are unable to appropriate more than seventy-five dollars annually for this item. But none can afford to spend less. If need be, the minister may do without the clothes he might wish, and reduce his diet to the simplest articles of food, but he must buy nourishment for his mind whatever physical deprivation is suffered. The quality of a private library is not necessarily determined by its size. Some ministers’ shelves are heavily loaded with worthless volumes which cost much money. Others purchase comparatively few books, but always of the finest type. A small library of choice books which can be studied profitably again and again is much better than a larger collection of inferior volumes which may be read swiftly and then forgotten. Generally speaking, the man of limited income should not purchase sets of theological books.

While there are notable exceptions (for example, religious encyclopedias), these are made to sell rather than to inform the mind. The minister does well to buy single volumes, which should be distributed among all the major depart 264 THE PASTORAL OFFICE ments of theological knowledge (i) Biblical Interpretation, (2) Christian Doctrine and Philosophy of Religion, (3) Church History, (4) Religious Education, (5) Missions, (6) Social Ethics, and (7) Practical Theology. It is unsafe in one’s early ministry to buy new books without advice. Seek the judgment of the best-informed men in the Conference, and ask any theological teacher in the church to recommend authors and titles. Do not buy a book that may be exhausted at a single reading.

Since a private library is always an expression of individual tastes, it is impossible for one to prescribe for another the contents of his reading shelves. A studious elderly minister will see in his library the record of his varying intellectual interests across a period of years. At one time he was fascinated by philosophy and filled a shelf with treatises on that subject At another he was enthusiastic over the expansion of the church and assembled twenty-five or thirty volumes of church history and religious biography. At still another he was absorbed in varying problems of biblical interpretation the prophets, the life and teachings of Jesus, the parables, the miracles, or the life of Saint Paul and his volumes on those subjects will remind him of that period. Thus one’s library becomes a kind of autobiography of the intellect. These special interests, however, should all rest on a broad foundation of general knowledge, and it is in order to make certain suggestions about fundamental volumes which should be in every minister’s library, without in the least abridging the right of the individual to his own special enthusiasms.

Because he is primarily 3, teacher of the Bible this book must be the object of his continuous study. He will brood over it, first, to enrich his own life, and, second, for its message concerning the spirit, confident that this record of God’s dealing with the race in other years will be supremely instructive to men to-day as they seek a way to life and peace. But the Bible does not “wear its heart pn its sleeve,”

It is not easy to understand. What we get from it will de THE MINISTER’S STUDY 265 pend largely on what we bring to it in the way of principles of interpretation. The first books, then, to be purchased by the young minister as a nucleus for the biblical section of his library should be a few volumes which treat in a simple and clear way the subjects of biblical revelation, inspiration, and authority. J. Paterson Smyth’s How God Inspired the Bible, and The Making of the Bible; McConnelFs Religious Certainty and Understanding the Scriptures; William Newton Clarke’s Sixty Years With the Bible; Eiselen’s Christian View of the Old Testament; Dods’ The Bible Its Origin and Nature; A. S. Peake’s The Nature of Scripture; James Orr’s Revelation and Inspiration these suggest the type of work we have in mind. Later, technical treatises may be added, but these more elementary volumes will suffice in the beginning. Moreover, there can be no proper understanding of biblical literature without a knowledge of the religious, political, and social background of every book; and the next most important volumes in this section will be one or two good “Introductions” such as Driver’s or MacFayden’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, and Moflfatt’s or Peake’s Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, together with Hastings’ Bible Dictionary (five large volumes) and Charles Foster Kent’s Historical Bible (six small volumes). After these general reference works have been installed one may purchase “commentaries” and “expositions” of particular parts of the Bible. At last one may secure a good onevolume commentary on the whole Bible (Peake’s or Dummelow’s), and there are excellent interpretive translations of the New Testament which have more value than some commentaries, for example, Moflfatt’s and Weymouth’s. For the most part, however, commentaries come in great sets, a volume, in some instances two, devoted to each book in the Scriptures. Among the more distinguished of these in recent years are the “Century,” “Cambridge,” and the “Expositor’s” Bibles; and the “Westminster” and “International Critical” commentaries. They are very expen 266 THE PASTORAL OFFICE sive, and the several volumes in any set are of unequal worth. On the whole, it is generally better to select single volumes from all these sets as one needs them than to make a large investment in books, some of which one may not use for years. As suggested above, any minister should feel at liberty to seek the advice of any theological professor in the church, by correspondence if not by personal interview, in selecting the worth-while books. In addition to the commentaries there are numberless individual studies on special themes which are rich in expository material.

It is well to follow the same method in building intelligently the remaining departments of one’s library one or more comprehensive works which outline the whole field, supplemented by special volumes on particular aspects or periods of the general subject. The basis of the doctrinal section should be two or three standard treatises on Christian Theology such as Sheldon’s System of Christian Doctrine, Clarke’s Outline of Christian Theology and W. A.

Brown’s Christian Theology in Outline, together with a few reliable volumes on the philosophical ground of faith, for example, Strickland’s Foundations of Christian Belief, or Foundations, by Seven Oxford Men. A knowledge of the manner in which Christian teaching has developed throughout the history of the church is important to a proper understanding of that teaching, and every minister should possess an excellent work on the history of doctrine, such as Fisher’s or Sheldon’s.

Throughout one’s whole ministry he will add to this section single volumes on special doctrines, having respect, first, for the great beliefs that all bodies of Christians hold in common, and afterward for the doctrines of religious experience in which Methodists have been especially interested. The following titles will illustrate what we have in mind: Knudson’s Religious Teaching of the Old Testament; Sheldon’s or Stevens’ New Testament Theology; Streeter and others, Immortality, Prayer, and The Spirit; Bowne, The Divine Immanence, Studies in Christianity; Jefferson, THE MINISTER’S STUDY 267

Things Fundamental; Mackintosh, The Person and Work of Jesus; McConnell, Essentials of Methodism, and Diviner Immanence. In the department of church history, the introductory work should sketch in outline the whole story of the expansion of Christianity. This is done well in a single volume by Williston Walker. If a work of several volumes is desired, buy Sheldon’s History of the Christian Church.

Later add volumes on particular periods, and biographies of great churchmen in all periods. After these a volume on the Protestant denominations and a good history of Methodism and the Methodist Episcopal Church would complete the section. The fundamental volumes in the department of religious education will deal with the psychology of religious experience among children and adults. Next should come volumes on principles, ideals, and methods of teaching religion. And finally there should be several volumes on the organization and administration of church schools. The reader is referred to the books recommended for study at the close of the chapter on religious education (XV). In developing the section on Missions, there should be, first, two or three volumes on the great ethnic faiths of the non-Christian world such as Soper’s Religions of Mankind, or Hopkins’, Menzies’, or G. F. Moore’s History of Religions. After these, historical volumes treating of particular mission fields, and biographies of great missionary leaders should be added, together with a number of texts expounding missionary ideals for the mission fields, and methods of missionary education that may be adopted in the local church. The department of Social Ethics will be in many ways the most important, yet the most difficult to develop. The basis should be a few reliable volumes on social organization, interpreting the mutual relations of the individual and society, and the significance of economics for both; next, there should be several volumes setting forth the principles 268 THE PASTORAL OFFICE and methods of the more significant social movements, such as socialism, trade-unionism, syndicalism; and lastly, there should be at least a half dozen of the great statements of the ethical ideal of Jesus for social relationships. The reader is referred to the books recommended for further study at the conclusion of Chapter XVII. The section on Practical Theology should contain a great variety of books having to do with the technique of church work. Some of the great expositions of the art of preaching made annually for a long period by the Yale lecturers and the great teachers of homiletics should be secured. At least one new volume of this sort should be read earnestly each year to keep one’s ideals untarnished. There should be a good collection of the best sermons by preachers living and dead, not for the sake of the material they contain but for the standard they set in the matter of literary form; also a few works on hymnology, several expositions of the ideals and methods of public worship, devotional volumes for the spiritual enrichment of the preacher’s own life, and many volumes on church methods and administration.

(See books recommended in Sections I and II.) The morning hours of each day should be dedicated sacredly to devotions and professional study. There will be another hour or two, generally in the evening, besides vacation periods, which may be utilized in reading general literature and periodicals. Here one may follow his own taste. History, biography, science, essays, fiction, poetry, all have peculiar values for the preacher, and in the course of a year he should read them all. History, biography, and science, being descriptions of life, will supply an abundance of the best illustrative material. Essays will suggest themes for sermons. Fiction and poetry will be recreative and at the same time cultivate the power of imagination without which the minister cannot attain to excellence in anything.

Upon his reading table should be found the official weekly of his denomination, a digest of current events and news, religious periodicals like The Christian Century, the Meth THE MINISTER’S STUDY 269 odist Review, and The Journal of Religion, together with at least one great magazine of general literature such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Yale Review, Harper’s, or Scribner’s.

One should learn the art of reading rapidly the lighter kinds of prose, both general and theological. There is in every well-written paragraph a single sentence, sometimes a single phrase, which summarizes the whole, and good readers know how, at a glance, to fasten upon these central words. To mark them with pencil makes it possible to review quickly the contents of the chapter or book with little effort. The only way to conserve the results of one’s reading is to make notes. The most interesting information, the most impressive illustrations, and the most suggestive interpretations will inevitably escape unless they are rendered permanent by writing. After Phillips Brooks’ death his biographer found many notebooks filled with jottings as he had read and outlines of sermons as they had first come to him the germs of his greatest discourses. And practically every successful minister reads with a pencil in his hand. It is possible, however, to keep one’s notes in such form that they are of little value. The bound notebook and scrapbook ’Tceep” things too literally. It is necessary to read every page of every book to find what one wants.

Notes and clippings must be indexed in some practical and simple manner to be useful. The following method is employed by one of the most successful Methodist pastors, with the result that all the data he has collected concerning any subject through his whole ministry is available immediately for use, (1) All books in his library are numbered and arranged on his shelves in consecutive order.

(2) He has clipped interesting articles on every conceivable subject. These are numbered consecutively from I to 5, 000 as they have accumulated, without any reference to subject, and are filed in folders containing fifty dippings 270 THE PASTORAL OFFICE each; for example, Folder No. I holds the clippings numbered from I to 49; No. 2, from 50 to 99; No. 3, from 100 to 149; etc.

(3) His personal jottings have been made on separate sheets of note paper and are filed separately in the same manner as his clippings.

(4) His sermons are preserved in strong manila envelopes on each of which appears a number, the subject of the sermon, when, and where preached.

(5) All this material is indexed carefully in a card index under fewer than one hundred topics arranged alphabetically. He began with a much smaller number and developed additional topics as there was need. The following will suggest the character of the groupings: Assurance, Atonement, Authority, Bible, Church, Education, Faith, God, Holy Spirit, Industry, Inspiration, Jesus Christ, Methodists, Missions, Politics, Prayer, Press, Recreation, Regeneration, Social Movements, Sunday School, Temperance, Texts and Subjects. As he comes upon any impressive fact or suggestion in his reading he makes note of it under its appropriate topic in his index.

Under each heading there would be dozens of cards like the following on “Prayer”, Meaning of Prayer B 248-43 Prayer and Daily Life 100:16-884 Prayer in the Life of Jesus.*..’S 127 Missions and Prayer B 274-123 Illustration N 39^1962

These symbols tell him that in Book No. 248 in his library, page 43, there is a chapter on the “Meaning of Prayer,” and in Book No. 274, page 123, another phase of the subject is discussed. He has also a clipping in Folder 16, No. 884.

Once he preached on “Prayer in the Life of Jesus/’ Sermon 127; and in his Note-file, Folder 39, Note 1962, he once recorded a valuable illustration. He has a score of other cards on this same general subject, containing material THE MINISTER’S STUDY “271 enough for a dozen sermons on every phase of the subject and all within reach.

2. THE MINISTER’S OFFICE. The minister’s office work should be cared for outside of the morning hours devoted to study. If he is so fortunate as to have a good secretary, this work will seldom need more than thirty minutes personal attention each day from him. Comparatively few pastors, however, have such assistance and must be their own clerks. If this work requires more than one and a half hoursperday on the average, he is justified in asking the official board to make an appropriation for stenographic help, for the pastor’s time is too valuable to spend a large amount of it keeping records and running a typewriter which some one else can do better for fifty cents or less an hour. The best available time for office work probably is in the early afternoon just after lunch and before it is wise to begin his afternoon calling.

3. THE MINISTER’S DEVOTIONAL LIFE. There is nothing more important for the pastor than the culture of his own spiritual life. His energies, constantly being drained, must, as constantly, be replenished. Happily his intellectual toil and pastoral visitation among the people of the community will often refresh his spirit if his attitude in them be prayerful. For, as Doctor Fairbairn says, “It may be laid down as a general principle that the whole of a minister’s labors should be intermingled with meditation and prayer. He should never be simply a man of learning and study, for this itself may become a snare to him; it may even serve to stand between his soul and God, and nurse a spirit of worldliness in one of its most refined and subtle forms.” 4 But in addition he must engage regularly in such special private exercises as are designed to make him conscious of the presence and peace and power of God in his own heart. The first of these is the meditative reading of the more devotional and liturgical parts of the Bible. The great hymns ’Quoted by Gladden, op. cit, p. 105.

272 THE PASTORAL OFFICE of the church, also, read thoughtfully and memorized, have power to nourish the spirit. Furthermore, the reading of prayers and religious poetry will help induce the mood of worship in which, finally, the soul of the man himself comes to self-expression and reaches out to lay hold of God at first hand. He who is not fully aware of the necessity for such communion is not fit to preach the gospel.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR FURTHER STUDY Washington Gladden, The Christian Pastor, Chapter V.

Frank W. Gunsaulus, The Minister and the Spiritual Life.

P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, Chapter V.

Evelyn Underbill, Practical Mysticism.