1.I 16. General Hints Professional Manners

General Hints Professional Manners.

There are a few cautions which may be worth considering. Avoid a professional manner. There is no reason why a clergyman should be anything but an earnest Christian gentleman. I shall not quarrel with the preacher who employs a symbolic dress for some special religious reason; but no man should dress himself simply for the purpose of saying, “ I am a preacher.” The highest character in which a preacher can stand is that of simple Christian manhood. It is not the things in which he differs from his follow-incn by which he will gain power.

It is by the things in which he will be in sympathy with them. There is great significance in that sentence, “It behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.” It is not a man’s business, then, to separate himself, by dress or by manner, -from the common people. It is his humanity, and his sympathy with their humanity, it is his sameness with them, both in weaknesses and in sins, in aspirations and partial attainment, that give him his power. The power of a preacher is the power of a brother among his brethren. It always seems to me, therefore, that the putting on of a professional dress is the hiding of one’s power.

Walk into your pulpit as you would enter an ordinary room. Don’t go there thinking of yourself, your coat, your hair, your step. Don’t go there as a “man of God.” Never be a puppet most of all, a religious puppet. I abhor the formal, stately, and solemn entrance of a man whose whole appearance seems to call upon all to see how holy he is, and how intensely he is a minister of the gospel. Nor can I avoid a feeling of displeasure akin to that which Christ felt when he condemned prayers at the street corners, when I see a man bow clown himself in the pulpit to say his prayers, on first entering.

Many men sacrifice the best part of themselves for what is called the dignity of the pulpit. They are afraid to speak of common things. They are afraid to introduce home matters; things of which men think and speak, and in which, every day, a part of their lives consist, arc thought not to be of enough dignity for the pulpit. And so the interests of men are sacrificed to an idol. For when the pul pit is of more importance than the joys and the sorrows, the hopes and the fears, the minute temptations and frets of daily life, it has become an idol, and, to feed its dignity, bread is taken from the mouths of the children and of the common people.

There are few things that have power to make men good or bad, happy or unhappy, that it is not the duty of the pulpit to handle. This superstition of dignity has gone far to make the pulpit a mere skeleton. Men hear plenty from the pulpit about everything except the stubborn facts of their every day life, and the real relation of these immediate things to the vast themes of the future. There is much about the divine life, but very little about human life. There is much about the future victory, but very little about the present battle. There is a great deal about divine government, but there is very little about the human governments under which men are living, and the duties which arise under those governments for every Christian man.

There is a great deal about immortality and about the immortal soul, but very little about these mortal bodies, that go so far to influence the destiny of the immortal souls. A sermon, like a probe, must follow the wound into all its intricate passages. Nothing is too minute for the surgeon or for the physician; nothing should be too common or too familiar for the preacher.