1.J 08. Questions and Answers
Questions and Answers.
Q. Would you have us preach on the subject of the heart belli”
“ desperately wicked “ V
MR. BEECHER. Oh yes. There are some texts in the Bible that I think it would be difficult to preach from, but that is not one of them. On the contrary, only last Sunday morning I preached on a branch of that theme namely, the “ deceitfulness of riches.” I showed what deceit men practised on themselves in proposing to themselves to get rich, in trying to get rich, and then in taking care of the riches when acquired. I did not notice that any of my rich men took it to themselves, either.
Q. Would you preach “ He that believeth not shall be damned “?
MR. BEECHER. Would I?
STUDENT. Yes. sir.
M.R. BEECHER. Yes, sir, assuredly. I always preach with a shadow. There is always an alternative. But I do not need, you know, to have a whip right up over the kitchen fireplace, where the boy can see it all the time. If you have given him one good whipping, he will remember it, and then, when you say “John!” that is enough. There are a dozen whippings in that.
These questions that you are propounding all come on the supposition that to preach in a spirit of love means that there is to be no punishment.
It does not mean any such thing. The spirit of love carries everything with it. It carries punishment with it, but in a qualified form, even as love carries it; though not as fear does, nor as conscience does, nor as pure intellect does.
Q. Where is the spring from which a man is to obtain the love and sympathy you speak of?
MR, BEECHER. If a man knows what he wants and what he is aiming at in his every-day life, he must get it just as he would seek any other educational development. If you desire a musical education, what do you do? You practise for that. If you wish to attain knowledge by art, what do you do? You put yourself under a master, and work for form and colour. If you want devotion in the sense of rapt meditation, then you seek that. If you want it in the sense of exhilaration and of bounding joyousness, you will seek that. But if you want religion in a sense of genial sympathy with men, you will seek it by being with men. And when you can bring yourself to lay aside things that you very much wish to do, things that are naturally strong in you, for the sake of doing something that you do not want to do, or being something that you do not want to be, on account of other persons, who are neither very agreeable nor very rewarding and who, perhaps, will never know of your sacrifice, then you will have shown yourself n’t for your work, and can say, “ I lay down a part of my life for that man.” That is the way we must minister to our congregations. Christ says, “ I am the way.” Make a road for men’s feet upon yourself. Pave it with your most precious things. Do it a few times, and do not think you will have to ask me any other questions as to the way to cultivate that spirit.
Practise loving men, if you want to have the power of love.
Q. Do you think that a man who is hy nature very cold and unsympathetic should preach, or #0 into the ministry V MR. BEECHEH. No; you might as well take an icicle to warm an invalid’s bed with.
Q. Was not Jonathan Edwards, when preaching the justice of God, moved by love?
Great as Edwards truly was, and far in advance of his age in many respects, he yet was unconsciously under the grossly materializing theological habits of the mediaeval schools. The monarchial figures of government in the Bible, and the figures of material punishment, are full terrible enough. But to employ the imagination, as Edwards did, in inventing new horrors for hell, above all, in attempting to picture the divine Heart as so in love with justice that it rejoices in the merited sufferings of the wicked, was a sad perversion of the functions of imagination. In some respects Edwards’s terrific sermon, “ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” may be ranked with Dante’s Inferno or Michael Angelo’s painting of the “ General Judgment.” But who can look upon the detestable representations of the painter, or the hideous scenes of the Florentine poet, without a shudder of wonder that they should have ever come from such tender and noble hearts? They were dreams of dark days. The doom of wickedness is dreadful enough, with out the hideous materialism and the horrible buffoonery of justice which prevailed in a former day.
Q. Is there not something analogous to divine judgment in the punishment of criminals by capital and other punishment?
Punishments follow the violations of natural law. But Nature is blind. It makes no discriminations.
It takes no account of motives. It has no palliations and no pity. When a father punishes, he takes account of the age, inexperience, temptations, and motives of the child, and grades his penalties, or wholly pardons, as will best effect his end, the child’s good. Governments undertake to do the same. But magistrates are hampered. Their knowledge is imperfect. The law fixes arbitrary processes of procedure. Punishments are often too lenient or too severe. They are determined full as much by the weakness of government as by the desert of the victim. Governments are but clumsy machines, and public justice is but a poor imitation of divine justice. We should be cautious in employing the analogies derived from material laws, or from human civil governments, in interpreting the method of One who knows perfectly all things, w^ho is unlimited in power, and who is not impelled by sheer weakness to such expedients as are resorted to by human tribunals.
I think that the analogies of parental government, in a human household, in which penalties are administered in the spirit of love, and for the child’s good, are far nearer the truth than those derived from the example of civil governments or artificial tribunals.
LECTURES ON PREACHING.
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