1.B 06. Qualifications of the Preacher

Qualifications of the Preacher.

Self-absorption is permissible once in a while; but the aptitude to deal with men, to incite the springs of human thought and feeling, the knowledge of how to move men, that is to be maintained in power only by incessant practice and observation; but if you have that in connection with the genius for moral ideas, you have two qualifications. A third qualification is what I may call living l)ij faith, the sense of the infinite and the invisible; the sense of something else besides what we see with the physical eyes; the sense of God, of eternity, and of heaven. If I were asked what had been in my own ministry the unseen source of more help and more power than anything else, I should say that my mother gave to me a temperament that enabled me to see the unseeable and to know the unknowable, to realize things not created as if they were, and oftentimes far more than if they were, present to my outward senses. The rain comes out of the great ether above. You see nothing of it to-night, though it is there, and descends to-morrow on the grass and the flowers; so out of the invisible realm of the spirit within which you are living under the crystal line dome of eternity, populous with love and law and truth, you will have a sense of the vastness and magnitude of the sphere in which you are working which will descend upon your life with fructifying power.

Another thing: you should have good health; and a fair portion of common sense, which is the only quality that I think never is increased by education; that is born in a man, or, if it is not, that is the end. But if, with those other qualities, you have good sense and good vigorous health, -and withal are of a good social disposition, you have the qualifications out of which a minister can be fashioned.

There is one thing more. I do not think that any man has a right to become a Christian minister who is not willing and thankful to be the least of all God’s servants and to labour in the humblest sphere.

If you would come into the Christian ministry, hoping to preach such a sermon as Robert Hall would have preached, you are not fit to come in at all. If you have a deep sense of the sweetness of the service of Christ; if the blood of the redemption is really in your heart and in your blood; if you have tasted what gratitude means, and what love means, and if heaven is such a reality to you that all that lies between youth and manhood is but a step toward heaven; if you think that the saving of a single soul would be worth the work of your whole life, you have a call, and a very loud call. A call to the ministry is along the line of humility, and love, and sympathy, and good sense, and natural aspirations toward God.

I recollect when I returned from the first revival in which I ever worked. I had been at Indianapolis between one and two years, and there had been no revival (and I had never been in one since I was a boy). I went out, on Brother Jewett’s call, from Indianapolis to Terre Haute; and I worked there three weeks in a revival until my heart was on fire; and it rained a stream of prayer all the way home from Terre Haute to Indianapolis. It was like an aurora borealis, I have no doubt, ray upon ray, for that whole distance, if angels could have seen it. It was in that feeling all the way, “ Lord, slay me if thou wilt; but I will be slain, or will have life and salvation among my people.” On Sunday I gave notice that I would preach every night that week.

We had a dingy lecture-room in my church that would hold about two hundred people. I preached Monday night, and we had a storm; Tuesday night it rained again, and when I called upon any who were awakened to remain, no one stayed; and I said, “ It makes no difference; if the Lord wishes it to be SO; I do! “ On Wednesday night I preached again, with more power, and called for inquirers at the close. One poor little thin servant-girl stopped!

She smelt of the kitchen, and looked kitchen all over. When I dismissed the congregation, my first feeling, I know, as I went toward her, was one of disappointment. I said to myself that after so much work it was too bad. It was just a glance, an arrow which the devil shot at me, but which went past. The next minute I had an overwhelming revulsion in my soul; and I said to myself, “ If God pleases, I will work for the poorest of his creatures.

I will work for the heart of a vagabond, if I am permitted to do it, and bring him to Christ Jesus.”

I felt it; and I thanked God that night for that girl’s staying. He paid me the next night, for two of my sweetest children not my own, but they were like my own to me stopped on the next night, and after that the work went on.

If, therefore, you feel willing to work for Christ’s sake, for the sake of eternity, for the love that you have for the intrinsic sweetness of the work of the ministry, the moulding of men and making them better and helping them upward; if this is itself sweet and pleasant to you if you are moved to do it in low places, without renown, and are willing to take your crown hereafter for it you are called, and there is no doubt about it. But if you want only this, to be very eloquent men, and to watch the eloquence of others; or if you want to have a big church, with a big salary behind it, and if that is your call to the ministry, stay away. You may be called, but it was not the Lord that called you; it was the devil.

Don’t come from pride, but come from a love for the work; and then, let me tell you, your work will be music. I hear ministers talk about their cares and their burdens.” There are cares and bur dens, but no more than there are discords in Beethoven’s symphonies; and your work will be as sweet and as musical as his symphonies are. Working for men! There is nothing so congenial. It is the only business on earth that I know of, excepting the mother’s business, that is clean all the way through; because it i,s using superior faculties, superior knowledge, not to take advantage of men, but to lift them up and cleanse them, to mould them, to fashion them, to give them life, that you may present them before God.

I am done, unless you wish to ask questions. I am open to-day and every day for them.