1.B 07. Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers.

Q. How shall one get the power of adaptation of one s-self to others, and how shall he increase it V

MR. BEECHER. If you were taking drawing les sons, and attempting to portray the human face, Imt with so little success as to make it very doubtful what you were trying to do; and if you should look up to your teacher and say to him, “ How shall I increase my ability to draw faces?” what would he say to you? “ Practice that will do it.” Preaching is in one sense an art; not in the ignoble sense. It is a thing to be learned, both in general principles and in practical details.

It is learned by some, as every trade is, much more easily than by others. It is learned by continuous trying and practising. A young minister ought not to be discouraged if he works three or four years in a parish before he really begins to get the control of things.

Q. Is it a good way to learn to move men by learning to move children?

MR. BEECHER. Yes; any way; not merely with children, but with everybody else. You are all of you in society. You have class-mates, room-mates.

You can begin practising a good deal of the ministry now. Suppose in a thing in which you have been accustomed to make your room-mate give up to you, after this you give up to him. Suppose you take some of the familiar scriptural texts, “ Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of another;” “ In honour preferring one another;” test yourselves by that. See if you can in all cases give up, one to another; give those around you the advantage of every opening, and hold yourselves back. Try all these tests. These arc admirable principles; and if you do not learn adaptation by practising the Christian virtues, then I am mistaken. What is minister? It is servant; serving men in love is ministering.

Q. What is the occasion of the tendency toward short pastorales in churches nowadays?

MK. BEECHER. Largely, I think, the divine mercy toward the parish. I do not mean by that that I consider a short pastorate a desirable thing, provided the conditions of long pastorates are complied with; but if a man has only a little in him, and is not going to have any more, I think his removal is a great mercy to his parish. When the cup is empty, it would better be removed and another one filled and brought in its place. Where one has breadth where he will give himself to the work of the ministry, in public and in his study both if the study and the street work into each other all the way he has a true ministry, and he has that in him which will last. A long pastorate has some advantages that cannot be over-estimated. But shallow men, who are sometimes called broad men, ought to have short pastorates. If -you take the Erie Canal, and, without increasing the amount of water, remove one bank to a distance of half a mile, you will broaden it very much, but you will have perhaps only a quarter of an inch depth of water. A great many men spread themselves out, and broaden in that way, and grow shallower and shallower. Such men soon evaporate.

Q. Some of us expect to spend several months of this summer in preaching. Would you encourage us to preach in the revival style the very first thing, and keep on right through?

ME. BEECIIEK. If you mean by the revival style, that which is addressed exclusively to the feelings, I should say No, not in all cases. You may be thrown among a set of mountain men, where your preaching will he a great deal more out of the pulpit than in it. Paul, you know, wove tent-cloth; and I have no doubt that when he sat down with the common people and worked with them, he was preparing to preach to them. The first thing you want in a neighbourhood is to get enrapport with the people. You want to get their confidence, to induce them to listen to you. It is a part of the intuition of a true preacher to know how to get at men. He looks at a man as Hobbs looked at a lock, who always asked himself, “ How can I pick it?” When I see a man I instinctively divide him up, and ask myself, How much has he of the animal, how much of the spiritual, and how much of the intellectual? And what is his intellect, perceptive or reflective? Is he ideal, or apathetic, or literal? And I instinctively adapt myself to him.

There is no mystery about this; it is simple enough. You all adapt yourselves in just that way.

You never treat an ox in any other way than as an ox. You never treat it as if it were a horse. But that same process by which you adapt yourselves unconsciously to the more apparent and superficial aspects of nature can be carried further; you can adapt yourself to the disposition of another, and know how to take him, where to take him, what will offend, and what will not offend.

Q. How would you influence a contrary man who stayed away from church for a month?

MB, BEECHEE. Very likely you laboured with him too long. There are a great many ways.

There is no one way of working upon men. You must try them. In fact, you have got to try men as you try fish. You put on one fly, and when you cast, the trout don’t rise. You whip it hither and thither a little while and try it. Perhaps it is the wrong time of day. You change the fly and try again. You come another hour of day; and if he won’t rise, you come to-morrow and try again, and by-and-by you will catch him; but very likely it will be by what you do not look for at all, and he will bite, and you hook him unexpectedly. You are not to suppose you can bring men down as you would go into the woods to fell a tree. Some men require a good deal of diplomacy and management, and it takes a good deal of time. How long was it before the Lord himself managed you? How long God’s providence waits for us! Many arc the influences brought to bear upon us before we are subdued. You must not be in a hurry or impatient.

You have not lost a man because he doesn’t take the truth the first time.