1.E 01. Circumstances alter cases

Circumstances alter cases. For instance, in regard to preaching, the field into which you go will have very much to do with it, both as to its manner and the preparation you will make for it. A man set in an uncultivated field in the far West, among the rude pioneers, would, both inwardly and outwardly, use a different method from that which he would employ in an old and cultivated community where the Church had been organized for a long time, and wher the men and women had been well instructed drilled, indeed in casuistical and doctrinal theology, its principles and truths.

You would not think of preaching elaborate sermons in doctrinal sequence, going among people who had been utterly unused to any such course as this. In a new community good sense would teach you at once, and if it did not, necessity would very quickly teach you that you could not preach as you would in the old pulpit. My early ministry was spent in the West, and I had the opportunity of seeing, time and again, ministers from parishes in the East coming out into the scattered populations of the West, made up from every quarter of the world; and it was an edifying spectacle to the amazement, the gradual awakening, the chagrin, the confusion, the embarrassment, the glimpse of hope, the putting out of the new method, the readaptation, and, finally, the successful issue of these new ministers into their new work; for they had to be acclimated, not in body alone, but in preaching as well. So I say that what would help you on the supposition that you were to settle in the East might be of very little importance to you if you were going to settle West, in Montana, for instance, or in Texas, at the South.