1.E 03. Variations of Denominational Service

Variations of Denominational Service.

There is another modifying circumstance that comes in, and that is the Church economy through which you undertake to administer.

You go out into a community, and find it already organized. Some of you will very possibly officiate in the Episcopal Church, while others of you will find yourselves in the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or Congregational Churches, and some even, perhaps, in the Roman Catholic Church.

Now you may ask, What difference docs the Church make? Is not man the same, no matter what Church he is in? But really there are two great Churches: those who believe that God works O by the power of the truth, and according to the great natural laws; and those who believe, in addition to this, that he works through a Church organization of a definite character, which has in it certain specified and ordained channels. And, in point of fact, in proportion as Churches or parishes are organized according to -this last belief will the O 3 amount of preaching be less. There is less of it for the obvious reason, that the Church economy requires so much time and labour in other directions.

You have to keep going the great organism in which grace inheres, and you worship by means of certain forms, ordinances, sacraments, and persons, all of whom are, in a sense, sacred; and you are obliged to give a great deal of your attention and care to the administration of that economy.

You will find in the Episcopal Church and I do not say whether it is best or not that the average duration of the sermon is twenty or twenty-five v minutes, the service occupying an hour and a half or two hours, not one-eighth of which is occupied in preaching. They depend upon the reading of the Scriptures, upon their musical services, and upon their forms of prayer, the sermon being but a minor thing among many considered more import ant. On the other hand, Churches like the Presbyterian, the Baptist, and the Congregational have 110 liturgy, and no elaborate Church service; they are obliged to emphasize that which they have, and the sermon becomes the chief thing in such denominations. That is the power they hold in their hand, and if they cannot wield that, they can wield nothing; for besides that there is very little, I am sorry to say, that is effectual in the work of their ministry and that is the weak spot in our scheme.

Although there is a great deal of preaching in the Methodist Church (as developed under Wesleyan teachings), yet you will take notice that that is not all. While they preach a. great deal, and put an emphasis upon it, yet, after all, they expect the main work to be done otherwise. When the preaching is over, they have a rousing good time in the social meeting, singing and praying, and then it is expected that men will be caught and brought into the church.

You will find that generally, in. New England, they have run to preaching. Why? Because they had nothing else to run to. The pulpit was made everything of, and the whole economy of the Church was barren outside of that. There was very little of singing, and what there was did not always minister to grace. The praying was sometimes most helpful, and sometimes not so much so; but after the reading of the Scriptures (and that, in my childhood, was not very much indulged in parish churches), the main thing was preaching.

Now, if one goes into a community where the sermon is everything, and other things are almost nothing, of course his preaching will be very different from what it would IDC were he to go into an Episcopal or a Methodist Church, where there is a large economy besides preaching, on which the minister depends for success in his labours. A”*ain “O you may have to build up a community. Or you may have to arouse them to loosen up the earth, and, as it were, take soil there, where the ground has been ploughed and worn out and abandoned, like old Virginia’s soil. Or you may have to take new prairie soil and break it up yourself. All these things will determine your style of preaching. So, then, when you go away from here into your field of labour, you will find that it is only a very little of what you have heard in the seminary that you can immediately apply. You must do things according to some principle of common-sense, aside from what you may have learned here. All these lessons that you arc being taught in the seminary are of a great deal more importance to you than you believe now.

You will think better of your theological training twenty years hence than to-day, perhaps. But, after all, mother-wit and a patient finding out of your road from day to day are going to teach you in the last instance, and they will be your best teachers.