1.E 05. Emotion

Emotion. The next element that I shall mention is the power of Feeling, There is a great deal of natural emotion in New-Englanders, but much of it is sup pressed. It is not the habit of people in our Eastern States to show feeling nearly as much as in the South, nor as much as in the West. The New Testament, however, is Oriental; and the Orientals always had, and showed, a great deal of emotion. The style of the apostles procedure shows that they had a great deal of fervency, which is only another term for emotional outplay.

If a man undertake to minister to the wants of his congregation purely by the power of feeling, without adequate force in the intellect, there are valid objections to that; but every man who means to be in affinity with his congregation must have feeling. It cannot be helped. A minister without feeling is no better than a book. You might just as well put a book, printed in large type, on the desk, where all could read it, and have a man turn over the leaves as you read, as to have a man stand up, and clearly and coldly recite the precise truth through which he has gone by a logical course of reasoning. It has to melt somewhere. Somewhere there must be that power by which the man speaking and the men hearing are unified; and that is the power of emotion.

It will vary indefinitely in different persons.

Some will have much emotion, and some but very little. It is a thing to be striven for. Where there is relatively a deficiency, men can educate themselves and acquire this power.

Now one of the great hindrances to the exhibition of true Christian feeling in the pulpit is that which I hear called the “dignity of the pulpit.” Men have been afraid to lay that aside, and bring them selves under the conditions necessary for the display of emotion. Now and then they will have a sublime, religious tone of feeling at a revival. But, after all, there is a vast amount of feeling playing in every man’s mind, which is a very able element in preaching. It may be intense, earnest, pathetic, or cheerful, mirthful, and gratifying, and is the result of love to God and God’s creatures. If a man desires to preach with power, he must have this element coming and going between him and his hearers; he must believe what he is saying, and what he says must be out of himself, and not out of his manuscript merely. If a man cannot be free to speak as he feels, but is thinking all the time about the sacredness of the place, it will shut him up.

He will grow critical. I think the best rule for a man in society and it is good for the pulpit too is to have right aims, do the best things by the best means you can find, and then let yourself alone. Do not be a spy on yourself. A man who goes down the street thinking of himself all the time, with critical analysis, whether he is doing this, that, or the other thing turning himself over as if he were a goose on a spit before a fire, and basting himself with good resolutions is simply belittling himself. This course is bad also in the closet.

There is a large knowledge of one s-self that every man should have. But a constant study of one’s own morbid anatomy is very discouraging and harmful. It is the power of being free and in dependent in their opinions that men want, and they must get it in some way or other. Having right aims, be manly; know that you mean right, that you will do right by the right way; then let go, and do not be thinking of yourself, if you can help it, from sunrise to sunset. A man must go into the pulpit with this spirit. Let him know what he wants, and let him be able to say, “ God knows what sends me here to-day.” Let his heart be right with God. When he is working for men and among them, if it is best for him to write, let him write; but it is better, for the most successful work, that he should not stand up and recite merely.

You know what you can do only when the sacred lire is upon you. You have no time then for analyzing the effect upon yourself in any minute way.

Many men go into the pulpit fresh from the mirror, cravatted and in perfect toilet, with the sanctity of the place weighing upon them, and every thing complete and proper. They know if there is the slightest aberration; and under all this there is a profound self-consciousness. They are shocked if any man, in such a place, does that which creates the slightest discord with their awful solemnity, or breaks the sanctity of the pulpit. Now, according to my own principles, when a man is a messenger of God, and knows that men are in danger, and believes that he is sent to rescue them, he must be lost in the enthusiasm of that work. Do you suppose he can stop his feelings from being manifested by any system of pulpit routine? If he is naturally correct and makes no mistakes, so much the better, for I do not think that mistakes are desirable; but there may be a “propriety” in his preaching that will damn half his congregation, or there may occasionally be almost an “ impropriety “that will hurt nobody, and, accompanied with the right manner will save multitudes of men. If it is for anything, it is to save men that you are going into the ministry. If you do not go for that, you would better stay out.

Men often think that excitements are dangerous.

Yes; everything is dangerous in this world. From the time that a man is born into the world until he leaves it, it is always possible that there might be danger coupled with everything he does. There is a danger that your feeling may be too boisterous, or of too coarse a nature, or that it will not be adapted to the wants of the congregation; all these things are to be taken into consideration. But there is no danger from excitement that is half so fearful as the danger of not feeling and not caring. The want of feeling is a hundred times more dangerous than any excitement that you can bring to bear upon a community.