1.G 17. Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers.

Q. Do you think the use of these encyclopedias of illustrations is honest?

MR. BEECHER. Why not?

STUDENT. Because one ought to make his illustrations himself.

I should say.

MR. BEECHER. That is purely a question with yourself. If a man says he would rather take the pains and time to work out his illustrations himself, he has a perfect right to do so. It is just the same question that comes up in everything else. “ Do you think a man ought to copy pictures, or to study from nature?” One school will tell you one thing, and another school another thing. It is simply a matter of preference. I should not borrow my illustrations a great while if I could help it; but if you find that you accomplish your designs in preaching, and at the same time improve yourself by practising in that way, it is allowable.

Q. Is it best to give your illustrations extemporaneously, even when the sermon is written?

MR. BEECHER. Yes, and no. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Some of your carefully written-out illustrations would die between your at tempting to remember and attempting to originate.

There is nothing worse than to get into the place where those two processes meet. You will hear a person say, “I have either to read my sermons, or else make brief notes and not read at all.” The difficulty is, that if you have your notes well written out, and then look up from them and undertake to extemporize, you will be extemporizing, as it were, with one eye, and thinking of what is in your notes with the other; so that you will really rest on neither, but go down between the two processes. No man can extemporize until he cuts the cord that holds him to his sermon. You cannot extemporize while you are thinking of anything other than the impulse which is carrying you on.

Q. Would you advocate special services for children at times?

MR. BEECHER, Yes. It is a very excellent plan indeed. I think every parish should have a periodical service for children. Dr. Storrs has had a regular series of discourses for his children, and it has been one of the most excellent features of his ministry in Brooklyn.

Q. About how much poetry is necessary to spice a sermon?

MR. BEECHER. Of quotations, I should say, gene rally, none. Of poetical treatment and illustration, it “depends.” Poetry, you know, is not a thing that you can measure and put in by quantity. If your theme suggests illustrations which are poetical, take and use them; but to determine that you will have a definite quantity of them will kill inspiration in the very egg.

Q. Is there not danger of getting into a loose way of sermonizing, by not preparing your illustrations beforehand, but just taking them as they strike you in the pulpit?

MR. BEECH ER. Yes; and there is danger of get ting into too severe a habit, if you prepare in the other way. There is danger an} way. You can not prepare in any way so that you can say to your self, “Now I am sure of success; I need not <nve O myself any further responsibility.” For, if there is a working man on earth, it is the man who under takes to preach continually and steadily to an or dinary congregation. Let me say to you, gentlemen, Never be frightened because you have preached a bad sermon; but, at the same time, never, under any circumstances whatever, preach a bad sermon on ] mi-pose, or by negligence or carelessness. If you are not in a good condition for work, if you are sick, never apologize, but do the best you can, even though knowing you are doing it very poorly. That is not a pleasant experience, as I can bear witness.

Preach the best you can, under the circumstances, without apology. If you are preaching to but six people, do the best thing you can do. Do it always and everywhere.

Q. Is it a proper thing to make an audience laugh by an illustration?

MR. BEECHER. Never turn aside from a laugh any more than you would from a cry. Go ahead on your Master’s business, and do it well. And remember this, that every faculty in you was placed there by the dear Lord God for his service. Never try to raise a laugh for a laugh’s sake, or to make men merry as a piece of sensationalism, when you are preaching on solemn things. That is allowable at a picnic, but not in a pulpit where you are preaching to men in regard to God and their own destiny. But if mirth comes up naturally, do not stifle it; strike that chord, and particularly if you want to make an audience cry. If I can make them laugh, I do not thank anybody for the next move; I will make them cry. Did you ever see a woman carrying a pan of milk quite full, and it slops over on one side, that it did not immediately slop over on the other also?

Q. If a man “ slops over “ on some occasions, is he not liable to “ slop over “ continually?

MR. BEECHER. Not long in one place, if he does it continually. If you take the liberty, however, from what I have said, to quote stale jokes, if you make queer turns because they will make people laugh, and to show you have power over the congregation, you will prove yourselves contemptible fellows. But if, when you are arguing any question, the thing comes upon you so that you see a point in a ludicrous light, you can sometimes flash it at your audience, and accomplish at a stroke what you were seeking to do by a long train of argument; and that is entirely allowable. In such a case do not attempt to suppress laughter. It is a part of the nature that God gave us, and which we can use in his service. When you are fighting the devil, shoot him with anything.

Q. Would not a man, under such circumstances. l>e in danger of overturning just what ho was trying to accomplish?

Mi?. BEKCIIER. No; unless he accompanies it very poorly.

If a minister is earnest and honest, and a man of God, if he bears about him the savour of the heavenly world and the benevolence of this life, his people will know it. If you know the difference between a man who is in earnest and one who is merely playing, do you suppose the people will respond to the superficial and lower qualities, and not to the greater and nobler ones in a true preacher?

Q. How long would you advise a young man to preach?

Mr. BEECHER. As long as he can make his people take this sermon. That is very much like asking how long a coat you should have made for people, in general.