01.07. QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE MINISTRY
CHAPTER VII QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE MINISTRY
Religion is the life of God in the soul of man, and the function of the minister is to impart this life to the individual and to disseminate this life through the community. He cannot impart this life to the individual nor disseminate it through the community unless he possesses it himself. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to define this life of God in the soul of man. But Paul has described its fruits.
" The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, serviceableness, fidelity, meekness, self-control." [1] The minister cannot impart these virtues to others unless he possesses them himself; and his power to impart them will be in the ratio in which he does possess them. He must have that companionship with the Father which is the essence of faith, that glad expectation for the race, through the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ, which is the essence of hope, and that good-will toward all men of every condition and character, which is the essence of love, or he cannot bring other men into the realization of this hope through this companionship with the Father. He need not necessarily have [1] Galatians 5:22-23. an emotional nature, though restrained and regulated emotion will add to his power; he need not necessarily possess spiritual vision, though imagination inspired by devotion and guided by reason will add to his power; but he must have this life of God in his own soul or he cannot give this life to the souls of others.
It is in vain for him to attempt to deceive himself by sedulously cultivating the impression that he can borrow his power from the Bible or the Church without possessing himself that life which has made the Bible and the Church powerful. He cannot even interpret the Bible without some possession of that experience which the Bible portrays.
One cannot teach geography to a class of children if he does not know what the sea or the mountain is. Words are but symbols: he must know what these symbols stand for or he cannot impart the knowledge to the pupil. So he must know what the words in the Bible stand for. He cannot interpret such a promise as this, " Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and teDder mercies," [1] unless he knows what it is to have iniquity forgiven, disease healed, life redeemed, the coronation of God’s loving-kindness and tender mercies. Without this knowledge of the inward experience, his repetition of the words is but the preaching of a phonograph [1] Psalms 103:3-4. or a parrot. He cannot interpret the Church unless he has that spiritual experience which has bound the Church together and, despite its various forms and creeds, has made it truly one. The minister is not a voice crying in the wilderness, - he is one of a great body of men and women who through the ages in increasing numbers have been bearing witness to the Living Christ redeeming the world; he is one of a great spiritual apostolical succession, the succession of those on whom Christ has breathed, to whom he has imparted his spirit, and on whom he has laid his commission. But he cannot witness for them unless he shares their experience. No theological education, no laying on of hands, will suffice to make the minister an interpreter of the Church unless he is made one in the body of Christ by that Christian experience which makes the Church one. He cannot, for example, give that Gospel message of the Church, " He pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel," * unless he knows what it is truly to repent, what it is unfeignedly to believe the Gospel, and what it is to feel the burden of sin lifted from his shoulders and himself set free. Spiritual experience must be a reality to the minister if he would interpret truly either the Bible or the Church; and his real power will be in the ratio of the reality and simplicity of this spiritual experience. This is what Paul means by the de 1 The Book of Common Prayer. claration, " Let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; " this is what Christ means by the promise, "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." [1] But possessing this spiritual power is not along I enough: the minister must be able to impart it. He cannot impart it if he does not possess it, but he may possess it and yet be unable to impart it. His constitution and temperament may be such that he can impart it only incidentally, by his life and example; he may be without power to give direct verbal effective expression to it: then he does not belong in the ministry. Piety or godliness is essential to success in the Christian ministry, but piety or godliness is not sufficient for the Christian ministry without other qualifications. Is it possible to analyze this ability to impart life, to see what are the elements of which this ability is composed?
I think it transcends complete analysis. There is something mystical in what we call sometimes personality, sometimes magnetism. It is in no small measure a gift, gained, acquired, or bestowed we know not how. But it is possible for one to culti1 vate the gift that is in him; and to do this he must at least endeavor to see what is the nature of this gift, what are its constituent elements, and how it can be cultivated.
Essential to this capacity to impart spiritual life is a clearly marked, well defined, eagerly earnest [1] Romans 12:6; Acts 1:8. See chap. i. desire to impart it. For success in the Christian ministry the minister must be inspired by an ambition to make men sharers of his life, to bring men into fellowship with God through Jesus Christ, to take a direct personal share in the great historic movement for the world’s redemption, to transform society by the impartation of the Christ spirit into the Kingdom of God. The minister must be a messenger; he must be an apostle; he must have an experience which enables him at least to understand the saying of Malachi, that the priest " is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts," an experience which will give him something of the certitude of Paul, " called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." [1] It is this experience of a commission received to be fulfilled, of a message received to be delivered, of a life received to be imparted, which distinguishes the preacher from the mere teacher. [2] No man can go to a theological seminary and get from that seminary a theological system, or an understanding of the Bible in its literary and ethical and theological aspects, and then go out and impart to men what the seminary has imparted to him, and expect success. He cannot purchase from the seminary, as from a jobbing-house, the goods which afterwards he will deliver to his congregation as a retailer. This is, indeed, in a measure true of all education. We call a doctor, not to tell us what [1] Malachi 2:7; 1 Corinthians 1:1; Romans 1:1.
[2] See chap, iv, pp. 114-118. he has learned of anatomy, but to set the broken bone; the lawyer, not to tell us what he has learned concerning contracts, but to draw for us a contract which will stand the test of time. So we go to the minister, not to learn what he knows about the Bible, or what he knows about theology, but to receive from him a ministry of life, a healing for a broken heart, or a bond of union with our fellow men which will stand the test of life’s temptations. This impulse or purpose in the minister must be an interior impulse. It may be awakened by influence from without, but no influence from without can take its place. For this reason I am more than doubtful about the wisdom of addresses to young men in college urging upon them the duty of entering the ministry, or influences by father and mother to send them into the ministerial profession. I would rather put obstacles in their way than clear the way of obstacles. I would rather repeat to them Christ’s warning to his disciples: " The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." I would rather bid them ponder the question which Christ put to James and John, " Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? " [1] I am inclined to say, even at the hazard of being misunderstood, that no man should go into the ministry if he can satisfy his own conscience and his own heart in any other vocation.
[1] John 15:20; Matthew 10:24-2
It is enough that he is their well-known, long-tried pastor, and his sermons are stamped with the indelible impression of his ministry. Because this is so, it would undoubtedly prove a loss to take away the right of preaching from the parochial clergy and confine it to certain preaching orders. Whether these clergy preach well or ill, nobody can preach to their congregations so well as they. [1], Let me not be misunderstood. I am not urging that the minister should never forget that he is a minister; I would rather say that he should never remember that he is one. Self-consciousness is [1] J. E. C. Welldon: Nineteenth Century and After. Reprinted in The Living Age, Oct. 29, 1904. perilous to success in any profession; nowhere is it }/ so perilous to success as in the ministerial profession. The bane of the pulpit is professionalism, - not hypocrisy, not deliberate false pretense, but the saying of a thing because it ought to be said, not because the heart prompts the speaker to say it. The minister should never be professional, - neither in the pulpit nor out of it. But he should not be a minister at all unless his whole nature, his executive ability, his social sympathies, his intellectual processes, his aesthetic tastes, his imagination, his ambition, his affections, are all pervaded by the spirit which rejoices in the fellowship of the Great Companion, made companionable to him through Jesus Christ, and by an overmastering desire to impart this companionship, and the life which it brings, to his fellow men. This passion to impart to the men about him the life of God will make him a living man among living men. It will make him share the spirit, sympathize with the thinking, talk the language of the twentieth century. He may hold to the old theology or to a new theology, but whatever instrument he uses, he will use it for the purpose of bringing the truth of God into the life of his own time, and he will speak to his own age and generation. He will understand the problems of his own time, spiritual, ethical, social, political, and will deal with them; not because they are problems, but because they are part of the life of living men and women. In this respect he will follow the example which is set for him by the biblical writers. The Bible is a book’ for all time, because every writer in it wrote for his own time, - Moses for a people just emancipated from slavery, Isaiah for a people threatened with dire punishment for aggravated sins, Ezekiel for a people in captivity, Paul for a people that were passing out of Hebrew into Greek life. Every one of its writers ministered to his own age, and therefore to all ages. This passion for men will also make the minister a minister to his own congregation. He will study their wants and seek to understand their lives, that he may minister to them. If he is preaching to a commercial congregation, ignorant of and indifferent to the intellectual perplexities of the scholastic community, he will not preach on Herbert Spencer and Evolution; he will not give to Corinth the sermon which last year he preached at Athens. If he is preaching to a radical congregation, whose whole idea of religion is summed up in the Golden Rule, he will study how he can effect in them a simple, unaffected, and sincere piety. If he is preaching to a devout congregation, whose religion has chiefly consisted in prayer and praise, and who have never brought their religious reverence to bear on the common affairs of life, he will study how he can make them see that to obey is better than sacrifice, that to do the will of Christ in daily life is better than to say to him, " Lord, Lord." This enthusiasm of humanity, while giving purpose and direction to the whole life, will give distinctive character to each sermon. The first condition of an effective sermon is a definite object.
Mark the difference between subject and object. In preparing a sermon the minister should define his object in his own mind before he select either his subject or his text. What do I want to accomplish this Sunday morning, in this congregation, with this discourse? This is the first question for the preacher to ask himself. When a lawyer goes before a jury, it is not in order to give them a lecture on justice, but to win from them a verdict for his client. When a public speaker goes before an audience in a political campaign, it is not to instruct them upon the general question of the tariff, - it is to get votes for the Republican or the Democratic candidate. The minister should learn a lesson from the lawyer and the political speaker. He should regard his congregation as a jury whose verdict he seeks to secure, as citizens whose vote he is determined to obtain. Psychologically speaking, he should address himself to the will, as the citadel of the character, and count no sermon a success which does not at least aim to achieve either some new resolution or some strengthening of a good resolution already formed. Mr. Gladstone has put this principle very clearly in a contrast which he draws between English and Italian preaching. The fundamental distinction between English and Italian preaching is, I think, this: The mind of the English preacher, or reader of sermons, however impressive, is fixed mainly upon his composition, that of the Italian on his hearers. The Italian is a man applying himself by his rational and persuasive organs to men, in order to move them; the former is a man applying himself, with his best ability in many cases, to a fixed form of matter, in order to make it move those whom he addresses. The action in the one case is warm, living, direct, immediate, from heart to heart; in the other it is transfused through a medium comparatively torpid. The first is surely far superior to the second in truth and reality. The preacher bears an awful message. Such messengers, if sent with authority, are too much identified with, and possessed by, that which they carry, to view it objectively during its delivery, - it absorbs their very being and all its energies; they are their message, and they see nothing extrinsic to themselves except those to whose hearts they desire to bring it. In truth, what we want is the following of nature, and her genial development. [1], It is this definiteness of object which distinguishes the sermon from the essay, and which makes some pulpit addresses which would be interesting essays, hopelessly ineffective as sermons. Some years ago I heard a sermon on Methuselah. The preacher explained to us that Methuselah lived for 969 years, and then he proceeded to tell us how much Methuselah would have seen if he had come to the end of his life the year in which the preacher was preaching his sermon. With this as his thread, the preacher [1] Quoted by John Morley, Life of Gladstone, i, 174. gave us a pictorial history of the English people from about the time of Alfred the Great to the present day. As an essay it might have been charming, but cui bono t It did nothing to help the men and women before him to live better lives. As a sermon it was worthless. A friend some years ago attending service with her brother, who was in a large boarding-school, had her attention called by him to the congregation to which the minister was preaching. There were fifty or sixty boys from ten to fifteen years of age, the rest of the congregation was made up of fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers; and the minister was preaching - on how to select a wife. The subject had probably been suggested to him either by some book which he had read or some experience which he was approaching; but it did not concern his congregation. The sermon was an aimless sermon; and an aimless sermon is always a useless sermon. This is the fatal defect with what I may call pretty sermons, sermons which are literary essays, sermons which are the product of the minister’s consciousness that he has to preach next Sunday and therefore must "get up a sermon." Under this pressure, he takes from the Bible as his text, "His righteousness is like the great mountains."
Then he takes down Michelet and reads for an hour on the mountains. Next he gets out his cyclopedia of illustrations, to find some bits of classic prose, or fine poetry, about the mountains. Then he begins to write his sermon. The mountains are strong, God’s righteousness is strong. The mountains are high: God’s righteousness is exalted above the plane of ordinary human righteousness. The mountains are white and pure: God’s righteousness is always pure and unsullied. The mountains supply the valleys with water: God’s righteousness is a feeding, watering, life-giving righteousness. Under each head of this discourse he works in a bit of poetry from his dictionary of poetical quotations; and his sermon is done. It is a pretty bit of literature, but it is preached with a fictitious earnestness and listened to with a languid interest. This is one way to make a sermon. His neighbor sees in imagination his congregation before him. He has entered into their life, he realizes their temptations, he sees that their great need is a new inspiration to righteousness, righteousness like that of God, - strong, high, pure, life-giving. Their life depends upon their possession of this righteousness - life here, life hereafter. What can he do to impart something of this life-giving righteousness to them? This is the problem which confronts him and with which he wrestles; and if he goes to Michelet, or to his dictionary of poetical quotations, or to his Bible, it is not for a subject, it is for the material which will enable him better to confer on a people whom he loves the power which they need.
If the sermon has this fundamental quality, if it is born of an intense faith in the truth of God, and an intense sympathy for men who need that trnth as an equipment for their own life, it will have two other qualities, - life and brevity. A sermon should never be a lake, it should be a river; it should have movement; a terminus a quo, and a terminus ad quern. If the minister in preparing his sermon has a definite object in view, all his thinking will naturally concentrate itself on the accomplishment of that object, and the sermon will move with increasing power toward the ultimate, and by the preacher before-perceived, result. This quality of life, or movement, is more than mere logical continuity. In a chain, each link depends upon and is fastened into the preceding link, but the last link does not differ in size from those which preceded it; but each contributing stream adds to the volume and force of the river. The sermon should be a river, not a chain. It should be so constructed that every new thought should not only conduct to the ultimate conclusion, but should reinforce the considerations previously educed: for the object of the sermon is not merely to convince the understanding, it is to transform life; and its value depends, therefore, not merely upon its logical completeness, but upon its reinforcing power. The object of the sermon on sin is not to convince the congregation of the generic fact of human sinfulness, - it is to lead each man in the congregation to cry out, " God be merciful to me a sinner! " The sermon on the forgiving love of God has for its object, not merely to convince the congregation that God does forgive sin, but to lead each burdened soul in the congregation to come to God f of forgiveness; and the whole sermon from its opening text to its last sentence should be shaped and fashioned for this purpose. The peroration, so called, should be the natural consummation of a discourse which in every paragraph grows wider and deeper and more forceful to the end. And this quality of vitality imparted by definiteness of spiritual purpose will prevent the preacher from imposing on the patience of his hearers. How long should a sermon be? This is like asking how large should a gateway be. The size demanded of the gateway depends on the size of the load to be carried through; the length of the sermon depends on the largeness of the idea of which it is a vehicle.
People do not object to long sermons, they object to lengthy sermons. If what the minister wants to say can be said in three minutes, the sermon is too long if it takes four minutes. If the minister is full of a theme which for its adequate presentation would require an hour, the sermon seems short if it occupies forty-five minutes. There is, however, an important fact which the modern minister should realize, but does not always, - the change which has been produced within the last twenty-five years by the telegraph and the newspaper. Men think much more quickly than they used to think. Contracts which they would take hours to talk over, they now complete, save for the legal phrasing, in five minutes. They read the daily newspaper by the headlines, or, glancing the eye down the column of the editorial, extract its significance by a kind of instantaneous intellectual process. Accustomed to this rapidity of mental action through the week, they go to church, and are wearied by hearing a minister hold a single thought before them, possibly a rather commonplace thought, for fifteen or twenty minutes, or even half an hour, while he is hoping to keep their attention upon it by the beauty with which he attires it, or even insisting that it is the duty of the hearer to continue to listen after he has learned all that the minister has to say. To an alert mind nothing is more wearisome than to stand at the end of a lane and wait for the speaker to come at a leisurely pace to the same terminus. The editor is under pressure to condense: he is constantly attempting to put the substance of a volume in a page, the substance of a page in a column, the substance of a column in a paragraph, and the substance of a paragraph in two lines; the minister, on the other hand, is often under temptation to dilute and expand: he has a single thought, and his question is, how can he so present this thought as to keep the interest of the congregation for twenty minutes or half an hour upon it? There is but one radical remedy for lengthy sermons: it is for the minister, first, to be possessed of the truth, and of the desire to impart it to his congregation because they need it, and, secondly, remorselessly to fix as his limit less time than he thinks is adequate for the due presentation of his subject.
There is a special temptation to ministers to over-elaborate the peroration and the introduction. A friend of mine tells me that he once heard a famous preacher say as he drew towards the close of his discourse, " One word more." My friend looked at his watch; the preacher had been speaking thirty minutes, and he took thirty-five minutes for the " one word more." In my judgment, the time for exhortation has passed away, - the whole sermon should be suffused with a genuine feeling; it may be inflamed with a genuine passion; if it is not, no endeavor to correct the defect by emotional appeals at the end will be other than worse than useless. As to introductions, generally the less introduction the better. The whole service of prayer and praise and Scripture reading has been introduction; that is, it has been preparing the mind and heart of the congregation for the message of the preacher. He who strikes the heart of his subject in the first sentence is the one most likely to secure an attentive listening at the outset of his discourse.
It does not come within the province of this volume to enter in any detail upon the question of the structure of sermons. For this the ministerial reader must be referred to the books on sacred rhetoric, of which there is an abundance; but it is legitimate to say that devotion to the truth and sympathy with men furnish no excuse for slovenly intellectual processes and no substitute for thorough intellectual preparation. Whether the sermon is written and committed, written and read, or not written at all, it ought to be carefully conceived and thoroughly prepared. Whenever we are able to get back of the finished oration to the processes of preparation, we always find that the latter have involved painstaking study. The apparently easy speaker is uniformly a hard thinker. Spontaneity in utterance is the product of industry in preparation. Mr. Gladstone was endowed by nature with all the equipment necessary for successful oratory, "a voice of singular fullness, depth, and variety of tone; a falcon eye with strange imperious flash; features mobile, expressive, and with lively play; a great actor’s command of gesture, bold, sweeping, natural, unforced, without exaggeration or a trace of melodrama;... the gift and the glory of words " - but to these he " superadded ungrudging labor." Here are his counsels to a correspondent, evidently born of his own experience, 1. Study plainness of language, always preferring the simpler word. 2. Shortness of sentences. 3. Distinctness of articulation. 4. Test and question your own arguments beforehand, not waiting for critic or opponent. 5. Seek a thorough digestion of, and familiarity with, your subject, and rely mainly on these to prompt the proper words. 6. Remember that if you are to sway an audience you must, besides thinking out your matter, watch them all along. (March 20, 1875.) [1] [1] John Morley: Life of Gladstone, i, 191, 192.
If ever the term " full man " could be applied to any preacher, it could be applied to Phillips Brooks. His sermon seemed to be - and was - the spontaneous expression of a superabundant life; wealth of vocabulary, of illustration, of exposition were the instruments, and spiritual enthusiasm was the secret of his marvelous power. But Dr. Allen, in the account of Phillips Brooks’s method of preparation, has made it very clear that the great preacher did not trust to these native gifts alone, - he directed all the forces of his nature with careful guidance to a purposed end.
He took half a sheet of sermon paper, folding it once, thus making four small pages, some seven inches by less than five in their dimensions, which he was to fill. He invariably filled them out to the last remaining space on the last page, as though only in this way could he be sure that he had sufficient material for his sermon.
Each plan contained, when it was finished, a dozen or more detached paragraphs, each of which contained a distinct idea, and was to become, when expanded, a paragraph in the finished sermon, placing over against each the number of pages it would occupy when it had been amplified. Then he added the numbers together. Thirty pages was the limit of the written sermon. If these numbers of assigned pages fell short of thirty, he reviewed his plan to see where he might expand, or where to reduce if he had too many. [1],
[1] Condensed from Dr. A. V. G. Allen’s account in The Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks, and quoted on page 718 of The Outlook for March 10, 1901.
More important than the quality of the sermon is the quality of the preacher, for the sermon is an expression of the life of the preacher, and therefore the value of the sermon depends upon the quality of the preacher’s life. There is a legend that a famous preacher, having been unable to make his preparations for a certain Sunday, asked the Devil to provide a preacher for him. The Devil replied, " I will preach myself," and he went into the pulpit and preached a vigorous and eloquent sermon against the Devil and all his works. When he came down, his ecclesiastical ally said to him, " I should have thought you would have been afraid to preach that sermon, lest it should destroy your influence."
" No," replied the Devil, " it will have no effect, because I did not believe a word of it myself."
Like many another ecclesiastical legend, this is a parabolic expression of a divine truth. The power of the sermon depends primarily on the reality of the minister’s conviction. It is not enough that he preach the truth, he must preach self -realized truth.
He should never be an echo of another man’s faith. If he has no experience of sin, he should not preach on sin; if no experience of God’s love, he should not preach on God’s love. If all ministers limited their preaching by their own experience, the sermons would be shorter and there would be fewer of them, but they would make up in effectiveness what they lacked in number and in length.
It is for this reason that I object to creed subscription, - not because I object to the creed, but I object to any system which puts a preacher under the temptation to become the advocate of another man’s faith, not the interpreter and expounder of his own. For this reason candor seems to me to be essential to the preacher. There are certain virtues which may be called professional virtues. No man can be an efficient soldier without courage; though he may be efficient as a soldier without honesty. No man can be an efficient merchant without honesty; though he may be efficient as a merchant without courage. Candor is the professional virtue of the minister. He cannot be truly successful without it.
He must have convictions and the courage of his convictions. Those cynics are mistaken who imagine that the preacher is popular who panders to popular prejudice. The answer to their cynicism is to be found in the history of the American pulpit. From Jonathan Edwards to the present day, and in all the denominations alike, the great preachers have been heroic preachers. Not to go beyond the circle of our own time, Finney, Channing, the Beechers, father and son, Bushnell, Phillips Brooks, - no one ever questioned the courage of these men, no one ever doubted their candor, and crowds thronged to listen to them. The American people like a brave man, a man of strong convictions and the courage of them. With this candor and courage must go another quality which does not always accompany them, respect for one’s fellow men. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " involves more than a spirit of mutual good-will, it involves also a spirit of mutual respect. The preacher must understand, and he must have intellectual respect for, opinions which he believes to be thoroughly erroneous. It may be laid down as an axiom that you can never persuade another man to your point of view until you appreciate his point of view. You can never get another to take your position until you have in imagination taken his position. If a Protestant would persuade a Roman Catholic, he must first sympathetically understand the Roman Catholic doctrines of Papal Infallibility, the Adoration of the Virgin, Transubstantiation, and the Real Presence.
If an orthodox believer would convince an Evolutionist of the truth of the doctrine of the Fall, he must first understand what Evolution means, and what are the grounds on which the scientist accepts it. If the preacher would impart spiritual vision to men and women in his congregation who are without it, he must first enter sympathetically into their conditions of life, understand what the countingroom is, and what its temptations and its struggles, and what the life of modern society and its illusions and snares. If he would persuade the employer to some different attitude towards the trade-union, he must first see the trade-union with the employer’s eyes, and comprehend the friction which naturally if not inevitably arises in our time between the organizations of labor and of capital. This is what Paul did. "Unfo the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, so that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." [1] This is what Christ did when he came to earth and entered, not merely into our physical conditions but into our spiritual experiences, and was tempted in all points like as we are, that he might become our Redeemer. The preacher must by imagination enter into the life of the people if he would impart to the people the life that is in Christ his Master. The preacher must understand us if he desires us to understand him.
There are three difficulties which tend to prevent the minister from entering thus sympathetically into the life of those whom he is addressing. He must be an educated man; and education develops culture, taste, and the critical spirit, and these tend to separate him from those who are without education, cultivation, and taste. Ignorance and boorishness build up a wall upon the one side, cultivation and taste upon the other. The preacher must be able to sympathize with the ignorant and the boorish, not [1] 1 Corinthians 9:20-22. withstanding his cultivation and his taste. His interest in people is therapeutic; he studies them as a physician studies his patients, that he may cure them. This is necessary, and yet this habit of studying men as specimens, so to speak, as set apart from him and objects of his ministry, easily tends to develop in him the spirit of self-conceit; and religious self-conceit is a form of Pharisaism. Thus, unless in all his study of mankind he is able to preserve the spirit of respect for mankind, the more he studies, the less competent does he become to do his Master’s work among men. Finally, since vices and intellectual errors arouse his conscience, his indignation is stirred against them. The age of physical persecution has passed, but the spirit which led men in the Middle Ages to punish heresy with fire and sword still exists. If he has that tolerance of error which is born of indifference to it, he has not the earnestness which enables him to combat it.
If he has that indignation against error which accompanies the spirit of religious or intellectual selfconceit, he has not that human touch which enables him to get entrance to the minds of the men whom he wishes to convince and convert. Thus his education, his professional interest, and his conscience combine to separate him from men, and will separate him from them, unless he sedulously cultivates that spiritual imagination which enables him sympathetically to understand all sorts and conditions of men, and that respect for humanity which enables him to secure their sympathetic hearing for his Another quality essential to the preacher, especially in our time, is a spirit of divine hopefulness. The pessimist has no place in the American pulpit. The preacher should be a leader among men. If he is to be a leader, he must set before himself an ideal, and he must have in himself some expectation that that ideal can be attained. I do not mean that he is to look only on the bright side of things.
He is to have the courage to see things as they are, but he must have faith in a God who is in the world making things better, and, born of this faith, an incorrigible expectation that they will be better, and an invincible determination to do something to make them better. He must believe that out of every day will walk a better to-morrow; he must believe, not with Browning, that " God ’s in his heaven, all ’s right with the world," [1] but that God is in his world, and therefore all will yet be well with it. " We are saved by hope." [2] He who has no vision to see a better future, and no expectation inspiring him to its attainment, does not belong in the Christian ministry. With this spirit of candor, courage, consideration, and hopefulness should go patience. " So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night [1] Robert Browning: Pippa Passes.
[2] Romans 8:24. and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, he knoweth not how." * The kingdom of God, then, is a growth; and growth requires time, and time demands patience. " Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain." [2] The impatience of preachers is one cause of the constant changes in the ministry and the consequent short and inefficacious pastorates. A young man once called upon me to ask my help in finding a new pastorate. To my question why he had left his last one, he replied, " The town of was nearer hell on earth than any place I ever saw."
" And what," said I, " is a minister for, except to change a place that is like hell on earth to one as near as possible to a heaven on earth? " He could give me no answer. Here was lamentable lack both of courage and of patience. When I went into the ministry my father gave me this counsel: " It is a principle in mechanics that if an object is at one point, and you wish to carry it to another point, you must carry it through all the intermediate points. That is equally true in morals. If your congregation is at one point, and you wish to take them to another point, do not try to carry them across; carry them one point at a time." This is the principle of patience concretely applied; it will prevent the progressive preacher from breaking his connections with [1] Mark 4:26-2
[2] James 5:7. his congregation in a too great eagerness to advance them. If a conservative preacher finds himself the pastor of a progressive church, or a progressive preacher finds himself the pastor of a conservative church, he should not seek a change. Let him stay where he is and attempt, one step at a time, to convert them to his better way of thinking. It is a mistake to suppose that honesty requires any minister to avow all his beliefs at once, regardless of the effect of his avowal on his auditors. [1] It is a still greater mistake to suppose that he must proclaim his dissent from his church and then depart from it. No modern preacher, however radical, differs more fundamentally from his church than did Jesus from the Judaism of his time, or Paul from the synagogues, or Luther from the Roman Catholic Church. But Christ remained in the Jewish Church until it excommunicated him, and Paul preached in the synagogues until he was driven out, and Luther remained a Roman Catholic until the Roman Catholic Church disowned him. These are good examples for dissidents to follow in our time. If all radical preachers go into radical congregations and preach radicalism, and all conservative preachers go into conservative congregations and preach conservatism, the divisions in the Church of Christ are made deeper and wider, and progress in the Church of Christ becomes impossible. Candor, courage, [1] " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. consideration, hopefulness, and patience constitute perhaps a not too common combination of qualities; but they are essential to the highest and more enduring efficiency in the Christian ministry.
What courses of study shall a minister pursue to develop the qualifications and increase the equipment for his work? Assuming that he has graduated from a theological seminary, has acquired there New Testament Greek, some knowledge of the Hebrew, such an acquaintance with historical theology as will prevent him from mistaking old errors in a new dress for new discoveries, such a knowledge of the ecclesiastical machinery of his own church as will enable him to work understandingly and loyally in it, and such acquaintance with the English language as will make him reasonably successful if not a master in the use of it, what are the lifelong courses of study which he must pursue? They all seem to me to be reducible to three branches.
He must study human nature. The best literary material for such study is furnished by the great novelists, poets, and dramatists. They are the interpreters of life; and life in its essential elements is the same in all ages, under all conditions, and in all civilizations. But he should not merely read the great novelists, poets, and dramatists for entertainment; he should study them for the purpose of ascertaining what are the motives which actuate men, what the life which hides behind the masks they wear, what the real personality hidden beneath the conventional incognito. He must familiarize himself also with the conditions of modern life and of modern thought. He must know both the intellectual and the industrial life of his age, for it is to that life he is to apply the principles and precepts of Jesus Christ, it is of that life he is appointed to be a leader, it is that life which he has to guide toward the Kingdom of God. And he must study human nature sympathetically in the individual members of his parish. He must be a man among men, and must cultivate in himself the receptive habit of mind, the habit of listening and considering the views and sentiments of others. He must receive impressions from his people through the week, that he may impart impressions to them on Sunday.
He must study the Bible; because in no other literature will he find such an interpretation of the higher spiritual experiences of men, such an exposition of the divine remedies for the sins and sorrow which afflict mankind. He should remember, too, that there is a great difference between studying the Bible and studying the commentaries on the Bible.
He who can get back to the Bible itself, who can apprehend the social and ethical principles which underlie the Old Testament jurisprudence, and which are expounded and applied to their own times by the Hebrew prophets, who can understand the great principles of individual life which find expression in the precepts of Jesus Christ, and interpretation in the philosophy of Paul and of John, and then can apply those moral and spiritual and those social and individual principles to the problems of our own time, will always be an original preacher. But more important than his study either of human nature or of the Bible is his cultivation of acquaintance with God. He must learn to look, in the events occurring in his own generation, for the God who is as truly in the history of America to-day as he was in the history of Palestine in the olden times.
Christ denounced the Pharisees because they could not discern the signs of the times. The prophet of to-day must perceive what God is doing in the world to-day if he would cooperate with God. But it is not only or chiefly in events that he is to seek for the Great Companion, - he must seek for him in the quiet of his own soul. Some one has well said that studying is searching for new truth, meditating is dwelling with familiar truth. The minister must find time not only to study but to meditate, not only to do and to think, but also to listen. To the lover of literature the most fruitful hours are not those spent with his books of reference about him, digging for knowledge as for a hid treasure; they are those spent in the quiet of the library, or the greater quiet of the forest, in the summer time, with Browning or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Tennyson or Whittier in hand. We read for ten or fifteen minutes, then the book drops into our lap, and we begin to think the author’s thoughts, to dream his dream, to see his visions. These hours in which we simply listen to what the men of genius have to say, - are they not the most fruitful hours of our life? The most sacred hours with nature are not those in which with spade or hoe we are digging, the better to cultivate fruits or flowers, nor those in which with hammer we break the rocks, or with magnifying glass we examine the flowers, to learn the secrets which nature has written in her book. Some day in June we lie down on the grass and simply take what nature has to give us. The squirrel runs up the tree and looks at us; the robin hops along, peeps at us, utters a little note, picks up his breakfast, and flies away again; the cricket shows himself in the grass close by, and chirps a cheerful note to us. We are not studying, we are scarcely thinking, we are simply listening. And we are learning more from nature then than when we are striving to wrest her secrets from her. As we listen to what great men have to say to us, and to what nature has to say to us, so may we listen in silence and solitude to what God has to say to us. Savonarola is reported to have said, " We are too busy praying ever to listen to God."
There is danger in our time that we of the Christian ministry, in this strenuous and eager life, shall be so busy working for God that we reserve little time to pray to him and no time to listen to him. The best hours, the most fruitful hours, the hours fullest of inspiration for future service are those in which our only utterance is, " Speak, Lord; thy servant is listening," and the only message we receive is, " Be still, and know that I am God." * The busier the minister is, the more exacting his parish, the more multifarious his duties, the more important is it that he keep sacred from every interruption, every call, whether of pleasure or of duty, this quiet hour.
[1] 1 Samuel 3:9; Psalms 46:10.