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 Cornell University Library 
 BV4211 .G81 
 
 Preacher and his place : the Lyman Beech 
 
 3 1924 032 335 790 
 olin 
 
Cornell University 
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 http://archive.org/cletails/cu31924032335790 
 
THE PREACHER AND 
 HIS PLACE 
 
■.^/ tl 
 
 THE PREACHER AND 
 HIS PLACE 
 
 THE LYMAN BEECHER LECTURES ON PREACH- 
 ING, DELIVERED AT YALE UNIVERSITY 
 IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY, ,Sgs 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. DAVID H. GREER, D.D. 
 
 RECTOR OF ST, BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 189s 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 By Charles Scribnek's Sons. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 T N looking over the Lectures which are 
 contained in this Volume, with a view 
 to their publication, I was strongly tempted 
 to recast them. Their style, as will be 
 seen, is that of direct address, which for 
 those who heard them was perhaps the 
 most appropriate, but for those who may 
 read them, it is not, to say the least, such 
 as I should choose. For this reason, there- 
 fore, I was disposed to change, not their 
 substance, but their form. I soon found, 
 however, that the one involved the other, 
 and that it was not easy, if indeed 
 possible, to change the phrasing of 
 the thought without changing also the 
 thought; and that was something which 
 I felt I had no right to do ; neither had I 
 
2 PREFACE 
 
 the desire to do it. The Lectures, there- 
 fore, are printed just as they were deliv- 
 ered, in the hope that if they were of 
 any value to the hearer, they may prove 
 to be not altogether valueless to the 
 reader, in helping him to determine the 
 distinctive place and work of the Chris- 
 tian minister in the economy of Modern 
 Life. 
 
 DAVID H. GEEER. 
 
 St. Baktholomew's Day, 
 August 24, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 » 
 
 Page 
 
 The Preacher and the Past .... 7 
 
 The Preacher and the Present ... 39 
 
 The Preacher and his Message ... 71 
 
 The Preacher and other Messages . 105 
 The Preacher preparing his Message : 
 
 General Preparation 137 
 
 The Preacher preparing his Message : 
 
 Special Preparation 169 
 
 The Preacher and the Parish . . . 203 
 The Preacher making the most of Him- 
 self 237 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 
 
 TN accepting the invitation with which I 
 had been honored to deliver this course 
 of lectures, I felt very keenly the embar- 
 rassment of putting myself in the position 
 of the last speaker upon a subject which 
 had been already very fully traversed, and 
 in regard to which it would not be easy 
 for me to say anything that had not been 
 more ably and better said before. There 
 was, however, this mitigating and reliev- 
 ing circumstance : when the other lec- 
 turers spoke and delivered themselves of 
 their burden, I was not in the audience, 
 and therefore did not hear them ; neither, 
 although their deliverances have been pub- 
 lished, have I had the privilege (except to 
 a very limited extent) of reading them in 
 print. While, therefore, I may repeat in 
 part what has been already said, I shall be 
 ignorant of it, and the ignorance will give 
 me boldness, or at least freedom in my 
 
8 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 utterance, and will help to relieve the 
 embarrassment which otherwise I might 
 feel. 
 
 But there was another embarrassment, 
 proceeding, not from the sameness, but 
 from the bigness of the subject. For it is 
 a big subject. It is almost boundless in its 
 bigness, and would be easier to treat if it 
 were smaller. In my early schoolboy days 
 it was, I remember, one of my appointed 
 and somewhat dreaded duties to furnish an 
 essay every week upon a topic of my own 
 selection. In the attempt to discharge 
 that constantly recurring and not welcome 
 task, I soon came to the end of all tlrink- 
 able topics, and did riot know what topic 
 to treat and write on next. Presently, 
 however, I hit upon a device which seemed 
 at the time both felicitous and fruit- 
 ful. I tried to find a topic so generous 
 and large that it might be continued from 
 week to week without any fear of exhaust- 
 ing it; and I can recall now with what 
 lively satisfaction I coined the fruitful 
 phrase, as then it seemed, and selected 
 for my theme, " The World and its 
 Contents." That lively satisfaction, how- 
 ever, did not long live, and I soon dis- 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 9 
 
 covered, what in other ways, and with 
 increasing fulness of realization, I have 
 been discovering ever since, and not always 
 to my comfort, that it is " the narrow chim- 
 ney which makes the best draught," and 
 that to have a theme too big is tantamount 
 almost to having no theme at all. 
 
 Something like that is the feeling which 
 I experience now. My theme is too big. 
 There seems to be no end and no begin- 
 ning to it. It is an all-ou1>of-doors theme, 
 like " The World and its Contents," or the 
 universe and its contents. For the work 
 of the ministry touches and includes with- 
 in its compass all sorts and conditions 
 of things, in the heavens above, and the 
 earth beneath, and the waters under the 
 earth, and in the soul of man. It deals with 
 things human ; it deals with tilings divine ; 
 things physical, things metaphysical ; things 
 natural, things supernatural ; mental, moral 
 and spiritual. In at least the form of the 
 speech, if not the speech itself, which Ruth 
 addressed to Naomi, it says to all these 
 things : " Where you go I go ; where you 
 lodge I lodge ; your interests are my 
 interests ; your work is my work ; your 
 truth is my truth, and your God is my 
 
10 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 God." The subject, I say, is very big, 
 and with the consciousness that I can start 
 ahnost anywhere, and proceed in almost 
 any direction, it is difficult to start and 
 proceed. I must, however, start some- 
 where, and perhaps I can do no better than 
 to try to put myself in your place, young 
 gentlemen, and start where you start, or 
 where presently you will start, when you 
 have taken your ordination vows and en- 
 tered upon your work. And where, then, 
 shall you start? And how, then, shall 
 you start ? And what, then, shall you be ? 
 Ministers of Jesus Christ going forth to 
 preach to the world the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, and to build up in the world the 
 Kingdom of Jesus Cluist, and to reconcile 
 the world tluough Jesus Clirist to God? 
 Yes, that will be your work; that, I am 
 sure, will be your ambition: and a great 
 and noble work, and worthy ambition it is. 
 But in the doing of that work, and in 
 the fulfilling of that ambition, there is, 
 or there will be, a limitation upon you, 
 voluntarily imposed, to be sure, but still 
 a limitation; namely, a theological limita- 
 tion. You will be bound by forms of 
 faith, and to those forms of faith — as the 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE FAST 11 
 
 religious organization which equips and 
 sends you forth has received them — you 
 must be loyal and true. That, I say, is 
 the way in which you will presently start, 
 with the self-imposed limitation of a theo- 
 logical subscription upon you. 
 
 Let me, then, start as you start, and in 
 this lecture consider what that limitation 
 is ; what it means and implies ; and what, 
 in my judgment, it does not mean and 
 imply. That is a question which the 
 Cliristian world to-day seems to be very 
 seriously considering. How can the new 
 knowledge which has been brought to light 
 by the spirit of modern inquiry be recon- 
 ciled with the old knowledge which is 
 reflected or expressed in the early forms 
 of faith ? Can it be reconciled at all ? Is 
 any reconciliation possible ? Is the Clu'is- 
 tian minister free to accept that new knowl- 
 edge, or free even to consider it? Is he, 
 with reference to it, an independent man ? 
 Some persons maintain that he is not-, and 
 that while the student of science is free, 
 and the student of philosophy is free, the 
 student of theology is not free, or not free 
 at least when he has been ordained and 
 become a Christian minister. Then, it is 
 
12 TEE PREACHER AND hi-" eLACE 
 
 said, he is fettered and bound, and must 
 teach, not what he thinks, but what the 
 Church which has ordained him thinks. 
 And tliat is true. But it is not, in my 
 judgment, true in the way in which it is 
 sometimes said to be true. In what sense, 
 then, is it true, and in what sense is it not 
 true? It is only right and proper that, 
 standing as you do upon tlie tlireshold 
 of the Christian ministry, you should con- 
 sider and settle that question, and tliat 
 before you go to preach the Gospel to the 
 present, you should try to ascertain what 
 your relation is to the past, and to what 
 extent you are fettered and held in check 
 by the past, and your freedom of utter- 
 ance is impaired. That is the topic which 
 I will ask you to consider in this lecture. 
 The Preacher and the Past. Stated in 
 other words, the topic or the question is 
 this: "What is involved in a theological 
 subscription? What does it mean, and 
 what does it not mean? " 
 
 I remark in the first place, in attempting 
 to answer that question, that theology as 
 I apprehend it is not a stationary, but 
 a progressive and constantly advancing 
 science. It is different now in some re- 
 
THE \SCBER AND THE PAST 13 
 
 spects from what it formerly was ; and it 
 is not now in all respects what it will be 
 hereafter. Truth itself, subjectively con- 
 sidered, is of course a fixed and definite 
 quantity. It is always one and the same. 
 But the knowledge of truth is not. That 
 is a yariable quantity, and is at one time 
 greater and more than at another time. 
 And this applies to all truth and all knowl- 
 edge ; whether it be the knowledge of the 
 truth of God in nature, or whether it be 
 the knowledge of the truth of God in 
 Christ. And just as the knowledge of the 
 truth concerning electricity, or heat, or 
 light, or gravity, is greater now than it was, 
 so is the knowledge of the truth concern- 
 ing Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Himself is 
 of course the same ; and the truth that we 
 find in Him now has been in Him always. 
 It has been always in Him, but not always 
 found in Him. It has been always true, 
 but not always known, or it has been 
 known only in part, and as it will be here- 
 after known only in part. For while there 
 may come a time when we can say we 
 know all the truth in things, there never 
 will come a time when we can say we knoAv 
 all the truth in Him, who was before all 
 
14 TBE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 things, by whom all things were made, 
 and without whom was not anything made 
 that was made. Life in Him is limitless. 
 Truth in Him is boundless. We do not 
 know it all ; we cannot know it all ; and 
 when we say we do, or when we draw the 
 line at the fourth or the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, and say that the knowledge of Clirist 
 was then complete and final, with nothing 
 more to be added, we are to that extent 
 denying Christ, or denying the God in 
 Chi-ist ; and the faith wMoh believes that 
 any doctrinal statement has set Him fully 
 forth, is faith in Christ as man. It may 
 call itself evangelical; it may call itself 
 catholic : it often does ; but it is neither. 
 It is an implicit negation of the evan- 
 gelical faith, and militates against that 
 catholic creed of the Church which it seeks 
 to uphold and maintain. That creed de- 
 clares that Christ was more than man, was 
 God; and God, the Infinite, the Absolute, 
 the Eternal, is always beyond the limit of 
 human apprehension, is always more than 
 the knowledge, be it ever so much, of man. 
 When we say that something is boundless, 
 we must not proceed to bound it. If we do, 
 we deny what we affirm, and destroy what 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 15 
 
 we build. And when we declare in one 
 breath that Jesus Clirist was God, or God 
 manifest in the flesh, and then in the next 
 declare that all that is in Him is known, 
 we deny what we afBrm, and destroy what 
 we build, and declare that He was not 
 God. 
 
 We read of certain persons who in 
 Christ's day tried to shut up the Kingdom 
 of Heaven against those who were seeking 
 to enter. The effort was not successful, 
 nor will it ever be. The kingdom of man 
 we may shut up; we may traverse it all 
 and say, " It goes no further than this ; 
 and that here is where it stops." But the 
 Kingdom of God we cannot shut up, and 
 just because it is the Kingdom of God. 
 There are treasures in it which we never 
 find ; and heights we never scale ; and 
 depths we never fathom ; and regions we 
 never explore. It is always open beyond 
 us, and its gates we can never close. And 
 if in Jesus Christ we see a King who 
 is God, and in His truth a kingdom which 
 is the Kingdom of God, we cannot say, 
 " Thus far and no farther does it go." We 
 cannot shut it up ; or if we do, we shut 
 it up as a Kingdom of God, and make it 
 
16 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 something less. Because, therefore, we 
 believe that Jesus Clirist was God, with 
 the Infinite in Him, we also believe that no 
 doctrinal symbol of the Christian Church 
 in the past is or can be the full expression 
 of Him. It may be true as far as it goes, 
 but it does not go far enough. It does 
 not go as far as He goes. There is in 
 Christ something more than what it sees 
 and states. That something more in Him 
 has been gradually coming out, with fuller 
 and larger disclosure to the apprehension 
 of man. We cannot shut it up, nor pre- 
 vent it from coming out. Men have tried 
 to prevent it, and time and again have 
 said, " Now we know it all ; the form of 
 Clu'istian doctrine is now complete, final, 
 there is nothing more to be added ; — there 
 is nothing more to be said, and contro- 
 versy is ended." But it was not ended ; 
 and it is not ended yet. It has been going 
 on ; it is going on, and it will hereafter go 
 on. Nothing has stopped it ; nothing can 
 stop it ; and more and more will the truth 
 of God in Jesus Cln-ist be apprehended 
 by man. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. So far as 
 a creed or doctrine is a statement of fact. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 17 
 
 such, for instance, as the Apostles' Creed, it 
 is of course filial. Fact is fact, and always 
 remains fact; and the Creed which ex- 
 presses fact in connection with Jesus Christ, 
 as the fact of His birth, for instance, or life, 
 or death, or resurrection, is to that extent 
 stationary. But the interpretation of the 
 fact, or of the significance of the fact, that 
 is not stationary. One age apprehends it 
 in part, and another age apprehends it in 
 part. The different apprehensions are not 
 contradictory, bu.t supplemental. Each age 
 looks from its own point of view, and 
 thi-ough the medium of its own atmosphere, 
 and sees something new in Christ, — not 
 something new in fact, but something new 
 in the meaning and application of fact. It 
 is vision as it were from a valley, with 
 mountains steep and high, sloping up on 
 either side towards the truth of God in 
 Christ ; and it is only the one little section 
 of the great and broad expanse imme- 
 diately above that any one age can see, 
 that any one man can see, or any one set 
 of men. St. Paul looks up from the val- 
 ley with clear and open eye, and the doc- 
 trine of faith is passing. " By faith a man 
 is justified without the deeds of the law." 
 
18 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 St. James looks up from the valley with 
 an eye equally clear, and the doctrine of 
 works is passing. "By works a man is 
 justified, and not by faith only." St. Jolm 
 at the close of the century, when Jerusa- 
 lem has fallen, and the stroke of doom is 
 impending over imperial Rome, — St. John 
 looks up from the valley, and the doctrine 
 of judgment is passing. 
 
 So throughout all the subsequent his- 
 tory of the Cliristian Church. The various 
 observations which at times it has made of 
 the truth of God in Christ we may and do 
 accept; but not as the observation of all 
 tlie truth in Clirist. They are partial, frag- 
 mentary, limited, and do not express it all, 
 and cannot express it all. They are good 
 as far as they go, and true as far as they 
 go ; but they do not go to the end of the 
 truth of God in Christ. There is no end. 
 It is endless ; it is boundless ; it is infinite ; 
 and more and more to every age it has 
 been coming out, and more and more to 
 every age it has been unfolding itself. 
 
 What then should be the attitude of the 
 person who believes in the gradual unfold- 
 ing of the truth of God in Clirist, towards 
 an ancient doctrinal symbol ? He may ac- 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 19 
 
 cept it fully, unequivocally, and without 
 any reserve; and if he accepts it at all, 
 he ought, I think, to accept it in that man- 
 ner. But he does not and cannot accept 
 it as a statement wMch is exhaustive. He 
 does not and cannot subscribe to it as some- 
 thing complete and final. What then does 
 he do ? What ought he to do ? Ought he 
 to repudiate and reject it ? No, not neces- 
 sarily. Ought he to try to change and 
 revise it? No, not necessarily. Ought 
 he to try by some clever process of inter- 
 pretation to read into it a meaning — some 
 new and modern meaning — which it does 
 not legitimately bear, and was not intended 
 to bear, thus putting new wine into old 
 bottles, and new cloths into old garments, 
 and making patchwork of them ? No ; 
 that, it seems to me, is not ingenuous. I 
 will not say it is not honest, for honesty 
 applies to motive, and the motive in such 
 a case is, I am sure, good ; but the method 
 I think is bad. What then does he do, or 
 what should he do ? He should ascertain 
 in full or in part the purpose for which 
 that doctrinal symbol was originally fash- 
 ioned and drawn, and then proceed to in- 
 quire whether he can indorse and approve 
 
20 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 that purpose. If he can, then, although 
 the symbol in its outward form may be 
 faulty, he is not called upon, in my judg- 
 ment, to reject it, nor even to change and 
 revise it. Let me illustrate : and as I am 
 more familiar with the doctrinal symbols 
 of the Episcopal Church, let me find my 
 illustration there •, and because of their ad- 
 mitted faultiness in some respects let me 
 find it in those doctrinal symbols which 
 are usually designated as the " Thirty-nine 
 ^\_rticles," and which are in many respects 
 like the other doctrinal symbols of the 
 [leriod of the Reformation. 
 
 Those Articles, as every student knows, 
 were put forth by their framers as a strong 
 and vigorous protest against many of the 
 teacliings supposed to be erroneous of the 
 Church of Rome. At the time of the Re- 
 formation those teachings had been re- 
 nounced and tlu'own off by the Anglican 
 Church ; and in order to keep them from 
 coming back into her fold again, those doc- 
 trinal barriers were erected. That is the 
 way in which they came to be. That is 
 their meaning and purpose. Now, as long 
 as we sympathize with that purpose, and 
 believe that it is our duty to protest against 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 21 
 
 those doctrinal teachings of the Church of 
 Rome, it would be both unwise and unne- 
 cessary to remove those doctrinal barriers. 
 And yet, as is generally admitted with 
 reference to other matters which did not 
 enter into and constitute a part of the con- 
 troversy of that time, those Articles are 
 very imperfect. 
 
 The Sixth Article says, for instance, 
 " Holy Scripture consists of all those books 
 of whose authority there was never any 
 doubt in the Church." And then it pro- 
 ceeds to enumerate the sixty-six books 
 which we have in our Bible to-day. Now, 
 modern scholarship has shown it to be 
 a fact, which was not known then, but 
 which now no one dreams of disputing, 
 that the authority of some of those books 
 in our Bible was for a long time doubted 
 in the Christian Church, and that the doubt 
 was not wholly removed until the fourth or 
 fifth century. If, therefore, we accept the 
 first part of the Article, which says that 
 " Holy Scripture consists of all those books 
 of whose authority there was never any 
 doubt in the Church," we cannot without 
 stultifying ourselves accept the second part 
 of the Article, which says that the Bible 
 
22 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 consists of the sixty-six books which are in 
 it now. But wliat was the purpose of the 
 Article ? To determine the scope and limit 
 of the Scriptural canon? Yes; but at the 
 same time to protest against the attempted 
 introduction into our Protestant Bible of 
 those Apocryphal books, whose authority 
 was coming to be recognized by the Roman 
 Catholic Church, and which to-day are 
 found in the Roman Catholic Bible. With 
 that purpose we sympathize ; at least I sup- 
 pose we do, and therefore we do not wish 
 to have the Article removed wliich de- 
 clares and expresses that purpose. Faulty 
 though it is, we can and do indorse it. 
 But let us not, when we know that it was 
 intended for one thing, apply it to some- 
 thing else which did not come into the 
 range of the purpose for which the Article 
 was framed. 
 
 And so with reference to other doctrinal 
 symbols which we have inherited from the 
 past. Some of them, to be sure, like the 
 early creeds of Christendom, are on a much 
 higher plane than those which I have been 
 considering. They are Ecumenical sym- 
 bols, and received the sanction of Clnisten- 
 dom at large ; wHle these are but provincial 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 23 
 
 symbols, an<l received the sanction of only 
 a part of Christendom. But the method 
 of interpretation is the same in both cases. 
 We must not try to evade them, or twist 
 them, or pervert them, or to make them 
 yield a meaning they were not intended to 
 yield. Our aim should be to ascertain the 
 purpose for which they were framed, and 
 our indorsement of them should be simply 
 an indorsement of that purpose, and should 
 not be made to apply to purposes to which 
 the symbols themselves were not intended 
 to apply. 
 
 And what is true of the doctrines of the 
 past is true also of the practices of the 
 past. Let me illustrate further : In an age 
 when force and violence were more prev- 
 alent in human society than they are now, 
 there were men in the Christian Church, 
 brave and strong, who banded themselves 
 together into a society which taught and 
 enforced the doctrine of unquestioning and 
 implicit obedience to authority. Monasti- 
 cism in its day was good, was needed. It 
 did a righteous work, and that righteous 
 work we indorse ; but we will not go back 
 to monasticism. At a time when the lax- 
 ity of public sentiment had almost legal- 
 
24 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 ized and sanctioned a kind of practical 
 polygamy and the most hideous and re- 
 volting excesses, and had produced in 
 society, and to some extent in the Christian 
 Chui-ch and ministry, an unbridled moral 
 corruption, there were men in the Christian 
 Church, brave and strong, who took upon 
 themselves before God a vow of perpetual 
 chastity. Celibacy in its day was good, 
 was needed. It did a righteous work, and 
 that righteous work we indorse; but we 
 will not go back to celibacy. At a time 
 when the Catholic Church for its own mer- 
 cenary purposes was trafficking in good 
 works and selling out indulgences to the 
 people, it was not untimely or unneedful 
 that a man of strong individuality, like 
 John Calvin, should arise, making promi- 
 nent again before everything else the doc- 
 trine of the divine decrees, declaring that 
 the salvation of men was entirely inde- 
 pendent of works, their own or others', and 
 was determined solely by the sovereign 
 purpose and predestination of God; thus 
 cutting up the Romish doctrine of indul- 
 gences by the roots. Calvinism in its day 
 was good, was needed. It did a righteous 
 work, and that righteous work we indorse. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 25 
 
 But, it is not necessary, some of us think, 
 to go back to Calvinism. 
 
 And so I say witli reference to other be- 
 liefs and practices of the Christian Church 
 in the past. In order to understand them 
 we must know something of what they 
 were trying to do, and of the strength and 
 character of the inimical forces against 
 which they were fighting. Who can under- 
 stand the tactics of a military commander 
 without understanding sometlnng of the 
 ground on which he is fighting, and of the 
 difficulties which he encounters, and of 
 the army arrayed against him ? We judge 
 of his conduct, not in the abstract, and up 
 as it were in the air, but down on the 
 ground, the earth, and with reference to 
 the particular exigencies of that particular 
 time and that particular fight. Was it 
 right and good in its aim ? Was it right 
 and good in its purpose? Did the com- 
 mander do the best he could with the 
 forces at his command ? Perhaps at another 
 time, and in another conflict, and facing a 
 different foe, he would proceed in a differ- 
 ent manner, would occupy a more advan- 
 tageous position on the field of battle, and 
 would have besides a better equipment to 
 
26 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 fight with. So, too, with reference to reli- 
 gious beliefs and symbols which have come 
 to us from the past. They are the symbols, 
 many of them, of an earnest theological 
 warfare on the part of men who were strug- 
 gling to apprehend and defend the truth. 
 They are the weapons with which they 
 fought, with which they went out — those 
 old sturdy and doughty defenders of the 
 Christian faith — to meet and do battle 
 with the enemy ; and they fought hard 
 and well. They gave no quarter : they 
 made no compromise. They fought to kill 
 and destroy, and they did kill and destroy ; 
 and many a rampart have they taken, and 
 many a stronghold razed. And we to-day 
 are living purer and freer lives, and breath- 
 ing larger liberties, because of what they 
 did, and of the way in which they fought. 
 Surely they could not have fought more 
 bravely or more truly than they did. God 
 give us the courage wlrich they had ! But 
 surel)', too, if they were living now, they 
 would fight in a somewhat different man- 
 ner. They would find, I believe, different 
 and, in some respects, better weapons to 
 fight with : a wider critical knowledge ; a 
 better critical equipment; a finer critical 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 27 
 
 insight ; a larger field to move on ; and dif- 
 ferent foes to encounter. But did they 
 do, not what was ideally best, but what 
 was best in the circumstances ? Was their 
 aim good, and their purpose ? Do we sym- 
 pathise with that purpose? Do we think 
 it right and true ? If we do, then we ac- 
 cept the doctrinal form or symbol in which 
 it is expressed, " Not as a barrier in the 
 way of progress, but as a badge of victory 
 in some hard-fought battle of the past." 
 We are not called upon, as another has 
 aptly phrased it, to commit " retrospective 
 suicide " in our loyalty to the present, 
 neither are we called upon to commit pre- 
 sent suicide in our loyalty to the past. 
 
 There are two things which the man who 
 looks upon the Christian religion in the 
 light of its historical development will not 
 be likely to do, two mistakes which he will 
 not be likely to make. First, he will not 
 lightly throw off the past, but will stand 
 upon, and believe in, and be strengthened 
 by the past ; saying, like Dante's pilgrim, 
 as he faces the unknown future, " I jour- 
 neyed on o'er that lonely steep, the hinder 
 foot still firmer ; " he will not lightly 
 throw off the past. And, second, he will 
 
28 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 not be slavishly bound by it. He will look 
 upon the present, not as detached from, 
 but as growing out of, the past, as the man 
 grows from the cliild ; and he will go for- 
 ward into the future, not fettered, but 
 equipped ; believing, not in a God of con- 
 fusion, but in a God of order, who has been 
 working in the past, is working in the pre- 
 sent, and will continue to work in the 
 future ; and, like a well-instructed scribe, 
 he will bring forth from the inexhaustible 
 treasure-house of the Christian religion 
 things both new and old. 
 
 The Christian Church has not yet appre- 
 hended all the truth that is in Jesus Christ, 
 for, as I have said, it is an infinite quan- 
 tity, and embodied in an infinite person- 
 ality, and she must continue to search for 
 the truth ; and when she stops the search 
 she will suffer loss in power, and her vital- 
 ity will wane. " I think," says John Locke, 
 in writing to his young friend Anthony 
 Collins, " that I am now beginning to see 
 the truth in full and perfect form, and that 
 I shall not have to search for it much 
 longer. But this," he adds significantly, 
 " is at the end of my days." Ah, yes, the 
 old philosopher's life was waning and pass- 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 29 
 
 ing away, and this was the sign of it ; ceas- 
 ing to search, and therefore beginning to 
 die. So will it be with the Christian Church. 
 Ceasing to search for the truth of God in 
 Jesus Christ, her redeeming power in 
 society and her quickening force will fail ; 
 and when she thinks she has found it all, 
 she will begin to die ! But she will not 
 die. She will live. And, searching more 
 and more for the truth of God in Christ, 
 she will more abundantly live ; will more 
 fruitful and vigorous become ; more beau- 
 tiful in her form, more helpful in her 
 worship, more useful in her work, more 
 attractive in her teaching, more compre- 
 hensive in her scope. 
 
 Christian theology then, young gentle- 
 men, is not stationary, but progressive. It 
 is the effort of men, and the successful 
 effort, to interpret Jesus Christ ; and that 
 interpretation, or those interpretations, 
 without reserve we accept; but not, of 
 course, as fully interpreting Jesus Christ. 
 We do not accept them in that way. We 
 cannot accept them in that way. To ac- 
 cept them in that way is to reject them. It 
 is to make Christ less than what they try 
 to express, and what they do express. It 
 
30 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 is to make Him limited and finite, wliich 
 they declare He is not ; and in declaring 
 that He is not finite, they declare them- 
 selves to be but the partial expression of 
 Him. Then, again, those doctrinal state- 
 ments are, after all, but the words of man ; 
 and the strongest words of man, and the 
 finest words of man, cannot always inter- 
 pret even man himself, and have the effect 
 often, not to express, but to stifle what is 
 best and deepest in him. Have you never 
 known what it is to listen to the strains of 
 some magnificent music, which like an in- 
 spiration of heaven seemed to come and 
 touch so sweetly, yet so strongly, your 
 answering heart and soul, and to lift you 
 up for a moment as into the very joy of 
 the presence of God ? And then, A\hen you 
 dared not speak or whisper, or scarcely 
 breathe, lest the spell should be broken, 
 some little critical, superficial soul has 
 come bustling up into your presence with 
 his chattering comment, and extinguished 
 the dream which was on your soul, and 
 driven its glory awa}'. The music — that 
 A^-as your word, wliich best expressed and 
 phrased what you thought and felt, or what 
 you longed to be, and all others seemed out 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 31 
 
 of place. The artist stands with brush and 
 palette, day after day, before his canvas, 
 trying so hard to speak. He says nothing ; 
 his lips are dumb ; there is silence around 
 him, and lie would not have it disturbed. 
 Yet the deep, unuttered thoughts which are 
 buried in Ins soul, with the best possible 
 expression, and in the most appropriate 
 manner, are gradually coming out; and 
 then, when his work is done, he points to 
 the finished picture and says, " There, that 
 is what I think ; that is what I feel ; that 
 is what I believe ; that is my creed ,- and 
 all the thought, and beauty, and life of my 
 soul is there, as no language of mine can 
 express it ! " 
 
 An English traveller has told us that 
 once in the course of his life he witnessed a 
 storm at sea, so magnificent in its propor- 
 tions, so sublime in its forms and effects, 
 that he was lifted up out of himself, and 
 lost all sense of himself. And, as the 
 winds struck the waters and lifted them up 
 into mountains, and the thunders uttered 
 their voice, and the lightnings forked and 
 flashed and -wrapped the clouds in flame, 
 and all nature reeled in the shock, there 
 was borne in upon his soul such a sense of 
 
32 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 the greatness, the glory, the awful majesty 
 of God, as no language of man could ex- 
 press it, and whose only fit and proper 
 word — symbol, doctrine, if you please — ■ 
 was the storm. 
 
 The words of man, I say, cannot inter- 
 ]Dret even all that is in man. How much 
 less, then, can they interpret all that there 
 is in Jesus Christ ! And, standing before 
 the picture of His great and wonderful life, 
 as on the Gospel pages, — in the words of 
 man, to be sure, but in the words of man 
 so fitly chosen that they seem to be not 
 the words of man, but part of the picture 
 itself, — as on the Gospel pages that picture 
 is portrayed, we are made to feel that there 
 is a beauty, and a power, and a majesty 
 there which no other words of man, how- 
 ever emotionally fine, or philosopliically 
 true, or metaphysically subtle, can express. 
 Standing there, we seem, not by conscious 
 effort, but instinctively, involuntarily, to 
 be carried far above all formal definitions 
 of Him, and Christ Himself is the Word 
 which best expresses what we think and 
 feel, and what we most truly believe. For 
 practical working purposes we have, indeed, 
 and must have, our definitions of Him, 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PAST 33 
 
 and must try to put in forms of speech 
 our thoughts and opinions about Him. 
 Some in the past have done it ; and what 
 they have done we accept, and are grateful 
 to them for it. We could not if we would 
 repudiate their work ; and we do not wish 
 to repudiate it, nor even indeed to change 
 it. It is theirs ; it is ours ; and we hold it 
 as the heritage received from them; and 
 we can no more reject it than to-day can 
 reject yesterday, or to-morrow reject to- 
 day ; and yet to-day is more than yesterday, 
 and to-morrow will be more than to-day. 
 
 As the men of the past contributed some- 
 thing, contributed much, to the knowledge 
 of the truth of God in Christ, so must the 
 men of the present contribute some further 
 knowledge which will be added to theirs, 
 as the knowledge contributed by the men 
 of the future will be added to ours. The 
 beautiful dream of Coleridge may then 
 perhaps be realized, and the Christian 
 Church may become like a great univer- 
 sity school, in which all the members and 
 pupils, having presented their admission 
 contracts, will walk at large and at liberty, 
 alone now, and now in groups, meditating 
 and conversing, gladly listening to some 
 
 3 
 
34 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 elder disciple whom the spirit of God has 
 taught, or lovingly communing with some 
 class fellow, while the common concern 
 will be peace, order, courtesy, mutual for- 
 bearance, reverence, patience, kindness, 
 charity, love for each and all, and the com- 
 mon devotion of all and each to their 
 common Master and Lord. Yes, their 
 common Master and Lord, who, as repre- 
 sented and portrayed on the pages of the 
 Gospel story, is always greater and more 
 than any doctrinal statement that can be 
 framed about Him. 
 
 That, as Christian preachers to-day, 
 should be your relation to the past. Grate- 
 ful and glad for what of Jesus Cln-ist it 
 has shown you, but more grateful and 
 more glad because He is more than Avhat 
 it has shown you. Who always has been 
 more, and always will be more. Who, 
 from the very beginning of the history of 
 the Cluistian Church down to the present 
 time, has bjen unfolding Himself in many 
 ways and forms to the consciousness of 
 the Cliristian Church. And, "From the 
 vision and voice at Damascus," if I may 
 bring this lecture to its close as one has 
 closed the introduction to his book, " From 
 
TEE PREACHER AND THE PAST 35 
 
 the vision and voice at Damascus, and tlie 
 tremendous words uttered in the midst of 
 the Seven Golden Candlesticks over the 
 Greek Sea, the Mystical Presence still 
 glides and shines. Gleams and echoes of 
 it linger on the Roman roadside, by the 
 Domine Quo Vadis, on the Hall of the 
 Round Table at Winchester ; on the clear- 
 ing in the woodland where the Merciful 
 Knight drew rein before the Crucifix. 
 And again, and yet again it has returned, 
 a voice and a vision, to such as have at 
 any time believed they saw and heard it, 
 of whom some remain to this present, but 
 the greater part are fallen asleep." 
 
 The theme, then, young gentlemen, 
 which yotr are called to study and preach, 
 is an inexhaustible theme, for that theme 
 is Jesus Christ. And depths below depths 
 are in it ; and heights beyond heights are 
 in it, which have never been fathomed or 
 scaled, and which invite you to the attempt. 
 And, listening to the voices which are 
 sounding about you to-day, and which at 
 times seem so bewildering ; and consider- 
 ing with an open and a fearless mind all 
 the forms of thought which are pressing 
 upon you to-day, and which at times seem 
 
36 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 SO disturbing, yon will find, I am sure, at 
 last, that just so far indeed as those voices 
 and thoughts are true, they will simply 
 give or be some new points of view from 
 which to see new meanings and wonders 
 in Jesus Christ. 
 
 " Then stand before that fact, that Life and 
 Death 
 Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread ; 
 As though a star should open out, all sides 
 Grow the world on you." 
 
THE 
 PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 
 
THE 
 PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 
 
 T N the previous lecture we considered tlie 
 work of the preacher in its relation to 
 the past. Let us consider now his work in 
 its relation to the present, the society in 
 wMch he lives, and of which he forms a 
 part, and to wliich he is called to preach. 
 The physician who prescribes without an 
 adequate knowledge of the case for wliich 
 he prescribes will not prescribe well ; and 
 the preacher who preaches without an 
 understanding of the society to which 
 he preaches, its prevailing temper or dis- 
 temper, will not preach well. Before, 
 therefore, I can hope to tell you anything 
 about the method of your preaching to-day, 
 I must try to tell you something about 
 to-day. For it is to to-day, and not to 
 yesterday, that you will presently preach. 
 You must never forget that. And how can 
 you preach to to-day, unless you have some 
 knowledge of what to-day is? And what 
 
40 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 is it? How may it be described? To 
 answer such questions fully would be ex- 
 tremely difficult, if not impossible. Society 
 to-day is not simple in its composition, but 
 multiform and complex. The tendencies 
 in it are not only numerous, but various, 
 and often indeed contrary. They run in 
 different directions, and currents and ed- 
 dies are in it proceeding in different patlis. 
 That is what makes society to-day so inter- 
 esting. It has within it so much life; so 
 much of the exuberance of life; so much 
 of the heterogeneousness of life; and in 
 looking at or describing it, or in attempting 
 to describe it, one thinks of the way in 
 which the waters come down at Lodore. 
 It is not this or that, it is hoth this and that, 
 and never seems still or the same, but is 
 always moving, and changing, and rusliing, 
 and plunging, and dashing, 
 
 " Smiting and fighting, 
 A sight to delight in ; 
 Confounding, astounding, 
 And deafening the ear with its sound I " 
 
 I am not about to attempt, therefore, 
 anything so ambitious, or indeed so prepos- 
 terous, as a comprehensive study of mod- 
 ern society. That, I confess, is a task 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 41 
 
 beyond my ability. It is also beside my 
 purpose. I have no such generalizing 
 process (a process always dangerous, and 
 apt not to be true, because only partly 
 true), I have no such generalizing process 
 at present in my mind. I simply want you 
 to look at society to-day from the point of 
 view of the pulpit, and in its relation to the 
 preacher, or rather in its relation to the 
 message of the preacher, in order that you 
 may understand the better not only what 
 that message should be, but how to prepare 
 and preach it. 
 
 Looking, then, at society to-day in its re- 
 lation to the preacher, what do we find? 
 We find, in the first place, that it does not 
 care about preaching as much as society 
 yesterday did, or society the day before ; 
 and that while it may need it just as much, 
 it does not just as much think that it needs 
 it. Preaching has been hitherto a very 
 effective and much-appreciated factor in 
 the development of the social life, and has 
 helped very much to make it what at pres- 
 ent it is. "It was by a sermon," says an 
 English reviewer, " that the movement was 
 inaugurated which has since grown into 
 Christendom, and which is now by more 
 
42 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 silent though not less potent agencies visi- 
 bly overspreading the earth. Men went 
 forth preaching ' Jesus and the Resurrec- 
 tion ; ' and from their generation we date, 
 not our years only, but a new movement of 
 human society which is filling the world 
 with its pressures and its progresses still." 
 That was true of preaching once. Is it 
 true of preaching now? Is preaching 
 equally valuable and important now ? Does 
 it still have in the world an important 
 work to do, or has it become to-day an 
 anachronistic tiring, a something out of 
 date, a venerable institution which has 
 survived in form, but in form only, like a 
 rudiment which has lost its function, and 
 which in the vast, and varied, and more 
 highly developed economy of the modern 
 social life has no proper place ? 
 
 Tliis latter view of preaching is the view 
 of many. They do not care about it, or do 
 not care very much about it. Eloquent 
 preaching they care for, but chiefly be- 
 cause it is eloquent, and not because it is 
 preaching. And therefore they do not go, 
 or do not go very much, to the place where 
 preaching is done. Many, I know, do go ; 
 and many churches there are which are 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 43 
 
 always filled with earnest and interested 
 congregations ; but there are many more 
 which are not. Nor is it always the ser- 
 mon that constitutes the attraction in the 
 case of those who do go to church. The 
 Roman Catholic churches are as well filled 
 as the Protestant, and perhaps better, and 
 it is not the sermon that fills them. Neither 
 is it the sermon that always fills the 
 Protestant churches. Sometimes it is the 
 service, the music, the ritual, the worship, 
 the things which go before, which some of 
 you call "the preliminaries." Sometimes, 
 too, it is social convention that fills them, 
 and people often go to church because their 
 neighbors go, — their neighbors whom they 
 esteem, their neighbors whom they affect ; 
 and the religiousness which they exhibit, 
 or wliich they seem to exhibit, we find 
 when we come to analyze it, is not reli- 
 giousness, but fashionableness. "I have 
 often met with women," says the author of 
 the book, "Without Dogma" (and men, 
 too, he might have added), " to whom reli- 
 gion was simply an item of the toilet ; and 
 they dressed themselves in it, or in some 
 particular form of it, as seemed to suit their 
 style." That sounds severe ; but those of 
 
 to 
 
44 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 US who have had an opportunity in the 
 practical work of the ministry to mingle 
 much with the people who compose our 
 congregations know that there is truth in 
 it; and the fact that many people go to 
 church to-day does not of necessity show 
 that they go for the sake of religion, and 
 still less for the sake of the sermon. It 
 simply shows, I think, that people, like 
 motives, are mixed, — religious people with 
 other people, — and that it is not easy at 
 present to draw the line distinctly between 
 the church and the world. 
 
 Whether, then, we consider those who 
 go to church, or those who stay away, we 
 find that people now do not as a rule attach 
 so much importance to preacliing as people 
 formerly did. That is a fact, to be perhaps 
 deplored, but not to be ignored, and which 
 will not, I think, be disputed. And why is 
 it a fact ? What is the explanation of it ? 
 Is it the fault of the preacher ? To some 
 extent I think it is, and of that I will speak 
 later. But it is not altogether liis fault. 
 It is due in a measure to causes for which 
 he is not responsible, but which neverthe- 
 less he must tiy to overcome. The art of 
 printing has a good deal to do with it. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 45 
 
 There was a time when if people desired 
 instruction on the subject of religion they 
 had to go to church and listen to a sermon. 
 That was then the way, or at least the 
 principal way, in which to receive instruc- 
 tion. Now, however, it is only one of very 
 many ways. The people to-day who are 
 interested in homiletical instruction need 
 not go to church and listen to a sermon, 
 but can stay at home and read one, and a 
 better one, perhaps, than many which they 
 would hear, and thus be by the reading 
 more than by the hearing helped. I know 
 that truth is sometimes more persuasive, 
 more stimulating and inspiring, when 
 heard than when read; but I also know 
 that the mind cannot so readily catch and 
 hold the truth, or follow it out so fully as 
 when it is "harvested by the quiet eye." 
 And in these days of cheap and voluminous 
 literature, with a public library in every 
 town, and a private one in almost every 
 house, when the sermons of a Liddon, 
 or a Brooks, or a Spurgeon can be pur- 
 chased for the small fraction of a dol- 
 lar, when magazines and periodicals are 
 freighted down with religious and theologi- 
 cal lore, -W'hen the words spoken in West- 
 
46 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 minster, in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in all 
 the great pulpits of Christendom can be so 
 soon delivered upon their study table, to be 
 read quietly at their own leisure, by their 
 own fireside, why, pray, should people go 
 to church to receive religious instruction 
 by listening to a sermon? 
 
 But that is not the only reason why 
 many people to-day do not attach so much 
 importance to preaching. There is another, 
 for which thfe preacher is himself respon- 
 sible. So much of the preaching to-day 
 seems to be preaching to yesterday, or 
 preaching about yesterday. It does not 
 touch as it ought the contemporary life, and 
 grapple with its problems, its duties, its dif- 
 ficulties, its dangers. There is, in conse- 
 quence, a sense of unreality about it, a for- 
 eignness, a far-away-ness ; and to men who 
 are of necessity preoccupied with the exigen- 
 cies of contemporary life, it is not helpful 
 preacliing. Then, again, there is in preach- 
 ing at times too much of oi/ier-worldness, 
 and not enough of <^^s-worldness. Instead 
 of making it appear that the religion of 
 Jesus Christ is chiefly for the present, we 
 teach it in such a way as to produce on 
 men the impression that it is chiefly for 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 47 
 
 the future, disclosiug to them the joys of 
 the future, or the sorrows and pains of the 
 future, — the joys of some future heaven, or 
 the pains of some future hell. And they 
 are apt, in consequence, to receive from us 
 the notion that the principal function and 
 use of the religion of Jesus Christ is to 
 show them how to escape at last the latter, 
 and to receive at last the former ; or how to 
 get ready in this world to enter at last 
 another, and to meet there their God. 
 Whereas we ought to teach, so it seems to 
 me, that that, instead of being the principal 
 use of the religion of Jesus Christ, is, in 
 fact, its least ; and that its purpose is not 
 to help them to die right and to get into 
 heaven after they die, but to help them to 
 live right, and to get into heaven before 
 they die. We should try to make them 
 understand that there is a heaven here in 
 this world, and a hell here in this world, 
 and that those who at present are living in 
 this world are in this heaven or this hell. 
 And Jesus comes as light, we should try 
 to make them understand, to show them 
 how to get out of the hell which is here, 
 or the hell-fire which is here, into the 
 heaven which is here. The light with 
 
48 TBE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 which He comes, to be sure, with which He 
 shone and sliines, is the light of another 
 world, declaring another world, disclosing 
 another world, its reality, its power, its life, 
 its discriminating judgments, its discrim- 
 inating awards ; the light with which He 
 shines is the light of another world, but 
 sliining down upon and meant chiefly for 
 this world. The sun is up in the sky, but 
 it shines there for the earth ; and the way 
 in wliich to use that light of the sun is not 
 to stand gazing up into the sky and acquir- 
 ing thus a physical myopia, or shortsighted- 
 ness, which prevents the gazers from seeing 
 clearly the things immediately about them, 
 but to walk on the earth in the light of the 
 sun, and with which on the earth it shines. 
 So, too, we should try to teach men and 
 women to-day that the way in which to use 
 the light of another world sliining in Jesus 
 Christ, is not to stand gazing up into the 
 heaveiis and acquiring thus a kind of spir- 
 itual myopia, or shortsightedness, which 
 prevents them from seeing clearly the forms 
 of duty immediately about them, but to 
 walk on the earth in the light of that other 
 world which in Jesus Christ so brightly 
 and beautifuU}' appeal's. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 49 
 
 This brings me to the consideration of 
 another reason why so many people to-day 
 are not interested in sermons. The feeling 
 is more or less prevalent, not only among 
 the few, but also among the many, that reli- 
 gion, so far as it relates to another world, is 
 a subject upon which neither the preacher 
 nor any one else can have any real and 
 verifiable knowledge. It is admitted to be, 
 indeed, a most important subject, and a 
 most interesting subject, and yet of neces- 
 sity unfathomable and unknowable. This 
 necessary ignorance of the human mind 
 upon the subject of religion has become in 
 our time a philosophy or a science, or rather 
 a nescience. And some of the most dis- 
 tinguished and influential thinkers in the 
 field of modern thought are declaring that 
 while there is some power back of phenom- 
 ena, or some power pervading phenomena, 
 transcendent or immanent, or both, from 
 which they all proceed, and by which they 
 all transpire, yet from the very nature of 
 the human mind, its relatedness, its condi- 
 tionedness, we do not know and cannot 
 what that power is like, or what in itself 
 it is. This plulosophy, as I have already 
 intimated, is not confined in its influence 
 4 
 
50 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 to the philosophical few. Philosophy never 
 is. It reaches the masses of the people, 
 and is felt more or less by all. " Though 
 I care but little," says the French wi'iter, 
 De Tocqueville, " about the study of philos- 
 ophy as such, I have always been struck 
 with the influence which it has exerted 
 over the things that seem to be the least 
 connected with it ; and even over society 
 in general, for abstract ideas, however 
 metaphysical and apparently unpractical, 
 penetrate at last, I know not how, into the 
 realm of public morals." And so with 
 that agnostic or nescient philosophy wliich 
 is current now. Although in its metaphy- 
 sical form it is intricate and abstruse, and 
 beyond the poptdar grasp, it is not confined 
 in its influence to the region of philosophy 
 proper. It reaches the popular mind, it 
 influences the popular judgment; and in- 
 stead of dwelling apart like a star in the 
 firmament of pure speculation, it is on the 
 contrary shining with a light that leads 
 astray (so at least I think) throughout the 
 whole economy of the modern practical 
 life. Or, changing if I may the simile, its 
 spirit seems to be in the very air to-day, and 
 everywhere we meet it, and everywhere we 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 51 
 
 breathe it. In colleges we meet it; in 
 clubs and drawing-rooms, in papers and 
 books, and magazines ; in the poetry of the 
 day ; in the fiction of the day ; in all the 
 forms and phases of the literature of 
 the day. And when from time to time the 
 preacher's voice is heard speaking of God, 
 and the soul, and the immortal life, and 
 a world beyond this world ; another voice 
 seems to come back in a kind of antiphonal 
 response, that these are matters, however in- 
 teresting, upon which the preacher has no 
 knowledge, or at least no verifiable knowl- 
 edge ; that these are problems which the 
 preacher cannot solve, which nobody can 
 solve, which are of necessity unsolvable, 
 and that round and round in a circle we 
 must forever go, and " ever more come out 
 by the same door that in we went." 
 
 And so it has come to pass that the age 
 in which we live is to a great extent on 
 the subject of religion silent. In some 
 respects, indeed, it is loud and noisy enough, 
 and the battle of words is fierce, and the 
 strife of tongues is great, and clamorous, 
 and incessant. Possibly there never was 
 a time, with the exception of the bright 
 and palmy days of Athenian culture, when 
 
52 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 there was so much mental iuquisitiveness 
 in society at large as there is in society 
 now. And that mental inquisitiveness, 
 which tlirough paper and book and maga- 
 zine, as well as through the medium of 
 private and personal conversation, is caus- 
 ing itself to be heard, has contributed in 
 no little degree to our mental enlighten- 
 ment and enrichment. We are talking a 
 good deal to-day on many and various sub- 
 jects. We are talking, too, to some pur- 
 pose ; and in spite of the superficialness of 
 much of our speech, we are, I think, as a 
 rule talking wisely and well. But when 
 it comes to the consideration of religious 
 questions, there is a growing feeling upon 
 the part of thoughtful people that it is 
 better not to talk, that it is better just to 
 be silent. I do not forget that there is 
 a good deal of religious controversy, and 
 discussion, and criticism going on; and 
 that here, too, the strife of tongues and the 
 battle of words is fierce. And yet despite 
 this fact, which is obvious enough, there is 
 a conviction stealing over the minds of 
 many, like a creeping paralysis, that it 
 is after all and for the most part simply 
 a battle of words, in which they can make 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 63 
 
 no progress towards a permanent and final 
 conclusion. What is settled to-day, they 
 thinlv, will be unsettled to-morrow ; then 
 the next day they will have to try to 
 settle it again ; and thus round and round 
 in a circle of search they must go, in wan- 
 dering mazes lost. It is just this feeling, 
 I think, that drives so many people into 
 the Roman Catliolic Church. They are 
 tired to death of searching and not finding, 
 " of dropping buckets into empty wells, and 
 growing old in drawing nothing up." They 
 want to be settled and fixed in a way that 
 will not have to be unsettled and unfixed. 
 Their chief desire is for some kind of final 
 faith. They are not, perhaps, particular, 
 after a long and fruitless search, what kind 
 of faith it is, if only it is positive and final. 
 They think that Rome has it, because she 
 so stoutly claims it, and so to Rome they 
 
 go- 
 There is, however, another and larger 
 and more thoughtful class to whom that 
 kind of relief is no relief at all. They 
 have almost made up their minds that 
 there is no relief to be had. Religion pre- 
 sents a problem wliich they think cannot 
 be solved. The philosoplier cannot solve 
 
54 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 it, they say, at least he has not solved it. 
 The historian cannot solve it, the scholar, 
 the theologian, the preacher cannot solve it ; 
 and while they are not indifferent to it, 
 they have almost reached the conclusion 
 that no conclusion can be reached, and 
 that the best thing, therefore, which they 
 can do is just to accept their limitations 
 and make up their minds to be ignorant. 
 That seems to me to be a characteristic of 
 the present age. We cannot call it infi- 
 delity exactly ; it is not infidelity. Or, if 
 it be infidelity, it is very different from that 
 old infidelity which formerly prevailed. 
 That old infidelity, as has been said, was 
 loud in its hate and defiance. This new 
 infidelity, if we can call it such, is suave 
 and serene in its ignorance. That old 
 infidelity shrieked and screamed in its 
 hatred of religion. This new infidelity 
 simply shrugs its shoulders and goes on 
 its way, and says, " You must excuse me ; 
 I really know nothing about it." And 
 so it has come to pass, that while the 
 age in which we live is noisy and loud 
 enough on almost everything else, and 
 talkative enough, and inquisitive enough, 
 with a buoyant and hopeful inquisitiveness 
 
TBE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 55 
 
 which notliing stifles or stills, it is for the 
 most part in religious matters quiet, and 
 has but little to say. That is the temper, 
 the philosophic temper or distemper, of the 
 time; not only among the few, but also 
 among the many, and who are made some- 
 what indifferent to the voice of the preacher 
 by it. 
 
 And not only does it act negatively, it 
 acts positively. It has an effect on con- 
 duct, and the agnosticism of the age accen- 
 tuates and intensifies the secularism of the 
 age. That is inevitable. For if the things 
 of religion are past our finding ovit, then 
 let us address ourselves, men say, or think, 
 to the things which are not past our find- 
 ing out ; and in our ignorance of another 
 and better world, let us make the best of 
 this, and try the best we can to conquer, 
 and overcome, and take possession of it. 
 And so does life become chiefly a material 
 thing, and its joys material joys, and its 
 ambitions material ambitions, and its values 
 material values. Its conception of great- 
 ness and power means chiefly material 
 greatness and power : so many horse-power, 
 or, if that has become an obsolete phrase in 
 these days of electrical experiment, so many 
 
56 THE pheacher and his place 
 
 volt-power. Its conception of growth and 
 development means cliiefly material growth 
 and development, and facilities for getting 
 about, or for going from place to place, 
 and for talking at long distances, no mat- 
 ter how poorly it talks, and nearly all 
 whose problems by rapid transit are solved. 
 It is a conception of greatness which thinks 
 it the highest pitch of civilization if, to use 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold's plirase, it can only 
 make its trains run every half hour between 
 one little dismal village and another little 
 dismal village, and carry messages to and fro 
 of the dismal life in each. And that is the 
 materialism which is upon us now. Not 
 the materialism of the school merely, but 
 the materialism of the street, or the mate- 
 rialism of the school producing the mate- 
 rialism of the street, the office, the shop, 
 the bank, the railroad, the drawing-room, 
 the counting-room. The blind man in the 
 Gospel story whose sight had been restored, 
 but not fully restored, looked out, we are 
 told, upon the people who were pressing 
 and moving about him, and saw them as 
 trees walking. A poor and purblind vision 
 of human life it was. But is it not the 
 vision wliich so many seem to have of 
 
TBE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 57 
 
 human life to-day, as sometliing chiefly 
 physical, as something chiefly earthy, rooted 
 in the earth, growing out of the earth, re- 
 turning to the earth, receiving from the 
 earth its substance, and having in the 
 earth its home, as the trees of the forest 
 have ? The same vital forces are seen 
 energizing in both, and feeding and nour- 
 ishing both, except that in the case of our 
 human life they have gone so far as to 
 make the trees walk ! Is it not so ? Does 
 it not seem so ? And looking at the way 
 in which so many regard the human beings 
 about them, wherein, after all, does it differ 
 so much from the way in which they re- 
 gard the growing trees about them ? They 
 make of the tree a handle with which to do 
 their work, and they make of the man a 
 hand with which to do their work, and 
 then they use them both, the handle and 
 the hand; and it is often so hard to see 
 where the handle stops, and where the 
 hand begins. Or they gather from the tree 
 the fruit, and they gather from the man 
 the fruit, and both are good and useful 
 because of the fruit they bear. And if 
 sometimes the tree seems to be in their 
 way they cut it down. And if sometimes 
 
58 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 the man seems to be in their way, and to 
 stop and stay their progress, or hinder and 
 block their path, why then they cut him 
 down. "Ah, the pity of it," they say; 
 yes, the pity of it, and yet so it must be. 
 It is the way of tlie world ; it is the method 
 of business ; it is the law of trade. They 
 cut him down and spare not, as the forester 
 cuts the tree down and spares not. 
 
 Then look at the way in which those 
 who are prosperous and better off regard 
 the poor. Not recognizing cliiefly and 
 first of all the great and divine humanity 
 in them, and trying to call it forth, but 
 simply from their abundance ministering 
 more or less to the immediate physical 
 needs of those whom they seek to relieve, 
 and stopping there and at that, and tliink- 
 ing that that is all, or thinking that that 
 is enough, — as though their beneficiaries 
 were not so different after all from the 
 trees under which they rest in some city 
 square or park, except that the trees have 
 somehow learned to tramp. Again, look 
 at the way in which the poor in turn 
 so often regard the rich, as simply fruit- 
 ful trees that have somehow come to be 
 planted in better and finer soil, as fruit- 
 
THE PREACBBR AND THE PRESENT 59 
 
 ful trees to be plucked, and by some 
 ingenious and clever kind of appeal to be 
 made to yield their fruit. And if some- 
 times, when the need is great, and the fruit 
 is temptingly near, the garden is entered 
 and spoiled, and the fruit plucked and 
 robbed, why the crime, after all, is not so 
 great, it is only like robbing trees. Or 
 look once more at the way in which so 
 many seem to regard themselves : and 
 wherein does it differ from the way in 
 which a tree, supposing it could talk, 
 would regard itself ? "I have come out of 
 the earth," it would say, " and am simply 
 a physical thing ; and by and by I know, 
 like everything else that is physical, I must 
 crumble away, and perish, and go back 
 again to the earth. In the mean time let 
 me live a joyous physical life. Let me 
 gather from earth, and air, and gases, and 
 seas, and skies, and clouds and sunshine in 
 them, a physical beauty and bloom. And 
 even from the rocks beneath me, around 
 whose forms I twine, and into whose fissures 
 I send my gnarled and twisted roots, — 
 yes, even from the rocks beneath me let me 
 gather physical strength, that the storms 
 may not destroy me, nor the tempests beat 
 
60 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 me down, and that I may not fall and 
 perish before my time." So would a tree 
 talk if it could, and so indeed does many 
 a man who can. 
 
 And that is the voice of to-day, or one 
 of the voices of to-day. Everywhere we 
 hear it, — in the social world, in the com- 
 mercial world, in the political world. It 
 is the voice of the man who speaks of the 
 physical value of the age, of the physical 
 prosperity of the age, and the physical 
 wealth of the age, and speaks about it 
 eloquently and fluently, as though it were 
 all in all. It is the voice of the man who 
 measures all human movements and oppor- 
 tunities, all human motives and methods, 
 by a standard of physical excellence. 
 And when you venture to say to him (not 
 in the pulpit, where you are expected to 
 say it, but out of the pulpit, where you are 
 not expected to say it, and yet where you 
 do say it, because you believe it) that the 
 aim of a Christian man or a Christian 
 people should be to seek first the Kingdom 
 of God, and all those great, and pure, and 
 lofty faiths and ideals which the Kingdom 
 of God represents, he is smitten with dumb- 
 ness or deafness, and does not know what 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 61 
 
 you mean exactly, or thinks you are an 
 unpractical, doctrinaire sort of person, 
 whose biisiness it is to do, and to do well 
 of course, some preaching work on Sunday, 
 and not to have any part in the real and 
 actual conduct of earthly things and affairs. 
 That is the type of man, and that is the 
 kind of voice which is so often seen and 
 heard. A good enough type it is in a 
 certain sort of way. I have no fault to 
 find with it for what it is, but chiefly for 
 what it is not. It is truthful, and upright, 
 and honorable. It is honest, and pays its 
 debts ; and yet, withal, so earthy, so un- 
 spiritual, so unaspiring, except towards 
 earthy things. It seems to have in its 
 life so little use for God, except upon 
 occasions, and those not very frequent ; 
 and if, as Dr. Martineau says, it should 
 be told some day that God was dead, it 
 would still go on pretty much as it does 
 now. That, I say, is a very common type 
 of humanity to-day, not in the sense of its 
 being commonplace, but in the sense of its 
 being prevalent. You will find it in the 
 city ; you will find it in the country ; in 
 the little country village ; in the little 
 country town, where life is supposed to 
 
62 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 be (because of its pastoral enyironment) 
 less sordid and mercenary, but where in 
 fact you will iind it just as hard and 
 close ("nigh" I believe is the New Eng- 
 land word), just as unresponsive to spirit- 
 ual aims and ideals, if not indeed more so, 
 than is the urban life. 
 
 And not only outside of the church do 
 you find that kind of person ; you find him 
 in the church : as a regular attendant 
 upon the services of the church, sitting 
 perhaps in the front pew, and listening so 
 attentively, so admiringly, to your eloquent 
 discourse. A clerical friend of mine was 
 preaching on one occasion from the text, 
 " What is a man profited if he should gain 
 the whole world, and lose his own soul?" 
 He was a very gifted preacher, and was on 
 that occasion particularly eloquent. And 
 as he tried to show, in that rapt and fervid 
 manner so characteristic of him, that the 
 soul might be a present loss, a loss here and 
 now, just as the mind might be a present 
 loss, and that the wealth of the whole 
 world would be in such a case to the man 
 who had lost his soul, as to the man who 
 had lost his mind, but a poor compensation, 
 — one of the members of the church was 
 
THE PREACBEB AND THE PRESENT 63 
 
 heard to say to a friend as he walked with 
 him down the aisle at the close of the 
 service, " Why, it is worth money to hear 
 that man preach I " Here, indeed, was not 
 indifference to preaching, but a certain 
 kind of appreciation of it and fondness for 
 it. And yet with that appreciation of 
 preaching, because it was good and elo- 
 quent, there was also that dull, opaque 
 imperviousness to preaching which pre- 
 vented it from doing the good it was in- 
 tended to do, and which knew no other 
 or better way of expressing its appre- 
 ciation than by rating it simply as a 
 commercial commodity, and putting a 
 commercial value upon it. And this, it 
 seems to me, was not an exceptional case. 
 And while there are not many who would 
 express themselves perhaps with such a 
 naive and simple frankness, there are many 
 and very many whom it represents. You 
 will meet them by and by ; you will preach 
 to them ; and they will listen to and admire 
 you, and say to their friends how well you 
 preach, and that they ought to come and 
 hear you. And sometimes as you preach 
 your soul will be all aglow, and your heart 
 will be all on fire, and your very body will 
 
64 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 tremble and quiver with tlie deep and 
 strong emotion which is working in you, 
 and you will think that surely now you 
 have lifted up the people out of their 
 spiritual apathy and dulness to seek first 
 the Kingdom of God ; and then you will 
 take up the collection, and you will see 
 how much you have lifted up — the 
 people. 
 
 Now, I am not saying these things to 
 discourage you, young gentlemen, I am 
 saying them rather to encourage you by 
 telling you about them beforehand, so that 
 you may not be discouraged when hereafter 
 you meet and experience them. The phy- 
 sician is not discouraged — recurring to 
 the simile which I used at the beginning — 
 when he knows what that sickness is which 
 he is expected to treat and cure. Why, 
 that is half the battle ; and he cannot cure 
 it unless he does know. Neither can you ; 
 and my purpose in this lecture has been to 
 try to show you what that sickness is which 
 you are to try to cure. It is not enough to 
 say that it is sin. Sin is the source of all 
 sickness. And yet there are different sick- 
 nesses, social as well as physical, and they 
 are called by different names ; and my pur- 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 65 
 
 pose has been to tell you something about 
 the present social ailment, and to give you, 
 as well as I could, a diagnosis of it. It has 
 been, I know, a very partial and imperfect 
 diagnosis, and has not covered all the symp- 
 toms of the case. But I have shown you 
 some of the symptoms, the chief of which, 
 and perhaps the most dangerous, from your 
 point of view at least, is this : that the pa- 
 tient to whom you minister, and whom you 
 hope to cure, does not always want to be 
 cured, or believe that you can cure him, and 
 therefore does not always call you in to 
 prescribe. And yet the patient needs you, 
 and what you have to give, or what you 
 have to tell; your Clxristian message he 
 needs. He cannot get on without it; or 
 he cannot get on well without it. The 
 men of to-day need religion as much as the 
 men of 'yesterday. They do not need to 
 have it presented to them in precisely the 
 same manner, but they need it. They need 
 it in temptation, in weakness and darkness 
 and depression, in the conflict fierce and 
 sharp of the modern competitive life. They 
 need it to keep them pure ; they need it to 
 keep them clean, morally pure and clean; 
 to keep in due control the passions of the 
 
 5 
 
66 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 body, which without the restraint of reli- 
 gious hope and faith are apt, especially in 
 these days of luxurious living, to break 
 away and get dominion over them. And 
 it is just as true now as it ever was, that 
 the visible which does not rest on the 
 invisible is apt to become the bestial. 
 Scepticism concerning another world and 
 sensuousness in this world are apt to go 
 together. Sometimes, as in the case of a 
 Don Juan, the sensuousness first, and the 
 scepticism last. Sometimes, as in the case 
 of a Favist, the scepticism first, and the 
 sensuousness last. But whichever be the 
 beginning, or whichever be the end, there 
 is an affinity between them ; and, not al- 
 ways, — it would be an exaggeration to 
 say that, — but usually, they sooner or later 
 meet ; and the person, or the people, or the 
 age which is not walking in this world in 
 the light of a world beyond, is apt to become 
 in time a coarse and sensuous age. Its 
 pleasures will show it; its pictures will 
 show it ; its works of art will show it ; its 
 novels, its stories, its letters, its theatres, 
 its operas, its conversations, its drawing- 
 rooms will show it, and the realism of 
 which it boasts will become sooner or later 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PRESENT 67 
 
 the realism of impudicity and immodesty, 
 of filth and mud! And with this realism 
 of impudicity, which is coming to be some- 
 what symptomatic of our modern life, there 
 is another and kindred symptom, namely, a 
 feeling of sadness or weariness, and hardly 
 worth-whileness, which the vision of the 
 whole physical universe without the vision 
 of God and another world does not and 
 cannot relieve. "Praise the Lord, O my 
 soul ! " exclaims the Hebrew seer; "let all 
 that is witliin me join to bless His holy 
 name ! " as with adoring wonder he looks 
 at the starry skies, because he sees re- 
 vealed the glory of God in the skies, while 
 the greatest literary seer of the nineteenth 
 century, looking at the same starry skies, 
 says to his friend, Charles Lamb by his 
 side, " Oh, mon, it is a sair sight ! " So 
 it is, cold, cheerless, overwhelmingly sad, 
 if instead of revealing to us the glory of 
 God and another world, day unto day 
 uttering His speech, and night after night 
 showing forth His knowledge ; it only re- 
 veals the glory and greatness of man, of 
 Newton and Copernicus and Kepler, and 
 the other men of genius who have contrib- 
 uted to the ascertainment of its laws. 
 
68 TEE PREACSER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 That, I say, is the sadness, in spite of all 
 its enrichment and enlightenment, which 
 seems to be resting so heavily on much of 
 our modern life. As much, then, as ever, 
 if not indeed more, men to-day need that 
 light of another world which nearly two 
 thousand years ago appeared in Jesus 
 Christ. Quietly, gently, then it came, 
 making no sound or noise, as the light 
 always comes, — 
 
 " It sparkles on the morning's million gems of dew, 
 It flings itself into the shower of noon, 
 It weaves its gold into the cloud of sunset, 
 Yet not a sound is heard." 
 
 So it came then, and so it comes now, into 
 the morning, noon, and sunset of human 
 life on earth. And so, too, young gentle- 
 men, it must shine tlu'ough us, not chiefly 
 by the noise and clamor of our theological 
 strife and ecclesiastical contention or as- 
 sumption, but by trying as well as we can 
 to live and teach and preach as He lived 
 and taught who was then, and is now, the 
 Light and the Life of the world. 
 
THE 
 PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 
 
THE 
 PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 
 
 "V 7[ rHAT should be the message of the 
 Christian pulpit to-day, and how 
 should the preacher preach it ? 
 
 These seem at first like simple, if not 
 superfluous, questions, with only one an- 
 swer to them. For it is the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ wliich the preacher is sent 
 to preach, and which, therefore, he must 
 preach. That, and that alone, must be his 
 word to men, must be to them his mes- 
 sage. But suppose they are not interested 
 in his message ? Must he still continue to 
 preach it? Surely he must, whether the 
 people hear, or whether they refuse to hear. 
 But suppose he can preach it in such a 
 way as to make them hear, or make them 
 willing to hear, ready and desirous to hear, 
 ought he then to preach it in that way? 
 That depends upon what the way is. If 
 it is a right way, yes. If it is a 
 wrong way, no. Preaching is not an 
 end in itself, it is only a means to an end. 
 
72 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 This clistinction is, I fear, sometimes over- 
 looked, and some there are who tliink, or 
 who apparently think, that the great desid- 
 eratum (if not the greatest and only) in 
 the evangelization of the community, is 
 simply to get the people into the way of 
 going to church. And therefore they re- 
 sort to many and various expedients for 
 the accomplislmient of that purpose , — and 
 some of them, too, expedients of very ques- 
 tionable propriety, and others again not 
 questionable at all, but cheap, vulgar, sen- 
 sational, and unquestionably bad. The end, 
 they seem to think, justifies the means ; 
 and the end here is simply going to church. 
 But that is not the end. It is, as I have 
 said, only a means to an end ; and whether 
 or not people should go to church depends 
 a little, depends a good deal, on what hap- 
 pens after they get there. 
 
 I can conceive of cases where it would 
 be better for people not to go to church, 
 and where less harm would come to them 
 by not going than by going. Have you 
 not yourselves sometimes found it so? 
 Have you not yourselves been made some- 
 times to feel, after you had been to some 
 particular church, that what you heard 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 73 
 
 from the pulpit there had not only done 
 you no good, but had actually done you 
 harm, had irritated and exasperated you, 
 and made you not better, but worse ? I am 
 sure you must have had such an experience 
 as that; we have all had such an expe- 
 rience. And then, again, I am sure we 
 have all had another and very different 
 experience, and have felt as we listened to 
 some men preach that we would like to listen 
 to them often. They helped us so much ; 
 they inspired us; they seemed to touch 
 and awaken what was best and purest, 
 what was divinest in us, and to bring it 
 out and express it, and to make it, for a 
 time at least, ascendent and dominant in 
 us. And why? What was the secret 
 of their power? They may have been 
 eloquent in the ordinary sense of the 
 term, or they may not have been. They 
 may have been learned and scholarly, or 
 they may not have been. Nor did we 
 always agree, perhaps, with what we heard 
 them say. And yet, somehow, they always 
 managed to make us feel as though they 
 had a personal message for us. And so, 
 indeed, it was a personal message for us, — 
 simply because it was their own personal 
 
74 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 message, a message whicli they themselves, 
 in their deepest and innermost souls had 
 found and felt to be good, had found and 
 felt to be true ; and which, therefore, pro- 
 duced an echoing response in us. It may 
 have been some truth which we already 
 knew, some very familiar truth ; and yet as 
 the preacher preached it, it seemed like 
 something new and to have in it something 
 new. And it did have in it something 
 new; it had the preacher in it. He had 
 made the truth his own. He had wrought 
 it out, or fought it out, and won it for liim- 
 self, and it was like a piece of liimself. He 
 was not simply defining some article of the 
 creed. He was not simply disclosing and 
 making known "the faith once delivered 
 to the saints," nor telling us what had been 
 "always and everywhere and by all re- 
 ceived." He was telling us rather what he, 
 by his own living thought, by his own liv- 
 ing experience, had made his very own. It 
 was the travail of liis soul, and we saw it, 
 and felt it, and were satisfied. This does 
 not imply that the substance of his preach- 
 ing was something new and different from 
 what was in the creeds, or something new 
 and different from what was in the theology 
 
TBE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 75 
 
 of the church to which he belonged ; but 
 it does imply that the truth which others 
 had found, and which had been by them 
 expressed in a theology or a creed, had 
 also found him, and become incarnated in 
 him. And it was his message to us, as 
 well as the creed's message. And he, the 
 preacher, the man, the living man and 
 preacher, was living in the creed, and mak- 
 ing the creed live, and breathe, and move, 
 and talk. And as a living thing we heard 
 it, and as a living thing we felt it, — not as 
 truth in abstract form, but as truth in form 
 concrete ; as truth in flesh and blood. And 
 that was his secret and power, or the secret 
 of his power. It is always the secret of 
 power. And when the pulpit loses that 
 power it will have none, or none at least to 
 differentiate it from other didactic agen- 
 cies, and to make it a unique and distinc- 
 tive force in the world. 
 
 Creeds are good. Theologies are good. 
 But creeds however scriptural, and theolo- 
 gies however sound, are not of themselves 
 enough. " I adjure you by the Jesus whom 
 Paul preaches " is not a formula that mil 
 exorcise the evil spirits and make the men 
 who heai' obedient to the faith. The creed. 
 
76 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 they will say, we know, we have always 
 known, and the theology we know ; but 
 who and what are ye ? 
 
 Plagiarism in a preacher or any one else 
 is generally and justly regarded as a very 
 reprehensible thing ; and when we find out 
 (and we usually do find it out) that a man 
 has been stealing the words of another, we 
 have no further use for that man. But 
 there is a plagiarism in theology as well as 
 a plagiarism in language, and it is possible 
 not only to steal from books, but also to 
 steal from creeds. And the preacher who 
 goes week after week to some venerable 
 storehouse of accumulated doctrines, and 
 opens the door, and takes some doctrinal 
 treasure out, and gives it forth to the peo- 
 ple, simply because it is the doctrine of his 
 church, without having first, in some sense 
 real and true, made that doctrine his own, 
 is a plagiaristic preacher ; and a plagiaristic 
 preacher is not an effective preacher. And 
 yet, it seems to me that much of our preach- 
 ing to-day is of that plagiaristic kind. It is 
 the preacliing of things and doctrines which 
 we have taken without buying, and which 
 we accept and hold because others accept 
 and hold them, — the school, the sect, the 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 77 
 
 party, the church to which we belong ; and 
 it is their faith we preach, and not ours. 
 Perhaps we do not think so, but it is so 
 more than we think; and that is the way 
 in wliicli it impresses tliose who hear us. 
 They almost knew beforehand that we 
 would say what we do say, because we are 
 Baptists, or Congregationalists, or Episco- 
 palians ; and that is what Episcopalians, 
 and Congregationalists, and Baptists usu- 
 ally say and are expected to say, and there- 
 fore they expected us to say it, and they 
 are not disappointed in us. Neither are 
 they much impressed, or helped, or quick- 
 ened by us ; and after a while they get tired 
 of hearing us, and they do not come to hear 
 us. And why should they ? They know all 
 that we have to say just as well as we do, — 
 the scheme of salvation, sanctification, re- 
 demption, the new birth, the atonement, 
 the doctrine of the divine decrees, the his- 
 toric episcopate, the sacrament of baptism, 
 and the Lord's Supper, and the decrees of 
 the General Councils, and the inspiration 
 of the Bible. They have heard it from 
 their youth up, and know it all, I say, just 
 as well as we do. And why indeed should 
 they come, to hear it and know it some 
 
78 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 more ? And they do not come. And then 
 it is that we are tempted to resort to tliose 
 questionable expedients to which I have 
 referred, such as advertising to preach on 
 queer and fantastic texts and sensational 
 topics, with a view to making them come, 
 and which, though successful in drawing, 
 perhaps, are not successful in edifying, and 
 which cheapen the pulpit, and degrade it in 
 the judgment of sober-minded people. 
 
 What then shall we do ? Shall we give 
 up doctrinal preaching, and try some other 
 kind, not sensational, but at the same time 
 not doctrinal ? By no means. We cannot 
 give it up. All preaching is doctrinal, and 
 must be. It may not be doctrinal after the 
 standard of the Thirty-nine Articles, or the 
 standard of the Westminster Confession ; 
 but it is doctrinal, nevertheless, for doc- 
 trine means simply a faith, a conviction, a 
 belief, and no man can preach without 
 some faith or belief. What people mean, 
 I think, when they say they do not care 
 for doctrinal preaching is tliis : they do 
 not care for that kind of doctrinal preach- 
 ing which has in it more of the personality 
 of Calvin, or Luther, or Athanasius, than 
 it has of the preacher himself. Stolen 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 79 
 
 thunder is poor thunder ; and so is stolen 
 doctrine. It does not go off well; or it 
 goes off by itself, simply making a noise, 
 
 — "Sound and fury, signifying nothing;" 
 and there is no lightning in it. It must 
 have been an impressive thing to hear Mar- 
 tin Luther preach, or to hear Athanasius 
 preach; and so it would be now. But it 
 is not at all impressive to hear Lutheran- 
 ism preached, or Athanasianism preached, 
 
 — to hear a system preached. That is the 
 kind of preaching to which the people ob- 
 ject when they object to doctrinal preach- 
 ing, and to which they ought to object. 
 
 The distinctive power of the pulpit is its 
 personality. Not primarily what it says, 
 though that, of course, is important, but 
 who says it ; otherwise a phonograph or a 
 telephone would do. Truth, especially 
 moral truth, is never very effective until we 
 see it alive, — not truth in the fine discourse, 
 or in the admirable essay, but truth in the 
 soul, "that inmost centre," as Browning 
 says, " where truth abides in fulness," and 
 where, as from a throne, it speaks with 
 authority to us. The orator who moves us 
 most is the orator who is moved most ; not 
 the orator who displays the most emotion, 
 
80 THE PREACBER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 but whose own personality is kindled most 
 by his thought. " If," says Horace to the 
 sons of Piso, " you wish me to weep, there 
 must be, first of all, a genuine grieving 
 in you." "Whoever," says John Milton, 
 "would not be frustrate of Ms desire to 
 write well in poetry, must be a poet in life. 
 Other things being equal, that will be the 
 greatest and most effective verse, the soul 
 of whose author is set on fire by the senti- 
 ment which it expresses." And as it is 
 with poetry, and art, and oratory, and liter- 
 ature in general, so is it with preaching. 
 Life responds to life. And how can the 
 truth we preach be made quick and alive 
 except by wrestling for it, or wrestling 
 with it, and thus getting it into and mak- 
 ing it a part of ourselves, so that we our- 
 selves go with the truth we preach, and 
 make it a personal force ? 
 
 This was the power of Jesus. The 
 truths He preached and taught were not, 
 for the most part, new. Isaiah had taught 
 them before Him, and Moses, and all the 
 prophets. And not only by the prophets of 
 Israel had many of those truths been taught, 
 but by the prophets of Greece, India, and 
 China, and the Wise Men of the East. 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 81 
 
 But when Jesus taught those truths they 
 were old as though they were new. For 
 He did not teach as the scribes, quoting 
 texts and authorities. He was His own 
 authority, and He spake with authority, — 
 not with tlie autliority of supernaturalism 
 merely, but the authority of personality, a 
 personality which had made those truths 
 its own, and which gave them life, and 
 power, and a confirmatory sanction that 
 needed no other sanction. Surely we know 
 what that means, though it is hard to de- 
 scribe it. We have often, however, felt it, — 
 not in the case of the pulpit merely, but in 
 matters outside of the pulpit. A person 
 tells us something which he has heard 
 from some one else, and that person again 
 from some one else, — of an accident, per- 
 haps, or a rescue, or some heroic deed, — and 
 the information is trustworthy, and we be- 
 lieve it. But it is second, or third, or fourth- 
 hand information, and not first-hand. And 
 while perhaps it has gained something in 
 the telling in the way of exaggeration, and 
 is more verbose and rhetorical, it has also 
 lost something. It has lost much ; and 
 never do we know how much until we 
 hear him tell it who has himself seen it, 
 
 6 
 
82 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 who was an eye-witness of it, and who 
 gives to us his own eye-witness version of 
 it. His words may be poor and few, and 
 with stammering tongue may he speak ; 
 and yet his words have power, and his 
 stammering tongue has eloquence. And 
 something there is in his voice, his accent, 
 his gesture, his emphasis, it is hard to say 
 what it is, something perhaps in his soul, 
 which touches the soul in us, and awakens 
 the soul in us, and life responds to life, 
 and we know not only that the man is 
 speaking truth, but we feel the power of 
 truth, and he speaks with authority to us. 
 
 This, I say, was the method of Jesus. 
 He was not a mere teacher of the truth, 
 He was an eye-witness of it. He saw it 
 not merely tlnrough the medium of the 
 observation of others, but tlnrough the 
 medium of His own observation. He saw 
 it, as it were, " first-hand ; " not as it came 
 from man, but as it came from God, as it 
 came from God to Him, as the Spirit of 
 God taught it, and made Him feel and 
 know it, made it indeed His, or rather 
 made it 5zm. And we, too, are to be eye- 
 witnesses of the truth, as we see it in Him 
 with our own eyes, with our own minds, 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 83 
 
 and hearts, and souls, with our own moral, 
 and spiritual, and intellectual natures, and 
 not as indirectly and obliquely we see it in 
 Him through others. Here at least, it 
 seems to me, whatever may be thought of 
 it in other respects, is the doctrine of the 
 Apostolical Succession true. Those who 
 preach Jesus Christ must be themselves, 
 as the apostles were, eye-witnesses of Jesus 
 Christ. That is what constitutes apos- 
 tleship, — eye-witnessing of Jesus Christ; 
 and those who are the successors of the 
 first apostles must succeed them also in 
 that. They must be not only historical 
 successors, but spiritual successors. The 
 former kind of succession may be neces- 
 sary in the judgment of some of us to pre- 
 serve the polity of the Church, but the 
 latter kind is necessary to preserve the 
 pulpit of the Church, whether it be a Con- 
 gregational or an Episcopal pulpit. That 
 was the power of the first pulpit in Cln:ist- 
 endom, and it will be the power of the 
 last. And from first to last men feel that 
 power and respond to it. That, I presume, 
 is what they mean when they say, as they 
 often do, that they want practical preach- 
 ing. Now, it is very difficult to define 
 
84 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 practical preaching. No two persons, per- 
 haps, would define it in the same way ; for 
 what would be practical to one man, in 
 one set of circumstances, would not be 
 practical to another man in another set of 
 circumstances. It is, I believe, the author 
 of " Ecce Homo " who says that practical 
 preaching for liim would be preaching on 
 the doctrine of the Logos, — " In the be- 
 ginning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God. All 
 things were made by I-Iim, and without 
 Him was not anytliing made that was 
 made." That was Avhat he would call 
 practical preaching, and what most of 
 those in our congregations would call very 
 unpractical. And so, again, preaching on 
 the forgiveness of enemies would not be 
 practical preaching to the man who has no 
 enemies, or who has no malice against 
 them. Practical preaching for the old 
 would not be practical preaching for the 
 young. Practical preaching for the sick 
 would not be practical preaoliing for the 
 well. Practical preaching for the rich and 
 comfortable would not be practical preach- 
 ing for the poor and uncomfortable. It 
 is not easy to define practical preacliing. 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 85 
 
 It depends so much on the time, and the 
 place, and the congregation, which is gen- 
 erally very much mixed, and a score of 
 other things which the preacher cannot 
 well have in mind when he is preparing 
 his sermon. What men really mean when 
 they say they want practical preaching 
 is that they want personal preaching, — 
 preaching that has in it the personality of 
 the preacher. Perhaps they would not put 
 it that way, but that is the way I put 
 it; for that, it seems to me, is practical 
 preaching, and the best kind of practical 
 preaching. Nor does it matter much what 
 the particular theme is, — the doctrine of the 
 Logos, or the doctrine of the atonement, 
 or the doctrine of the forgiveness of inju- 
 ries. The people, as they hear, are stirred 
 and kindled by it, because the preacher 
 himself is stirred and kindled by it. It 
 is his life going into them. And, again, 
 life responds to life, and enthusiasm to 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 That is the distinctive thing in preach- 
 ing. It involves, of course, the giving of 
 instruction. But it involves something 
 more than the giving of instruction, for 
 that, as we have seen, can be given in other 
 
86 THE PREACBER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 ways. With the giving of instruction 
 there should, be the giving of life, — the 
 preacher's life, his moral and spiritual life, 
 and intellectual life, — as the Spirit of God 
 has awakened his moral, and spiritual, and 
 intellectual life. 
 
 I spoke in the last lecture of the mate- 
 rialistic temper of modern society, and how 
 it is disposed to judge and measure all 
 things by standards of material value. 
 That is the ailment which the Christian 
 minister to-day must try to cure. And 
 how must he try to cure it? Must he try 
 to show the wrongness or the falseness of 
 materialism by a philosophic discoursing 
 about it? Must he be forever dragging 
 what he believes to be a better and truer 
 philosophy up the pulpit stairs, and dis- 
 cussing before miscellaneous congrega- 
 tions, in philosophic phrase and dialect, that 
 subtle, agnostic teaching which is to-day 
 so penetrating and pervasive, and which is 
 doing so much to undermine the spiritual 
 foundations of life, and destroy its spirit- 
 ual ideals ? No, I do not think so ; although 
 I think he should be competent to do it at 
 proper times and in proper places, and that 
 his training is sadly deficient if he is not 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 87 
 
 competent to do it. But for the preacher 
 in the pulpit there is a more excellent way. 
 There, it seems to me, he is not so much 
 to talk in a philosophic way about spiritual 
 forces and entities, as to be a kind of spir- 
 itual force and entity himself ; thus touch- 
 ing, and quickening, and making real the 
 spiritual forces and entities in those to 
 whom he speaks. This is not an easy 
 thing to do : and because it is not easy we 
 are sometimes tempted to do what is not so 
 difficult, and that is to try to meet a philo- 
 sophic or practical materialism with an 
 ecclesiastical materialism. Here, again, 
 the Roman Catholic Church shows its 
 knowledge of human nature. It repre- 
 sents Grod to the eye, or professes to do so 
 at least. It makes Him visible in actual 
 flesh and blood upon the altar. It gives 
 Him shape and form for men to see and 
 behold with physical sight and vision, and 
 in the act of beholding to worship and 
 adore. That is the charm, to the devout 
 Roman Catholic worshipper, of the sacrifice 
 of the Mass, that it makes Jesus Chi'ist live 
 and die before his very eyes. And the sol- 
 emn scene that was enacted upon Calvary 
 eighteen hundred years ago is re-enacted 
 
88 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 for him with all its sad. and tragic realism 
 in the midst of the modern world. " To 
 me," says John Henry Newman, " nothing 
 is so consoling, so tlirilling, so uplifting, so 
 overcoining, as the Mass. I could attend 
 it forever and not be tired ; for it is not a 
 mere form of words, it is a great action, 
 the greatest action that ever can be on earth. 
 It is not the Invocation merely; but, if I 
 dare use the word, the 'Evocation,' the 
 calling out, the manifestation in visible 
 form to the physical eye of that Eternal One 
 becoming actually present upon the altar 
 in our flesh and blood, before whom angels 
 bow and devils tremble ! " That is what 
 it meant to him ; and although my whole 
 nature revolts at the materialism of the doc- 
 trine that underlies it, I think I can under- 
 stand how — not upon a cultivated mind 
 like Newman's, but upon uncultivated or 
 half cultivated minds — it can have such 
 wonderful power, just because it is so ap- 
 pealing to the physical senses. 
 
 There is another phenomenon in oiir 
 modern society which points in the same 
 direction, which calls itself by the name of 
 Spiritualism, but which is in fact the gross- 
 est materialism. It is a worse form of 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 89 
 
 materialism even than that which underlies 
 the doctrine of the Mass, disclosing such 
 an utter want of spirituality on the part 
 of those who accept it that they are not able 
 apparently to believe in the existence of 
 spirit unless they can see and touch it, 
 and hear it "mutter" and talk. And what 
 a commentary it is upon the materialistic 
 temper of modern life that so many other- 
 wise sensible people to-day should accept 
 a sign so puerile to strengthen their waver- 
 ing faith in the reality of a spiritual world, 
 and to save themselves from the sheer 
 despair of having no faith at all. 
 
 The same materialistic method is im- 
 plicit, I think, in much that goes by the 
 name of Ritualism, which is the attempt 
 to make religion more believable and real- 
 izable by making it more appealing to the 
 physical senses. It is the attempt, when 
 rightly interpreted, so it seems to me, to 
 cure a worldly materialism by an ecclesias- 
 tical materialism. But there is in my 
 judgment another and more effective way, 
 and that is for the preacher, as the expo- 
 nent of religion, to become himself in his 
 preaching the expression of a spiritual force, 
 and the embodiment of a spiritual life. 
 
90 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 whose presence thus in the pulpit Avill 
 awaken the spiritual life which is latent in 
 those who hear him. This may seem to 
 some of you a vague kind of method, but 
 it is a real one. Do we not know what it 
 is to come into the consciousness of new 
 worlds, and the possession of new ideals 
 and faiths, by coming into contact with the 
 living presences which embody them ? We 
 stand before the patriot who has done some 
 great unselfish, and patriotic act, and for 
 the time at least we believe there is nothing 
 more real and more admirable than patriot- 
 ism. We stand before the soldier who, 
 with a record of courage, of fine and 
 splendid courage, has just come home from 
 the wars, and for the time at least we be- 
 lieve there is notliing so real and admir- 
 able as courage. Pure and unalloyed 
 goodness, nobleness, unselfislxness, or dis- 
 interestedness of motive and conduct, — 
 perhaps as a rule we do not much believe 
 in these things, because as a rule, perhaps, 
 we do not much see them. But some 
 day we do see them; we stand in their 
 presence, we look up into their eyes : they 
 speak to us, and we hear them ; they touch 
 us, and we feel them; and we bow and 
 
TBE PREACBER AND HIS MESSAGE 91 
 
 kneel before them, and ask them to give 
 their benediction to us. 
 
 Now, in some such way as that must 
 the preacher of Jesus Christ try to bring 
 the people to whom he preaches into the 
 consciousness of that high and pure ideal 
 life which Jesus Christ was, which Jesus 
 Christ is. That life must be in his preach- 
 ing. And the people to whom he preaches 
 must feel it in his preaching, and, coming 
 thus into contact with it, they will for a 
 time at least believe in the reality of it. 
 Ordinarily, and for the most part, they are 
 in very close contact with things of a differ- 
 ent kind, with material things and affairs, 
 and they become so absorbed in those mate- 
 rial things and affairs that they find it hard 
 to realize other things and affairs. We all 
 know, again, what that is. How we can be- 
 come so deeply engrossed at times in some 
 one line of conduct, or some one line of 
 thought, as not to see, or hear, or know 
 what is going on about us, — the singing 
 of the birds on the trees, the forms of peo- 
 ple passing by on the streets, the striking 
 of the clock on the stairs : we are not con- 
 scious of any of these things. They are 
 real, and true, and are going on about us, 
 
92 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 but we are not conscious of them ; we are 
 conscious only of that one thing which is 
 going on so vehemently and engrossingly 
 in us, until by some sharply asserting and 
 interruptive influx of life from the world 
 which lies outside, that part of our nature 
 which had been asleep is quickened and 
 awakened in us. So, I say, must the pul- 
 pit, in order to have and perform a dis- 
 tinctive mission to-day, become somehow 
 a power which shall break in upon the 
 engrossing secular life of men and women, 
 and make them feel and become more 
 spiritually alive. That, it seems to me, 
 is what people go to church for. They 
 want to feel themselves more alive, to 
 be lifted up and exalted to some higher 
 plane of life. Then with that warmer 
 glow of life in them, and from that higher 
 plane, they will see and know of them- 
 selves what their practical duties are, 
 and will have more disposition to perform 
 them. 
 
 That kind of preaching, too, as I have 
 already said, is authoritative. It authen- 
 ticates itself. For whether or not the 
 people who hear believe what the preacher 
 says, they believe him. They cannot help 
 
THE PREACHER AND BIS MESSAGE 93 
 
 believing him, and they cannot help feeling 
 and responding to him, and he does them 
 good and helps them. "What did he say ? 
 Well, they are not quite sure that they 
 know what he said. Did he not say such 
 and such a thing, and surely you do not 
 mean to tell us you believe that? Yes, 
 now that they come to think about it 
 they remember he did say that, or some- 
 thing like it, and it is true that they do 
 not believe it. But then, he believed it. 
 Ah, how much he believed it ! How with 
 his whole heart, and soul, and mind he 
 believed it ! How he seemed to be on fire 
 with it ; and it was, they say, the fire they 
 perceived, and not the fuel that kindled it. 
 They almost forget what the fuel was, — 
 at least they did not notice it much at the 
 time. 
 
 I am interested in a Rescue Mission in 
 New York, and go there at times to speak 
 to the men. A poor, forlorn, degraded, 
 almost helpless and hopeless, set of men 
 they are. They have lost their character, 
 they have lost their reputation, they have 
 lost their self-respect, they have lost every- 
 thing except their souls, or except that 
 soul-instinct which, no matter how down- 
 
94 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 trodden, and buried, and covered up, is 
 in every man, and never can be lost. I 
 find it very hard to reach and touch tliose 
 men. But there is a little woman who 
 goes there sometimes, who was once a 
 member of the Salvation Army, and whose 
 words have much more power and effect- 
 iveness than mine. And to her they 
 always listen with a rapt and eager listen- 
 ing ; and often, as I have heard her talk, 
 have I seen those hard, stolid faces lighten, 
 and kindle, and glow, as though from be- 
 neath the rubbish their souls were coming 
 out ! But not only does she touch and 
 move and quicken them, she also touches 
 me as very few preachers do. Her theology 
 is not mine ; it is in some respects very 
 different from mine. Many of the things 
 which she says seem to me to be puerile 
 and crude ; and when I come to think of 
 them afterwards, I am sure I do not believe 
 them, and could not believe them. But 
 slie believes them, and her whole person- 
 ality seems to be saturated with them, and 
 to quiver and tremble with them ; and the 
 earnestness with which she speaks is not 
 simulated and feigned, but most intensely 
 real. And it is that real, unfeigned, and 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 95 
 
 deep personal earnestness which touches 
 me as well as others, and makes me more 
 alive. 
 
 Now, I do not wish to be understood 
 as saying or implying for a moment that 
 it makes but little difference what one 
 preaches, if only he believes it very much, 
 and is very much in earnest about it. It 
 does make a difference, and a very great 
 difference. I shall have something to say 
 about that in the next lecture. Truth is 
 truth always, and is always different from 
 error ; and our business is to preach truth, 
 and nothing but truth. But the point I 
 am making is this : that the distinctive 
 power of the pulpit is not the mere preach- 
 ing of truth, but truth so preached as to be 
 preached in personality ; truth made living, 
 made life ; and that even when it is not 
 truth that the pulpit preaclies, or not trutli 
 as we apprehend it, it may sometimes, 
 and does, become in the pulpit a power, 
 and a spiritual power, which awakens a 
 spiritual power or a spiritual life in us. Is 
 not this the reason why so much of the 
 homiletical literature of the past fails to- 
 day as we hear it to move or impress us 
 much ? It was impressive at the time, but 
 
96 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 it is not impressive now. It was impres- 
 sive to those who heard it, but it is not 
 impressive to us who are only able to 
 read it. " We are often amazed," says the 
 author of a recent " Life of St. Francis," 
 " on reading the memoirs of those who 
 have been great conquerors of souls, to 
 find ourselves remaining cold ; finding in 
 them all no trace of animation or origi- 
 nality. It is because we have only a life- 
 less relic in the hand. The soul is gone. 
 The written word can no more give an 
 idea of it than it can give an idea of a 
 sonata by Beethoven or a painting by 
 Rembrandt." Yes, the soul is gone ; and 
 that which made it power, so distinctively 
 and effectively power, we cannot know 
 and feel ; and to us who only read it, it is 
 not power. 
 
 I caution you, therefore, young gentle- 
 men, against the tendency to introduce 
 into your sermons long quotations or ex- 
 tracts from the sermons of those who were 
 thought, and justly thought in their day, 
 to be such eloquent preachers. Eloquent, 
 indeed, those passages were when spoken 
 by them, because by them they were spoken ; 
 and while you can put their words into 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 97 
 
 your speech, you cannot put them into 
 your speecli; and the only true way to 
 imitate or to be like them is to be like them 
 in being yourselves. God spoke to them , 
 let God speak to you, in, through, and by 
 you. Then will your message be, as theirs 
 was, a personal message to men ; and you 
 will become as eloquent as it is possible for 
 you to become. Every man in this world 
 is different from every other man ; and 
 every preacher is, or ought to be, different 
 from every other preacher, and cannot be 
 a true and effective preacher unless in 
 some respects he is. Copy, therefore, no 
 one. Take no one for your model. In 
 that way failure lies. "The great man," 
 says Emerson, "is the man who reminds 
 us of no other man." And the great or 
 the greatest preacher is the man who 
 reminds us of no other preacher. He may 
 preach the same truth which other preach- 
 ers preach ; and yet, coming through his 
 personality, his mind, his soul, his heart, 
 he will not see it and feel it exactly as 
 others see it and feel it. Nor will he say 
 it like them ; and while it is the same, it 
 is the same with a difference, and it is that 
 difference which cannot be imitated, which 
 
 7 
 
98 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 cannot be reproduced, whicli makes him 
 the great preacher that he is. And it is 
 just so far, not as we resemble but as we 
 do not resemble him, that we too become 
 great up to our capacity of greatness. 
 
 This, then, is the substance of what I 
 have been trying to say : that in order to 
 make our preaching of the Christian Gos- 
 pel effective, it must be the Gospel as it 
 speaks through us, tlirough our own per- 
 sonal knowledge and personal conquest of 
 it. And yet how hard it is to have it so 
 speak to-day ! The truth of the Gospel 
 comes to us cut and dried and labelled, 
 and as such we take it, and preach it, and 
 then so often find, and so often wonder, 
 that it does not have, as we preach it, the 
 life and power of truth. The reason of it 
 is this : that while it is truth, it is not 
 life, or not truth alive. We have not made 
 it ours, as those who first formulated it 
 made it theirs. And it is not easy to make 
 it ours, just because it was they, and not 
 we, who formulated it. And therefore to 
 us it is apt to be only, or chiefly, a formula. 
 As a formula we receive it ; as a formula 
 we preach it ; and, as a formula, it has no 
 power. But perhaps a change is coming. 
 
THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 99 
 
 God riiles in all ages, and is ruling now. 
 And in that sceptical and critical tliought 
 which seems at present to be shaking, if 
 not undermining, the traditional faith of 
 some, or rather that somnolent acquies- 
 cence which has been misnomered faith, 
 God in His providence may be preparing 
 the way for making it again, as once it 
 was, a living and personal faith. And 
 looking at, and feeling that spirit of ques- 
 tion and doubt which is so prevalent now, 
 may we not say, with the Pope in Brown- 
 ' ing's "Ring and the Book," — 
 
 " What if it be the mission of this age 
 To shake this torpor of assui-ance from our creed, 
 Ke-introduce the doubt discarded, bring 
 The formidable danger back we drove 
 Long ago to the distance and the dark. 
 No wild beast prowls now round the infant 
 
 camp; 
 We have built wall, and sleep in city safe. 
 But if some earthquake try the towers that laugh 
 To think they once saw lions rule outside : 
 And man stands out again, pale, resolute, pre- 
 pared to die. 
 Which means, alive at last ! " 
 
 Yes, and the pulpit alive at last; and 
 having been made alive by having been 
 
100 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 made to seek and win again for itself 
 " That old faith in the thing grown faith 
 in the report," and as a new and personal 
 conquest to preach and body it forth. 
 Then will it be a power, a unique and dis- 
 tinctive power. Then will its word and 
 message be a word and message of power. 
 Then, even in an un-ideal and materialistic 
 age will it di-aw all men unto it ; for the 
 truth which then it will preach will be the 
 trutli alive. Life will touch and appeal to 
 life, and life will respond to life. Men 
 will not then be indifferent, cannot then 
 be indifferent, to the pulpit's living voice ; 
 but listening to that voice, not from a sense 
 of duty, but from a sense of need, they will 
 be helped and quickened by it. Material 
 treasures and joys will still be treasures 
 and joys. Men will continue to seek them 
 and to find them. But something else will 
 they find ; and the living voice of the pul- 
 pit will help them to find their souls. A 
 new ideal will gradually dawn through the 
 agency of the pulpit on an un-ideal age. 
 A new ambition through the voice of the 
 pulpit will be awakened in it. A new 
 light will seem to come, as when the morn- 
 ing has followed the night, and the dark- 
 
TBE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE 101 
 
 ness been driven away ; as when, over the 
 eastern hills — 
 
 " Forth one wavelet, then another, curled, 
 Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed 
 Rose reddened ; and its seething breast 
 Flickered hi bounds ; grew bold, then overflowed 
 the world." 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER 
 
 MESSAGES 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER 
 
 MESSAGES. 
 
 T N his interesting and admirable book on 
 " Social Evolution " Mr. Benjamin 
 Kidd has shown with great force and 
 clearness of statement what a large and 
 important factor religion has been in the 
 growth and development of society. That 
 indeed is the one thing which everywhere 
 we see, and which I think hereafter we 
 shall continue to see. Those who believe 
 that the future will emancipate man from 
 religion are poor readers, it seems to me, 
 both of the future and of human nature. 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer is not generally re- 
 garded as a religious apologist; and Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer has put himself on record 
 as having explicitly stated that as knowl- 
 edge grows, and deepens, and widens more 
 and more, so will the religious sentiment 
 ©•row ; and that the man of the future, 
 more cultivated, more highly developed 
 
106 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 than now, will be more religious than 
 now. 
 
 While, however, all that is true, that 
 man is so essentially a religious creature 
 and can never get rid of religion, it must 
 also be confessed and deprecated as true 
 that religion has not diffused itself through- 
 out the whole man, throughout the whole 
 body of Ms conduct and thought; and 
 that while it has been and still is an 
 active force in social growth and develop- 
 ment, it might be and ought to be more 
 active than it is. There is still too much 
 of a break or chasm in man's life. There 
 is a lack of unity in it. He is not reli- 
 gious always, but only religious at times ; 
 and much of his life seems to be, and 
 seems to be of necessity, beyond the sphere 
 of religion. Now, there is something wrong 
 about tills ; for religion should touch, and 
 pervade, and compass all the life, and not 
 simply a part of it. And why does it not ? 
 Perhaps we preachers are in a measure 
 responsible for it. I think we are ; and 
 that in our zealous effort to strengthen 
 and establish religion and make its domin- 
 ion more, we have in fact narrowed it, and 
 made its dominion less. Of course we 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 107 
 
 have not meant to do this, but neverthe- 
 less we have done it. And how ? "We 
 have drawn the line too sharply between 
 the seciilar and the religious, or rather 
 have helped to make an impassable gulf 
 between them, so that those who would 
 pass from the religious to the secular can- 
 not ; neither can they pass to the religious 
 who would come from the secular. We 
 have made this distinction in the first 
 place with reference to truth, and have 
 been disposed to teach, or at least to give 
 the impression, that what we call religious 
 truth is something essentially different 
 from what we call secular truth. 
 
 The difference we say is this : religious 
 truth is something -^vhich God has revealed, 
 while secular truth is something which 
 man has discovered. Our object in mak- 
 ing this distinction is to give to religious 
 truth a more authoritative investiture, and 
 to make men more disposed to hearken to 
 and obey it ; because it is God's truth, the 
 truth which God has revealed. In empha- 
 sizing, however, the sacredness of the truth 
 which we call religious, the truth which is 
 in the Bible, we have diminished the sacred- 
 ness of all other truth, the truth which is 
 
t> 
 
 108 TBE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 not in the Bible, and have made it some- 
 thing secular. In their apprehension, 
 therefore, of that other truth, men very 
 naturally have become secularized, and 
 have not been made to feel that in touch- 
 ing that other truth they were touch- 
 ing the garment of God, as we touch His 
 garment who move within the sphere of 
 the truth which God has revealed. They 
 are outside of that sphere, we think ; and 
 while what they say may be true, it is not 
 as true as our truth, and must be subordi- 
 nated to our truth, because our truth is 
 revealed truth, and theirs is not revealed. 
 And so we become jealoiis of them, and 
 they become jealous of us ; and there is 
 friction, and irritation, and antagonism 
 between us. And we have the sinsrular 
 spectacle and the sad one, of men loving 
 truth with an earnest and passionate love, 
 searching for it, devoted to it, ready, if 
 need be, to die for it, as they have died for 
 it, and yet standing apart and separate 
 from Him whose Kingdom is the king- 
 dom of truth, whose weapon is the weapon 
 of truth, whose voice is the voice of truth, 
 and who said before the governor in the 
 judgment hall, " To this end was I born ; 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 109 
 
 for this purpose came I into the world, 
 that I should bear witness unto the truth." 
 It is, I say, a sad and singular spectacle, 
 and one that ought not to be. And why 
 is it ? Are not we ourselves in a measure 
 responsible for it by making a distinction 
 in theory which does not in reality exist ? 
 Truth in the Bible is not distinguished 
 from truth outside of the Bible by the 
 fact that it alone is a revelation of God, 
 that it alone is sacred, that it alone is 
 religious. That is a wrong distinction. 
 All truth is sacred. All truth is religious, 
 and it is all a revelation of God. To think 
 or teach otherwise is to deny the possibility 
 of any revelation at all. Tt is to deny that 
 the truth of the Bible is a revelation of 
 God. Or rather it is to deny and destroy 
 the only philosophic ground upon which 
 we can consistently maintain that it is a 
 revelation of God, and to go over at once 
 to the enemy, — that positive school of 
 thought which declares that God, being 
 absolute and infinite, and because infinite 
 and absolute, cannot make a revelation of 
 Himself to the related and the finite, and 
 must forever remain to us unknown and 
 unknowable. We, on the other hand, be- 
 
110 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 lieve that God can reveal himself and 
 does reveal Himself, that He is essentially 
 a revealing God. That is the crux of all 
 our philosophic contentions. Can the Un- 
 known Infinite become known to the finite ? 
 Can God reveal Himself ? And here, too, 
 is the essential difference between the re- 
 ligious and the non-religious mind, — one 
 believing that God is a revealing God, 
 and the other believing that God is not 
 a revealing God. 
 
 Whenever, therefore, we teach with 
 reference to any body of truth, with refer- 
 ence to the truth of the Bible that it alone 
 is divine revelation, we fall, with reference 
 to all other truth, into the very error which 
 we deprecate. We teach by implication, 
 as far as that other truth is concerned, pre- 
 cisely what non-religion teaches, what Posi- 
 tivism teaches, namely, that God is not a 
 revealing God, and that that other truth is 
 something which man by his own unaided 
 effort has discovered, and which, therefore, 
 has to be looked at in connection with man, 
 as revealing the glory of man, and not as 
 something rather which the revealing God, 
 working in and tlirough man, has revealed 
 to man's apprehension. May we not be- 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 111 
 
 lieve, however, that God -was once long ago 
 a revealing God, but that He is not now a 
 revealing God ? Yes, we may believe it ; 
 but to do so is to believe in a changeable 
 God, and not in a God who is the same 
 yesterday, to-day, and forever, without 
 variableness or shadow of turnincr. And 
 if we believe in a changeable God, who is 
 not now and always a revealing God, we 
 make it difficult to believe that He was 
 ever a revealing God ; because we surren- 
 der that philosophic first premise by which 
 alone we can prove it, namely, that God is 
 essentially a revealing God, and substi- 
 tute in its place that philosophic first 
 premise of the Positive school of thought 
 which declares that God is essentially a 
 non-revealing God. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. The truth 
 which the Bible contains could not have 
 been reached by the unaided faculties of 
 man. That of course I believe, and would 
 stoutly maintain. But neither, again, 
 could the truth which lies outside of the 
 Bible. That, too, is divine revelation. 
 The method of the revelation may not be 
 the same. It may be, if you please, less 
 immediate and direct : those are questions 
 
112 TPE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 which I am not now considering. My 
 point is this, that it is divine revelation, 
 and must be regarded as such, as the 
 logical sequence of that fundamental con- 
 viction in which religion finds its raison 
 cVetre, that God is essentially a revealing 
 God, and that the whole of our human 
 nature in its intellectual activities, as well 
 as in its moral and spiritual endeavors, is 
 quickened by and dependent upon, and 
 has its being in this immanent and reveal- 
 ing God. What, then, is the difference 
 between truth in the Bible and truth 
 outside of the Bible ? Not that one is 
 revealed and the otlier not revealed ; they 
 are both revealed. Neither is it that one 
 is more authoritative than the other ; for 
 truth can have no liigher authority than 
 the fact of its being truth. The differ- 
 ence is this : partly, if you please, that 
 they are revealed in different ways ; partly 
 that they are different kinds of revealed 
 truth; and partly, also, that in the Bible 
 we have the revealed truth of God moving 
 more and more towards a full embodiment, 
 and in Jesus Christ made flesh. We see 
 it not as theory there, not as an abstract 
 principle, we see it there as life. It is 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 113 
 
 clothed in a living soul, in a living form 
 and body ; it speaks in a living voice. The 
 Word of God is made flesh and glorified 
 by an incarnation, saying, not here or 
 there, or this or that is truth, but saying, / 
 am Truth ; look unto Me ; come unto Me ; 
 follow Me. Every one that is of the truth 
 heareth My voice. 
 
 But suppose there should be some con- 
 flict between the truth within and the 
 truth without the Bible ? Why, the very 
 asking of the question is the answering of 
 it. Truth is truth, and God's truth, and 
 God's revealed truth, and can no more be 
 in conflict with itself than God can be in 
 conflict with Himself. That there is in- 
 deed, or may be, a conflict more or less, 
 between certain propositions which by the 
 different teachers have been put forth as 
 truth, I do not of course deny, and in the 
 face of facts could not. Those whose busi- 
 ness it is to study the truth of God con- 
 tained outside of the Bible may be at 
 times mistaken in what they say and teach, 
 as they have been mistaken ; and we should 
 be slow and cautious in accepting what 
 they say, because it may not be true ; but 
 we should also be slow and cautious in 
 s 
 
114 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 rejecting what they say, because it may be 
 true. Let us wait and see: not antago- 
 nistically, but sympathetically ; and let us 
 be willing that they should go on and do 
 their work in their own proper way. And 
 what is their way ? It is to put forth at 
 times new and tentative hypotheses, not 
 as being themselves positive statements of 
 truth, but simply as working theories with 
 a view to ascertaining how well or ill they 
 work. If it is found that they work well, 
 and continue to work well, then by that 
 well-working they are validated and con- 
 firmed. But if it is found that they work 
 ill, and continue to work ill, then by that 
 ill-working they are invalidated and set 
 aside, or changed somewhat and corrected. 
 In the mean while, then, I say, let us wait 
 and see whether they work well or whether 
 they work ill. And let us give to those 
 who are working them a hearty and appre- 
 ciative encouragement. Let us cause them 
 to understand that we are with them and 
 not against them, and that if, as the result 
 of their working, their brave and patient 
 working, they should at last disclose and 
 make known to us some truth not known 
 by us before, — ^^then, no matter through 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 115 
 
 what medium it comes to us, no matter 
 what surrender of cherished belief it costs 
 us, we will submit to it, and bow to it, 
 gladly, gratefully, reverently, as the truth 
 which our God, our revealing God, has 
 through them revealed. 
 
 Above all things, let us not seem to put 
 ourselves in an attitude of hostility to 
 those who are simply trying with an appa- 
 rently honest purpose to bring to light 
 more and more the hidden things of dark- 
 ness, and to find out what is true. Let us 
 be careful not to create the impression 
 that we are afraid of truth, of any truth, 
 and that we are not in full sympathy with 
 those who are seeking truth. Let us be 
 willing, therefore, to forego the pleasure, 
 so appealing to the clerical mind at times, 
 of refuting so successfully in the presence 
 of sympathetic congregations those vain 
 and deluded men of scientific research, 
 who remain, alas, so insensible to our 
 refutation of them, and still go on with 
 their searching. And let them go on with 
 their searching. What we hold we believe 
 is true ; and because it is true we hold it ; 
 and because it is true we teach it. But we 
 hold not all the truth. "The first man 
 
116 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 knew her not perfectly, no more shall the 
 last find her out. Her thoughts are more 
 than the sea, and her counsels profounder 
 than the great deep." There is more yet 
 to come ; there is more yet to appear. And 
 to all who are honestly trying to make it 
 come and appear, the voice of the Clxristian 
 pulpit should be always ready to give and 
 speak an encouraging word ; and to claim 
 and maintain for them that same liberty 
 of prophesying which it claims to-day for 
 itself. In the exercise of that liberty they 
 may make mistakes, as we do, and go 
 wrong; but without the liberty to go 
 wrong there can be no liberty to go right ; 
 and it is better to run the risk of mistak- 
 ing the false for the true, than, by not run- 
 ning the risk, to fail to find the true. 
 
 Let us then be willing to give, and to 
 let it be understood that we are willing to 
 give, the fullest and broadest liberty to all 
 those persons to-day who, in spheres out- 
 side of the Bible, are trying to find the 
 truth. Let that be our attitude towards 
 them, — not inimical, but friendly ; not at 
 variance with them, but at one with them ; 
 believing that through them God can also 
 speak, and does at times speak, and that 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 117 
 
 the truth which they utter is not therefore 
 secular, but sacred and religious, the truth 
 which God reveals. 
 
 Is that then the truth which we as 
 Cliristian ministers are called upon to 
 preach ? That does not necessarily follow. 
 I should say that as a rule we are not 
 called to preach it. Truth, to be sure, is 
 one, and not two, or many ; and yet there 
 are many kinds, and phases, and forms of 
 truth, like the many notes of music, or the 
 many hues of color, which, though con- 
 nected, are different. The truth of geology 
 is in harmony with the truth of astronomy, 
 but it is not the same as the truth of as- 
 tronomy. Nor does it follow that because 
 one teaches geology he should also teach 
 astronomy. It rather follows that he should 
 not ; and that if he does undertake to 
 teach it, he will not teach it well. The 
 blade (to use Lord Macaulay's simile) 
 which is intended to serve the double 
 purpose of a carving-knife and a razor, 
 will not carve so well as a knife, nor shave 
 so well as a razor ; and the bakery which 
 should also be a bank, would be likely to 
 make poor bread, and to discount bad 
 bills. 
 
118 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 The tendency of civilized society is a 
 tendency towards specialization; and the 
 specialized task of the preacher is not to 
 try to preach all the truth which God has 
 revealed (though it is all true, and God 
 has revealed it), but to preach that truth 
 which God has revealed in Jesus Christ; 
 and the less he has to do with the preach- 
 ing of what is called scientific truth, the 
 better, I think, will it be both for the 
 preaching and the science. His preach- 
 ing will be touched or affected more or 
 less by that scientific truth. It cannot 
 help being affected by it. And more 
 or less incidentally and collaterally and 
 as a kind of side light it will show it- 
 self in his preaching. But he is not, in 
 my judgment, and as I interpret his office, 
 called upon to preach it, any more than he 
 is called upon to preach against it. He is 
 called upon chiefiy to preach the truth of 
 God revealed in Jesus Christ ; and through 
 his own personal absorption and assimila- 
 tion of it to make that truth a power in 
 the lives of those who hear him. That is 
 his special task, and that is task enough, — 
 hard enough, great enough, sublime enough 
 to tax him to the utmost, and to give him 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 119 
 
 emiDloyment enough. And yet, while per- 
 forming the task of preaching the truth 
 of God revealed in Jesus Christ, let him 
 not forget that there is other truth, and 
 that there are other teachers of truth. Is 
 his task sacred? So is theirs. Is his truth 
 revealed ? So is theirs. Is he a minister 
 of God? So are they. Is he a prophet of 
 God? So are they. And the work which 
 they do is religious work, as the work 
 which he does is religious work ; because 
 it is not chiefly the work which is done by 
 them, but the work which is done by God, 
 or done by God through them. And the 
 verdict of the heart is a true one, when, 
 looking back over the ages and seeing 
 the beautiful things which have been 
 brought to light by literature and art, 
 and the wonderful things which have been 
 disclosed by physical or metaphysical and 
 philosophic research, and the great results 
 and principles which have been evolved in 
 the progress and conflict of the nations, 
 and the historic march of events, it is 
 moved to say as it sees, not what hath man, 
 but " what hath God wrought." 
 
 Instead, therefore, of making a distinc- 
 tion between sacred truth and secular, let 
 
120 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 US claim all truth as sacred, because all 
 truth is God's, and comes from God, and 
 is doing God's work in the world. 
 
 And the claim which we make for truth 
 let us also make for life; and teach that 
 life, though engaged in secular duties and 
 affairs, is still a sacred thing ; and that the 
 secular sphere in Avhich it moves is still a 
 sacred sphere ; and that the secular work 
 which there it does is still a sacred work. 
 Jesus Clirist is there in that secular sphere, 
 or may be there. For what is Jesus Christ ? 
 Not merely the name of a person who lived 
 on the earth some eighteen or nineteen 
 hundred years ago, and then died, and was 
 buried, and rose again, and went off some- 
 where into some invisible world. Jesus 
 Christ is the name of the Life on earth of 
 God ; and that Life of God we find upon 
 the earth to-day in the hearts and souls of 
 men. The image of God is on them, and 
 cannot be effaced. The Life of God is in 
 them, and cannot be destroyed. And every 
 now and then, at unexpected times, and 
 in unexpected ways, gleams and flashes 
 of it appear in secular things and affairs. 
 And the name of that Life of God in the 
 hearts and souls of men is Jesus Christ, 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 121 
 
 in whom it fully appeared without let or 
 liindrance, without spot or blemish, and of 
 whom it was said in consequence, that He 
 was the brightness of His Father's glory, 
 and the express image of His person. 
 
 Ordinarily, however, men do not feel 
 that the life of God is in their secular 
 sphere of conduct. Clu'istian men do not 
 feel so ; and when they go from the duties 
 which they perform in church on Sunday 
 to the duties which await them in the office 
 or shop on Monday, they seem to them- 
 selves to be going away from Jesus Christ, 
 from a territory which is religious to a 
 territory which is not religious. They may 
 be religious in it ; to some extent they are 
 religious in it, many of them, perhaps most 
 of them. But the territory itself they 
 feel is not religious, but common, Avorldly, 
 and secular ; and that they while in it are 
 doing common and worldly things. And 
 they get into the habit of doing them in 
 a common and worldly way, according to 
 the way of the territory, according to the 
 rules of the territory, which is not a relig- 
 ious territory, and whose rules, therefore, 
 are not religious rules. The religious 
 rules belong only to the religious territory, 
 
122 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 which is back there, somewhere. They 
 were in it for a wlrile on Sunday, or at 
 the week-day prayer-meeting; and there, 
 indeed, in that religious territory they 
 observed religious rules. But out here, 
 in the great, broad, busy non-religious 
 territory, those religious rules do not work 
 or apply, and are not expected to apply. 
 
 And so we have the spectacle of men, 
 good and true, observing one kind of rule 
 at one time, and another kind of rule 
 at another time. On Sunday they are 
 religious, and seek first the Kingdom of 
 God. That is what Sunday is for. On 
 Monday they are worldly, and seek first 
 their own kingdom. That is what Mon- 
 day is for. On Sunday they believe in 
 unselfishness, and altruism is the rule. 
 On Monday they believe in selfishness, 
 and egoism is the rule. On Sunday they 
 believe in trying to win their souls by 
 sacrificing themselves. On Monday they 
 believe in trying to win the world by sac- 
 rificing others. Nor do they think that in 
 doing this they are doing anything wrong. 
 They are simply living in two territories, 
 or going from one territory to another, 
 like a person who goes from a monarchy 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 123 
 
 to a republic, and observing in each the 
 rules, and laws and manners of each. In 
 the religious territory they are religious, 
 and conform to religious customs. In the 
 worldly territory they are worldly, and 
 conform to worldly customs. 
 
 Now, such a conception of religion and 
 of religious observance is a very poor one, 
 stunted, dwarfed, or abortived; and yet 
 it is the conception which so many seem 
 to have. Not only do so many laymen 
 seem to have it, but so many clergymen ; 
 and so many laymen perhaps because so 
 many clergymen. Lite priest, like people. 
 And their preaching shows that they have 
 it. They exhort their congregations, for 
 instance, not to give so much of their time 
 and strength to the world, and the doing 
 of things that are worldly, but to give part 
 of it to God and to the doing of things 
 that are religious. By which they mean 
 the things that are marked and labelled 
 religious, that have a religious stamp, a 
 religious name upon them, such as teach- 
 ing in Sunday-school, or attending the 
 weekly prayei'-meeting, or the sewing so- 
 ciety, or the Dorcas society, or the benev- 
 olent society, or the missionary society, — 
 
124 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 the things that are connected more inti- 
 mately with the activities of tlie church. 
 And thus they give the impression that 
 religion is a sort of side issue on the earth, 
 or a little sphere of conduct and activity 
 by itself, and that there is another and 
 larger sphere of conduct into which reli- 
 gion, and religious laws and rules are not 
 expected to enter, or not to enter much; 
 and into which, in consequence, they do 
 not enter much, and where other laws and 
 rules which are not religious, which are 
 not the laws and rules of the Kingdom of 
 Christ, prevail. 
 
 Now, I believe thoroughly in that kind 
 of religious work which is known as 
 " church work," or parish work, — Sun- 
 day-schools, prayer-meetings, benevolent 
 societies, etc. I believe that the Christian 
 people in our congregations should take 
 hold of that work and help it. That 
 surely is religious work, and very impor- 
 tant religious work. I shall have some- 
 thing to say about that before I finish this 
 course of lectures. But there is another 
 kind of religious work which seems to me 
 to be still more important. I mean the 
 work which is done in what is usually des- 
 
TBE PBEACBER AND OTBER MESSAGES 125 
 
 ignated as the secular sphere of conduct, 
 — politics, society, business. And the men 
 who are in that so-called secular sphere 
 should be made to feel that God is also in 
 it, and that they are in it with God and for 
 God, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in all. They should be made to feel 
 that they are in it to do God's work in the 
 world, in God's way, according to God's 
 rules, as Jesus Christ has revealed them. 
 They should be made to feel, therefore, 
 that all the activities in which they there 
 engage, or the things which there they do, 
 are religious things and activities. This 
 will make them, not less inclined, but more, 
 to participate in and do those other reli- 
 gious things, those other religious duties, 
 such as teaching in Sunday-schools, at- 
 tending prayer-meetings, and helping and 
 relieving the poor, for which the parish 
 stands. Naturally, easily, gladly, will they 
 pass from one kind of religious work to 
 another kind of religious work. There 
 will seem to be no break in it. And if 
 you want to get your congregations (when 
 the time comes for you to have congrega- 
 tions) more interested in the religious work 
 which is going on in your parishes, you 
 
126 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 must first get them to understand (it is a 
 difficult thing to do, for it is always a diffi- 
 cult thing to get people out of ruts), that 
 religious work is sometliing which is going 
 on all the time. You must first make them 
 realize that in this world which God made 
 and owns, there never was meant to be any 
 other kind of work except religious work, 
 and that the distinction which has been 
 made between the religious and the secu- 
 lar is a false and misleading distinction. 
 First get them to understand that, I say ; 
 then your Sunday-schools will be well 
 equipped, your prayer-meetings will be 
 well attended, your missionary and benev- 
 olent societies will prosper and flourish as 
 you would have them flourish. Yes, and 
 other things will come in time in your par- 
 ishes which will also prosper and flourish. 
 
 We hear the fear expressed in some 
 quarters to-day that the minister of Jesus 
 Christ is giving too much of his time to 
 the development in his parish of secular 
 works and activities, and is himself in 
 danger of becoming secularized. Instead 
 of devoting so much of his energy and 
 strength to the starting of guilds and clubs, 
 • — girls' clubs, men's clubs, boys' clubs, — 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 127 
 
 and coffee-houses, and gymnasiums, and 
 dispensaries, and kindergartens, and day- 
 nurseries, and loan bureaus, and employ- 
 ment bureaiis, lie should, it is said, confine 
 himself more strictly to his proper work, 
 which is the work of preaching the Gos- 
 pel. Now, if this criticism simply means 
 that the work of preaching the Gospel is 
 for the Christian minister, the first and 
 paramount work, then I accept and in- 
 dorse it; for that is what I believe, and 
 have already said. And if the doing of 
 those other things to which I have referred 
 interferes with his preaching, then in my 
 judgment he should not try to do them. 
 If he cannot do both, let him not try to 
 do both, but only to do the one wliich is 
 in importance first. But if the criticism 
 means or implies that in doing those things 
 in his parish which are commonly called 
 secular he is not doing things which are in 
 reality religious, then it seems to me that 
 the criticism is not well taken, and is cal- 
 culated to give a conception of religion 
 which impoverishes and enfeebles it, and 
 makes it so much less, and so much less 
 sublime, than what it really is or what 
 it was meant to be. For religion, accord- 
 
128 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 ing to the Christian conception of it, does 
 not mean to have the consciousness of God 
 in some particular places, or in some par- 
 ticular things. That is the pagan concep- 
 tion of religion, that God is in places and 
 things, ■ — lo here, lo there ! But our reli- 
 gion is better and more sublime than that, 
 and means to have the consciousness of 
 God in all places, and in all things. With 
 that consciousness of God all duty is sacred 
 duty ; all service is sacred service ; all life 
 is sacred life. Wherever we go or are, 
 we have the consciousness in us that we 
 are standing on holy ground. Whatever 
 we try to do, we have the consciousness 
 in us that we are doing holy work. And 
 even when through jjarish coffee-houses, 
 and clubs, and gymnasiums, we minister 
 simply to the bodies of men, we are min- 
 istering unto bodies which Jesus Christ 
 taught are the temples of the Holy Ghost. 
 That, it seems to me, is the conception 
 of religion which you and I are to try to 
 give to the people of tliis generation. 
 And if in any way we can make our 
 parishes stand for that and express it, we 
 shall be doing something towards the estal)- 
 lishment on earth of the kingdom of the 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 129 
 
 Son of God. Human life hitherto has 
 been too much divided, and cut up into 
 fragments and sections. Each of the de- 
 partments of knowledge, says Mr. Kidd 
 again, which has dealt with man in society, 
 has regarded him almost exclusively from 
 its own standpoint. " To the politician he 
 he has been the mere opportunist. To the 
 historian he has been the unit, which is 
 the support of blind forces apparently sub- 
 ject to no law. To the exponent of religion 
 he has been the creature of another world. 
 To the political economist he has been 
 little more than a covetous machine. The 
 time has come, it would appear, for a bet- 
 ter understanding and for a more radical 
 method." And that better understanding, 
 it seems to me, must come from a better 
 understanding of religion, from a concep- 
 tion of religion which shall include in its 
 synthesis all forms of human conduct and 
 all departments of human activity. It is 
 eminently fit and proper, therefore, that 
 the minister of Jesus Christ should take an 
 active part in all social and political move- 
 ments ; not merely because he, too, is a 
 man and never forfeits his manhood ; but 
 because also he is a man of religion, a re- 
 
130 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 ligious man. And all tliose social and po- 
 litical movements are essentially religious 
 movements whicli tend to establish on the 
 earth, or should be so directed as to be made 
 to establish, the kingdom of Jesus Clirist. 
 Xa long, however, as the minister of Jesus 
 Clirist has but little to do with them, men 
 will continue to feel that those social and 
 political movements are not religious move- 
 ments, and that the work which they do 
 along those different lines is not a religious 
 work. And it is just that conception of 
 the work of the world, of the real work of 
 the world, Avhich we must try to change. 
 That great political reformation, it has 
 been said, which broke out in Europe 
 near the close of the last century, and 
 whose influence has extended to these 
 western shores, has made the people feel 
 that the sovereignty of the world is in 
 their hands to-day, and that they indeed 
 are the kings. What is needed now, it 
 has been also said, is another and greater 
 reformation, which shall make the people 
 feel that they are priests as well as kings, 
 and which shall give to them in their AA'ork, 
 whatever it may be, and hnwever secular 
 it may seem, the consciousness of God and 
 the sense of responsibility to Him. 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 131 
 
 In this way, I think, and only in this 
 way, will social antagonism be abated, 
 social irritation appeased, and that social 
 reformation wrought, Avhich is both needed 
 and imminent and which cannot be loii;^- 
 delayed, when the rich and the poor and 
 all, will be made to realize that they are 
 priests as well as kings, and are every- 
 where doing their work in the world as at 
 the altar of God. In that way, too, it 
 seems to me all human life on earth is to 
 be gathered up into Jesus Christ, — not by 
 separating it from the secular sphere, but 
 by sending it into the secular sphere with 
 the consciousness there of God. When 
 Abraham was called by the Divine Spirit 
 to leave his native country, he went out, 
 we are told, looking for a city, the symbol 
 of secular life, whose builder should be 
 God. The men of Shinar and Nineveh 
 were building up their cities in selfishness 
 and sensuousness. Abraham looked for a 
 city whose builder should be God. When 
 St. John in the isle of Patmos looked for- 
 ward into the future, and saw the eventual 
 triumph of the Christian religion on earth, 
 he saw that triumph coming to pass, — not 
 in the form of a church, in Avhich all men 
 
132 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 should, be doing things technically called 
 religious, but in the form of a city, the 
 symbol of secular life, a New Jerusalem, 
 coming down out of heaven from God, in 
 which all men should be doing things tech- 
 nically called secular, but doing them with 
 the spirit of God as revealed in Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 St. Augustine, at the beginning of the 
 fifth century, when the city of Rome by 
 reason of its inherent moral corruption, 
 was falling into decaj^, put forth liis cele- 
 brated work, in which he attempted to 
 show that the Christian religion was not 
 hostile to the secular life, but that its pur- 
 pose was to build a city of God on earth. 
 Two cities, he says, began to be upon this 
 earth with man, founded by two loves, — 
 the one by the love of self even to the de- 
 spising of God, whose greatest creation is 
 the city of Rome ; the other by the love 
 of God even to the despising and sac- 
 rificing of self, whose greatest creation 
 will be that society, that city, that sphere 
 of secular activity whose life has all been 
 gathered into Jesus Christ. 
 
 That is the task, young gentlemen, to 
 which to-day you are called, of trying to 
 
THE PREACHER AND OTHER MESSAGES 133 
 
 gather up into Jesus Christ, not some, but 
 all human life on earth. I do not know 
 any task more noble, more sublime, or 
 which appeals more strongly to every true 
 and sublime and worthy impulse in you. 
 To what vocation greater, can any young 
 man devote his talent, his time, his life ? 
 Touching all pursuits, and including within 
 its compass all kinds of social endeavor, 
 all phases of moral reform, what field so 
 broad, so vast? It is indeed the world, 
 and that is the field, the world, in which 
 as the ministers of Jesus Christ you are 
 called to work. 
 
THE PREACHER PREPARING HIS 
 MESSAGE 
 
 GENERAL PREPARATION 
 
THE PREACHER PREPARING HIS 
 MESSAGE 
 
 GENERAL PEBPAKATION 
 
 T N venturing to tell you something about 
 the preparation for preaching, as I shall 
 try to do in this lecture, I must, of course, 
 go over the same ground in part which 
 you have already gone over, or which you 
 are now traversing with your teachers 
 here ; and this may seem in me both super- 
 iiuous and presumptuous. But the purpose 
 of this lectureship, as I interpret it, is to 
 impart such information as one has been 
 able to gather from his own practical min- 
 istry, and to supplement the valuable in- 
 struction of the school, with the hints and 
 helps suggested by an experience outside 
 of the school. Assuming that I am right 
 in this, let me proceed to tell you some- 
 thing about the preparation for preaching. 
 There are two kinds of preparation for 
 preaching, one general, and the other spe- 
 cial. They are both important, and I 
 
138 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 propose to speak of both. In this lecture, 
 however, I shall confine myself to the first. 
 You remember, perhaps, the story told 
 of that eminent preacher after whom this 
 lectureship is named, that when upon one 
 occasion he was asked how long it had 
 taken him to prepare a sermon which he had 
 just delivered, he replied, "Forty years." 
 I do not know whether the story is true ; 
 but it might be. It is substantially true of 
 every sermon preached. The time involved 
 in the preparation is more than the few 
 days which have been devoted to the task, 
 and includes within its compass all the 
 days on earth which the preacher himself 
 has lived. It began, that preparation, when 
 the preacher began ; not when he began to 
 be a preacher, but when he began to be, or 
 rather before he began. It began with his 
 ancestors; and he is what he is because 
 they were what they were. And the tem- 
 perament or the talent which is possessed 
 by him he has received from them, or re- 
 ceived tlu'ough them from God. He enters 
 upon his task, and he performs his task, 
 -with a preparation for it which has been 
 bestowed upon or given to him by God. 
 First of all, then, the person who is ex- 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 139 
 
 pecting to preacli should try to be reason- 
 ably sure that he has been thus prepared 
 by nature or by God. He should try to 
 be reasonably sure that God has bestowed 
 upon him a fitness for the work. It is not 
 every good young man who is called upon 
 to be a preacher. Goodness, of course, is 
 essential ; and it goes without saying that 
 that is a qualification which he should 
 possess. But that is a qualification which 
 everybody ought to possess for his work in 
 life, the layman as well as the clergyman, 
 and the layman as much as the clergyman. 
 For there are not two kinds of goodness, 
 there are not two moral codes, one for those 
 who preach, and another for those who hear, 
 but the same moral code for both, emanat- 
 ing from the same God. If it is the duty 
 of the minister to be good after the highest 
 type of goodness, — or rather after the 
 only type, for there is but one, — so is it 
 the duty of the mechanic, the lawyer, the 
 man of affairs, the president of the rail- 
 road, the president of the bank. But just 
 as in the case of the mechanic something- 
 more than goodness is required, so in the 
 case of the preacher is something more re- 
 quired. Each of them must, have, in order 
 
140 THE PREACBER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 to do his work, or to do it fairly well, some 
 aptitude for his work, some gift or fitness 
 for it which has been bestowed by nature, 
 and that means when rightly interpreted, 
 which has been bestowed by God. With- 
 out that preparation he will not be success- 
 ful, and the work to which he devotes 
 himself will not only be ill done, but un- 
 comfortably done. He will not rejoice in 
 his work ; he will not Ije happy in it. 
 
 But how can a person know whether or 
 not he possesses that kind of preparation ? 
 How can a person who is contemplating 
 the work of the ministry know? He can 
 know after he has tried. But how can he 
 know before ? He cannot know fully and 
 infallibly, " for the fire in the flint shows 
 not till it be struck." And yet I think he 
 can tell with a reasonable degree of assur- 
 ance even before it be struck whether the 
 ih'e is there. Emerson somewhere says, 
 not in these words, but in substance, that 
 what a person most of all desires to do in 
 the world, is as a rule the thing which 
 best of all he can do, and ought to try 
 to do, and was perhaps intended to do. 
 Like so many of Emerson's aphoristic say- 
 ings, this one has to be taken, not as un- 
 
PREPARma BIS MESSAGE 141 
 
 qualifiedly and as in all cases true, but 
 only as measurably true. But it is measur- 
 ably true. And of one who is considering 
 whether or not he is called to preach the 
 Gospel of Christ, whether or not he is fitted 
 for that particular work, and has been pre- 
 pared and sent of God to do it, I should 
 simply ask these questions, or should ask 
 him rather to ask them of himself : Is the 
 preaching of the Gospel of Christ the thing 
 which most of all I desire to do in the 
 world? Does it like nothing else appeal 
 to and arouse and seem to set me on fire 
 with an enthusiasm for it? Does it pos- 
 sess for me an attraction which nothing 
 else possesses, not because of what in the 
 way of personal reward it may be able to 
 give me in this world or another, but just 
 because of what it seems to be in itself as 
 its own sufficient reward? Does it make 
 me feel as I think of it, or see it, and hear it 
 done by one who is fitted to do it, that I, 
 too, am a preacher, — not perhaps as he is, 
 I cannot hope for that, but still that I am 
 a preacher, that I ought to be, that I must 
 be, and that I cannot rest contented until I 
 try to be ? 
 
 I do not say that that is an infallible 
 
142 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 test, but it is a test. If a person feels with 
 reference to the work of preaching in some 
 such way as that, then I think he may be 
 reasonably sure that God has given him 
 that general preparation or fitness for the 
 work which first of all he must have, and 
 which will enter as a factor, secretly per- 
 haps and unconsciously to himself, yet 
 vitally and helpfully, into the preparation 
 of every sermon which he prepares. 
 
 That is the first requisite in the general 
 preparation for preaching ; but it is not all. 
 The treasures which God has put in the 
 human mind and soul are like the treasures 
 which He has put in the ground. They 
 are there ; but they are there to be brought 
 out. If they are not there, they cannot of 
 course be brought out ; but they are there 
 as though they were not until they are 
 brought out. You cannot make a preacher 
 of one who is not born to be a preacher, 
 who does not have it in him ; and yet he 
 has it in him as though he had it not until 
 it has been brought out. And what will 
 bring it out? The same thing that brings 
 the treasure out of the ground. Work will 
 bring it out, — hard work, and only hard 
 work. In other respects also does the 
 
PREPARING BIS MESSAGE 143 
 
 parallel sometimes hold, not always, but 
 sometimes, that the better and finer the 
 treasure, the harder is the work required. 
 Herein, is the saying of Carlyle true, that 
 genius means, or is, the capacity for in- 
 finite exertion. And the preacher who 
 trusts chiefly to his native gifts and endow- 
 ments, his quickness of thought, his fluency 
 of speech, his readiness with his pen, or his 
 facility with his tongue, his poetical tem- 
 perament or his oratorical temperament, or 
 whatever his gifts may be, without trying 
 to train, and discipline, and enrich them by 
 patient and persistent study, by the hardest 
 kind of hard work, will find sooner or later, 
 and sooner rather than later, and his con- 
 gregation will also find, that he is preached 
 out, and that he has exhausted both himself 
 and them. 
 
 Now, that is a kind of general prepai'ation 
 for preaching which you are acquiring here. 
 That is what you are here for ; but it does 
 not end here, it only begins here; and 
 hard as your work here may be, it will be 
 still harder when you go away from here. 
 'Every man who succeeds to-day is a hard 
 worker. He may not work with worry, 
 and he will not work well if he does so 
 
144 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 work ; but he works with energy. This is 
 true of every calling. It is, I think, partic- 
 ularly true of the minister's calling to-day. 
 Some people have the notion that the only 
 day in the week on which the minister is 
 very busy is Sunday. I have not found it 
 so. Sunday to me has always been the 
 easiest day in the week; and when people 
 ask me, as they sometimes do. When are 
 you most at leisure ? or. When can we hope 
 to find you the most disengaged ? I usually 
 say, '^ On Sunday." I have less to do then 
 than on any other day in the week. It is 
 true that I preach on Sunday ; and it often 
 happens that I preach — though it ought 
 not to happen — two or three times on 
 Sunday; but then I don't mind preacWng 
 when I am ready to preach, any more than 
 I mind eating my dinner when I am hun- 
 gry. But where the labor comes in, is in 
 the cooking of the dinner, and in the going 
 to market, and the many different markets 
 to get the things to cook. That is what 
 takes time for the subsequent prandial exer- 
 cise, as for the subsequent pulpit exercise. 
 Hard, therefore, as your work here may 
 be, it must be still harder when you go 
 away from here. You must still be stu- 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 145 
 
 dents, and diligent students ; and there are 
 three directions which your studies must 
 take. You must be students first of the 
 Bible. You have not yet exhausted, you 
 never will exhaust, the truth of that won- 
 derful book, or that wonderful collection 
 of books; and the more you study the 
 Bible, the more will you be impressed both 
 with its wonderfulness and its inexhausti- 
 bleness; provided, that is, you study it 
 with a fresh and open mind, not taking 
 something to it which you already know, 
 to be by it confirmed, but ready always to 
 find in it, and expecting always to find in 
 it, something more than you know, and 
 which will add to your knowledge. You 
 must study it, too, let me say, not simply 
 as a book of yesterday, but as a book of 
 to-day ; not simply as a book of facts which 
 happened long ago, but as a book of prin- 
 ciples rather which are in operation now, 
 and which the facts illustrate and suggest. 
 This is not always done. Some persons 
 study the Bible in the way that Balzac 
 makes one of his characters say history 
 ought to be studied, not to find "prin- 
 ciples, but only events ; not to find laws, 
 but only circumstances." That is the 
 10 
 
146 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 way in which some persons study the 
 Bible, and the way too in which, judg- 
 ing them by their sermons, some preach- 
 ers seem to study it. They fuid in it a 
 fact in the history of Abraham, or Moses, 
 or Samuel, or David; or an event in the 
 history of Israel ; or a circumstance in the 
 history of the apostles ; and then they tell 
 the people all about that fact, that circum- 
 stance, that event ; and the people are not 
 much interested in that circumstance or 
 that event. Why should they be? It 
 happened so long ago, and to people so far 
 away, in Jerusalem, or Babylon, or Arabia, 
 and has apparently but little to do with 
 what is happening now. And they take, I 
 say, in consequence, but little interest in 
 it; and the interest which they do take is 
 a kind of archaic interest, like the interest 
 which one takes in old monumental re- 
 mains, or the forms of plants and animals 
 which have become extinct. Very curious 
 things they must have been, and wonder- 
 ful, and real and true. And how well the 
 preacher describes them ; how eloquently he 
 sets them forth; what choice language he 
 uses in discoursing to the people about them. 
 And yet they are not their things, or do 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 147 
 
 not seem to be theirs, as things which bear 
 on them. And while, perhaps, there is in 
 his fine discourse about them some httle 
 practical lesson, or helpful moral drawn, 
 it is an incidental or parenthetical lesson, 
 or a moral drawn by the way; and the 
 things and the events from which the moral 
 is drawn do not seem real and near, or 
 to be alive now, as they were alive once, 
 or to be as true for the people living now 
 as for the people living then. 
 
 Now that, it seems to me, is not what 
 the Bible is, nor is that the way in which 
 to study it. Your aim should be, not sim- 
 ply to find archaic facts and historical state- 
 ments in it, but beneath those facts and 
 statements, whatever they may be, living 
 rules and laws, or principles and truths ; 
 not true because they are in it, but in it 
 because they are true, universally true, 
 eternally true, for all times, for all places, 
 for all persons, whether they lived long 
 ago in Palestine or Arabia, or whether they 
 are livinsf now in Connecticut or China. It 
 is only in this way that you can make the 
 Bible, and the truth which the Bible con- 
 tains, a real and living factor in the life of 
 the modern world. Of what value will be 
 
148 TBE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, 
 unless you can also show that it is the story 
 of men and women now ? Of what value 
 will be the story of the call which came to 
 Abram in Ur of the Chaldees, unless you 
 can also show that it is the same call which 
 comes to people now? Or that the word 
 which was spoken to Ezekiel, dwelling by 
 the Chebar River, is the word which is 
 spoken to them, dwelling on the banks of 
 the Hudson or the Thames ? Or that the 
 message which came to Isaiah in Jerusalem 
 or Babylon is the message which comes to 
 them in Boston or New York, and a mes- 
 sage just as true and just as needed now, 
 as it was true and needed then. That mes- 
 sage and that word you will not find on 
 the surface of the Bible. You must dig 
 for it beneath the surface as the miner digs 
 for the ore ; and in your attempt to find it, 
 like the miner, you will find some local stuff 
 and material closely connected with it, but 
 which is not it. 
 
 I remark again that you must use your 
 imagination in your effort to fuid it, — a dan- 
 gerous weapon and a sharp one, which cuts 
 both ways, towards error as well as truth, 
 but which, nevertheless, you must use in 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 149 
 
 trying to find in the Bible the living word 
 of God. And then when you have found 
 it you must give it forth and present it, not 
 always in that rhetorical and idiomatic form 
 with which it was originally associated and 
 which is but the superficial accessory of it, 
 but in that form of expression which ap- 
 peals to the people noio, and which they 
 now understand and use. In this way you 
 will do what you can to make them see 
 and feel that wliile it is old it is new, the 
 word of God to Isaiah, and the word of 
 God to them ; the message which Ezekiel 
 heard, and which they should also hear. 
 Study the Bible in that way, with a rever- 
 ent imagination, with an open heart and 
 mind; trying always to find, not merely 
 local facts, but eternal principles in it ; not 
 as a book of yesterday, but as a book of 
 to-day; not as a book A\^hich shows that 
 once, long ago, God was near to the world, 
 but as a book which shows that He is 
 always near to the world. Then it will 
 not be necessary for you to be always try- 
 ing to prove and vindicate the Bible, try- 
 ing to prove to the people that it is the 
 word of God, or how it is the word of God. 
 It will le the word of God, and will prove 
 
150 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 itself to be, first to you, and then through 
 you to them, quick, powerful, penetrating, 
 and, profitable for doctrine, reproof, cor- 
 rection, instruction in righteousness, that 
 righteousness which in the Old Testament 
 Scriptures is declared to be eternal, and 
 which Israel tried to express, and which in 
 the New Testament Scriptures is defined 
 as love, and which Jesus Christ embodied. 
 And topics will it give you, and subjects 
 will it suggest, which will always be fresh, 
 and timely, and pertinent to the occasion. 
 And topics, too, they will be which you 
 will never exhaust, will never reach the 
 end of in meaning or in number ; and fast 
 and often as the Sundays come you will 
 never be preached out. 
 
 But there is still another direction which 
 your studies should take. The preacher 
 should be a man of broad and generous 
 culture, and should study, not only the 
 Bible, but books outside of the Bible. 
 Those other books will help him to teach 
 and interpret the Bible, will help him to 
 know the Bible, to understand the Bible, 
 and will help him to help the people to 
 understand the Bible. And by this I do 
 not mean that they will furnish him with 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 151 
 
 facts, and incidents, and stories which he 
 will be able to use as illustrations in preach- 
 ing, thus making his preaching because 
 more pictorial, more interesting and attrac- 
 tive. That indeed they will do, and that is 
 desirable ; for an apt illustration in preach- 
 ing is always helpful. But here let me 
 say, in passing, that it must be an illustra- 
 tion which is the preacher's own ; not ne- 
 cessarily one which he has invented and in 
 that sense made his own, but one that he 
 has found in the course of his general read- 
 ing. There are, I believe, books of illus- 
 trations, stories, incidents, and anecdotes 
 which are intended to be a kind of homi- 
 letical bank, upon which the preacher can 
 draw at sight without the usual discount ; 
 and there is apt to come a time in the ex- 
 perience of every preacher (it usually comes 
 very early in his experience) when he is 
 tempted to use such books. My advice to 
 you is, to let such books alone. Don't buy 
 them ; don't borrow them ; don't use them 
 at all ; and if you have them, burn them. 
 They will not help you in preaching, or the 
 help with which they help you, or with 
 which they seem to help you, will be spuri- 
 ous help ; and the sermon which is adorned 
 
152 TEE PBEACEER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 with that kind of adornment will be to 
 that extent a spurious kind of sermon. It 
 will be like those houses of mixed archi- 
 tecture which suggest the thought, as we 
 look at them, that before they were com- 
 pleted the money gave out, and that they 
 had in consequence to be finished off with 
 a cheap and spurious kind of embellish- 
 ment, which, though it is on them and in 
 them, is not of them, and which does not 
 therefore improve them. 
 
 Illustrations in preaching are good ; but 
 they must be illustrations di'awn, not from 
 books of stories and encyclopaedias of anec- 
 dotes, but from that general fund of knowl- 
 ledge which by his personal study the 
 preacher has made his own. Then they 
 are good and helpful, and may be legiti- 
 mately used. 
 
 But that is not the reason why the 
 preacher should be a diligent student of 
 books other than books of the Bible : not 
 for the purpose of finding illustrations in 
 them, but illustration rather of how the 
 books of the Bible, or the truths which are 
 in those books, seem to touch, and meet, 
 and mingle with the truths contained in 
 other books, and to be by the truths of 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 153 
 
 those other books illuminated and con- 
 iirmed. It is only in that way that one 
 can really know what the truths of the 
 Bible are. You cannot surely know what 
 a young man is when you see him only at 
 home, under his father's roof, and in his 
 father's house, and how he acts and behaves, 
 and what he does while there. You must 
 see that, but you must see more than that. 
 You must see him away from home, and 
 living in other places, and moving in other 
 spheres, and going forth on journeys, and 
 travelling in other paths, and how he acts 
 and behaves, and what he does while there. 
 So with the truths of the Bible. In order to 
 see and know them, you must see and know 
 them not only in the Bible, and in their 
 Bible home, or in that home of the church 
 which the Bible has made to protect them, 
 and how they act and work, and what is 
 their character there. You must see them 
 away from home, in history, and govern- 
 ment, and politics, in social affairs, in coiu- 
 mercial affairs, in the affairs of yesterday 
 and in the affairs of to-day, and how in 
 those affairs they energize and work, and 
 what is there their influence, and what is 
 there their fruit, and how all life on earth, 
 
individual and national, is strengthened 
 where they are, and weakened where they 
 are not. And thus by seeing how well, 
 how admirably they work, how admirably 
 they behave, not only in their home, their 
 venerable Bible home or their ecclesiastical 
 home, but also away from home, when 
 brought to the test of experience in the life 
 of the world at large, — by seeing them 
 there, I say, you will apprehend them better, 
 you will appreciate them better, you will 
 acquire new confidence in them, and hold 
 them with firmer grasp. 
 
 Then, again, you will find in the books 
 outside of the Bible new and unexpected 
 applications made of the truths which are 
 in the Bible. You will see them in a new 
 perspective, or under a new sky, or through 
 the medium of a new light ; heights and 
 depths will be disclosed, and vistas made 
 to appear which otherwise would be ob- 
 scured and unapprehended by you. The 
 truths which are in the Bible will seem to 
 be born again, to have within them a life, 
 to have within them a power, which you 
 never dreamed that they had. Trains of 
 thought will be started, and suggestions 
 will be awakened, and beauties will be 
 
PREPARINO HIS MESSAGE 155 
 
 revealed, and visions will be unfolded, 
 whicli will come to your soul at times 
 with a great and glad surprise. There will 
 be in your preaching a freshness which will 
 make it more interesting both to you and 
 to those who hear you. You will preach 
 old truths, but not in old ruts, and the 
 doctrines will seem new set, and to have 
 new meanings in them. So much depends, 
 you know, not only in physical vision, 
 but also in mental and moral, upon the 
 point of view. And the knowledge which 
 you acquire outside of the Bible will not 
 be other knowledge than the Bible, but 
 other knowledge of it, and will give new 
 points of view from which to see the Bible. 
 Or, again, so much depends for the devel- 
 opment of life upon the atmosphere, and 
 things which seem to be dead and to have 
 no life at all in one kind of atmosphere, 
 are energized and quickened and vitalized 
 in another. And your studies outside of 
 the Bible will give a new atmosphere to the 
 Bible ; and in that new atmosphere many 
 of the germinal truths which are in the 
 Bible, and which to you are in it as though 
 they were not in it, will open, and expand, 
 and grow, and yield new blossom and fruit, 
 
156 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 and become to you alive, and will make 
 your preaching alive. 
 
 Is not that the reason, or one of the 
 reasons at least, why the pulpit to-day is 
 sometimes heavy and dull ? It is learned 
 enough, and scholarly enough, but it is too 
 exclusively a theological scholarship, or an 
 ecclesiastical learning. And would it not 
 make the pulpit more attractive and edify- 
 ing if it had around it more of the atmos- 
 phere of another kind of learning, with a 
 view to giving it a deeper and livelier 
 insight into the word of God, and making 
 it see some finer and better meanings in 
 that word of God? We sometimes hear 
 it said that what is needed in preaching to- 
 day is not that it should be more eloquent 
 and learned, but more expository and scrip- 
 tural ; that it should be more closely con- 
 fined to the preaching of the Gospel of 
 Christ. And that I believe is true. The 
 people who go to church to-day go there to 
 be helped. They have been working hard 
 all week long, and they want to hear some- 
 thing that shall strengthen, and refresh, 
 and inspire them, and lift them up towards 
 a better and purer life. They have been 
 listening to the words of man, which are 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 157 
 
 not always inspiring words, and now they 
 want to listen to the word of God for 
 a while, and lay hold on eternal life, and 
 to touch as it were the hem of the garment 
 of Jesus Christ. And that will be the best 
 and most helpful kind of preacliing which 
 will enable them to do it. 
 
 Let your preaching, then, be expository 
 and Scriptural, the preaching of the Gospel 
 of Christ. And in order that it may be 
 that, study the Bible. And in order that 
 you may know better what the Bible is, do 
 not confine yourselves in your study of the 
 Bible to the study of the Bible itself, or 
 to the study of books and commentaries 
 written upon the Bible. Begin there, but 
 do not stop there. Study the Bible through 
 books which are not themselves biblical, 
 — thi'ough history, and philosophy, and 
 poetry, and science, and fiction, — and you 
 will understand better what the Bible is, 
 and also what is in it, and will be able 
 better to bring it out, and better to enforce 
 and apply it. 
 
 What particular course or method you 
 should adopt in traversing that field of 
 literature wliich lies outside of the Bible, 
 it is for you to determine ; only do not 
 
158 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 neglect it, or tliLnk that in studying it you 
 are neglecting the Bible. You are, on the 
 contrary, studying the Bible, and getting 
 ready to preach it, not only more attrac- 
 tively, but more effectively as well. 
 
 But there is still another direction which 
 your studies must take. You must be 
 students of human life ; not simply as it 
 was yesterday, but as it is to-day. The 
 story is told of a theological instructor in 
 one of our seminaries, whether true or not 
 I know not, and it matters not, that he was 
 in the habit of saying to his pupils in his 
 closing lecture to them, " Three things are 
 necessary, young gentlemen, to success in 
 the ministry, — grace, learning, and com- 
 mon sense. If you have not grace, God can 
 give it to you. If you have not learning, 
 man can give it to you. But if you have 
 not common sense, neither God nor man 
 can give it to you." His purpose I pre- 
 sume was to impress upon them, not so 
 much the hopelessness in certain cases of 
 acquiring common sense, but the desirable- 
 ness of acquiring it in all cases. And surely 
 it is desirable, not only in a layman, but also 
 in a clergyman. He cannot get on without 
 it, or cannot get on \\e\\ : and the only way 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 159 
 
 in which he can succeed in acquiring it is 
 by coming into touch with life, — the life of 
 the people about him, their real and actual 
 life, seeing it, feeling it, studying it, and 
 learning thus what it is by personal con- 
 tact with it, and how to guide and direct 
 it. That is a quality which the preacher, 
 which the minister of Jesus Christ, like 
 every one else, must have, and without 
 which his preaching, however learned and 
 eloquent, will not be effective preaching. 
 And yet, while the Christian minister needs 
 it just as much, it is, I think, for him more 
 diiificult to acquire. He is so fenced about 
 with conventional limitations and forms 
 that he cannot come near to the people, 
 nor can the people come near to him ; and 
 it is not easy for him to see them as they 
 are. He cannot do what other people 
 do, and go where other people go. He 
 lives and moves and acts as a diiierent be- 
 ing among them. His pursuits are differ- 
 ent ; his pleasures are different ; his habits 
 of life are different ; even his clothes are 
 different. He is a different being among 
 them, and they meet him in consequence 
 in a different way, with a different kind of 
 speech, with a different kind of conduct, 
 
160 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 and with reference to him they are, or at 
 least are apt to be, a different kind of 
 people from what they usually are. And 
 so I say it is hard to get acquainted with 
 them, to know them, to understand them. 
 His office makes it hard ; and that knowl- 
 edge of human life which he ought to have, 
 which he ought to acquire in order to be 
 able to discharge the duties of his office, 
 his office does so often prevent him from 
 acquiring. 
 
 How is this difficulty to be met and over- 
 come ? I would not willingly say a word 
 which would tend in the least to disparage 
 or depreciate the ministerial office, to lower 
 it, to cheapen it, or to detract from the 
 dignity of it. It is, in my judgment, the 
 noblest and highest of all offices, as I have 
 been trying to make you feel ; and in every 
 proper and lawful way I Avould magnify it 
 and proclaim its worth and value, and set 
 its dignity and greatness forth. And yet 
 I cannot but think it is a great mistake to 
 so regard that office as to make it like a 
 fence, and a high fence, and difficult to get 
 over, between the man on one side, and his 
 fellow men on the other. They should not 
 so regard it, and he should not so regard it. 
 
PREPARING BIS MESSAGE 161 
 
 Let him go among them rather, and live 
 and be among them, simply as a man among 
 men, as an honorable and high-minded man, 
 living like other honorable and high-minded 
 men, trying thus to win their confidence, 
 and to secure and have theii- respect, not 
 chiefly because of his office, but chiefly be- 
 cause of liimself. And if there is to be a 
 difference between them, let it be a differ- 
 ence in manhood and character, and not in 
 oflicial status. Let it be a difference which 
 attracts and binds them more closely to 
 him, and not a difference which repels and 
 puts them further away. 
 
 But the minister, it is said, is often pre- 
 vented from doing what other people do, 
 innocent though it be, because it is his duty 
 to set an example to them. In one sense 
 that is true. The minister of Jesus Christ 
 should set an example to men ; but it should 
 be a real example, and not to any extent a 
 feigned and simulated example. It should 
 not be an example simply for the sake of 
 example ; for the person, whether minister 
 or layman, who aims to be an example, 
 simply for the sake of example, will sooner 
 or later, and inevitably and in spite of 
 himself, become more or less of a hypocrite. 
 11 
 
162 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 The example which he sets will not be the 
 example of one who is doing what is 
 right for its own sake, regardless of conse- 
 quence, but the example of one who is 
 doing what is right chiefly or in part for 
 the sake of others, and solicitous of con- 
 sequence ; and the example which he sets 
 will not be a good example. It will have 
 more or less of the element of dissimula- 
 tion in it, which people will be quick to per- 
 ceive. It will not be a genuine example ; 
 it will not be a wholesome example ; and 
 the influence which it exerts will not be 
 a wholesome influence. Let the minister, 
 I say, be a man among men ; not careless, 
 not lax, not indifferent, but at the same 
 time not afraid of what they say or think, 
 and not anxious about it. Let him go and 
 be among them, not thinking much or at all 
 of the impression he makes upon them, but 
 only of what is right, and careful only for 
 that, — honest, fearless, straightforward, 
 and scorning consequence. Whitcomb 
 Riley has described him, — 
 
 " The kind of man for you and me, 
 He faces the world unflinchingly ; 
 And smites as long as the wrong resists 
 With a knuckled faith, and force-like fists. 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 163 
 
 He lives the life he is preaching of, 
 
 And loves vyhere most there is need of love. 
 
 And feeling still with a faith half glad 
 That the bad are as good as the good are bad, 
 He strikes straight out for the right : and he 
 Is the kind of man for you and me." 
 
 That is the kind of man who will know 
 men. That is the kind of minister who 
 will know men, and how to direct, and 
 lead, and be an example to them, because 
 he is of and among them, in sympathy 
 with all that is natural, with all that is 
 human in them. He will not be worldly, 
 but he will understand the world. He 
 will not be a participant in wrong-doing, 
 but he will know what wrong-doing is ; 
 and to the wrong-doer he will know how 
 to speak a strong and searching word. 
 Separate from evil as his Master was, but 
 not separate from man, as his Master was 
 not, like his Master he will know what is 
 in man, and something of his Master's 
 power he will be able to exert. Go among 
 men, therefore, and live among them, and 
 see and learn how they live and what their 
 habits are, their f i-iiltie.s, their temptations, 
 their sins. Do Jiot let your office be a bar- 
 
164 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 rier between you and them, but an open 
 door rather that leads into their midst. 
 That is what your pastoral visiting should 
 be, not simply a process of running about 
 and placating people, and persuading them 
 to come to church. It has always seemed 
 to me as though there were something un- 
 manly and undignified in that. It should 
 be an opportunity, rather, to read and 
 study new pages, or to read and study new 
 chapters in the book of human life, as you 
 see it in the homes and families which you 
 visit. Often will you find in that book 
 of life, not only new subjects for sermons, 
 but new and better ways for the preparing 
 and preaching of sermons. But not only 
 through pastoral visiting should you seek 
 that opportunity : seek it every^vhere ; for 
 if you are to preach to men, you must know 
 them ; and if you are to know them, you 
 must be more or less among them. You 
 must not be afraid of hurting or contami- 
 nating yourselves, or your character, or 
 your reputation ; it is not your business to 
 be afraid. It is your business to know and 
 minister to human life ^vith the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, to know its needs and perils, 
 its struggles, its privations, its hardships. 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 166 
 
 not in a general way as you learn about it 
 from books, but in a particular way as you 
 learn about it and know it from your 
 personal knowledge of it. That is your 
 business ; and in the performance of that 
 business I say you must not be afraid ; and 
 if you are the kind of man that a minister 
 ought to be, with high and noble aim, with 
 pure, lofty, and unselfish purpose, you 
 need not be afraid. No harm will come to 
 you, or your character, or your reputation, 
 but much that is good will come. 
 
 Here is the advantage of that kind of 
 work in your parishes of which I have 
 spoken in a previous lecture, and which is 
 usually designated as " secular " work. It 
 will at least give you a better and truer 
 knowledge of human life and nature, and 
 how it thinks and feels, and what it really 
 is ; and you will know better how to 
 preach the Christian Gospel to it. There 
 vdll be in your sermons a straightness, 
 a downrightness, a directness which other- 
 wise they win not or cannot so easily 
 have. 
 
 By every means in your power, then, seek 
 to know the human life about you, and to 
 which you are called to preach. How in- 
 
166 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 teresting it is ; how suggestive ; how much 
 it needs preaching ; and how much to-day, 
 if you know it, you can by your preaching 
 help it. Study not only books, study not 
 only the Bible, but study human life ; and 
 the aptitude for preaching which God has 
 bestowed upon you, you will thus unfold 
 and develop, and be better prepared to use 
 for the glory of God in the world, and the 
 good of man in the world. 
 
THE PREACHER PREPARING HIS 
 
 MESSAGE 
 
 SPECIAL PREPAEATION 
 
THE PREACHER PREPARING HIS 
 
 MESSAGE 
 
 SPECIAX, PEEPAKATION 
 
 T N the last lecture I spoke to you of the 
 general preparation for preaching. My 
 purpose now is to supplement what I then 
 said, and to speak of the special preparation 
 for preaching, of the preparation, that is, 
 which one should make for preaching, say, 
 next Sunday. That is what next Sunday 
 he will hare to do. How shall he do it? 
 How shall he get ready to do it? How, 
 in other words, shall he best prepare him- 
 self for the task which then awaits him? 
 That is the question which I will ask you 
 now to consider, and upon which I will 
 venture to offer some suggestions. Before 
 doing so, however, let me say that I recog- 
 nize the fact that what is valuable for one 
 may not be equally so for all; and that 
 every person must work out his own 
 preaching and his own method of preach- 
 ing as he must work out his own salvation, 
 
170 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 and learn and determine for himself what 
 for himself is best. And yet while that is 
 true, it is also true that he may learn some- 
 thing from the experiences of others. And 
 if the little that I have learned by a practi- 
 cal experience for myself shall be the means 
 of helping you to learn a little for your- 
 selves, it is all I hope to accomplish. 
 
 With this prefatory remark, let me pro- 
 ceed to consider, with you, the question, 
 " How shall a person prepare himself for 
 the immediate dutj' of preaching ? " 
 
 Observe, I do not say, " How shall he 
 prepare his sermon ? " That is a different 
 question. To prepare a sermon is one 
 thing, and to prepare to preach is another ; 
 and the preparation involved is a different 
 kind of preparation. It is in this latter case 
 both more comprehensive and more per- 
 sonal : more comprehensive, because more 
 personal ; and the whole personality of the 
 preacher in all its varied make-up enters 
 into the task. It is not simply a process 
 of flunking and writing, birt a process of 
 living and being, as well as thinking and 
 writing, and involves not only the exercise 
 of the mind, but the exercise of the soul, 
 the conscience, the heart, the bod}-, — yes, 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 171 
 
 even the body; and the preacher himself 
 is a factor in his preparation to preach. 
 That is what the preacher is called upon to 
 do, — not to prepare sermons, but to pre- 
 pare to preach ; to prepare himself to 
 preach. And how shall he do it? He 
 must have, in the first place, something to 
 preach about. He must have a subject. 
 And how shall he find a subject? Will 
 anything do ? No ; anything will not do. 
 He must have something which at that 
 particular time is particularly appealing to 
 him. It is not necessary that it should be 
 suggested by his own personal experience : 
 it may be suggested to him by the experi- 
 ence of others ; by the need of the congre- 
 gation to which he is called to minister ; 
 or by the need of the community in which 
 he is called to live, — by a book, by a visit, 
 by a conversation, by a circumstance of 
 recent occurrence, by an event of recent 
 happening. There are scores of ways in 
 which it may be suggested to him. But it 
 must be something which when it is sug- 
 gested appeals to and takes hold of him, 
 and becomes for the time a part of him, 
 and makes him feel that that is what he 
 must surely preach about next Sunday. 
 
172 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 But suppose the days go by and no such 
 subject comes. Sunday is coming. There 
 is no doubt about that ; and he must be 
 ready to preach when it does come ; and 
 yet no Hving theme, no timely theme and 
 appealing, has been suggested to him. 
 Will not that sometimes be the case ? Yes, 
 it will ; but it ought not to be the case 
 very often, and will not be very often if he 
 has been diligent in making that general 
 preparation to which I referred in the last 
 lecture. I said then, j^ou remember, that 
 he should be a diligent student both of the 
 Bible and of books outside of the Bible. I 
 add now that while he should not study 
 Avith an immediate view to preaching, he 
 should not forget in his studying that he is 
 a preacher. By this I mean that he should 
 have in the course of his studying, not only 
 the scholar's temper seeking knowledge for 
 its own sake and apart from its practical 
 value, but something also of the homileti- 
 cal temper. He should have, in other 
 words, a mind that is open towards ser- 
 mons or towards the suggestion of sermons ; 
 and as from time to time subjects are sug- 
 gested he should make a note of them, not 
 in his memory merely, where they will fade, 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 173 
 
 but in a book, where they will not fade. 
 He should have such a book, or a number 
 of such books, beside him on his table 
 while he is studying, in which he can 
 write down, not too fully nor at too great 
 length, — that would be interruptive and 
 tedious, — but fully enough to subse- 
 quently recall the subjects suggested for 
 sermons, and making at the time a hasty 
 outline of them. Then, when he is at a loss 
 to know what to preach about, let him go 
 and consult those books, those books of 
 sermon stuff, not of somebody's else ser- 
 mon stuff, but of his own sermon stuff, or 
 sermon thought and outline. Presently he 
 will observe that his divining-rod begins 
 to dip; there is something there which 
 attracts him, to which he seems to be 
 drawn. He has not fully found it yet, but 
 he is finding it. His sympathies are moved, 
 and he yearns towards it. The blood be- 
 gins to go up into the brain, or the wheels 
 begin to go round, and it Avill not be long 
 before he has his subject, or his subject 
 has him, and takes possession of him; 
 and he will clearly see and know, without 
 any misgiving, what to preach about next 
 Sunday. 
 
174 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 Let me advise j'ou, then, in your study- 
 ing, your reading, or your thinking, to have 
 such books beside you, to catch and hold 
 your thoughts, and to catch them just as 
 they come, and to hold them just as you 
 catch them, without making an effort to 
 group or arrange them in an Index Rerum, 
 or according to the letters of the alphabet, 
 or with any sort of systematic classifica- 
 tion, — that will be burdensome, and will 
 take up too much time, — but just for the 
 purpose of not losing them, and so that you 
 can get them again when you want them. 
 I have quite a pile of such books in my 
 library (pardon this allusion to myself ; but 
 I must be more or less autobiographical in 
 these lectures, and am, I presume, expected 
 to be), and I find them very helpful ; and 
 when I do not know what to preach about, 
 I turn over the pages of those books. It is 
 like pouring a dipper of water down the 
 pump when it is dry and does not work : 
 it fetches the water, and the static fluid in 
 the quiescent pump is started and begins 
 to flow. I find them, I say, very helpful ; 
 and so, I think, would you find them, — not 
 my books but yours ; and if throughout 
 your ministry you make it a practice to 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 175 
 
 keep such homiletical notebooks, you will 
 not experience much difficulty in finding 
 subjects for sermons ; for the preacher who 
 has by his side these suggestive aids will 
 generally have suggested to him something 
 to preach about. 
 
 But suppose even that fails, — and the 
 best devices do fail sometimes, — what then 
 shall he do, and how then shall he proceed ? 
 Sunday is coming, is drawing near, and he 
 must be ready to preach ; and yet he has no 
 word, he has no message to preach. His 
 mind is a blank ; he has turned over the 
 pages of his notebooks, and nothing seems 
 to appeal to him, nothing seems to take 
 hold of him, and his mind is still a blank. 
 What shall he do ? Let him leave his books 
 for a while, and try to forget all about them, 
 and put on his hat and go out, — not for 
 physical exercise, though that, perhaps, will 
 help him, but for human exercise, for the 
 exercise of his heart, his soul, his mind, in 
 the midst of human life. If he is living 
 in a city like New York, let him go down 
 into the tenement houses, and put himself 
 into new and sympathetic touch with that 
 form of life which there he will see and 
 find, — its patience, its courage, its endur- 
 
176 TEE PREACHER AND BIS PLACE 
 
 ance ; or its misery and its degradation, 
 and which there afresh he will feel. Or 
 let him go into the business houses, into 
 the counting-houses and the dwelling- 
 houses ; and whether living in some metro- 
 politan centre or in some country village, 
 let him go where the' people are, where 
 they toil at their tasks, their common 
 every-day tasks, and where they carry their 
 burdens, their hard and heavy burdens, 
 and break and fall beneath them ! Let 
 him study and learn their ambitions ; let 
 him see and know their sorrows ; let him 
 hear their cries of distress, their hopes, 
 their fears, their shames, their wrongs, or 
 their wrong-doings ; let him feel the full 
 pulse of their life, — and he will presently 
 have and feel some subject on which he 
 can preach, some subject on which he 
 must preach. 
 
 His biographer has said of St. Francis, 
 the eloquent and gifted preacher of the 
 Middle Ages, that he felt himself the man 
 in whose body were born all the efforts, 
 the desires, and the aspirations of men, 
 Avith whom, in whom, through whom, they 
 were yearning to be renewed and to be 
 born again, and that in that respect, more 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 177 
 
 than by any external imitation, he was to 
 them a Christ. And the preacher who, 
 like St. Francis or like St. Francis' Mas- 
 ter, goes out among the people, and by his 
 sympathy with them embodies them in 
 himself, will not be lacking of subjects on 
 which to preach to the people. 
 
 If, then, the books in his library do not 
 give him the theme, let him leave his 
 books for a time and go out, and try to 
 study the book of human life, and he will 
 surely find a theme. 
 
 Assuming now that he has found it, how 
 shall he prepare himself to preach on it ? 
 What shall be his method of preparation ? 
 That will depend somewhat, will depend a 
 good deal, upon his method of preaching. 
 If it is his habit to preach with notes or 
 from manuscript, he will not go to work to 
 prepare himself to preach in the same way 
 or fashion in which he will go to work if 
 it is his habit to preach without notes. 
 And here, perhaps, I should say something, 
 as I presume most of my predecessors in 
 this lectureship have said something, in 
 regard to these different methods of preach- 
 ing. My own practice is to preach with- 
 out notes ; and of course I prefer that 
 
 12 
 
178 THE PREACEER AND EIS PLACE 
 
 practice, otherwise I should not practice it. 
 It has proved itself for me to be the better 
 way ; though I am far from saying that it 
 is the better way for everybody. I am 
 satisfied, however, after having tried both 
 ways, that preaching without notes is the 
 better way for me. I can in that way put 
 myself more fully into my preaching ; and 
 however it may seem to the people who 
 hear me, it seems to me, at least, as though 
 I came in that way nearer to the people, 
 and could speak with greater freedom and 
 more directness to them. A manuscript 
 fetters and binds me, and I seem when 
 speaking from it, to be speaking also to it. 
 It gets in my way, and I become impatient 
 of it, and I long to push it aside and look 
 away from it, and not to look back at it 
 again, but to continue to look at the peo- 
 ple ; and every time I do look back at it 
 again, I feel as though something had 
 come between us, and broken the current 
 between us. And something has come 
 between us, — the manuscript has come 
 between us; and I experience then the 
 truth of what Dr. Storrs says, that paper 
 is a non-conductor, and does not easily let 
 the electric current go through. I am 
 
PREPARING mS MESSAGE 179 
 
 sure, then, that for me, preaching without 
 notes is tlie better way to preach; and 
 while I am not sure that it would be the 
 better way for all, I am sure that there 
 are many who would find it the better 
 way if once they had the courage to try 
 it, and the persistency to keep on trying. 
 
 You will pardon me again if, with the 
 hope of persuading and encouraging some 
 of you to try it, I refer to my own expe- 
 rience, and tell you how I was induced to 
 try it myself. I had been in the ministry 
 several years before I was led to attempt 
 it, and during that time I wrote my ser- 
 mons fully out, and preached them as I 
 wrote them. I was not satisfied, however, 
 with that way of preaching, and was al- 
 ways restive under it. I wanted to preach 
 in some other way. I wanted to preach 
 without notes ; and occasionally I did at 
 the second service on Sunday, when the 
 congregation was smaller, or at the week- 
 day lecture. But to go up into the pulpit 
 Sunday morning when all the people were 
 present and to preach without notes, — I v, as 
 horribly afraid, and had not the courage to 
 attempt it. Upon one occasion, however, 
 just after I had come back from my sum- 
 
180 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 mer's vacation, I preached, as usual, a writ- 
 ten sermon which seemed so exceptionally 
 poor (I think one always preaches his poor- 
 est when he has been out of it for a while) 
 that I said to myself, I remember, " Now 
 is a good time to try to preach without 
 notes, for you certainly cannot do worse 
 next Sunday morning without notes than 
 you did last Sunday morning with them." 
 I therefore resolved to try, and with a good 
 deal of trepidation I did try. I selected 
 as my text, " Forgetting the things which 
 are behind, and reaching forth unto tlie 
 things which are before, I press towards 
 the mark ; " and while of course I did not 
 allude to the fact that that was just what 
 I myself was doing at that moment, I had 
 the consciousness of it, — the consciousness 
 that I was at that moment practising what 
 I was preaching, and trying to do in my 
 way what I was telling the people to do in 
 theirs. That consciousness helped me a 
 little, and enabled me to get through bet- 
 ter perhaps than otherwise I should have 
 got through, and some of my vestry came 
 into the vestry room afterwards and quoted 
 my text at me, " Forget the things which 
 are behind." At all events, I did get 
 
PREPARING BIS MESSAGE 181 
 
 through, and I am glad I did ; for it en- 
 couraged me to try it again, and I did try 
 it again, and again. I have been trying it 
 ever since ; and although I have preached 
 many poor sermons since, — it is now fif- 
 teen years ago, — the poorest of them have 
 been the sermons which I have written. 
 
 Having made bold to say this much 
 about my experience in preaching without 
 notes, perhaps I should go on and say a 
 little more and tell you something about 
 my method of preparation. After I have 
 found my subject I go to work, of course, 
 to think about and develop it, and I do my 
 thinking about it to some extent in words. 
 I think with a pencil in my hand ; and many 
 of the thoughts as they come to me I try to 
 express on paper, especially if when they 
 come to me they are not very clear. I try 
 to make them clear by putting them into 
 words and giving expression to them ; and 
 while I do not memorise that expression, I 
 find that in preaching it often comes to me 
 easily, naturally, and without any effort on 
 my part to recall it. It is simply an in- 
 stance of the mnemonic aid that is furnished 
 by clear thinking. That, however, is but 
 an incidental result, and my purpose in 
 
182 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 writing, as far as I do write, is simply to 
 make sure that I apprehend with distinct- 
 ness the thought that is in my mind. I 
 want to make sure that I have it, and not 
 that I merely seem to have it ; and the only 
 way sometimes in which I can make sure 
 that I have it is to try to write it. And 
 so I go through with my subject, writing 
 a little every now and then, sometimes 
 more, sometimes less, as the subject seems 
 to require, not for the sake of the writing, 
 or because I expect to use it in preaching, 
 for I do not, but for the sake of the thinking, 
 and the clearness of the thinking. Then, 
 when I have got through with the subject, 
 — no, I never get through with it until I 
 preach it — it is in my mind to some extent 
 all the time, not only when in my study, 
 but at other times ; I live with it more or 
 less throughout the week, and it grows and 
 develops in me, and becomes a part of me, 
 and more and more I have it, or more and 
 more it has me. And when Sunday morn- 
 ing comes, or Saturday afternoon or even- 
 ing, I look over the notes or the writings, 
 many or few, which I found it helpful to 
 make in the tracing out or the clearing up 
 of some of the thoughts of the sermon, in 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 183 
 
 order to be sure that I have them, and then, 
 without taking them with me, as best I 
 can, I preach. I do not even take the 
 heads or outlines with me into the pulpit ; 
 I take nothing with me but the text. I 
 tried the other plan at first, but it did not 
 work well ; it hindered me almost as much 
 as a manuscript did. I cannot tell exactly 
 how or why it hindered me, but it did. It 
 was, I presume, like trying to swim by 
 having all the time one foot on the bottom, 
 or one hand on a board ; and I found that 
 the better way, if ever I was going to learn 
 to swim, was just to jump right in and 
 swim — or sink. At all events, I did jump 
 in, without anything to depend upon, and 
 after a fashion, — perhaps not a very good 
 fashion, but still after a fashion, — I have 
 been swimming ever since, or preaching 
 ever since without manuscript. I do not 
 call it extemporaneous preaching, or me7n- 
 oriter preaching, — it certainly is not that, 
 or not consciously that. I am not particular 
 to call it anything except preaching with- 
 out notes ; and poor as the preaching may 
 be, it is the best that I can do ; and my 
 reason as well as my excuse for referring 
 to it now is to encourage some of you to 
 
184 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 try it, if you care to try. If you want to 
 do it, I am sure, from my own experience, 
 you can do it; for I was not, and am not 
 naturally fluent in speech, nor do I possess 
 the faculty ahove the average of thinking 
 on my feet ; and the little power in that 
 direction wliich at present I possess, I have 
 acquired by practice ; and what I have 
 learned to do a little, I am sure that most 
 of you can learn to do better and more. 
 Let me add, however, this word of caution. 
 To prepare to preach without notes is a 
 much 7nor6 difficult process than to pre- 
 pare to preach loith them. If you adopt 
 the former method simply as a makeshift, 
 and with a view to finding it easier and 
 less exacting, you will surely fail, as you 
 surely ought to fail. But if, on the other 
 hand, you address yourselves to the task 
 with earnestness, and thoroughness, and 
 persistency, with that faith in the truth of 
 your message which you ought to have, and 
 with that due faith in yourselves, which 
 is, after all, but faith in the Gocl who 
 made you, you will not fail. Your rhetoric 
 may not always be the best, nor your 
 language always the choicest, and yet 
 sometimes it will be ; and it is quite likely 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 185 
 
 that you will hesitate at times, and be at a 
 loss for a word, and become a little in- 
 volved. But if it does not matter much 
 to you, it will not matter much to the peo- 
 ple, and if you are not confused by it 
 they will not be confused ; and your mes- 
 sage, though broken in form a little, nor 
 always to your satisfaction when you come 
 to review it from a literary point of view, 
 will have, in spite of its ruggedness, and 
 sometimes because of its ruggedness, an 
 impressiveness and a power which it 
 would not otherwise have. 
 
 One other thing let me say about this 
 method of preaching, in answer to an ob- 
 jection which is sometimes made against 
 it. Suppose, when the time comes to preach, 
 the preacher liimself is not in good phys- 
 ical condition ; the nerve force is scant 
 and weak, scintillating sparks of pain, and 
 he has what is usually called a nervous 
 headache ; or he is in some other way, and 
 for some other reason, physically below par 
 and not quite up to the mark. Will not 
 this make it more difficu.lt for him to 
 preach without notes ? Surely it will. But 
 it will also make it more difficult for him to 
 preach with notes. It will make it more 
 
186 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 difficult for him to preacli at all ; and per- 
 haps in such a case he ought not to preach. 
 But if he is not too sick to preach from 
 manuscript, he is not too sick to preach 
 without manuscript; and the conscious- 
 ness that he has no manuscript to depend 
 upon will sometimes have the effect to im- 
 prove his physical condition, and put him 
 in better physical form. I, at least, have 
 often found it so ; and in an experience 
 of iifteen years, in which I have had my 
 physical ups and clowns, like other people, 
 whenever I have been well enough to 
 preach at all, I have been well enough to 
 preach without manuscript. 
 
 But whatever method of preaching you 
 may adopt, whether with notes or without 
 them, let me remind you again that there is 
 a difference between preparing sermons and 
 preparing yourselves to preach ; and that it 
 is this latter task which you are called to 
 perform. You may, if you choose, write 
 your sermons, but you must do something 
 more than write them. You must write 
 yourselves into your sermons, or must write 
 them into yourselves. You must manage 
 somehow to make the sermon which you 
 prepare, the expression of what you are, or 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 187 
 
 of what throughout the week you have 
 been, not only thinking, but acting, doing, 
 living ; it must be as it were to your peo- 
 ple your weekly story or epic. The mes- 
 sage which you have heard, it must be, and 
 not only heard but obeyed. The lesson 
 which you have learned, it must be, and 
 not only learned but practised. The ideal 
 which you have seen, it must be, and not 
 only seen but embodied and realized and 
 become. Not merely some truth of God 
 must it be which you have carefully written 
 out on paper and put away in the drawer 
 until the time comes to take it therefrom 
 and use it, but some truth of God must it 
 be which the Spirit of God has written out 
 in you, which He has put into your mind, 
 your soul, your very blood, so that when 
 your heart beats it will seem to beat with 
 it and send it pulsing through you. Re- 
 member always, I say, that you are not 
 simply to prepare a sermon for Sunday, but 
 prepare to preach on Sunday. As inciden- 
 tal to this you may use paper, twenty sheets 
 or forty ; but be careful to bear in mind that 
 the paper is for the sermon, and not the 
 sermon for the paper, that the sermon is 
 lord of the paper, and should not be en- 
 
188 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 slaved by it. Then, when Sunday conies 
 you will be ready, not merely to deliver a 
 sermon, but, what is more, to preach ; and 
 your preaching will be better than any 
 mere delivery of a sermon, however fine 
 and admirable the delivery may be. And 
 you will not need any books on oratory or 
 elocution to teach you how to preach. To 
 a certain extent such books may be of 
 assistance to you, but it is only a very lim- 
 ited extent. Sometimes they are helps, 
 but sometimes, too, they are hindrances; 
 and your instructors in elocution will, I 
 am sure, tell you that the best kind of elocu- 
 tion is the elocution of the man who, with 
 some gift for preaching, stirs up the gift 
 that is in him, and without much thought 
 of elocution simply prepares to preach. 
 
 And here let me say that I think it very 
 questionable whether a person should pre- 
 pare to preach more than once on Sunday. 
 Many preachers do it, I know ; but there 
 are not many who do it well. It is ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to do it well. It is not 
 difficult to sermonize twice on Sunday ; but 
 it is difficult to preach twice on Sunday, 
 or to prepare to preach twice. One living 
 thought, or one living theme, living with 
 
PREPASING HIS MESSAGE 189 
 
 the preacher, living in the preacher 
 throughout the week that intervenes be- 
 tween one Sunday and another, and pre- 
 paring him to preach, is usually enough 
 for the preacher, and is usually enough for 
 the congregation. It was, I believe, Mr. 
 Beeoher who said that two sermons on 
 Sunday were like two wads in a popgun, 
 — one shoots the other out; and that is 
 apt to be true with reference, not only to 
 the congregation, but with reference to the 
 preacher as well. The two sermons are 
 apt to interfere with one another, and hurt 
 and cripple one another ; and in the preach- 
 er's mind, as in the congregation's mind, 
 the tendency of one is to shoot the other 
 out. I am aware that Mr. Beecher did not 
 observe his own rule ; but Mr. Beecher 
 was an exceptional man, and yet not ex- 
 ceptional enough to be altogether inde- 
 pendent of established usage and custom, 
 but was, like the rest of us in this respect, 
 victimized by convention ; and it would 
 be, I think, a desirable thing if the conven- 
 tion could be changed. Instead of having 
 two preaching services on Sunday, it would 
 in my judgment be better to make the sec- 
 ond service a different kind of service, — 
 
190 TEE PREACHER AND BIS PLACE 
 
 a Praise Service, if you please, or a Prayer 
 Service, or a Vesper Service of some sort, 
 or a service simply of worship, with a few 
 remarks by the minister, notmore than ten or 
 fifteen minutes in length, and suggested per- 
 haps by some fragment of thought left over 
 from the morning discourse. Or, if there 
 are to be two preaching services on Sunday, 
 then let the parish provide two preachers, 
 not to preach to the same congregation, but 
 to different congregations. Why indeed 
 in some parishes, especially in the large 
 cities, would it not be a good rule to have 
 not only two preaching services on Sundaj^, 
 but four or five such services by four or five 
 different preachers ? Why should not our 
 church buildings be utilized more than 
 they are? Looking at it simply from a 
 commercial point of view, is it not a poor 
 and inadequate return for the investment, 
 to have them open only for two or three 
 hours on Sunday, or for about one hundi-ed 
 and fifty hours out of the whole year ? If 
 I could do in this matter just what I should 
 like to do, I would never close the churches 
 except at night, when everytliing else is 
 closed. I would keep them open always ; 
 not only on Sunday, but on every other 
 
PREPARING BIS MESSAGE 191 
 
 day ; and I would have some kind of serv- 
 ice in them every day in the week ; not 
 always, perhaps, a preaching service, but a 
 service of some kind. In the case of many 
 of our city churches that is what is done. 
 That is what is done in St. Bartholomew's 
 Church. It is open every day in the year, 
 with the exception of a little while in mid- 
 summer, when it is open only on Sundays. 
 With that exception, it is open every day 
 in the year, and every day in the year there 
 is a service in it. This involves the having 
 of more than one minister in the parish, 
 for one minister, of course, cannot do all 
 that in such a case is required. And here 
 let me say that if there are to be several 
 ministers in the parish, one of them in my 
 judgment must be the head, — call him 
 Rector, call him Pastor, call him what 
 you please ; he must be in fact the head. 
 I know that some of my Congregational 
 bretliren differ from me in this, and that 
 they are trying the experiment of having 
 associate pastorates ; but I venture to ex- 
 press the opinion that it will not work 
 well, or that when it does work well it will 
 be the exception and not the rule. In the 
 majority of cases, however, I presume it 
 
192 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 would be found impracticable to have more 
 than one clergyman in a parish ; and when 
 that is the case, the congregation should 
 be contented with one preacliing service 
 on Sunday. It will be better, as a rule, 
 for the parish, and better, as a rule, for the 
 preacher, and better for the parish because 
 better for the preacher. One message a 
 week is enough for him to prepare, and 
 enough for them to hear ; and if they in- 
 sist on more, the quality will be sacrificed 
 to the quantity, and they will both suffer 
 loss. 
 
 I remark again that if the preacher pre- 
 pares himself to preach in the way that I 
 have suggested, he will have to prepare 
 himself witli a new preparation for every 
 new occasion upon which he preaches. He 
 will not have much use for old sermons, 
 unless he can get back into the old moods 
 of thought and the old moods of life, of 
 moral and spiritual as well as mental life, 
 — those old appealing moods which were 
 with him indeed and possessed him when 
 he prepared the old sermons, or when he 
 prepared himself to preach them. Some- 
 times he can do that, but not often ; and 
 usually he will find when he preaches an 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 193 
 
 old sermon that it is an old sermon ; and 
 that although when first he preached it it 
 was fairly good and effective, something 
 seems to have gone out of it which then he 
 felt was in it. And something has gone 
 out of it, — the life has gone out of it, or 
 part, at least, of the life. The thoughts are 
 the same, the arguments are the same, the 
 illustrations are the same ; he makes the 
 same points, and perhaps with the very 
 same words ; but they are the same with a 
 difference, and that difference is vital. He 
 preached before j now he is delivering a 
 sermon as a substitute for preaching. That 
 is not ahvays the case, but it is often the 
 case ; and while there are some sermons 
 which he can preach over and over again, 
 and preach perhaps better, every time he 
 preaches them because they are the product 
 of permanent moods of thought, of mind, 
 of heart, of soul ; there are not many such 
 sermons, and he will not produce many 
 such. Instead, therefore, of turning over 
 the barrel and searching from time to time 
 among its musty contents with a view 
 to iinding in it some suitable sermon to 
 preach, it would be better to let it alone. 
 Or, if he is disposed to turn it over very 
 13 
 
194 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 much or often, it would be better still to 
 destroy the barrel, and not have any, so 
 that every week, with little or nothing in 
 the way of old preparation to fall back 
 upon, he might find himself committed to 
 the task which is always new, and always 
 interesting and stimulating because new, 
 not of preparing to sermonize for half an 
 hour on Sunday, but of preparing himself, 
 mind and heart and soul and body, of pre- 
 paring himself to preach. He may not 
 always preach as he would like to preach, 
 or as he feels he ought to preach ; but he 
 will always feel that he is preaching, and 
 his congregation will feel it, and will like 
 to hear him preach ; and a congregation, 
 too, place him where you please, he will 
 always have. 
 
 One thing more, it seems to me, the 
 preacher should have in mind in prepar- 
 ing himself to preach. It does not bear 
 directly, perhaps, upon his preparation, 
 and yet perhaps it does. At all events, he 
 should not forget it, but should have in 
 mind the fact that he is preparing him- 
 self to preach to an assembly of men and 
 women who are gathered for something 
 else, or who ought, at least, to be gathered 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 195 
 
 for something else than simply to hear 
 him preach. They are gathered for prayer, 
 for praise, and to engage for a time in 
 worship, and in the various acts and phases 
 of worship. For that he must also pre- 
 pare. That also is his task, not only to 
 preach, but to worsliip, and to help the 
 people to worship ; and to be to them, not 
 merely the prophet of God, but the priest, 
 — not in the Romish use of the term, 
 as the human liierophant through whom 
 God's blessings come, — but in the Protest- 
 ant use of the term, as the human soul 
 through whom God's blessings come. On 
 whose soul as it rises to God the souls of 
 the people rise, and by whose soul as it 
 catches the inspirations of God the souls 
 of the people are inspired, and enabled in 
 spirit and truth to engage in the worship 
 of God. Whether he can do that with 
 a liturgy or without one, I will not say. 
 I have an opinion on that subject, but this 
 is not the time nor the place to express 
 it. I am not here to defend or advocate 
 the use of the Prayer Book. But whether 
 you use in your parishes a liturgical 
 form of worship or a non-liturgical form, 
 I may at least urge you not to slight 
 
196 TEE PREACHER AND EIS PLACE 
 
 worship, but to emphasize and make much 
 of it, and to try to induce your people to 
 make much of it. They will make much 
 of it if you yourselves make much of it ; 
 and it seems to me that you ought to 
 make much of it. Something people must 
 worship; something they do worship, — ■ 
 wealth, or power, or nature, or humanity, 
 or God, or something. The only question 
 is, what ? And the office of the Christian 
 minister, in part at least, is to take that 
 innate, ineradicable impulse of the human 
 heart, and to give it expression towards 
 God as Jesus Christ has revealed Him. It 
 is to quicken in the mind that slumbering, 
 spiritual faculty by which alone man can 
 apprehend the reality of the spiritual life 
 and of things unseen and eternal. 
 
 Our human nature is as a rule very 
 much under the dominion of the sensible 
 and the near. Things at a distance, or 
 which do not in any way appeal to the 
 physical senses, are hard to realize. That 
 is the standing difficulty which religion, 
 dealing as it does so largely with super- 
 sensible matters, must always encounter, 
 and which it essays to meet and overcome 
 by means of Christian worship, giving 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 197 
 
 thereby to the soul that consciousness, 
 that sureness, that certainty of itself which 
 can only come by communion with the 
 pervading and eternal soul of the world, 
 that Father in whom all things live and 
 by whom they are sustained. Never was 
 it more needed than in this materialistic 
 and not very reverent age, — an age which 
 as George Eliot says, is so often flippant 
 and coarse, mistaking a cynical mockery 
 for the gift of penetration. This, she says, 
 is the impoverishment which threatens us 
 and our posterity, — the new famine, the 
 meagre fiend, with lewd grin and clumsy 
 hoof, breathing a mildew over the harvest 
 of our moral sentiments. The office of 
 the Christian ministry is to try to recover 
 men from this flippant and irreverent 
 materialism, not by preaching merely, but 
 by lifting them up into the consciousness 
 of that higher, nobler, albeit immaterial 
 and invisible life which comes from com- 
 munion with, and is found in the worship 
 of, God. 
 
 Make much of worship, then ; and in 
 making much of worship you will not be 
 making little, but much of preaching too. 
 You will be preparing yourselves to preach 
 
198 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 on those great and important themes with 
 which the pulpit deals, and which will 
 never grow old, and to answer for your 
 people and with your people, and in the 
 midst of your people, those great and 
 important questions whose importunity 
 mil never abate. For, as an English 
 reviewer and Congregational divine has 
 said : " It is in the great congregation 
 where heart beats with heart, and breaths 
 conspire, and common beliefs and experi- 
 ences draw the children of toil and ]pain 
 into close, dear fellowships of sympathy 
 and hope, that those answers will best be 
 given. . . . 
 
 " There is a power in public Avorship, 
 in the utterance of common sorrows, needs, 
 and hopes, in the prayer that is breathed 
 and the praise that is sung in concert, not 
 merely with the crowd that fills some 
 particular sanctuary, but with the innu- 
 merable company of all lands and ages who 
 have drunk of the same spring and gone 
 strengthened on their way, which they 
 strangely miss Avho teach that worship is 
 a worn-out superstition, and that only in 
 the clear light of law can men walk and 
 be blest. Ah, no, while man sins and 
 
PREPARING HIS MESSAGE 199 
 
 suffers, while there is blood-tinged sweat 
 upon Ms brow, while there is misery in his 
 home and anguish in his heart, that voice 
 can never lose its music, which speaks, not 
 through preaching merely, but through 
 worship as well, of the comfort and inspi- 
 ration of the everlasting Gospel of Christ, 
 which seems to tell the sin-tormented 
 spirit the tale of the Infinite Pity, and to 
 bid it lay its sobbing wretchedness to rest 
 on the bosom of the Infinite Love." 
 
 In the best way, then, you can, in the 
 way that is best for you, try, not to prepare 
 a sermon simply, but to prepare yourselves 
 to preach, and to prepare yourselves to 
 worship ; to preach to the people, to wor- 
 ship with the people, and thus not by 
 preaching merely, and not by worship 
 merely, but by preaching and worslup to 
 lift up Him who has "lifted with His 
 pierced hands empires off their hinges, 
 turned the stream of centuries out of its 
 channel, and still governs the ages ; " and 
 who, when lifted up, will draw all men 
 to Himself. 
 
THE 
 PREACHER AND THE PARISH 
 
THE 
 PREACHER AND THE PARISH 
 
 OO far in these lectures I have been 
 considering the preacher simply as a 
 preacher, for that is what it seems to me 
 he is chiefly called to be ; and with those 
 who would belittle or depreciate that 
 ministerial function I have no sympathy. 
 While that, however, is his most important 
 work, it is not his only work. He is a 
 preacher, but he is more; he is a worker 
 in the pulpit, and he is a worker out of 
 the pulpit. He is a worker in the parish : 
 not in his personal capacity merely as a 
 member of the parish, but in his capacity 
 as the head of the parish ; and the parish 
 which has made him its head and over 
 which he presides is the instrument with 
 which he works. And a very effective 
 instrument for Christian work it is. There 
 are not many workers so well equipped 
 as he, for there are not many who have 
 a constituency so compact, so tractable, so 
 
204 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 sympathetic as the Christian minister has. 
 If he fails to use that effective parochial 
 instrument, like the servant in the parable 
 of the talent and the napkin, he is failing 
 with a culpable ignorance, perhaps with a 
 culpable sloth, to do in the world the work 
 which he might do, which he ought to do, 
 and for the doing of which in the provi- 
 dence of God he has been so especially 
 equipped. 
 
 It is one thing, however, to have an 
 instrument given with which to do a work ; 
 it is another thing to use it, or to know 
 how to use it well and to the best advan- 
 tage, and so that the best results may be 
 accomplished by it. 
 
 These are the questions to which I will 
 venture now for a while to direct your 
 thought and attention; or, putting the 
 matter more plainly, I will ask you in this 
 lecture to consider with me the question, 
 " How shall the Christian minister pro- 
 ceed to make the parish over which he 
 presides, to the utmost possible limit and 
 in the most useful way, an active and work- 
 ing parish ? " That, of course, will depend 
 very largely vipon the character of the 
 parish, what it is, where it is, and how 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 205 
 
 strong or weak it is. A parish in the city 
 cannot be worked in the same way pre- 
 cisely that a parish in the country can ; or 
 a parish in one part of the city or country 
 like a parish in another part of the city or 
 country ; or a weak parish like a strong 
 parish; or a rich parish like a poor one. 
 Parish work in this respect resembles pulpit 
 work, and depends upon the circumstances, 
 which are not the same in all cases, which 
 to some extent indeed are different in all 
 cases ; and some of the methods and rules 
 which are found to be good for one will be 
 found to be bad for another, or at least not 
 good for another and not adapted to it. 
 There are rules, however, which are good 
 for all, and applicable to all, and the first 
 of these I have already intimated in say- 
 ing that every parish should regard itself 
 as unique, in its duties, its difficulties, its 
 responsibilities, and should not try to copy 
 any other parish, as every preacher is 
 unique and should not try to copy any 
 other preacher. He will make a mistake 
 if he does, and so will the parish. In St. 
 Bartholomew's Parish, for instance, we 
 have a Loan Bureau, where we lend money 
 in small amounts of from ten to two hun- 
 
206 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 drecl dollars, aggregating about fifteen 
 hundred dollars a weet, charging a fair 
 rate of interest, and taking as security a 
 mortgage upon the furniture and house- 
 hold goods of the borrower. I believe in 
 that form of benevolence, and think it does 
 great good. It is particularly needed in a 
 city like New York. And St. Bartholo- 
 mew's Parish was able in part to supply 
 that need, and did and does supply it. 
 But it is not particularly needed in a vil- 
 lage like New Canaan, in this State, where 
 I am in the habit of spending my summers. 
 There are other needs there, more perti- 
 nent and imperative ; and for any parish 
 there to undertake to start a Loan Bureau, 
 even if it could, would be a misdirection 
 of energy. The thing itself is good and 
 wise, but it is not good and wise in all cir- 
 cumstances ; and whether or not it should 
 be attempted will depend upon the circum- 
 stances, the circumstances of the parish, 
 and the circumstances of the community 
 in which the parish is located. 
 
 Or, take another illustration of a more 
 general character. There is no problem 
 perhaps in this country more pressing and 
 wide-spread, and at the same time more 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 207 
 
 difficult, than the drink problem, than the 
 problem which deals with the traffic and 
 use of intoxicating liquors ; and there is in 
 my judgment no greater mistake than to 
 try to solve that problem in the same way 
 in all places. I am satisfied that it cannot 
 be solved in a community of ten hundred 
 thousand inhabitants in the same way that 
 it can be solved in a community of ten 
 hundred inhabitants. The best method in 
 one case is not only not, the best, but often 
 the worst in another. And the reason why 
 in America we have made so little progress 
 towards the solution of it is, I think, be- 
 cause we have failed to recognize that fact, 
 and have tried each of us to universalize 
 his own method, and to make it the method 
 always, for everywhere, and for all. 
 
 But I have no desire at present to dis- 
 cuss the Temperance question, or to stir 
 up strife and prejudice on that vexed and 
 vexing subject. I have referred to it sim- 
 ply because it furnishes in my judgment 
 an apt illustration of what I am trying 
 now to show, that even when a social prob- 
 lem is everywhere the same, the method of 
 its solution is not everywhere the same; 
 and that what is wisest and best for one 
 
208 THE PREACHEH AND BIS PLACE 
 
 place or one parisli, may not be wisest and 
 best and expedient for anottier. 
 
 This, then, is the first rule which I would 
 venture to give you for the development of 
 a parish; and wresting from its connection, 
 and reversing the apostolic injunction, I 
 would say, Let every minister of a parish 
 look not upon the things of others, but 
 upon his own things. Let him look with 
 a hard, practical, open-eyed common sense 
 upon his own parisli, upon his own com- 
 munity, its circumstances, its conditions, 
 its needs. Let him not think because 
 some particular clergyman in some particu- 
 lar community has made himself conspicu- 
 ous, and deservedly so, in some particular 
 kind of work, in the work, let us say, of 
 municipal reform, that he, the clergyman 
 in some other community, is called upon 
 to undertake the same kind of work. Let 
 him be not an echo, but a voice ; for while 
 the echo may be just as loud as the voice, 
 and sometimes louder and shriller, it is 
 nevertheless an echo. It is chiefly an 
 amusing thing, and will certainly not ac- 
 complish what the voice accomplishes, for 
 the voice has personality in it, and the 
 echo has not. Let not the clergyman 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 209 
 
 think, again, because there is in some 
 other parish a flourishing Blue Ribbon 
 Society, or a Girls' Friendly Society, or a 
 Christian Endeavor Society, or a St. An- 
 drew's Brotherhood, or a Brotherhood of 
 St. Anch-ew and St. Philip, that that is 
 just the thing which he must start and 
 have in his parish. Perhaps it is ; but 
 perhaps it is not. He must determine 
 that for himself; and there is no Board of 
 Control, at Boston, or Chicago, or New 
 York which can determine it for him. He 
 knows his own parish, or ought to know it, 
 better than any one else ; and if it is desir- 
 able (and it is) that he should co-operate 
 with others in doing some large and gene- 
 ral work in the church, or the nation, or 
 the world, it is also desirable that he should 
 co-operate with them in his own way, and 
 that those who have the management of 
 that large and general work should make 
 its rules so few and flexible that he can 
 co-operate with them in his own way and 
 according to the differential exigencies of 
 his own parochial situation. He must not 
 be trammelled in his co-operation by alien 
 and inapplicable rules. He must be free 
 to adopt new methods which have not been 
 14 
 
210 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 elsewhere adopted. He must be free also 
 to attempt new works and enterprises which 
 have not been elsewhere attempted. There 
 are in business general rules which business 
 men adopt, and which they observe and 
 practise, and that is right, is necessary ; 
 but they are not enslaved by those rules. 
 And the successful man in business is the 
 man who sees in the business world some 
 new thing to do which has not been seen 
 by others, or which at least has not been 
 done by others ; who sees it, and seizes it, 
 and makes it yield its rich and fruitful 
 bounty to liim. 
 
 As it is in the business world, so should 
 it be in the parish. Let every parish learn 
 as much as it can from others, and let it as 
 far as it can co-operate with others in the 
 work of the Church at large. And yet let it 
 not forget, and let not the man who guides 
 and directs its activities forget, that while 
 general rules are good, so are particular 
 rules, and that the valuable quality in 
 the parochial as in the business world is 
 not the quality which is alwaj's following 
 precedents, or waiting for precedents to 
 follow, but the quality which sometimes 
 makes them, and then follows its own 
 precedents. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 211 
 
 Let every minister then study his own 
 parish, its needs, possibilities, and oppor- 
 tunities, and the needs and opportunities 
 of the community in which it is placed; 
 prepared to unite with others and to do 
 what others do, and also prepared to do at 
 times something new and peculiar which 
 others cannot do ; and thus he will contrib- 
 ute some new and peculiar force towards 
 the regeneration of human society at large, 
 towards the establishment on the earth of 
 the kingdom of the Son of Man. 
 
 This, then, is the first rule to be observed 
 in the development of parochial activity. 
 It should be a form of activity germane to 
 the parish, which the parish ought to do, 
 and is able to do. 
 
 Now, let us go on a little further, and 
 see what the next rule is. Here, we will 
 say, is a work to be done which the parish 
 is capable of doing ; and how shall the man 
 in charge of the parish proceed to have it 
 done? The place, let us suppose, is a 
 manufacturing or mill town, with a good 
 many operatives in it ; and the minister in 
 that town feels that he and his parish ought 
 to do something for those operatives, for 
 the men who work in those mills. He 
 
212 TEE PREACHER AND BIS PLACE 
 
 thinks it would be a good thing to estab- 
 lish among them a society, a guild, a 
 brotherhood, a club, for mental and moral 
 advancement, or for wholesome recreation 
 and pleasui-e ; a literary society, a debating 
 society, an athletic society, or some kind 
 of society wliich would be elevating and 
 improving, and which would tend to give 
 its members a more abundant life. Assum- 
 ing, I say, that that is an expedient thing 
 to do, what is the first step to take in the 
 doing of it ? To call a public meeting of 
 the people of the parish, or of the people 
 who work in the mills, or a meeting includ- 
 ing both, to talk about and discuss it, and 
 listen to objections, and offer resolutions, 
 and appoint committees, and draw up a 
 constitution, with articles and rules and 
 by-laws ? No ; a good many societies have 
 been started in that way, and when they 
 got started they stopped. After the con- 
 stitution and the by-laws had been fully 
 and carefully framed there seemed to be 
 nothing else to do, or at least notliing M'as 
 done. The societies in qu.estion were born, 
 they had strength enough to be born, but 
 not strength enough to go on living after 
 they were born ; and having a constitution, 
 
THE PBEACBER AND THE PARISH 213 
 
 but not tlie right kind of a constitution, 
 they presently collapsed and died. What, 
 then, is the right kind of constitution to 
 start with ? Not a constitution on paper, 
 however elaborate and admirable, but a 
 constitution in flesh and blood. Let the 
 minister who wants to start such a society 
 as I have indicated start with that; not 
 with by-laws, but with a man, or a woman. 
 Let him try to find some one, whether man 
 or woman, and whether in or out of the 
 parish, who feels about the matter as he 
 does, who will make it his personal work, 
 or her personal work, and will devote liim- 
 self or herself to the faithful furtherance 
 of it. Let him try to find some one who 
 has not only the time for it, but the gift for 
 it, the capacity for it, the. patience, the 
 courage, the enthusiasm. Let him begin, 
 not with the establishment of a society, 
 but with the establishment of a person- 
 ality, making that the nidus, the liv- 
 ing and attracting nidus to which the 
 society will come, and around which it 
 will gradually gather, and strengthen, and 
 grow. Then after a while he can make 
 his rules and by-laws for the government of 
 the society when he has a society to govern. 
 
214 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 and will know, not from a doctrinaire and 
 theoretical conjecturing, but from a practi- 
 cal experimenting, what laws and rules he 
 ought to make, and what he ought not to 
 make. But let him try to find, first of all, 
 the right kind of person in starting his 
 society. Let him not start it until he does, 
 for that, I am satisfied, is the way to start ; 
 and, started in that way, the society which 
 he starts will become a successful society. 
 There will be in it a personal force, and 
 the magnetism of a personal force will 
 draw to it in time other personal forces ; 
 and the people of the parish, seeing it going 
 on, will be more likely to support it, and to 
 rally around and help it, not only with 
 their approval, but also with their money, 
 as far as they are able to give it. By and 
 by they will boast of it, and be proud of it, 
 and will appropriate it as their own, and 
 speak of it as the society which they started, 
 and as the good work which thei/ inaugu- 
 rated, and which tJieij' parish is doing. And 
 the minister will be pleased to hear them 
 talk so, and will encourage them so to talk, 
 and yet will know in his heart that it was 
 the one resolute man, or the one energetic 
 woman, standing as the significant figure 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 215 
 
 at tlie beginning of it, who more than any 
 one else, or than all others together, has 
 contributed to its success. 
 
 Now that, it seems to me, is a very 
 important rule, and perhaps the most im- 
 portant in the development of parochial 
 activity. And not only is it important in 
 the development of parochial activity, but 
 in the development of all activity of a use- 
 ful and wholesome kind. And if we take 
 any one of the great movements of the 
 world, social, political, or religious, — or 
 any one of its great institutions, its schools, 
 its academies, its hospitals, its benevolent 
 societies, its missionary societies, its tem- 
 ples of art and learning, — and try to trace 
 it back through its history to its start, we 
 shall usually find that it started, not with 
 many, but with one ; that it started as the 
 Bible starts, with a personality, "In the 
 beginning, God; " or that, as in the case of 
 the Christian Church, a personality is its 
 corner-stone. Nearly all the great and 
 fruitful activities of the world have been 
 started in that way; and from them we 
 may learn the rule to be observed by us in 
 our parochial world. Business men have 
 learned it, and the first concern of the busi- 
 
216 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 ness man in trying to develop his business, 
 or in trying to start an d establish some new 
 dejpartment in it, is to find some suitable 
 person to whom he can give it in charge, 
 and whom, placed at the head of it, he can 
 make responsible for it. So much depends, 
 he knows, upon finding the man to begin 
 with, and the right and fit man, that he 
 will not begin until he does find him. And 
 then when he does find him (except for 
 general guidance and direction), he does 
 not interfere with him, but leaves it largely 
 to him, if not to plan, at least to execute, 
 the details of the enterprise which has been 
 committed to him. 
 
 This leads me to speak of another rule 
 which it would be well for the clergyman 
 to adopt in the development of parochial 
 activity, and which, if not like unto the 
 one which I have just mentioned, is at 
 least suggested by it. And that other rule 
 is this : not to do liimself what somebody 
 else can do as well. 
 
 It has doubtless occurred to you, while 
 I have been speaking and telling you that 
 the way in which to promote and develop 
 some new parochial adventure is to find 
 the right person to start with, that that 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 217 
 
 is not always an easy thing to do. It 
 may be comparatively easy in a very large 
 parish, which has the constituency of a 
 very large membership to draw from ; but 
 most parishes are not large, or not very 
 large ; and in the ordinary parish, however 
 desirable it may be, or however necessary, 
 it is not always easy to find some suitable 
 person, some suitable man or woman with 
 whom to begin to do some needed paro- 
 chial work. And surely it is uot easy. If 
 it were, then everything would be easy, 
 and the problem of parochial activity would 
 not be much of a problem. And yet, de- 
 spite the greatness of the difficulty, it is not, 
 I am convinced, even in the ordinary par- 
 ish, insuperable. And if the parish clergy- 
 man, instead of devoting so much of his 
 time to the doing of things himself, would 
 devote it rather to the finding of some one 
 else to do them, he would be, I think, very 
 often — oftener than he supposes before he 
 tries — successful in his search. That, it 
 seems to me, is what he should have in 
 mind in visiting in his parish, and in try- 
 ing more and more to become acquainted 
 with it, namely, to discover individuals in 
 it who are fitted for particular things, for 
 
218 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 particular kinds of w.ork, saying to one 
 and another, as from time to time lie finds 
 them, here is something for you to do, and 
 here is sometliing for you, and you. That 
 is his parish problem, not how he can do 
 all things Mmself : he cannot do them all 
 liimself; he has not the time nor the 
 strength ; nor ought he indeed to do them 
 even if he could. His work is to set others 
 to work, and to be active in making them 
 active. And if he tries to do everytliing 
 himself, he will not only fail in the attempt, 
 but -will also fail in developing the activity 
 of his parish. And that is what chiefly he 
 is trying to do : not simply to work him- 
 self, but to make his parish work ; and 
 however busy and industrious he may be 
 personally, imless he can thereby make his 
 parish industrious and busy, he will not, 
 and cannot, become a successful parish 
 worker. There are some clergymen, it has 
 been said, who are forever confounding in- 
 spiration with perspiration. It is a homely 
 plirase, but an apt one ; and the confusion 
 to which it refers does, I fear, exist in the 
 minds of not a few. They are active in 
 moving about, and in making parish calls, 
 and in doing this and that, and going here 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 219 
 
 and there, and hastening on to attend to 
 something else, with but little time to 
 give us when we happen to come across 
 them. They always seem so busy, so 
 breathlessly busy, and they always are so 
 busy ; and as in our quieter and humbler 
 spheres we stand apart and look at them, 
 the words of the apostle will somehow 
 force themselves upon us and come into our 
 minds, that " bodily exercise profiteth lit- 
 tle." They are not, at least, the models, so 
 we venture to think, of the ideal parish 
 clergyman who, in a quieter way, with less 
 fussiness and more thoughtfulness, is for- 
 ever working upon, and working out the 
 problem how he can best succeed in mak- 
 ing his people work. He is not idle, far 
 from it ; he has much to do, very much ; 
 his work is hard and exacting, and taxes 
 all his strength. But it is the work of one 
 who leads, or the work of one who inspires, 
 who is always trying to find the right 
 things to be done, and the right persons to 
 do them; and who, when he has found 
 them, trusts them, and does not needlessly 
 interfere with them, knowing that people 
 will work best when they are allowed to 
 work in their own way, and to put their 
 
220 THE PEEACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 own personality into their work. It will 
 be his duty, of course, to suggest and plan 
 the work, the character of it, the scope of 
 it, and the policy for the workers to pursue. 
 He will also have to encourage and help 
 them in their work, and to keejD himself in 
 touch with it ; and yet he will let them 
 feel that it is their work, and that what 
 they can do as well as he, he will not do, 
 but will reserve himself for the doing of 
 what they cannot do. 
 
 I have referred to the methods adopted 
 by men in the business world, and that is 
 one of their methods : not to do themselves 
 what others can do as well, or well enou.gh, 
 and only to do themselves what others can- 
 not do. That is the way in which they 
 are able, often to our amazement, to accom- 
 plish so much. They have learned the 
 secret of transferring whatever is transfer- 
 able to agents, to clerks, to book-keepers, 
 to stenographers, to various kinds of depu- 
 ties ; and while they guide and direct those 
 deputies and clerks, they let them do the 
 work, and trust them to do the work, and 
 expect them to do the work which has been 
 given to them to do. It is a good rule in 
 the business world, experience has proved it 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 221 
 
 good ; and it is equally good in the paro- 
 chial. I know, indeed, that the two cases 
 are not exactly parallel, and that we cannot 
 proceed in precisely the same manner in 
 both. The vicarious work in the business 
 world is paid work, and if it is not done, 
 or not done well, the persons intrusted with 
 it can be and are dismissed ; wliile in the 
 parochial world the work that is done by 
 others is largely gratuitous and voluntary, 
 and the workers themselves in consequence 
 cannot be so closely and strictly held to 
 the mark. As far, however, as it is feas- 
 ible, it is a good rule to adopt ; and the best 
 results, I am confident, cannot be developed 
 or obtained in the parochial world until 
 sometliing like it has been adopted there. 
 A little work can be done, but not a large 
 work. It will be a work done by the min- 
 ister, and not a work done by the parish ; 
 and it is a work done by the parish which 
 the minister wishes done, and should exert 
 himself to have done, but which, of course, 
 by the parish -will not be done, nor even 
 attempted, as long as the minister tries to 
 do it all himself. 
 
 May I refer to my own experience here, 
 and say that that is the method which I 
 
222 THE PREACHER AND BIS PLACE 
 
 have found it necessary to adopt. We have 
 in St. Bartholomew's Parish a good many 
 departments of parochial activity. We have 
 not only our Sunday-schools, and mission- 
 ary societies, and benevolent societies, but 
 a Swedish mission, and a Chinese mission, 
 and an Armenian mission, and a SjTian 
 mission, and a lodging-house, and a loan 
 bureau, and an employment bureau, and a 
 coffee-house, and a penny provident fund, 
 and a girls' club, and a boys' club, and a 
 men's club, and a gymnasium, and a kin- 
 dergarten, and a surgical clinic, and a med- 
 ical clinic, and an eye and ear clinic, — but 
 the list is long enough. Now, it would 
 have been absolutely impossible for me 
 or any other man to get all these things 
 started, unless I had adopted the rule, not 
 simply of trying to do things myself, but 
 of trying to find others to do them. I am 
 in touch with all those things, and try as 
 best I can to guide and direct them. And 
 once every week I have a conference with 
 the heads of all the departments of parish 
 work, and the head of each department, 
 makes to me at that conference a weekly 
 report of his work, and we talk over the 
 matter together, and wind things up, as it 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 223 
 
 were, for another week ; and so the work 
 goes on, and there is but little friction in 
 it. The head of a parish, therefore, like 
 the head of a business, if he would have 
 the parish do its largest possible work, must 
 learn to transfer whatever in his work can 
 be transferred to others, and must not do 
 himself what they can do as well, but must 
 only do himself what they cannot do. 
 Even then he will find, as the work of his 
 parish grows, that his hands are more than 
 full, and that the work which he is called 
 upon to do is more indeed than he can do. 
 
 This leads me to speak of still another 
 rule, which is like the rule of transference, 
 namely, the rule of a wise and a judicious 
 postponement. I do not know who said it 
 first, but it has been often said since, that 
 one should never put off until to-morrow 
 what can be done to-day. That may be a 
 good rule for an idle man, or for a man 
 who is disposed to be idle ; but it is not 
 good, I am sure, for a man who is crowded 
 with work. Such a man must learn, not 
 only how to transfer whatever can be trans- 
 ferred, but also how to postpone whatever 
 can be postponed. For even when he has 
 transferred whatever can be transferred. 
 
224 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 there is often still a resickium left wlaich is 
 more than he can do at that particular 
 time, and he must make another transfer- 
 ence, not to another person, but to another 
 time. And from the various things which 
 have been devolved upon him, — the letters 
 he has to write, the calls he has to make, 
 the directions he has to give, the plans he 
 has to form, and the activities to superin- 
 tend, or the wheels to set in motion and 
 to keep in motion, all of which that day 
 he cannot personally do, — he must select 
 those things which are that day most urgent, 
 and which cannot well be left to another 
 and later day ; and whatever can be left to 
 another and later day must be so left. He 
 must learn the art of a wise and judicious 
 postponement, not because he is lazy, bu^t 
 because he is very busy. It is an art, and 
 the busy man has learned it. He has had to 
 learn it ; and instead of not putting off until 
 to-morrow what can be done to-day, he has 
 found from personal experience that it is 
 sometimes wise to reverse that proverbial 
 precept, and not to do to-day what can be 
 put off until to-morrow. He has found, 
 too, from experience that it is an economi- 
 cal rule, and that a certain percentage of 
 
THE PREACnER AND THE PARISH 225 
 
 the work he is called to do, if postponed, 
 will not have to be done, or will somehow 
 do itself. And he reckons on that per- 
 centage, and counts it in his work, or rather 
 counts it out, — he discounts it, and learns 
 to do each day only what each day he can 
 do and ought to do, or ought most to do, 
 and to leave the rest undone, and not to 
 worry about it. And not worrying about 
 to-morrow, he will be better prepared for 
 to-morrow and for whatever to-morrow 
 brings, and will sometimes find, when it 
 comes, that it does not come at all as he 
 supposed it would come, or does not bring 
 at all what he supposed it would bring. 
 Now that is a rule for the man who is 
 very much pressed with work, for the very 
 busy man. It is not a rule for the man 
 who is not much pressed with work, who 
 is not a busy man. And in saying that it 
 is a rule for the clergyman to adopt in the 
 development of parochial activity, I take 
 it for granted, of course, that the clergyman 
 is a very busy man, a man pressed with 
 work, and pressed for time in which to do 
 his work. If he is that kind of man he 
 will learn the art of postponement : expe- 
 rience will teach it to liim. He will use it 
 15 
 
226 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 without abusing it: not with a view to 
 shirking his work, or to letting it go un- 
 done, but simply with a view to the better 
 performance of it ; and he will know what 
 I mean. But if he is not that kind of 
 man, he will not know what I mean, or 
 will pervert and wrest my meaning, and 
 think that the counsel which I give is 
 neither wise nor safe. And for him it is 
 not safe ; and this much of my meaning at 
 least I should be glad to have him under- 
 stand, that I do not mean him, and that in 
 saying what I have said, I have had in mind 
 the man who, to the utmost of his capacity, 
 and without sparing himself, is trying to 
 make the parish for which in the provi- 
 dence of God he has been made responsi- 
 ble an active and working parish. And 
 because I believe, young gentlemen, that 
 that is your ambition, I have ventured to 
 give you some of the rules which I have 
 learned from experience, and which in my 
 case, at least, experience has proved to 
 be helpful. 
 
 What are those rules ? Let me sum- 
 marize them. First, you should study 
 your own parish, and try to develop in it 
 only such activity as it is fitted to do. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 227 
 
 Second, you should, do it by finding the 
 right persons to do it. Third, you should 
 transfer what you can transfer, and keep 
 for yourselves only what is your personal 
 work ; and fourth, you should learn in 
 doing your work the art of a wise and 
 judicious postponement, doing to-day what 
 you can do, or what seems to-day most 
 urgent, and then without fret or worry 
 leaving the rest undone. 
 
 Let me add two or three counsels more. 
 In the development of parochial activity 
 do not go too fast. Do one thing well 
 first, get it well started and established, 
 and make a success of it before you start 
 something else ; and that, when you have 
 made a success of it, will suggest some- 
 thing else to start, and not only so, but will 
 enable you the better to start it. Your 
 people will see that you are a practical 
 man, and a wise one, and that what you 
 undertake to do you carry through and 
 do. They will be more likely to give you 
 their confidence, to believe in you, and to 
 help you. They will look upon you as a 
 man who always succeeds in his work, and 
 and they will contribute to your success, 
 and success will lead to success, and to 
 
228 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 still greater success. And when, from 
 time to time, you make some new pro- 
 posals to them, they will feel that you 
 at least know what you are about; and 
 your opinion will be their opinion, and 
 your judgment their judgment, for they 
 will have had experience of your judgment, 
 and will have found that it is good, and 
 they will follow where you lead. 
 
 In the development of parochial activity, 
 therefore, do not go too fast. Make one 
 thing a success before you start something 
 else, and you will find in the end that that 
 is the fastest way. 
 
 This other advice I give. In the devel- 
 opment of parochial activity you will need 
 money, — not much, it may be, but some ; 
 and tlie money wliich you need must 
 come from your parishioners. They are 
 the persons to whom you will have to 
 look to obtain it ; and if you would be suc- 
 cessful in your efforts to obtain it you 
 must inspire tlieni with confidence, not 
 merely in your moral character, but in 
 your business character. You must make 
 a report of the money, whether much or 
 little, whicli froiu time to time they give 
 you, and whicli passes through your hands : 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 229 
 
 not with a view to showing or proving 
 that you are honest, — that of course they 
 do not question, — but simply because it 
 is business, and you are dealing with busi- 
 ness men who are accustomed to that sort 
 of thing, and who in the business world 
 require it. They may not require it of 
 you as their clergyman, but they will be 
 gratified if, without requiring it, they re- 
 ceive it. And when as business men they 
 see that you deal with money in a practical 
 and business-like way, and are always able 
 to account and always do account for eveiy 
 dollar, for every cent, that has been in- 
 trusted to you, it will be not only a satis- 
 faction to them, but a kind of satisfaction 
 which will be productive of liberality in 
 them, and dispose them to intrust you 
 with more money. 
 
 Be careful, then, about money matters. 
 You cannot be too careful. And when 
 you take a collection, take it in such a way 
 that the people will understand, not that 
 they are being asked to give to something 
 they know not what exactly, and simply 
 because it is a custom to take collections 
 in churches, but to sometliing they do know 
 what, wliich you have made them know 
 
230 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 with clear and full knowledge. Then 
 when you have taken it, be particular 
 always to account for it, and to show that 
 it has been used in the way you promised 
 to use it : not for the sake, I say again, of 
 making clear your integrity in the matter, 
 — that is not doubted, — but simply because 
 that is the business way to proceed ; and 
 in dealing with business men in the busi- 
 ness aspects of your parish work you want 
 to be business-like. A little knowledge of 
 book-keeping is desirable in a clergyman ; 
 and whether he handles thousands of 
 dollars, or hundreds of dollars, or less, it 
 is equally desirable ; and the clergyman 
 who keeps an account of the money which 
 he handles, and in proper times and ways 
 reports it to his people, will not, I think, 
 as a rule, expeiience much difficulty in 
 obtaining from his people such reasonable 
 sums of money for the development of 
 [>arochial activity as they are able to 
 give. The American people are practical 
 and business-like, but they are also gener- 
 ous ; and when they believe in the cause, 
 and when they believe in the man who 
 embodies and pleads the cause, they will 
 help him to liis heart's desire. 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 231 
 
 And now, having said all of this to you 
 about your parish work and the way in 
 which I think it ought to be done, what I 
 have said would be incomplete unless I 
 should supplement it with something else. 
 For I would not have you feel that in 
 doing your parish work in the way that 
 your parish requires, you are doing only 
 your parish work. You are doing a work 
 which reaches far beyond your parish. No 
 man can live to himself to-day, and no 
 parish can live to itself. Every man is 
 related to every other man, and every 
 parish is related to every other parish. 
 And it is, after all, not our parishes merely 
 that we are trying to develop and build, 
 it is the kingdom of God we are trying to 
 build. Human life on earth is not many, 
 but one ; and to-day we are beginning to 
 perceive and realize that fact as we have 
 never perceived and realized it before. 
 Barriers between the people still exist of 
 course, and always will exist, for God has 
 made men different, and we cannot make 
 them alike. Barriers still exist, therefore, 
 but they are not so high as they used to 
 be, they are not so hard to get over. The 
 " demos " is asserting itself. The people 
 are coming up and getting nearer together ; 
 
232 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 and as they clasp each other's hands 
 stretched across the boundaries, and heart 
 beats against heart, and they look over the 
 walls with a glad surprise into each other's 
 faces, they are astonished to see and find 
 how much alike they are, how much they 
 have in common; and that the humanity 
 which unites them is greater and more 
 than the circumstance which divides them. 
 That, I say, is what at present we are 
 beginning to realize as we have never 
 realized it before. "We are beginning to 
 realize as never before that the true field 
 of human life and effort is not that little 
 spot of earth on which our feet are stand- 
 ing, — the village, the town, the city in 
 which we are dwelling, or the parish to 
 which we belong. We are moving to-day 
 upon a larger plane. We are finding our 
 correlations in a wider sphere. We aie 
 gathering om^ subsistence for heart, for 
 soul, for mind as well as for body from a 
 vaster expanse of territory. All the people 
 to-day in all the world are thi'onging us. 
 What we tliink is going far beyond us 
 into the thought of the world. What 
 we do is going far beyond us into the 
 conduct of the world. The individual 
 touches the multitude ; the multitude 
 
THE PREACHER AND THE PARISH 233 
 
 touches the individual; each overflowing 
 into all, and all flowing back again into 
 the bosom of each. Hence it is that people 
 feel to-day there is nothing so out of place 
 as narrow-mindedness ; nothing so galling, 
 so fretting, so hard to bear as provincialism ; 
 because they feel that provincialism is a 
 wrong accent in this closing decade of the 
 nineteenth century life; and that the 
 little narrow-minded man who takes no 
 interest in anything except what he is 
 doing, is born out of due time, and should 
 have been born ten hundred years ago, 
 when the field of human sympathy and 
 fellowship was more in correspondence 
 with his little narrow thought. 
 
 While, therefore, we must do our parish 
 work according to its needs and opportuni- 
 ties, and in the way that it ought to be 
 done, we must not allow ourselves to be- 
 come little narrow-minded clergymen, tak- 
 ing upon us simply the hue and complexion 
 of our parochial environment. We must 
 try to realize rather that the field in which 
 we are working is as broad as the world 
 itself ; and that while in our several par- 
 ishes we are doing our parish work, we 
 are at the same time doing a work which 
 
234 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 is more than our parish work, and which 
 is somehow contributing to the establish- 
 ment on the earth of the Kingdom of God. 
 It was, as you know, the custom of the 
 Roman emperors to celebrate with their 
 subjects the annual feast of the Terminalia, 
 in which they worshipped the god Ter- 
 minus, who presided over the boundary 
 lines ; but the Kingdom of Jesus Christ 
 has no boundary lines, or not now at least, 
 and its Terminalia will not be celebrated 
 until the whole wide world shall have been 
 made subject to Him whose temple on the 
 earth we are trying now to build. Not 
 indeed in our time will that temple be 
 built ; but it will be built some day, and 
 we can help to build it. And if the angels 
 in heaven can somehow see and rejoice 
 over penitent sinners here, may not we 
 perhaps, somewhere in the universe, we 
 know not where, but somewhere, see the 
 structure finished wliich we have helped 
 to build ; and mingle our voices with the 
 shoutings of those who cry, " Grace, grace 
 unto it ! " when the headstone shall be 
 brought forth at last, and the world in 
 which we are living now shall have 
 become the Temple of God ! 
 
THE PREACHER MAKING THE 
 MOST OF HIMSELF 
 
THE PREACHER MAKING THE 
 MOST OF HIMSELF 
 
 TN approaching the end of this course 
 of lectures, in which I have been try- 
 ing to tell you something about "The 
 Preacher and His Place," I am impressed 
 very strongly with the feeling, not that I 
 have said what I ought not to have said, 
 but that I have left unsaid so much that I 
 ought to have said. More and luore it has 
 been borne in upon me that it is impossible 
 for one person to lay down rules or pre- 
 scribe methods for another. No man can 
 tell another the secret of himself, however 
 poor that secret may be, for the reason that 
 it is even to himself a secret. He may do 
 things fairly well, but he cannot tell how 
 he does them, or he can tell only in part, 
 and the part which he does not and cannot 
 tell is the most vital and important part. 
 I remember once saying to a very gifted 
 preacher just after I had heard him preach 
 one of his inspiring and inspired sermons, 
 
238 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 that I was not surprised the people came 
 in such great crowds to hear him, and that 
 I could well understand why they came. 
 " I can't," was his simple and modest 
 answer ; and I do not believe he could ; 
 neither could I, although I said I could. 
 But what I meant was this, that there was 
 a great and helpful attractiveness in his 
 preaching which I perceived and felt, as 
 did everybody else who heard him ; but 
 what that attractiveness really was, or in 
 what it consisted, I could not say then, 
 and cannot say now. Personality, perhaps, 
 would express it as much as anytliing else. 
 But then, again, what is personality ? Or 
 why is it that that force which we call per- 
 sonality is so much more forceful in some 
 than it seems to be in others? I do not 
 know. That is part of the mystery of life 
 which cannot be explained. Mr. Rusldn 
 says, somewhere, that the greatness or 
 sraallness of every person is determined 
 for him at the outset, just as it is deter- 
 mined for a fruit whether it shall be an 
 apricot or a pear. And that I presume is 
 true ; and as far as it is true the individual 
 himself has nothing to do in the matter 
 except to be what God made him, or except 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 239 
 
 to become what the God who made him 
 meant that he should become. 
 
 But how may he become what he was 
 meant to become ? Here, perhaps, is where 
 advice and counsel may legitimately come 
 in, and where the suggestions of one may 
 be helpful and useful to others. And in 
 this closing lecture I will try to tell you 
 how I think the preacher can make the 
 most of himself, how he can develop such 
 power of personal force, such power of per- 
 sonality as may be potential in him, and 
 which more than anything else will make 
 his preaching a power. 
 
 First, however, let me call your attention 
 to the fact that it is not easy to-day to 
 develop that personal force, and that the 
 constitution of modern society is such that 
 instead of tending to make personality rich 
 and strong, it tends sometimes to make it 
 poor and weak. Let me show you what 
 I mean by the help of illustration. It is, 
 I think, Mr. Herbert Spencer who some- 
 where says that there is an antagonism 
 oftentimes between what he calls the in- 
 crease of size or bulk and the increase of 
 organism or structure, the one growing not 
 infrequently at the expense of the latter. 
 
240 TBE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 In the vegetable kingdom, for instance, 
 those plants which grow very rapidly in 
 bulk do not possess, as a general thing, as 
 much strength and tougliness of structural 
 fibre as those which grow more slowlj^. 
 They are not so vigorous and hardy ; they 
 have less power of resistance, and cannot 
 encounter so successfully the adverse influ- 
 ence of the elements, and are more likely 
 to wither and die. So, too, in the animal 
 kingdom. The boy who grows very rapidly 
 in size is apt to become weakened for a 
 time in vital force by the precocity of his 
 physical development, and to be made more 
 liable to disease. 
 
 Now, what is true of existence in the 
 animal and vegetable kingdom seems to be 
 equally true of existence in the social king- 
 dom. The size of life in our time, its 
 physical proportions, so to speak, have been 
 characterized by a precociously rapid and 
 unprecedented development and growth. 
 Our extent of vision to-day, our oppor- 
 tunity of action, our curriculum of study, 
 our range of influence, our sphere of sym- 
 pathy', the entire circumference of our 
 being, by reason of modern invention and 
 skill, has been most wonderfully enlarged. 
 
MAKING TEE MOST OF HIMSELF 241 
 
 The life of the whole round world to-day 
 is humming and buzzing, shouting and 
 singing, laughing and crying, whispering 
 and thundering, and all at once, its story 
 into our cars. Yes, and more than that. 
 By spectroscope and telescope we of this 
 generation have been carried beyond the 
 society of this earthly planet, and intro- 
 duced into the society of the universe 
 itself. We have grown so in size that we 
 can reach out and touch the stars ; so large 
 and giant in form have we become that we 
 can take them into our arms, resolve them 
 into their constituent and component parts, 
 and weigh them in our scales. And yet 
 this rapid development of our life in social 
 size and bulk may militate against the 
 development of individual organism and 
 structure, — • the great power of society 
 weakening personal force. The very mul- 
 titude of our opportunities and privileges 
 paralyzing our action. The very abun- 
 dance of our pleasures diminishing our joy. 
 The very greatness of our educational ad- 
 vantages dissipating the mental force. 
 There are so many books to read to-day 
 that we read none of them well. There 
 are so many things to think about to-day 
 
 16 
 
242 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 that we are in danger of losing tlie power 
 of concentrated thought. It is so easy 
 to-day to read the Bil^le in our mother 
 tongue that it lies on the talde neglected. 
 It is so easy to-day, in comparison with 
 what it used to be, to go to church, that 
 we don't go. The house in which we live 
 is luxurious in its appointments, and the 
 life that we live there is so often sluggish 
 and dull. The church in which we gather 
 to worship God is rich in its splendor and 
 beauty, and the worship that we offer there 
 is so often barren and dead. The school- 
 house splendid and the scholar dull ; the 
 church magnificent and the worshipper 
 drowsy. Socially becoming stronger and 
 greater, personally weaker and less. 
 
 We are told to-day that the genius of 
 the drama is declining ; that the power of 
 the pulpit is waning ; that literature is 
 losing its originality because of its volumi- 
 nousness ; that statesmanship is degene- 
 rating ; and while the statement is not 
 unqualifiedly true, it has enough truth in 
 it to illustrate how the great development 
 of life in social size may militate against 
 the development of individual structure, 
 weakening personal capacity and force. 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 2-13 
 
 There are so many tilings going on in our 
 modern world, so many oracles of wisdom 
 clamoring to be heard, so many prophets 
 prophesying, so many preachers preaching, 
 so many critics criticising, so many voices 
 of one kind and another sounding in our 
 ears, that we feel like a person in an 
 overcrowded drawing-room at an evening 
 party, utterly dazed and bewildered, un- 
 able to speak or listen to anybody coher- 
 ently for any length of time on any subject, 
 or to give forth any sound having sense 
 and meaning ; stupified, asphyxiated, spell- 
 bound by the great chattering, brilliant 
 world society about us. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of making much of 
 individuals to-day, we put our trust in 
 corporations, in institutions, in organiza- 
 tions, in machines ; the individual man 
 becoming less and less important, shrink- 
 ing into smaller and smaller proportions, 
 gradually going down into the depths of 
 obscurity and darkness, dropping out of 
 sight and mind. The corporation every- 
 thing-, the individual nothing ; socially 
 great and strong, personally weak and 
 unimportant. That, I say, is a tendency 
 to which we are exposed. Society has 
 
244 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 become overgrown, and we cannot easily 
 keep up with it. The world of human 
 interests is getting to be too big for us, is 
 developing too rapidly, and we are trying 
 to absorb and assimilate so much in our 
 attempt to keep iip with the times, as we 
 say, that the faculties are in danger of 
 becoming congested. 
 
 How may this danger be avoided ? How 
 may a man to-day, in spite of all these 
 antagonistic tendencies, make the most of 
 himself, and develop to the utmost his 
 potential personality ? I answer, first, by 
 a fixed and steadfast purpose to serve the 
 human life about him. See how a fixed 
 and steadfast purpose operates in one's 
 life. Two persons, we will suppose, go 
 on 'Change together at some great com- 
 mercial or metropolitan centre. New York, 
 or Chicago, or Paris, at some feverish 
 crisis in the market. One of them goes 
 there for no particular purpose ; he sim^jly 
 drops in as a stranger visiting the city to 
 note what can be seen and heard. And 
 the power of that strange, tumultuous life, 
 that shouting, and screaming, and flinging 
 of arms overhead, that hurried and feverish 
 movement to and fro, as though all Bedlam 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 245 
 
 had broken loose, it is too much for him. 
 He is stupefied, dazed, lost. He seems to 
 be in everybody's way. Everybody else 
 seems to be in Ms way. He is tripping 
 over everybody. Everybody seems to be 
 tripping over him, and he is in danger of 
 being crushed. But the other man goes 
 there for a purpose. There is somebody 
 he wants to see there, must see ; or there 
 is business of a particular sort that he 
 wants to transact there. He has stocks to 
 sell, or grain, or cotton, or -wool to buy. 
 He goes there for a purpose, and the power 
 of that purpose guards him, guides him, 
 steadies him, saves him from being crushed 
 and overcome. Well, it is the same way 
 in the broader areas of life. Go out into 
 the world, and live your lives without any 
 fixed and definite object, and the bright 
 glare of the world's great society will 
 dazzle you ; the roar of the world will 
 deafen you, perhaps madden you. So 
 many things there are you could easily do 
 if you wanted to ; so many things inviting 
 you to their performance ; so many things, 
 I say, that you could easily do if you wanted 
 to, that you do not do any of them ; thus 
 floating, sinking, gone at last, having ac- 
 
246 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 complished little or nothing. But hold up 
 the shield of a purpose, no matter what it 
 is, and stick to it, and you are protected 
 thereby from the confusing and bewilder- 
 ing noises about you. The roar of the 
 battle may be at the very gate ; but the 
 voice of the inspiration of the purpose that 
 is crying in you is louder than the sur- 
 rounding strife, and your life goes straight 
 on with your purpose. 
 
 Then, further, let it be a purpose not to 
 be ministered unto, but, as in the case of 
 Jesus Christ, to minister to the human life 
 about you. And how strangely and quickly 
 will all the best forces of that human life 
 about you give themselves to you, their 
 beauty, their power, their life, and become 
 incorporated in you, become as it were you. 
 They will take their crowns and crown 
 you. They will lift you up and exalt you, 
 and give their blessing to you, and will 
 help to make you all that you are cap- 
 able of becoming. Is it not the same 
 yieat principle which we see ojDerating 
 everywhere else? "Serve me long and 
 well," says art; "be my minister first, and 
 then some day you shall become my mas- 
 ter." " Kneel low at my footstool with 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 247 
 
 patient and reverent homage," sajs the 
 kingdom of nature to the inquiring disci- 
 ple, " and then some day you shall sit on 
 my throne." So does the world of human 
 life about you seem to say the same thing 
 to you. "Take your life and live it for 
 yourself alone, and I will do little or noth- 
 ing for you. I will give you none of the 
 enrichment wherewith I am enriched ; and 
 my best and strongest influences, which 
 would help you so much to come to your- 
 self, you will never know or reach. But 
 take your life and live it, not for yourself, 
 but for me, and then I will give it back a 
 hundredfold unto your bosom again, and 
 you shall thus become and reach your best 
 and truest self, your greatest and highest 
 self." Is it not the way in which every- 
 thing comes to itself, — not through itself, 
 but through others? Take, for instance, 
 anything you please, — a tree, a house, a 
 church, this church, or this chapel, or some 
 particular object or feature in this chapel, 
 this window, for instance, behind me. Is it 
 a thing by itself ? Apparently it is, but in 
 reality it is not. How did it come to be 
 where it is ? Somebody put it there. Be- 
 fore somebody put it there somebody else 
 
248 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 made it. And where did lae iind the mate- 
 rial out of wliich to make it? He found 
 it in the eartli. And liow did it come to 
 be in the earth ? Bj- a long, long process, 
 too long to tell about, it grew there. And 
 Avhat made it grow there ? Heat, and cold, 
 and moisture, and summer, and winter, and 
 fire, and vapor, and snow, and friction, and 
 decomjDosition, and petrifaction. It came 
 to be itself not by itself, but tlu'ough other 
 things outside of itself ; and except for 
 those other innumerable tilings outside of 
 itself it would never have reached itself. 
 Its personality, so to speak, would never 
 have been developed. 
 
 And that is just as true of human nature 
 as it is of inanimate nature. No man can 
 reach the full stature of his personality ex- 
 cept through others. Living alone and 
 standing apart from others, he can never 
 show what he is, " but only Avhat he is not." 
 He can only show, as some one has said, 
 that he is not a friend, or acquaintance, or 
 companion, or comrade, or neighbor ; he 
 exists for nobody; and presently, to his 
 surprise, and generally to his horror, he 
 will discover that he is nobody. The peo- 
 ple about us to-day are not really other 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 249 
 
 people, they are ourselves, in whom we be- 
 come alive, and reach, and find ourselves, 
 and in whose features, masked and dis- 
 guised by suffering, and need, and igno- 
 rance, and foolishness, and want, we shall 
 find as the mask is Lifted the features of 
 oui-selves. 
 
 There is, therefore, no more effective way 
 in which a man can develop and bring out 
 to the utmost the potential force of per- 
 sonality in him than ]yj that manner of life 
 which in the Christian ministry is yours, or 
 which is in theory yours, and should be 
 yours in fact.. It is sometimes said, I 
 know, that the Christian minister's life is 
 a very narrow life ; and so sometimes it is. 
 But if it is so, it is not because it ought to 
 be so, but because he has made it so. Let 
 him steadfastly maintain in his ministry 
 the great unselfish purpose of Iris ministry to 
 touch, and heal, and help, and in some way 
 to serve the human life about him, and more 
 and more will that human life give itself 
 to him, and make his power more, his per- 
 sonality more. It is not, then, young gen- 
 tlemen, a little and narrow calling into 
 which you are going ; it is the biggest and 
 the broadest of all callings ; and a calling, 
 
250 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 too, which as you pursue it will make you 
 bisr and broad. With a heart and mind and 
 soul open on all sides towards your fellow 
 men, you will acquire that most effective 
 of all forces, personal force, and which 
 more than anything else will make your 
 preaching effective. 
 
 And yet, while all this is true, it is not 
 the whole truth. There is something more 
 to be said. There is another environment 
 about you besides the human environment, 
 and Godward as well as manward you must 
 open your hearts and souls. And if you 
 are to become the highest and the best that 
 you are capable of becoming, you must 
 learn to live in communion with the highest 
 and the best. I am a strong believer in 
 prayer as a factor in personal development. 
 And the men who have been the great 
 leaders in the Christian Church in the past, 
 and whose personality has contributed much 
 to the making and moulding of the Church, 
 have been men who prayed much as well 
 as men who worked much; and who, 
 through prayer, were made patient, and 
 brave, and strong in work, and fitted for 
 their work. And in the same way, young 
 gentlemen, must we be fitted for our work. 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 251 
 
 through the quickening power of prayer ; 
 and whatever tends to weaken confidence 
 in prayer tends to weaken us, and to pre- 
 vent us from reaching and using that power 
 of personal force by which alone we can do 
 our best and greatest work. It cannot be 
 denied, however, that there are tendencies 
 to-day which seem to be energizing in that 
 direction. We meet them not only in 
 others through reading and conversation, 
 we often feel them ourselves; and some- 
 times, indeed, when with bowed head or 
 bended knee we are engaged in the very 
 act of prayer, the thought will somehow 
 suddenly come and be suggested to us, 
 What is the use of it after all ? Is there 
 any good in prayer ? Is there any reality 
 in it? Are we indeed speaking into the 
 ear of God, or simply articulating into the 
 air? Does the Lord Almighty hear our 
 prayer, and will He answer? Or are we 
 simply repeating and mumbling pious 
 words and phrases because we have been 
 taught to do so, whose only response is 
 their echo, and not even that ? 
 
 It may not be amiss, therefore, if in the 
 closing part of this closing lecture I ven- 
 ture to say something to you about these 
 
252 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 tendencies which seem to militate against 
 the reality of prayer. Most of them might 
 be summarized in some such statement or 
 objection as this : Nature being uniform in 
 its -working, effect following cause there 
 with an unerring regularity of sequence 
 and occurrence, prayer is an exercise con- 
 trary to the law of nature. But that, it 
 it seems to me, is exactly what it is not. 
 Prayer contrary to the laws of nature ? 
 What nature ? Whose nature ? It is not 
 contrary to my nature. It is not contrary 
 to your nature. It is not contrary to human 
 nature in general, for in all ages men have 
 prayed; and, judging the future by the 
 past, as long as human nature remains 
 human nature they will continue to pray. 
 It is the one tiling, indeed, which every- 
 where we see, which everywhere we hear, 
 — prayer : in all lands, among all peoples, 
 in all conditions of life, among all sorts of 
 men, in all the past we hear it. In the 
 song of the Parsee priest on the top of the 
 Persian mountains ; in the sound of 
 the Mussulman's cry, breaking forth with 
 tlie sunrise from the turret stone of the 
 mosque ; in Mohammedanism ; in Buddli- 
 ism ; in Zoroasterism ; in the monotheism 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 253 
 
 of the Jew ; in the militarism of the Roman ; 
 in the f etichism of the African, — the voice 
 of prayer is heard. And the spirit of prayer 
 is felt breatliing through the hymns to 
 Indra and Varuna, as well as tlirough the 
 Psalms of David to Jehovah. 
 
 What is the story of human life in the 
 past but the story of religion? and if of 
 religion, then of prayer. It is the story of 
 human life trying to come to itself through 
 a power outside of itself ; and to somehow 
 tell itself, its deepest, inmost, secretest self, 
 into the listening ear of some sympathetic 
 God. And not only in the story of the past 
 do we hear it, in the story of the present 
 we hear it. The voice of prayer is heard 
 in all the lands to-day ; among all the peo- 
 ple to-day ; not only among the people who 
 call themselves religious, but among the 
 people who do not call themselves reli- 
 gious, who yet, in spite of themselves, are a 
 little religious at times. They cannot keep 
 God out of their thought. They cannot keep 
 God out of their speech. The instinct of 
 God is in them, and they cannot get rid of it. 
 And that instinct of God which is in them 
 carries with it the instinct to appeal at 
 times to God. And they do appeal to God ; 
 
254 THE PHEACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 not always reverentlj-, sometimes profanely, 
 using His name as a name with which to 
 curse and swear. But what is cursing and 
 swearing but the instinct in them of prayer, 
 of appeal to God, gone mad, because they 
 have gone mad and angry for a moment ; 
 the instinct in them of prayer blasphe- 
 movisly expressed. It is an irrepressible, 
 an ineradicable instinct. It shows itself in 
 wrath, in anger, in love, in fear, in danger, 
 in death, in the sudden escape from dan- 
 ger, in the sudden exemption from death, 
 when involuntarily they are moved to say 
 and can't help saying, " Thank God ! " as 
 though, somehow. He did it, and they feel 
 and know He did it. Or, when touched 
 with some emotion, some deep and strong 
 emotion beyond the common want, of glad- 
 ness or of joy, which they know not ho\v 
 to express or how to others to tell it, or 
 how with others to share it, the heart goes 
 up to God as though it would share it with 
 Him, and would say to Him, " Oh, see, as 
 no one else can see, my gladness and my 
 joy ! " Or when in some hour of need, 
 confronting some difficult oi- perilous 
 task which they have not strength or 
 energy to perform, and yet Avhich they 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 255 
 
 must perform, without any human guid- 
 ance and without any human aid, treading 
 the winepress all alone in darkness and in 
 weariness, with none to help or understand, 
 or bring deliverance to them, and the cry 
 goes up to God for help, and the appeal to 
 God is made ! 
 
 Prayer contrary to the laws of nature? 
 Why it is a law of nature, of human na- 
 ture at least, which lives, and breathes, 
 and moves, and has its being in prayer; 
 which is forever, reverently or irreverently, 
 sacredly or profanely, silently or vocally, 
 somehow appealing to God ; swearing in 
 His name, protesting in His name, testify- 
 ing in His name, deprecating, imprecating, 
 expostulating in His name ; forever carry- 
 ing up its great case in equity to God as 
 unto its highest and ultimate Court. 
 
 Contrary to the laws of nature ? Why, 
 more than anything else it is our nature. 
 It ripples through all our laughter, which 
 is in its last analysis but the breaking forth 
 for a moment of the imprisoned spirit try- 
 ing to reach and touch the glad surprise of 
 some unknown life. It ripples through all 
 our laughter, it shines through all our 
 tears; it shows itself in our weaknesses. 
 
256 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 makes stronger our strengths, and quickens 
 within us the dream of some ideal life, not 
 seen as yet, but believed in, towards which 
 we now press on, towards which we now 
 aspire as tlie home of the soul in God. In 
 human nature, at least, I say, there is no 
 other law so imperiously dominant, so su- 
 premely transcendent, so universally preva- 
 lent as the instinct in us of prayer; and 
 we can no more get rid of it than human 
 nature can get rid of human nature. 
 
 Now let us go on a little farther. What 
 is human nature? "What is our physical 
 science to-day declaring our human nature 
 to be? Where does our physical science 
 to-day say it originated and came from? 
 You know what it has to say upon that point. 
 Human nature, it says, is all of a piece and 
 one with all the rest of nature : one organ- 
 ism, one growth, one development ; just as 
 the growth of the plant is one, from the 
 seed where it starts to the blossom where 
 it ends; as the growth of the tree is one, 
 from the root below the ground to the fruit- 
 age and foliage above. So is nature all of 
 a piece, and one ; from the nature far down 
 and below, which is not human, to the na- 
 ture far up and above, which is human. It 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 257 
 
 is all one growth, through protoplasm, and 
 molecule, and mist, and star-dust, and rock, 
 and mineral, and vegetable, to man ; one 
 growth, one organism, one development, all 
 of a piece. Now, without entering upon a 
 discussion of the merits of that theory, let 
 us assume, if you please, that it is true, 
 that man has been evolved by a long process 
 of development out of a molecule, or a pro- 
 toplasm, or a lump of clay. Will it be 
 maintained, can it be maintained, that the 
 lump of clay out of which he came, enters 
 more essentially with its laws and tenden- 
 cies into the constitution of things, than the 
 human being with his laws and tendencies 
 who came out of the lump? "Is that 
 a consistent science which maintains that 
 man is to be included within the scope of 
 nature, and then excludes him from the 
 scope of nature in trying to ascertain what 
 are the laws of nature ? " If man be part of 
 it all, connected with it all, related to it all, 
 then why should he, the highest, biggest, 
 best part, in trying to interpret nature, be 
 thrown out of the count ? And if the ten- 
 dency to pray be, as from the induction of 
 all human life it seems to be, an essential 
 part of his being, an essential law of liis 
 17 
 
lio 
 
 8 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 being, why is it not just as much a hiw of 
 nature, as the law which bincls the planets 
 in their course, or makes the earth to turn 
 to-day, or the sun to shine to-day ? 
 
 " The reality of a growing thing," some 
 one has wisely and truly said, " the reality 
 of a growing tiling is in its highest form 
 of growth ; " the last explains the first, not 
 the first the last. And the highest form 
 of growth in this growing universe, if it 
 is a growing universe, is man, with the 
 spiritual instinct in his heart to pray. 
 
 But then it is said that that spiritual 
 instinct of prayer must be confined to 
 spiritual things. Possibly so. But who 
 has a metaphysical scalpel or blade that 
 is sharp enough and keen enough to di-aw 
 the line of demarcation between them, and 
 tell us where spirit in its influence on 
 matter ends, and matter in its influence on 
 spirit begins ? It cannot be done. Spirit- 
 ual things and material things cannot be 
 separated. They move and go together; 
 here and now, at least, they stand or fall to- 
 gether. Patience is a spiritual thing, as are 
 love, hope, faith ; but they rest on a physi- 
 cal basis, and are largely determined by 
 physical facts and conditions. Good temper 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 259 
 
 is a spiritual thing; but good temper is 
 somewhat determined by good digestion. 
 The soft answer that turnetli away wrath is 
 a spiritual thing ; but the soft answer that 
 turneth away wrath is not so easily spoken 
 when we are weak and tired, and the nerve 
 force is exhausted, and all the nerves seem 
 to be out on the surface scintillating- 
 sparks, as when we are strong and well. 
 Spiritual forces are closely correlated with 
 physical forces. If we are to pray only 
 for spiritual things, how shall we know 
 what to pray for and what not to pray 
 for ? If we are to pray only for spiritual 
 things and not physical, which are so 
 mixed up with them, how can we pray at 
 all ? And yet is it not, after all, futile to 
 pray for physical things? A shower of 
 rain, for instance, is the product of certain 
 atmospheric agencies, which make a shower 
 of rain inevitable. Or the death of an in- 
 dividual, again, is the consequence of 
 certain pathological and physiological con- 
 ditions which render his decease as sure 
 as the rising or setting of the sun. And 
 can we hope by prayer to change the whole 
 course and constitution of the world 
 of physical nature ? I do not know ; all 
 
260 TEE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 I know is this, and this I do know, that 
 it would be to change the whole course 
 and constitution of the world of human 
 nature if we did not pray. And upon that 
 world of human nature, which is said to 
 have come out of all the rest of nature, to 
 be its blossomed outgrowth, — upon that 
 world of human nature, with the instinct 
 in it of prayer, we take our stand and 
 pray, and leave results to Him who is 
 greater and wiser than Ave, and who has 
 made it a law of our being, a law of nature, 
 to pray. 
 
 Now, I have said all this, young gentle- 
 men, because I want you to feel how right, 
 how reasonable, is prayer; and that you 
 are not turning away from the light of 
 nature as modern knowledge reveals it to 
 you when you turn towards the light of 
 Clirist. And because, further, I would 
 deepen in you the conviction which I am 
 sure you already have, that it is only by 
 the opening up of your heart and soul, not 
 only towards the human, but towards the 
 divine environment of your lives, that you 
 can reach the full stature of your personal 
 development and make the most of your- 
 selves. Let God make you strong, and 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF HIMSELF 261 
 
 then you are strong with a strength that 
 will prove itself so often to be an invincible 
 strength, and which opposition and diffi- 
 culty will only more fully bring out. Do 
 you remember the story that Browning 
 tells of the tyrant who tried to crush one 
 of his weak and apparently defenceless 
 subjects ? 
 
 " So I soberly laid my last plan 
 To extinguish the man. 
 Round his creep-hole with never a break 
 Ran my fires for his sake. 
 Overhead did my thunders combine 
 With my underground mine, 
 Till I looked from my labors content 
 To enjoy the event, 
 When suddenly, how think ye the end? 
 
 The man sprang to his feet, 
 
 Stood erect, caught at God's skirts and prayed. 
 
 So I was afraid." 
 
 Ah, yes, it is then that the man springs 
 to his feet and stands erect and strong in 
 the full stature of his manhood, when 
 prayer becomes, not merely a form or phrase, 
 but a living reality to him, and when, 
 through prayer, he reaches out and touches 
 the skirts of God, and God becomes a 
 living reality to him. 
 
262 THE PREACHER AND HIS PLACE 
 
 How, then, in trying to tell you some- 
 thing about the preparation of yourselves 
 for that great work to which you have 
 devoted yoiu'selves could I dare, even at 
 the risk of seeming to preach to you a 
 little, leave unsaid that which I have said, 
 and which, although I have said it last, is 
 in importance first ? Never let your work 
 come between you and God. You will be 
 tempted to do so at times ; but do not yield 
 to the temptation.' Let nothing come be- 
 tween you and God ; for it is as men of 
 God that you go. Men of God! Think 
 how much that means, or how much it 
 ought to mean. It is as men of God that 
 you go out into the world among }-our 
 fellow-men, with fixed and steadfast pur- 
 pose to serve your fellow-men. Thus, and 
 only thus, laying hold on God, will you 
 become in a measure the incarnation of 
 God, His quickening power and life flow- 
 ing into your souls. Thus, and only thus, 
 with a fixed and steadfast purpose to serve 
 your fellow-men, will you become the 
 embodiment of your fellow-men, and what 
 is highest and best in them will be ex- 
 pressed in you. XnA becoming thus in 
 yourselves the most that you can become, 
 
MAKING THE MOST OF BIMSELF 263 
 
 and having a personality strengtlaened and 
 enriched both by man and God, by the 
 whole environment of your lives, the human 
 and the divine, will you most effectively 
 do what He, Avho was on earth both Son 
 of Man and God, has sent you forth to 
 do. 
 
 THE END.