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QUAYLE, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. by Kipios mowaiver pe.—David. Ego sum pastor bonus.—Jesus. Kypvéov tov Asyov.—Paul. CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM. New York: EATON & MAINS. Copyright, 1910, ; by Jennings and Graham. — CONTENTS. THE PREACHER, - - - - 2 3 e THE PREACHER AS ANNUNCIATOR, - - - THE PAsToR-PREACHER, - - “ “ s REDEEMING THE TIME, - - = a 4! THE TYRANNY OF Books, - - 3 - 2 THE PREACHER AND His Books, - - - THE POWER OF THE WILL IN PREACHING, THE RANGE OF PULPIT THEMES, - - - RELATION OF THE PULPIT TO Civic AFFAIRS, - REACHING THE RICH AND THE POOR WITH THE GOSPEL, - - - - - - - - THE SECRET OF EFFECTIVE PREACHING—AN AT- TEMPT, - - - - . - - = THE PREACHER AND SERMONIC LITERATURE, TRIVIALITIES OF A PREACHER’S CRAFT, - - SOME PREACHER ‘‘ NEVERS,” - - - - THE Sin oF BEING UNINTERESTING - - . THE Pastor, - . - : - : - THE PAsTOR AND THE SICK, - - - - THE PasToR AND THE CGILD, - - - - 5 CONTENTS. THE PasToR AND YouTH, -~ - THE Fine Art oF Lovine Forks, - ‘“‘THE LovE oF CHRIST CONSTRAINETH Us,” “THE Girt oF Gop WHICH Is IN THEE,” KEEPING ALIVE THE SENSE OF WONDER, POLLEN FOR THE MIND, - - - THE SEARCH FOR SOULS, - - THe PREACHER—A Mystic, - - THE PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON, THE JUSTIFICATION OF A SERMON, - THE PREACHER AS AN APPRECIATOR, THE PREACHER—A MAN oF PRAYER, THE PREACHER AND THE AGES, - THE PoET AND THE PREACHER, - CicERO AND PauLt—A ContTRAst, THE DEBT OF THE REPUBLIC TO THE PREACHER, SomE PREACHERS I HavE Known, THE DESTINATION OF A SERMON, - PREACH-ING OR PREACH-ER, - PAUL, THE PREACHER, : - - ‘‘THE Lorp Is My Pastor,” - CHRIST THE Goop Pastor, - - 162 ~1%3 180 185 192 203 210 219 226 233 241 255 262 270 284 300 324 354 359 374 403 408 A Foreword. Or my own accord I would not have been bold enough to write this book. To believe among the very many books on preachers and their affairs that one from me would not be an intrusion, was quite be- yond me. But the suggestion of our Book Editor, Dr. Cooke, supplemented by many ministers of many denomina- tions, has stimulated my courage to the point of set- ting down some things which as a pastor I have put to the test of practicability. If God will make these words of mine to minister to my brethren at God’s altar (my younger brethren in particular), I shall be elate; for with this sole in- tent has The Pastor-Preacher been written. Witiiam A. QuayLe. The Preacher. Ir God or man has a manlier business than preach- ing, that business has not been set down in the list of masculine activities. Preaching is a robust business. It is in nothing ladylike. “If after the manner of men I have fought with the beasts of Ephesus” is not a phrase descriptive of physical or metaphysical lassi- tude or incapacity. The preacher is not a man of cartilage: he is a man of bone and sinew. He feels the riot of mighty deeds. Life is epic to him. “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” was another of the granitic sayings of brother Paul, sometime preacher in the Church of God. And no man of the Christian ministry will find it possible to lack virility if he associates much with preacher Paul. Battle was a first notion with him; and battle is robust. The first degree, as the lodge-men say, in the gospel ministry is to feel that it is a man’s job. It takes more courage to be a preacher than to be a gladiator, or a stormer of fortresses, because the preacher’s battle is ever on, never ceases, and lacks the tonic of visible conquest. In the preacher busi- ness the sight of the eyes helps so little. Plaudits are © lacking, huzzas are silent. The politician in campaign time may count on the torchlight procession, the explo- sion of cheers when the political platitude is uttered, the 9 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. being carried on the shoulders of ardent political par- tisans who see in him the incarnation of their own political ideas. Nor is it to be doubted that these days of visible triumph bridge over those other days of an- tagonism and gibe to which the political leader is heir. One cheer resounds across many a day of muttered discontent. | But a preacher has none of this. He is ever in the public eye, but never in the public plaudit. What- ever his service, urban, civic, patriotic, or literary, no acclaim greets him. His must be a life of clamorless renown. He feels the sullen antagonisms of unright- eousness and often hears its bitter and envenomed voice; but the procession of triumph belongs not to him nor to his hour, but please God to that far day when the humblest men and women shall have the crown and the plaudit at the hand and voice of God. This is no plea for the cheer, but is a tribute to the unac- claimed man who marches straight on when every lip is dumb, hearing the voice of his Master saying “For- ward.” We shall not fill up the ranks of the ministry by talking smooth talk of ease or emolument. TuHar 1s NOT HOW THE MATTER Is. The battle beats fiercely. It is against principality and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places; it is tireless as the dread- ful fight before Port Arthur. The easy brother should not undertake this job. I call it “job” because that is what it is. Put preaching where it belongs, not with the so-called learned professions, but with the eter- nal working professions, the serious sweaty toils of men, 10 THE PREACHER. where the corn is planted and the wheat is reaped and the trenches are dug and the sewers laid—the ever- lasting labors of mankind. At this point “The Sky Pilot” and “Black Rock” have been worthy contribu- tions to the homiletics men ought to study who would adventure on the mighty manliness of preaching. Men who could play and pray and hit, and hit hard if need be; men who wore no collar to designate their craft, but went where they went with the throng of men, men with the throng—such can be sky pilots any- where. Music may or may not be in a preacher’s arm, but it must be in a preacher’s heart; and the manliest music in the human frame is always the tireless muscle of the heart, which refuses to rest lest all the other muscles die. The unaffrighted and the unaffrightable man, that is the figure of a preacher cast in bronze. How would a sculptor frame a preacher if he set him to that holy task? If he wanted to picture sailor or architect, ar- tisan or inventor, it would require no vivid imagination to picture forth some symbol of such deeds and such engagements; but a preacher, what would the sculptor do for him to make his meaning plain? Were I sculp- tor I would frame a masculine figure meet to wrestle Hercules to the ground, and he should, level-eyed, look straight forward as to see the face of man and God, and have an uplifted mighty arm, on which should be caught a sword-stroke meant for a group which should huddle sheltered at his side, shielded by his arm from the crashing sword. The preacher is thus an arm to keep the helpless and unhelped from wrath of men, and 11 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. the mighty from the blow of doom which falls on sin as from the roomy sky. That might or might not be a skillful scene to fling the preacher into lasting bronze, but would at least deliver him from the mil- linery of half-heartedness. He is a man, glad of the task, nor squeamish at the hurt, and is receiving sta- tion for all such vigors as inhabit this universe built of the brawny God. “My son, be strong.” How athletically that word rasps on the air. The big man’s job is where we are to list the preachers at their place. The strong man’s vocation is what preaching is. They who want to do embroidery must not come here. The football men are the men wanted here. The center-rush men who heed not the opposing line, how hard it is to break, but break it—such men are the preacher type. I would have every candidate for the ministry play football. It would teach him impact and to see with quick eye the need, and with spirit and body agility to cope with the need. The great, bleak, angry line of sin, what shall a preacher do with that? And the only logical reply as well as the only Scriptural reply is, “Rush against it.” Those who wait with suave deliberation to measure with a careful eye the forces massed against them will truly never be browbeaten by surly defeat, but they will as certainly never leap with the wild call of victory in throat and limb. Better to be beaten having tried than to be cowed and never to have tried at all. “Grandly begin,” is the tremendous word of Lowell. And only such grandly begin as have nerve. Not the nerve of the braggart, not the nerve of sense- 12 THE PREACHER. less swagger, not the nerve of senseless attack, but the swift eye and the swift brain and the whirlwind attack —“And with God be the rest,” as the great Browning has it. To be wholesome, a preacher must be brawny. The anemic of spirit can not do this deed. They had bet- ter not try. The world has definitely passed and for- ever passed out of the domain of the priest into the domain of the man. He who does not see that has little gift for seeing. The “‘nice man” is a past tense preacher-figure. Men want the strong man. It is not, to be sure, here intimated that the body is the preach- er’s chief asset. Slightness of figure hindered neither Wesley nor Napoleon. Not every man can have a six- foot figure like Washington, nor a six-foot-four figure like Abraham Lincoln. But the might of man lies not in his body. It lies in his soul, though it must be con- ceded that a brawny body which shall not subtract from the man when he is first met is worth the having. But the body must be as it is. We can not select the physical man we wear. But we may make the meta- physical man we ought to be. We be makers of our spiritual selves, God being our Helper. But spiritual brawn we may be and spiritual brawn we must be, pro- vided we are to do muscular service for the Lord Christ. Was it a happening that when Jesus sought disciples who should indoctrinate this world He beckoned to swarthy fisher folk and others of country soil, mostly country men and scarcely city men, and when He found a city man of singular and.angular might He smote him with the cross and beckoned the bruised and fallen 13 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. city man to come and show how he could measure strength with country men; and afterwards this same city man from Tarsus said in justification of apostle- ship, “I thank God I labored more than they all?” The slight-built Saul was made of sinewy iron, who could take shipwrecks to his breast and bear scourgings and not die, and meet the robbers in the darkening hills. Filigree work instead of men will not do this country toil of preaching the country Christ. Marquetry and buhl are well enough, but are not world necessities. Paul was not by common conception a large man, but he was a man. Dr. Grenfell of the Labrador is a man of diminutive stature, but that man who is min- istering to such as needed the help of a Christ-man found himself on a wild night of the long Labrador winter afloat on a sagging sea of ice. The dogs which drew his wagon of the north grew ravenous with hunger and finally leaped on their master to dine off his flesh, and in self-defense he slew the brutes, battling as he clung to the houseboat of the tilting ice-cakes, skinned his slain dogs and wrapped him in their warm hides, and so escaped death by freezing, and, tying their legs, bone and bone, erected a flagstaff, from which waved the signal of his own garment, stripped from his freez- ing shoulders, and so signaled, a passing ship rescued him; and so the sea missed of one more victim and earth kept one hero a little longer. When I heard this man speak he impressed me as a little man. When I read this of him he stood before my imagination like a tower. Thomas Coke was a little man, but when verging toward seventy years, started out along the 14 THE PREACHER. then slow highway of the sea to become foreign mis- sionary to India, and died on the Indian Ocean, face toward those for whom his Christ in love had died. I love to front him and Livingstone in my thoughts— two lovers of the underworld of heathen loss and tears and hopelessness. Men like these are the strong men whom this ar- ticle has in view, such as shall lay man’s hand upon the mightiness we call this world. “If God be for us, who is he that can be against us?” is the hidden might on which the brawny preacher lays hold. He feels God- competent and himself competent in God, nor leans much and has no kindredship to groaning, but sings much and shouts some and does sweaty deeds, which shall by and by become the substance of some iliad in heaven. Preachers, be strong. Roll your sleeves up to the shoulder. Make man know a brother man has come when you have invaded any place. A man is come, howbeit a Christ-man. A missionary in Porto Rico was preaching very late one night to a multitude. He was very weary. He had preached and administered the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and married a grand- father and a son and a son’s son—three generations— because in that land where pure Christianity had not been, marriage had been made so expensive that fam- ilies had been born without the holy rite of wedlock; and now, when this missionary had come on this moon- lit night, son, father, grandfather had all been wedded to the women who were mothers of their children and had gone home happy that God had blessed them with 15 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. marriage at the last. And the preacher-man, who had wrought far into the depths of the silver night, had taken hammock and gone apart to hang it on the hill- side, where moonlight gypsies with the shadows; and when his prayers were said and he would have slept, certain barefoot workingmen, who had come from far and had not heard enough of the strange, sweet gos- pel from the preacher’s lips, came quiet as the moon- _ light and said, “Mr. Christ-man, will you tell us some more about this Christ?’? And then he said he knew he was not tired, but rested, and arose and told these workingmen, for whom Christ died, the story of the Christ, who was to them like some gracious dream— and they went down to their houses justified. “Mr. Christ-man,” that is nearly what a preacher is, though not quite; when these dusky brothers would come to know this preacher better, then they would accost him as “Brother Christ-man.” And so this is what every preacher is—a man, a Christ-man, a brother Christ- man, strong to battle and to plow and reap, or, what is challenge to a stronger strength, to work and have no reaping—here. 16 The Preacher as Annunciator. A PREACHER may not be a great man, but he must preach great matters. His pronouncement is sublime. The little child who holds a geography in his hands holds a geography of a whole round world. He is a lad; but the geography is a planetary concern. Ini- tial to any dignified preachment, is the sense of its sheer immensity. To sail a toy boat on a puddle is quite a different employment from sailing a toy ship on an ocean. To some men preaching is sailing on a puddle. To such men, need it be said, preaching is a childish performance. A big man at a trivial task is ridiculous. Except a gospel be voluminous as an ocean, to preach is petty employment. A stupendous gospel makes its proclamation a regal performance. Some kingdoms yet alive in our world are as infantile as the kingdom in “The Prisoner of Zenda,” only large enough to supply wine for a drunken king and cheap wardrobe for a kinglet. A little swagger, a little fuss and feathers, a little cheap theatricals, but no kingdom whose interests are the crowded interests of a mighty host. This is what renders the pomp of such workers ridiculous. They have all the ritual and none of the majesty of a cathedral. Here is where a man who inspects preaching as a possible vocation worthy of a grown man must be rigid 2 17 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. with himself. He must scrutinize this task as a com- petent engineer does the swirls of riotous seas where a lighthouse is to be erected. The painstaking must be infinite. He must not lightly scan this home of wrecks like some gay pleasurer who lifts a voice of momentary horror over this feast of shipwrecks. These pass by this fearful spot: the engineer stays by it. He is here to cure it, and must therefore hold a court of inquiry over it. He calmly studies its wildest toss of wildest tempest. Even so the preacher in prospect. He is vigilant first of all to see whether the task be sublime. If it be not, he must not choose it for his human task. Either the gospel is incomparably great or it is imbecile; and no man must be doer of the im- becile. If this view be accurate, then it is apparent that the gospel differs from all vocations beside, for with other vocations some must be small, some large; and small must be cared for as definitely and sedu- lously as the large. Nothing that ought to be done is to be accounted small. Not so with the gospel. Either it is sublime or it is unworthy; and this is so because of the scene for which as well as the scene from which its task is defined and carried on. Either the gospel is a hoax or it is the great dignitary among the vocations of the world. It is mightiest or it is a piece of charlatanry ; and what man dare think of him- self in the role of a charlatan! The lure of the gospel is the lure not of wages, not of leisure, not of prestige, but the lure of things to be done, which, if left undone, this world would be left a wreck along the shores of the universe. If the 18 THE PREACHER AS av NUNCIATOR. gospel be not utterly necessary it is utterly unneces- sary. There is no half-way permission or commission to this Christ apostolate. Man is so great and so lost in the theory of Jesus as to lift all that touches him into the supreme passion of the world. Unless a man feels this like the hack of a sword or the fierce jab of a spear, he must not preach. He is not big enough to preach to whom this gospel is not supremely great. Except a man’s ministry be mo- mentous, he himself is trivial. If a body kept a lighthouse on a bleak coast, shut up of storms and prisoner of dangers, could his man- ual toil ever become bitter or commonplace, if so be the keeper knew that on his fidelity to keep a lit lamp depended the safety of fleets of ships? The days might be wintry, dark, monotonous, the coast might be one barren, dreary stretch of sand, the lighthouse might shiver to the waves’ onset crush on crush, the ice-floe might cinch round slow and ruthless, but these would only clamp his lips a little firmer for his resolute task, to keep brave ships safe from grim catastrophe. The value of his deed makes his whole life one epic achieve- ment. What think you, preacher, is your task sublime? Does it summon a strange enthusiasm to dawn and noon like glorious Mount Tacoma of the Pacific Sea? If not, then you have missed your task. Let go. You will with dull certainty fumble a task whose magni- tude you can not appreciate or approximate. Men so little as to think the gospel lean must not undertake to preach it. Wise men will laugh at them: the wise 19 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. God is certain to. Better mend kettles in a jail than to think a Pilgrim’s Progress a foolish quest and think the Delectable Mountains inconsequential hills. If the gospel brings a man to his knees, if the Christ seems loftier than all the lit stars, if Jesus seems beyond all words yet theme of all words in time and in eternity, if a lost world shut the soul in as with a Labrador fog, and the sense of a redeemed world wakes a million sun- rises on the morning hills of the heart, then may that man humbly aspire to be minister in holy things, a ne- ophyte at God’s high altar. The relevant question for any preacher to raise at: this inquisition of his own soul is never, “Am I great?” but ever, “Is the gospel great?” “The task as under the great Taskmaster’s eyes,” as the blind Milton hath it, is the eventual thing, the solemn and solemnizing circumstance of a ministerial career. “I am the proclaimer of this gospel,” is a preacher’s authorization of himself. Suppose at the gate of a city, as a preacher en- tered the portal for the first time, there stood as in ancient cities a sentinel with strident voice to lift the challenge, “Who goes there?” Then the preacher’s fearless answer to the fearful challenge would be, “I am a preacher of the everlasting gospel.” And the sentinel will let him pass. In these wide words he has lifted above his head a sky where all sublimities and humilities may wander fearless as the rush of stars. I have seen some men preaching who appeared to me to be clerks in a poor store. They were very busy; but they had no goods. They sifted the newspapers 20 THE PREACHER AS ANNUNCIATOR. to disclose a Sunday theme. They were eager with a sort of childish eagerness to have something to say, but when they spoke they had nothing to say which, if left unsaid, had left a new heart-break in the world. Newspapers deal in temporalities: a sermon, to be a preachment, deals in sempiternalities (a Jatinity which, if used seldom, reverberates like a terrific sea). “Tf I left this sermon unsaid, what loss would en- sue??? Put that sharp sword at every sermon’s throat and see how the sermon fares. ‘The gospel is so sub- lime,” is how the mighty preachers felt. That was the mood of Paul, who was burdened by his vast preach- ment. “I have a baptism to be baptized with,” said the Christ. That sense of vocation will crush little moods down, will stay manliness up, will give valor as a warrior, will give charm as a man, will give a man a hearing on the part of brawny and burdened souls. “Tt must be told,” is how a man must feel toward this gospel. It must be told. This world needs it. This world must have it. “I am the voice,” said sun- burnt John. “I am the voice,” every preacher must say. What boots it that gracious truths are for the telling if no one lifts the voice for telling them? I am that voice. I must not be silent. ‘Woe is me if I preach not this gospel,” is the sedate answer of a serious soul confronted by the peril of silence. ‘I must, I must; I dare not be silent.” And when viewed in this light, preaching becomes sublime. 21 The Pastor-Preacher. Fatuactes lurk almost everywhere. They are very treacherous. Who does not guard against their guile will probably be slain by them in the dark. This preacher-task is peculiarly liable to this wily attack. The fallacy of special prevalence is that a man must content himself to be a preacher or a pastor: he can not be both. This is often said, and often, too, by such as should know better. In no vocation is a fal- lacy quite so treacherous and damaging as in the preacher vocation. There incorrect premises will mis- lead, if they do not ruin, a career. Many look on the activity of a minister as if he were to be either an assistant pastor or to have an assistant pastor. Such expectancy is plainly deceptive. It neither will be that way, nor ought it to be. A man should be big enough for both procedures, and can be that big. It is his distinct business to be. Not infrequently advices to ministers are tendered by such as could not preach or could not visit, and sometimes could do neither, and then these visible infallibilities stand qualified to criti- cise all who in weakness and weariness and yet with manly fidelity are trying to do both. The axiom of a preacher’s career should be, “By the help of the great Pastor of the flock, I will be a pastor-preacher.” 22 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. The supposition that a man is so important that he can not afford time to make pastoral calls is a piece of irreligious conceit which is intolerable in a man who is to be a servant of all. What ought to be done, that is the business of the preacher to do, and to do gladly. A sign to all men who are to engage in this preacher trade with all its exaltations and all its heart-weariness is that the greatest of human preachers, Paul of name, visited from house to house and did so betimes with tears blinding his Christ-dimmed eyes. After that en- sample we lesser men may well refrain from suggesting to ourselves that we are too important to do the menial service of pastoral visitation. The trouble is largely with our ideal. If a man gets off on the wrong foot in this business he seldom gets on the right foot. If a man entering the min- istry feels called of God to do all that becometh a good minister of Jesus Christ, and feels that this includes caring for the flock, hunting the straying sheep, catch- ing the lost lamb against his heart, binding up the broken-hearted, caring with great gentleness, yet with stern sagacity, for those who are out of the way, then will his whole life shape itself to meet this gracious conception of heavenly ministry. I have not met any minister who had once been a visitor from house to house amongst his people, giving over the custom, on further knowledge of that way, because of inexpediency. Those who once try “calling” as a means of grace both for themselves and their parishioners, see the sweet effectiveness of this ministry and use it with growing eagerness as the years go on. ‘True, it is hard work 23 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. to go day after day from house to house. The body wearies and the soul wearies. But why should a sery- ant complain at being tired? Is not he his Master’s man? Do not his work hours belong to his employer? Is it to be wondered at or complained of that at day end his shoulders stoop beneath the toil? Truly not. Every hired man, if he have done a man’s work that day, is tired by night time; and his weariness is token of his diligence. But the ideal, and not the physical toil I still think is the chief deterrent to the exercise of this godly dili- gence in pastoring the flock. Can a man do both pas- toral and preaching work effectively? Certainly. And why speak so dogmatically on a disputed point? Be- cause many ministers have done both. ‘This ends the matter. What has been done can be done. An able- bodied and an able-souled man can do great things; and when definite things need the doing we are the men to do them. No thoughtful man can doubt the effectiveness of pastoral work. All human people want to be cared for by their pastor. To assume that one has members who do not care whether he comes to see them or not, is to assume that they lack the human heart. They do not. ‘There are no classes and no masses to a wise man who cares for souls. He knows folks. And if a man be so, he will find open doors and open hearts; and if he be not so, then he has no business in the holy vocation of preaching. “I am suf- ficient of a preacher not to need to visit around,” I have heard that remark not infrequently, and have heard cf it frequently. It is always a mark which evi- 24 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. dences a sure lack of the very brain-girth which the speaker credits himself with possessing. If a man is really big he can do two things. If he can not do the two things, he is small. A little conceited strut- ting will not raise him into real intellectual supremacy. So far from a preacher divorcing himself from pas- toral fidelity because he can gather a hearing by his voice and heart making joint argument, he is the more obligated to bring his powers of holy persuasion to bear on the unit, and not let his sole influence lie on the one altar of public speech. Either a man is too big to make pastoral calls or he is too little. The man who makes his boast that he does not need to make pastoral visits plainly does not think himself little. He mistakes himself for a great man. Now, if he were great he could be ambi- dexter and do both. The fallacy at this point, I take it, lies just here: A minister thinks that such ministers as go from house to house to visit are drumming up a congregation, but that they themselves are so gifted as not to need to drum up a crowd. But the falsity of the assumption lies in the motive implied. The faith- ful minister is not drumming up a crowd as he goes from door to door, knowing the children, comforting the wounded; he is doing his duty, he is getting close to those whose servant he is, he is showing by his com- ing that here is a friend, a brother, a lover. If by this means his hearing is augmented, so much the bet- ter; but with a man of real depth of spiritual nature that does not occur to him at all, and most certainly ~ does not occur to him as the motive of his endeavor. 25 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. He is girded for his deed by the high hope of helping those to whom he comes. I am not unaware that it has been thought that, irrespective of real preaching gift, a good visiting- pastor could build up a notable hearing. My impres- sion formed by years of attention to leading leaders in the Church of Christ is that, however this may have been in times past, it is not so now. A good pastor may be preferred to a man who is solely a good preacher; but the good pastor needs to preach; and the good preacher needs to be a good pastor. People are getting curious. They seem to want a man to be capable of ministering to them by high speech, by the touch of hand and the whisper of the voice. Some think that visiting is easy work, that it is mainly an exercise of the legs. What a poor sense such have of the validity of the social instinct and the divine instinct of the home! Those who so think do themselves scant credit. It is hard to muster up real respect for that man who knows people and respects the souls of women and men and yet has so scant an appreciation of meeting man as man apart where two souls may hazard confidences. It is a burning pity that in these so profound interests men can exhibit so feeble perception. True, a man may be so gifted as a preacher that, whether he visits or not, he can com- mand a hearing and can help a throng, which is quite beside the real issue. The real issue is not whether a speaker can by the remote handling of the pulpit ben- efit many and gather a distinguished congregation, but is whether he could not do any given congregation more 26 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. good by both remote and neighborly treatment. Ab- sent treatment may well excite the risibilities of such as are not opaque in their intelligence, and it may with cogency be required by every preacher of himself whether absent treatment in a social and _ brotherly way can by any possibility so help those whom he is bound in righteousness to help as present treatment would do. Pastoral visiting I deem to be a greater tax on the faculties than preaching, hard as preaching is. Such visiting is by no manner of means a holiday to the brain. Provided a preacher spent his forenoon in his study in taxing thought and profound investigation of those majestic themes which every preacher is called on by his vocation to consider, even then weighing the serious intellectual intent of the morning hours, with due regard to their intensity, the afternoon, if spent in going from house to house as a cure of souls, is a severer intellectual task. Every faculty of soul, body, brain, spirit is brought into play when a preacher becomes a shepherd of souls. Those who lightly esteem this section of a preacher’s effort have not given heed. to this. Had they wrought in the vineyard of pastor- toil they would have been too smart to have vended a cheap and empty sneer. If a minister does not him- self do his duty and go from house to house in the name of God, welcoming the stranger, making the sick forget their aches and the lonely their tears, let him at least have the courtesy to let those men alone who will do what they should do. He who visits his flock must be prayerful, alert, 27 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. thoughtful, robust, humorous, a lover of children, and a deep lover of age, a stout lover of youth and an eager lover of such as are in the very energy of great action, with the sweat dripping from the face and no leisure to wipe the dripping sweat away. He must be aware of men. Some preachers think they should beware of men and women. ‘That is their blunder. Being aware of souls is the sweet essential which will give a preacher passport to most lives. “A searcher for souls” is what a preacher en route to homes may be denominated. And could anybody wish a diviner cognomen? But the novice will naturally inquire, “If I go calling so much, when will I get time to prepare my sermons?” ‘The question is valid, but not discerning. He must preach and he ought to preach capable ser- mons, by which is meant sermons freighted with intent and thought and aspiration and the fine fire of warming the cold heart. But pastoral calling will aid, not re- tard, this very sermon preparation. No average man can bend the full force of well-trained faculties to study more than six consecutive hours without intel- lectual fag. If he spend more time, if an apt student of himself, he is aware that he binds a certain hazi- - ness of atmosphere around all the objects of his thought. To study well while in the study, and to visit well when out of the study, are reciprocals. ‘They do not, like trains trying to run on one track in opposite directions, collide; but, like trains on the same track going in like directions, they carry double commerce. The distinct blame of most study habits is that there 28 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. is a dissipation of force, because the entire attention is not held to the matter in hand. The student reads twice what he should have read but once, and the twice reading was necessitated by not giving absolute heed at the first reading. A rigid disciplinarian of his fac- ulties will not allow his mind to wool-gather, but de- mands of it in imperious fashion that it tend to busi- ness in business hours. Now, assuming that a student has poured out his mind after this fashion for six hours, or five hours, or even four hours, he will discover that a change of oc- cupation will freshen his jaded faculties and bring him back like a man coming home from a swim in the sea— full of vigor as if he had never been tired. No man will, in my opinion, lose in his intellectual life, and no man will lose in his preacher effectiveness by spend- ing his afternoons calling on his members. Certainly every manly preacher will recognize that he must study. He has no right to take wages for a given thing and then not do that thing. “Srupy” may serve as a preacher motto for a part of a preach- er’s toil. But for another part of that toil the motto is, “VISIT” and the two will clasp hands as cordially as spring and summer. No man can be too busy to visit. No man can be so direful a student as to honestly have no leisure for seeing his members at their homes. When I hear a man talking that way I set him down as unconscious or conscious stage-play. He is possibly fooling his brains with his mouth. 29 ““Redeeming the Time.”’ Tue pastor has all the time there is, for which reason he has no cause to complain. He has enough time—let us put it that way. And many a preacher will demur. In a way he has a right to, but in an- other way he has neither right to nor cause to. We have all more time than we use. We have not need so much of more time, but need of redeeming the time we do possess. “Value time; for it is the stuff of life,” said wise Ben Franklin, which is a more recent put- ting of a laconic and perspicuous saying from the lips of a man who was a real master in the art of using time, preacher Paul, who said “redeeming the time.” The preacher says, “I am busy every waking mo- ment.” Likely enough. That is the trouble. “Busy” people are fussy people. They lack calm. They per- turb themselves and others. A saying of John Wesley has always impressed me as the wisest word I have ever heard touching the use of time. That sagacious work- ingman observed, “I am always in haste, but never in a hurry.” That is as acute as the cryptic sayings of Bacon in his essays. Hurrying wastes time: haste uses time. 'To be fussy does nothing much except to make a bluster like as the passage of a speeding train brings in behind it a track of leaves and winds and papers, which rush frantically into the vacuum the train has 30 REDEEMING THE TIME. made. There is plenty of hurry, but no locomotion; a bluster of dust, detached, useless, nervous—that is all. I have known preachers who made you wild: they were in a tempest, rather a teapotty tempest, to be sure, but still a tempest. The world was riding them as if they had been a nag. When they came and where they were there were dust and scattering among children, Church members, and Church matters. They mistook sputter for proceeding. They simply slew the effective procedure of themselves by their dusty bluster. They worried around; they told everybody how busy they were; they could hold you any length of time, detail- ing how unmercifully they were pressed with work, and fooled away (that is the exact phrase to fit the exact fact) enough time talking about their work to have done it. They simply mistook sputter for speed and execution. Work is done in calm just as boats which build the breakwater on windy seas must have calm for the prosecution of their industry; so must a preacher. He can not bully a sermon nor bluster his way through serious labors. He can command a calm. Hurry is detrimental to expedition in accomplishment; Nature is skilled artisan in despatching business. So hurry kicks up a dust: haste makes no dust, so there is time to see what it is at. Or, to change the comparison, haste, like an auto, keeps ahead of its own dust. If the preacher would be pacific, but speedy, he will be amazed by the amount he can accomplish. Friction is lost force. Thus must the preacher avoid friction. He knows that the longevity of life is not in his own hands. He must live while he may, and die when o> THE PASTOR-PREACHER. he must. But there is a thing which can be compelled. Whether one may add years to one’s life, he may, by increasing the speed of execution, add a number of lifetimes to his life. If a body increase the speed of doing things—thinking, reading, and the like—by twice, then in fifty years he will live a hundred years; if three times, then in fifty years he will have lived a hundred fifty years; if by six times, which is quite within the possibility, then in fifty years he would live three hundred years. Here is where haste tells. This is the philosophy of John Wesley having done such a surprising amount of work. He was not in a hurry; but was always in haste; and he accomplished, He had put his faculties on the dead run, which is the easier speed for the brain, as for the auto, than low speed. Every preacher should therefore put his mind to speed. He should read not lazily, not stupidly, but alertly. The brain ought to be taught to attend to business; for it is really lazy, like a man born in the tropics, and will not haste unless driven to it. But a man should master his faculties. He is their lord. They can do and they will do with precision and ex- pedition if held to it, and a logy brain can be trained to alacrity and fidelity if never allowed to loiter nor dally at a task. Never allow yourself to read a page twice to get the thought. When that is done it is not because the thought is so profound, bui because the at- tention of the reader is so lax. The mind is more in- stantaneous than the eye, and yet the eye is practically instantaneous. When a surgeon takes his surgical in- struments in his hand, then the hand becomes calm like 32 REDEEMING THE TIME. steel. The hand is trained to answer to the demanc of the surgeon’s knife. What an apt illustration of what the mind may be trained to do so soon as any subject is put before it for elaboration. Nor is this theory. This is the way the mind is. It will submit itself to its master. It will go, and it will go like a whipped horse if so disciplined. So shall the average man amongst us prolong his life of accomplishment from one hundred to two hun- dred years. - It is distinctly worth while to make the effort, the goal being so worthy. We shall be able to read many books and ponder them. The more haste the less speed, is not true. The more hurry the less speed: the more haste the more speed. To be a skilled intellectual craftsman is to be qualified for speed and for accuracy. Time is often wasted in dawdling over small things. The average correspondence which the average preacher has to attend to is slight. Yet many a preacher will let an entire morning evaporate while he is dawdling around replying to three or four letters. If that is not fooling away time, pray, what is it? Or he goes down town on an errand two or three times a day when once was plenty. All he had to do he could have done at one going. He did not use his brain to plan the errands down town. * Then often the preacher takes himself so seriously. He stands off and looks at his work, and it looks big. Surely. But if, instead, he would buckle into his work, the task would grow smaller. A cord of wood will last interminably if the man who is to cut it into stove- 3 33 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. wood looks at it and estimates how many sticks there are in the cord of wood; but if he will take the first stick, put it on the buck, and saw fast, the cord will melt away and he will have fun by seeing it melt away. To stand off and discourse on the size of the job is not the expeditious way of doing the job. ‘Pitch into it,” is the colloquial and terse and altogether sweaty way of putting it, but is the right way. ‘That does things. Instead of bemoaning paucity of time, let him re- deem time. Let him urge his faculties to celerity. Let him omit the small things and do the large things. Let him be alert and take intellectual crosscuts, and the average preacher will be delighted to see his own prog- ress. When he walks to make calls let him walk at a good gait. When he grows muggy in his brain, let him quit study and go out and face the sky, and do something which shall enliven his wits, and he will come back to the old issue with a live intelligence and delight himself with finding how instantly without ef- fort is it put to his hand. What some men have done may teach all of us what redemption of time, what elongation of time in output is possible to such as “occupy” till Christ comes. 'To gauge our work and its comparative excellence not by how long we were, but by what is the actual market value of the work, will redeem many a man from daw- dling and bring him to surprising outputs for him. Lord, teach us how to redeem Thy time and ours. Amen. 34 The Tyranny of Books. Now, for a preacher to use a book is legitimate; but for a book to use a preacher is illegitimate. If a congregation can discover by a preacher’s Sunday ut- terances where the preacher’s week-day reading has been, then is that preacher in sore need of ampli- fying. A preacher’s entire life of reading (in so far as a book may) should minister to each Sunday’s ut- terance, and not some book on which he has browsed during the week. I know a preacher whose preachments Sunday after Sunday will counteract each other with as much fidelity as the sentiments in some of Emerson’s essays. The reason was apparent. He was a cheap man and belonged to the book of the hour. Books of the hour are petulant. Especially if a man reads the- ology (calling each tome theological which avers itself to be theological) he will find himself conducting a menagerie with many anomalous beasts in his tents, but the names of them he does not know. The bookish preacher is defective because people are more than books; and when a man can not digest books and brings them into the pulpit as if he brought them in his hand, he becomes a ditto mark with many another preacher. His sermon is not his. It has a tang of a school. He has gotten it by heart, but his 35 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. heart has not got it. The sea drinks all rivers which crowd from mountain levels to the sea sands; but all rivers become sea when once the mighty thirst of the ocean has engulfed them. So the reading of many books is in keeping with the preacher’s manliness and ministry if all he reads he appropriates as the sea, and gives his multi-information the color of his personality and thought as the sky may give its color to the sea. The reason why so many ignorant preachers are more interesting than many cultured preachers is that the ignorant man has not been mutilated and mastered, but comes such as he is fresh from the fields, with his own force backed up by his own personality, saying the thing he thinks. There is in him a freshness like the dewy fields, and strength like the rocks which apply their massiveness to constructing mountains, and are a surprise like the finding of a new wild flower. When books master a preacher they are his foes: when the preacher masters books they are his good friends. Some rules for a preacher’s reading may be here hazarded : 1. Read many books. 2. Do not read in one direction for a month or two months, but in many directions all the time, pref- erably every day. 3. To this end keep on the mental table several diverse topics—fiction, poetry, prose literature, his- tory, science, music, philosophy, discovery, biography. So many read one thing for months till they are fairly covered with the mold of their effort like stale bread. So many times, on asking a preacher, ““What have you 36 THE TYRANNY OF BOOKS. been reading lately?’ he will reply, sociology, history, theology, or what not; but seldom more than one direc- tion. Thought inclines too readily to become reiterant and needs to be schooled to be versatile. 4. Such reading will help the mind to keep clear thought. One book will rest the mind for the other book and from the other book, just as looking in dif- ferent directions of the landscape will keep the sight more accurate than looking down one road for long, in which case you can scarcely discern at all. 5. This democracy of reading will keep alive the sense of delight in all. Tedium is avoided. Every prospect pleases. Suppose a student to do a thing like this: read at the same time Cicero’s Letters, William Cowper’s Letters, James Smetham’s Letters. The dif- ference in times, the difference in minds, the difference in personalities, the difference in occupations will give the right of way to many noble vistas of thought. Or suppose he reads Amiel’s Journal, Rousseau’s Confes- sions, Asbury’s Journal, John Wesley’s Journal, John Woolman’s Journal, and Boswell’s Johnson simultane- ously. Or suppose, again, he reads The Life of Phil- lips Brooks, The Life of Huxley, The Life of Charles Darwin, the Autobiography of Herbert Spencer, Rus- kin’s Preterita, and Cardinal Newman’s “Apologia pro Sua Vita.” While these readings are in the same gen- eral direction, they open up such diverse intellectual and spiritual atmospheres as to prove immensely accel- erative to thought and stimulative to the moral need. Or suppose he reads the Life of Lowell and the Let- ters of Lowell, Carlyle’s Cromwell, Emily Dickinson’s 37 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. Poems, Thoreau’s Cape Cod, and John Wesley’s Ser- mons at the same time. What planets would swim into his ken, and how readily he might find his thoughts speaking the language of the great spirits of the world! 6. Read fiction. It will keep the blood hot and the eyes keen, and will teach the art of seeing charac- ters as those masters in character saw them. “Loui- sana’’ will hearten a man for months, and “The Manx- man” will set a hero in the soul, and “Quentin Dur- ward” will make the day of his advent seem a modern incident, and “Robinson Crusoe” will make him rollick like a boy, and “Treasure Island’ will kindle all the boy there ever was in him, as will also Irving Bacheller’s “The Master.” It will set a man having nightmares over Rog Rohn; and Hawthorne will always keep the spirit listening for and hearing things he could not hear without, and “Under the Greenwood Tree” will make the country dewfall gather on the ground of a body’s soul; and “Eben Holden” will set a man’s heart to the tune of kindliness for a hundred years. 7. The preacher’s theological reading, so called, will need to be, in honor, more or less in the channels of his Church belief. If not so, it will be hard to jus- tify his patriotism toward his own denomination. A wild rush to read every new theological volume (so- called) because it talks authoritatively of religion, is je- june. The wiser minds take such in homeopathic por- tions. A little is adequate. To be sure, a preacher must not be hidebound and must read a few theological works each year, said theological works to be in such diverse directions as to cover the thinking in the thes- 38 THE TYRANNY OF BOOKS. logical field. But care must be used lest he fritter away much time which might be better used. 8. In buying books, as in reading them, the preacher should study each year to keep himself so alive to the book market that he can select some vol- ume in the various domains of science which shall keep him abreast with the best thought, namely, the truest thought, and most sagacious and informed in these fields. Cyclopedias for advancing science are abso- lutely worthless, but by the method above mentioned every crowded preacher can keep himself abreast of the best scientific as well as theological thinking of his time. Now, in all this a man must guard himself with all diligence lest the erosion of books wear his selfhood away. Many speak the speech as it was pronounced to them and trippingly on the tongue. I no sooner hear them a few minutes than I know what to expect, nor am I surprised or disappointed. I always hear it. The usual saying, “That was a strong address,” is usually true. So it was. But it belonged not to the man who emitted it, but to his master, whether man or book. I had read the address in the book before I heard the address from the man. The utterance had no more personality and originality than the shadow of a boulder cast in a stream. To the many who were not informed in reading, the address passed for strong thought: to one informed it passes as an absorption of books, an address in which was no sign of thought. The things he told were told him; and as they were told, so he spoke. The reduction of a man’s personality to 39 THE PASTOR-PREACHER. a ditto mark, that is bookish preaching. I know a preacher who never is guilty of a thought for himself, and yet he thinks himself a peculiarly original and somewhat brilliant thinker. But he is really a sponge. He puts his brain in water, and then squeezes the brain. I have experimented on him by suggesting a thought on some week day, and with astonishing fluency he on the following Sunday would emit that thought. Had anybody accused this ditto brother of being pure plag- iarist he would have become mephitic. He is so huge a ditto mark as not to know it, but will vex the ear with thoughts which quite consume him, and he thinks himself doing the labors of Hercules when he really is doing the labors of nobody. This kind of a brother is very tedious, but often passes for scholarly. ‘‘Schol- arly” is a nondescript word in vogue by many to cover up their own paucity of thought and lack of ability to do a thing they were not coached to do. Pastoral visiting will frequently do more to break the tyranny of books than all other things combined. A flow .of hot blood, an invasion of soul, the ery for help oozing from bleeding lips, will make a lot of book- ishness become humanness. Preachers are dealers with souls. Men, women, children are more majestic than books. Books may cast a light on the soul and on soul forces as an artist conceals the light from the gaze of the spectator, but so placed that his picture is set out with splendor by the hidden lamp. So used, books are priceless in their soul use. . Books must filter through the soil of personality as water through the earth’s gravels which are about 40 THE TYRANNY OF BOOKS. them. Most water of celebrated springs owes its quali- ties to the earths which hold it. Preachers must study this,—study that books do not eliminate them as Becky Sharp eliminated Rawdon Crawley. Sermons should not smell of the book, nor smell of the lamp, but should thrill with the thrill of the book and the thrill of the man who preached the sermon, so that all the auditors may say, “Our preacher spoke this day ;”” whereas many an auditor must in fidelity to fact say, “Our preacher to-day rehearsed another installment of thoughts be- longing to somebody else.” Books are the preacher’s good servitors, but his ex- ecrable masters. The preacher needs to have an insur- rection of himself. If on a given day any visitor should inquire in some pulpit, ““Who preached here?” a just reply would be, “ ’Most anybody preaches here; but Brother Ditto is the mouthpiece; we have phono- graphic observations from this pulpit.” This stricture would not be cynical, but it would be vitriolic.