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Lyman, Albert Josiah, 1845 
 1915. 
 
 The Christian pastor in th 
 new age 
 
THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 IN THE NEW AGE ^^ ' '■' 
 
 ( 
 
 MOV I 2 1! 
 
 COMRADE^SPONSOR— SOCIAL MEDIATOR 
 
 
 Lectures for 1909 on the George Shepard Foundation 
 Bangor Theological Seminary 
 
 BY / 
 
 ALBERT JOSIAH LYMAN 
 
 Author of *' Preaching in the Nenv Age^ 
 "A Plain Man's Working Vie^w of 
 Biblical Inspiration j'' etc. 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL ^ CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1909, by 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
 
 Published^ November^ 1909 
 
This little volume is dedicated and inscribed 
 in affectionate honor to my beloved people of 
 the South Congregational Church and Parish, 
 Brooklyn, whose unswerving fellowship has been 
 my joy and song during all the six and thirty 
 years of my ministry among them, and in whose 
 faith and patience and wonderful unity of kind- 
 ness I have seemed to find both clear warrant 
 and noble witness for that view of the Christian 
 Pastorate which, in tribute to them, is here loV' 
 ingly, though imperfectly, outlined. 
 October 24, 1909. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 President's House, 
 Bangor Theological Seminary, 
 Bangor, Maine. 
 'My dear Dr. Lyman: 
 
 Dr. George Shepard, Professor of Homi- 
 letics in Bangor Theological Seminary from 
 1836 to 1868, was one of the great preachers 
 of his time, decHning invitations to pulpits in 
 Boston and New York in order to do his loved 
 work of teaching. 
 
 Your lectures were the " George Shepard " 
 Lectures on Preaching and Pastoral Service, 
 named in his honor. You were the fifth in- 
 cumbent of the lectureship, following Dr. 
 Charles E. Jefferson, Dr. Amory H. Bradford, 
 Professor Hugh Black, D. D., and Professor 
 Edward C. Moore, D. D. These lectures came 
 in " Convocation Week," February 1-5, 1909, 
 and your associated lecturers on other Founda- 
 tions for the year were Dr. Hamilton W. Ma- 
 bie, of The Outlook, New York, and Professor 
 
vi PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Harlan P. Beach, D. D., of Yale University. 
 You and your associates spoke day after day 
 to a great company of Students, Ministers, 
 Teachers, and citizens of Eastern Maine, who, 
 with the most eager and responsive enthusiasm 
 listened to the noble and inspiring addresses. 
 
 Your lectures, in addition to their high gen- 
 eral excellence, were enhanced in value be- 
 cause you had previously visited our students 
 at Bangor, and had privately conferred with 
 them about their felt personal needs, so that 
 the laboratory or inductive method might be 
 adopted throughout. 
 
 The effect of the lectures was moving and 
 profound. It will remain with your auditors 
 all their lives. It will distinctly mark for good 
 many pastorates. 
 
 Our Faculty rejoices to learn that you are 
 to give these lectures a wider circulation 
 through the printed page. Nothing is more 
 needed in our time than a renewal of power 
 in the pastorate. If you shall be willing to 
 retain the direct and personal phrasing of the 
 lectures, they will be, I am sure, all the more 
 effective because of their more intimate appeal 
 thereby. 
 
 Let me afresh thank you for your work in 
 
PREFATORY NOTE vli 
 
 the name of our Faculty and Students. Permit 
 me to remain, my dear Doctor Lyman, 
 Ever gratefully and affectionately yours, 
 
 David N. Beach. 
 
 October 23, 1909. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 I HAVE yielded, with no little misgiving, to 
 the courteous urgency of the Class of 1909 in 
 Bangor Theological Seminary, reinforced by 
 the generous consent of its President and the 
 Faculty, asking that the Lectures delivered 
 before the class during " Convocation Week " 
 last February, upon the "George Shepard " 
 Foundation, and relating to some aspects of 
 the Pastoral Office in our Modern Time should 
 be put in type. 
 
 My misgiving has to do with both the form 
 and the substance of these addresses. As to 
 form, there is none to speak of. The Lectures 
 are informal Talks merely, with no preten- 
 sion to literary finish, — 3. handful of hints 
 rather than a treatise, a challenge at the gate, 
 not intended for veterans or for experts, but 
 thrown out, in the manner of quick-fire con- 
 versation, to meet, at once and on the level, 
 the eager and high interrogation of a group 
 of young men standing at the gateway of 
 a great vocation. They are therefore much 
 
X FOREWORD 
 
 more suited to the entente cordiale of the mo- 
 ment between speaker and hearer, than to the 
 cooler scrutiny of the critical reader. 
 
 As to substance, the deficiency is still 
 greater. Speaking under sharp limitations of 
 time, the effort was to bring out a single 
 generic conception of what might be called the 
 modern pastoral consciousness, rather than to 
 present a complete account of the Pastoral 
 Office. The speaker assumes much which a 
 more formal discussion must labor to prove. 
 The talks start with the professional " rein " 
 loose, and do not "draw rein" till the close. 
 This leads to many omissions — and quite pos- 
 sibly involves an impression of incompleteness 
 and confusion. 
 
 One must in fairness add also the fact 
 that these Lectures — to call them such — 
 deal with what is supposed to be the more 
 perfunctory and humdrum phase of our profes- 
 sional duty, as contrasted with the preaching 
 phase of it. Preaching and pastoral serv- 
 ice do indeed interplay. On the higher level 
 each pole of the ministerial battery is alive 
 with the power shot over from the other pole, 
 and the vital fire in both is one. And this 
 is truer than ever now, for the Modern Age 
 
FOREWORD XI 
 
 blends preacher and pastor as no other age 
 ever has, in the figure of the one spiritual 
 teacher and leader. 
 
 But the sense of this, which is readily; 
 poured into the excitement of oral address, is 
 not so easily imparted to the printed page, 
 and this little volume will at first therefore 
 seem to be a prosy review of the prosy half 
 of the minister's duty. 
 
 Still, on the other hand, to rewrite the Lec- 
 tures, to expand them with ampler citation and 
 discussion, to fill out the gaps they leave open, 
 or to take out from them the spontaneous and 
 personal note of free, spoken address— would 
 be to substitute something else for what^ was 
 given at Bangor, and which I am so kindly 
 asked to reproduce. 
 
 In such a plight, I have only to make a vir- 
 tue of audacity, and ask the kind reader to 
 overlook the deficiences which the kind hearer 
 did not have time enough to notice, and 
 which, on second thought, both hearer and 
 reader— and above all, the speaker himself— 
 will find it hard to excuse and impossible to 
 
 explain. 
 
 A. J. t. 
 
 Brooklyn, New York, 
 October, 1909. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory. The Pastoral Spirit .... i 
 
 LECTURE II 
 The Pastor as Comrade and Counsellor . . 25 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 The Pastor as Spiritual Sponsor and Social 
 
 Mediator 65 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 The Pastor as Parish Organizer and Leader . 109 
 
 LECTURE V 
 The Pastor as Preacher ..... ., .. 143 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. THE PASTORAL 
 SPIRIT 
 
INTRODUCTORY. THE PASTORAL 
 SPIRIT 
 
 Mr, President, Gentlemen of the Faculty and 
 Members of the Classes: 
 
 In one brief word may I offer you my salu- 
 tation, and thank you for the honor of stand- 
 ing here among you, less, indeed, as a lecturer 
 than as a fellow student, to speak with you 
 concerning some of the present practical as- 
 pects of our vocation. 
 
 It seems fitting that I should at the outset 
 allude for a moment to the personal method we 
 shall employ in our discussion. 
 
 I owe my choice of a theme not only to the 
 freedom permitted under the generous terms 
 of the " George Shepard " Foundation upon 
 which I speak, but especially also to the equally 
 generous suggestion of the President. 
 
 He informed me that our professional field 
 on its side of preaching had been already cov- 
 ered by previous lectures upon this founda- 
 
4 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 tion; but that the pastoral side of the minis- 
 ter's life had not received similar separate pres- 
 lentation; and he encouraged me to select this 
 plainer and more sequestered function of the 
 ministry as our special subject. 
 
 Our theme, then, may take this phrasing: 
 
 The Christian Pastor in the New. !Age. 
 
 I emphasize the latter half of this title, be- 
 cause, if I do not mistake, certain features oi 
 pastoral service, always vital, are thrown by 
 the spirit of our age into a new and noble 
 relief. 
 
 Indeed, we may put the point even more 
 strongly. Standing in his full free manhood, 
 in closest contact with the age itself, his " bare 
 feet on the bare earth " — to recall Dr. Stalk- 
 er's phrase in his "ordination charge," the 
 young pastor of our time discovers that the 
 two ideas in human conduct which Modern 
 Sociology counts as of most instant value, 
 viz., personal comradeship and social media- 
 tion, are precisely the two which denote the 
 finest pastoral efficiency, — ^so that we redis- 
 cover, as it were, the heart of the ancient Pas- 
 torate in listening to the characteristic demand 
 of the New Age. 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 5 
 
 It is the zest of such rediscovery which gives 
 the present speaker courage to add another 
 v^ord upon this rather hackneyed subject of 
 Pastoral duty, and it is the notion of such a 
 quest which will govern the method of our 
 talks together. 
 
 My first business therefore was to learn from 
 you as students in definite particulars what you 
 feel, and want and need. It is the content of 
 your mind as a contemporary modern product 
 that is the thing of primary value and authority 
 here. The genius of this lectureship is clinical 
 rather than speculative, and fraternal most of all. 
 
 This method also will enable me to set these 
 simple talks into the position where they be- 
 long with reference to your Seminary Curric- 
 ulum. I realize that in the presence of pro- 
 fessors accomplished in teaching the tech^ 
 nique both of preaching and of pastoral serv- 
 ke, any formal review of the theory and duty 
 of the pastorate would be as needless as it 
 would be impertinent. I may assume your 
 general acquaintance with the subject. You 
 know the standard books, the leading authori- 
 ties, the established divisions and definitions. 
 
 It was, accordingly, the attempt to comply 
 with what I felt to be this primary duty of the 
 
6 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 lectureship, when I arranged to spend a weelc 
 with you here last November, to meet the 
 members of the senior class, both as a body 
 and individually, desiring, by the frankest 
 possible conference upon the problems of in- 
 stant practical import -in your minds, to learn 
 from you what you feel to he vital in the work 
 of the Christian pastor, not only as to its 
 old genius and spirit, but as to its present 
 arena of action, its immediate conditions 
 and difficulties, and its thrilling and overmas- 
 tering inspirations. So I might seek, by 
 the analysis of your own present consciousness 
 concerning your vocation, to determine how 
 that vocation itself should now be construed, 
 and how the ancient Pastoral Spirit rearticu- 
 lates itself in response to modern demands. 
 
 You met me frankly more than half way. 
 You disclosed, indeed, your misgivings. I 
 caught the muffled beat of that inner appre- 
 hension which a true man must feel, though 
 he does not parade it, in responding to the 
 tremendous challenge of this rocking age. 
 
 I looked also upon the vivid picture you 
 drew for me from the life, of the difficulties 
 existing in many of our New England par- 
 ishes where you had been at work. Listening 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 7 
 
 to you I felt again, as I did forty years ago, 
 the tremor of the young man's question — and 
 the older man's also — Who is sufficient for 
 these things? 
 
 But I discovered also something more, 
 namely, that the picture of the pastoral ideal, 
 which you, as young modern men, are thus 
 carrying in your minds, is really the true de- 
 lineation of what the New Age is calling for 
 in the Christian Pastor, and I went back to my 
 study, vowing that I had in honor and in 
 truth but one single thing to do, and that was 
 to put into the clearest possible expression 
 these queryings and verdicts of your own 
 minds, swiftly correlating them with the per- 
 sonal experience of an older soldier in the 
 same battle. 
 
 I had then in a moment, the warrant for 
 my method, which was to listen to you, — to 
 what your modern souls are asserting, not as 
 by intention but half unaware, — and if I 
 could seize upon this, articulate it, and simply 
 arrange it in an order of progression, I should 
 have my lectures: So that you, — and here is 
 the idea, — you should be the teachers of your- 
 selves. 
 
 You are the sons of the New Age, as we 
 
8 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 older men are not. You feel its mother-throb 
 in your veins. In the spontaneous mental 
 movement within you, in the psychological 
 and spiritual forces which have brought you 
 to these halls and which will send you forth 
 from them, do I find the germ and norm of all 
 I have to say. 
 
 The main content of this your apprehension 
 of your calling seemed to fall naturally under 
 three affirmations: 
 
 1. The Pastor is a human comrade and 
 counsellor. 
 
 2. The Pastor is a Spiritual sponsor and 
 guide, 
 
 3. The Pastor is a social mediator in a dis- 
 tracted age. 
 
 First, Comradeship. 
 
 At the very forefront of your thought lay 
 the vivid conviction that the Christian Pas- 
 torate must be first and last and all the time 
 fraternal. Your words, moreover, reflected 
 the fact that this principle of human brother- 
 hood, as identifying the pastorate, is receiving, 
 at this very moment, a new emphasis by what 
 is freshest in the movement of our age. It is, 
 you told me, the age of the cosmopolitan fra- 
 ternity, and upon its unfurling banners burns 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 9 
 
 forth that very word comrade as never be- 
 fore. 
 
 Second, Sponsorship. 
 
 Hard upon this sense of the primary place 
 of the fraternal spirit in a true pastorate fol- 
 lowed, however, something more. It is the 
 reverberation in your modern dialect of an 
 ancient and holy sentiment, as old as Sinai, as 
 old as religious worship itself, and in the 
 Christian centuries sanctified under every type 
 of doctrine and ritual, to the effect that the 
 pastoral office is not only fraternal, but is also, 
 in a true sense, spiritual and priestly, so that 
 the words sponsor and priest convey a mean- 
 ing which no travesty upon that meaning can 
 wholly discredit. 
 
 "As Thou didst send me into the world, 
 even so I sent them into the world," are 
 words which the Fourth Gospel credibly as- 
 cribes to Jesus. 
 
 They cannot be elided in any Scriptural 
 statement of the ministry. 
 
 Not that we are shut up to the sacramen- 
 tarian view of the method of this divine be- 
 stowal, although there is an element of truth 
 even in that view which has attracted many of 
 the noblest Christian ministers, and which we 
 
10 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 must honor and incorporate in any complete 
 statement of the pastoral office. 
 
 I do not care for the mere word "priest." 
 It is apt to be misunderstood. I have used it 
 for the instant so as to mark the thing I 
 would describe. Perhaps the better word is 
 Sponsor. The Pastor is a sponsor for men — 
 an "Ambassador of Christ," whose relation 
 to his King on the one hand, and to men on 
 the other, is peculiarly intimate. " As though 
 God were entreating by us," is the cry of that 
 perfervid Paul. 
 
 All noble religions, and Christianity pre- 
 eminently, unite to present the Religious 
 Teacher as the Spokesman, in some degree, for 
 the Unseen Eternal. The Christian pastor is 
 the spiritual confidant, the confessor, in the 
 worthy sense, of his people. 
 
 In the most personal and tremendous issues 
 of human life, its sins and repentance, its 
 calamity and despair, at its crisis of struggle 
 and at the hour of death, the Christian Pas- 
 tor stands sponsor for men, solemnly realiz- 
 ing and humbly declaring the attitude of the 
 Infinite, as revealed through Christ. 
 
 Third, Mediatorship. 
 
 I shall not be misunderstood. The Pas- 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT ii 
 
 tor's mediation is no usurpation of the Media- 
 tion of Christ. The human Pastor is the sec- 
 ondary medium, through whom that great 
 Mediation is reaHzed. But as we talked to- 
 gether a few weeks ago, I discovered that your 
 sense of the majesty and deHcacy of this 
 higher office of the Pastorate expressed itself 
 in the idea of the Pastor as the social mediator 
 among men in the midst of the confused and 
 warring factions of our time. 
 
 You also held to it that the process of such 
 secondary mediation is natural and ethical, not 
 sacramentarian. Christ's Mediatorial power 
 and grace are realized in the Pastor's char^ 
 acter, not in his mere oiRce, It is the beauty 
 of a consecrated and winnowed manhood 
 which becomes the agent for this secondary 
 mediation. 
 
 The logic of all this, as we maintain, there- 
 fore, does not go to affirm that this quasi- 
 mediatorial function is an official exercise of 
 a specific, and, as it were, extra-human gift, 
 bestowed de facto at ordination ; but it goes to 
 the point of affirming a certain definite divine 
 assistance to the minister's own faculties in 
 undertaking his specific service. 
 
 The true priest is not made such by arbi- 
 
12 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 trary ecclesiastical enactment or any mere ex- 
 ternal " laying on of hands " so as to consti- 
 tute him a vicegerent, a formal dispenser of 
 celestial benedictions. These statutory and 
 exclusive theories of the priesthood dwindle 
 into palpable unreality in front of the terrible 
 challenge of actual pastoral experience. But 
 all the more because you disavow the formal- 
 ism of the High Church view, do you insist 
 upon the spiritual reality which lies behind 
 that view and behind fevery profound vijew of 
 the Christian Pastorate. 
 
 You declare, because the heart of the Chris- 
 tian ages, including the present age, declares 
 that only a mediatorial soul can exercise a 
 mediatorial office, but such a soul can, A 
 noble and consecrated manhood, whose wealth 
 and volume of sympathy is carried up to the 
 point of spiritual indentification with human 
 need on the one side and with divine grace on 
 the other, can be in a true sense priestly. 
 
 We reach, then, the conception, in which, 
 translating your own apprehension, I discover 
 the latent consciousness of our age, that the 
 spiritually sponsorlike and mediatorial element 
 in the pastorate is developed out of the Chris- 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 13 
 
 tianly fraternal. It is not a new endowment 
 or function, coupled on to that sense of com- 
 radeship, which a moment ago we called the 
 primary element of the Pastorate. On the 
 contrary, this latter, if carried high enough 
 and fulfilled in Christ's way, involves and 
 leads up into the former. 
 
 May I say that the idea of this development 
 is to be our keynote in these addresses ? 
 
 In the process of this mental development, 
 and indeed from its very inception, something 
 does indeed flow down from Christ into the 
 minister's heart — (so you declared your sense 
 of the thing) — ^a distinct Divine help, though 
 availing itself of the normal psychological 
 channels, appearing as a deepening of motive, 
 a vivifying of consciousness, a facilitating of 
 growth, an unlocking of latent power, in a 
 word, the realization of an impelling force, 
 which fills the normal channels of mental ex- 
 perience and development with a fuller vol- 
 ume of power, to help the pastor for and in his 
 Specific pastoral service. 
 
 But we shall maintain that Christlike broth- 
 erhood opens the only psychological path along 
 which this higher priestly gift can be realized. 
 
14 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 Altruistic devotion in Christ's way and name 
 is the only gate to the exercise of true priest- 
 hood in His Name. 
 
 You will, of course, recognize in a mo- 
 ment that in thus opening our line of thought, 
 we are assuming, without argument, the essen- 
 tial truth contained in the Irenic Christian 
 Faith in Christ as the Living Master and Di- 
 vine Redeemer. 
 
 If the position of the fextreme rationalism 
 be adopted, if the objective reality of this 
 spiritual realm be discredited, if Christ's life 
 continues effective only in the way of noble 
 example and the heroes and martyrs of faith 
 in their vision of a living and present Christ 
 have been gazing only on dreams, then a por- 
 tion, and perhaps a main portion, of all this 
 working philosophy of the pastorate falls to 
 the ground. But not all of it fails, even in that 
 case, for the historical basis of Christianity, 
 whatever it is held to be, may be so vividly 
 realized by the mind as, in a sense, to live again 
 and forever; and thus the ideal picture of 
 Christ's life, shining through whatever im- 
 perfections are assumed to exist in the Gospel 
 record, continues to maintain an inspiring in- 
 fluence upon the mind similar to that which 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 15 
 
 such a Christ Himself would exert if He were 
 still alive. 
 
 At this point, then, the vista of our whole 
 theme suddenly opens before us with a kind of 
 thrill and wonder, and we imagine that we can 
 perhaps state, in some approximately compact 
 phrase, the proposition which is our thesis now 
 namely that the genius of the Christian pastor- 
 ate is the principle of the humanly fraternal 
 developed through fellowship with the Figure 
 of the human Jesus and carried high enough to 
 become spiritually mediatorial through God's 
 grace as reflecting and articulating the Great 
 Mediation of the Divine Christ. 
 
 And just here we again discover, with a 
 curious start of surprise and joy — that as the 
 present age and era is the era of the comrade, 
 so it is also, and with equal urgency, the era 
 for the social mediator. The time cries aloud, 
 not only for mediatorship between man and 
 God, but for mediatorship between man and 
 man, class and class, nation and nation. We 
 may perhaps put this point very strongly and 
 assert that just now, in the midst of the up- 
 heaval and dissolution of traditional assump- 
 tions, in the midst of perilous and glorious dis- 
 locations and realignments in the intellectual 
 
i6 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 and social world, in the midst of fresh and 
 acute shocks between opposing classes, even in 
 the rise and sweeping surge of a socialistic 
 propaganda, half mad, half prophetic, is dis- 
 closed as never before, both a peremptory need 
 of and a passionate outcry for precisely this 
 genuine social mediatorship. 
 
 Oh! for a battalion of ministers who shall 
 go forth now in Christ's name, so nobly com- 
 rades as to be also true mediators among men. 
 I see the holy and beautiful lips of the Gal^ 
 lilean moving again as of old, saying " Blessed 
 are the peacemakers," the intellectual and 
 spiritual mediators of the new age. Chris- 
 tian pastors are called of the time and of 
 God to be such. Nobody else can be such so 
 well. 
 
 The minister must be a mediator now or 
 fail. He must explain men to themselves, and 
 to one another. He must explain man to man, 
 class to class. He must be the Hnk of fellow- 
 ship between what else would fall asunder. 
 
 He must humanly mediate between men, in 
 order that he may articulate and reincarnate 
 the spirit of his Master's mediation between 
 man and God. 
 
 Here, then, in vital and even inevitable 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 17 
 
 succession, rise before us the main terraces of 
 our theme; or if the simile of steps be hack- 
 neyed, let -us consider these divisions, which 
 will be taken up in the lectures to follow, as 
 several rooms, opening upon one central 
 rotunda, which we may denominate the Pas- 
 toral Spirit. 
 
 THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 
 
 A word, therefore, of this Pastoral Spirit as 
 we close to-day. 
 
 May we not assert that each of the great 
 professions possesses its own peculiar genius, a 
 sentiment characteristic of it alone, and in a 
 sense non-transferable ? 
 
 Medicine has its distinctive enthusiasm; the 
 law its own. So of journalism or art. 
 
 Accordingly, I would lay a double initial 
 emphasis upon the truth that here, in this 
 identification of our specific pastoral spirit, is 
 the very crux and talisman of our calling. " In 
 hoc signo vincimus." 
 
 And yet there is perhaps some reason to 
 fear that this is precisely the matter to the im- 
 portance of which we are least alive, and 
 which is least emphasized in many excellent 
 manuals upon the pastoral office. 
 
 Last summer, in the wish to meet a little less 
 
i8 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 meagrely the responsibility of this lectureship, 
 which I had then consented to assume, I spent 
 several weeks in Oxford, at work in the 
 Bodleian Library, endeavoring to look with 
 some care through the numerous volumes, both 
 by the more recent and the older writers on 
 this subject of the Christian Pastorate. Two 
 discoveries surprised me; First, the compara- 
 tively limited amount, as well as literary in- 
 feriority, of the material specially relating to 
 the pastoral function, as compared with that 
 devoted to preaching. And the second, and 
 still more surprising fact was, that in all theses 
 forty or fifty volumes, so far as I was able to 
 examine them, almost the entire weight of the 
 discussion, both by Anglicans and by Non- 
 conformists, seemed to be thrown upon rather 
 prolix and conventional tabulations and de- 
 scriptions of the objective functions of parish 
 duty, while comparatively little effort had been 
 made, apparently, to render forth anything 
 like a vivid and thorough conception of what 
 the pastoral spirit itself really is; how it dif- 
 fers from other enthusiasms in the mind, what 
 constitutes its dynamic secriet, how it kindles 
 and masters men, and how a minister may rec- 
 ognize it, and employ it, as he would drive 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 19 
 
 some splendid high-bred horse, housed in his 
 stall. 
 
 Our simple series of talks can certainly 
 enter upon no ambitious attempt to present a 
 complete analysis of this pastoral spirit; yet 
 our whole effort will break down unless we 
 get some clear impression of its specific psy- 
 chological distinction, its curious aliveness, its 
 gentlemanliness, its leap and glow, its Christ- 
 like brooding and yearning, its subtlety and 
 vivacity of mental impulse, like the movement 
 of quick-silver. 
 
 Perhaps a better symbol would be the sparkle 
 of cold water. Indeed, the cup of pure crystal 
 water, conceived of as the union, strange 
 to say, of those two quick and imponderable 
 spirits of flame, oxygen and hydrogen, one de- 
 noting the heavens and the other the earth, is 
 hardly a fantastic similitude of that indefina- 
 ble vitality and vivacity by which the pastoral 
 spirit exhibits its integral union of the human 
 comradeship with the heavenly mediation. 
 
 But is this so ? you ask. We are plain mat- 
 ter-of-fact men, and we challenge you. Are 
 you not simply " up in the air," idealizing our 
 vocation and drawing a fancy picture of a 
 subjective condition which a mystic here and 
 
20 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 there may realize perhaps, but which is not a 
 necessary concomitant of most men's ministry? 
 
 Well, that is for you to determine as our 
 discussion proceeds. I am certainly not ad- 
 vancing the theory of any abnormal or mys- 
 tical or extra-human faculty conferred upon 
 pastors; but I do hold to this as a psycholog- 
 ical fact, capable of ample verification, that 
 the development in a man of the pastoral spirit, 
 — the genius of comradeship, carried up to the 
 level of spiritual sponsorship and social medi- 
 ation, which is the true priesthood in Christ's 
 name, is attended by the release into action and 
 more and more into definite consciousness of a 
 certain unique enthusiasm, which is under 
 God, the force upon the pastoral side of our 
 calling. 
 
 And yet this pastoral spirit rather laughs 
 at any attempt to analyze it, so simple is it and 
 manly, swiftly moving and all alive. It does 
 not like to sit down before a lecturier's camera. 
 Like Dr. Brown's high-bred Scotch collie, 
 " Wylie," my saint and hero among dogs, it 
 would rather be away on the moors tending 
 the sheep. But if we can catch the noble, 
 eager, tireless creature, and hold it long 
 enough for any inspection, we shall marvel at 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 21 
 
 the quiver of its life and thank God for the 
 privilege of making it our own. 
 
 Ah, gentlemen, I check myself at this men- 
 tion even of the v^onderful collie, for it is the 
 shepherd himself whose figure emerges in 
 the sweet and sonorous Latin word entitling 
 these studies of ours, who is our most perfect 
 image of that which we would describe. The 
 " Pastor " is our Lord's own image of Him- 
 self and of His minister, — a symbol repro- 
 duced from the noblest Old Testament 
 prophecy. 
 
 The Pastoral spirit is the Shepherd spirit, 
 reproducing the spirit of the ''Chief Shep- 
 herd," as St. Peter calls our Lord, and de- 
 veloped in the minister by his personal fellow- 
 ship with that Human-Divine Personality. 
 The image is ideally perfect. Seen dimly in 
 the dawn against the upland horizon, or more 
 clearly beneath the blaze of noonday, appear- 
 ing in all song and story, in the homeliest as 
 well as the lordliest literature and in the rural 
 life of the ages, the shepherd offers the finest 
 model which human avocations afford of per- 
 sonal fidelity. Tireless watchfulness, valiant 
 protection, tender care, sagacious, indomitable 
 devotion unto death, are all combined in him 
 
22 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 " who giveth his life for the sheep." Not the 
 wolf that howls in the night, not the thunder 
 of raging storm, not the serpent that slides 
 through the thick grass, not hunger or thirst 
 or the robber's knife can separate the shepherd 
 from the flock he loves. 
 
 You will pardon what you will regard as 
 the over-florid emphasis upon these similitudes. 
 Yet similitudes even such as these are, as I 
 understand the matter, not far-fetched, as 
 illustrating that specific temper which we dis- 
 cover in the Christian ministry. It is both an 
 intuition and a feeling, realized together in 
 one indivisible impulse, in whose peculiar 
 motive and particular ierrand appears the 
 blending of the two sentiments already indi- 
 cated, that of red-blooded human brother- 
 hood, and that of religious sponsorship, fused 
 in the thrilling sense of a special diving com- 
 mission. 
 
 But a little more in detail. In any attempt 
 to characterize such a compound mental im- 
 pulse, which is partly disclosed in conscious- 
 ness and partly not, our best way, as I sup- 
 pose, is to describe it in its practical action. 
 
 I shall, therefore, single out and specify five 
 main features of the Pastoral Spirit in action, 
 by which, in their combination and interplay, 
 
THE PASTORAL SPIRIT 23 
 
 this spirit of the Christian Pastorate is known. 
 iThey are these : 
 
 The chivalry of Christian honor for men. 
 
 The tenderness of Christian sympathy with 
 men. 
 
 Thg genius of rescue. 
 
 The passion of spiritual sponsorship. 
 
 The cheer of the invulnerable Christian 
 hope. 
 
 These features of the Pastoral Spirit will 
 come up for successive mention in the lectures 
 to follow; but the actual work of our calling 
 itself does not thus segregate and disunite 
 them. They are all realized together, as one 
 glowing impulse, pervading the pastor's serv- 
 ice in each of the four great roles which we 
 are to consider, and which are these : 
 
 First — The Pastor in his primary relation 
 as Human Comrade and Counsellor, 
 
 Second—The Pastor in his supreme office 
 as Christian Sponsor and Social Mediator in 
 Christ's name. 
 
 Third — The Pastor, so developed, launch- 
 ing his personality upon his church as the 
 Parish Organiser and Leader. 
 
 Fourth and finally— The Pastor in his pul- 
 pit, as Preacher and Public Religious Teacher. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 THE PASTOR AS COMRADE AND 
 COUNSELLOR 
 
THE PASTOR AS COMRADE AND 
 COUNSELLOR 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, writing in June, 
 1883, to his friend W. E. Henley, concerning 
 the Hterary art, remarks : 
 
 " I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, author, etc., am merely beginning 
 to commence to prepare to make a first start 
 at trying to understand my profession." 
 
 Behind the joke is an ache. The whimsical- 
 ity is only the mask for a kind of self-despair. 
 Self-despair is the word. Said one of you to 
 me last November, "It is not self-distrust I 
 feel, it is self-despair; but I won't let men 
 know it." This is a mood which often falls 
 upon a sensitive, ingenuous young mind, when 
 alive to the ideal of a great vocation. A gen- 
 tleman does not parade his faint-heartedness 
 although he feels it so keenly. He masks it 
 under a quip or a jest. 
 
 No man feels this more than the young 
 
 minister; no man save one, and that one is the 
 
 old minister, because this sense of an almost 
 
 hopeless discrepancy — ^half whimsical, it is so 
 
 27 
 
28 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 absolute — between the loftiness of the pastoral 
 ideal and the meagreness of onfe's own per- 
 formance, increases rather than lessens as life 
 goes on. 
 
 Over against this self-despair comes in, 
 more and more it is true, another feeling, that 
 of trust in the divine help, and the conviction 
 also that God often employs very poor tools 
 at very fine tasks ; but still the sense of incom- 
 petency remains so keen as to shut off all 
 assumption, and I cannot say a truer word at 
 the outset of this second lecture-talk than to 
 enter a demurrer against any apprehension 
 that the present speaker assumes a right to lay 
 down rules for your practice in our arduous 
 but fascinating calling. 
 
 You are to be yourselves. We have, it is 
 true, carried the legend of individuality in 
 pastoral practice so far as almost to shut out 
 clinical appositeness from lectureships on the 
 pastoral function. And this is a pity, for 
 surely the cure of souls involves principles 
 of spiritual therapeutics as definite and as 
 verified as those accepted by our brethren of 
 the medical profession in their healing of 
 men's bodies. 
 
 Still, at the heart of it, th'e genius of our 
 
TASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 29 
 
 profession is preeminently that of the adap- 
 tation of individuality to individuality, as St. 
 Paul declares in a famous autobiographical 
 passage!. 
 
 The pastoral impulse, when fully developed, 
 is subtle, nimble, lightly moved. It is a con- 
 stant passion in an individual man for per- 
 sonal religious ministry. It adopts, therefore, 
 spontaneously, many varying types of endow- 
 ment as its agents, and many methods of 
 address as its channels. 
 
 In these talks I bring to you only a few 
 hints from one man's work. They are 
 sprinkled — let us suppose — with one man's 
 heart's blood, and are for him — let us admit — 
 the best working rules he has. But still sift 
 them, gentlemen, eliminate the personal equa- 
 tion from them. Pardon any chance note as 
 of dogmatism. 
 
 I seem to myself hardly more than a novice: 
 still. Challenge, therefore, everything I say. 
 Test it by the Scriptures and by the witness 
 of other men. Fear not to trust your own 
 judgment in correcting it. If you find any 
 fragment which may serve your turn, remodel 
 it, so as to make it fit better upon your own 
 individual errands. 
 
30 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 Our special topic to-day is : 
 
 The Pastor as a Human Comrade and 
 Counsellor, 
 
 [What is this comradeship? 
 
 How is it developed in the Pastor? 
 
 [What is the demand for it, especially at the 
 present time? 
 
 These are the questions which suggest the 
 simple divisions we may follow. 
 
 First. As to the first question you are bear- 
 ing in mind the boldness of our thesis. — Our 
 key note in these lectures is to the effect that 
 the pastoral spirit — ^the pastoral soul — is, as 
 we conceive it, the result of the humanly fra- 
 ternal carried so high through fellowship with 
 Christ as to become the spiritually mediatorial 
 in His Name. You will, therefore, have been 
 asking — What sort of comradeship — what 
 style of brotherhood must this be which can 
 bear the weight of such a tremendous sequel? 
 
 We are to trace the rise and development 
 in the minister's mind, under psychological 
 law of a very unique and wonderful temper, 
 and the question is peremptory whether in 
 fixing upon a basic mental impulse so plain 
 and simple as human brotherhood we are pro- 
 viding adequate foundation for a structure so 
 lofty. 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 31 
 
 And yet that is precisely what we do. We 
 take this plain, human sentiment, and no other, 
 as our psychological starting point. We can 
 in reason take no other. Why seek for any 
 broader foundation than love in building up 
 the Christian Pastorate? Love "never fail- 
 eth " while " tongues " may fail. On that floor 
 you stand brother to every man on earth, and 
 whatever edifice of sacramental ministry be 
 built up upon the " Great Bases " of unselfish 
 love shall stand fair and sure forever. This 
 human fellow feeling is indeed, as we shall 
 see, taken up into the realm of Christian faith, 
 and becomes irradiated with the light and life 
 of Jesus Christ, but yet essentially and rad- 
 ically it is in itself natural and human, with no 
 esoteric refinements or supranatural additions. 
 The Pastor, indeed, need not cultivate the 
 extreme of boisterous bonhomie satirized by 
 Cowper : 
 
 " The man that hails you Tom or Jack, 
 And proves by thumping on your back 
 His sense of your great merit 
 Is such a friend, that one had need 
 Be very much his friend indeed 
 To pardon or to bear it." 
 
 This "hail fellow" style is not necessary, 
 and yet what we have in mind in Pastoral 
 
32 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 Comradeship is after all at bottom plain 
 Brotherliness, of the " out and out," practical, 
 red-blooded kind, — this, however, made Chris- 
 tian and surcharged after the manner of Jesus, 
 with democratic and spiritual, fire. It is friend- 
 ship raised to the point of spiritual incan- 
 descence, but also especially grounded in 
 honor — honor for the human creature. . 
 
 HONOR FOR HUMANITY 
 
 Indeed, the word comrade, etymologically- 
 speaking as well as in the light of current 
 usage, carries with it a note a little more 
 deeply respectful as well as vividly vital even 
 than the word friend. It is friendship, — - 
 then one hand- turn more. 
 
 A friend may look a little down on you. A 
 comrade's glance is level. A friend comes to 
 aid you. A comrade stays with you. A 
 friend counts you in with him. A comrade 
 counts himself in with you. A friend can 
 wait till to-morrow about helping you, and yet 
 be comfortable. The word of comradeship 
 is now. Friendship affiliates. Comradeship 
 identifies. Friendship talks across. Com- 
 radeship walks abreast. There is no essential 
 difference between the two; but comradeship 
 
PASTOR "AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 33 
 
 keeps one stick more in the furnace. Friend- 
 ship is not cool; but comradeship is blaz- 
 ing flame. Comradeship to-day is friendship 
 raised to the highest power — the fusion of 
 man with man in God's great blast-furnace of 
 the modern time. 
 
 And because in our new social era, the word 
 of fellowship among the rank and file of men 
 is comrade, therefore, the kind of Pastor 
 wanted and needed among men is the kind of 
 Pastor who makes that name good. 
 
 'Honor for humanity, as well as fellowship 
 with humanity, is thus the ground-tone in 
 that comradeship of which we are now speak- 
 ing as being the primary germ in the pastoral 
 evolution. It is the first of what we termed 
 the five essential features of the Pastoral 
 Spirit. 
 
 Honor for humanity is a familiar phrase 
 to-day, although for generations it was 
 tabooed as being inconsistent with orthodox 
 views of human depravity. And, possibly, 
 you may lift a cautious hand and tell me to 
 choose my words narrowly at this volcanic 
 point. Not so, gentlemen! Why should I 
 mince the matter? I am here to attest, so far 
 as I rationally and scripturally can, what I 
 
34 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 believe you believe and have a right to be- 
 lieve, and I am sure you are right in your con- 
 viction that a "mystery of iniquity" in hu- 
 man nature is not the " total depravity " of 
 human nature. 
 
 A sincere but provincial interpretation of 
 that phrase, "total depravity," threw its dark 
 pall too long across the New England Hills; 
 so that one hardly wonders when, a century 
 ago, the father of Horace Bushnell, coming 
 out of the Episcopal church into the Congrega- 
 tional, in New Preston, Conn., complains of 
 what he calls the '^rather over-total depravity 
 of the Sermon!" 
 
 But this interpretation of the word total 
 is no part of an irenic orthodoxy. In true 
 Christianity, pity starts with honor, and the 
 impulse to save springs aloft out of the sense 
 of radical worth in the thing to be saved. 
 
 The prodigal son was his father's child. 
 He was not a whelp of the desert, a pariah of 
 perdition. With whatever sense of the name- 
 less horror and woe of that infernal irration- 
 ality which wg call moral evil, the true Pastor 
 carries at the bottom of his manhood the 
 chivalry of honor for that which he is trying 
 to serve. This is both a conviction and a 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 35 
 
 sentiment, having its ethical foundation in the 
 dual doctrine of the spiritual Fatherhood of 
 God and sonship of man, and its scientific 
 corroboration in the modern testimony con- 
 cerning the countless and strenuous ages 
 through which, under evolutional law, this 
 wonderful human creation, the crown of 
 nature, as well as its paradox and problem, 
 has been slowly brought to its present stage. 
 
 Out of this conviction concerning man, at 
 once spiritual and scientific, springs a senti- 
 ment which is a veritable knighthood of the 
 ministry, a noblesse oblige which takes its 
 cap off, not only in the presence of women, 
 but of humanity everywhere. 
 
 This spirit is not merely courtesy. It is 
 elemental equity. Its gracious but tremen- 
 dous logic springs straight from the funda- 
 mental truths of man and revelation. 
 
 If the universe is old, then is humanity 
 great. 
 
 If God be parental, then is humanity great. 
 
 If Christ be Mary's Son, then is humanity 
 great. 
 
 If Calvary be worth while, then is humanity 
 great. 
 
 The intensest conviction of human sin is the 
 
36 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 reflex of the sense of the greatness of that 
 upon which the sin has fallen. Pity and honor 
 always dwell together in the pastoral soul. 
 
 The late Dr. R. W. Dale of Birmingham, 
 whose " Nine Lectures on Preaching," deliv- 
 ered thirty years ago in Yale Divinity School, 
 still remain nearly or quite at the head of 
 modern manuals upon the homiletical side of 
 our work, quotes George Eliot to illustrate the 
 difference in mental attitude between two 
 sorts of ministers — Mrs. Poyster in "Adam 
 Bede'," speaking of the two parsons of Hay- 
 slope, remarks — " Mr. Irwine was like a good 
 meal o'victual, you were the better for him 
 without thinking on it; and Mr. Ryde was 
 like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and he 
 worreted you, and after all he left you much 
 the same." 
 
 "Mr. Ryde" represents the "judicial," 
 fault-finding, condemnatory attitude toward 
 humanity; and it is false and bad. On the 
 contrary, the true Pastor sounds as his key- 
 note Sir Thomas Browne's sentiment, "Na- 
 ture is the art of God." Human nature 
 is, therefore, looked upon as the highest 
 of that art. Nor does any sense, however 
 poignant, of human misery and error, or even 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 37 
 
 of the black depths of that iniquity in which 
 humanity is engulfed, neutralize the Pastor's 
 underlying reverence for the human creature* 
 
 Indeed, this sense of honor for humanity 
 is so constant that it will not be denied, and 
 is not discouraged, even in front of the poorest 
 specimens of men, but searches steadfastly 
 in the poor, coarsened, peasant face, eager to 
 catch, and believing that it will catch there, 
 " some glint i' th' een," as the Scotch say^ 
 some dash of sunlight upon cheek and brow, 
 which, to recall our Wordsworth, shall con- 
 vey the true hint of " that imperial palace 
 whence we came." 
 
 You observe that what I am speaking of is 
 not the dutifully conventional and often mourn- 
 fully pious assertion of the " value of the 
 human soul," in quotation marks. It is the 
 actual sense of the innate and inalienable 
 beauty of human personality, body and soul 
 together, and without any quotation marks at 
 all. It is a kind of shock and quiver of manly 
 joy at the sight of a human face, like that of 
 the botanist finding a rare flower on a high 
 Alp. The pastoral impulse is not merely to 
 save, but to honor humanity so much that sav- 
 ing seems inevitably worth while, 
 
38 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 Naturally also this pastoral sense of the 
 greatness of human life is quite irrespective 
 of all accidents of culture or station. It is 
 a note of manners and mental attitude which 
 never leaves the true Pastor, but clothes him 
 like a garment, and walks with him down the 
 street, pervading the most casual interview, 
 not laboriously, as if with " deliberate premedi- 
 tation aforethought," — ^to parody a judicial 
 phrase — and never with any slightest touch of 
 mawkish pose, either explicit or implicit, any 
 more than you say " Dear Madam " to your 
 mother. 
 
 The labored mawkishness of pastoral man- 
 ner sometimes seen is the counterfeit of the 
 thing we are speaking of, a clever counterfeit 
 perhaps, enough to deceive the very elect; but 
 a counterfeit for all that. 
 
 The true article is not over-serious. It is 
 own cousin to humor and laughter. Our 
 seriousness is often two-thirds vanity and 
 spiritual pride. 
 
 The true honor for men appears in a certain 
 careful and genial considerateness as to the 
 mood and the need of the man you meet, 
 an instinctive and delicate scrupulousness in 
 " taking the man fair," as we say, a habit of 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 39 
 
 seeing him against his own horizon as well as 
 yours, yet giving him the benefit of the divine 
 landscape which you think you see, a certain 
 assumption of the high-bred as existing of 
 necessity in th(g very understructure of his 
 soul. 
 
 A Christian minister ought to be able even 
 to walk down the white clanking corridor of 
 the State's prison bearing to the wrecked and 
 wretched congregation assembled there to meet 
 him, an honor for " the man within the man " 
 still eloquent in his eye. 
 
 In a word, the pastoral spirit is stamped 
 upon its very front with a dignity of fellow- 
 ship with humanity which does not willingly 
 leave upon even the briefest interview a mem- 
 ory which lowers the tone of life. 
 
 COMRADESHIP, HOW ATTAINED 
 
 Second. But how shall the reality of this 
 high comradeship be attained ? By what method 
 shall the young Pastor develop within himself 
 this spirit of lofty fellowship with men .? Here 
 we reach the heart of the inquiry before us to- 
 day, and here we get the best light upon the 
 nature of pastoral comradeship itself. 
 
 I answer the question by insisting at the 
 
40 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 very start that we must accustom ourselves to 
 a more natural way of regarding people, in- 
 stead of the perfunctory, professional way. We 
 must, I imagine, go back to the very beginning 
 of the young preacher's ministry, and clear 
 away an assumption of callow officialism which 
 too often clogs his footsteps even at the gateway 
 of his calling. 
 
 It is one of those unfortunate legacies of 
 mediaeval tradition, which are all the more 
 persistent and baneful because hidden and un- 
 noticed, that the young Pastor so often enters 
 the arena of his profession by the wrong door, 
 i, e., from the side of ministerial formalism 
 rather than the side of human fraternaUsm. He 
 tries to begin where he ought to leave off. 
 
 The gentlem<en of the Faculty will forgive 
 me if I avow a fear that the curriculum of our 
 Theological Institutions, alive as our profes- 
 sors are increasingly to the practical needs of 
 men, is not, even yet, quite so far recon- 
 structed as to set the young theologue into 
 his work through the gate of human fellow- 
 ship rather than the gate of clerical assump- 
 tion. 
 
 For nothing is clearer in the study of the 
 Gospels than the fact that the psychological 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 41 
 
 development which issues at last in what is 
 most nobly ministerial and mediatorial in our 
 profession begins in simple Christlike brother- 
 liness. 
 
 Pentecost is to be reached via Emmaus and 
 the walk thither. First Gennesaret, then Cal- 
 vary. "That is not first which is Spiritual, 
 but that which is natural, then that which is 
 spiritual." As opposed to this, is it not true 
 that we have been apt to start in our ministry, 
 assuming to be little spokesmen for the Eter- 
 nal, and thus, all unaware to ourselves, stiffen 
 at the outset into an odd and more or less con- 
 ceited religious exclusiveness, only to spend 
 the latter half of life in trying, with difficulty, 
 to climb down to where people really are? 
 That is both an awkward and a pathetic piece 
 of gymnastics. We have to learn, sooner or 
 later, what Jane Addams of Hull House aptly 
 calls " the futility of the individual conscience." 
 
 I put the point extravagantly, in order that 
 you may omit the extravagance and put it 
 truly; but the point itself is worth thinking 
 about. 
 
 We shall maintain that the normal evolu- 
 tion of Christ's minister as a Pastor to-day is 
 like that of the disciples of old, from wayside 
 
5|2 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 companionship to apostolic prerogative, not 
 the reverse. We reassert our main proposition 
 that the fraternal sentiment in the pastorate, 
 if genuine and carried high so as to be 
 Christ-like, develops into the mediatorial ; and 
 we must disown the topsy-turvy psychology, 
 which, unfortunately for the credit and power 
 of our calling, has been allowed to reverse 
 this natural order. Dr. Bonar after listening 
 to a minister who was preaching with great 
 gusto said to him, " You love to preach, don't 
 you?" "Yes, indeed I do." "But," said 
 Bonar, " do you love the men to whom you 
 preach ? " 
 
 To carry the criticism a little further, one 
 may discover reasons enough why we fall into 
 this mistake. That deep and altogether sacred 
 experience in the heart of a young man, which 
 he interprets as a " call " to the ministry, may 
 seem to him at first to segregate him some- 
 what from his fellows. 
 
 Then too, more and more, the pressure of 
 his special and non-secular studies tends to 
 side-track him a little, unless he is on his 
 guard. Add to this the amiable coddling 
 of the devoted group of his well-meaning and 
 admiring personal friends who so often keep 
 a little, low fire of incense burning, beautiful 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 43 
 
 and blinding, identifying" the young minister 
 with something separate and saintly, the 
 acolyte of a vocation supposed to be set apart 
 of God. The young pastor is also se- 
 cluded from many average temptations; is 
 treated with more than the average consider- 
 ation ; moves in a social environment in which 
 sentiment takes the place of the rough and 
 tumble which the young man training for a 
 business career is apt to receive. Says Galton 
 in his work on " Hereditary Genius," " A 
 gently complaining and fatigued spirit is that 
 in which Evangelical Divines are apt to spend 
 their days." 
 
 It is easy, therefore, — it is almost unavoid- 
 able, that before he is quite awake to the dan- 
 ger, a certain subtle perfunctoriness will have 
 spun its gray yarn over the young theologue's 
 mind. He takes himself very seriously. Well, 
 he ought, and yet, and yet , it is quite possible 
 that he will have to spend hard, sad years later 
 on in edging back and down to the plain, sane, 
 human ground-floor and in getting this incense 
 out of his eyes. 
 
 " But, beloved, we are persuaded better things 
 of you, though we thus speak." 
 
 You will even now in these student years 
 and from now resolutely on, hold yourself to 
 
44 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 the basal note and tone of simple, humarr 
 friendliness, as the starting point for every- 
 thing else in your profession. You will ab- 
 jure fustian and make yourself meet men on 
 the level and on the square ; availing yourself, 
 deliberately and gladly, of all influences from 
 nature, from literature, from current life 
 which make you one with your fellows. 
 
 But further and more especially, the spirit 
 of comradeship with men is developed in the 
 Pastor's mind chiefly by forming and main- 
 taining the habit of mental companionship 
 with the figure of the human Jesus, as set 
 forth in our Gospels. Here is truly the live 
 nerve of the whole matter. For Jesus first 
 introduced and embodied to the world the 
 thought of human comradeship. He discov- 
 ered the cosmopolitan fraternity. He first 
 taught the unhorizoned hospitality. 
 
 Our proposition that the true and normal 
 initial attitude of the pastoral mind is the 
 fraternal, bases itself primarily and chiefly 
 upon the careful study of the New Testament 
 record of the method by which the disciples 
 were developed into apostles under the tute- 
 lage of Jesus Christ, both before and after the 
 Resurrection. 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 45 
 
 He is, indeed, no longer living- in material 
 form before us, but it is a part of that irenic 
 Christian faith, which these lectures assume, 
 and do not seek to argue, to believe that the 
 inspired Gospel records of Jesus' life furnish 
 the channel through which He Himself in 
 propria persona and in living power still com- 
 munes with men and impresses His personal- 
 ity upon our minds, even as He did upon His 
 immediate disciples of old. 
 
 A study of the effect upon them of their 
 companionship with the Master is, therefore, 
 applicable to ourselves in our mental compan- 
 ionship with Him through the medium of our 
 use of the Gospel annals. 
 
 These plain men were at first adherents, 
 then followers, then comrades of the Beauti- 
 ful Galilean, " walking with Him in the way,'' 
 and so along that same "way" they became 
 "disciples" and "apostles." The earliest 
 germ of what was to be apostolic in their 
 minds and in some true sense mediatorial in 
 their service was in the pulse-beat of plain 
 brotherhood, into which they entered with 
 Jesus as their Friend and Teacher and 
 Leader. 
 
 If there were time, one would love to try 
 
46 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 to sketch that wonderful Syrian idyl, how 
 " friendship grew from more to more " — to 
 readapt Tennyson's delicate phrase — as that 
 little band of men trudged to and fro in Pales- 
 tine, along the curving, crowded shore of 
 Gennesaret, across the flower-strewn plain of 
 Esdraelon, over the rugged uplands of Judea, 
 for those three swift, gentle years, sailing in 
 a boat together, camping together at night, 
 and resting side by side at noonday in some 
 green outlooking glade of the hills. The tone 
 was that of a steadily deepening human fellow- 
 ship with Jesus. They heard the Galilean in- 
 tonation. They saw the evenly parted flow- 
 ing hair. They gazed into His face. They 
 became familiar with the mild, strong brow, 
 the ineffable lit look, the comrade-compelling 
 eyes. They became one with Him, with the 
 body and soul of Him ; so that it had become 
 natural at last for St. John to lay his older 
 head upon the bosom of his young Master. 
 
 But this familiarity did not breed satiety, 
 least of all disrespect. The better they came 
 to know Him, the more they came to love 
 Him; then love whitened into reverence, and 
 reverence hushed itself in a kind of wondering 
 homage and blessed trust, until the mental soil 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 47 
 
 had become mellowed and sifted and prepared 
 for the thrilling enlargements of faith and con- 
 secration which followed the Resurrection, in 
 which they took up their Master's mediatorial 
 commission in His name. 
 
 But this process of mental development was 
 from the beginning in accordance with nor- 
 mal psychological law, proceeding from the 
 palpable to the ineffable, from human contact 
 to spiritual ascendency. 
 
 Indeed, as I have re-read the Gospels and 
 the Book of the Acts carefully through in con- 
 nection with these simple lectures, I have 
 failed to discover any line as of demarcation, 
 any incident, any moment, any act of the 
 Lord at which and by which the man was, all 
 at once and by enactment, made over into 
 an apostle. He develops into the apostle, I 
 do not say by his own power and law of 
 growth alone. I do not mean that without 
 the co-operation of the gift of the Lord he at- 
 tains the apostolic grace. 
 
 I mean that Christ's spirit worked with their 
 spirits through perfectly natural, human chan- 
 nels, and not by the invocation of any extra- 
 natural mental law. No one of the disciples 
 ceased to be himself. His training was the 
 
48 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 training of a human companion. Togethef 
 with his Master, he was occupied most of the 
 time in rendering simple immediate services 
 to sick and needy people. The environment 
 was human. The relations throughout were 
 common and natural. The culture was that 
 of plain friendliness. 
 
 In a word, the initial training of these men 
 for their subsequent pastoral office was 
 through intensifying and consecrating the 
 fraternal 
 
 So to-day. In the mental habit of inces- 
 santly communing with the Figure of Jesus, 
 as presented in the Gospels, human though 
 ineffable, the minister comes in sight of the 
 ultimate meaning of comradeship with all 
 men, and so begins to apprehend a little of 
 what the wonderful rhythm of Christ's Divine 
 Style of living was, and thus enters what is al- 
 most a new consciousness as to the vital reach 
 and wealth of our religion and the beauty of 
 the fellow-life it may bring. 
 
 I am^ persuaded that here Is a field of per- 
 sonal experience in the Pastorate, the subtle 
 vitality and charm of which we have not fully 
 realized. Many of us older men have to la- 
 ment our early failure in this direction, be- 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 49 
 
 cause our natural approach to the Nazarene 
 was checked by the presence of a vague and 
 oppressive theological preconception. 
 
 I have not time to enter into this fully now ; 
 but it seems to me as though God by His 
 Spirit had taken certain traditional scales off 
 the eyes of you young men of the present age, 
 so that you could enter into a new, vivid, sense 
 of human companionship, even with the in- 
 comparable Personality of the Son of Mary. 
 
 A profound change is coming over the face 
 of the waters. One meets it among the ablest 
 and most earnest younger scholars and Chris- 
 tian workers everywhere. Its note is, in a 
 word, this: Realise Christ as the -first dis- 
 ciples did, and get together in Him. 
 
 It is a new keynote in the Christian con- 
 sciousness of the time, and one of the most 
 pregnant significance. 
 
 OBJECTIVE DEMAND 
 
 Third. We come then to the question as to 
 the present objective demand for this spirit of 
 comradeship in the Pastor. 
 
 I would not ask you to delay at this point if 
 I wished only to recite the familiar common- 
 places concerning the universal desire of men for 
 blood-warm human sympathy in their minister. 
 
so THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 You are hearing this every day. It has always 
 been true, and always will be true, that " a min- 
 ister must be first a man," that a parish made 
 up of homes desires in its pastor a home-friend ; 
 but what I do ask you to notice is that this old 
 parish cry for brotherly manhood first, as the 
 prerequisite of priesthood, is sharpened into a 
 fresh acuteness of accent as the twentieth cen- 
 tury gets fairly under way. Go abroad among 
 men and what do we see ? New forms of social 
 organization. Go into the Colleges and what 
 do we find ? New chairs of social economics. 
 
 Within less than twenty years a new science 
 has been bom, the science of Sociology. I 
 might almost say that a new social conscious-* 
 ness has also been born. Socialism, which is 
 beyond question the most dynamic word and 
 movement of the hour, a movement which is 
 a melee of true and false, of right and wrong, 
 a movement half-wild and mad and big with 
 peril, yet not without signals of noble promise, 
 is at bottom not a novel social philosophy, not 
 a new economic scheme. At bottom it is a new 
 note as to what is dreamed of as possible in 
 human fellowship. John Spargo must be 
 reckoned with as well as John Calvin. We 
 are entering upon the era of the world-wide 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 51 
 
 fellowship. An average American Parish, — > 
 especially a New England manufacturing 
 town, to say nothing of our great cities, is a 
 parochial polyglot. You will have to learn 
 brotherhood in ten dialects. At first a certain 
 academic fastidiousness in the student may 
 shrink away from this pastoral democracy. 
 Do not shrink. Shrinking is shirking. 
 
 Socialism, in its usual overt surface propa- 
 ganda, is an illusion and a suicide. Its logic 
 would sacrifice both freedom and faith, and 
 ultimately ruin both the home and the state. 
 It does not know what to do with either 
 genius or sin or death or Christ and is a 
 grave digger rather than an emancipator of 
 the people. 
 
 But socialism, in the sense of that human 
 ache and longing which lie in its depths like 
 a broken rose in a boiling cauldron, is a " bit- 
 ter cry " for Christianity itself under terms of 
 comradeship, and the pastor for to-day must 
 know that bitter cry and be alive to it, and 
 be able to say in response to it : In the Great 
 Comrade's Name, I am here. 
 
 All men always want friendliness in what 
 stands for the Highest. 
 
 One of your own number uttered to me a 
 
52 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 sentence which I have been remembering ever 
 since and which voices us all. I quote ver- 
 batim. He said: 
 
 "We fellows take in here a lot of knowl- 
 edge; but it is and must be mainly theoretic. 
 How can we take it up, work it over, and then 
 give it out so that" (mark thiese words: they 
 are the very words of the student to me) — 
 " so that plain people will understand by what 
 we say the thing we mean when we say 
 it?" 
 
 Ah, that is the question indeed! It cuts 
 right down on living nerve. Now, what I 
 suggest in answer is this, for substance, — ^that 
 all merely intellectual effort to accomplish this 
 translation of the subjective into the objective 
 will fail. 
 
 Th'e bridge of interpretation between your 
 mind and the mind of Jones the blacksmith, or 
 Johnson the carpenter, must be brotherhood; 
 — Christ's sort of brotherhood — not the mere 
 intellectual conception of brotherhood (crit- 
 ics and gossips may have that when they stab 
 their neighbors), but brotherhood itself, 
 friendship incandescent, a pulse-beat, a fellow- 
 ship-fountain as genuine and spontaneous as a 
 spring shot out from the granite ledges of old 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 53 
 
 Katahdin yonder (which I once cHmbed on 
 my way to the ministry). 
 
 Such human fellowship is as fraternal and 
 realistic as Bethany itself. Jesus was the Di- 
 yine Realist in such friendship. 
 
 If you do not feel it in your heart to be such 
 a kind of comrade with men as this, then ask 
 the Lord for a knock-down blow, which will 
 give you the sense of need for that which all 
 through your ministry, people will be wanting 
 from you every week of every year. Possibly 
 in answer to prayer, God will give you some 
 vision or love or trial even which will melt 
 you and recast you into the embodiment of a 
 live fraternalism, such as you would have 
 gained by beating about in Palestine for three 
 years with Jesus, for this is the sine qua non 
 of a really effective Christian pastorate to-day. 
 
 And, further, it is out of such a Christ-trained 
 comradeship that the adequate and welcome 
 pastoral Counsellor is evolved. 
 
 THE COMRADE-COUNSELLOR 
 
 And this, too, is a necessity, for a pastor 
 must be a counsellor. I check myself here 
 against possible intrusion upon your curric- 
 ulum. It is the province of the technical 
 teaching in pastoral theology, which province 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 I am trying not to usurp in these lectures, to 
 set before you in detail the various occasions 
 in the parish life upon which pastoral counsel 
 is apt to be sought. Suffice it to say here, 
 that all parish problems revolve around homes. 
 
 People come to a true pastor, more than 
 you might think, with their home problems, 
 how yonder invalid is to be provided for, how 
 this son or daughter is to go to college, when 
 there isn't bread enough to go round, how a 
 neighbor who is a born mule is to be made over 
 into anything else. The real problem in such 
 a case is usually that of two mules ! The pas- 
 tor must have a sane, wise word to say in ref- 
 erence to a hundred practical questions. 
 
 A young minister settled in a farming 
 community, gained a reputation without know- 
 ing it by the way he answered a question 
 which two farmers brought to him, thinking 
 to entrap him. " Shall that piece of land be 
 put to corn or to oats?" they asked him. 
 The young theologue, who had mother wit, 
 but no more knowledge of farming than of 
 Sanskrit, answered with solemnity, ** I should 
 let it £-0 to grass! " They took the reckless 
 bit of slang as an expert judgment, and his 
 reputation was made. (But, gentlemen, just 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND. COUNSELLOR 55 
 
 one suggestion here. Close your own inter- 
 views! 
 
 If a man be a mere pulpit performer, he 
 will interest an audience, and when they have 
 become familiar with his special variety of 
 stage show, they will gently insinuate that 
 Providence has other fields where, no doubt^ 
 that particular style of performance will be 
 freshly appreciated, and never having touched 
 the home, the home will not miss him when he 
 goes. But the man who means to mean much 
 as a Christian minister will discover that the 
 home is the nerve of the Parish. Why should 
 it not be? The child is there — and the dead. 
 The very dwelling, as I once heard Beecher 
 say, is "stained through and through with 
 soul-color," and everything pastoral depends 
 upon the way in which the pastor is able to 
 enter that home door. 
 
 Now what such a home needs in its minister 
 is a comrade who is so much a comrade that 
 by the sheer weight of wise love he becomes 
 fit counsellor. The function of counsel grows 
 naturally out of the fellowship of the friend. 
 
 The pastor must incarnate that combination* 
 No one else can do so quite so well. The posi- 
 tion and power of the family physician come 
 
56 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 nearest to it, and in certain respects are 
 superior. But the arena for counsel is not so 
 wide as with the pastor, and the pastor lifts 
 his hand when the doctor lets his fall. 
 
 And just here it seems worth while to 
 say in passing — cultivate special friendship 
 with high-toned medical men. Their way of 
 looking at life is apt to be saner than yours. 
 Your profession and theirs meet in the care 
 and cure of the same complex human person- 
 ality. The age-old instinct which has so 
 closely affiliated the two professional offices is 
 just and profound — but not to the point of 
 confusing the two arenas, as some of our 
 mushy modern cults undoubtedly do. 
 
 Never usurp the physician's place; but al- 
 ways respect the physician's point of view. 
 Correct your own by it. There is no better 
 corrective for your doctrinaire tendency. All 
 good theology can walk arm in arm with good 
 physics. Do not take such a "header" into 
 the " Emmanuel Movement " or any other, that 
 you cannot stand out in honorable, manly, 
 humble friendship with medical men. They 
 know more about curing people than you or I 
 know, or ever will know. 
 
 But, resuming the direct course of the dis- 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 57 
 
 cussion, we here in this conception of the Pas- 
 tor as the family comrade-counsellor come in 
 sight of the second and third of the five quali- 
 ties which were mentioned in the introductory 
 lecture as vital to the pastoral spirit, viz. — 
 sympathy with men and the genius of rescue. 
 
 SYMPATHY WITH MEN 
 
 May I say a word of these as we close to-day ? 
 Not sympathy /i?r men. Sympathy /br men is 
 ^ym^2iih.y pro forma. It is sympathy standing 
 at a distance with its gloves on. 
 
 Sympathy with men is being " touched with 
 the feeling of our infirmities .? " Touched with a 
 feeling /<?/' their infirmities ? 
 
 O, no ! the great author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews saw deeper than that — " touched with 
 the feeling ^our infirmities." 
 
 Sympathy is a trait half-masculine, half- 
 feminine and, therefore, wholly pastoral. It is 
 the instant instinct to realize the other man's 
 point of view, the quick sense of his muscle- 
 strain beneath his load. Sir Walter, in his 
 "Lay of the Last Minstrel," hits it off well 
 when he calls it : 
 
 »' The silver link, the silken tie 
 Which heart to heart, and mind to mind 
 In body and soul can bind." 
 
S8 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 In this sympathetic insight is the first half 
 of wise counsel. Pastoral counsel is both un- 
 derstanding counsel and fellow-feeling counsel. 
 
 Then another point right here. Do not 
 merely pity pain ; respect pain. 
 
 The famous Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, 
 author of " Rab," said, you may remember, 
 Speaking of medical men, that sympathy les- 
 sened as a sentiment only to reappear as mo- 
 tive. But I think that in the instance of the 
 pastor, sympathy both deepens as a sentiment 
 and strengthens as a motive; but first of all, 
 it doffs its cap at the mystery of grief. I re- 
 member a story which John B. Gough, the 
 temperance lecturer of a generation ago, used 
 to tell with strange dramatic effect, of an in- 
 terview he had with a small street messenger 
 boy in London, who said, " O yes, Sir ! I 
 delivers all sorts of letters. Sometimes they 
 is black-edged, Sir, then I always lifts my cap, 
 'fore I ring, Sir ! Then the laidy turns white, 
 when she sees the black. Then I lifts my cap 
 again, Sir ! " Gentlemen ! always, somewhere 
 or other in the Parish, there is the home where 
 you must lift your cap '^'fore you ring, 
 Sir." 
 
 Pain is clairvoyant, is telepathic. It in- 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 59 
 
 stantly detects your mental attitude toward it, 
 and this mental attitude is the real comforter. 
 That keen, roused, delicate, reverential out- 
 reach and yearning over the personal pain, 
 anxious first of all to do justice to it, to under- 
 stand it, not to intrude upon it, to treat it v^ith 
 equity, then to relieve it if possible,--such 
 sympathy as this is all but almighty. 
 
 "What shall I say to the afflicted?" one 
 of you asked me. Say? Nothing, perhaps; 
 just a grip of the hand, and one straight' look 
 into the sad feyes. What is eloquence? 
 What is consolation? What is counsel? I 
 tell you, the quiver of loving human fellow- 
 ship in such a silent instant is more eloquent, 
 being human, than God's singing seraph him- 
 self could be. Thank God that our Christ 
 was born of woman! 
 
 Then again, and at the opposite pole of the 
 psychologic balance, sometimes humor, if gen- 
 tle, is better than tears. A smile, with a choke 
 in your throat at the same time, goes far. 
 
 " Do you always pray in a sick room? " one 
 of you asked me. No, I should need to be 
 prayed for myself if I did. Only I'm apt to 
 pray when a hard man lies low and doesn't 
 expect prayer, though the prayer is just as 
 
6o THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 likely to be made standing, in the quarter minute 
 when I grip his hand as I rise to go. God hasn't 
 much use for prayers that depend on kneeling, 
 though kneeling is well, too, in its place. 
 
 There is a humor even which prays well be- 
 cause it loves much. There is a gaiety that is 
 born of the Resurrection. In a word, it is the 
 natural, the spontaneous, the fraternal that is 
 ever straining on in Christ's way towards the 
 advisory, the intercessory, the mediatorial, that 
 wins and masters. 
 
 Do as you would like the other man to do by 
 you, if the case were turned round ; yet ever we 
 revert to the principle, that the goal to be 
 reached is something so delicate and subtle and 
 fine, that no rule can reach it ; no formal pre- 
 meditation can compass it. Have the Christian 
 comrade-soul, and then trust its spontaneous 
 intuition and impulse. A preacher said to 
 McCheyne, "I have been preaching on the 
 doctrine of Eternal Retribution to-day.** ** Did 
 you preach it tenderly ? " said McCheyne. 
 
 THE GENIUS OF RESCUE 
 
 So finally to-day we come in sight of our 
 third quality in the pastoral spirit — the genius 
 of rescue; and here again I do not mean a 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 6i 
 
 mere helter-skelter rush down upon the shore 
 where the surf is thundering. 
 
 Mark also this, our phrase is not a genius 
 for rescue — (only the adepts and rare experts 
 have that) but there is a certain genius of res- 
 cue, which may dwell and ought to dwell con- 
 stantly in any man who is fitting himself to be 
 a pastor. 
 
 What I mean is the constant effort at a large, 
 fair grasp upon helpful horizon conditions. It 
 is a quick sense of the criticaln'ess of moments, 
 an alertness as to possible recombinations of 
 the elements of situations. It is the habit of 
 instant translation of sentiment into action. 
 It is something at once tense and tender, 
 rapid and practical, dwelling in the constant 
 mood and turn of mind. This is what I mean 
 by the genius of rescue. 
 
 You will realize at once that the scope of 
 this impulse and motive is very broad. Every 
 parish has its tragedy. Rescue is not a con- 
 ventional revival-meeting word, alone or 
 mainly. It means incessant watch and inces- 
 sant fight for some imperilled life. Satan's 
 crew are on the heels of men, and they do not 
 know it. Young men are crowding the gay 
 vestibules that open back into seductive cor- 
 
62 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 ridors that curve, away and away, into the 
 hells of shame. 
 
 All along the moral line the Pastor rides, 
 runs, calls aloud, stands and pulls like a Titan 
 when he cannot call. No other man is sen- 
 tinel. No other man is messenger. No other 
 man cares or dares to assume the role of moral 
 rescuer. The Pastor cannot but assume it. 
 Practically it is the Pastor or nobody. 
 
 He ahvays sees humanity against its tre- 
 mendous back-ground of moral danger, and 
 this vision is an integral part of the pastoral 
 consciousness. 
 
 Nor is this saving, rescuing impulse the 
 mere reflex of some problematical eschatology. 
 It is not a mere crude evangelistic fervon 
 The rescue it seeks is both physical and moral 
 rehabilitation. It can carry a loaf of bread, 
 and then pray all the better while the man 
 eats. Nor is there anything mawkish or over- 
 done in the expression of this ardor to save. 
 
 One of the men I know in our profession 
 who has it most, shows it least, as you might 
 casually meet him. 
 
 Let me illustrate. I used to do a bit of 
 climbing in the High Alps. Your first-rate 
 guide, as I have had some occasion to know, 
 
PASTOR AS COMRADE AND COUNSELLOR 63 
 
 will not show what there is in him, all wait- 
 ing and ready, until a rope snaps or a man 
 stumbles, and then his movement is quick as a 
 leopard. But the genius of rescue is all the 
 time alive in him. He never hesitates. He 
 is " all there," as we say, on the instant, and 
 all ready. 
 
 So the rescuing, pastoral power in a man is 
 a life-line, coiled, and coiled so that it doesn't 
 kink in the sudden, swift uncoiling. 
 
 Such a comrade-counsellor, combining the 
 spirit of sympathy with the rescuing genius, is 
 therefore, always a man on an errand; and 
 here is his professional freedom and power. 
 Have your ministry charged with this burn- 
 ing sense of errand. For this is the note of 
 supreme practical efficacy, the indentification 
 of a man at the full pitch of his roused power, 
 with an errand that matches the power. 
 
 The Pastor will have the manner of the 
 errand-man. He will be as good-naturedly 
 but inflexibly chary of the waste of time as the 
 driven physician is. The street will come to 
 know him as a man whom you mustn't stop for 
 desultory chat, any more than you would stop 
 a physician answering a hurry call, and when 
 some officious saint stops you at the corner to 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 obtain the latest information as to the family 
 you have just visited, you v^ill dare to say 
 with the merest flicker of a gentle smile : * my 
 friend, the ministry listens, but never speaks/ 
 
 A hand-grip, a cordial v^ord, then swiftly 
 on! Don't dally and be repetitious either in 
 the pulpit or out of it. From pious prolixity 
 save us, Good Lord! Let every hour mean 
 something. Christian comradeship is athletic- 
 Pastoral counsel is given on the march. It 
 carries an instant practical meaning which 
 every one can recognize. 
 
 I once preached a sermon on the Parables. 
 After church, at dinner, my kind host turned 
 to his little daughter, who had attended church 
 with her father, and said : " Well, Sadie, can 
 you tell now what a Parable is? " " Yes, sir," 
 said the little Sadie, promptly, and without a 
 suspicion of incivility. "What is it, my 
 dear?" "It is this, papa: A parable is a 
 heavenly truth without any earthly meaning." 
 
 She didn't understand the burst that fol- 
 lowed. I did, and burned that sermon. 
 
 Gentlemen, make your pastorate, however 
 high and heavenly, have earthly meaning. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPON- 
 SOR AND SOCIAL MEDIATOR 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 
 AND SOCIAL MEDIATOR 
 
 You have been, I am sure, alive to the 
 danger, which in our course of thought, up to 
 this point, we have incurred. In our three- 
 fold endeavor in these lectures, first to avoid 
 trenching upon the right of eminent domain 
 belonging to your professors ; second, to main- 
 tain simplicity of address, without rhetorical 
 embellishment, just as we talked the ground 
 over two months ago ; and, finally, to approach 
 the higher levels of the pastoral ideal from the 
 plain, human ground-floor of Christian experi- 
 ence and psychological law, rather than from 
 the assumptions of an ex cathedra ordination, 
 we have risked this serious danger — that of 
 seeming to belittle the greatness and sacred- 
 ness of the pastoral office itself. That such a 
 charge does not lie legitimately against our 
 scheme of thought, considered as a whole, I 
 wish to-day to make clear. 
 
 I do not indeed seek to hide from anyone 
 what by this time is evident enough, that we 
 67 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 adopt on the whole what may be called the 
 naturalistic rather than the sacramentarian 
 conception of the Pastoral office, and yet the 
 word naturalistic does not express the whole 
 of it. If our friends insist upon a label they 
 will perhaps call it the "Broad Church," rather 
 than the "High Church" view. And they will 
 summon as its sponsors men like Bushnell, 
 Beecher, Brooks, rather than Liddon and New- 
 man. But we protest against being thus 
 labelled. We insist indeed that our view is not 
 the technical Broad Church view as such at all. 
 We hold that the view we are presenting, if 
 taken in its totality, includes the vital content 
 of the High Church conception though not in 
 its usual form of statement. Possibly this will 
 be more evident as we proceed. 
 
 Our topic, which you will recognize in a 
 moment, as the center and heart of the series, 
 is t/ie Pastor as Spiritical Sponsor and Social 
 Mediator in Chf isfs name. 
 
 Restating briefly our main position, our 
 apprehension is something like this, that accord- 
 ing to the record of the New Testament and 
 the witness of Christian experience, the normal 
 development of the pastoral spirit proceeds from 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 6g 
 
 the humanly fraternal to the spiritually media- 
 torial ; that in the pastorate the Christian man 
 and comrade becomes the Christlike counsellor; 
 and the counsellor the sponsor, and the sponsor 
 Christ's social mediator among men. He be- 
 comes the under-shepherd of souls, and in that 
 sense a priest of God, clothed with the dignity 
 and holy power of a truly sacramental func- 
 tion, declaring Christ's great mediation be- 
 tween man and God, and so mediating socially 
 between man and man. " Stewards of the 
 mysteries of God " is the simple yet daring 
 Apostolic phrase. But in all this, as I take 
 pains to reiterate, he crowds nothing of him- 
 self into Christ's place any more than the 
 ambassador ursurps the throne of his King. 
 
 The ministry is " in its inmost nature, a 
 bearing testimony, and its most effective ope- 
 ration rests principally upon the giving of 
 a living and spirit-filled testimony," says 
 Theodore Christlieb. 
 
 Nor is it meant that this mental advance or 
 transition from comradeship to sponsorship is 
 a matter of time or of mechanical division. 
 
 From the very start the two great constitu- 
 ent elements, the brotherly and the priestly, 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 are interwoven in the Pastor's life. The or- 
 der of development we are tracing between the 
 two is — ^(to employ again the word I am us- 
 ing with a wearying frequency), psychological 
 rather than chronological. A minister doesn't 
 work ten years as a comrade, then after that 
 go on as a divinely commissioned priest. On 
 the contrary, every throb of comradeship 
 swiftly re-appears in the earnestness of the 
 sponsor and the efficiency of the mediator. 
 
 I adhere to this word, mediator and media- 
 torship, because it describes the fine, golden 
 goal of our ministerial race. I trust to your 
 intelligence and fairness not to misunderstand 
 the word, because although now captured by 
 the ecclesiastical specialists and clothed with a 
 ritualistic badge and uniform, it yet remains a 
 broad and mighty human word, and in its 
 etymology and especially its new social signifi- 
 cance to-day, it means the very thing I mean. 
 
 But while brother and priest are ever join- 
 ing hands in the Pastor's mind, yet there is a 
 development from one into the other as the 
 years go on. In this lecture I am to speak of 
 this development. Unless I mistake it is es- 
 sentially the reflex of the Pastor's own deep- 
 ening acquaintance with Christ. Just as the 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 71 
 
 Pastor learns comradeship by fellowship with 
 the human Jesus, so he learns sponsorship 
 through fellowship with the Divine Christ. 
 In the depths of personal Christian experience, 
 the minister enters more and more into living 
 fellowship with his Lord, as the growing 
 branch roots itself more and more within the 
 vine, and Christ is apprehended not only 
 as the Beautiful Galilean Companion and 
 Teacher, but as Divine Mediator, Redeemer 
 and Master. 
 
 Henchman the minister becomes, and knight 
 of the Crucified. Christ's spirit breathes upon 
 his spirit and what follows is a real, though in- 
 definable oneness of life between them. So 
 the New Testament teaches. And this moral 
 and spiritual sharing of life with life between 
 minister and Master works to winnow and 
 purify the man's own soul, so that it shall be- 
 come a little more achromatic — if I may ven- 
 ture a pedantic word, transmitting, in juster 
 color and outline, something, if God will, of 
 the image and message of Christ. The Pas- 
 tor thus himself becomes a true sponsor and 
 after his manner a social mediator in Christ's 
 name among men. 
 
 It is to three aspects of this maturing proc- 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 ess in the Pastor's mind and to three fields 
 of its objective expression that I am to ask 
 your attention to-day. But, my fellow 
 students, I confess to a feeling of shrinking 
 and of awe even, in endeavoring to put into 
 what must be poor, pale words, any hint of 
 this inner story of the Pastor's heart. You 
 remember how at this point in our talk to- 
 gether we swore the o^th against all mawk- 
 ishness, and pledged our manhood to sim- 
 plicity, lest we should parody or profane this 
 deep experience. 
 
 So sternly ethical is the law of it, yet so 
 preciously spiritual in its sequel, with such a 
 mortal loneliness sometimes, yet with entranc- 
 ing visions of the pastoral ideal, together with 
 an unrelaxing clench upon first-hand human 
 reality, that one is daunted by any notion of 
 describing it; and I am fain to fall back upon 
 your prayers, in some such words as those of 
 the fervid and devoted St. Bernard, Abbot of 
 Clairvaux, who, at the outset of one of his ad- 
 dresses, thus confesses his inadequacy: 
 
 "Behind these curtains of words, I feel 
 that an indescribable holiness and sublimity 
 are veiled, which I dare not touch, save at the 
 command of Him who guards their mystery." 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 73 
 
 " But in His Name," St. Bernard continues, " I 
 pass on. It will devolve upon you mean- 
 while, by your prayers, that we may the more 
 readily meditate upon a subject which requires 
 attentive minds, if it may be that the humble 
 knocker at the door, by his humility, may per- 
 ceive that which the over-confident explorer 
 would seek in vain." 
 
 THE ETHICAL SUBSTRATUM 
 
 First, then, let us notice and weigh well 
 the constant ethical substratum in the Pas- 
 toral consciousness. 
 
 .We start where we left off in the last lec- 
 ture, — with our feet upon the solid human 
 floor of character and comradeship — as recog- 
 nized, brought into relief and trained into ac- 
 tion by the habit of personal fellowship with 
 the life of the human Jesus. Now the thing 
 to insist upon is that no additional or subse- 
 quent spiritual illumination supersedes or min- 
 imizes this ethical substratum. 
 
 May I assert with all the care and force 
 at my command that the Christian Ministry 
 stands or falls by its ethic. This must be even 
 more than an average or conventional ethic. 
 It must be the common ethic of high human- 
 
5^4 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 ity and it must be Christ's ethic too. The 
 earnest young minister, before he has gone 
 very far in his pastoral experience, finds him- 
 self within the swing of a mood, at once of 
 immitigable sternness and of overpowering at- 
 traction. He comes sharp upon the convic- 
 tion that he must not only be personally noble, 
 but noble in a way high and unique, if he 
 would be worth much as a pastor. 
 
 One of your own number asked me this 
 question, substantially : — " How can I make 
 my ideal of manners at once gay enough for 
 the young and grave enough for the old ? " 
 
 I answer, one cannot, except by rising to a 
 summit, a moral ridge so lofty that the vision 
 'extends and the streams flow in both directions 
 at once. 
 
 Gentlemen, I am preferring to quote you 
 rather than to quote from the books, because 
 the books deal chiefly in generalities ; but your 
 questions are hot from the furnace of personal 
 debate and endeavor. 
 
 The pastor realizes, to the core, that his 
 pastorate is an offense and a farce before God 
 and his own soul unless it be the reflex of an 
 uncommon striving after all that is high and 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 7$ 
 
 fine in personal character. He enters thus 
 upon the Via Sanctissima of his Hfe. 
 
 In the tremendous annals of early and 
 mediaeval asceticism, he reads the century-old 
 witness to this principle, that a lofty personal 
 ideal is the pastor's first prerequisite. 
 
 The method of this ascetic self-discipline, 
 seems to him mistaken, but its spirit he must 
 honor ; and the very method itself, perhaps, he 
 half unaware invokes, to some extent, in the 
 intimate places of his life, v^here no friend 
 goes. 
 
 Goethe says that something of the hero lies 
 latent in every man. Certainly a kind of 
 moral heroism denotes the pastoral vocation. 
 This latent moral heroism flashes up within 
 the man. The young minister trims the lamp 
 of his own moral freedom, God's firelight in 
 his mind, and in thie exhilaration of free 
 choice, with a strangely mingled sense of the 
 duty of honor and the glory of privilege, he 
 sets himself, in every live stitch and inch of 
 him, into the strain of an unrelaxing race to 
 read his title clear to high-terraced manhood, 
 
 " Every man that striveth in the games 
 exerciseth self-control in all things." "Now 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN. PASTOR 
 
 they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but 
 we an incorruptible." "I buffet my body." 
 The English weakly renders the energy of the 
 Greek. The truer paraphrase would be, " I 
 strike myself beneath the eye." "I beat my- 
 self black and blue." So cries the warrior 
 Paul. " Lest by any means after that I have 
 preached to others I myself should be re- 
 jected." So the young pastor pursues his 
 stern and glad struggle of which no man 
 knows. 
 
 Alone in his room, or walking the forest 
 aisles, or upon the crags of the mountains, for 
 the pastor is a cragsman, he woos his moral 
 ideals, trying to make of himself God's court- 
 eous and courageous gentleman. If he meets 
 Apolyon, as he will, disguised, he detects him, 
 closes with him and throttles him. He be- 
 comes possessed with the conviction that his 
 pastoral instrument is his own soul and that 
 like unto the graver, who first tempers his tool 
 in the furnace, then adds the edge and the 
 burnish with delicate and patient care, so he 
 must hammer and refine himself, grind down 
 and temper his own mind and spirit in order 
 that he shall be fit (or rather let me say a little 
 less unfit, for we dare not use a bolder word) 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 77 
 
 to be a pastoral graving tool in his Master's 
 hand. 
 
 I anticipate your obvious criticism. You 
 are saying that in all this account of the pas- 
 toral morale there is nothing new. Certainly 
 there is not, but the relation of that morale 
 to the challenge of the present age is new, and 
 each man's task in meeting that challenge is 
 an 'experiment as new for him and almost as 
 exigent as was the voyage of Ulysses. 
 
 But this ethical endeavor is not the end. 
 The Pastor " follows on to know the Lord.'* 
 He comes more and more "to know the love 
 of Christ which passeth knowledge." Here 
 in reverence we draw near to that deeper rev- 
 elation of Christ within the soul as the Su- 
 preme Mediator and Divine Shepherd and 
 Master, which is the " Holy of Holies," not 
 less in pastoral development than in Christian 
 experience. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL DISCLOSURE OF CHRIST 
 
 Second : Still following on in the analogy of 
 the Gospels, we discover that this initial way- 
 side fellowship with the Figure of the Nazarene 
 as perfect human Friend and Model, deepens 
 by imperceptible gradations into the adoring 
 
78 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 realization of His Divine Supremacy and Re- 
 deeming Power. 
 
 This is no matter of theological technique, 
 or of orthodox limitation. In the roster of 
 these worshippers we find Channing and Rob- 
 ertson as well as Wesley and Fenelon. 
 
 The spiritual quality in the Sacrifice of 
 Christ appears. He is the Son of God. He 
 is the supreme Incarnation of the Supreme. 
 He is the Holy Mediator, the Saviour and Lord 
 of the renewed and transformed life, and the 
 growing apprehension of this spiritual loveliness 
 and ascendency floods the mind. 
 
 Thus the young Pastor comes to live and 
 work in a strange kind of wonder at the totality 
 of his Lord's human-divine personality, upon 
 the physical and spiritual lineaments of which 
 he dwells with a lover's loyal joy, so that he 
 literally " walks with Jesus " every day through 
 Palestine on his way to his own parish, and in 
 any pastoral service seems to himself to be only 
 Christ's servant. 
 
 "Slave" was Paul's quivering word. Noth- 
 ing else, indeed, seems to him of comparable 
 value, beside this effort to make himself a 
 creature not wholly out of key with the 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 79 
 
 mediating Divine manhood of his Lord and 
 with the rich privilege of being His Spokes- 
 man. This is his quest of the "Holy Grail" 
 and he pursues it with an earnestness at once 
 ethical and spiritual, the severity of which he 
 must not evade, yet the glory of which he 
 cannot describe. 
 
 You will pardon, gentlemen, what I fear you 
 are finding a somewhat unrelieved seriousness 
 in the tension of our discussion to-day. But 
 I wish to avoid fancies, and at this vital point 
 in the entire course of our thoughts, do justice 
 to the glimpses, which you did me the honor to 
 give me in our personal talks together, into 
 the inner longing and spiritual purpose of your 
 hearts. 
 
 I would not speak in the language of mysti- 
 cism, yet I am speaking of what words cannot 
 tell. While the fundamental note of the in- 
 ner life remains ethical, the young Pastor goes 
 not far along this holy way of manhood-cul- 
 ture for the pastorate before he perceives the 
 wondrous figure of his Lord by his side, and 
 it seems to him almost as if this Chief Pastor 
 of Souls, and his own soul, reaching him, 
 turns and walks with him, to teach him the 
 
8o THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 I 
 
 art of the under-shepherd. The essence of 
 
 this experience is probably coincident with 
 that of all true Christian hearts which enter 
 into the spiritual fellowship of the Life of 
 Christ ; but the special accent under which 
 this experience is apprehended is given by the 
 specific thought and purpose of the minister's 
 own vocation. 
 
 I In this mood the pastor swings into the 
 midstream of his calling. He clears that peril 
 of self centered-ness and masked pride, which 
 dogs the heels of the zealot or the mere 
 ethical expert. He escapes what Lecky calls 
 **the melancholy of introspection." He real- 
 izes that he must not only be noble, but 
 noble in Christ's beautiful and symmetrical and 
 out-giving way, in order to be Christ's pastor, 
 because only Christ's way of living is the 
 helpfully mediatorial way. The moral move- 
 ment within him is now modulated into a finer 
 and more thrilling key. It rises into the 
 light. His ethical struggle becomes a com- 
 panioned struggle, and his Companion is not 
 only his Model and Master but his Saviour and 
 Helper. 
 
 His moral ideal itself also becomes more 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 8i 
 
 finished and illumined and adds the altruistic 
 touch. * How shall I make goodness seem 
 beautiful?' the Pastor asks, * blending just- 
 ness and gentleness ? * * What is possible for 
 me in taking into my heart something of the 
 very spirit of the Crucified and Risen One, so 
 that I may not fumble in being the medium of 
 that beauty of blessing which is the authentic 
 mark of His mediatorial grace?' 
 
 You will say again, all this is vague and 
 mystical. So in a sense it is. But the inner 
 pastoral experience illustrates the truth of that 
 maxim of Professor William James as to " the 
 reinstatement of the vague and inarticulate to 
 its proper place in our mental life.'* * In the 
 field of realized motive, at all events, there is 
 nothing vague. A great spiritual aspiration, 
 perhaps the sublimest motive that can drive a 
 man, takes possession of the young minister, 
 to become in some little, far-off way, at least, 
 a medium between a realized Christ on the 
 one hand, and a realized human need on the 
 other. 
 
 Only character, he thinks, can accomplish 
 this, but it must be Christ-like character blos- 
 soming in Christ-like service. 
 
 "What's white?" is still the pastor's stern 
 
 * As quoted by Pres. King, in " Rational Living." 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 cry for himself. What is sheer, naked, ethical 
 honor? But what's warm as well as white in 
 Christ's way of living as related to others' 
 needs? This becomes not less the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 THE PASSION OF SPONSORSHIP. 
 
 Third: Thus in the depths of the pastor's 
 soul, almost before he knows it, is born what 
 I have called, in default of a better phrase, the 
 passion of sponsorship. 
 
 This perhaps you will remember is the third 
 of the five features under which in the open- 
 ing lecture we defined the pastoral spirit. 
 
 I wish I could describe this ardor of the 
 sponsor so as not to be misunderstood. The 
 sentiment is not an olificial specialty. Its roots, 
 as I repeat, are in that spiritual experience 
 which is generic in the Christian heart. And 
 this surely is the reason why so many " lay 
 preachers " are good preachers and pastors 
 too. But in the pastor's mind this common 
 Christian experience seems to rise into the 
 sense as of a spiritual accrediting, — ^a humble 
 and daring hope that through companionship 
 with Christ and struggle to be like Him, one 
 may share with Him under His direction and 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 83 
 
 in His behalf and Name something- of His 
 " watch and care " for and with and over the 
 flock of His love. 
 
 I express the feeling poorly, but you will 
 perceive that, while it carries much of the 
 spiritual content of the High Church concep- 
 tion of the Pastorate, it is at the opposite pole 
 from the pride of ecclesiastical assumption, or 
 the arrogance of official prerogative. 
 
 The growth of this peculiar consciousness 
 from its fraternal germ has been natural, 
 psychological, ethical. Its prevalent mood is 
 joyful and brave, although sane and humble. 
 In it is what Burns calls " Ae spark o' Na- 
 ture's Fire," and yet also something of the 
 "indwelling Spirit" of St. John. 
 
 A true Pastor's sponsorship thus becomes to 
 him a beautiful spiritual necessity. It simply, 
 as we say in our vernacular, has to be. It is the 
 reflex of the Pastor's own most intimate sense 
 of Christ and of Men. 
 
 And I call especial attention to the further 
 fact that the impulse of this sponsorship is, in 
 a true sense, mediatorial. The Pastor does 
 not indeed look upon himself as the source of 
 pastoral efficiency, nor does he assume any 
 primary prerogative. He seconds Christ's 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 care for the flock. And he feels that only so 
 far as he is personally worthy, can he thus 
 represent his Master. But the Pastor does 
 aspire to express in human and social type and 
 form something of the spirit and power of the 
 Great Mediation of Christ. He assumes indeed 
 no authority as of himself.* He is interpreta- 
 tive. He is ambassadorial, to use St. Paul's 
 eloquent word. He is distributive. 
 
 Do not be afraid of this human use of the 
 great v^ords. Surely nothing else than this is 
 the New Testament idea. How does Christ 
 himself become the supreme Mediator? 
 Through His Incarnation, through the glory 
 of personal character carried out to its ulti- 
 mate loveliness and offered with love's own 
 self-sacrifice to effect moral restoration. In- 
 carnation is the true antecedent of mediation. 
 So the Pastor, as the under-shepherd, shares 
 in a true mediatorial function, but he attains 
 to this by virtue not of a statutory commission, 
 but through the medium of his own earnest- 
 ness and elevation of spiritual endeavor, seek- 
 ing to realize Christ's life within his own, and 
 so represent Him to his flock. 
 
 * " It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in 
 me." — Gal. 2 : 20. 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 85 
 
 I hear you say again that I am becoming 
 still more esoteric, mystical. No, my com- 
 rades. I am seeking to be Scriptural. I am 
 seeking to recall the genuine pastoral experi- 
 ence of the Christian ages. There is a con- 
 dition of the inner spirit at once fraternal and 
 sacramental, charged with the sense of Christ 
 and of His errand, which affects the man 
 through and through, like some quick fire or 
 wine of God, reaching even to the outward 
 bearing, and keeping the frame erect, the 
 movement alert, the eye clear, the hand steady 
 and kind, the whole man on a quick pitch of 
 beautiful power, eager to understand, free to 
 judge, ready to serve, able to save. 
 
 And how is this pastoral sponsorship illus- 
 trated? It is shown in a constant temper of 
 gentle reference to the invisible Chief Shep- 
 herd. Christ is always invoked. 
 
 The .pastoral temper incessantly endeavors 
 to carry out the Divine shepherding of Christ. 
 It is full alike of power and humility, of 
 firmness and tenderness. It has the keen, 
 patient intentness of the watch. I have 
 called it a passion. It does grow to be such. 
 The Pastor would rather care for his flock at 
 whatever cost than do anything else. 
 
86 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 May I allude to still another feature of this 
 temper? Charged with comradeship, it also 
 charges itself with responsibility. It would 
 guarantee the flock. Sponsorship desires to 
 take the place of that for which it cares, as in 
 that almost fierce apostrophe of St. Paul 
 (Rom. 9.3 :) " I could wish that I myself were 
 anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake." 
 He speaks to the Galatians of " travailing in 
 birth " for his people. The Pastor would be 
 true at once in both directions, towards the 
 very heart of Christ and towards the very 
 heart of man. Out go both his arms, the one 
 to grasp Christ, the other to grasp his brother 
 man; and if this figure of the extended arms 
 implies a kind of crucifixion, in love's ache to 
 save, here also he is " crucified with Christ." 
 
 He cannot minister the water of life, — so he 
 feels, — ^unless his very hand touches the hand 
 of his Lord in taking it. He is the cup-bearer. 
 How ? By what he conveys ? Yes, but more 
 by what he is. 
 
 And on the other hand he identifies himself 
 with the flock. He gives his bond for them. 
 To employ our current vernacular, he '' signs " 
 for them. He is their sponsor. Their life is 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 87 
 
 his life. He gives himself as their hostage. 
 He stands voucher for them, and for their 
 future, and he means to make his vouching 
 good. In this brave yearning he summons the 
 picture of his flock before his mind. What 
 does he behold ? All abroad on the mountains 
 the sheep are scattered, and into the cleft of 
 the rock falls the lamb. Valiant and patient, 
 a veritable shepherd, he watches, ranges, waits, 
 feeds, fights, if need be. He is always keyed 
 to his calling. He never forgets or ignores 
 his flock. That flock is his, as being his 
 Master's. A love without a name, so fearless 
 is it, and gentle and strong and self-forgetting, 
 dwells with him night and day for that flock. 
 He is, before God, its representative. "We 
 were gentle in the midst of you," writes St. 
 Paul to the Thessalonians, "as when a nurse 
 cherisheth her own children." " Well-pleased 
 to impart unto you not the Gospel of God 
 only, but also our own souls, because ye were 
 become very dear to us." 
 
 While taking nothing away from their own 
 direct and individual responsibility, the Pas- 
 tor yet holds his people in his arms as he might 
 his own child at the Baptism. And that won- 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 derful word Sponsor, in the etymological es- 
 sence of it, in the sacramental sweep of it, en- 
 titles the rhythm of his life. 
 
 Then, too, the same great music of media- 
 torial sponsorship is heard in a multitude of 
 little wayside notes rippling along through the 
 days. 
 
 Christ's Pastor will be very thoughtfully 
 courteous in little things, not " touchy," not 
 fussy, not garrulous. " Full of mercy and 
 good fruits, without variance, without hypoc- 
 risy." He will have that finish on the edge 
 which marks the gentleman. 
 
 You will observe all along the interplay of 
 the two pastoral tones, one of which we have 
 called the comrade-like or the fraternal — and 
 the other the sponsor-like or the mediatorial. 
 The genuine pastoral spirit of which I am so 
 poorly speaking is the sanest thing alive, in 
 perfect tune with plain, ordinary human life, 
 and yet th^ Pastor is ever striving to echo 
 and re-embody something of the mediating 
 energy of the Divine Personality which so 
 entrances him. He emulates Christ's exqui- 
 site balance. His spiritual symmetry. His fel- 
 lowship with nature and little children. Yet 
 at the same time he dares repeat even to the 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 89 
 
 most wretched of sinners his Master's solemn 
 adjuration, " Go and sin no more." 
 
 The Pastor will hate mawkishness as he 
 hates the devil. He simply cannot let any 
 mean mood master him. He smites at all 
 "blue devils" and keeps himself strung and 
 sunny. He has no patience with sanctified 
 stagnation. He will be martial and dare to 
 dare. O ! this Knight-note in our vocation ! 
 
 And yet on the other hand and in the same 
 breath the same man is all alive to express the 
 Infinite Compassion of Calvary, and his tones 
 will tremble with some far-off throb of the 
 gentleness of Gennesaret as he grieves over 
 human error, and murmurs in the ear of peni- 
 tence, "Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in 
 peace." 
 
 " What is your prevalent feeling and mood 
 as you face your great congregation?" I 
 once asked Mr. Beecher. He looked at me a 
 moment silently, then at something beyond 
 me. The great eyes grew humid and the 
 face royal and tender. "Compassion," he 
 replied. 
 
 The Pastor's pulse-beat is thus ever in two 
 scales which yet are one. He is at once com- 
 rade and priest. He pushes the pace, and yet 
 
90 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 he will put into every day some Christ-likg 
 considerateness for him who cannot push the 
 pace, or who even drops by the way. 
 
 He keeps himself sane by a pinch of those 
 two preserving salts of the higher life — humor 
 and humility, and yet he keeps in touch with 
 the wide world through sympathy and pity. 
 He is enamored of the fine art of fidelity. He 
 is severe with himself, " downs " petulance 
 and jealousy, or better, bows them out of 
 court with a curious little smile; but towards 
 others he is not severe, cultivating rather that 
 sweet candor which springs from steadily try- 
 ing to be gently just. 
 
 He holds his tongue and keeps his temper: 
 yet Christ helps him to combine hatred of 
 shams with fairness to the shammer. He is 
 emulous of the high and incorruptible life, 
 and yet is spokesman for the All-forgiving and 
 All-renewing Love. 
 
 In a word, he mobilizes his whole energy 
 into the dual dialect of his vocation, both in 
 the direction of personal ethical nobleness and 
 of sacrificial Christ-like ministry to other 
 men. He takes other men's moral ideals as 
 only the scaffolding for his own, and prac- 
 tices the "one touch more" in service which 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 91 
 
 only the Chief Shepherd knows, and for which 
 he is never paid. He seeks the beauty of the 
 holy, the valor of the true; but not less the 
 outreach of the rescuer and the might of 
 love's self-sacrifice. 
 
 Ah, my Brothers, my words are thin and 
 far away indeed from the greatness and glow 
 of that of which I would speak ; but if I do not 
 mistake, it is along some such path as this 
 that your own thoughts were moving as w6 
 spoke together of the Pastor's progress into 
 the increasing apprehension of that sacred 
 and high and spiritually mediating function 
 which Christ commits to him in his calling. 
 
 SOCIAL MEDIATION 
 
 We come, then, in our closing division to- 
 day, to a moment's glance out upon the scen- 
 ery of that threefold field where this comrade- 
 like, sponsor-like spirit, so nobly ethical, yet so 
 finally spiritual, charged with the sense of 
 Christ, and, therefore, in some degree the 
 agent of His mediatorial grace, is to be exer- 
 cised. 
 
 This field comprises the individual, the 
 home, the community. 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 1st. The arena of individual conference 
 and confession. 
 
 2nd. The home problems of your people on 
 their spiritual side. 
 
 3rd. The religious life of the Parish and 
 the community at large. 
 
 We cannot here do more than glance at 
 these wide domains of pastoral duty, endeav- 
 oring to determine simply the Pastor's essen- 
 tial relation to them. It is, in a word, Socially 
 Mediatorial. You will rigorously bear in mind 
 our constant proposition that the Pastor is not 
 an official dispenser of heavenly blessing. But 
 he mediates through the natural agency of per- 
 sonal trustworthiness, and his mediation consists 
 in his Christlike service as the explainer, the 
 interpreter, the harmonizer, the peacemaker, 
 the spiritual inspirer. 
 
 In other words this mediation is distinctively 
 social. In our scheme of thought this point is 
 the one chiefly emphasized. Pastoral mediation 
 has to do with the relations between man and 
 man, class and class, as determined by the 
 relation between man and God. The Pastor 
 helps everybody to understand everybody else, 
 and in doing so to understand Christ most 
 of all. 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 93 
 THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 Is it a fancy to discover an element of 
 mediation in even the most personal and in- 
 dividual conference ? Here the Pastor mediates 
 between the two men in the man before him. 
 He must be able to explain the man to himself. 
 He applies to him the seventh chapter of the 
 Book of Romans. This profoundly beautiful 
 style of mediation appears to perfection in the 
 conversations of our Lord with individuals, 
 which, as Nicoll observes, " make up so large a 
 part of the Gospels." 
 
 Here opens the confused and critical realm of 
 personal wrong-doing, where misfortune and 
 fault, heredity and perversity, ignorance and sin 
 welter together. How infinite the complexity 
 of the individual moral problems that are laid 
 sorrowfully, and sometimes savagely, almost, 
 before the Pastor's eye. 
 
 Most people who individually will seek your 
 counsel will come to you under the bewilder- 
 ment or paralysis of some false preconception. 
 
 "My little summer parish," said one of you 
 to me, "has been burned over and over with 
 fanaticism ! " How often the words have re- 
 curred to me ! How the fires of false religion 
 have burnt over and scorched our beautiful 
 
94 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 New England ! Well ! You will deal very 
 patiently with these preconceptions, not identi- 
 fying the real intent of the man with them. 
 You will illumine the interview with some unex- 
 pected turn or touch. Great is the power of the 
 unexpected, and all thorough mediation is full of 
 that power. Prediger remarks, ** Get others to 
 talk ; what a man says to you has more influence 
 upon him than all you can say to him." 
 
 The Pastor mediates in this dim tangle of 
 human wrong by explaining the evil part of the 
 man to the good part of him, and claiming the 
 good part as still on God's side in the fight, not 
 confusing, in the crude, common way of average 
 human judgment, the whole of the man with 
 his fault. The man hadn't thought of that dis- 
 tinction, and in your power to present it is your 
 first hold upon him. 
 
 Out on the Southwestern plains the air is so 
 
 clear that the Mexicans have a proverb that you 
 
 can *' see into day after to-morrow." The Pastor 
 
 must see into "day after to-morrow" for his 
 
 man ; and you will not forget to grace the talk 
 
 with 
 
 " Some touch of Nature's genial glow, " 
 
 to quote another phrase of the great Sir Walter. 
 The Pastor studies human nature, as he 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 95 
 
 studies his Bible. He is sedulous of the 
 " higher criticism " of men*s lives, and he is 
 not content with mere driftwood knowledge 
 either. He collates his observations of human 
 nature, writes them down, and tries to get at 
 a definite group of working principles and 
 maxims. So he can recognize the wrong in a 
 man and yet keep on caring for him, not 
 merely as an object of pity — ^men resent that 
 and ought to — ^but as still his Father's child, 
 and susceptible of rescue. You can say almost 
 anything to a man if you make it evident that 
 you say it because you honor what is good 
 in him and that your anxiety for him is not a 
 professional pose. In the City of Brussels the 
 Socialists have erected a People's Palace. In 
 one of the halls, behind a screen, is frescoed 
 upon the wall the figure of Jesus Christ. So 
 in many a worldly mind, screened even from 
 his own consciousness, is the similitude of 
 Christian ideals. The Niagara of nineteen 
 Christian centuries has not for nothing poured 
 itself into and upon the modem mind. 
 
 But just one word here as to these personal 
 interviews: — ^better be luminous than volum- 
 inous ! 
 
 Now this sense of the moral dualism in a 
 
96 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 man and of the duty and privilege of medi- 
 ation between the two selves of him gives to 
 the Pastor a curious spiritual daring, an in- 
 dependent and good-humored fearlessness in 
 dealing with men in the wish to explain them 
 to themselves and to segregate the good from 
 the evil. * You can't make me anything other 
 than your brother/ Christ's minister says to 
 every man; *and I will show you why.' 
 
 Then the explanation of Christ to the man 
 follows naturally. The Pastor more than 
 preaches ; he would incarnate something of his 
 Master's spirit and attitude; he interprets 
 Christ through his own lit and tender per- 
 sonality, playing upon and in sympathy with 
 the good half of the man he is talking to. 
 
 And thus with reference to all the innum- 
 erable moral problems in individual lives 
 which the confessions and questions of his 
 parishioners will bring to him. The Pastoral 
 mood is not only intelligently responsive and 
 humanly sympathetic, but it is also that of a 
 spiritual priesthood in Christ's name. The 
 Pastor is Christ's own under-shepherd directly 
 at work, his own nature roused and playing 
 free, out towards his parishioner. 
 
 Robert Browning, who of all modern poets 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 97 
 
 comes closest to the Pastor, in depicting the 
 moral scenery of human life, has in hia 
 " Saul " presented one of the lordliest pictures 
 in English literature of the truly pastoral 
 ministry, as the young shepherd-singer deals 
 with the dark despair of the great chieftain, 
 as he hangs " drear, and stark, blind and 
 dumb." That "black midtenfs silence" is the 
 similitude of many a human heart. And the 
 wonderful, varying, upward curve of the harp- 
 ist's melodies, ranging from rural trolls to the 
 sublimest religious adjuration and prophecy 
 — is the strangely complete and eloquent pro^ 
 totype of the Christian Pastor's many-toned 
 plea. Even that sinewy and sunny line, which 
 gives the dominant key-note of the entire 
 poem: 
 
 " How good is man's life — the mere living," 
 
 is not unaptly paraphrased by our answering 
 cry : How good is the Pastor's life — the mere 
 loving. 
 
 With his own mental windows ever open 
 towards Christ, he realizes the Unseen; he 
 realizes also the spiritual background of the 
 life he is trying to help. This twofold out- 
 look imparts a wonderful steadiness and 
 
98 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 blitheness to pastoral service. The Pastor is 
 
 not an idealist but a realist, only he sees the 
 
 whole of the man in Christ's way : 
 
 "He looks at all things as they are, 
 But through a kind of glory," 
 
 and he is alive to the tips of his fingers with 
 an active, buoyant friendliness which interprets 
 to the man his own problem and rouses the 
 good in him to fight the evil. 
 
 THE HOME 
 
 Then the home ! Ah ! the home. Hats off 
 again, gentlemen ! Every home possesses for 
 the Christian Pastor something of the sacred- 
 ness which for Jesus hovered about that home 
 in Bethany. 
 > In the previous lecture we have spoken of 
 the pastor as the family comrade and coun- 
 j sellor. Let me add a word here as to his more 
 ; distinctively religious office in the home. Here 
 also he must mediate, between one home and 
 another perhaps ; or in the home itself, avoiding 
 intrusion, he must deftly mend the break be- 
 tween different factors and currents in the family 
 life. He is the interpreter between the home 
 as it is and the same home as it might be, 
 should it realize its own latent possibilities. In 
 the family interview his motto is : 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 99 
 
 " Fear not to touch the best, 
 The truth shall be thy warrant." * 
 
 "All these matters of pastoral service seem 
 vague to me ! " said one of you to me. They 
 will not seem vague when you get to them, 
 dear brother, if you make your own soul so 
 nobly fraternal that it becomes, perforce, 
 mediatorial in the true sense. And you can 
 form no idea beforehand of the solemn and 
 gentle joy of it all. 
 
 Ah, gentlemen, let us pray God that we may 
 have the right mood at the threshold of 
 homes, delicate, reverent, with a grain of 
 humor and a pound of cheer, remembering 
 ere the door opens, the unseen shapes of joy 
 or sorrow which may be waiting within. 
 
 Have you a voice, a look, for the weeping 
 ones in the dim, chill room where the living 
 has just become the dead? Yes, if you are 
 Christ's man, you have; not otherwise. And 
 Christ's man, while he lingers long at Cal- 
 vary, does not stop there; he goes on with 
 Christ to the Resurrection. 
 
 Here, too, your office is to mediate, i. e., to 
 interpret the unseen in the terms of the seen 
 
 * Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 
100 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 r — ^to help the sad eyes to see what Christ gives 
 you to see. They must often see through 
 your eyes if they are to see at all. 
 
 And aside from these more acute chal- 
 lenges, your spiritual sponsorship will be 
 called upon in reference to the common run of 
 home questions all the time. How many a 
 misunderstanding is to be set right! This 
 young fellow, caught in a business snarl, when 
 the case involves more folly than fault, is not 
 only to be helped out, but the moment is to 
 be seized upon instantly, tactfully, and availed 
 of to swing the young life towards its God. 
 This girl is to be sent on her way to college 
 rejoicing, but also resolute for Christian serv- 
 ice!. Here an inevitable burden is to be set 
 a little more easily on the galled but patient 
 shoulders; there a rift of Christ's sunshine 
 sent across the invalid's room; yonder an old 
 saw or song made to tinkle pleasantly again 
 in the dulled year of age. 
 
 How can a man do it all? He cannot, ex- 
 cept as he is a medium for the exquisite medi- 
 ation of the many-toned Christ. You will be 
 careful also not to trench upon the field better 
 occupied by other advisers. Be sensible, or 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR loi 
 
 else don't try to be saintly. Don't make a fool 
 of yourself by stealing the doctor's job or the 
 lawyer's, or the business man's. They can 
 give better counsel than we can in their own 
 fields. 
 
 ^ What then is your office? It is to bring a 
 kind of Resurrection Morning into evening all 
 the time, comradeship into struggle, rescue 
 into failure, in a word bring Christ into the 
 home life. Is not all this work in some true 
 sense mediatorial ? 
 
 THE COMMUNITY 
 
 Then, last of all, and following inevitably 
 upon the individual and the family sponsorship 
 comes the Pastor's office as mediator in the 
 parish, and in the community at large. Here 
 we instantly feel the hot breath of the new age. 
 The age gasps for adequate mediation. 
 
 What a rocking time ! '' A conflict of meth- 
 ods," says Sabatier, 'Ms a graver matter than a 
 quarrel between doctrines." 
 
 What is upon us now is a conflict of meth- 
 ods, each method represented by a class rather 
 than by a man. So furious is the current that 
 we have a meUe of groups. I make no at- 
 tempt at novel or recondite analysis of these 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 social phenomena, but the broad, patent facts 
 of the situation constitute such a challenge as 
 never met Christian minister before. 
 
 The age is full of the detonations of class 
 hostility. Prejudice, jealousy are not indu- 
 rated, half-ossified, as of old ; but are breaking 
 out into overt and acute (Conflicts, where 
 " ignorant armies clash," to recall Arnold's 
 phrase, in the midst of the dust and smoke of 
 a kind of economic chaos. 
 
 What is needed? Mediation, mediation, on 
 the part of some one so plainly disinterested, 
 so fair and fraternal and good-humoredly 
 brave, that men can't help liking him and 
 trusting him — a Christian minister in short, 
 v^ho, first a comrade with men, can in Christ's 
 spirit be mediator and peacemaker among 
 men. 
 
 Who else can so well explain men to men and 
 " keep friends " with all ? This gives glory 
 even to " preaching in a sawmill," as one of 
 you told me he was privileged to do. 
 
 Here opens before us in its new and acute 
 phases what Professor Ely used to call the 
 " effort of men to live the life of men." One 
 of these modern issues is the "Propaganda 
 of Socialism '* — ^to employ the epithet of Labor 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 103 
 
 Commissioner Charles P. Neill. American 
 Society to-day is a vast and tumultuous sea 
 of social conflict, a congeries of whirlpools, 
 where precedent meets experiment, as when at 
 the " Falls of St. John," the mighty downrush 
 of the river meets the still more mighty inrush 
 of the tide. 
 
 What an hour to live in, gentlemen! Peril 
 and opportunity come in on the same flood. In 
 this very social unrest is the potency of social 
 regeneration. What we are awaking to is 
 what Dr. Stelzle terms the " economic inter- 
 pretation of history." Changes, realignments 
 vast and vital are in rapid progress. The 
 balance of our population and power is becom- 
 ing urban. Industry is everywhere organized. 
 Not less than one hundred and twenty inter- 
 national organizations are affiliated with the 
 " American Federation of Labor." Twenty-five 
 million socialists in the civilized world are bent 
 upon a revolutionary propaganda. There are 
 fifty socialist periodicals in the United States 
 alone. Again we ask, what is needed ? And 
 again we instantly answer, — intelligent and loving 
 mediation more than anything else, so securing 
 mutual understanding and co-operation. But who 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 shall thus mediate ? Who if not the Christian 
 Pastor ? 
 
 The priest of God now must be a practical 
 expert in promoting a better harmony of 
 social movement in the community. 
 
 The Pastor is the one man in town who, by 
 virtue of the associations of his calling, and 
 especially by virtue of whatever pure noble- 
 ness of soul he possesses and the high, fine 
 style of his manhood, can bridge these chasms 
 between classes and so warrant on his own 
 that best epitaph on any man's grave. The 
 man who helped to make men one. 
 
 ,You ask, " Who in our profession is trying 
 to do this sort of thing? '' Who? Why, such 
 men as (to mention only two of whose work 
 I personally know) Ozora S. Davis, late of 
 New Britain, Conn., now President of Chi- 
 cago Theological Seminary, and Charles R. 
 Brown, of Oakland, Cal. They not only try 
 to do it, but they do it. 
 
 Davis has toiled to master four languages 
 besides his own, in order to speak to the for- 
 eign-born operatives in the New Britain mills. 
 
 Brown of Oakland has gone into the La- 
 bor Unions and stood fearlessly forth for the 
 fraternity of the Church with all men, high 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 105 
 
 and low, and all men high and low, in Cali- 
 fornia, love and honor him for doing it. 
 
 That sentence of Lessing, though one-sided, 
 is suggestive : " The Christian Religion has 
 been tried for centuries. The Religion of 
 Christ remains yet to be tried." 
 
 So we may say that the Pastorate of Christ, 
 charged with His spiritual democracy and 
 beautiful with His spiritual mediation, is yet 
 to be brought to bear fully upon the social 
 confusions of our time. 
 
 For the Pastor's function is not limited by 
 his Church walls. A splendid breadth of light 
 falls upon the modern Pastor in the sense that 
 he belongs to the community through his 
 Church. He is every man's man in the Mas- 
 ter's name. 
 
 So it is that the Pastor, tuned to the very 
 mind of his Lord, and having brought all men 
 nearer together, can fitly stand at the Table 
 of the Holy Communion, declaring the Mes- 
 sage of the Cross, and the assurance of the 
 pardoning grace of God. 
 
 One of you asked me this question, and it 
 hits the eye of its target, — I quote verbatim : 
 "Which is the better, to devote one's self 
 to making fine sermons for the edification of 
 
io6 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 a few saints, or to get out, even at some sac- 
 rifice of pulpit preciseness, and try to reach 
 outsiders with the simple Message of Salva- 
 tion?" 
 
 From the pastoral standpoint, one doesn't 
 hesitate five seconds for an answer. Which 
 is better, carefully to fodder one prudent, self- 
 satisfied sheep, or pull ninety-nine heedless 
 lambs out of the ditch? And yet the alter- 
 native which the question proposes does not 
 really obtain, for that " simple Gospel mes- 
 sage '' which you have in mind is really bet- 
 ter preaching, even intellectually considered, 
 than is your labored academic essay. 
 
 Sylvester Home's great Church in London 
 bears this motto, "No quest, no conquest." 
 The logic of the view of the pastorate pre- 
 sented to-day makes the Pastor a broad, live, 
 many-sided man. He is the Pastor, not merely 
 of the Church, but of the community. The 
 exclusive, seclusive theory of the pastorate is 
 the worst possible for the saints themselves. 
 
 The line that separates the Church from the 
 general public is partly arbitrary and illusory, 
 the relic of false standards. Christ's man is 
 for men, wherever he finds them. Some are 
 
THE PASTOR AS SPIRITUAL SPONSOR 107 
 
 out of the Church that ought to be in; some 
 possibly are in that ought to be out. 
 
 My friend, Bishop Leonard of Ohio, told 
 me this story: He said he sent a young cu- 
 rate, blazing with zeal and ready to tackle 
 anything, to one of the hardest, toughest^ 
 little, side-tracked parishes near the southern 
 border of the State. After a time, back came 
 the curate to report. 
 
 "Well," said Bishop Leonard, "how many 
 new members have you got into the Church ? " 
 
 "Bishop, not a one," was the answer; "but, 
 by the grace of God, I've nearly cleaned out all 
 the old members f 
 
 The best way to cultivate the saints is to 
 make them go out with you, to seek and save 
 the lost. 
 
 Ah, men, that is what you are for, till the 
 sunset gun, to get hold of men, anywhere and 
 everywhere, explain them to themselves, medi- 
 ate between them, create among them the basis 
 for an intelligent and lofty social fellowship, 
 help them to understand Christ, and so bring 
 them back to God — to the Church, do I say? 
 Yes, to the Church, if it be a true Church of 
 God, for the Church will be, as it was at the 
 
io8 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 beginning, the natural and necessary social 
 form in which this Christ-Life among men 
 will nucleate itself and organize itself for 
 action. 
 
 What some of these forms of Church action 
 are at the present moment, and how the Pastor 
 is to avail himself of them and lead them, will 
 be the subject of our next talk together. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE PASTOR AS PARISH ORGAN- 
 IZER AND LEADER 
 
THE PASTOR AS PARISH ORGANIZER 
 AND LEADER 
 
 The field which, in rapid and informal 
 fashion, we shall traverse to-day, differs 
 widely from its predecessors in the series. Up 
 to this moment our keynote has been personal, 
 possibly even introspective. We have tried to 
 draw near to that wonderful inner flame of 
 the pastoral spirit which, like the fire of God 
 in the burning bush, illumines but does not 
 consume!. 
 
 We have described this peculiar fire of our 
 calling by its essential traits, its fundamental 
 note of honor for men, its sympathy with men, 
 its genius of rescue, its passion of sponsorship 
 in Christ's name. We have thus traced a 
 course of mental development which, though 
 attended at every step by the presence and 
 grace of the spirit of Christ, is yet normally 
 psychological, and by which the human com- 
 rade and counsellor becomes also Christ's un- 
 der-shepherd, the spiritual guide and minister 
 of his people, fulfilling the supreme offices of 
 a mediator in our distracting time between 
 III 
 
112 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 rival groups and classes in the community, and 
 so embodying and applying something of the 
 spirit of the Great Mediation of Christ. 
 
 In our highly complex and socialistic era, 
 however, such pastoral work in the commun- 
 ity, in order to be effective, must avail itself 
 of the principle, never before half so much 
 emphasized as now, of social organization. 
 Thus opens before us, in logical order, the 
 function of the pastor as the parish leader. 
 We shall bear in mind that what we are to 
 discuss is not the field of parish machinery it- 
 self, — ^that would require a volume — but only 
 the pastor's relation to it. 
 
 A most notable feature of church life in 
 the new age is the immense expansion of the 
 principle of subsidiary organization in the par- 
 ish. This is in response to the dominance of 
 the new social note in the development of civ- 
 ilization. This new note, however, is more 
 than a mere rediscovery of the social idea or 
 a fresh insistence upon social method. It is 
 the distinct emergence of a specific theory and 
 style of social organization, namely, that of the 
 subdivision of classes into groups, each of which 
 shall remain semi-independent and yet be an 
 organic unit. 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 113 
 
 What Graham Taylor calls " the irresistible 
 tidal movement from individualism toward 
 solidarity'' is to be analyzed by reference to 
 this further principle of subdivisions into 
 group independencies. 
 
 As to this heated and changeful field, gener- 
 alizations are easy and easily fallacious ; but it 
 seems reasonable to suppose that we are ap- 
 proaching that new conception of the higher 
 individuality which, to employ the language 
 of Prof. Shaler of Harvard, "includes lower 
 individualities in itself." 
 
 What seems to be coming in upon us in 
 Church and State is not only a new sense of 
 the significance of corporate social life, with 
 its new science of sociology and its new social 
 economics, but also the further discovery and 
 application of what might be called — running 
 a clear risk of pedantry— the ganglionic model 
 of social structure, as in physical organisms, 
 namely, the idea of organizing by classes of 
 more or less independent groups, these groups 
 themselves being composed of more or less 
 independent clusters. It is the notion of the 
 correlation of a number of independent social 
 centres of subdivision. The new energy of the 
 social unit thus developed, together with the 
 
114 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 multiplication of wondrous and novel agencies 
 of modern science, and our enlarged facilities 
 for intercommunication, is remodeling the 
 face of our civilization. 
 
 To this style of remodeling the church must 
 conform. In all the great convocations held 
 this last year, denominational and interde- 
 nominational, at Edinburgh, London, Philadel- 
 phia, this fact has been recognized. Modern- 
 ism is not, as the Vatican conceives it, a for- 
 eigner, an immigrant, a pert invader making 
 a descent upon the age. It is the age itself 
 rebuilding its fabric of faith under more ra- 
 tional forms. The new age is the old age, 
 remelted and recast. The church of the new 
 age is the church of the old age, readapted. 
 You cannot preach to an express train unless 
 you are on the train; and the social laws that 
 at any epoch operate throughout the entire 
 community, operate not less in the church, 
 which is integrated in that community. There 
 is also abroad everywhere a freshened and im- 
 mensely enlarged notion of the breadth of the 
 relations in which the church may legiti- 
 mately stand, as affecting the community, 
 especially in the field of child-culture, of hu- 
 manitarian relief, and in the work of home 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 115 
 
 and foreign missions, which is a supreme test 
 of the true Christian spirit. 
 
 The relation of this very briefly and crudely 
 stated philosophy of modern social develop- 
 ment to our line of thought will be evident as 
 we proceed. On the whole, this organizing 
 passion of the age (for it is almost such) is to 
 be welcomed in the church. The life of the 
 age is in it, the providence of God behind it; 
 it carries the energy and the prophecy of our 
 time. 
 
 But a very vital question for the minister is 
 as to how he shall hold himself in relation to it. 
 Shall he leave this field of departmental ex- 
 pansion to others? No. Shall he surrender 
 himself to its mechanism, making its technique 
 of foremost importance? Emphatically, no. 
 
 But if you ask me exactly how to steer be- 
 tween these two opposed extremes, I have only 
 to make that confession of inability to answer 
 which is good for the lecturer's soul, and 
 which may remind you how we are all in the 
 same boat with one another in this complex 
 and difficult matter of handling a parish to the 
 satisfaction of modern men as well as to the 
 glory of God. 
 
 iN'evertheless, I may perhaps hazard a f( 
 
 :w 
 
ii6 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 hints, drawn out of my own pastoral experi- 
 ence, which must in every case be modified to 
 suit the individual pastor's own idiosyncrasy 
 and the circumstances of the parish in which 
 he labors. 
 
 The general ideal of parish administration, 
 and especially the pastor's relation thereto, 
 which I am to suggest, will be characterized 
 in three particulars by the controlling presence 
 of three sentiments: 
 
 1. Personal Considerateness. 
 
 2. Federative Independence, 
 
 3. Social Enthusiasm. 
 
 PERSONAL CONSIDERATENESS 
 
 You, gentlemen, will be able to find a better 
 brace of words than these by which to Express, 
 in a single epithet, the entire quality which I 
 have in mind. It is that note of personal solic- 
 itude, equity, and adaptation which is im- 
 parted to all the organized activity of the 
 parish by the pastor's care for individuals, 
 based upon his knowledge of them, his re- 
 spect and love for them, and his desire for their 
 due and proper freedom of individual action. 
 
 What I have in mind is the opposite of the 
 machine tone in parish life. 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 117 
 
 Right here, on the threshold of the dis- 
 cussion, rises before us the truth which in 
 this whole field is probably the most vitally 
 important thing to remember, namely, that 
 while the pastor must in our day be an ad- 
 ministrative leader, he is not to shift from 
 his normal and constant pastoral attitude, in 
 order to accomplish this administrative work. 
 True parish economics presents the pastor as 
 organizing, but not the pastor turning himself 
 into something else for the sake of organizing. 
 
 President Tucker, in his Yale Lectures on 
 Preaching, delivered ten years ago, remarks, 
 with that union of rare insight and finished 
 expression which make his words precious, 
 " There is a strong, though subtle influence at 
 work toward the unmaking of the preacher 
 coming up out of the social situation." So we 
 may say there is a subtle influence at work 
 toward the unmaking of the pastor coming up 
 out of the administrative situation. Against 
 this tendency we must set our whole force. 
 
 The very key-note of wise and fine parish 
 direction is that the pastor shall not cease to 
 be a pastor in order to be a parish promoter; 
 but on the contrary, shall carry the rich, full, 
 devoted tone of the pastoral spirit into every; 
 
ii8 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 fibre and filament of his administrative func- 
 tions. Is it not true, however, that the contrary 
 is often assumed by young ministers ? 
 
 Does not a vague idea prevail, accepted 
 almost without challenge in certain quarters, 
 that old-fashioned pastoral service was one 
 thing, with its individualistic note of devotion, 
 but that this new, insistent, absorbing business 
 of parish organizing is quite another thing, 
 more quasi-secular in character, as though the 
 minister must needs possess no less than three 
 suits of professional clothing, one to wear in 
 pastoral service to the sick and afflicted ; 
 another — a kind of smart spiritual ** cutaway " 
 
 — to wear as a man of affairs in running the 
 parish machine; while a third, — cut, Heaven 
 only knows how, but different from the others 
 
 — is reserved exclusively for the pulpit ! Some- 
 what in this vein is an advertisement which, as 
 I am credibly informed, a senior seminary stu- 
 dent inserted in the columns of the village 
 paper: "Wanted, a good strong horse to do 
 the work of a country pastor ! " 
 
 All this is away from the deep truth of our 
 calling, and from the best influence of church 
 life upon our civilization. Such professional 
 segregation, as of different roles in the ministry, 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 119 
 
 is fallacious and mischievous. It is also 
 needless. 
 
 The truth is, the genius of fruitful parish 
 discipline is profoundly permeated by the pas- 
 toral spirit. The pastor first of all considers 
 individuals, justly and gently. He adapts the 
 worker to the task and adjusts the task to the 
 worker. The clatter of cold cog wheels is 
 hateful to him. ' If nowhere else in modern 
 society, then all the more in the church,' he 
 exclaims, * will we, by Christ's grace, realize 
 an organic life characterized by that spiritual 
 freedom and elevation which spring from a 
 delicate and just regard for each man's per- 
 sonality.' Now it is precisely this note of 
 fraternal sponsorship, genial, yet charged with 
 religious earnestness, which makes church life 
 different from and spiritually superior to 
 other forms of organization in our modern 
 society. 
 
 In other words, the parish machine must 
 not be a machine. It must have soul, and its 
 soul must be love. AH the numberless subsid- 
 iary departments and agencies of the church 
 propaganda are to be shot through with a 
 peculiar temper and glow, which is distinc- 
 tively pastoral, which nobody but the live pas- 
 
120 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 tor, who is never anything other than a pastor, 
 can introduce and maintain. In its peculiar 
 considerateness, its accent on fellowship, its 
 loving care for the remnants, fringes and fag- 
 ends of the social life, parish organization 
 should be the equivalent, in corporate and or- 
 ganic form, of those qualities which we have 
 specified as denoting the pastor's shepherding. 
 In a word, the parochial must be the pastoral, 
 in Christ's vital and humane sense of that title, 
 and if it is not, then, while there may be a 
 great deal of social stir in the parish, the finest 
 ends of the church life will drift out of sight, 
 both unrecognized and unreached. 
 
 Here, therefore, we come upon what, I can- 
 not help thinking, is the most valuable prac- 
 tical rule for our guidance as ministers, in 
 dealing with economic and administrative de- 
 tails : Decide them in the pastoral way, that is, 
 get into the full glow of the pastoral firelight, 
 and then decide them. Do not decide them in 
 any rattling mill of mere committee confer- 
 ence, or in the icehouse of an unwarmed 
 church study. 
 
 For example, shall we permit people, whose 
 hearts are warm, but who have little educa- 
 tion, to teach in the Sunday-school, or shall 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 121 
 
 we insist upon pedagogic accomplishments? 
 The pastoral spirit would answer: accept the 
 former class as teachers to start with, then 
 work toward better education as fast as you 
 can. 
 
 Here is another question which you will 
 meet. Shall we give free rein to everybody, 
 especially the young people, to multiply social 
 entertainments, bazaars, fairs, secular shows 
 within the church walls, all " for church pur- 
 poses," of course; or shall we be a trifle con- 
 servative in these matters? The pastoral 
 spirit, in the sense as we have defined it — the 
 reembodiment of the Master's spirit — would 
 reply: take the conservative line to start with. 
 But when you have run up — ^not so high either 
 as to be out of sight — the great flag of spiritual 
 fidelity, then admit beneath it all social ameni- 
 ties and enthusiasms possible which are not 
 inconsistent with it. The easy habit of dis- 
 regard, or even forgetfulness, in attention to 
 secondary enterprises, of the great, constant, 
 spiritual errand of the church, is a policy 
 fraught with a profound peril; it loses more 
 than it gains, and in the long run will cost 
 the church the loss of the deeper respect and 
 confidence of thinking men. 
 
122 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 The instances are legion to which this prin- 
 ciple of parish judgment applies. Decide the 
 little local question in the light of the roused 
 pastoral sentiment, i. e., the sentiment at once 
 of comrade and sponsor. Yet do not sit up so 
 straight even as Pastor as to lean backward. 
 Keep in sympathy with your vivacious young 
 people, or with some possibly over-economical 
 business man, even when you oppose them. 
 Let them feel that you understand them, and 
 very genially and patiently explain the con- 
 trary ground to them. Very possibly they 
 may be right and you wrong. 
 
 " Would you admit dancing in the church ? " 
 one of you asked me. Yes, if I would in the 
 little room upstairs at home where my mother 
 goes to pray. That, I think, would be the 
 Pastor's answer. There is a fitness in things, 
 and the common sense of the community, if 
 frankly appealed to, respects that fitness. Only 
 you must learn to say " No " in these matters 
 with a smile that means genuine kindliness, 
 and with a quick tactful suggestion of some- 
 thing else in place of the thing forbidden, that 
 shall be attractive and yet shall preserve the 
 sense of moral fitness. 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 123 
 
 Sometimes an unexpected turn helps. " May 
 we have a little game in the church parlor? " 
 was asked of a minister friend of mine, a tact- 
 ful man. " Certainly," he answered. " And 
 we'll rehearse some songs at the same time. 
 Then the next day we will all rally and tramp 
 out two miles to a poor little hospital on the 
 outskirts of the town and sing those songs to 
 the poor fellows lying there in their pain ! " 
 And the scheme went through, too. But the 
 young folks didn't want to play that game in 
 the church parlor every week ! 
 
 Get down to the pastoral undertone in your 
 parish economics. The Church is the Church, 
 not a trade-union, nor a business corporation, 
 nor a social club, primarily, though in a sec- 
 ondary sense it is all of these. It is a human- 
 rescue brotherhood, working for moral and 
 religious ends. Bring Christ's love-note in. 
 Parish economics is not mechanism. It is the 
 natural fulfillment of Christ-like outreach for 
 men, appearing in modern socially organized 
 forms. 
 
 This very level question was asked by one 
 of you : " Shall a minister m our day of or- 
 ganized activities concentrate his effort on 
 
124 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 his parish machinery and let domestic parisH 
 calHng go ? *' I answer, No. Why ? Because 
 that wouldn't be pastoral. The home inter- 
 view is what will most help the minister in- 
 telligently and kindly to guide the committees 
 and interject the line considerateness of Christ 
 into the methods of departments. 
 
 Still, in this matter of common " parish call- 
 ing " we must remember that times have 
 changed. New demands have multiplied and 
 time seems shortened. A pastor is an over- 
 driven toiler, preacher, teacher, leader, 
 watcher ovier his flock. He must be a stern 
 yet tactful economist of his moments. He has 
 no time for garrulous gadding about the par- 
 ish. A parish call is a salutation, not a con- 
 ference, and, as a rule, ten minutes are more 
 to the purpose than sixty for such salutation, 
 unless in connection with some definite profes- 
 sional errand. 
 
 We complain of parish gossip. Let us 
 see to it that we are not gossips ourselves, 
 especially in committee meetings. The habit 
 of indiscreet garrulity in committee meetings 
 digs many pastoral graves. It is a good rule 
 never to talk to one person in the parish about 
 another, and never presume upon your ex 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 125 
 
 oiHcio chairmanship to recite personal narra- 
 tives. 
 
 Gentlemen, do not let the twentieth century 
 turn you into that curious parochial prodigy — ■ 
 a universal committeeman, a polyglot chair- 
 man. Don't try to be captain of everything; 
 and when you are captain, don't forget that 
 you are Christ's under-shepherd and human- 
 ity's servant first and all the time. Let the 
 deacons moderate some of the meetings. Oc- 
 casionally have the sprightliest deacon do it, 
 if you think the very term "moderator" is 
 invidious in that connection. And, by the 
 way, have some sprightly men on your Dea- 
 cons' Board. That is a part of the modern 
 era in church enterprise. 
 
 FEDERATIVE INDEPENDENCE 
 
 But we pass to the second feature of our 
 parish ideal, which will perhaps let us a little 
 further into the social philosophy of our sub- 
 ject. Closely joined with the spirit of con- 
 siderate loving-kindness which, emanating 
 from the pastor himself, should pervade all 
 the church organizations, is another quality — • 
 the quality of freedom, a concession of inde- 
 
126 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 pendence to official associates and subordi- 
 nates, based upon trust in them. This also is 
 a direct emanation from the pastoral attitude 
 of mind. 
 
 "Ye, brethren, were called for freedom; 
 only use not your freedom for an occasion to 
 the flesh, but through love be servants one to 
 another." (Gal. 5, 13). 
 
 Here, in a sentence, St. Paul describes the 
 genius of church organization on its side of 
 liberty. 
 
 In order to measure the value of this prin- 
 ciple in modern church life, we must more 
 carefully recur to that analysis of present so- 
 cial conditions which has already been out- 
 lined. 
 
 Ezekiers ancient and dazzling vision of the 
 beryl wheels is fulfilled in an age such as this, 
 which is characterized by the impulse, not 
 merely to organize, but to multiply subsidiary 
 organizations within organizations. Perhaps 
 the most distinctive note in the organizing im- 
 pulse of to-day is that it so loves the " wheels 
 in the middle of a wheel." It is a very demon 
 of federative subdivision which is upon us ; or 
 rather not a demon, but the little wizard of 
 social efficiency. Modern power is largely in 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 127 
 
 the ratio of the subdivision of semi-inde- 
 pendent agencies. Now the logical conse- 
 quence of this must be an ultimate appeal 
 either to a very rigid mechanical discipline, or 
 to a very lofty voluntary fraternity, as the 
 force to coordinate and harmonize these many 
 subdivisions; for each desires to maintain a 
 certain independence. 
 
 As soon as you get fairly started in prac- 
 tical parish development you will be at your 
 wits' end to keep track of your "train sec- 
 tions" (or keep them on the track, for that 
 matter). In my own parish organization, I 
 have no less than fourteen presidents of things, 
 besides vice-presidents, and more than that 
 number of subordinate chairmen! I counted 
 them this morning; and my church is a quiet 
 family tea-table compared with the infinite in- 
 stitutionalism of some churches. 
 
 I do not deprecate this growing multiplic- 
 ity; I welcome it. The heart-throb of the 
 age insists that it should be thus. We shall 
 soon have an office of some sort for every man, 
 woman and child in the church. And the 
 people like it; they must have it. They work 
 well under it; they won't work without it; 
 the twentieth century forbids them. Labor it- 
 
128 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 self IS welcome, If only people can have enough 
 " division of labor " ; and everybody finds rea- 
 son for being a Dorcas, who can only be sec- 
 retary or something of a Dorcas society. 
 
 I intend no slant of satire ; but pay my com- 
 pliment to the spirit of the age. In this mi- 
 nute subdivision of corporate life, in this multi- 
 plication and distribution of official responsi- 
 bility, is a hidden dynamic of vast and hith- 
 erto undeveloped power. Thirty and more 
 separate presidents and chairmen in one church 
 implies an unlocking of human energy little 
 short of terrific! Indeed, right here, in this 
 ingearing of departments, this interplay of 
 groups, each group an organized unit, this free 
 union of legitimate official ambition, with un- 
 limited organic subdivision, we hear the very 
 ''chug chug'' of the motor-car of the modern 
 parish race. 
 
 Under these circumstances, two theories of 
 parochial administration offer themselves for 
 your adoption: the one, the more centralized 
 and autocratic; the other, the more federated 
 and distributive. In the former, the pastor 
 is not only the nominal but the actual manager 
 and dictator of all these multiform activities. 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 129 
 
 His word is law. He holds all the strings in 
 his hand. He rules— tactfully, if he has the 
 grace— but he rules. The whole parish is like 
 a great army, a factory, or commercial house, 
 with one absolute head, from which all depart- 
 ments and sub-departments are graded down. 
 The amazingly effective "Salvation Army" 
 organization is a supreme instance of this re- 
 ligious autocracy. What it lacks is freedom 
 for individual development. 
 
 The other parochial method is that of fed- 
 erated fraternalism, in which, while the pastor 
 is at the head, each department of the parish 
 organization is treated and trusted as being an 
 entity in itself, with its own head— the Sun- 
 day-school, Senior, Intermediate, Primary, 
 Kindergarten; the Mission School; the Wom- 
 an's Mission Circle; the Men's Club; the 
 Young People's Alliance; the Junior Guilds, 
 half a dozen of them, all and each regarded 
 somewhat as "free and sovereign states," in 
 a federal union. Here freedom is maintained 
 and the community of action is secured, not 
 so much by official discipline as by a common 
 and burning spirit of religious earnestness and 
 mutual faith and honor glowing at the centre 
 
I30 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 of the parish life, which spirit it is the business 
 of the pastor himself to cultivate and even 
 embody. 
 
 Now, as between these two administrative 
 theories and methods, the former, the central- 
 ized and autocratic, is probably the more busi- 
 nesslike, the more army-like, the more effec- 
 tive for machine ends, the better agent for 
 mere church propagandism ; and the more re- 
 cent drift in what we call " up to date " parish 
 enterprise is, I am incHned to believe, on the 
 whole, tending in that direction. 
 
 But I seriously question whether the higher 
 ends of personal Christian culture and a fine- 
 toned Christian civilization are reached so 
 nobly as by the federation plan. To quote a 
 phrase of Edmund Burke, we "pardon some- 
 thing to the spirit of liberty.'' 
 
 Take what most pastors discover to be a 
 somewhat " burning " question, that of the 
 choir, for instance. There is considerable rea- 
 son to believe that an average church choir can 
 be managed best on the federation plan. Min- 
 isterial autocracy is usually checked at the 
 organ loft. One instance to the contrary is, 
 however, reported from a colored church 
 down South, where the minister, having suf- 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 131 
 
 fered many things for many days, announced 
 one Sunday morning, " De choir will now 
 sing dat beautiful piece, *" We ain't got long to 
 stay heah/ after which dey will consider dem- 
 selves discha'ged and will file out quietly, one 
 by one. .We'se gwine to hab con'gational 
 singin' heahaftah in dis yere chu'ch." 
 
 Nathaniel Schmidt, Professor of Semitic 
 literature at Cornell University, in his elo- 
 quent though radical book, "The Prophet of 
 Nazareth," published three years ago, remarks, 
 " A greater importance is given in the teach- 
 ing of Jesus to the perfecting of human soci- 
 ety than to the future of the individual." This 
 may be a rather one-sided generalization, but 
 there can be no question but that the exhibi- 
 tion of free and voluntary brotherhood, in 
 organized action in the church of Christ, is 
 now and is to be our finest socially educative 
 force ; but in order for this, the organic affilia- 
 tion must be voluntary and free. As Jesus 
 said, " By this shall all men know that ye are 
 my disciples if ye " are subservient to a cen- 
 tralized parish administration ? No — " if ye 
 have love one to another." 
 
 If Christian churches represented an ethical 
 and intellectual level no higher than that of 
 
132 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 the masses of society at large, autocracy, let 
 us concede, might be the best method for util- 
 izing their energies. But the churches arg 
 composed of Christian men and women, i. e., 
 of people who, in the free exercise of educated 
 reason and moral purpose, have chosen Christ, 
 His truth as their law. His service as their 
 joy. Now, among such people, the federative 
 plan, while it has its dangers, has also its im- 
 mense advantages. It develops personal char- 
 acter and the responsibility of free initiative. 
 It promotes mutual respect and voluntary 
 courtesy. It makes Christian courtesy rather 
 than parish red tape the arbiter of differences 
 between departments. It makes the parish a 
 brotherhood of honor, between free groups of 
 coordinated workers, " stirred up with high 
 hopes of living to be brave men," to use a su- 
 perb phrase of Milton, not mere cogs in parish 
 wheels. 
 
 In a word, this method is morally educative 
 rather than mechanically coercive. It may not 
 "get there," as we say, quite so quick; but 
 we get more when we do "get there." I 
 throw in my vote, therefore, for the federative 
 ideal of parish administration. 
 
 " Tell us," said one of you to me, " when 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 133 
 
 you come, what has been your own experi- 
 ence? Where do you put the emphasis?" 
 Well! One man's experience doesn't count 
 for much, but it is the best he has. I may say, 
 therefore, perhaps without impropriety, that 
 in the course of my thirty-five years' pastorate 
 in a single church, I have had the amplest pos- 
 sible confirmation of the moral and spiritual 
 value of this freer, more voluntary, and, as it 
 seems to me, more finely fraternal method. 
 
 Now, where does the logic of all this couple 
 on with our general scheme of thought? At 
 this point, namely, that the genius of this fed- 
 erative method is preeminently pastoral, in the 
 sense in which we have used the word in these 
 lectures, namely, comrade-like and socially me- 
 diatorial. It is full of a noble fellowship and 
 equally full of a noble freedom trust. The 
 deliberate habit of exercising this faith in your 
 department leaders, daring to let others besides 
 yourself have their way — (at all events until 
 they discover that your way is better) this 
 large, brave, free trust, I say, in your fellow 
 Christian workers, is the direct product of, and 
 the constant incitement to, what we have called 
 the pastoral spirit at its full bloom. 
 
 Indeed, the glory of the federative idea in 
 
134 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 parish economics is that the one indispensable 
 requisite for making it effective is precisely 
 that pervasive spiritual glow throughout the 
 parish which it is the first business of Christ's 
 pastor to maintain. In the spirit of his Mas- 
 ter's grace, he substitutes the appeal to love 
 and honor and mutual considerateness for the 
 mere discipline of arbitrary command. 
 
 In fact, the alternative is sharp. If you 
 are really comrade and mediator, in Christ's 
 Name, you are distinctly not autocrat. " Our- 
 selves as your servants for Jesus' sake," writes 
 the man of Tarsus, even to that little mongrel 
 and quarrelsome church in the dissolute Cor- 
 inthian capital. You persuade, not command. 
 You appeal to loyalty, not issue a subpoena^ 
 You treat your parishioners as your coordi- 
 nates and brothers. You " go before " the 
 sheep, as Jesus said, rather than drive them. 
 
 Time fails to go fully into the social ethics 
 that lies behind all this ; but I suspect that the 
 essential dignity and value of all Protestant 
 voluntaryism is in that :ethic. And if the 
 minister adopts this as his parish method and 
 ideal ; if, taking the risk, he dares to trust his 
 parishioners as Christ trusts him and them ; if 
 he organizes his whole church in this spirit, 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 135 
 
 giving to each sub-department a certain un- 
 challenged freedom of action in its own 
 sphere, he will find that the nobler Christian 
 enthusiasm in himself, and in all the church, 
 will be deepened and purified. The splendid 
 spiritual fire at the center of the parish life 
 will keep all the departments, though free, yet 
 Spiritually one, rather than mechanically allied. 
 
 SOCIAL ENTHUSIASM 
 
 Fellowship, Freedom, Cheer! This is the 
 order of the parish psychology. Besides the 
 qualities of considerateness and trustfulness 
 which characterize the true pastor's handling 
 of church activities is one quality more, also 
 distinctly pastoral, which, like the flame at the 
 finial, brings the others to completeness and 
 illumines the entire field of pastoral adminis- 
 tration. It is the quality of spiritual cheer. 
 It is that cheer of the invulnerable and im- 
 mortal hope which, as you may recall, we spec- 
 ified in our opening lecture as the last of our 
 "five traits" of the pastoral spirit. 
 
 "We are saved by hope." The Christian 
 pastorate is saved by hope. Buoyancy in lead- 
 ership is what I mean. This is the pastor's 
 
136 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 final contribution to organized church activity 
 and is almost the most precious of all. It is 
 that quality which is imparted to Christian 
 service by the blending of reason and faith in 
 the sense of the attainableness of the end 
 sought. This end is the moral rescue and spir- 
 itual rehabilita.tion of men. That such re- 
 newal is practically possible is with the Chris- 
 tian minister a first article of his faith. It is 
 both a rational conviction and a kindling 
 vision ; and this cheer of the invulnerable hope, 
 drawn from the depths of his belief in the law 
 and the love of the world, he imparts to all the 
 working of his parish forces. To recall 
 .Wordsworth's line, 
 
 A man he seemed of cheerful yesterdays 
 And confident to-morrows." 
 
 The significance of this quality of cheer 
 shines out when we remember that it is pre- 
 cisely the one so often lacking in the working 
 of our secular social machinery. For by cheer 
 I do not mean stir or excitement or even ar- 
 dor. Social mechanism in non-Christian soci- 
 eties may furnish all these. I mean a steady 
 hopefulness which is enthusiasm and some- 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 137 
 
 thing more ; a kind of certainty of result which 
 seems to echo the purpose of the Infinite. 
 
 " Some novel power 
 Sprang up forever at a touch, 
 And hope could never hope too much 
 In watching thee from hour to hour." * 
 
 So the parish watches the pastor. This 
 pecuHar cheer is perhaps the reverberation, in 
 the pastoral temper, and through the pastor 
 in all the church life, of the very "joy" of 
 Christ, which seems closely associated with 
 His underlying certainty that His work 
 would avail. "These things have I spoken 
 unto you, that my joy may be in you." 
 
 The modern evolutionist should be a man of 
 hope, in his sense of the reign of law, and of 
 the sure upward progress of life. But this in- 
 tellectualism, left to itself, is liable, as you 
 know, to fits of reaction and depression and 
 is even sometimes turned right around, as in 
 the philosophy of Schopenhauer, into a sci- 
 ence of pessimism. But the Christian pastor 
 laughs pessimism out of court. He works in 
 a great surge of anticipative assurance. In his 
 view pessimism is the snarl of a one-eyed dog, 
 * Tennyson, In Meinoriam. 
 
138 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 or in more respectful phrase, it is a one-sided 
 judgment based upon a partial view of the 
 facts. You reply, Optimism also is a deduc- 
 tion from only half the facts. No ! The major 
 portion of the facts of life, as the evolutionist 
 and the Christian see them, crowd over upon 
 the brighter side. A day and a night together 
 make not one night but one day. Things are 
 not only straining, but straining upward. 
 
 But the pastoral temper, besides being thus 
 rationally hopeful, glows also with the specific 
 Christian gladness — I had almost said glee— 
 and good reason why. It is alive with social 
 kindliness. Its Christmas bells ring all the 
 year. It palpitates with a sense of Christ — 
 the Christ not only of Gennesaret, but of the 
 Resurrection — Christ living and mighty and 
 instantly present, though unseen, in the plen- 
 itude of His beautiful power for moral re- 
 newal everywhere. 
 
 In this mood, rational assurance and spir- 
 itual exhilaration coalesce and produce in their 
 convergence pastoral cheer — a kind of deep 
 gaiety, constant, permanent, indestructible. 
 This gaiety, or buoyancy of leadership, is the 
 " one touch more " which church organiza- 
 tions need for felicitous action. Without it 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 139 
 
 they grind or clatter or are cold. Like the 
 firelight in a " living-room " or oil upon the 
 watch wheel, this buoyant temper enables the 
 church happily and harmoniously to perform 
 its duty in every department. 
 
 Let me quote again from yourselves : " My 
 parish vibrates between levity and lethargy," 
 said one of you, speaking of his summer field. 
 Well ! better that vibration than no movement 
 at all. Get right into the middle of the vibra- 
 tion and inoculate it with true pastoral buoy- 
 ancy. A cork is a little fellow, but all Niag- 
 ara cannot drown it. 
 
 " How to reach the men of the parish ? '' 
 was another of your questions — a very per- 
 emptory one, a very difhcult one. I think 
 perhaps the best answer is suggested right at 
 this point, and it is this: cheerful initiative in 
 developing local parish organization. This is 
 the way to reach men. Men nowadays like to 
 organize, if they can see something good and 
 glad and practically accessible to organize for. 
 They had rather serve on a committee than 
 listen to preaching; and who can challenge 
 their taste? 
 
 Then, too, this cheer, good-humored and 
 genial, with its hint of far-away music, and 
 
140 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 with a touch upon it of the graceful gracious- 
 ness of Christ Himself, is just what is neces- 
 sary to help the pastor to perform, tactfully 
 and happily, his own administrative duty. He 
 practices Christ's art of the gentle justice. 
 
 Fretting business it is to be an omnipresent 
 chairman! You have observed that it is al- 
 ways at the hub where the wheel creaks and 
 binds. Chronic anxiety, if not irritation, is 
 often the synonym of administrative responsi- 
 bility. But clothed with cheer, as the pastor is 
 or may be, proud and happy, as well as vigi- 
 lant and brave, full of a certain self-maintained 
 animation, the pastor meets all the irritating 
 wear and tear, even of committee meetings, 
 with a curious blitheness. Of course, the saints 
 won't always agree with him, — they wouldn't 
 be real saints if they did — for he will not al- 
 ways be in the right and ought not always to 
 be agreed with. However, whether the wind 
 blows high or blows low, a pastor becomes a 
 cheerful expert in taking criticism. Unless 
 you can take a blow as a compliment — side 
 with others against yourself — you haven't 
 learned the rudiments of the Christian pas- 
 torate. 
 
PASTOR AS ORGANIZER AND LEADER 141 
 
 Considerateness, Trustfulness, Hopefulness , 
 these three then, in their combination, repre- 
 sent, as it appears to me, the pastoral spirit in 
 the field of parish leadership, maintaining, in 
 all organized activities, the warmth of per- 
 sonal attention, the freedom of feder- 
 ated independence, the immortal cheer of 
 social Christian enthusiasm. So we carry on 
 the essence of the fraternal and socially media- 
 torial genius of our calling. We surrender 
 nothing, either of the fine comradeship or of 
 the noble priesthood, to any supposed eco- 
 nomic necessity, in conducting parish adminis- 
 tration. On the contrary, these qualities, em- 
 bodied in the pastor and constantly present in 
 his church management, impart to these varied 
 activities themselves the beauty and power of 
 a true ecclesia of God — "many members, yet 
 one body" — a brotherhood of free men in 
 Christ Jesus, availing itself of every modern 
 facility, and organized in the full play of the 
 modern spirit, yet devoted to a supreme spir- 
 itual errand, and illustrating in the commun- 
 ity the social ideals of the kingdom of Christ. 
 
 Considerateness, Trustfulness, and Hopeful- 
 ness ! Why should I not adopt the shorter and 
 
142 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 more familiar words, which better render the 
 immortal Greek of St. Paul — ^love, faith, hope ; 
 and, gentlemen, now as ever, and in the ad- 
 ministrative department of the pastorate not 
 less than in any other, " the greatest of these 
 is love." 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 
 
 In the course of our rapid review of certain 
 aspects of the pastor's relation to his work in 
 our modern time, we reach to-day a closing* 
 glance upon what is commonly regarded as the 
 crowning function of the ministry. Our sub- 
 ject is The Pastor as Preacher. 
 
 Dr. Stalker, of Glasgow, at the outset of 
 his Yale Lectures of 1891, expresses the Prot- 
 estant consensus as to the place of preaching 
 in the ministerial vocation, when he exclaims, 
 " Preaching is the central thing in our work." 
 Yet, later on in the same lectures, he remarks, 
 " Gentlemen, I believe that almost any 
 preacher, on reviewing a ministry of any con- 
 siderable duration, would confess that his 
 great mistake had been the neglect of indi- 
 viduals." 
 
 Are these two sentiments mutually exclu- 
 sive, or is there not a conception of the pastor 
 in the pulpit which may unite them? You, 
 who have done me the honor to follow the 
 argument of these lectures, will know how in- 
 145 
 
146' THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 slant and decisive must be our answer. With 
 regard to this supreme function of the pastor's 
 life, as of every other, we are to maintain our 
 constant point of view and line of thought. 
 
 For another way of stating the same theme 
 would be: the pastoral spirit in the pulpit. 
 What we have to recognize and magnify is 
 precisely the same attitude and temper of mind 
 and heart in preaching which we have endeav- 
 ored to trace in every other department of pas- 
 toral duty. 
 
 Preaching may be textual, after the great 
 manner of Maclaren, or topical, like that of 
 Liddon; it may be expository or hortatory; its 
 style may be that of the quiet homily, or it 
 may flash with that occasional " stab of flame," 
 to use Lowell's epithet, which, in such sermons 
 as those of Jeremy Taylor or Horace Bush- 
 nell, marks the inspiration of genius and de- 
 notes the supreme spiritual insight and appeal ; 
 but in any and every case, true preaching will 
 embody something of the essence of the pas- 
 toral spirit. Human comradeship and Christly 
 sponsorship will, in their unique, pastoral 
 blending, at once warm and elevate the pulpit 
 utterance. 
 
 Speaking thus, I suspect myself of too far- 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 147 
 
 fetched phrase, and must enter my own de- 
 murrer against anything which may seem 
 stilted or visionary in the remarks thus intro- 
 duced. 
 
 I have no sharper dread, in concluding 
 these simple addresses, than that of having 
 appeared to present in them some transcen- 
 dental or overwrought pastoral ideal, remote 
 from the actual pulse-throb of men in our 
 red-blooded time. But we have sought to be 
 Scriptural. It is true we have set our pro- 
 fessional standard high; but so also does the 
 New Testament. We have found our sine 
 qua non for the pastorate to consist in a spe- 
 cific and highly charged state of mind — a fire 
 of fellowship at once with Christ and with 
 men; but the New Testament insists on this 
 also; and the mood itself, thus identified, is 
 not mystical or extravagant, but natural and 
 sane. 
 
 So in particular of the pastor in the pulpit. 
 The pastoral spirit, as I conceive it, does im- 
 part to preaching a unique and exalted tone; 
 but that tone is not rhapsodic, any more than 
 it is ofificially presumptuous or sanctimonious. 
 The pastoral spirit in the pulpit is eminently 
 spontaneous, simple, practical; earnest, surely. 
 
148 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 even to a white heat, but without loss of 
 human perspective. It is tender but not tame ; 
 free because so nobly fraternal; wise because 
 of real knowledge of the people; spiritually- 
 vital because charged with the peculiar ardor 
 of the Christly shepherding. 
 
 We make, therefore, to-day no attempt to 
 introduce a novel theory of preaching or to 
 present any remodeled picture of the preacher. 
 On the contrary, we are to reassert that an- 
 cient and constant view of the pulpit office 
 which is confirmed by the noblest traditions 
 of the Church, and expresses the deepest intui- 
 tion of its ministers. 
 
 Following a simple, three-fold division, we 
 will remind ourselves first of what Christian 
 preaching is ; then, secondly, of its " audi- 
 ence " — who constitute its hearers ; finally and 
 more specifically, in the third place, we shall 
 thus be prepared to ask how, — preaching be- 
 ing what it is, and the congregation being 
 what it is, — that particular temper which we 
 have described as pastoral may dominate the 
 situation thus presented, modulating the 
 preacher's message and matching it both with 
 the man who speaks and with the man who 
 listens ? 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 149 
 
 WHAT IS PREACHING r 
 
 I am seeking no original or exhaustive defi- 
 nition, but will confine myself to the mention 
 of the three factors which always enter into 
 that form of religious address known as Chris- 
 tian preaching. 
 
 I St. The content of the message; 
 
 2nd. The personality of the preacher; 
 
 3rd. The immediate occasion and present 
 need of the people. 
 
 Let me make three citations from three 
 great pulpit masters, of different types, which 
 will bring out, in their order, these three chief 
 and constant factors of true preaching. I will 
 select three American ministers — ^perhaps our 
 foremost names as preachers in three great 
 Protestant communions. They are not now 
 living, but were living not long ago, and they 
 have been, each of them, lecturers at Yale, on 
 the Lyman Beecher Foundation. The first is 
 Bishop Matthew Simpson, of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, one of the most eloquent 
 men in American history, concerning whose 
 strange, half-hypnotic spell upon his hearers 
 we have heard such almost incredible but un- 
 doubtedly authentic incidents, surpassing even 
 
ISO THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 those attributed to Patrick Henry or to Henry 
 Clay. 
 
 Simpson says: "Your office, as preachers, 
 is not to speak as for yourselves, not to speak 
 words which even the wisest men have uttered, 
 but simply to speak the message which God 
 has given. This message He has put in writ- 
 ing. It has been printed. We have it in our 
 hands. You are to take these words and 
 utter them, whether the people bear or for- 
 bear.^' 
 
 This, then, is the first factor, the content 
 of the massage^ which is, in a word, the re- 
 vealed truth of Christ. 
 
 My second quotation is from Phillips 
 Brooks — and there is no name nobler in pul- 
 pit annals. He says, " Truth through person- 
 ality * is our description of real preaching. It 
 is the decay of the personal element that makes 
 the ministry of some old men weak." Those 
 of you who have heard Phillips Brooks will 
 imagine how he would look when he said that ; 
 and the fire yet seems to flicker on the pages 
 in which that regal and rushing mind poured 
 forth his sense of the importance of this per- 
 sonal element of the preacher's power. 
 * Italics ours. 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 151 
 
 My third quotation is from Henry Ward 
 Beecher, the Shakespeare -of the modern pul- 
 pit. With his own unmatched vitality of ex- 
 pression, he fixes attention on the third factor, 
 viz. : the congregation, the occasion, the need, 
 the practical end sought. He remarks : " A 
 preacher is a teacher; but he is more. He 
 looks beyond knowledge to the character which 
 that knowledge is to form. It is not enough 
 for him that men shall know. They must he, 
 A preacher is an artist of the soul" * 
 
 Citations like these could be multiplied in- 
 definitely. They might reproduce a hundred 
 verdicts upon the essence of preaching by its 
 greatest masters, recent and ancient, and in all 
 of them we shall discover clearly set forth, as 
 in what Chrysostom calls " the lofty, large 
 and broad picture offered of these things in 
 the Holy Scriptures," these three prime fac- 
 tors, always to be recognized and adjusted to 
 one another, which make up true preaching — 
 the Christian content of the message, the 
 Christian personality of the preacher, the im- 
 mediate condition and need of the hearer. 
 
 Now even a moment's consideration of the 
 nature of these factors brings sharply into the 
 * Italics ours. 
 
152 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 foreground the vital relation which the pas- 
 toral spirit bears to them, each and all. Two 
 of them are distinctly personal — the person- 
 ality of the preacher himself, and this is the 
 fastor's personality, and the personal need of 
 the hearer, and this only the preacher as pas- 
 tor knows. Even as to the remaining factor, 
 the content of the message, we must maintain 
 that the pastoral sense of it is the truest sense ; 
 for that content is, in a word, the truth of 
 Christ as realized in experience, and it is the 
 pastor's experience which effects such realiza- 
 tion because, as we have seen, the distinctive 
 pastoral consciousness is developed through 
 deepening acquaintance with Christ. 
 
 Then, too, we must remember that this 
 message of Christ which preaching reproduces, 
 is to be not merely in some commonplace and 
 conventional conception thereof, but in Christ's 
 own conception thereof; that is, preaching 
 must present Christ's truth, with something 
 of His perspective of emphasis. His cadence 
 in utterance, His aptness of personal applica- 
 tion. Therefore, plainly, only one who waits 
 long at the Master's feet, as the pastor must, 
 if he is really a pastor, can realize intimately, 
 and so report justly this ensemble of Jesus' 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER iS3 
 
 teaching, the proportions, the shadings, the 
 spiritual rhythm of the Christian revelation. 
 
 But the case becomes infinitely stronger 
 when we consider the personal factors of 
 preaching. In preaching, the noblest of arts, 
 that of the orator, is carried up to a level 
 where the orator becomes, in a true sense, the 
 embodiment of his message. He incarnates it. 
 He incarnadines it, to use the same root word. 
 He is, by Christ's grace and in Christ's name, 
 the personal reincarnation, in human form, of 
 the spirit of that Gospel which he is to pro- 
 claim. Preaching thus differs essentially from 
 other forms of oratory. It is not to be treated 
 as a performance. The preacher stands for his 
 message as well as articulates it. Art in 
 preaching is, after all, at the bottom of it, the 
 art of living, making manhood beautiful and 
 so holding it — holding the whole man, clean 
 body, live brain, consecrated spirit, all as one 
 piece, one lens, set in the white light of truth, 
 letting God take care of the image, if only the 
 crystal itself can be kept consistent and clear. 
 But all this is only another way of saying that 
 the pastoral training and attainment become 
 vital to the preacher and are an essential ante- 
 cedent to true preaching. 
 
IS4 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 We are living in a day when mere declama- 
 tion counts for less and less in public speech. 
 Over-vehemence or easy glibness reacts unfa- 
 vorably, and the impression of sincerity is im- 
 paired. The fluent exhorter, unaware to him- 
 self, lays himself open to some such shrewd 
 criticism, to employ a rough illustration, as 
 that of a New Hampshire farmer who, after 
 listening to a preacher of this sort, and being 
 asked for his opinion, remarked, " Wall, he 
 talks consid'abul ez I do, when Fm lyin' ! " 
 What makes the pulpit message glorious is the 
 impression of supreme sincerity, an impression 
 illustrated in its height by the preaching of 
 such a man as Phillips Brooks — a noble per- 
 sonality, completely identifying itself with a 
 noble message. 
 
 But this identity, this sincerity, is the direct 
 result of pastoral self-culture. No academic 
 training, no rhetorical practice or elocutionary 
 drill can, by itself, accomplish that culture of 
 character whose direct emanation is this utter 
 pulpit sincerity. Only the pastor can put the 
 soul of the ministry into speech. Only the 
 pastoral devotion to the Master and to the 
 man can create this instant identity between 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 15s 
 
 the entire manhood of the speaker and every 
 filament of his message. 
 
 Here we see how it is that the parish edu- 
 cates its own preacher. " We don't pay our 
 debts to our stepping stones," said a sagacious 
 observer of Hfe, and we ministers sadly fail 
 in recognizing our obligation to our people 
 for that feature of earnest personal sincerity 
 in pulpit utterance which they have educated 
 in their minister as pastor and which is more 
 than half his strength. 
 
 And this is especially true to-day, when less 
 than ever the mere echoes of the library suf- 
 fice for the pulpit, when the preacher is bound 
 to go forth into the highways and byways of 
 the time and bring back what is most fine and 
 vital in the actual experience of the current 
 age, to supplement the lore of ancient days in 
 providing pulpit material. Is your sermon 
 fresh and Interesting to yourself? Not other- 
 wise will it touch your people. Would you 
 yourself take it up, once it got cold, for your 
 own pleasure or uplift? If not, then it is not 
 fit for another man. The very curl of the 
 crest of the new age must be in it, as well 
 as the Inmost throb of your own convictions. 
 
IS6 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 Then it will strike the nerve of your neigh- 
 bor. And it is the pastor's habit of meeting 
 men on the instant in swift living colloquy 
 which opens the straight road to the attain- 
 ment of this fresh and practical vitaHty in 
 preaching. 
 
 THE CONGREGATION 
 
 But, further and mope particularly, true 
 preaching, in any complete or noble conception 
 of it, not only strives to proclaim a true message, 
 not only to incarnate the truth of that message 
 in roused personal earnestness, it also strives to 
 adapt the manner of its utterance so as to meet 
 the actual needs of the people addressed. In- 
 deed, adaptation is too weak a word. "I am 
 made all things to all men, that I might by all 
 means gain some," cried the orator Paul. 
 Preaching is not soliloquy. Preaching is not 
 telling people what I think. That is like talk- 
 ing to a fish instead of fishing for him. Preach- 
 ing is stnting the heart of the message to the 
 heart of the man, through a heart in yourself 
 which is in tune with both message and man. 
 
 What is the genius of the Incarnation } The 
 genius of the Christian Incarnation is the prin- 
 ciple of embodying a higher spirit in the finest 
 forms of a lower but current environment, for 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 157 
 
 the sake of lifting the whole of that environ- 
 ment to a higher level. The genius of preach- 
 ing seeks such an incarnation of adaptation. 
 
 O fellow-students, is it not a thrilling thing 
 to preach, or even to try to preach and fail, in 
 the glory of such an ideal of preaching as this, 
 with a realized Christ behind us, so near that 
 He can touch us, and with the living men of 
 to-day in front of us, so near that we can 
 touch them! 
 
 We must somehow burn in upon our own 
 souls the conviction that our profession is 
 more than a profession, more than a vocation 
 even, for a vocation may be a priest's profes- 
 sion. It is a passion, as of one who finds him- 
 self Chrisfs rescue-man. It is an affair of red 
 blood and white fire, demanding, employ- 
 ing all we have and are, a "savor*' of life 
 unto life. 
 
 Let us look then for a moment, directly and 
 intently, at that wonderful, fascinating, for- 
 midable creature, the congregation itself. It 
 is more than an audience. I am ashamed of 
 that thin word " audience," as applied to a 
 church full of worshippers and parishioners. 
 What is a congregation? It is an assemblage 
 representing many homes and families gath- 
 
IS8 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 ered for the most august and intimate of all 
 purposes, the worship of the Infinite God, an 
 assembly constituting a spiritual fraternity, 
 made such in the Supreme Name, Memory, 
 and Power of Jesus Christ, the Crucified Re- 
 deemer and Risen Master, who is believed to 
 be spiritually present and in the vivid sense 
 of Whose Presence everything is said and 
 done. This is what we say we believe. Such 
 a fraternal assembly, I say, in such a presence, 
 is waiting to hear a certain utterance which, 
 in the name of this Lord, and sent through 
 the charged medium of His commissioned 
 servant, is to meet what? Some theoretic or 
 academic situation? No, — but rather to meet 
 the actual shapes of moral and spiritual want, 
 peril, pain, need and instant, practical crisis 
 in the several arenas of a thousand lives. 
 
 What a spectacle! There is nothing else 
 like it or approaching it on the earth. Famil- 
 iarity with it has dulled our minds to its 
 unique greatness. To the seeing eye and the 
 feeling soul, it is dramatic to the ultimate de- 
 gree. Yes! it is more than dramatic; it is 
 critical as surgery, sacramental as Calvary. 
 
 Look more closely at these men and women. 
 Are they alive to all this ? Far from it. That 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 159 
 
 is the criticalness of the situation. Yet they 
 may be made ahve. 
 
 What is the surface aspect?* That of an 
 eager, hurried, sensitive mass of humanity, 
 all in its best clothes indeed, and presum- 
 ably in its best spiritual form also, and yet 
 appealing very deeply to sympathy, — a thou- 
 sand souls of every class, occupation, mental 
 aptitude, — a throng heterogeneous enough, yet 
 strangely unified in the rushing torrent of our 
 modern life, as trees, dissimilar, bend evenly 
 in a gale. Here are business men, professional 
 men, v^orking men, the rich and the poor, 
 young faces, old faces, sad faces, glad faces, 
 mindless faces — a pathetic crowd. Here are 
 people trying to forget; here are comedies 
 without merriment, and tragedies without dig- 
 nity ; here are grand men and grander women, 
 beaten down by the flail of misfortune; here 
 is humanity careless of its glory and callous as 
 to its shame ; here is the age itself, both devout 
 and defiant, both believing and skeptical, vol- 
 canic in energy, perturbed even in repose, 
 seeking any distraction as a relief from week- 
 
 * This and the two following paragraphs are repro- 
 duced from the author's " Preaching in the New Age," 
 Carew Lectures, Hartford Theological Seminary, 1900. 
 Revell & Co., 1902. 
 
i6o THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 day strain ; volatile in sensations, lashed by am- 
 bitions, passionately alive, though now hushed 
 because it is Sunday, driven by forces, novel 
 and splendid, through efforts it cannot stop 
 to measure, toward ends it will not lift itself 
 to see. 
 
 But all this is not in the average conscious- 
 ness. The real mental mood is quiescent, half 
 somnolent after the hot week. The people 
 bow, they stand, they sing — some of them, if 
 the choir will give them a chance; they are 
 outwardly attentive. Here and there are a 
 few really roused, religious minds; but the 
 average tone is that of conventional decorum 
 united with a vague seriousness. It is the vast, 
 roaring week-day world arresting itself for the 
 moment, and trying, rather dimly, to remem- 
 ber that it ought to remember eternity. 
 
 Look more closely still. All this is the sur- 
 face aspect. But something more is present 
 in this strange, tremendous creature, the con- 
 gregation. The congregation is really two 
 congregations, just as every man is two men. 
 There is an undertone in every man in which 
 lies the residuum of the ancestral generations, 
 the rich sub-soil of Christian civilization. 
 Within yonder churchgoer who seems so su- 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER i6i 
 
 perficial, so careless, is a man of latent sensi- 
 bilities, and faiths, too, which, however dull 
 or unaware the man is at the moment, per- 
 petuate in him the essence of ancient creed and 
 choral, the fragrance of ancient sacraments, 
 the reverberation of old heroisms, the valor 
 and patience of Christian centuries. There is 
 a unique and solemn splendor in the fact that 
 each individual is a kind of flask or crucible 
 into which all the generations have poured 
 something of their best. The Lord's Prayer, 
 the Triune Benediction, the deep, old creed 
 phrases, " I believe in God, the Father Al- 
 mighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, 
 our Lord," the "Gloria," the " Te Deum," 
 the " holy invocations " at the Christening, 
 the Communion, the bridal, the burial, — these 
 have recorded themselves in the very sub- 
 structure of the mind of the modern hearer, 
 in the most intimate and instinctive turns of 
 cerebral process and spiritual aspiration. The 
 invisible congregation within the visible is the 
 humanity which Christ Himself has touched 
 and is still touching in the subtlest, holiest 
 ways. 
 
 You say I am idealizing the congregation. 
 No, I am trying to tell the real, full truth 
 
i62 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 about it, if we stand to the mark of what we, 
 as Christians, allege that we believe. 
 
 Now it is along these old spiritual channels 
 of mental association that the pastor — mark 
 the word, underscore it, redden it, whiten it, 
 charge it with the full, nameless, pastoral vol- 
 ume of human fellowship and Christly media- 
 tion — the pastor, who knows the people, loves 
 them and is watching for them, man by man, 
 is to pour the flood of his echoed ministry of 
 Christ to the soul. 
 
 Plainly only the pastor can do this, and 
 really match his people's need. Here on the 
 instant he is to launch the eager, careful stroke 
 that shall win his man. All depends upon his 
 pastoral knowledge of that man. He is to 
 concentrate his whole self, his whole sense of 
 Christ's truth, into some arrowshot of winged 
 syllables which shall go home. But he must 
 know his target, as only the pastor can know 
 it. Only the preacher, as pastor, can see and 
 realize at once both congregations, that one 
 which is outward, patent, self-conscious; and 
 that one which is inward, latent, subliminal, so 
 to speak. By the same word he must address 
 both the outward and the inward hearer and 
 make that hearer aware of his own inner self. 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 163 
 
 The pulpit mood resulting from this effort 
 is peculiar, winning, masterful. In its blended 
 tension and exhilaration, its sense of critical- 
 ness and concentration upon an immediate er- 
 rand, it is not so utterly dissimilar, though in 
 a far higher field, to that which Harry New- 
 bold so wonderfully puts into his ringing lines 
 about the last inning on the great cricket field, 
 which I cannot translate into the loftier dialect 
 of our own profession as it realizes the sense 
 of crisis in pastoral appeal, without a shiver of 
 the nerves. 
 
 "There's a breathless hush in the close to-night, 
 
 Ten to make and the match to win, 
 A bumping pitch and a blinding light, 
 
 One hour to play and the last man in. 
 And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat. 
 
 Or the selfish love of a season's fame; 
 But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote — 
 
 * Play up, and play the game.' " 
 
 Now, if something like this which we have 
 tried to indicate is the nature of preaching, 
 and if something like this which we have en- 
 deavored to outline, is the condition and need 
 of the congregation, what manner of men are 
 we if we do not admit the pastoral spirit and 
 temper not only to a place but to a first place. 
 
i64 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 in the pulpit? Preach from the texts of peo- 
 ple's lives. 
 
 I asked four members of this senior class 
 whether their most effective sermon was not 
 one which they had been led to make as the 
 sequel to some personal pastoral effort, and 
 every one of the four answered in the affirma- 
 tive. I could say the same; most ministers 
 could, I fancy. 
 
 " Few sermons are as long as they seem," 
 quaintly remarks our genial friend Dr. Cro- 
 thers. Nothing but the pastoral sense of er- 
 rand in them will make them seem as short as 
 they really are. Not for the " salvation of 
 sermons,'' as some one has wittily said, but for 
 the salvation of men does the preacher preach ; 
 and the men to be saved are right in front of 
 you, not remote abstractions. Whether you 
 preach extemporaneously or from carefully 
 written manuscript or from some " dishevelled 
 and dissolute spatter of ink," as my friend 
 Dr. Kelley, of the Methodist Review, once 
 called his outline " notes," you will employ 
 your method as only your doorway to an 
 instant grapple with your audience. "A 
 preacher is a wrestler with men," said Beecher. 
 And the victory which is sought is not mere 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 165 
 
 assent or admiration, nor is it limited by the 
 conventional ideal of a sudden conversion, 
 though it may include that. We seek to save 
 fnen to he men, vitally, ethically, and all up and 
 down the scale of practical living, so that they 
 shall be saved to truer thoughts, kinder service, 
 purer lives — saved to be better neighbors and 
 nobler citizens — saved to save others. 
 
 Now, the men who are thus to be lifted 
 upon some higher terrace of Christ's broad 
 salvation are the men at the instant pres- 
 ent. The pastor knows them; therefore he 
 can speak to them of what touches their ac- 
 tual need and matches the current of their 
 thoughts. The pastor loves them; therefore 
 he can speak to them with the frank fearless- 
 ness of a recognized and attested friendship. 
 The pastor shepherds them and cares for the 
 little lambs in their home folds; therefore he 
 can speak to them, with a conceded right of 
 counsel, and therefore also, if he does speak 
 to them in this pastoral way, they will listen 
 to him. 
 
 Nor will the intellectual quality of the ser- 
 mon be at all injured thereby. On the con- 
 trary, the theological and literary elements of 
 discourse, as if they knew their master, love 
 
i66 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 to array themselves in natural and effective 
 forms beneath the aegis of an errand of life — ■ 
 vital fellowship with men, vital fellowship with 
 Christ, vital effort to bring the real Christ to 
 the real man. So the treatment of every theme 
 is shaped and is modulated for its instant per- 
 sonal errand. Homiletics comes down from 
 its dusty pedestal and takes its lesson from the 
 wayside watch, and all the sermon is suffused 
 with the clear, firm, gentle, brave quality of 
 the shepherd's considerate care. Only if you 
 want to hit a man in this corner of the church, 
 you will be careful steadfastly to look the other 
 way, into the opposite corner, for the very 
 lUroma of the pastorate is courtesy. 
 
 THE PASTOR IN THE SERVICE 
 
 The same pastoral solicitude will appear in 
 all the conduct of the church service both be- 
 fore and after the sermon. I cannot with suf- 
 ficient earnestness remind you, my honored 
 fellow-students, that from the first instant 
 when you enter the pulpit and the service 
 opens, you are yotir people's pastoral man. 
 Every tone, every inflection, every office of 
 reading, and pre-eminently of prayer, is to 
 be bathed in the yearning earnestness of a 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 167 
 
 brother and sponsor; and as the service pro- 
 ceeds, the entire scenery of the previous pas- 
 toral week flashes up into its pulpit bloom. 
 You will read the Scripture, whether the text 
 be narrative, lyric, didactic, as if listening to 
 the accompanying recitative from a hundred 
 homes. Your choice of hymns will be the pas- 
 tor's choice. You will pray, — O my brothers, 
 you will pray as though all your dumb con- 
 gregation found its voice in you. 
 
 ". . . Hear his sighs, though mute 
 Unskillful with what words to pray, let me 
 Interpret for him." * 
 
 Such prayer will not be an address to the 
 Lord or to an audience. It will be tender and 
 holy — a comrade's cry to the Chief Compan- 
 ion — a sponsor's call to the Chief Shepherd. 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things, both great and small." t 
 
 Prayer should be prayer, not prolix, not 
 repetitious, not garrulous, not explanatory, not 
 discursive, but brief, reverent, gentle, vital. 
 Quaint George Fuller is not so far from the 
 
 * Milton. t Coleridge. 
 
i68 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 mark when he says, " In extemporary prayer, 
 what men most admire God least regard- 
 eth.'' 
 
 I have heard, and you have heard, with an 
 ache that went far deeper than criticism, 
 prayers full of a thin and fussy emphasis, — no 
 dignity or reverence, no repose, no depth of 
 appreciation of what pubhc prayer assumes, no 
 real soul in the prayer. Such prayer is not 
 pastoral prayer. 
 
 And just here one word, by the way, as to 
 the week-night Prayer Meeting, the despair of 
 so many a pastor's heart. I know but one 
 great rule : Be your whole, rouse dy pastoral 
 self, then go to your chapel and let your parish 
 deal with itself through you. 
 
 Then, last of all, the pastoral spirit follows 
 the sermon, or rather follows it up, by carry- 
 ing it out into the parish, making it the unob- 
 trusive text for a score of interviews, for 
 wayside allusions, for genial turns of adminis- 
 tration. The pastor walks into the sermon, 
 and the sermon walks out with the pastor. 
 This gives coherence and continuity to the en- 
 tire ministerial life. The Sunday service is 
 not a weekly lectureship, but a pastor's watch- 
 fire on the road, along which people and pas- 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 169 
 
 tor are moving together in one common and 
 constant march. 
 
 CLOSING WORD 
 
 Fellow-Students: It would argue ill for our 
 consistency in following the canons of con- 
 struction adopted in the preparation of these 
 addresses did I allow myself to loiter at their 
 close, or to indulge in any vain attempt to 
 cover their homespun plainness by an ambitious 
 finale. 
 
 I have tried simply to talk to you as I would 
 in my study to younger brothers, about our 
 common calling on its pastoral side, finding 
 the germ of all that I have said to you in what 
 you said to me last November, when you ex- 
 plained to me your own practical conception 
 of the Christian pastorate in our great day. 
 I have not sought novelties or subtleties. I 
 have quoted not much from books; they are 
 open to you. I have quoted from yourselves. 
 With your own faith and feeling as a guide we 
 have, as it were, stepped down together into 
 the tumult and thunder of the great modern 
 arena which summons you. There we have 
 sought to discover what kind of pastor the age 
 needs and demands. We have been thrilled 
 
170 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 by the instant evidence that the pastor wanted 
 now is, as at the first launch of Christianity, 
 precisely the man most trained and tuned into 
 fellowship with men through fellowship with 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This discovery fills us with joy, even when 
 confronted by a task so serious and strenuous 
 as that which now challenges a Christian pas- 
 tor. All the time is alive, and in a sense all 
 its life is everywhere. But this is as we would 
 have it. We will, by Christ's grace, bring the 
 world-throb into the heart of our local par- 
 ishes. 
 
 Some good men will tell you that these are 
 days of menace and alarm, and so they are; 
 but the age is Christ's age, for all that. In 
 all the loud tumult of our rocking time He 
 still walks as of old upon the waves of Gen- 
 nesaret. His breath is on the air, His hand 
 is on the soul. That was a true word of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, who said at the 
 great London Conference last summer, " It is 
 an age in which men are seeking the spiritual, 
 even when they do not consciously accept 
 Christianity." The age, dazzled by its own 
 fires, is yet stumbling on to meet our Christ, 
 while we, on our part, carrying Christ in our 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 171 
 
 hearts, must run forth to meet the age. How 
 to make from this superb wealth of fresh ma- 
 terials a new ''body of Christ," this is our 
 fascinating, absorbing errand. 
 
 What the age is hungering for and search- 
 ing after is Truth in forms of Justice, and 
 Right in forms of Beauty. We are to exhibit 
 in Christ this very tmion of "truth and 
 grace." I must think that if Christ were to 
 speak now, He would surprise us all by how 
 much in the modern world He would approve. 
 During these many centuries His spirit has 
 been at work, and He would not disavow the 
 results of His own working. He is " stand- 
 ing at this latter day upon the earth." We 
 must detect and interpret His smile on the 
 time. 
 
 No mistake is more serious than to belittle 
 current criticism and discussion, for surely the 
 spirit of God is moving through the channels 
 of this very discussion itself, towards what 
 Albrecht Ritschl calls "the moral union of 
 all men," in which is to be realized the true 
 kingdom of Christ. May we not even believe 
 that in the modern union of a discriminating 
 intellectual temper, with a warm and catholic 
 altruism, we are to find not only the mark of 
 
172 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 Christ on the age, but even a kind of resurrec- 
 tion of Christ Himself. Doubt is not disbelief. 
 The soul, like the ship, may swing on its an- 
 chor, yet be anchored. Science, standing on 
 the far rim of the known, is silent in front of 
 the newly realized vastness of the yet un- 
 known, and in that silence rational faith is 
 reborn. The social issue of the twentieth cen- 
 tury is to be between a dream of human fel- 
 lowship without Christ, and a manifestation of 
 human fellowship in Christ. The errand of 
 the church may have heretofore seemed for- 
 mal; it is now vital. 
 
 You will sometimes be discouraged because 
 the avalanche of demand is so tremendous. 
 Do not be discouraged. A republic is always 
 an ethical and spiritual battlefield; but Christ 
 is the Captain of the noble democracy. So, 
 when you are fair tired out with conflict and 
 effort, then " let up," sit down for a space, 
 fold your hands and see things go, for they 
 are going up, because God lives as well as you, 
 and lives in His own world, and Christ is 
 " His power unto salvation." 
 
 Be sincere, not subjectively merely, but in 
 outward impression also. Insist upon things 
 being what they seem, especially in yourself. 
 
THE PASTOR AS PREACHER 173 
 
 Be kind, in some fresh accent of reality. Carry 
 your lantern in front of your cudgel, not your 
 cudgel in front of your lantern. Be coura- 
 geous. When you plunge into the jungle of 
 great towns and mingle with the swarms of 
 men, you must still dwell in that New Jeru- 
 salem of the mind which every year is laying 
 anew its " foundations of jasper," and swing- 
 ing on surer hinges its gates of pearl. 
 
 Cultivate noble professional friendships. 
 " We four," wrote the young Neander to one 
 of his fellow-students, " will establish at Halle 
 a true * Civitas Dei,' a City of God, whose 
 foundation forever is friendship." 
 
 Most of all, — if one may dare humbly and 
 reverently to express a sacred and divine thing 
 in a plain, human way, — cultivate the sense of 
 companionship with Jesus, the Christ. The 
 alpha and omega of the pastorate is there. 
 
 God with you, comrades. Be genial toward 
 thoughts and toward men, but for your orders 
 go up only to Christ and to the higher terraces 
 of your own spirit, where He walks. Dare to 
 fling yourself out upon what seems to you, in 
 Christ's name, surely true. Maintain the 
 splendid jet of roused and ready power, in 
 nerve and brain, and in the knighthood of the 
 
174 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR 
 
 loyal soul, and so be God's man, Christ's man 
 in the midst of the vast and tossing time. We 
 have, we say, but one life to live. Drop the 
 *' but." We have one life to live. 
 
 So saying, I have done. Brothers, fare you 
 well. Work in love. Work to save. The 
 keynote to-day in our vocation is spiritual 
 chivalry. Make the pastorate glow. Make 
 that word pastor to entitle the supreme joy 
 as well as the supreme devotion of your life. 
 Christ is the Master-Truth, the Master-Power. 
 He sends you forth. He is with you. In Him 
 fare you well. 
 
Date Due 
 
 D 4 '46 
 
 H 
 

 iilili'^