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 Cuyler, Theodore L. 
 
 1909. 
 The young preacher 
 
 1822- 
 

THE YOUNG PREACHER 
 
THE YOUNG PREACHER 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D. 
 
 LATE PASTOR OF LAFAYETTE AVENUE CHURCH, BROOKLYN 
 
 £ 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 112 Fifth Avenue 148 & 150 Madison St. 
 
 Publishers 0/ Evangelical Literature 
 
Copyright, 
 
 1893, 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company. 
 
The following chapters have already ap- 
 peared in the "Golden Rule," and are now 
 published in a more permanent form, at the 
 request of many readers of that journal. 
 
 T. L. C. 
 
TO 
 MY YOUNG BRETHREN WHO ARE CALLED OF GOD 
 TO PREACH 
 
 "JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED" 
 
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
 Vll 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Why should you be a Minister ? 1 
 
 II. Pastoral Work 13 
 
 III. Growing Sermons 25 
 
 IV. More about Sermcn-Growing 37 
 
 V. The Delivery of Sermons 49 
 
 VI. Health and Habits 61 
 
 VII. Winning Souls 73 
 
 VIII. How to have a Working Church 87 
 
 IX. The Man behind the Message 99 
 
 IX 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 WHY SHOULD YOU BE A MINISTER? 
 
I. 
 
 WHY SHOULD YOU BE A MINISTER? 
 
 IN this series of articles addressed to 
 young preachers I shall draw chiefly 
 from ray own personal experience and 
 observations during the last forty-six 
 years. Superlatively happy years have 
 they been to me; for I have often said 
 that no monarch's throne and no presi- 
 dential chair is so exalted as a pulpit in 
 which a living preacher presents a living 
 Christ to dying souls. Every minister 
 who reads these columns, and is worthy 
 of his high calling, will doubtless echo 
 the same sentiment. But a vast number 
 of young Christians among our readers 
 are raising the question, Ought I to 
 enter the ministry? Let me say a few 
 
 3 
 
4 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 frank words to those who are debating 
 with themselves this vitally important 
 question. 
 
 That the demand in our country for 
 effective ministers is far in excess of the 
 present supply is very evident. Our 
 population increases more rapidly than 
 the supply of preachers; and of those 
 who have entered the ministry, a con- 
 siderable proportion have evidently mis- 
 taken their calling. No mistake can be 
 more lamentable than this ; sometimes it 
 is made from a false estimate of one's 
 self, and sometimes from the urgent per- 
 suasions of indiscreet friends. But if 
 there are some in the sacred ministry 
 who ought not to be there, I feel quite 
 sure that there are many more outside 
 of the ministry who ought to be there. 
 The legal, medical, editorial, engineering, 
 and some other professions, are over- 
 crowded. The only occupation in Amer- 
 ica that is not overdone is the occupa- 
 
WHY SHOULD YOU BE A MINISTER? 5 
 
 tion of serving Jesus Christ and saving 
 souls. I do not undervalue the conse- 
 crated labor of laymen ; I do not affirm 
 that a Christian cannot serve his Master 
 effectively in any other sphere than that 
 of the ministry ; but I do affirm that the 
 ambition for worldly gains and worldly 
 honors is drawing some of the church's 
 best blood into their greedy outlets. All 
 this is undeniably true ; yet, whenever a 
 young man comes to me for advice in re- 
 gard to entering the ministry, I generally 
 put him through a course of pretty close 
 questions. 
 
 In the first place, my good brother, 
 have you any natural gift of speech? 
 The chief business of a preacher is to 
 speak; and if, from either physical or 
 mental deficiency, you have no ability to 
 address an audience, then you will be as 
 useless as a bell without any clapper. 
 Great orators are few, and it is not nec- 
 essary that you should be one ; mere flu- 
 
6 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 ency of utterance with nothing to utter 
 will make you only a " tinkling cymbal" ; 
 and yet a certain degree of fluent speech 
 is indispensable if you ever expect to 
 command any auditors. Test yourself in 
 the Christian Endeavor meetings or else- 
 where, and find out whether you can say 
 a good thing in such a way as to make 
 people listen to you. If, after several 
 fair and honest trials, you completely 
 fail, then you may conclude that God did 
 not make you for a preacher. Serve him 
 in some other way; but do not let a 
 pious intention deceive you into a pro- 
 fession for which you are not fitted. 
 
 Second, have you the physical health 
 to endure the strain that the duties of 
 the ministry will lay upon you? Some 
 preachers, like Richard Baxter, Robert 
 Hall, and Dr. Pay son, of Portland, have 
 wrought a glorious work in spite of the 
 bodily infirmities that overtook them; 
 but it is not safe for any young man to 
 
WHY SHOULD YOU BE A MINISTER? 7 
 
 undertake the ministry if he is an inva- 
 lid, or even likely to become one. Next 
 to a heart full of love to Christ, and a clear 
 brain, you will need good lungs and good 
 legs; the first, in order to preach; and 
 the other, in order to go about among 
 your flock. If you are too frail to endure 
 the strain of study and public speaking, 
 if your nerves are rickety and your stom- 
 ach hopelessly dyspeptic, then you will 
 enter upon your work heavily handi- 
 capped. At a later time I will offer 
 some hints to ministers on the preserva- 
 tion of health ; but do not start out with 
 no health to preserve. 
 
 Third, have you the mental furniture 
 to equip you for the ministry of the gos- 
 pel ! Genius is not essential, unless it be 
 " a genius of godliness." Pulpit geniuses 
 are rare; and, if God intended to save 
 the world by them, he would have created 
 more of them. Some of the most thor- 
 oughly useful, effective, and blessed miu- 
 
8 THE TOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 isters I know of have been, or are, men 
 of very moderate intellectual powers. No 
 two pastors in New York led more of 
 their congregations to Jesus Christ than 
 did the late Dr. B. and Dr. N. ; yet 
 neither of them ever uttered a brilliant 
 thing. They both had eminent piety, 
 warm, loving hearts, and an abundance 
 of good common sense. This last quality 
 is indispensable. If you have not learn- 
 ing, you can by hard study acquire it ; if 
 you have not a strong constitution, you 
 may by wise regimen strengthen it; if 
 you have not money to pay for your 
 education, you may earn it; but if you 
 have not good common sense, then (as a 
 quaint old preacher said) " may God pity 
 you, for you cannot get that anywhere." 
 
 Fourth, are you fervently and honestly 
 praying for heavenly direction and care- 
 fully watching the leadings of Providence ? 
 When God calls a man to the ministry, 
 •he is apt to let the man know it. I be- 
 
WHY SHOULD YOU BE A MINISTER? 9 
 
 lieve in answers to honest prayer, and I 
 believe in the leadings of the Holy Spirit ; 
 and if yon believe in them also, and will 
 keep yonr eyes open and heart hnmble 
 and docile, yon will be likely to get some 
 clear indications as to yonr dnty. Dur- 
 ing the first eighteen months after I grad- 
 uated from college — months mostly spent 
 in teaching— I was balancing between the 
 law and the ministry. Many of my rela- 
 tives urged me to become a lawyer, as 
 my father and grandfather had been ; but 
 my godly mother had dedicated me to the 
 ministry from infancy, and her counsels 
 all leaned toward the pulpit. One win- 
 ter afternoon I rode off five miles to a 
 prayer-meeting in a neighboring village. 
 It was held in the parlor of a private 
 house. I arose and spoke for ten min- 
 utes ; and, when the meeting was over, a 
 person said to me, " Your talk did me 
 good." On my way home the thought 
 flashed into my mind, " If ten minutes' 
 
10 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 talk to-day helped one soul, why not 
 preach all the time ? " That one thought 
 decided me on the spot. Our lives turn 
 on small pivots ; and, if you will let God 
 lead you, the path will open before your 
 footsteps. 
 
 Finally, let me say that no young man 
 ought to enter the ministry unless he 
 feels an intense and invincible longing 
 for the work, — a desire so strong that he 
 will gladly submit to any hardships and 
 privations in order to carry out his holy 
 purpose. When Dr. John Todd, the au- 
 thor of the " Student's Manual," set out 
 for his education for the ministry, he 
 walked all the way to college, and slept 
 on the ground out-of-doors for lack of 
 money to pay for his lodgings. If you 
 do not feel in your very bones, " Woe is 
 me if I cannot preach the gospel ! " then 
 let it alone. God is not calling you to 
 a work that an archangel might covet. 
 You will need all your zeal, all your 
 
WHY SHOULD YOU BE A MINISTER f 11 
 
 faith, and all your staying power, to 
 carry you through ; for the life of a faith- 
 ful, courageous, and consecrated minister 
 is not a swing in a hammock. It is the 
 happiest life on earth, if you enter upon 
 it with a pure, unselfish motive, and pur- 
 sue it, not for your own glory, but for 
 the glory of your Master. Go to that 
 all-wise and loving Master, my young 
 brother, and ask him the question that 
 Saul of Tarsus asked, " Lord, what wilt 
 thou have me to do f " Whatever he saith 
 unto your conscience, do it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 PASTORAL WORK—HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 13 
 
II. 
 
 PASTORAL WORK — HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 THE work of every minister is twofold ; 
 it is partly in the pulpit and partly 
 out of the pulpit. The first is the work 
 of the preacher; the second is that of 
 the pastor. The two ought to be insep- 
 arable ; what the providence of God and 
 good common sense have joined togeth- 
 er, let no man venture to put asunder. 
 You will be in your pulpit only four or 
 five hours in each week; what you are 
 to be and to do during those infinitely 
 important hours will be the theme of my 
 plain, loving counsels to you in a future 
 article. But your labors outside of your 
 pulpit will occupy more or less of your 
 time during every day of the week ; they 
 
 15 
 
16 THE YOVXG PREACHER. 
 
 embrace the whole sphere of your pas- 
 toral intercourse with your flock, — your 
 dealings with the awakened, with the 
 sick and the afflicted, with the bereaved 
 and the troubled; your organization of 
 Christian work in your parish, and your 
 executive oversight of all the manifold 
 activities of the church. Your great busi- 
 ness is to win souls to Jesus Christ, and 
 to build them up in godly living ; and 
 all this cannot be accomplished by two 
 sermons a week, even if they were the 
 best that Paul himself could deliver. In 
 fact, the largest part of Paul's recorded 
 work was quite other than public preach- 
 ing. As for our blessed Lord, he has 
 left us one extended discourse and a few 
 shorter ones; but oh, how niany narra- 
 tives we have of his personal visits, per- 
 sonal conversations, and labors of love 
 with the sick, the sinning, and the suffer- 
 ing! He was the Shepherd who knew 
 every sheep. 
 
PASTORAL WORK— HOW TO DO IT. 17 
 
 Determine, then, from the very start, 
 that you will be a thorough pastor. Only 
 a few men can be great preachers, but 
 every minister who has a good heart and 
 good sense can be a good pastor. Devote 
 the forenoon of every day, except Mon- 
 day, to your study, and do not allow any- 
 body to intrude upon you, unless he or 
 she comes there on the Master's business. 
 My custom was to pin on my study- 
 door a card, " Very Busy ; " this had the 
 wholesome effect of shutting out mere 
 formal calls, and of shortening the calls 
 of those who had some important errand. 
 Having given your forenoon to your stud- 
 ies, give your afternoons to pastoral visi- 
 tation. The physical exercise alone will 
 be a benefit, and the spiritual benefits will 
 be tenfold more. Secure a complete rec- 
 ord of the "whereabouts" of your con- 
 gregation. Request from the pulpit that 
 prompt information be given you of any 
 change of residence, and also of any case 
 
18 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 of sickness or trouble of any kind. En- 
 courage your people to send you word 
 when there is any case of religious inter- 
 est in their families or any matter of im- 
 portance to discuss with you. In short, 
 treat your flock exactly as if they were 
 your own family. Be perfectly at home 
 in their homes. 
 
 You should manage to visit every fam- 
 ily at least once in each year, and as much 
 oftener as circumstances may require. 
 If you are wise enough not to have 
 any " loafing " places, you can easily get 
 through the largest congregation that you 
 are likely ever to have. Spurgeon had an 
 assistant pastor for his immense flock; 
 but he made it a rule to visit the sick or 
 the dying in as many cases as possible. 
 He once remarked to a friend, "I have 
 been to-day to visit two of my church- 
 members who are near eternity, and both 
 are as happy as if they were going to a 
 wedding. Oh, it makes me preach like 
 
PASTORAL WORK— HOW TO DO IT. 19 
 
 a lion when I see how my people can 
 die." 
 
 It has always been my custom to take 
 a particular neighborhood, and to call on 
 every parishioner in that street or dis- 
 trict ; but I have seldom found it wise to 
 send word in advance to any family that 
 I would visit them on a certain day or 
 hour. For I might be prevented from 
 coming, and thus subject them to disap- 
 pointment or annoyance. Eun the risk 
 as to finding them at home ; and, if they 
 are all absent, then leave your card, and 
 try again at another time. If you come 
 in upon your people unawares, as you 
 commonly will, it will depend upon your- 
 self to secure a cordial welcome. If you 
 come in with a hearty salutation, and ask 
 them to allow you to sit down with them 
 wherever they are, regardless of dress 
 or ceremony, you will soon be perfectly 
 at home with them. No one should be 
 so welcome as a loving pastor. Do not 
 
20 THE TOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 squander your call in idle trivialities or 
 gossip. Encourage them to talk with you 
 about the affairs of your church, about the 
 Sabbath services and the truths preached, 
 and the influence that your message is 
 having upon them. In this way you may 
 discover whether your shots are striking, 
 for the gunnery that hits no one is not 
 worth the powder. Fishing for compli- 
 ments is beneath you ; but it does cheer 
 a pastor's heart to be told, " Your sermon 
 last Sunday brought me a great blessing ; " 
 " It helped me all the week ; " or, better 
 still, " Your sermon brought me to decide 
 for Christ." In a careful and delicate way 
 seek to draw out your people in regard 
 to their spiritual condition; if you find 
 that any of the family is anxious about 
 his or her soul, or has any peculiar spir- 
 itual trouble, then manage to have a pri- 
 vate and unreserved conversation with 
 that person. Be careful how you ever 
 violate the confidence reposed in you. A 
 
PASTORAL WORK— HOW TO DO IT. 21 
 
 family physician and a faithful pastor 
 often have to know some things that they 
 do not like to know, but they should not 
 let any one else know them. 
 
 This intimate, personal intercourse with 
 your flock will enable you to bring the un- 
 decided to a decision for Christ. It will 
 also enable you to clear up difficulties and 
 to solve doubts, gently to rebuke the de- 
 linquent, and to encourage the diffident 
 and desponding. A close, hearty, person- 
 al talk will often accomplish more than a 
 hundred sermons. As a school of practi- 
 cal theology there is nothing like dealing 
 with a human soul in its various needs or 
 conflicts and temptations. The first re- 
 vival that I ever had (in my little church 
 at Burlington, K J.) was worth more to 
 me than the same length of time spent in 
 the theological seminary. Next to God's 
 Word, the most important thing for you 
 to understand is the human heart. Out 
 of the knowledge that you gain in your 
 
22 THE YOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 intimate intercourse with your people you 
 will often make some of your best practi- 
 cal discourses. My people have given me 
 almost as many sermons as I have given 
 to them. A living person is worth a 
 dozen dead books to instruct you. 
 
 "A house-going minister makes a 
 church-going people." He wins hearts. 
 If you make yourself at home in every- 
 body's home, if you are hearty in . your 
 manner, — especially with the children, — 
 if you come often to visit them in their 
 sickness and in their sorrow, if you deal 
 with them frankly and lovingly, you will 
 gradually weave a cord around their 
 hearts that is not easily broken. They 
 will forgive a poor sermon, and stand a 
 plain sermon without flinching. It is 
 your business to be popular, not to grat- 
 ify vanity, but to make your heaven ly 
 message winsome. You represent Christ. 
 Study to win everybody. Take an inter- 
 est in everybody. Never slight the 
 
PASTORAL WORK— HOW TO DO IT. 23 
 
 smallest child, or poorest or most ob- 
 scure human creature in your parish. 
 Never knuckle to the rich ; never neglect 
 the poor. The most effective ministers, 
 who build up the most solid churches, 
 are the good pastors. If many a minis- 
 ter would take part of the time that he 
 now spends in polishing his sermons (and 
 often polishing all the edge off), and would 
 devote it to going among his flock, he 
 would have a bigger congregation and 
 vastly more conversions to Christ. All 
 this pastoral work will consume time, 
 and will often put a sharp strain on your 
 nerves. No matter; it will pay in the 
 end. Nothing costs too much that will 
 save a soul. The shepherd who is above 
 the watching and the tending and the 
 nursing of his flock will soon have no 
 flock to watch. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 GROWING SERMONS. 
 
 25 
 
III. 
 
 GROWING SERMONS. 
 
 A GREAT many sermons are made, and 
 very bunglingly made, too; but the 
 best sermons grow. The seed, or root, 
 of them is lodged in the preacher's mind, 
 and often by the direct agency of the 
 Holy Spirit. It should always be a pas- 
 sage from God's inspired and infallible 
 Word. Your divine commission is to 
 "preach the Word," and whatever topic 
 or subject should be revolving in your 
 mind, yet the sermon on that topic should 
 have a root in the Bible. The men who 
 draw from God's inexhaustible reservoir 
 of truth are commonly the men who hold 
 out ; for human brains often run dry, but 
 the Bible never does. Spurgeon was al- 
 
 27 
 
28 THE YOUXG PREACHEB. 
 
 ways a closely textual preacher, and that 
 was one great secret of his perennial 
 power. The brilliant Theodore Parker, 
 of Boston, sometimes took his text from 
 Shakespeare; he concocted therefrom 
 bright essays, but they did not contain 
 gospel enough to save a mouse. 
 
 It has always been my custom to 
 keep a little memorandum-book in which 
 I noted down any Bible passage that 
 seemed especially adapted to the pulpit, 
 and so I always had by me a supply to 
 draw from when I sat down to work on 
 my sermon on Tuesday morning; for I 
 seldom left the choice of my theme any 
 later than that day in the week. Be on 
 the lookout for themes all the time and 
 everywhere. As I happened to meet a 
 man one day, and mentioned to him the 
 fact that a criminal was to be hanged on 
 that day, he replied, "Yes, poor creature, 
 the wages of sin is death." That old, fa- 
 miliar passage so impressed me at the 
 
GROWING SERMONS. 29 
 
 moment that I went home and began a 
 discourse on it immediately. It is a hap- 
 py thing for you when some out-of-the- 
 way passage that is seldom preached from 
 opens itself to you in a fresh and striking 
 way; for then you can present to your 
 people something that they had probably 
 never heard before, and the very novelty 
 of the text excites curiosity and enchains 
 attention. Sensational preachers often 
 hit upon odd texts, and handle them 
 grotesquely; as when one of this tribe 
 preached on the words, " Let her drive ! " 
 and another one founded a discousre 
 against the practice of immersion on the 
 words, " Beware of divers." While clowns 
 in the pulpit perpetrate such follies, there 
 is still a legitimate argument in favor of 
 novel texts, when handled wisely and de- 
 voutly ; for such presentations of sacred 
 truth give your hearers a new idea of the 
 inexhaustible wealth and wide applica- 
 tions of God's Word. 
 
30 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 When you have selected your passage 
 from the Bible, let your sermon grow 
 legitimately out of it. The connection 
 between every good sermon and its text 
 is just as vital as the connection between 
 an apple-tree and its roots. Sometimes 
 a lazy minister endeavors to palm off an 
 old sermon for a new one by changing 
 the text; but this artifice should soon 
 expose itself, for the change would be 
 like the decapitation of "a man, fatal to 
 life. The text ought to spring up as the 
 root of your discourse, and send its trunk 
 towering aloft as the central idea of that 
 discourse. All the arguments, instruc- 
 tions, and exhortations are but as the 
 boughs branching off from this central 
 truth, giving breadth, vigor, and spiritual 
 beauty to the whole organic production. 
 The unity of your sermon — yes, and the 
 spiritual power of it, also — will common- 
 ly depend upon its adherence to the great 
 divine truth contained in the inspired 
 
GROWING SERMONS. 31 
 
 text. Remember that your text is God's 
 part of your sermou; aud from that 
 should sprout out manifold vital and vig- 
 orous thoughts, like the fruit-laden limbs 
 of a Bartlett pear-tree. Be careful that 
 you do not tie on the trunk a lot of dead 
 sticks that have no organic connection 
 with the trunk, and only disfigure its 
 comeliness. The more thoroughly you 
 get your text into your very soul, the 
 more you will get it into your sermon. 
 Very often you may introduce the results 
 of your own personal experience into 
 your preaching ; and, if you live close to 
 God, he will be pouring his Spirit into 
 your heart; and these experiences will 
 be among the most richly profitable por- 
 tions of your pulpit instructions. If you 
 water your text with prayer, it will assur- 
 edly grow into a goodly tree, and "the 
 fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon." 
 
 As to what may be called the mechan- 
 ical process of sermonizing, you must fol- 
 
32 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 low your own instincts. There lias been, 
 and probably will ever be, an endless dis- 
 cussion about the comparative merits of 
 written and of extemporaneous preach- 
 ing. No rule is the best rule. Find out 
 by practice which method you can use to 
 the best advantage, and then pursue it. 
 No man ever fails who understands his 
 forte, and no man succeeds who does not. 
 Some ministers cannot extemporize ef- 
 fectively, if they try ever so hard ; there 
 are others who, like Gladstone, can think 
 best when they are on their legs, and are 
 inspired by an audience. Probably the 
 two greatest British preachers of this 
 century were Chalmers and Spurgeon. 
 Chalmers wrote every line of his magnifi- 
 cent discourses, and delivered them with 
 such tremendous vehemence that he made 
 the rafters roar. Spurgeon was a prince 
 of extemporaneous orators. When I once 
 asked him whether he ever wrote any of 
 his sermons, or even any portion of them, 
 
GROWING SERMONS. 33 
 
 his reply was, "I had rather be hung." 
 His method was to fill up the cask all 
 through the week by diligent study of 
 God's Word and of all nutritious books ; 
 and then, when Saturday evening came, 
 he selected his particular text, and on Sun- 
 day morning he just turned the spigot, 
 and out flowed the pure, sweet gospel 
 in an abundant stream. No man could 
 preach after that fashion who was not a 
 close student of books and of human na- 
 ture, and who had not a great gift of 
 ready, fluent speech. Young brother, if 
 you find that your sermons are running 
 out, or furnish only a thin, scanty stream, 
 fill up your cask. 
 
 The great danger of extemporaneous 
 preaching is that it may lead you into 
 disconnected rambling, or mere effusive 
 gush. Therefore you ought to form your 
 style, at the outset, by careful and sys- 
 tematic writing. When Spurgeon was 
 a youth, he wrote most of his sermons. 
 
34 TEE TOrXG PREACHER. 
 
 Dr. Richard S. Storrs is by all odds the 
 most elegant and affluent extemporane- 
 ous orator in America; but for twenty 
 years he carefully wrote all his discourses. 
 Henry Ward Beecher was in the habit of 
 writing about half of the sermon; and 
 then, turning away from his notes, he in- 
 terjected the thoughts that came to him 
 in the heat of the moment, and presently 
 returned to his manuscript. This has 
 been my own method of sermonizing, 
 until about fifteen years ago, when I 
 adopted the plan of preparing a short 
 brief and tucking it into a Bagster's 
 Bible. Dr. John Hall writes carefully, 
 and leaves his manuscripts at home. So 
 does Dr. Alexander McLaren, of Man- 
 chester, who is to-day the most splendid 
 sermonizer in Great Britain. The elo- 
 quent Guthrie of Scotland committed 
 his discourses to memory, and delivered 
 them in a torrent of godly emotion. 
 Without citing any further cases, let 
 
GBOWING SERMONS. 35 
 
 me exhort you to study your sermons 
 most thoroughly, conscientiously, and 
 prayerfully, whether you commit them 
 to paper or not. The most slipshod and 
 abominable of all methods is that of ex- 
 temporaneous thinking, or attempting to 
 shake a sermon out of an empty sleeve. 
 It is this style of offhand pulpit chatter 
 that has brought extemporaneous preach- 
 ing into discredit. If you are careful to 
 plant a text in your mind, water it with 
 prayer, and let it grow all the week, and 
 branch out into fruitful boughs of prac- 
 tical spiritual truth, you will never be 
 ashamed to look at your people from 
 your pulpit, or to look at yourself when 
 you go home from church. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 MORE ABOUT SERMON-GROWING. 
 
 37 
 

IV. 
 
 MORE ABOUT SERMON-GROWING. 
 
 AS every orchard contains a variety of 
 fruit-trees, so you should aim at 
 variety in the growth of your discourses. 
 Some preachers run into an excess of 
 doctrinal sermons; others, into the con- 
 troversial ; and others, into the hortatory. 
 Dr. Charles Hodge used to select his texts 
 from the epistles, and he preached theol- 
 ogy — and very sound theology, too; Dr. 
 Talmage is apt to find his texts in the 
 narrative portions of the Old Testament, 
 and his sermons are vivid pictures. The 
 Bible is a miracle of variety ; every note 
 of the gamut is struck in its pages, and 
 every chord in the human heart is made 
 to vibrate by its truths. 
 
 39 
 
40 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 The backbone of your work in the pul- 
 pit ought to be doctrinal. Jesus Christ 
 dealt in doctrine ; in the third chapter of 
 John, during the course of a single con- 
 versation with Nicodemus, he discussed 
 human guilt, the atonement, regenera- 
 tion, the Trinity, divine love in redemp- 
 tion, the need of faith, and the promise 
 of heaven. These great central truths 
 are all packed into one short, simple, 
 solemn talk. Paul is the great master 
 of divine theology; his Epistle to the 
 Romans was well pronounced by Cole- 
 ridge to be the profoundest book in 
 existence. And oh, how his mighty soul 
 kindles and burns with holy emotion ! 
 My young brother, if you are ever dry 
 or ever dull, do not let it be when you 
 are handling these great central truths. 
 Preach doctrine with passion. Make your 
 arguments red-hot with heavenly fire. 
 A man who cannot get into a holy glow 
 over such themes as the atonement, the 
 
MOBE ABOUT SERMON-GROWING. 41 
 
 new birth, the glories of redemption, the 
 resurrection, and the judgment to come, 
 can never be a great precaher or hold 
 thoughtful minds under the spell of his 
 power. Finney, the king of modern evan- 
 gelists, bombarded the consciences of sin- 
 ners with a tremendous broadside -of doc- 
 trine ; the most acute lawyers and judges 
 were attracted by his logical discourses, 
 and many of them were converted. Yet 
 he could be very rich and tender in deal- 
 ing with the desponding and the troubled. 
 He used to say that the Bible fared very 
 badly ; some Christians gave away all of 
 its precious promises, and sinners threw 
 away all of its threatenings ; and so there 
 was not much left of it. In our day Eev. 
 B. Fay Mills exhibits many of the traits 
 of Finney, and his close, pungent, doctri- 
 nal preaching to the conscience is the 
 chief element of his power. Solid in- 
 struction ought to come before the most 
 persuasive appeals ; in other words, you 
 
42 TEE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 must tell your hearers what to believe and 
 what to do before you urge them to do it. 
 Merely hortatory sermons seldom amount 
 to much. 
 
 Your main reliance must be upon the 
 great central, doctrinal truths of God's 
 Word ; these you should preach with all 
 the fresh and vivid illustrations, and all 
 the fervor, that you can command. But 
 the Bible is very rich in history and biog- 
 raphy. This is one of the internal evi- 
 dences of its divine origin ; being written 
 for human instruction and guidance, it 
 contains every variety of human charac- 
 ter. What a marvelous portrait-gallery 
 is that which begins with Adam, and is 
 followed by such a procession of patri- 
 archs, soldiers, statesmen, singers, proph- 
 ets, rulers, apostles, mingled with hum- 
 ble maidens, servants, and little children ! 
 Some of these characters — such as Enoch, 
 G-aius, Dorcas, Demas, and Tertius — are 
 painted in a single sentence. Out of all 
 
MORE ABOUT SERMOX-GBOWIXG. 43 
 
 this immense gallery you can select sub- 
 jects for scores, yes, for hundreds, of 
 sermons. I have always found that bio- 
 graphical discourses were not only inter- 
 esting to almost every class of auditors, 
 but could often be made the most practi- 
 cal and profitable. Robertson of Brigh- 
 ton has a sermon on Eli, and Dr. Guthrie 
 one on Demas, and Dr. McLaren one on 
 Judas (the text being " See thou to that "), 
 which are superb specimens of portraiture, 
 that present pungent truth to every man's 
 conscience. Rev. John McNeill, who is 
 often styled " the Scottish Spurgeon," 
 deals very largely with biographical inci- 
 dents; and his sermons on the sacrifice 
 of Abraham and the expulsion of Hagar 
 are brilliant specimens of word-painting, 
 and at the same time of acute analysis of 
 character and presentation of some cen- 
 tral truths of the gospel. When present- 
 ing Scripture incidents, be careful to ad- 
 here to the inspired narrative, and not to 
 
44 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 overlay it with any " modern improve- 
 ments." Even one of the greatest evan- 
 gelists of the day, who is a grand practi- 
 cal expounder of Scripture, was tempted 
 to make the servants of Naaman say to 
 him, " Suppose the prophet had told you 
 to take cod-liver oil three times a day for 
 ten years, wouldn't you have doiie it ? " 
 
 There is a third kind of sermons, which 
 our forefathers used to call experimental, 
 because they deal mostly with the inner 
 life and the spiritual experience of God's 
 people. The seeds of this sort of dis- 
 courses are found in great abundance in 
 the Psalms and in John's Gospel. Bun- 
 yan's immortal Pilgrim is the unrivaled 
 masterpiece in the line of Christian ex- 
 perience ; after him come Jeremy Taylor's 
 " Holy Living and Dying," Rutherford's 
 "Letters," and President Edwards on 
 the " Religious Affections " ; of all living 
 preachers along this line, none excels 
 Rev. F. B. Meyer, of London, who has 
 
MORE ABOUT SERMON-GROWING. 45 
 
 attended the Northfield conferences for 
 two summers. Tliis is a sort of preach- 
 ing that requires close, prayerful study 
 of the Word and of the workings of the 
 Holy Spirit on your own heart. The 
 deeper the soil of godliness in your own 
 soul, the richer will be the crop of exper- 
 imental sermons sprouting out of it. If 
 you are a faithful pastor, studying the 
 experiences of your own people, you will 
 gather no little material from them also. 
 Preach, my dear brother, to the heart. 
 The head is of but half as much conse- 
 quence. Your pulpit is, not a professor's 
 chair, nor your audience a class of uni- 
 versity students. They are a company 
 of immortal creatures, who come to your 
 church every Sunday from the toils, the 
 temptations, the trials, the joys, and the 
 sorrows of the week. They want to be 
 fed, and not with whipped syllabub or 
 confectionery. Most of them will need a 
 lift ; bruised hearts will need to be bound 
 
46 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 up; feeble knees to be strengthened; a 
 word in season must be spoken to the 
 weak, the weary, and the woebegone. 
 Tonic sermons are always in order; the 
 stronger, the better. Many of our people 
 are like eight-day clocks ; they get terri- 
 bly run down during the week, and re- 
 quire to be wound up again on Sunday. 
 Try to steep your sermons in God's Word 
 and in prayer, so that when you preach 
 them they will infuse iron into the blood. 
 Of course you will use all the illustra- 
 tions you can get hold of; but be careful 
 that they illustrate something. When 
 lugged into a sermon merely for the sake 
 of ornament, they are as absurdly out of 
 place as a bouquet would be if tied fast 
 to a plough-handle. The divine Teacher 
 set us the example of making vital truths 
 intelligible by illustrations when he spake 
 so often in parables. All congregations 
 relish incidents, when they are pat for the 
 purpose. Do not be afraid of an anec- 
 
MORE ABOUT SERMON-GROWING. 47 
 
 dote, if it is serious enough for God's 
 house, and helps to drive the truth into 
 the hearts of your auditors. During my 
 early ministry I delivered a discourse to 
 young men, at Saratoga, and closed it 
 with a solemn story of a man who died 
 of remorse at the exposure of his crime. 
 The late Hon. John McLean, a judge of 
 the United States Supreme Court, was 
 in the congregation ; and the next day I 
 called to pay my respects to him. He 
 said to me, "My young brother, I was 
 much interested in that story you told 
 last evening; it clinched the sermon. 
 
 Our ministers at C used to introduce 
 
 illustrative anecdotes; but it seems to 
 have gone out of fashion, and I am sorry 
 for it." I replied to him, "Well, I am 
 glad to have a decision of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States in favor of 
 telling an anecdote or personal incident 
 in the pulpit." There is one principle 
 that covers all cases; it is this: What- 
 
48 TEE YOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 ever makes the gospel of Jesus Christ 
 more clear to the understanding, and 
 more effective in awakening sinners, in 
 converting souls, in edifying believers, 
 and in promoting holiness, is never out 
 of place in your pulpit. When you are 
 preaching for souls, use any and every 
 weapon of truth within your reach. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 THE DELIVERY OF SERMONS. 
 
 49 
 
V. 
 
 THE DELIVERY OF SERMONS. 
 
 THE preaching of the gospel is spiritual 
 gunnery; and many a well-loaded 
 cartridge has failed to reach its mark 
 from the lack of powder to propel it. A 
 good sermon committed to paper, or care- 
 fully prepared in your mind, is merely a 
 preliminary process ; when you get into 
 your pulpit, you must preach. And 
 preaching is not paper-reading, nor is it 
 mere frothy gush. It is the faithful pres- 
 entation of God's inspired truth to im- 
 mortal souls; and that truth must be 
 addressed not only to the reason, but 
 to the conscience and to the affections. 
 Your aim must be to arrest the attention 
 of your auditors, — to arouse those who 
 
 51 
 
52 ■ TEE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 are indifferent, to warn the careless, to 
 rebuke the faithless professor, as well as 
 to "comfort the sorrowing, strengthen the 
 weak, and edify believers. As the am- 
 bassador of the living God, yon must de- 
 mand and command a hearing, cost what 
 it may. An advocate strikes for the jury ; 
 and if he does not gain the verdict, his 
 effort is a failure. You must strike for 
 souls; and if you do not succeed (with 
 the sought help of the Holy Spirit) in 
 moving your hearers one inch toward a 
 better life, then your preaching is a fail- 
 ure. Results are what you are after, and 
 they will never be secured if you address 
 your auditors in a cold, or careless, or 
 formal and perfunctory manner. 
 
 The delivery of your sermons, my 
 young brother, is half the battle. Why 
 load your gun, unless you can send your 
 charge to the mark ? Many an ordinary 
 discourse has produced an extraordinary 
 effect by an intensely earnest delivery. 
 
THE DELIVERY OF SERMOXS. 53 
 
 It is equally true that many an excellent 
 discourse has failed to produce any im- 
 pression on account of the dull and 
 monotonous manner of the speaker. If 
 you do not warm yourself up, you may 
 be sure that you will never warm up 
 your congregation. I once asked Albert 
 Barnes, "Who is the greatest preacher 
 you have ever heard ! " Mr. Barnes, who 
 was himself a very calm, clear-headed 
 thinker, replied, " I cannot answer your 
 question exactly ; but I can tell you what 
 was the grandest specimen of preaching 
 I ever heard ; it was by Edward N. Kirk, 
 before my congregation during the height 
 of a revival. It produced a tremendous 
 effect." Dr. Kirk was not a profound 
 scholar or thinker; but he was a born 
 orator, with a superb voice and grace- 
 ful manner and persuasive tone, and his 
 whole soul was red-hot with a holy love 
 of Jesus and of dying souls. About the 
 time that I had this talk with Mr. Barnes 
 
54 THE YOUNG PREACHES. 
 
 I was in Boston, and at a public meeting 
 there I heard a very able production read 
 in a lifeless manner before a listless audi- 
 ence. As I was coming out, a gentleman 
 said to me, "If Edward N. Kirk had 
 had hold of that address, he would have 
 thrilled everybody in the house." Cer- 
 tainly, my old friend Kirk had a remark- 
 able gift of saying even a common thing 
 with most uncommon power. 
 
 You may call this " magnetism" if you 
 choose, or by any other name; but I 
 would define it as the fire in your own 
 soul that not only kindles your tongue, 
 but also kindles the hearts before you. 
 Paul must have had this when he ceased 
 not to warn the Ephesians, night and day, 
 with tears. It has been the characteristic 
 of nearly all the most effective preachers. 
 Dr. Chalmers had it ; McCheyne had it ; 
 Dr. Guthrie had it to such a degree that 
 a Highland drover standing in the packed 
 auditory spoke out audibly, " And did ye 
 
THE DELIVERY OF SERMONS. 55 
 
 iver hear the like o' that ! " The sermons 
 of Frederick W. Robertson, of Brighton, 
 are models of vigorous thought and clear- 
 cut expression ; yet they owed much of 
 their power at the time to their being 
 delivered "with a fiery glow." In my 
 own humble experience I have seen my 
 congregation much moved by a certain 
 discourse, and spiritual results have fol- 
 lowed it. At another time and place the 
 same sermon has produced no impression, 
 and I feel quite confident that the differ- 
 ence was more with me than with my 
 hearers. Physical condition may have 
 something to do with a minister's power 
 in delivery; but the chief element in "y\dt 
 the eloquence that awakens and converts /a 
 souls is the unction of the Holy Spirit. 
 Your best power, my brother, is power 
 from the Holy Ghost. You may have 
 that if you empty yourself of pride and 
 vainglory and foolish fear of man, and 
 then seek the inpouring of the divine 
 
56 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 Spirit in his fullness. Do not be discour- 
 aged if your voice is weak, or is harsh 
 and unmusical; do not trouble yourself 
 too much about the gracefulness of your 
 gestures. Dr. Alexander Duff's eloquence 
 swept his audience like a hurricane,"but 
 such outlandish contortions of gestures as 
 his, I never witnessed elsewhere. Phys- 
 ical defects may often be overcome by res- 
 olute training, as Bishop Phillips Brooks 
 overcame them ; and, if you fall into un- 
 couth and disagreeable habits of intona- 
 tion or gesticulation, get some good friend 
 to score you out of them. You never will 
 become an effective preacher if you are 
 unwilling to accept the sharpest criticisms 
 kindly; and faithful are the wounds of 
 a wife, if she sometimes cuts your self- 
 conceit to the quick, or prunes off your 
 bad habits without mercy. 
 
 During my three years in Princeton 
 Theological Seminary I made it a rule to 
 go out as often as possible and address 
 
THE DELIVERY OF SERMONS. 57 
 
 little meetings in the neighboring school- 
 houses, and found this a very beneficial 
 method of gaining practice. A young 
 preacher must get accustomed to the 
 sound of his own voice; if he is natu- 
 rally timid and bashful, he must learn to 
 face an audience. He must first learn 
 to speak at all; afterward he may learn 
 to speak well. " I spoke every evening 
 but one during my first session of Par- 
 liament," said Charles James Fox, " and 
 I am only sorry that I did "not speak on 
 that evening also." It was by such con- 
 stant practicing on the patience of his 
 auditors that Fox became one of the most 
 splendid masters of parliamentary debate. 
 It is a happy thing for a young minister 
 to begin his ministry in a small congre- 
 gation. He has more time for study ; he 
 has a better chance to become intimately 
 acquainted with individual characters, 
 and also a smaller audience to face. The 
 first congregation that I was called to 
 
58 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 serve contained about forty families; 
 three or four of these were wealthy and 
 cultured, and the rest were plain mechan- 
 ics, with a few gardeners and coachmen. 
 I aimed my sermons at the comprehen- 
 sion of the gardeners and the coachmen 
 at the rear of the house, leaving my cul- 
 tured parishioners to gather what they 
 could from the sermon on its way. One 
 of these rich folks was a very distin- 
 guished lawyer. After I had delivered 
 a very earnest sermon on " the worth of 
 the soul " I went home and said to my- 
 self, " Lawyer C must have thought 
 
 that was a camp-meeting exhortation." 
 He met me during the week, and to my 
 astonishment he said to me, "Young 
 man, I thank you for that sermon last 
 Sunday ; it had the two best qualities of 
 preaching — simplicity and earnestness. 
 If I had a student in my office who was 
 not more in earnest to win his first ten- 
 dollar suit before a justice of the peace 
 
THE DELIVERY OF SERMONS. 59 
 
 than some ministers seem to be in trying 
 to save souls, I would kick such a student 
 out of my office." 
 
 That lawyer's remark did me more good 
 than any month's study in the seminary. 
 It taught me that the cultured relish plain, 
 simple truth as much as do the ignorant, 
 and that downright earnestness to save 
 souls " hides a multitude of sins " in us 
 raw young preachers. If you want to 
 be a natural and forceful speaker, do not 
 trammel yourself too much with the can- 
 ons of elocution. Load your piece with 
 God's truth, take good aim, and then fire 
 away. The less you think about your- 
 self while in the pulpit, the better. Leave 
 your own self-consciousness and your 
 own reputation down under the pulpit 
 stairs. Look at your auditors as immor- 
 tal beings bound to the judgment-seat 
 of Christ, and remember that you are to 
 meet them there, and to render your ac- 
 count for discharging your duty to them. 
 
60 THE TOVXG PREACHER. 
 
 Then seek the power from on high, and 
 preach for sonls ! Preach as if the light 
 of eternity flashed into your face. The 
 more soul you put into your preaching, 
 the more souls you will bring to Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 HEALTH AND HABITS. 
 
 61 
 
M 
 
 VI. 
 
 HEALTH AND HABITS. 
 
 ANY people have the very foolish 
 impression that the life of a minis- 
 ter is a very easy one. But the pastor of 
 a large parish, who devotes himself con- 
 scientiously to his work, needs a strong 
 mind in a strong body. Every student 
 for the ministry should use abundant 
 physical exercise during his preparatory 
 training, so that when he enters upon his 
 labors he may be able to " endure hard- 
 ness as a good soldier," and not be a 
 candidate for the hospital. It is rarely 
 a wise thing to have a first settlement 
 in a great city. A small parish in the 
 rural regions is the best place in which 
 to begin. There the young man will 
 
 63 
 
C4 TEE TOUNO riiEACEEE. 
 
 have undisturbed opportunity for study- 
 ing God's Word, and human nature, too ; 
 he will have the bracing influence of 
 country air, and of long walks or rides 
 to visit his flock. Almost all the great- 
 est ministers of both Britain and America 
 have served their apprenticeship in hum- 
 ble parishes, while those who rush pre- 
 cipitately into ambitious settlements com- 
 monly break down. The clock that is 
 not content to strike one will never strike 
 twelve. 
 
 Bodily health, my young brother, is 
 more easily kept than regained ; and Dr. 
 Prevention is the best physician that you 
 can employ. I am not very strong phys- 
 ically, but I have taken good care of a 
 good constitution, so that, during an 
 active ministry of forty-seven years, I 
 have never spent an entire Sabbath in 
 bed. On three or four occasions I have 
 suffered from ailments that kept me from 
 church, but did not put me on my back. 
 
HEALTH AND HABITS. 65 
 
 The best parts of me have always been 
 my lungs and my legs; they are really 
 the most important parts, for the one 
 does the preaching, and the other does 
 the pastoral visiting. As to the voice, I 
 have avoided too many warm wrappings 
 about the throat, have applied plenty of 
 cold water and friction, and have never 
 been addicted to troches and other like 
 trumpery. Nor is it a good practice to 
 drink cold water very often while speak- 
 ing. 
 
 Take a total-abstinence pledge, at the 
 very start, to refrain from all sorts of" 
 alcoholic stimulants and all sorts of in- 
 digestible food. A minister sometimes 
 calls in as an ally what proves to be a 
 deadly enemy. Long years ago, the elo- 
 quent Dr. K fell into sad inebriation 
 
 from having used port-wine to enable 
 him, as he honestly said, " to preach with 
 more power." He repented in dust and 
 ashes, and spent the closing years of his 
 
66 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 godly life as an entire abstainer. One of 
 the most zealous ministers of this city 
 probably shortened his life by a lamenta- 
 ble slavery to strong coffee and tobacco. 
 Both coffee and tea are harmless luxuries 
 to most of us when used in moderation. 
 Famous old Dr. Emmons, who died at 
 ninety-five, used to drink his coffee " one 
 half milk, and the other half sugar " ; but 
 when I saw the British prime minister, 
 Lord Beaconsfield, trembling like an aspen 
 leaf, I was not surprised that his wife 
 said, "My husband likes his coffee as 
 black as ink and as hot as Tophet." 
 God's prohibitory law against the use of 
 exciting stimulants appears in that they 
 are all armed with a whip of scorpions. 
 
 My chief panacea has always been 
 sound, healthful sleep. This is the great 
 secret of Mr. Gladstone's longevity and 
 marvelous power at the age of eighty- 
 three. He once told me that he managed 
 to lock all his cares, and parliamentary 
 
HEALTH AND HABITS. 67 
 
 debates, and perplexities of public office, 
 outside of his bedchamber door. The 
 men who live the longest, and do the most 
 effective work, are commonly good sleep- 
 ers. If they cannot secure enough sleep at 
 night, they make it up by a short nap in 
 the middle of the day. When a man who 
 has so much strain on his brain and his 
 nervous sensibilities as a pastor has, goes 
 to his pillow, he should school himself to 
 the habit of dismissing all thoughts about 
 outside matters. If this costs him some 
 difficulty, he should pray for divine help 
 to do it. As for anodynes to quiet down 
 the nervous excitements of preaching, or 
 of revival meetings, I have found nothing 
 so wholesome as a good bowl of bread 
 and milk. Dr. Lyman Beecher used to 
 accomplish the same result by shoveling 
 a pile of gravel to and fro in his cellar, 
 and sometimes by dancing to the music 
 of his own violin. 
 
 Too many ministers toil at their ser- 
 
68 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 nions until ten or eleven o'clock, and then 
 retire, with throbbing nerves, to their 
 sleepless beds. This is suicide. The man 
 that invented " midnight oil " deserves a 
 purgatory of everlasting nightmare. My 
 own rule is never to touch a sermon by 
 lamplight. One hour in the morning is 
 worth two or three at night. Get into 
 your study every morning — except Mon- 
 day — as early as you can, and then to 
 your books and your pen. If your mind 
 is dull and inactive, do not attempt to 
 force it into the preparation of a sermon 
 that will probably put your congregation 
 to sleep. Throw down your pen ; take up 
 a book, or try a short nap or a short 
 walk. But when your mind is especial- 
 ly clear and alert, then bolt your study- 
 door against all intruders, and make the 
 very most of such precious golden hours. 
 More than once I have had a whole ser- 
 mon burst on me at a single sitting, and 
 I did not stay my pen until every nimble 
 
HEALTH AND HABITS. 69 
 
 thought was captured aud securely fast- 
 ened to paper. " Redeeming the time" 
 literally signifies " buying up opportuni- 
 ties " ; and when these favored moments 
 for coining thought are vouchsafed to 
 you, let no thief break in and steal the 
 mintage. 
 
 Do not be surprised that I exhort you 
 so earnestly to the care of your bodily 
 health and to the formation of good men- 
 tal habits. They are both of vital impor- 
 tance for your usefulness. Your health 
 affects the spirtual health of your flock. 
 If you are sleepless during the week, 
 you will become enervated and irritable, 
 and will put your congregation to sleep 
 by your dull sermons. If you do not di- 
 gest your food, you will be very likely to 
 torment them with indigestible preach- 
 ments. As soon as your study becomes 
 so excessive as to fag you out, then shut 
 up your books, or drop your pen, and be 
 off at something else. It is the work 
 
7i) TEE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 that we attempt when we are tired that 
 hurts us; yes, and hurts those that are 
 obliged to listen to us. 
 
 Sometimes you will be tempted to re- 
 peat a former discourse, from lack of time 
 to prepare a new one. If you do this, 
 see to it that the discourse is improved 
 on its second delivery. Cut out its weak 
 points ; strengthen it with fresh thought ; 
 and, if it was originally delivered on a 
 stormy Sabbath, it will be well to give it 
 a larger audience under better auspices. 
 Do not be afraid to repeat a thorough- 
 ly good thing. Many folks have short 
 memories. A poor, lean, juiceless ser- 
 mon ought never to be preached once; 
 but a rich, nutritious discourse, which 
 God has already blessed, may be made 
 still more forcible on a second or third 
 delivery. Dr. Edward Dorr Griffin de- 
 livered his great sermon on " The Worth 
 of the Sonl" ninety times; he never 
 wearied of it, nor did those who had 
 
HEALTH AND HABITS. 71 
 
 heard it more than once. Fewer ser- 
 mons and richer ones should be the aim 
 of those that really edify Christ's people 
 and win souls to the Saviour. There is 
 an increasing fashion of advertising the 
 topics of discourse in the newspapers. 
 It is a bad fashion, and none of the great 
 preachers, such as Guthrie, McLaren, Lid- 
 don, Newman Hall and Spurgeon, have 
 practiced it abroad ; and very few of our 
 best preachers practice it in our country. 
 There are more objections to this custom 
 than I have time and space to specify. 
 The best topic is that which will save the 
 most souls ; the best advertisement is the 
 love of your people and the blessing of 
 God upon your ministry. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 WINNING SOULS. 
 
 73 
 
VII. 
 
 WINNING SOULS. 
 
 SOME one asked Dr. Lyman Beecher, 
 in his old age, " What is the greatest 
 of all things!" The sturdy veteran re- 
 plied, " It is not theology ; it is not con- 
 troversy; it is saving souls." He had 
 been the king of the American pulpit; 
 but, as he looked back over his noble 
 career, he felt that the greatest good that 
 he had accomplished was in leading guilty 
 and polluted souls to their only Saviour. 
 David Brainerd, one of the most cele- 
 brated of our missionaries, while he was 
 laboring among the poor, benighted In- 
 dians on the banks of the Delaware, once 
 said, " I care not where I live, or what 
 hardships I go through, so that I can but 
 
 75 
 
76 THE YOUXG PEE AC HER. 
 
 gain souls to Christ. While I am asleep, 
 I dream of these things; as soon as I 
 awake, the first thing I think of is this 
 great work. All my desire is the con- 
 version of sinners, and all my hope is in 
 God." Our blessed Master came into our 
 sin-cursed world to seek and to save the 
 lost. To convert men to Jesus Christ by 
 the aid of the Holy Spirit was the master- 
 purpose of Paul and his fellow-apostles. 
 The great Reformation, under the lead 
 of Luther and Calvin and Knox, was far 
 more than a protestation against Popish 
 errors; it was a direct bringing of be- 
 nighted souls to the cross for salvation. 
 Whiten 1 eld and the Wesley s made this 
 their chief business. The most successful 
 preacher of modern times was Spurgeon ; 
 and he once asked me the question, " How 
 far do your ablest American ministers 
 aim mainly at the conversion of souls ? " 
 The question that my beloved British 
 brother asked me I would propound to 
 
WINNING SOULS. 77 
 
 every young preacher that reads these 
 lines. No minister is likely to succeed in 
 anything that he undertakes with only 
 half a heart; he can never do what he 
 does not even attempt to do. If your 
 whole heart is not bent on the glorious 
 work of converting sinners, by the help of 
 God, you will never accomplish it. You 
 may produce much valuable and elevat- 
 ing thought ; you may argue ingeniously 
 against current skepticism ; you may un- 
 fold sound principles of morality; you 
 may say many eloquent things about 
 " developing humanity," and in behalf of 
 benevolent reform ; but if you stop short 
 of leading immortal souls to Jesus Christ, 
 then your ministry will be, at the most 
 vital point, a failure. Nor is it a vague 
 idea about " reaching the masses," or sav- 
 ing people in the general, that must in- 
 spire you. Men are saved or lost indi- 
 vidually. The Bible declares that "he 
 which converteth a sinner from the error 
 
78 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 of his way shall save a soul from death, 
 and shall cover a multitude of sins." A 
 single soul was a sufficient audience for 
 the Son of God at the well of Syehar and 
 in the inquiry- room of Nicodemus. 
 
 1. Aim then, my brother, to make your 
 preaching direct, pointed, individualiz- 
 ing. Let every unconverted person in 
 the house be made to feel, " That means 
 me." Not every sermon is to be addressed 
 to the impenitent, by any means; but 
 when you are presenting Christ, present 
 him as each man's Saviour; and when 
 you discuss the guilt and danger of sin, 
 bring it home to each individual sinner. 
 " Thou art the man," sent Nathan's para- 
 ble into David's heart like an arrow. Do 
 not be afraid of any sinner in the house ; 
 and pray God to help you love every sin- 
 ner before you so fervently that you will 
 tell him plainly that if he does not repent 
 and accept Christ, he will be lost forever. 
 Do not be afraid of the word " hell " any 
 
1VIXXIXG SOULS. 79 
 
 more than of the word " heaven." Oh ! 
 it is sheer cruelty to conceal from your 
 hearers that the wages of sin is death. If 
 you are faithless and cowardly, the blood 
 of souls will be found in } T our skirts. 
 Preach, therefore, plainly, lovingly, and 
 pungently the guilt of sin and the doom 
 of sin, and pray that every impenitent 
 soul before you may be convicted by the 
 Holy Spirit. Aim to reveal to every sin- 
 ner his or her own personal guilt before 
 God, for nobody is likely to flee to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ until he or she feels 
 the need of him. Deep convictions of sin 
 generally produce deep conversions ; shal- 
 low convictions produce shallow Chris- 
 tians. Put in the plowshare of divine 
 truth, and then bear down on the beam ; 
 if it reaches to the roots of sin, and tears 
 them up, all the better. When you have 
 made a sinner see himself, then try. to 
 make him see his Saviour. Then point 
 him to the all-sufficient Eedeemer, whose 
 
80 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 atoning blood cleanseth from all sin. 
 That is the way in which Peter preached 
 at the time of Pentecost, when three thou- 
 sand souls were convicted and converted 
 in a single day. When you are preach- 
 ing repentance to the sinner, you cannot 
 deal too faithfully and pungently ; when 
 you are offering salvation to the sinner 
 through Jesus, you cannot be too win- 
 some and loving in your beseechings. 
 
 2. Only a part of your work in soul- 
 winning is likely to be done in your 
 pulpit. The most important part will 
 be done when you are brought face to 
 face with an awakened person. Be on 
 the lookout for such persons constantly. 
 During your pastoral visits you will en- 
 counter those that are inquirers, and you 
 should rejoice to converse with them im- 
 mediately. By the way, when I discov- 
 ered several such cases during my calls 
 in one afternoon (in 1856) I hailed this 
 fact as a token of the Holy Spirit's pres- 
 
wixxixa SOULS. 81 
 
 ence; and I* summoned my church-offi- 
 cers, and appointed special services every 
 evening, which services resulted in a large 
 number of conversions. Always be on 
 the watch for the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit. Listen for the first drops of 
 heavenly blessings; then gird yourself 
 for the happy work. In dealing with 
 an awakened soul, your prime duty is 
 to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, and 
 therefore you must pray fervently for his 
 guidance. Endeavor to ascertain just 
 what it is that is in the way of the in- 
 quirer, and what it is that keeps him 
 from surrendering to Christ. If it be 
 some bad habit or evil practice, then that 
 evil practice must be abandoned. If it 
 be some sin, cherished in the heart, then 
 he must yield, even if it be* like pluck- 
 ing out a right eye or cutting off a right 
 hand. In most cases the chief hindrance 
 lies in a wicked, stubborn heart. It has 
 always been my aim to convince awak- 
 
82 THE TOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 ened persons that, unless they were will- 
 ing to give their hearts to Jesus and to 
 " do the will " of Jesus, there was no hope 
 for them. We must shut the inquiring 
 soul up to Christ. The experiences of 
 inquirers may differ as much as their 
 countenances; "but in two vital partic- 
 ulars all cases are to be treated alike. 
 Every sinner must cut loose from his 
 sins, and must cleave to the Lord Jesus. 
 Saving faith is vastly more than an opin- 
 ion or a feeling ; it is an act of the soul. 
 It is the act of joining our weakness to 
 Christ's strength, our ignorance to his 
 knowledge, our guiltiness to his atoning 
 love, our wills to his will, ourselves to 
 him. No one is soundly converted, and 
 no one should join the church, until he 
 has joined himself to Jesus Christ. This 
 is the one infallible test. It is not enough 
 to " feel happy " ; it is not enough to say, 
 " I am trying to be a Christian " ; no soul 
 is safe until it has surrendered uncondi- 
 
WINNING SOULS. 8 3 
 
 tionally to Christ, and has been "born 
 anew " by the Holy Spirit. Do not " count 
 noses" too hastily, and do not be so 
 ambitious to swell the numbers of your 
 church that you will rush the uncon- 
 verted or the half-converted into it. It 
 will be your folly, and may be their ruin. 
 3. In addition to your conversations 
 with such awakened persons as you may 
 encounter in their homes, or such as may 
 call on you for conversation, it will often 
 be wise to appoint inquiry-meetings. Do 
 this when you discover a need for such 
 meetings, and not as a mere empty form. 
 Some zealous ministers insist that such 
 a meeting should be appointed after every 
 preaching-service ; but suppose there are 
 no inquirers to meet ; then the very word 
 becomes a solemn farce or failure. When 
 there are inquiring souls, and they are 
 gathered for instruction and guidance, 
 then be exceedingly careful as to whom 
 you allow to go in with you. Surely you 
 
84 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 would not call in the first person that 
 happened to go by your door to treat 
 one of your family that was dangerously 
 sick. Be equally careful not to allow 
 rash and inexperienced persons, or pious 
 " cranks," to meddle with" immortal souls 
 that are settling the stupendous question 
 of their own salvation. If you require 
 help, invite only the men and women 
 possessing both grace and good com- 
 mon sense. Converse with each inquirer 
 as closely as possible, and as concisely. 
 Bring each to the point at once. Have 
 God's Word in your hand as well as in 
 your memory, and be ready to use the 
 right passages for the right case. With 
 the infallible Word to give 'you light, 
 call upon the Holy Spirit to apply his 
 almighty power and loving work to the 
 souls before you. Encourage the inquir- 
 ers to pray themselves. Try to keep 
 every eye fixed on Christ; urge imme- 
 diate surrender to Christ. Do not be- 
 
WINNING SOULS. 85 
 
 grudge the time or labor required to help 
 a halting or perplexed soul. Hand-picked 
 apples keep the longest. Individual labor 
 with each inquirer is indispensable. The 
 happiest hours you will spend in this 
 world, my young brother, will be those 
 that you spend in leading sinners to 
 the Saviour. " He that is wise winneth 
 souls." To you, if you are thus wise, 
 will belong the crown that shineth as the 
 stars. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 HOW TO HAVE A WORKING CHURCH, 
 
 87 
 
VIII. 
 
 HOW TO HAVE A WOKKING CHUKCH. 
 
 YOUR success will depend, under God, 
 not only upon your own devotion 
 and diligence, but also upon the thor- 
 ough cooperation of your people. You 
 are not only a shepherd of souls, but the 
 commander of a regiment in Christ's sac- 
 ramental host. It is not every godly min- 
 ister that has the gift of executive ability. 
 Henry Ward Beecher, with all his splen- 
 did genius and eloquence, had but small 
 executive faculty. Mr. Spurgeon, on the 
 other hand, was so masterly an organizer 
 that if he had taken to politics he might 
 have been a great parliamentary leader, 
 or perhaps the prime-minister of the 
 realm. Dr. James W. Alexander once 
 
 89 
 
90 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 said to me, " There is no pastor in New 
 York whom I envy more than Dr. Asa 
 D. Smith [afterward the president of 
 Dartmouth College], for he has the knack 
 of keeping all his people at work." 
 
 It is indeed a peculiar " knack " of many 
 ministers; and, if you do not possess it 
 naturally, you must do your utmost to 
 acquire it in as large a degree as possible. 
 Common sense and godly zeal are indis- 
 pensable to every minister ; if you do not 
 possess these, God has never called you 
 to the ministry. If you do possess them, 
 then apply them to the task of develop- 
 ing and guiding the spiritual activities of 
 your flock. Be an untiring worker your- 
 self. A lazy pastor makes a lazy church. 
 Emphasize from your pulpit, again and 
 again, the duty and the joy of labor for 
 Christ, and exhort every member of your 
 church to find his or her place of useful- 
 ness — the place for which God created 
 him and the Holy Spirit converted him. 
 
HOW TO HAVE A WORKING CHURCH. 91 
 
 Too. large a proportion, in nearly all our 
 churches, count for very little except 
 upon the muster-roll ; and, when that roll 
 is called for duty, they seldom answer 
 "Here." A large portion of the power 
 in the church, therefore, becomes latent ; 
 the stream is diverted upon the water- 
 wheels of wordliness, or else runs to waste 
 entirely. One reason is that young con- 
 verts are not trained into Christian ac- 
 tivity from the start. Another is that 
 when new members unite with the church 
 they are not set to work ; and so they drift 
 away into idleness, and become " dead- 
 heads " in the church. 
 
 Of course you will organize a society 
 of Christian Endeavor in your congrega- 
 tion, if there be none already in existence. 
 No church in these days is complete with- 
 out a thorough organization of its young 
 people for spiritual labor and spiritual 
 growth. As a training-school for young 
 converts it is as indispensable to the 
 
92 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 church as the Sunday-school; it molds 
 the youth into a household, and into a 
 homelike relation with the church; it 
 supplies a social necessity, and keeps the 
 sons and daughters of Christ's family out 
 of the clutches of the devil. The danger 
 with all associations of young people is 
 that the social element may crowd out 
 the spiritual element, and so cause a 
 Christian organization to degenerate into 
 a semi-convivial club, bent on amuse- 
 ments. There is a place for innocent, 
 healthful entertainments, such as musi- 
 cal concerts, readings, sociables, instruc- 
 tive exhibitions, etc. ; but as soon as the 
 "daughter of Herodias" gets into the 
 association, and your young people try 
 to make a frolic of their religion, then 
 use your veto summarily. No society of 
 Christian Endeavor and no association of 
 young Christians is likely to lose its in- 
 terest or to languish, so long as the hearts 
 of the -members are full of Christ, and their 
 
HOW TO HAVE A WORKING CHURCH. 93 
 
 hands are full of doing good. But, when 
 Satan " side-tracks " them into mere mirth 
 and merriment, they soon go over the 
 embankment, and end in a smash-up. 
 There is always enough of innocent rec- 
 reation and wholesome happiness to be 
 found on Christ's side of the dividing 
 line, without going over to the world's 
 side ; nor can we ever convert the world 
 to Christ by conforming to its follies, its 
 fashions, or its frolics. 
 
 In every society of Christian Endeavor 
 there ought to be a temperance commit- 
 tee. The decanter and the dramshop 
 are chronic curses in every community, 
 which your pulpit and your church have 
 no right to ignore. The title to member- 
 ship in a temperance society should be 
 the pledged practice of entire abstinence 
 from all intoxicating beverages ; the con- 
 stitution and by-laws should be brief; 
 the public meetings should be free to 
 everybody, and a collection should be 
 
94 THE TOUXG PEE ACHE 11. 
 
 taken up to meet current expenses. I 
 found such an organization in my church* 
 to be a source of manifold blessings to 
 our own members and to tlie surround- 
 ing community. 
 
 Your prayer-meetings will be the spir- 
 itual thermometer of your church. A 
 prayer-meeting below freezing-point indi- 
 cates a cold church ; it is both a cause and 
 an effect of serious spiritual declension. 
 When a revival comes, it commonly begins 
 right there. Whatever else you neglect, 
 never neglect your prayer-meetings, and 
 never allow anything else to crowd them 
 out. Always attend them yourself, but 
 never take charge of them so long as any 
 church-officer or gifted member can be 
 found to conduct them. If you lead them, 
 there is a danger that you will be tempted 
 to monopolize them. A certain eminent 
 minister complained that his people did 
 not take part in the devotional gatherings, 
 and the reason was that he absorbed most 
 
HOW TO HAVE A WORKING CHURCH. 95 
 
 of the time by his own addresses. The 
 main purpose of a prayer-meeting is not 
 a sermon ette by the pastor ; it is the de- 
 velopment of the church-members in their 
 spiritual life, the worship of God in fer- 
 vent prayers, songs of praise, and the 
 stirring up of one another's hearts in ex- 
 perimental talks and warm exhortations. 
 The more like a family gathering it is, 
 the better. Have your church-officers 
 conduct it, in alphabetical order. It is a 
 good practice to select some Bible passage 
 or practical topic beforehand, and to have 
 that announced from the pulpit on the 
 previous Sabbath. Exhort the leader to 
 come well prepared, and then leave the 
 helm in his hands. If the meeting drags, 
 be ready to give a timely lift; and you 
 will seldom allow the service to close 
 without some words of earnest exhorta- 
 tion or of prayer. Unless you are won- 
 derfully fortunate, you may be troubled 
 by some officious and indiscreet brethren 
 
96 THE TOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 that persist in flying" like moths into the 
 candle. It is your duty to deal with such 
 offenders lovingly and kindly. If they 
 are genuine Christians, they will thank 
 you for setting them right, and so will 
 the rest of your people. If they are only 
 noisy, or self-conceited self-seekers, then 
 they ought to be abated as nuisances. 
 
 In dealing with the varieties of people 
 in your charge, and in developing their 
 activities, you will need to use a holy tact. 
 Study the characters of your members. 
 Put to the front the wisest, and gently 
 repress the blunderers. Some good peo- 
 ple will do good service if they are only 
 consulted ; to such it will be wise to say, 
 "Brother A, don't you think it would 
 be well for us to do this or that?" Tlie 
 brother will then imagine that he is hav- 
 ing his own way, when he is really going 
 your way. There is a vast deal of human 
 nature in the godliest men and women in 
 our flocks. Never wound a true disciple 
 of Christ ; never discourage any one that 
 
HOW TO HAVE A WOE KING CHURCH. 97 
 
 longs and tries to be useful; and never 
 do anybody's work so long as lie or she 
 can be got to do it. You will have 
 enough work of your own. 
 
 Finally, let me exhort you to drive 
 every wheel in your machinery to its ut- 
 most ; but do not have more wheels than 
 power. Enlarge your work as fast and 
 as far as you have men and money to 
 propel it. Keep clear of hobbies and all 
 sorts of sensational devices. Feed your 
 flock with strong, solid, gospel food, if 
 you want them to be strong for work, 
 and then arouse their enthusiasm by your 
 own example and by leading them to seek 
 the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Come 
 to them on Sunday with Christ on your 
 lips, and go among them all the week 
 with Christ in your heart and life. The 
 only power that can drive any church is 
 the Power from on high ; and that church 
 which is mighty in prayer will always be 
 mighty in work. Heaven's holy activi- 
 ties will be its sweetest rest. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 THE MAN BEHIND THE MESSAGE. 
 
 99 
 
IX. 
 
 THE MAN BEHIND THE MESSAGE. 
 
 THE ambassador of the United States 
 to a foreign court is both accorded 
 certain honors and exposed to critical 
 observation, because he represents the 
 great republic. Remember always, my 
 young brother, that you are the ambas- 
 sador of the Lord Jesus Christ, the bearer 
 of the gospel message from the court of 
 heaven ; therefore be very watchful of 
 the man that bears the message. Look 
 well after the man that walks in your 
 shoes. People have a right to expect 
 more than ordinary piety in a minister, 
 because he is a representative of Jesus 
 Christ, and has promised to be an "en- 
 sample to the flock." You have no right 
 
 101 
 
102 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 to be a minister if you are not willing 
 to be closely watched and keenly scruti- 
 nized ; you ought to have taken account 
 of this when you voluntarily assumed so 
 high and holy an office. Do not shirk 
 the "fierce light " that may be expected 
 to beat upon your pulpit and your pas- 
 torate, and, above all, on your own per- 
 sonality. A torch-bearer must not expect 
 to be hidden; the light that he carries 
 will reveal to others what manner of man 
 he is. 
 
 The great object of preaching the gos- 
 pel is to form godly character, and there- 
 fore the preacher himself should strive to 
 exhibit a character of the highest possi- 
 ble type. We whose business it is to set 
 forth Christianity must not forget that 
 people look at us when outside of our 
 pulpits, to discover what we mean when 
 in our pulpits. If your conduct before 
 the community contradicts your utter- 
 ances of God's truth on God's day, then 
 
THE MAX BEHIND THE .MESSAGE. 103 
 
 your tongue, if it had the charm of Chrys- 
 ostom's, would be but a tinkling cymbal. 
 A parishioner once remarked, "My pas- 
 tor's discourses are not brilliant, but his 
 daily life is a sermon all the week." Paul 
 stood behind all his inspired utterances ; 
 the " living epistle w was as eloquent and 
 convincing as any words he ever sent to 
 Corinth, or ever pronounced on the hill 
 of Mars. A large part of the power of 
 the best ministers lies in their own per- 
 sonality. -Phillips Brooks was generally 
 accounted the foremost American clergy- 
 man of these days; his discourses were 
 fresh, chaste, vigorous, often brilliant; 
 and, being constructed largely out of his 
 own spiritual experience, were adapted to 
 the experiences of his hearers; but the 
 magnificent manhood of Phillips Brooks 
 towered above his grandest discourses. 
 It was equally true of Spurgeon, the 
 most popular preacher of modern times. 
 Behind all his thousands of fervid gospel 
 
104 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 messages stood Spurgeon, the fearless, 
 faithful, genial, warm-hearted man of 
 God, whom Protestants and Roman Cath- 
 olics, Jews and Quakers, alike revered 
 and loved. They did this, too, in spite 
 of all the sharp points of his Calvinistic 
 doctrines. He never trimmed his sails to 
 catch popular favor, and the world liked 
 him all the better for that. Time-servers 
 are always despised. If you want to 
 catch and to keep the popular ear, have 
 the courage of your convictions. Never 
 be afraid of your own congregation, or 
 of any one else but God. Yet plain, fear- 
 less speaking should never degenerate 
 into the bluster of a bully, or the exas- 
 perations of a common scold. Richard 
 Cecil, of London, once said that too many 
 ministers go to the opposite extreme. 
 " They are all milk and mildness. They 
 touch all sin with so much tenderness! 
 and if the patient shrinks, they will 
 touch no more. The gospel is some- 
 
THE MAX BEHIXD THE MESSAGE. 105 
 
 times preached in this way till all the 
 people agree with the preacher ; he gives 
 no offense, and he does no good." 
 
 If compromising God's trnth in the 
 pnlpit is mischievous, so is compromis- 
 ing in your practice during the week. I 
 have a pretty strong conviction that the 
 reaction that has set in during these later 
 years is not a wholesome one. Ministers 
 in former times may have gone to an ex- 
 treme in punctiliousness of clerical dress 
 and in austerity of manners. Now the 
 danger is in the opposite direction; and 
 too many ministers try to be like every- 
 body else, both in their costume and their 
 customs. For fear of being thought puri- 
 tanical they become frivolous. In order 
 to win favor with the world they fall too 
 much into the ways of the world, forget- 
 ting that when they try to conform their 
 Christianity to the world they will never 
 be able to conform the world to Chris- 
 tianity. The standard is being lowered, 
 
106 THE YOUNG PREACHER. 
 
 both in doctrine and in practice. The 
 dividing line between the church and 
 the world is becoming more indistinct; 
 as to some things, it is almost obliter- 
 ated. For example, a larger proportion 
 of church-members attend the theater 
 than attended forty years ago, not be- 
 cause the morals of the average stage 
 have been elevated, but because the mor- 
 al standard of too many professing Chris- 
 tians has been lowered. Set your face 
 like a flint against all impure and un- 
 wholesome amusements. There are cer- 
 tainly enough pure and innocent rec- 
 reations to be found without resorting 
 to the gilded nastiness of the average 
 playhouse, or the sensualities of the ball- 
 room. Never go where your Master 
 would not go. Never be found where 
 any one, especially one of your own 
 church, will be likely to say, " I did not 
 expect to see you here." Keep on Christ's 
 side of the dividing line ; and, where you 
 
THE MAX. BEHIND THE MESSAGE. 107 
 
 are in doubt, give Christ and conscience 
 the casting vote. There are several things 
 that are not sinful per se, but which it 
 would be improper for a Christian min- 
 ister to do. God's Word may not pro- 
 nounce it a sin to touch a glass of wine ; 
 nevertheless, under the sanction of Paul's 
 precept to practice self-denial for the sake 
 of others, you ought to let the wine-glass 
 severely alone. Secret drinking is dan- 
 gerous to yourself; public drinking is 
 dangerous to other people. Entire ab- 
 stinence is the only safe course. There 
 may be no direct prohibition in the Bible 
 of certain games of chance ; yet a min- 
 ister should never be seen with a pack of 
 cards in his hands. "Keep thyself pure ; " 
 "let no man despise thee." Never in- 
 dulge in any practices that will require 
 you to make explanations or apologies. 
 Be rigidly careful in your pecuniary 
 transactions; and, however small your 
 salary may be, let me exhort you to bear 
 
108 THE YOUNG PKEACHEK. 
 
 any privation sooner than incur the ter- 
 rible bondage of debt. This has eaten 
 like a cancer into more than one minis- 
 ter's health and happiness. Sterling hon- 
 esty, scrupulous truthfulness, rigid self- 
 denial, cheerful sobriety (that is not afraid 
 to laugh when laughter is in order), gen- 
 erous treatment of all your brethren, and 
 sympathy with the sorrowing, the sob- 
 bing, and the suffering around you — all 
 these virtues will tell upon your influence, 
 and will give a prodigious power to your 
 ministry. 
 
 If in your case the man is to be at all 
 like his divine message, then you must 
 keep your heart with all diligence ; for 
 your outward life before the world will 
 be measured by your inward life with the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. The water in a pub- 
 lic fountain never rises one inch higher 
 than its birthplace upon the mountain- 
 side. The greater your piety, the greater 
 your power. Genius, scholarship, elo- 
 
THE MAX BEHIND THE MESSAGE. 109 
 
 quence, are no substitutes for whole- 
 souled love of Christ and holiness of life. 
 If you do not love your Master intensely, 
 you will soon get weary of your work; 
 if you do not love your people unselfishly 
 and devotedly, they will soon get weary 
 of you. The deeper you root down into 
 Christ's heart and your people's hearts, 
 the larger and the longer will be your 
 pastorate. 
 
 That prince of modern evangelists, 
 Charles Gr. Finney, used to have sea- 
 sons when he felt shorn of his spiritual 
 strength. Then he shut himself up with 
 God, went down on his knees, and, empty- 
 ing himself of all self-seekings and self- 
 reliance, he fervently prayed to be filled 
 with the Holy Spirit. Then he went to 
 his pulpit like a giant. The last hour 
 that I spent with my beloved friend 
 Spurgeon was spent at family worship. 
 After I had concluded my prayer, he 
 chimed in with a most wonderfully sim- 
 
110 THE TOUXG PREACHER. 
 
 pie, fervent, artless converse with Goti; 
 it was like the reverent talk of a child 
 with the best of fathers. After I heard 
 that marvelous prayer I said to myself, 
 " Now I know the secret hiding-place of 
 Spurgeon's power." My brother, if you 
 cannot pray, you cannot preach. 
 
 With these few frank and fatherly 
 counsels I bid you Godspeed in your 
 work — a work so glorious that an arch- 
 angel might covet it, and yet it is in- 
 trusted to "earthen vessels." Preach 
 the Word. Feed the flock. Win souls. 
 An ordinary man may become extraor- 
 dinary when the Spirit of the Almighty 
 Son of God dwelleth in him. Carry 
 the sacred fire in your bones, as old 
 John Bunyan did when he warned his 
 hearers to flee from the wrath to come, 
 and to set their faces toward the Celes- 
 tial City. Keep eternity in view. Let 
 the light of the "great white throne" 
 fall on your page when you study, and 
 
THE MAX BEHIND THE MESSAGE. Ill 
 
 on your pulpit when you preach. You 
 are a watchman who must give account 
 for souls in the great day of judgment. 
 There is no higher throne for any saint 
 in heaven, and no more radiant crown, 
 than is reserved for the faithful, fearless, 
 unselfish, holy-hearted minister of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. He shall reign with 
 his Lord and King ; he shall shine as the 
 stars for ever and ever. 
 
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 cal list of subjects, which is more sensible and convenient, and 
 every way more satisfactory, than any book of the kind we have 
 ever known, for some years we have had it in constant service 
 in our Bible study ; and our sense of its value has grown with th© 
 passing years. We know of no other work comparable with it, 
 id this department of study."— Extract from editorial in Sun- 
 day-School Times, 
 
 The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Consisting 
 of Five Hundred Thousand Scripture references and 
 parallel passages, and numerous illustrative notes. 8vo, 
 cloth, 700 pages, $2.00. 
 
 11 You have conferred a favor on the Bible Students of America 
 by issuing your edition of The Treasury of Scripture Knowl- 
 edge. It is a great improvement on Bagster's edition. Bible 
 students who desire to compare scripture with scripture will find 
 the Treasury to be a better help than any other book of which I 
 have any knowledge."— R, B. McBurney, Gen'l Sec y y T. M. C'.A. 
 wew York, 
 
 NBwvoRK.i Fleming H. Revell Company : .Chicago. 
 
A ^TIPP F^TIfttf Send for the first volume and see what a mine of 
 
 want the full set. 
 
 wealth is in these "Notes." You will surely 
 
 "C. H.M.'s" NOTES. 
 
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 THE GOSPEL IN THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 
 
 
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 These Books are not Commen- 
 taries, in the ordinary under- 
 standing of that word ; they are 
 of a more popular style ; helpful, 
 suggestive, inspiring. 
 
 GENESIS, EXODUS,. LEVITICUS, 
 
 NUMBERS AND DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 Read thefollowmg Commendations from well-known 
 Pastors, Evangelists, L?.ymen, Etc. 
 "Some years since I had my attention called to C. H. 
 M.'s Notes, and was so much pleased, and at the same 
 time profited by the way they opened up Scriptural 
 truths, that I secured at once all the writings of the 
 same author. They have been to me a very key to the 
 Scriptures:' D. L. MOODY. 
 
 "Under God they have blessed me more than any 
 books outside of the Bible itself, that I have ever read, 
 and have led me to a love of the Bible that is proving 
 an unfailing source of profit." 
 
 Maj. D. W. WHITTLE. 
 
 Deuteronomy is issued in two volumes, the others complete in one 
 volume each. 
 
 Separate volumes may be had if desired. ' Sent post paid to any 
 address on receipt of price. 
 
 The complete set in six volumes* covering over 2,300 pages, it 
 offered at the reduced price of 7Bc. per Vol. or $4.50 per Set. 
 
 new yur K.- 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company chicaqp 
 

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