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 Triumphant Ministry 
 
 LETTERS FROM 
 
 TIMOTHY KILBOURN T^^.xcA yJf 
 
 TO ' ~" *■ *T " ■ * U Arvi es Mir 
 
 FRED GAYNOR 
 
 Assistant Minister in the City of 
 the Stranger 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 CHARLES R. ERDMAN, D.D. 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 The Westminster Press 
 1914 
 
 S- 
 
 V«/oime.r> 
 
Copyright, 19 14, by 
 F. M. Braselmann 
 
Contents 
 
 Introduction 
 I. The Call 
 II. The Equipment 
 
 III. The Tax 
 
 IV. The Fellowship 
 V. The Goal . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V 
 
 I 
 
 24 
 
 44 
 66 
 
 87 
 
Introduction 
 
 The joys of the Christian ministry, — its 
 privileges and its possibiUties, its demands and 
 its rewards, its companionships and its high 
 purpose, — such is the glad, serious burden of 
 this book. Were its notes of cheer and its 
 words of counsel more widely sounded, we 
 should hear less frequently the familiar question : 
 Why do not more men of the highest ability 
 volunteer for the ministry ? At least a partial 
 answer to this question has been given in the 
 statement that it is because the claims and 
 attractions of the ministry are so seldom pre- 
 sented to young men by parents and pastors 
 and teachers and friends. This little packet 
 of letters presents them with all the im- 
 pressiveness of deep conviction, and with all 
 the power of a personal appeal. 
 
 The message of these pages is then, first of 
 all, to the youth of our schools and colleges, 
 our academies and universities. It shows them 
 that the "call to the ministry" is nothing 
 
 [v] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 magical or mysterious, but a divinely presented 
 opportunity for rendering the highest possible 
 human service ; that the work of the ministry is 
 not too difficult for men of few talents if they 
 are wholly dedicated to Christ, and that it offers 
 the greatest opportunity on earth to the man of 
 marked ability who also possesses the rare gift 
 of an attractive personality ; that the dreaded 
 isolation of the ministry is compensated by the 
 most inspiring of companionships ; that its sat- 
 isfactions and rewards are as real as they are 
 unique, but its demands are such that triumph 
 is assured to those alone *' who have soldier 
 stuff in them and can endure." No young 
 man should be made to determine his life work 
 without first being granted the light of such a 
 vision. 
 
 No less vital is the message to those students 
 who have already volunteered for the Christian 
 ministry. They are shown the kind of equip- 
 ment their future work demands ; they are 
 reminded of the seriousness as well as the glory 
 of their task ; they are urged to more diligent 
 use of present opportunities ; they are assured 
 that the largest work is usually done by those 
 
 [vi] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 who, in the days of discipline, have been made 
 acquainted with the best tools and have become 
 most skillful in their use ; they are pointed to 
 right paths of endeavor, warned of pitfalls, and 
 led toward fields of fruitful service. No class of 
 students more need or more fully appreciate 
 sympathetic counsel and guidance than those 
 in our schools of theology ; and they will not 
 fail to prize these pages, written for them by 
 one whose point of view is not academic nor 
 theoretical but that of an active pastor whose 
 words are expressions of his own experience and 
 work. 
 
 Here too is a message for those whose 
 ministry has not been " triumphant." There 
 are such. For them the dreams of earlier days 
 have faded ; they have found the task other and 
 more arduous than they had supposed ; dis- 
 appointment, hardship, sorrow, and pain have 
 been the companions of their journey ; coveted 
 opportunities have been denied them ; neither 
 their efforts nor their motives have been appre- 
 ciated ; lack of sympathy and cruel criticism 
 have chilled their hearts ; to them the unseen 
 has become increasingly unreal ; life and service 
 
 [ vii ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 have grown more hopeless and dreary than 
 they dare confess ; the battle has gone against 
 them and they are conscious of defeat. To 
 such these searching letters may disclose the 
 unconscious sources of their weakness, or may 
 show that apparent failure has been real success. 
 They may suggest that the work has lacked 
 method, and right motive ; that the preaching 
 has not lifted high the cross, or glorified the 
 divine Saviour ; that the will has not been 
 wholly yielded to Christ, or that **the closet 
 with the closed door " has been neglected ; that 
 seeming misfortune has been actual fault. 
 
 On the other hand to some, whose loyal 
 service appears to be rewarded by no glories of 
 manifest victory, who by trial and pain are be- 
 ing better prepared for their ministry of con- 
 solation, these lines will bring reassurance and 
 comfort and hope. They may have passed a 
 Troas, where disappointment and anxiety made 
 them turn from open doors ; and now, like a 
 welcome messenger, these words of cheer, show- 
 ing them the essential nature of their work, the 
 eternal issues of their task, the unseen influences 
 of their sacrifice, and the divine purpose in their 
 
 [ viii ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 sufferings, may enable them to exclaim with the 
 apostle, as they start forward on their way : 
 " Thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us 
 in triumph in Christ." 
 
 Then, too, there are those who believe they 
 are experiencing a ''triumphant ministry," but 
 who are self-deceived. They have been measur- 
 ing success by numbers, by church attendance 
 and statistical reports, by human applause and 
 gratifying popularity; but in the midst of 
 ecclesiastical machinery and social activities, 
 engrossed by engagements, and immersed in a 
 multiplicity of executive details, they have lost 
 sight of " the goal." They too, and they not 
 least of all, need the sober message of these 
 letters in which, with true perspective, the efforts 
 and achievements of the ministry are viewed in 
 their right relations and proportions, while it is 
 shown that true success can consist only in an 
 increasing knowledge of Christ and in the re- 
 newal of souls by bringing them into fellowship 
 with God through his Son, our Saviour. 
 
 Shall we say, however, that these letters will 
 be of value only to those already named, to 
 those who may enjoy the high privilege of be- 
 
 [ix] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing ordained preachers of the Word ? Shall we 
 not rather conclude that such vivid pictures of 
 a pastor's life will be illuminating and helpful 
 to all the followers of Christ who thus may learn 
 more perfectly what is expected and required 
 of Christian ministers, what is the nature of 
 their work, what the divine content of their 
 message, what their need of sympathy, encour- 
 agement and support? To spread such a 
 message is certain to make the ministry ever 
 more triumphant and to hasten the coming and 
 kingdom of our Lord. 
 
 Charles R. Erdman. 
 Prince ton y New Jersey. 
 
 [x] 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CALL 
 
 Dear Fred : 
 
 "What is the secret of the triumphant 
 ministry?" That is just the question I faced 
 the other day, A young friend visited me, the 
 second time within a year, for counsel and ad- 
 vice. The first time he came, I happened to be 
 in his college town. He met me at the rail- 
 road station as I was leaving for home. He 
 came to talk with me about what he should do 
 when he graduated in June. I said, '* What are 
 you thinking about, James ? " He replied, " The 
 ministry and medicine." I saw that he wanted 
 me to tell him my side of the story, so I began. 
 This is the way I summed it up for him : 
 "James, there is no vocation in all the world 
 that furnishes a man such opportunities. There 
 is no other that taxes all the faculties of heart 
 and brain, all the resources of simon-pure man, 
 as does the ministry. You will have more 
 hardships to endure, more temptations to meet, 
 [1] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 more assaults on your courage to face, more 
 testing of high and noble purpose, more call to 
 bear and forbear, more draft on all your re- 
 sources of whatsoever sort, in the ministry, than 
 in any other profession into which you might 
 enter. Now don't go into it unless you feel you 
 must ; then if a door swings open, enter it and 
 count on great opportunities for usefulness." 
 
 He made his second visit a few days ago 
 when he came in to say, " I am going to the 
 seminary on Monday to study for the ministry, 
 and I want to hear you talk for a litde while on 
 the things which you think worth while for one 
 just entering the seminary." I never before 
 more earnestly desired help from God than I 
 did when I faced this young man with these 
 words on his lips. We got on splendidly for 
 an hour. If he keeps before him the salient 
 points of that conversation and the conclusions 
 we reached, he will discover the triumphant 
 ministry earlier than it has fallen to me to dis- 
 cover it. If I tell you a little of my own history, 
 you will see where the triumphant ministry be- 
 gan with me. 
 
 My decision to study for the ministry was 
 [2] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 reached while teaching a country school, at the 
 close of my academy course and immediately 
 preceding my freshman year in college. It 
 was not made at the time of an impending 
 crisis, when the mind is balanced between 
 grave alternatives. No calamity, real or im- 
 aginary, confronted me, if my decision should 
 be against the ministry. There were no per- 
 plexities of any sort. I had been rocked in the 
 cradle of a home missionary manse and brought 
 up in the conviction that God has a claim on 
 our lives. I knew my parents expected me to 
 be of service in the world. I lived in intimate 
 fellowship with my father — a man of devout, 
 mystical spirit, entirely untouched with worldly 
 ambitions, who practiced his profession with 
 great joy and fidelity. His example was ever 
 before me. It did not occur to me with any 
 force to follow any one but him. When the 
 actual decision was made to study for the min- 
 istry, I pressed quite naturally and religiously 
 on to the goal. It never occurred to me then, 
 and it does not occur to me now, that I am ex- 
 alted above other men by the choice I have 
 made. Take it from me, Fred, the man, who, 
 
 [3] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 in accordance with his history and circumstances 
 and talents, chooses to serve God and his fel- 
 lows as a farmer, a mechanic, an engineer, a 
 Y. M. C. A. secretary, a doctor, a merchant, or 
 a chemist, chooses as honorably and religiously 
 as the man who chooses to serve in the ministry. 
 It may be not quite orthodox for a minister to 
 take this view. But it seems to me that John 
 R. Mott, Robert E. Speer, John Wanamaker, 
 Luther Burbank, Charles W. Stiles, Woodrow 
 Wilson, with a host of others who might be 
 named, have chosen as well and rendered as 
 much service to God and men as some of our 
 great ministers have rendered. The main thing 
 is to hear your call from the heights and to fol- 
 low it — ever on the ascent as you go through 
 the world, lifting up your fellows and carrying 
 them to God with you. 
 
 However, my decision was made, and my vo- 
 cation has been followed, in a time when the 
 emphasis of our civilization has been against 
 my choice. The opportunities for personal and 
 material prosperity have been multiplied and 
 the multitude have followed after them. Can- 
 didates for these advantages have increased 
 [4] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 and those for the ministry have dedined. Many 
 ministers have been cast down in these past 
 twenty years by the fashion of the times, which 
 argues that a man who makes money, produces 
 a new spear of grass, discovers some disease- 
 breeding bug or bacillus, builds a railroad, or 
 piles up wealth of this sort, is the only bene- 
 factor of the race. The man who takes the long 
 look — that sweeps the eternities and scales the 
 heavenlies — is discredited. Many people think 
 he looks too far, that he is impractical. We are 
 poor mortals of clay, sad failures on account 
 of heredity and environment, oppressed with 
 sickness and hunger, in great need of bread and 
 butter and bank accounts. Satisf)^ our hunger, 
 heal our sickness, improve our environment, lift 
 us toward success and business prosperity, and 
 you are accounted a practical servant of society. 
 You will surely be affected by this fashion of 
 the times, as I have been ; but take this into ac- 
 count. While such activities are not the chief 
 work of the minister, he is not altogether unre- 
 lated to them. The triumphant ministry de- 
 pends upon two things at this point. First, the 
 minister's clear and accurate vision of civiliza- 
 
 [5] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 tion ; second, his relating himself to that civili- 
 zation as a spiritual force. The condition of 
 the common people and the circumstances of 
 their daily toil, the reward of their services, the 
 opportunity for their children, the attitude of 
 the public mind and conscience toward them, 
 is most largely and favorably established in the 
 lands where the ministry of the gospel of Christ 
 is a spiritual force. Is there not an indubitable 
 connection between that gospel thus preached 
 and these favorable conditions for humanity? 
 I believe there is. Therefore, when choosing 
 my vocation, I reached the conclusion that the 
 man whose talents and training and circum- 
 stances of life conspired to fit him for the min- 
 istry and to turn him to it, would find a glorious 
 opportunity to afifect practically the civilization 
 of his time. 
 
 I was not without ambition. I entertained a 
 hope that some day I might be equal to some 
 " larger sphere of influence." Most of the men 
 who are in such spheres enter them before they 
 are forty. I worked hard and rattled some door 
 knobs to such spheres in the first seven or eight 
 years. But I found that the ears on the other 
 [6] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 side of those doors were deaf to all who did not 
 have some private wire connections, or who had 
 not made enough noise outside to attract atten- 
 tion. Our country is a very noisy one, and not 
 attentive to men who are in quiet places and 
 doing their work in a quiet way. My disap- 
 pointment was very keen when I discovered 
 this. I will not repeat the story here. For 
 ** substance of doctrine," as the theologians say, 
 it occurred three times in my history within 
 eight years, before I realized its truth. But 
 awakening to it, these experiences conspired to 
 give a clearer vision of my great calling and 
 helped to get my eyes on the right things. 
 And, in the triumphant ministry, that is one of 
 the greatest considerations. Every disappoint- 
 ment makes its direct contribution to the tri- 
 umph, if we accept the gospel we are set to 
 preach. If we believe, 
 
 ** One adequate support 
 
 For the calamities of mortal life 
 Exists, one rnly ; the assured belief 
 That the procession of our fate howe'er 
 Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
 Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
 Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
 All accidents, converting them to good." 
 [7] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 However, a man does not know this at the 
 beginning. He may preach it. He may be- 
 Ueve it. By and by, through disappointment 
 and prayer and the change of circumstances 
 and the incoming peace — which is better than 
 understanding — and with " experience," he gets 
 the right perspective and the vision that enables 
 him to work and rest and wait. This is his 
 first triumph — the triumph within. 
 
 There are at least three ways in which the 
 ministry will present itself to those who hear the 
 call to it, as an opportunity for triumph. There 
 is the opportunity of administration. The first 
 thing the young minister has to face when he 
 leaves school for actual work in the ministry, is 
 a hard and fast ecclesiastical organization ; fre- 
 quently inefficient in accomplishing the task for 
 which it exists in the local congregation. The 
 exact point of inefficiency is in the spirit and 
 vitality of the official board. They do not have 
 a vision of the work to be accomplished. They 
 are without inspiration to carry forward any 
 vision to realization. In consequence of this 
 lack, chaos reigns in plans for work and bank- 
 ruptcy in treasuries to support it. Ignorance is 
 
 [8] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 found on every hand. His official boards could 
 not define the reason for the Church's existence 
 if their Hves hung upon it. Many of them do 
 not take the church paper or journal that gives 
 them a definition of the Church, its tasks, and 
 methods by which to accompHsh their work. 
 They are Hke what the scientific agriculture 
 schools call the old uneducated farmer, — ''acci- 
 dent workers." They go at church business in 
 a blind, hit-or-miss sort of way. While each 
 man of them may have made a success of his 
 own business, these same men sufTer utter defeat 
 when they take up the business of church 
 finance, or the management of the so-called 
 spiritual interests of the Church. The young 
 minister finds that ecclesiastical forms circum- 
 scribe his field and that things have to be ac- 
 complished through channels long since im- 
 poverished and dried up. If he succeeds he 
 will be taxed on every side. Customs inimical 
 to the spirit of the gospel of Christ will have to 
 be broken down. Blindness as deep as a star- 
 less night will have to be pierced with light. 
 Prejudices as fixed and narrow as little minds 
 will have to be faced. And perhaps a Chinese 
 [9] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 inertia and love of ease will have to be moved 
 before he accomplishes his task. There are 
 three things he will have to do if he makes any 
 progress himself, or if he moves the Church to 
 achievement or respect. 
 
 First, he must present a clearly defined pur- 
 pose, as stated in the gospel of Christ, for 
 which the Church exists. No man with the 
 gospel of Christ in his heart and Christ's vision 
 for the Church before his face, can be content 
 with his church as his field. He must make it 
 his force in the world. Second, he must have 
 plans adequate for engaging all the resources, 
 latent and active, in his church and for accom- 
 plishing the world-vision which he holds. 
 Third, he must have sufficient persistence and 
 patience to keep at his task till things are 
 brought to pass. 
 
 If, by any process of inaction or consent, he 
 accepts the methods of congregations in many 
 communities for supporting the Church, he will 
 speedily find himself the victim of circum- 
 stances humiliating to himself and impoverish- 
 ing to his purse. He will find that the note of 
 authority in the gospel he proclaims is lost. 
 
 [10] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 He will find that there is nothing to develop 
 and challenge the lives of men to high and noble 
 living. 
 
 But if he has clear and definite views, and is 
 faithful to them, he will have a triumphant min- 
 istry. There will be those who will be quick to 
 see the better things and catch the vision of the 
 better way. Many will come to see how their 
 lives are enlarged and enriched in the broader 
 horizon he pushes back for them. And year by 
 year he himself will grow into the larger man 
 as he reaches out for the larger things. 
 
 The second opportunity for the triumphant 
 ministry is in the pulpit There has been a 
 great deal said in the newspapers and magazines 
 about the decline of the pulpit. We have been 
 told that the day for the pulpit is gone, and the 
 problem of getdng a Sunday evening congre- 
 gadon in the cities and a full house in the 
 mornings, everywhere, is cited in proof that it 
 is soo But, my dear Fred, you have never 
 heard any prince of God, who occupies a pulpit, 
 talking it. 
 
 There are several things that lead me to be- 
 lieve the pulpit is a place of power. First, the 
 [11] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are 
 unapproached in searching the conscience, com- 
 forting the heart and reveahng the will of God 
 to men. In the second place, Jesus Christ is a 
 living power for regenerating and recovering 
 wasted humanity. There is only one message 
 of hope for the woman who has lost her crown, 
 and that is Christ's word to her. There is only 
 one power in the world to-day that can lift a 
 man by a single bound to heights to which 
 culturists would need years to raise him, if, in- 
 deed, they could raise him at all, and that 
 power is the power of Christ. Third, while the 
 great medium of education to-day is the printed 
 page, the most thrilling medium for the trans- 
 mission of truth is a living- person, stirred with 
 a great passion for mankind. This is the op- 
 portunity of the pulpit for the man who is 
 called of God to occupy it — to unfold the mes- 
 sage of the Old and New Testaments under the 
 power of Christ, out of a heart quivering with 
 interest in men. 
 
 There is not a single field of human conflict, 
 action, pathos, tragedy or triumph over which 
 
 he may not range, yes, over which he may not 
 [ 12 ] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 have to range in the preparation of his message 
 to men, as the years speed away. 
 
 One of the inexpressible joys for you will be 
 the appreciation men show of your knowledge 
 of them and sympathy with them. Every week, 
 it may be many times in some weeks, you will 
 receive acknowledgments of their indebtedness 
 to you. Acknowledgments will come, not from 
 a narrow circle of intimate friends, but from men 
 and women in various and widely different 
 circumstances, and from strangers as well as 
 friends. They will talk of your help, or comfort, 
 or instruction, or inspiration, and sometimes 
 they will say nothing but just wait to walk home 
 with you at the close of the Sabbath day, that 
 perchance the very breezes that blow upon your 
 faces may tell you the gratitude which they feel. 
 On the other hand, you will have evidence of 
 your power in the passionate opposition the 
 forces of hell wage against your valiant warfare. 
 Look abroad and see how they are doing it in 
 high places. Take for example one instance 
 published throughout the land. Canon Hensley 
 Henson, standing in his pulpit in London, 
 uttered such a denunciation of the atrocities of 
 
 [13] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 the rubber industry in South America and so 
 fearlessly arraigned the men who were guilty, 
 that the counselors for these great industries 
 threatened him for his plain speech. They 
 could not face the assault of a fearless and 
 righteous proclamation of the truth. Before 
 you began your ministry, but a few years ago, 
 a writer in a great weekly, criticizing the pulpit, 
 said, ** The men who bring things to pass care 
 no more for the message of the preacher than 
 they care for the opinions of a pretty woman." 
 Follow Beecher on the slavery issue ; Canon 
 Henson on the rubber issue ; all the pulpits in 
 this country on the temperance issue ; and see. 
 There is no agency of which the forces of vice 
 and intemperance, and tainted, easy money, 
 and corrupt politics, are so afraid as they are 
 of the ministers of God who know, who have 
 forceful wills, who love God and their fellows, 
 and who are not afraid of the faces of men. 
 
 " Keep the preachers out of this (temperance) 
 fight," is the instruction the liquor interests have 
 sent out to their henchmen everywhere. That 
 is what they are saying right here in this country 
 town to-day. They know, under the blessing 
 
 [14] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 of God, that the preacher is going to win and 
 that the pulpit, his throne, is a place of power. 
 
 The third opportunity of the triumphant 
 ministry is your private and personal work as 
 pastor. Here is an incident of last week. He 
 was just a plain, everyday, hard-working 
 manager of a public corporation. We were in 
 the dressing room of the gymnasium preparing 
 for a game of volley ball. I knew my man and 
 I said, '' I have just had an interview with 
 Mr. S on the subject of his personal re- 
 lation to Christ." ** Did you get him ? " said 
 my friend, now stripped to the skin. '' Not 
 to-day," said I, " but I will in time." '' Well, 
 that is worth while," he continued, as he got 
 into his sleeveless shirt. *' Often when I solicit 
 an order and get it, I feel of how little con- 
 sequence it is either to my customer or myself ; 
 but when you preach Christ to a man and win 
 him to Christ, you have accomplished something 
 worth while." That is a plain workingman's 
 estimate of the ministry triumphant. 
 
 I had a telephone message one day, asking 
 me to go and talk with a man over his domestic 
 troubles. The circumstances of the trouble 
 
 [15] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 were very delicate. Patience and forbearance 
 had been stretched almost too much. This 
 man had so nearly lost heart that he had gone 
 to his room to take his life. Surprised there, 
 by one who loved him dearly, the deed was not 
 done. On learning the facts, I hastened to him 
 at his office. No one was about on business, so 
 I went in. We locked the doors and sat down 
 to talk things over and if possible to find a way 
 out. When I left an hour after, he said : '' I am 
 so glad you came. The way seems clearer 
 now." I went out, and for weeks we worked 
 away until things were adjusted and the strain 
 removed. I had been gone for a month, when, 
 on my return, after some weeks, I went to this 
 office on business. ** Well, you have neglected 
 me a long time, my friend ! " said this man with 
 a smile as he looked into my face. Then we 
 talked the whole matter over again and I went 
 home to score another triumph in the ministry 
 to men. 
 
 My record for a day, repeated again and 
 again in the lives of men ministering in quiet 
 places over this land, will illustrate the trium- 
 phant ministry. A funeral at 7 : 30 A. M. (of an 
 
 [16] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 old soldier, a Mason, but not a church member, 
 where a sermon was preached " by request") 
 Back to the study at lo A. M. Dinner at 
 12 : 45 P. M. Out on pastoral rounds at 2 P. M. 
 — first to the hospital, accompanied by two 
 church officers, to receive an old woman eighty- 
 five years of age into church membership ; from 
 there to call on an old pauper woman with a 
 secret care ; then to a deserted wife and mother, 
 to find out how life is with her ; then to a family 
 with a careless and ungodly husband and father, 
 whom we would Hke to get interested in going 
 to church ; then to a young laborer's home 
 whose little child ought to be baptized ; then to 
 find the home of a lost child crying on the 
 street ; then for home and supper. It was 8 P. M. 
 when I sat down to that meal. After supper 
 my favorite journal was read and a few lines 
 were penned, and I lay down to sleep and rest, 
 grateful for the day thus past and for the promise 
 of a busy to-morrow. 
 
 You ask, " Are there no gloomy days in such 
 a ministry ? " Many of them. Many a man, 
 who did run well for a while, slips and falls — 
 and sometime utterly fails, and your labor 
 
 [17] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 seems to have been in vain. Many a mistake 
 is made, over which you may actually shed 
 tears. Many a truth must be spoken, after 
 which some men will not speak to you when 
 they meet you in the street, unless it be to scold 
 or condemn. Many a hardship will have to be 
 faced in the course of life that will cost much in 
 sacrifice and love. 
 
 Fred, don't hanker too much for the big 
 church in the big city. The best work is often 
 done in the small city and town. Triumphant 
 ministries in such places abound. I am think- 
 ing now of a country minister who received the 
 Great Promotion three years ago. He preached 
 the gospel of Jesus Christ for about forty years 
 after his ordination, then, as Peter Cartwright 
 says, in his autobiography, of a certain ''Brother 
 Lee," witnessed a good confession to the end, 
 fell from the walls of Zion with the trump of God 
 in his hand and (went) to his reward. When he 
 went away, he left his wife with three sons and 
 two daughters to mourn his departure. He 
 died in a small village, about such as he had 
 spent the most of his life in, in one of the central 
 states. The chief social institutions of that com- 
 
 [18] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 munity are the post office, the general store, 
 the blacksmith shop, the schoolhouse and the 
 church. The cemetery in which his poor form 
 is laid has no regular sexton. It is left to the 
 mercies of those who have loved ones lying 
 there. The villagers go in from time to time 
 with their scythes and mow the yard, and with 
 their shovels re-sod the graves and fill up those 
 that have sunk below level. Once a year they 
 also decorate the graves with the simple, old- 
 fashioned flowers which they have gathered 
 from their back gardens and front yards. No 
 grave is overlooked. Some friendly hand, once 
 a year at least, lays a tribute of love and respect 
 upon the little mound marking the place where 
 they laid him. 
 
 He was licensed to preach in early manhood, 
 but a gift for business and trade kept him until 
 the call came for him to take charge of a par- 
 ticular church, when he resigned his position 
 which paid him twelve hundred dollars a year 
 and began to ride the circuit at six hundred dol- 
 lars. He never had a salary of more than seven 
 hundred and fifty dollars a year. They eked 
 out this meager salary for seven with " mission- 
 
 [19] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 ary barrels" which the women of large, wealthy, 
 city churches sent to them through their society. 
 These '* barrels " were opened with great excite- 
 ment when they came. And the people noticed 
 that the preacher's family were " all togged out 
 again in new clothes (?) " An interesting sight 
 they were, indeed, when they all sallied forth 
 in their secondhand finery ! But they managed 
 to keep their children in the schools within their 
 reach and two of them succeeded in getting 
 through college. And, what is of far more im- 
 portance in the ministry triumphant, all the 
 children grew up to live worthy, upright Hves. 
 Two of the boys entered the ministry and all of 
 them secured the one great hope of the father's 
 life — *'a clear tide to a home in heaven." 
 
 When that family assembled to say the last 
 farewell, and the friends had passed through the 
 little parlor for a last look at his beloved face, 
 the wife and mother took her children in and 
 shut the door. The first paroxysms of their 
 grief over, they steadied their voices and the 
 people outside heard them singing *' Nearer, my 
 God, to thee " — a song he had taught them 
 when these grown-up sons and daughters were 
 
 [20] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 little boys and girls about his knee. It was the 
 same song the men and women sang when the 
 great Titanic went down. They all stood, 
 those men and women of millions and fame, 
 very much as did the country minister's family 
 beside their dead — with little comfort, except a 
 splendid precious memory of work well done 
 and a high hope of heaven. 
 
 There were many dark days in that home — 
 the darkness which poverty, unrequited toil, 
 humiliating circumstances, bring. But the 
 country minister quit his ministry with confi- 
 dence that God was with him to the end and 
 the shout of victory was on his tongue. 
 
 When I get really blue about spiritual achieve- 
 ments, or poorly rewarded services, I think of a 
 life like that ; or I take down my " Twice Born 
 Men " and read for a little while in it, or the 
 " Everlasting Mercy " and go through it ; or I 
 remember my dear friend Callahan, on the 
 Bowery, and how God got a hold on him ; or I 
 think of the men whom I have piloted from the 
 sick room to the glory land ; or I recall the day 
 when Margaret brought her love affair to 
 counsel with me about that. I consider these 
 
 [21] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 things and I say to myself, '* Timothy, the min- 
 istry is the mightiest opportunity on the face of 
 God's green earth for a man with heart and 
 brains!" The afflictions? They shall work 
 '' for us a far more exceeding and eternal 
 weight of glory ; while we look not at the 
 things which are seen, but at the things which 
 are not seen : for the things which are seen are 
 temporal ; but the things which are not seen 
 are eternal." The triumphant ministry is for 
 those who have soldier stufi in them and who 
 can endure. 
 
 This morning I received a letter from a 
 gentleman whose letterhead indicates that his 
 corporation does business in a great center in 
 the Middle West and in the metropolis of the 
 East. This letter was about prayer. Our 
 paths had crossed at the Men and Religion 
 Congress in New York. He believes in prayer. 
 He knows other men of *' big. business " who 
 believe in prayer. I had sent him a little book 
 on that subject. He was writing me to say 
 how much he was helped in reading it and how 
 interested he is in trying to get men banded 
 together in the work of prayer. 
 
 [22] 
 
THE CALL 
 
 Again, last spring I read in my " British 
 Weekly" that William T. Stead had com- 
 panions of his rosary, whom he remembered at 
 least once a year in prayer — on the anniversary 
 of their first meeting. When things like this 
 cross my path, frequently I am comforted with 
 the thought that to teach men to do these 
 things is the privilege of the ministry tri- 
 umphant. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Timothy Kilbourn. 
 
 [23] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 Dear Fred : 
 
 Now that I have written to you on the 
 call to the ministry and the opportunity which 
 the ministry offers to men who have the stuff 
 of endurance in them, I want to say something 
 to you on the subject of equipment. 
 
 There are three great factors in the equip- 
 ment of the minister for the triumphant ministry. 
 These are the school, the personality of the 
 minister and the closet with the closed door. 
 In the course by which the Church usually de- 
 termines the fitness of men for the ministry, 
 emphasis is laid on the first of these. In my 
 judgment, it is of the least importance in the 
 group. You went to college, and later to the 
 seminary, to prepare for the ministry, to equip 
 yourself for the work. It was well you did. 
 In this day nothing seems of more importance 
 than equipment, and certainly a proper amount 
 
 [24] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 of schooling is a large contribution to that end. 
 But the schools simply introduce us to some of 
 our tools. They do very little toward teaching 
 us how to use them. There is many a man 
 who is like a young friend of mine, a semi- 
 invalid. The last time I saw my friend he 
 took me to his den and showed me his snow- 
 shoes and skees and guns. He had a splendid 
 repeating rifle of the latest pattern, that would 
 have delighted the heart of any old hunter in 
 the northern woods, who has use for such an 
 instrument every day ; but for this young 
 friend who was keeping it in his den there 
 was no opportunity to try it out. All the use 
 he made of it was when he fondled and pol- 
 ished and admired it. It was in grave danger 
 of being rusted and spoiled before he should 
 have a chance to use it in a hunt for bear. 
 Thus is it with much of the schooling men get 
 — it is spoiled for service before they get a 
 chance to put it to use. 
 
 The literature, philosophy, chemistry, as- 
 tronomy, biology, Latin, Greek and Hebrew 
 with which I became acquainted a little, and 
 only a little, in school, were instruments for 
 
 [25] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 doing the great work for which I was being 
 equipped. But I needed to know how to use 
 them. They are of no use to me until I learn 
 how to use them. It often happens that men 
 have taken too much time in getting equipped. 
 They have gone to school too much. They 
 went to the best college within their reach and 
 at the end of their course received their A. B. 
 Then they took one or two years in residence 
 there for their Master's degree. Then to the 
 seminary for their B. D. Then they went to 
 the great university at home or abroad for 
 their Doctor's degree. Thus they sallied forth 
 equipped for the fray. 
 
 But they did not arrive. They did not pro- 
 duce what you expected them to produce. 
 They did not achieve. The fault was not in 
 the schools or the tools, but in themselves, that 
 they are underlings. 
 
 Now it is very important that a man have 
 tools. And let me urge you to select with 
 great care those you will need ; and let me also 
 remind you to keep them up to date ; and 
 further let me urge you not simply to own 
 them and fondle them, but to use them so fre- 
 
 [26] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 quently that your dexterity and skill may be 
 increased thereby ; but never get the notion 
 that tools are anything more than the least 
 important factors in your equipment. 
 
 There are scores of men who know enough 
 about Hebrew to qualify for the Rabbinical 
 Priesthood, who could give you the derivation 
 of every word on a page of the Hebrew text, 
 who know all about accents, pointing, punctu- 
 ation and paragraphs of the original, but whose 
 equipment is of no more advantage to them in 
 the ministry of Jesus Christ than that much 
 " pig Latin " of a street gamin's play. There 
 are men who have searched and read the 
 masters in the literature of their own tongues 
 who could not awaken a single impulse to 
 higher and nobler living in the most responsive 
 soul. In all their getting they did not get 
 understanding of a single motive or motion of 
 the human heart. You go into their study and 
 the smell of Russia and cloth is like the spices 
 of Arabia to your nose, but they have " cut no 
 channel " from that study to their stint for the 
 day. 
 
 There are men who follow the advance of 
 
 [27] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 science so hard that they know the latest discov- 
 ery it has made, the latest word it has spoken, 
 the latest formula it has stated, the latest analysis 
 it has proposed ; who could not lead a soul from 
 the darkness of. sin to the light of life, however 
 eager that soul might be to escape the dark- 
 ness and enter the light. They are not 
 equipped for the work. 
 
 Fred, it is wonderful what a man can do with 
 a jackknife if he has the essential equipment — 
 the talent to use that knife. A man on the 
 street once offered for sale to me a beautiful, 
 delicate and elaborately carved fan, which he 
 had wrought with his pocket knife out of the 
 commonest-looking piece of pine picked up in 
 the street. Now I have just such an instru- 
 ment in my possession, and there are scores of 
 pieces of pine in my cellar out of which such 
 a thing of beauty as he wrought might be 
 carved, but I lack the necessary equipment 
 for making use of the tools. 
 
 A young man went to college and took every 
 prize offered to his class. He went to the sem- 
 inary and repeated the triumph there. Receiv- 
 ing his scholarship, he went abroad for a year. 
 
 [28] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 On his return he became minister in a suburban 
 church of sixty members ; but within two years 
 and five months he had utterly failed. When 
 his successor was called to the field, before ac- 
 cepting, he consulted with the professors of that 
 seminary from which he and the other young 
 man had graduated, as to what he should do 
 with the call. These professors reviewed the 
 other man's history in the school and frankly 
 warned this young man against attempting the 
 work of a field in which their star performer had 
 failed. ** Remember," said they, " you have no 
 such record in school. He is the best man we 
 have sent out. He failed to make anything of 
 that field. If you follow him you must be pre- 
 pared to move from the field any day." But, 
 as this young man pondered and prayed over 
 the church's call, he felt that God wanted him 
 to succeed that man, so he sent his acceptance, 
 and his ministry there was a succession of tri- 
 umphs for nearly six years. Now this man had 
 been denied many of the advantages the other 
 man had had, but he had one outstanding ad- 
 vantage for the work over the other man — he 
 could use the tools in his hand. 
 
 [29] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 Without minimizing the value of the training 
 of the schools, without encouraging any man to 
 drop his study of science, philosophy, Latin, 
 Hebrew or Greek, let me remind you that some 
 of the most powerful and outstanding ministers 
 of Jesus Christ in the history of the nineteenth 
 and twentieth century Church have been men 
 who from the standpoint of the schools had only 
 a jackknife with which to do their work. Prob- 
 ably one of the most interesting figures in the 
 development of American history is the circuit 
 rider of the Methodist Church. This man was 
 chosen by the people for his work, first, because 
 he had *' experienced " religion ; and second, 
 because he had a gift of expressing that expe- 
 rience to the class meeting and the camp meet- 
 ings and the meetings held in the settler's 
 houses. Then the presiding elder found him out 
 and set him to work ministering to the small 
 rural districts needing the message, which had 
 no better equipped men for the work. So, 
 astride of his horse, with his saddlebag library 
 behind him, he went forth with no school to 
 sharpen his countenance, save only the face of 
 a friend. Some noble servants, great preachers, 
 
 [30] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 fearless prophets and powerful evangelists were 
 found amongst these men. Peter Cartwright 
 was a notable circuit rider in Kentucky and 
 Illinois. Under his preaching, sin was rebuked, 
 sinners were converted and multitudes were led 
 into an experience of the power of God to save 
 the lost. 
 
 I am reminded, as I write, of a man used of 
 God so marvelously in the last half of the last 
 century, that his name will never be forgotten 
 in America, England and Scotland, for the sav- 
 ing of sinners and the awakening of the Church, 
 who never saw the inside of a college until he 
 began to establish colleges for young men and 
 women in a like situation with himself. The 
 ministers of all these lands have sat at the feet 
 of Dwight L. Moody, to learn how to use their 
 man-made tools and the sword of the Spirit, 
 which is the Word of God. 
 
 A thing has happened which has never hap- 
 pened before in the history of the world. A 
 man who knows next to nothing about the 
 methods and atmosphere of the classroom of 
 the schools, who violates all the principles of 
 the homiletic art and insults the proprieties of 
 
 [31] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 the preaching profession according to the 
 schools, has, nevertheless, preached to sixty- 
 thousand people in a day and seen tens of thou- 
 sands fall under his powerful dramatic utterance 
 of the truth. Billy Sunday believes in and 
 preaches the oldest and most ** traditional " 
 doctrines of the Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testaments — the Word of God. 
 
 Fred, don't depend on the schooling you re- 
 ceived nor too greatly magnify the instruments 
 it placed in your hands. Don't buy too many 
 books. Know what you do buy and ** cut a 
 channel" from your reading to your work. 
 Read, read, by all means ; get all you can from 
 the books, but be sure to think far more than 
 you read. Gather sweetened water from every 
 flower in the field, but remember Jefferson's ob- 
 servation on honey and the bee, and be sure to 
 squeeze something of your own personality into 
 all that you gather from these broad and beau- 
 tiful pastures. 
 
 Personality — that is the principal thing in 
 the human elements of a ministry triumphant. 
 If you want to get clearly before you the figure 
 of one whom you do not want to be like, read 
 
 [32] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 George Eliot. Almost any minister she pre- 
 sents will do, for she seems never to have met 
 any but nobodies. I am thinking of her 
 Mr. Casaubon in '' Middlemarch," v^hose per- 
 sonality was so dry and worthless that it makes 
 a man angry to think such dust could ever be 
 found in our profession, in fiction or real Hfe. I 
 am thinking of that dear, heroic, inconsequential, 
 beautiful bookworm, old Mr. Lyon, in " Felix 
 Holt," and I don't know of any man who, in 
 these modern days, feels it possible for persons 
 like him to be triumphant ministers in any time 
 or place. Some of our recent novelists have 
 done well in trying to present ministers of 
 forceful personality in their books ; but most of 
 them have so limited them in one way or an- 
 other that I cannot believe they will live for any 
 considerable time in the mind and heart of the 
 busy, sinning, dying world as triumphant men. 
 They were not big enough. 
 
 Before I leave this subject I must speak of 
 one figure in fiction that looms up before me as 
 a man worth knowing, whether you meet him 
 in books or real life, and that is " Rev. James 
 Harden, M. A., who was educated at Cam- 
 
 [33] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 bridge ; threw up all his prospects when he be- 
 came convinced of sin ; cast in his lot with the 
 Independents and wrestled even unto blood 
 with the world, the flesh and the devil in Cow- 
 fold for thirty years till he was gathered to his 
 rest." That is the man we like to meet ; and 
 we shall be everlastingly grateful to Claudius 
 Clear for introducing us to Mark Rutherford, 
 and to Mark Rutherford, a Unitarian, for this 
 introduction to that Evangelical Independent 
 minister, James Harden, Master of Arts. He is 
 a personality, in league with the Personality of 
 the ages, Jesus called Christ. And after all, that 
 is the great equipment for a triumphant min- 
 istry. Now a man who is really this, a person, 
 is, in a way, distinguished at the start. What- 
 ever comes to him and passes through him is 
 new when it leaves him. When he goes to his 
 study and begins to read, there is a fine bit of 
 mental and spiritual metabolism taking place 
 all the while. When he comes out, however 
 poorly his memory may work in any attempt at 
 a quotation of the poets, or philosophers, or 
 scientists, nevertheless you know he has been 
 with them and learned of them. 
 
 [34] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 There are some outstanding personalities like 
 this in the recent past and present day. Let 
 me mention two. Beecher is the first. The 
 success of this man is wholly described in this 
 one word — personality. He went out to his 
 garden or farm or orchard and came back with 
 loads of precious fruit to lay on the table at 
 Plymouth Church the following Sunday. He 
 went into his study and read ; he read his his- 
 tories, then returned to describe the movements 
 of God through the centuries ; he read his 
 poets, and returned laden with flowers whose 
 sweet perfume filled the room ; he read his 
 dramatists, and returned to dramatize the truth 
 so wondrously, that men, conscious of its reality, 
 laughed and cried ; he read his philosophers and 
 then stood before the people to plead the cause 
 of God and men in such a fashion that his 
 audience rose to do valiant deeds for them. 
 Yet Beecher's verbal memory w^as so poor that 
 he scarcely ever attempted to quote what other 
 men had said. But through the long years of 
 his ministry he stood two, three or more times 
 each week on a public platform or pulpit in the 
 metropolis of this land, and brought a message 
 
 [35] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 as fresh and new as the morning. There are 
 many who have tried to tell us the secret of the 
 power of this man, but nothing sums it up bet- 
 ter for me than personality : the expression of 
 the moral, and if you will allow me to say, the 
 aesthetic and intellectual order of the world 
 through an individual. 
 
 The other man who can gather and change 
 the world and history and science, especially, 
 into food for the heart and mind, is that remark- 
 able Wesleyan Methodist preacher and saint, 
 William L. Watkinson. Of his many books I 
 commend to you one, for a study of personality 
 in its preaching function — " The Duty of Im- 
 perial Thinking." This book is a series of 
 " sermonettes " (I call them that for their 
 brevity). It has been some years since I read 
 this book but as I remember it, each chapter is 
 an exposition of some great text in Scripture 
 illustrated from a well-known scientific fact or 
 recent discovery. Some of the titles are 
 '' Ashes of Roses," '' The Poles of the Moral 
 Order," "The Charmed Life of the Frail," 
 *' Plowing the Sands," *' The Efficacy of Joy," 
 ** The Devil's Riddle," '' The Implied Promise 
 
 [36] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 of Nature and Life." Besides these there are 
 forty-six other sermonettes in this book, the tides 
 to which are an index to the great personality 
 who pours himself out in the message he brings 
 from the Bible and the world of science, through 
 which he daily roams in search of inspiration 
 and strength. He speaks not more than forty 
 words a minute, I should say, but I have seen a 
 huge audience greet him day after day and 
 crowd up to the platform steps for seats to hear 
 what God had to say to them through him. 
 
 Personality is always so much greater than 
 the message it consciously and purposely utters, 
 that there is an overplus of virtue, of life, ac- 
 companying all the attempted output. The 
 message prepared for the pulpit is an expression 
 of all the experience of the week as the minister 
 has touched the four corners of his parish and 
 the world. The old woman that he visited ; the 
 anxious and loving mother after whose son he 
 inquired ; the man with whom he counseled be- 
 hind a locked door ; the poor sinner that poured 
 the tale of sin and failure into his ear ; the 
 strong, valiant man with whom he conspired for 
 human good — all these are conscious of the con- 
 
 [37] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 tribution which they made to that sermon, along 
 with the masters of the world from whom he 
 gleaned, though not one of them could lay his 
 finger on a single word and call it his own. 
 When it got back to them it was new. 
 
 Now a man like this is not interested in those 
 much-advertised magazines and books of ser- 
 mons and texts ready-made to suit a thousand 
 occasions. Our man with a personality does 
 not wear secondhand clothes nor " hand-me- 
 down" garments for the mind. He has no 
 trouble in finding themes upon which to preach. 
 He has such a fund of subjects on hand, crowd- 
 ing for expression, that he lacks time and 
 strength and utterance to get them a chance to 
 be heard. He is never preached out. He 
 grows richer and fuller with the years. His 
 parishioners speak of him as a man of ever-in- 
 creasing usefulness in their midst. They know 
 there is something in this man that makes it 
 impossible to forecast the message for the com- 
 ing week. They do not know who or what 
 will touch him between Sundays, but they know 
 that in any event he will be a new man on the 
 coming day. 
 
 [38] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 In the ministry as in every great field, as Dr. 
 Van Dyke said in " The Gospel for an Age of 
 Doubt," '* life is now the regnant idea ; person- 
 ality its utmost expression." ** Persons are the 
 most potent factor of progress and change in 
 history," said Fairbairn, "and the greatest per- 
 son known to it is the one who has been the 
 most powerful factor in ordered progress." 
 
 Yes, my dear Fred, that is the secret of the 
 triumph of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the 
 expression of Personality — the divine Person- 
 ality. And if that gospel gets half a chance to 
 express itself in and through the personality of 
 a man with a gift for telling what he has learned 
 from fellowship with Christ, there will be tri- 
 umphs all along the way. 
 
 But I should not give you a sufficient word 
 unless I should write something on the secret of 
 vitalizing, charging or developing the person- 
 ality and of our access to power outside of 
 ourselves. Within a year or two, three men 
 who love ministers and who ought to know, 
 have said to me that many ministers are not 
 '' equal to their job»" Two of them were field 
 secretaries of two of our church boards and the 
 
 [39] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 third was a live, wide-awake, energetic mission- 
 ary from India who is *' doing things " out there 
 for God and men. These three men were go- 
 ing all over the country and claimed to be meet- 
 ing ministers and churches everywhere and 
 hearing *' both sides " of a restless Church. In 
 a letter recently received from the editor of the 
 most widely read church paper in our denomi- 
 nation, the declaration is made that it is very 
 difficult to find men equal to the task which our 
 large city churches have to face. I have a 
 large acquaintance amongst the ministers of 
 our church, and I have not felt that on the 
 whole they were any more unequal to their task 
 than are the men of the churches to which they 
 minister. But if there is any failure on the 
 part of ministers to be equal to the task which 
 they and the Church are facing to-day, it can, 
 in my humble judgment, be accounted for in 
 the fact that they have lost their key to the 
 closet door. 
 
 Now, Fred, there are just two things to re- 
 member about the closet with the door. In the 
 first place, it is appointed by Christ. In the 
 second place, it is for us the trysting place of 
 
 [40] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 power. There is one thing you and I can never 
 forget — the prayer band that used to meet in 
 my study on Saturday night and the resuks. 
 You remember those eleven names we had on 
 our Hst for a number of months, and how nine 
 of them confessed Christ with scarcely a word 
 spoken to them by any one of us. In answer 
 to our prayers God brought those men into the 
 kingdom of Christ. The ministry of interces- 
 sion is a ministry from which no soul can be cut 
 off by outward events. And it is the most effi- 
 cient ministry a man can offer. No ministry is 
 more needed in these times. 
 
 Men and circumstances we could never reach 
 by direct approach can be reached from the 
 closet with the closed door. I am in receipt of 
 a letter that tells me how this has been done in 
 the life of a friend. He wrote me two months 
 ago of his perplexity and distress and how every 
 way which he had tried had failed. In reply I 
 declared my belief in the power at our disposal 
 by way of the closet with the closed door. We 
 entered it together, he in a city far away, I in 
 my own place. This letter tells that six weeks 
 ago things began to change and that now the 
 
 [41] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 work has reached such a stage of success that 
 his hope is firm and his heart filled with cheer. 
 Take a new look at Mark ii : 24. It is the 
 pledge for your communion in the closet with 
 the closed door. Here also men get what the 
 schools could not successfully give — access of 
 power in the terms of personality. Personality 
 is something that culture cannot give. Culture 
 can only improve what nature brings to its 
 school. But I am sure that with the closed 
 door, there is a change in the Hfe elements of 
 the men who resort to the closet. Something is 
 added which nature and the schools and world 
 experience cannot give. 
 
 You know, Fred, that to enter the kingdom of 
 heaven you must be born again — not educated 
 or reformed or given changed environment, but 
 born again. Now we know that this means 
 more than outward change. It means new life. 
 Hence the possibility of change in the seat of 
 personality, even. Even the men whose lack 
 of equipment for service in the ministry was 
 personality itself, may hope for change to be 
 made in them, at the very seat of life. 
 
 Whatever men may say, I know that in the 
 
 [42] 
 
THE EQUIPMENT 
 
 closet with the closed door there are the secrets 
 of life. Men who have gone in there daily 
 have come out with faces that shine, with 
 visions that inspire those to whom they give the 
 good news, and with power to remove moun- 
 tains into the midst of the sea. 
 
 Since my last letter you have left us in the 
 country and have gone into the great city's life. 
 Remember what the psalmist said about what 
 he had seen there : " I have seen violence and 
 strife in the city. Day and night they go about 
 it upon the walls thereof : mischief also and sor- 
 row are in the midst of it. Wickedness is in the 
 midst thereof : deceit and guile depart not from 
 her streets." 
 
 In the face of circumstances like that, what is 
 the chance for a man of peace, with a message 
 against sin? Much, in every way, if he draw 
 on the source of power. He will not fail if he 
 keep the path worn to the closet with the closed 
 door. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Timothy Kilbourn. 
 
 [43] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE TAX 
 
 Dear Fred : 
 
 You write of a ** hard week." I am 
 glad you have them. I hope you make each 
 week a hard week. Dr. Forsyth said : ** It is 
 the demands, not the promises, that make men 
 of us, the responsibilities, not the enjoyments, 
 that raise us to the stature of men.'* 
 
 No ministry is triumphant without tax. But, 
 if a man is disposed to take life easily, the min- 
 istry offers him a chance with many advantages. 
 He can be assured of a living of some sort from 
 the start. He will be treated with considerable 
 respect, by a large part of the community, down 
 to the end of the day, because he is a minister. 
 He will be indulged by many pious people, who 
 hope and pray for a day of awakening, but who 
 are too diffident to prod toward this end " the 
 Lord's anointed." Unfortunately for the min- 
 ister, he has no monitor to arrange his schedule 
 
 [44] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 and keep him up to it, outside himself — unless 
 it be his wife. But, usually, birds of a feather 
 flock together, and she is either of a slattern 
 mind Hke her husband, or of that adoring sort 
 that worships her lord. She may be of that de- 
 ceived number who imagine that their husbands 
 are victims of overwork. 
 
 Many people support the minister as a 
 charity ; and their interest is not critical or 
 constructive. They expect no reckoning. 
 Charities should not be held too strictly to 
 account. Besides, it takes too much time. 
 Their minister, knowing that this is their view, 
 and having no burning zeal or alluring vision 
 other than his personal comfort and ease, ac- 
 cepts the situation and lives up to it. With 
 no one to drive him to his work, he lounges 
 through the week. Possibly, on the last day, 
 or the last two days, the approaching publicity 
 of the Sabbath begins to bear down upon his 
 mind and he gives himself with great vehe- 
 mence to getting ready for the event or events. 
 And when it is done he is so taxed by his effort 
 to bring forth something out of nothing, that 
 he imagines himself a sadly overworked man. 
 
 [45] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 Like Rev. John Broad, minister at Tanner's 
 Lane in Cowfold, antitype of Rev. James 
 Harden, M. A., of wliom I spoke in my last 
 letter to you, the minister who would avoid 
 ministerial tax will be exhausted in digesting 
 the food he eats. Mr. Broad '* was not of the 
 revival type. He was moderate in all of what 
 he called his * views,' neither ultra-Calvinist 
 nor Arminian ; not rigid upon Baptism." A 
 man who *' very much preferred the indirect 
 method of doing good and if he thought a 
 brother had done wrong, contented himself 
 with praying in private for him. He was not, 
 however, a hypocrite, that is to say, not an 
 ordinary novel or stage hypocrite. He could 
 not doubt, for doubt was not in the air ; . . . 
 Nor was Mr. Broad a criminal in any sense. 
 He was upright, on the whole, in all his 
 transactions, although a little greedy and 
 hard, people thought. . . . Another rec- 
 ommendation was that he was temperate in 
 his drink. He was not so in his meat. Supper 
 was his great meal, and he would then con- 
 sume beef, ham or sausage, hot potatoes, 
 mixed pickles, fruit pies, bread, cheese and 
 
 [46] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 celery, in quantities which were remarlcable 
 even in those days ; but he never drank any- 
 thing but beer — a pint at dinner and a pint at 
 supper." 
 
 Now the picture is bold and would not be 
 true to the average minister who has an easy 
 life, a life without tax, in the ministry of to-day. 
 But it is a faithful portrait of what a man may 
 become who finds the ministry an opportunity 
 to lie down on the obligation to work. 
 
 But I am not writing to you about Rev. John 
 Broad and his ilk because I fear you may fall 
 into his class. My message to you is inspired 
 by what I know you want to be — a useful man, 
 a faithful servant for Jesus Christ, who studies 
 to show himself approved unto God, rightly 
 dividing the word of truth. 
 
 The tax of the ministry to-day surpasses the 
 tax of any previous age. There never was an 
 age when so much work was laid at the min- 
 ister's feet for him to do as now. There never 
 was an age when the circumstances amidst 
 which he must do it were more unfavorable. 
 The pressure that is being put upon us calls 
 for a clear understanding of our work and our 
 
 [47] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 commission. We must sooner or later give 
 the world a new definition of our task, a new 
 vision of our calling. We must get a new 
 emphasis for ourselves. In every line of hu- 
 man activity there has been a tendency toward 
 specialization, except in the ministry of the 
 Church of Jesus Christ. I will not undertake 
 to illustrate this statement from the many pro- 
 fessions and businesses offering examples, but 
 I simply call your attention to specialization in 
 one department of Christian life and work. 
 There is the Y. M. C. A., an institution so 
 efficient and special that it has supplanted the 
 Church in the judgment of many business 
 men who give their substance for prosecuting 
 Christ's work. In our county town of twenty- 
 three thousand inhabitants, the Y. M. C. A. 
 building will accommodate forty men with 
 rooms, fifteen hundred members with pleas- 
 ure, opportunity for exercise, fellowship and 
 training of body and mind. The following 
 paid workers are always on the job — a general 
 secretary, assistant secretary, membership sec- 
 retary, boy's secretary and physical director. 
 No one of these secretaries attempts to do the 
 
 [48] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 regular work of addressing die meetings on 
 Sunday afternoons. None of them do any 
 teaching except one Bible class each week and 
 when necessity calls them through the failure 
 of regular teachers, who are provided for 
 the class work. They do not duplicate one 
 another's work in any way. Whatever work 
 they do is done with the idea of reaching a 
 man for accumulative effect. 
 
 There are also in this little city about thirty 
 churches. Seven of these churches are not 
 more than six blocks from that Y. M. C. A. 
 building. In each of these one man is expected 
 to do, and is trying to do, the work that those 
 five men are doing, or are trying to do, in the 
 Y. M. C. A., in buildings only one of which 
 approaches the Y. M. C. A. in modern improve- 
 ments. What is the result ? Are any of these 
 men succeeding? Yes, some of them very 
 well. All of them more or less. But every 
 man of them has faced at some time in the 
 course of five or six years the restless Church. 
 This resdessness is, in a large measure, ac- 
 counted for by the fact that so much is expected 
 of the minister which he cannot reasonably be 
 
 [49] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 expected to do. The reason so many men are 
 not *' big enough for their job " in the ministry, 
 lies in the fact that their job is really the work 
 of four or five men. Before he knows it, the 
 best man will be tempted to waste time and 
 energy on the urgent and seemingly important, 
 or imperative, claims on his attention, which, 
 after all, turn out to be unimportant, when 
 compared to the main business of his life. 
 Some of the best ministers in this land have 
 made a heroic effort to meet the situation, to do 
 everything demanded of them, and have failed. 
 They have planned the parish work and tried, 
 in the best way they know how, to set everyone 
 to work ; they call on the troubled, the new 
 arrivals and the sick ; they teach the men's 
 Bible class or some other class in the Sunday 
 school ; sometimes they lead the singing and 
 look out for the teaching force from week to 
 week ; they attempt to meet the public demands 
 on them to shepherd the flock, that is, to feed 
 the sheep, frolic with the lambs and find pastures 
 and playgrounds that are new and green for all 
 of them. These wonderful men do all this for 
 their own, and then go out into the community 
 
 [50] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 to do the same for the town, the county, the 
 State and the Church at large. Then they go 
 back to their homes to study, — and to hear 
 what the still small voice would say ! And too 
 frequently they don't catch it because the Elijah 
 conditions are not present. With the prophet, 
 when the thunder and the storm had passed he 
 had a chance to hear ; but with the rattle of the 
 street outside and the telephone bell inside, 
 when does the man of to-day get a chance to 
 hear ? 
 
 Now where are we going to begin, my friend, 
 to get the mastery of this tax that spells failure 
 for the average man? Oh, yes, I know what 
 you will say — look at John Timothy Stone, and 
 J. H. Jowett, and S. Parkes Cadman, and Russell 
 H. Conwell, and a host of other great and good 
 men who do wonderful things. But I venture 
 to say these men gained a mastery by doing in 
 the beginning what I am going to propose to 
 you — and that is this : 
 
 Remember you cannot do everything. Re- 
 member that you have been set to feed and 
 tend Christ's flock— the lambs and the sheep. 
 The important thing in such a tending is first 
 
 [51] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 to feed, second to guard, third to seek out the 
 strayed and lost. I venture to say, Fred, if you 
 will confine yourself to this, you will not fail, and 
 you will be taxed, and you will be triumphant. 
 
 But a man cannot feed the sheep unless he 
 prepares to feed them. The subjection of the 
 whole life to this business of preparation to feed 
 the sheep is imperative upon the minister. He 
 must know the green pastures and the still 
 waters. He must take the walk beforehand if 
 he would lead them on Sunday into the places 
 where their souls can be regaled. The mastery 
 and discipline of tax, therefore, begins right 
 here at the study in the manse. 
 
 Let it be the best room in the house for air 
 and light and heat. If there is any room in the 
 house that has outlook — with a fine sweep 
 across the hills or the river or the lake or the 
 sea — let us pray that it may be this room which 
 has the best air and light and heat. In my 
 second parish they built a room large and light, 
 and with a sweep across the lake and the land- 
 scape miles and miles away, while just near was 
 a quiet spur of the hill to which I might go and 
 look out and away over lake and land as far as 
 
 [52] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 the eye would reach. And that helps a man to 
 see things in a grand way. One afternoon 
 from that hilltop I saw something I shall never 
 forget. The city lay in the distance. While I 
 marked the great, tall buildings, black against 
 the fields, and the windows reflecting the light 
 of declining day, a cloud, flung across the sky, 
 shut out the sun. With the exception of the dim 
 shadow of the great, huge buildings rising high 
 toward the sky, the city was immediately lost to 
 view. While I thought on the scene, and how 
 many a prospect in life is spoiled by the clouds 
 that shut out the light, behold, there was a rift 
 in the cloud, and the sun shot his rays across 
 the background of that dark scene, and while 
 the city was still under the cloud there were 
 radiant and beautiful prospects beyond. 
 
 Now, Fred, choose a room, or get a hilltop, 
 where you can get a prospect like that if it is in 
 or near your house. It is like Beulah Land to 
 the man who must go within an hour, or a day, 
 to feed the flock. 
 
 When you have the room with the air, the 
 heat and the light, go to it on the hour. I 
 do not say you should go when I go, or leave 
 
 [53] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 when I leave. My plan is to have a schedule 
 from 6 A. M. until lo P. M. There is scarcely 
 one day in seven that I follow that schedule un- 
 interruptedly to the end. But it makes provi- 
 sion for hard study in the Hebrew and the 
 Greek of the original text, though I never pos- 
 sessed any facility in language work. It has a 
 place for daily reading of a stiff sort, and for 
 lighter reading and for play. And though I 
 seldom get a chance from six in the morning 
 until ten at night to follow the schedule com- 
 pletely, I am never in the position of the man 
 who does not know what to do next. If inter- 
 ruptions come and spoil my attention for a 
 while, when they pass I can get right down to 
 business again by observing on the schedule 
 what comes next. 
 
 Before I leave the study there are two things 
 I want to say. Look hard at the schedule from 
 6 to 9 A. M. A long while ago I determined to 
 read nothing until I had read the Book. Now 
 to that vow has been added the time for prayer. 
 Your ministry of intercession can be practiced 
 at this hour. And it is the best hour of the 
 day. Enter the closet with the closed door in 
 
 [54] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 the morning-. I say nothing about how to read 
 or work. You ought to have mastered any 
 disposition to intellectual lounging or laziness 
 long before you left the college campus or the 
 professional school. But above everything let 
 me urge you never to lose the habit of '' boning 
 down to hard work " in the study. 
 
 The Scriptures are the Word of God and the 
 way is so plain that the wayfaring man, though 
 a simpleton, need not err therein ; but they place 
 no premium on simpletons in the pulpit. " The 
 trouble with many of us is just this — we come 
 to our work from low levels, from the common 
 angle, with the ordinary point of view." Do 
 some " mountain climbing," Fred, and get on 
 the heights. Do most of your climbing on your 
 knees in the study. Let the study be the scene 
 of long hours, kept jealously for the Company 
 you can get there, and for hard toil in prepara- 
 tion to feed the flock. 
 
 But you must leave the study, if you are to 
 be a minister of Jesus Christ, and get out amidst 
 the flock. The sheep must know the shepherd, 
 else his voice will sound like that of a stranger. 
 
 [55] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 And a stranger's voice they will not follow. 
 Now that is particularly true of the lambs and 
 the young sheep. They must hear your voice 
 in their homes or school or on the street, where 
 you can call them by name and give them the 
 attention which each individual, big, little, old 
 and young, delights to receive. To do this it 
 is not necessary that you be frequently in these 
 familiar places with each one ; but if it is the 
 record you make each week with some of them, 
 you keep the touch of sympathy and tone that 
 makes them believe you are akin. 
 
 Probably no work a minister has to do is 
 more futile than his pastoral work when done in 
 the usual way. To run up and down the street, 
 pushing buttons on the posts of doors where 
 people live and when admitted frittering your 
 time away in futile remarks about the weather, 
 or some topic in which there is no heart or soul, 
 is usually a sinful waste of time. I suppose 
 that it has to be done sometimes, but be sure 
 necessity is laid upon you when you do such 
 things. To visit all the women in your parish 
 when the men are at work and the children are 
 at school is to put in your time usually where 
 
 [56] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 it is needed the least. Women in the average 
 church home are glad to hear that you dropped 
 into the office for a chat with John, or that you 
 are coming in the evening when the children 
 are at home ; but to be gadding about from 
 door to door in afternoon bell-ringing and per- 
 functory calls, gives you no lift in their esteem. 
 
 And when you go down on the street be sure 
 that you do not lounge or loaf. There are lots 
 of men doing that at the pool room, and the 
 smokehouse, and the news stand, and they 
 know the man who is in the same frame of 
 mind as their own. I have found it convenient, 
 when introduced to a man, to find out in some 
 way or other where he stands in relation to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and the Church ; and if the 
 way is open, I do business for Jesus Christ there 
 and then. 
 
 I make it my business to book engagements 
 with men to talk about their personal relation 
 to Christ and the Church. Day before yester- 
 day my duties as a college trustee required me 
 to sit on two committees for three or four hours, 
 in a city twenty-five miles away. On returning 
 home at i : 30 P. M., business led me to the 
 
 [57] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 bank. In the queue before the cashier's win- 
 dow was a man I have been '' working on " for 
 three years. I asked him to give me a few 
 moments aside when he was through with his 
 business. When he came aside and took my 
 hand, I said : *' Friend, the communion season 
 is a week from Sunday. Won't you decide for 
 Jesus Christ without further delay ? " Taking 
 my hand in both of his, he said : *' See me 
 again ; I promise to think seriously between 
 now and then." 
 
 I left him to visit a store where five young 
 women who attend our church are at work. 
 One of them had two mates in the Sunday 
 school and she took me to talk with them. 
 Both of them decided for Christ and will come 
 into the Church. Then I hastened to the office 
 of a young lawyer who, three weeks ago, ac- 
 cepted Christ, to see how it was going with 
 him. He had had a " blue night " the evening 
 before. In his private office I counseled and 
 encouraged him. Then to my barber shop. 
 As I went out one of the proprietors was alone 
 and I sat on the bench beside him. It was an 
 opportune time and for fifty minutes I talked to 
 
 [58] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 this new prospect about Christ — what he had 
 done for me, and what he could do for him. 
 
 Yesterday I had a funeral. After it was over, 
 I had to visit another home into which death 
 had stalked. When I left there I went to a 
 factory to talk about Christ to the proprietor. 
 He was occupied, but his daughter at the desk, 
 a member of our Sunday school, though not a 
 Christian, seemed ready for my approach, so I 
 talked to her and she decided to come next Sun- 
 day morning into the Church. From there I 
 went to a large manufactory for a close confer- 
 ence with one of the proprietors of that firm. I 
 waited ten minutes for him ; then we pulled our 
 chairs together and, like men, talked about 
 Christ and what we owed to him. When we 
 shook hands, I did not have his surrender to 
 Christ, but he thanked me for the visit and my 
 interest in him. 
 
 In addition to cases like these are the many 
 to whom counsel and comfort and inspiration 
 and sympathy must be ministered by the way. 
 
 We have between five and six hundred mem- 
 bers in this church with which is connected a 
 mission where my assistant is at work. In the 
 
 [59] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 field are all sorts, classes and conditions for us 
 to meet and serve ; but there is not a man or 
 woman, boy or girl, in the place who does not 
 believe this is the most needed and best ren- 
 dered pastoral work. 
 
 *'Ye are witnesses," said Christ. "Ye have 
 not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and or- 
 dained you, that ye should go and bring forth 
 fruit, and that your fruit should remain." And 
 when a man looks at that, he knows the terms 
 of the commission cannot be satisfied in weather 
 comments or social perfunctories of the pink tea 
 sort. There is no triumph for any man on such 
 occasions. Triumph comes, and comes only, to 
 the men who are besieging the citadel of Man 
 Soul and receiving a surrender of that famous 
 castle in the name of our Lord. 
 
 In this connection I have said nothing about 
 the sweet peace and inspiration that passes into 
 the life of a man who has pastorally ministered 
 to the saints of God who are shut in from week 
 to week, and whose quiet rooms are places of pain 
 and sweet repose. I have not mentioned the 
 glow he feels when those who have failed send 
 for him to come in haste. I have said nothing 
 
 [60] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 of the joy that may fill his heart when some lad 
 has come to talk out with him plans for the 
 coming days. But when his schedule has been 
 kept filled with engagements like this, he knows 
 he has a message that will meet some heart's 
 need, the first day of the week. 
 
 And that is my next message to you — the 
 tax upon you the first day of the week. If you 
 have done wisely, you have followed the advice 
 of Jefferson and rested on Saturday, in order 
 that you may be fresh for your tax on the first 
 day of the week. I have no sympathy with the 
 man who brings the smell of a midnight lamp 
 to the pulpit on the first day of the week ; nor 
 with the man who brings the redness of eye 
 caused by late hours under the incandescent 
 lamp on Saturday night ; nor with the man who 
 brings a sermon polished and pointed and bal- 
 anced in every part as a literary triumph for the 
 week. The need of the people is not a literary 
 gem, cold and hard. Neither do they need a 
 treatise on literature, philosophy, or art. Neither 
 do they want a discussion of social service. 
 What the people want in the pulpit is a man 
 who is a medium through whom God himself 
 
 [61] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 can speak to them and through whom they can 
 reach up to God. The pulpit is no place for 
 platitudes or Platonism. It is the place for 
 pouring out the heart and mind, in God- 
 inspired speech. It is the place where a man, 
 consumed with love for God and men, ought to 
 glow and flame with the story that never grows 
 old, and the joy that cannot be told, and the 
 hope that cannot be dimmed, and the conviction 
 that cannot be chilled, and the determination to 
 win that cannot be denied. What the pulpit 
 needs to-day and every day is triumphant men, 
 strong men, rejoicing to run a race. It is the 
 men who *' joy " " according to the joy in har- 
 vest, and as men rejoice when they divide the 
 spoil." It is the confident men who fear not 
 the faces of men — triumphant men who keep 
 step with Jesus Christ in his march victorious, 
 triumphant, around the world. 
 
 I sat with a man in his office this week, who 
 told me of his search for peace. Though he was 
 a Protestant, he had intimate Catholic friends, 
 with whom he had talked and had laid his plans 
 to visit the priest. Then his attention was di- 
 rected to the advent, of a visiting minister of 
 
 [62] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 Unitarian faith. He was charmed with his 
 utterance, but the message gave no peace. 
 He followed him, however, into the city from 
 which he came and listened again. But the 
 message, discussing and repudiating miracles, 
 " only confirmed my doubts," said he, " and 
 did not bring peace." And what stronger in- 
 dictment than that could a man utter against 
 such preaching? The world doesn't need the 
 help of men to confirm doubts. It needs the 
 help of men who can bring assurance and hope 
 and peace. This cannot be done by men whose 
 sermons start no farther back, nor deeper down, 
 nor higher up, than the teeth. No, Fred ; there 
 is no triumph in preaching like that. 
 
 Triumphant preaching is a tax upon the 
 whole man. It is the man that must be sacri- 
 ficed on Sunday. Let him be neither common 
 nor unclean. Let him come to the people 
 after the rest and refreshment of the yesterday, 
 and the brooding of the week, and the fellow- 
 ship with God and his saints, and the hours in 
 the closet with the closed door, and at the ap- 
 pointed hour let his sacrifice be complete. Let 
 him tell them things that he knows — that God 
 
 [63] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 loves them ; that his is a brooding, atoning love ; 
 that sin is more than a mistake or a struggling 
 toward the light — it is a deadly thing that can- 
 not be trifled with ; that heaven is in the heights 
 and that it is for those who accept the gift ; that 
 there is forgiveness for the men and the women 
 who have failed, who turn to him. Oh, yes, my 
 friend, great things have been done for us in 
 Jesus Christ our Saviour, Redeemer and King. 
 Prayer is a great sluice gate through which the 
 reservoir of God's love and grace and power 
 can be poured upon the soul and upon the 
 world. Love, yes, wonderful love, is the mes- 
 sage the world needs. 
 
 *' Oh, 'twas love, 'twas wondrous love, 
 The love of God to me, 
 It brought my Saviour from above, 
 To die on Calvary." 
 
 Fred, the trouble is with many souls, it may 
 be with some that are in the ministry, that they 
 do not know these things. If they know them — 
 then their conviction is not deep enough. They 
 have no experience out of which to speak. 
 There is no passion in their utterance. There 
 is no real tax when they preach. 
 
 [64] 
 
THE TAX 
 
 Give yourself " a living sacrifice, holy, accept- 
 able unto God, which is your reasonable service. 
 And be not conformed to this world : but be ye 
 transformed by the renewing of your mind, that 
 ye may prove what is that good, and accept- 
 able, and perfect, will of God." 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Timothy Kilbourn. 
 
 [65] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 Dear Fred : 
 
 One of the great words of the New 
 Testament, and one of the great joys in the 
 Christian Hfe, and one of the blessed and com- 
 forting experiences in the triumphant ministry, 
 is fellowship. 
 
 It is worth a man's while to remember the 
 men who have wrought, for God and men, in 
 the ministry of Jesus Christ. Beginning with 
 the apostles, there has continued a succession 
 of heroes and saints whose characters and per- 
 sonalities shed luster on the race and magnify 
 the gospel which we preach. 
 
 The apostle Paul is the outstanding apostle 
 of the New Testament for the following rea- 
 sons : First, his personal acquaintance with 
 the Lord began after the Lord's ascension. 
 Jesus Christ, glorified and reigning in glory, 
 appeared to him with such clarity and distinct- 
 
 [66] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 ness and directness, that the acquaintance had 
 all the marks of the sensuous, as well as the 
 spiritual, reality which the other disciples had 
 had with Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh. In 
 the second place, upon the experience of this 
 contact with Christ, the whole person, prospects 
 and purposes of the apostle were converted. 
 ** Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of 
 Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of 
 the Hebrews ; as touching the law, a Pharisee ; 
 concerning zeal, persecuting the church ; touch- 
 ing the righteousness which is in the law, 
 blameless," — yet what things were gain to 
 him these he counted loss for Christ ; yea, 
 doubtless, he counted '* all things but loss for 
 the excellency of the knowledge of Christ" 
 and did " count them but dung " that he might 
 win Christ and be found in him. That is to 
 say, the evolutionizing effect of this contact 
 with the ascended and glorified Lord was so 
 great, that, gathering together all the glories 
 of ancestry, and all the advantages of privilege, 
 and all the allurements of office, he laid them 
 on the altar of this fellowship and counted their 
 sacrifice gain. And in the third place the sus- 
 
 [67] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 taining and inspiring effect of this fellowship 
 — out of which came a wonderful ministry, a 
 wonderful message, a wonderful heroism in the 
 face of tribulation, a wonderful hope for the 
 eternity to come and a wonderful conscious- 
 ness of the divine Presence — lifts Paul's char- 
 acter to the dominant place in the history of 
 great workers for God and humanity in this 
 world. Many times have 1 read his charge to 
 Timothy for its inspiring effect upon me. I 
 like the translation of Arthur Way : " As for 
 me I think my work is done. I am as wine 
 just about to be spilt on the altar — as a ship at 
 point to put out to sea. I am a wrestler who 
 has achieved a gallant struggle, a runner who 
 has finished his race, a soldier who has kept 
 his oath of loyal obedience. Henceforth there 
 is laid up in store for me the victor's wreath of 
 righteousness, which the Lord will award me 
 in the Great Day, the Lord the Righteous 
 Judge — and not to me alone, but (to you also, 
 Fred ; and) to all who with yearning love have 
 watched for his appearing." 
 
 Now I say it is a comfort and an inspiration 
 to have fellowship with Paul. When I read 
 
 [68] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 his letters, and know his personal conflict, and 
 victory through grace, and make discovery of 
 his anxiety for the Church, and his passionate 
 love for this young man, and for the blessed 
 Lord — I know that that same conflict and joy 
 and triumph have been found in the heart of 
 men down to this present day — and, sometimes, 
 in me. 
 
 I will not stop to mention the great saints in 
 whom the grace of the gospel burned, and who 
 sacrificed their inheritances and privileges for 
 Christ, and w^ho laid themselves on the altar of 
 his service until utterly consumed. I have the 
 record of some of them to whom I have turned 
 again and again in the consciousness that they 
 are redeemed by the same Blood by which I am 
 redeemed. The works of two or three of them 
 are before me now as I write to you. To them 
 I owe more than I can ever repay. Get these 
 works and read them, that you may see the 
 wonders of divine love working in them as it 
 works in me and in you. You will then broaden 
 your acquaintance with the wonders of grace in 
 the Church, and enlarge the consciousness of 
 your fellowship with God's saints. 
 
 [69] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 I must mention some other saints you may 
 not have met. There are some of the old ones 
 like Samuel Rutherford of Anwoth of whom it is 
 said, '* He was always praying, always preach- 
 ing, always visiting the sick, always catechising, 
 always writing and studying." His biographer 
 says that an English merchant said of him, 
 ** Even in days when controversy had sorely 
 vexed him and distracted his spirit, I came to 
 Irvine, and heard a well-favored, proper old 
 man with a long beard, and that man showed 
 me all my heart. Then I went to St. Andrews 
 where I heard a sweet, majestic-looking man, 
 and he showed me the majesty of God. After 
 him I heard a litde fair man and he showed me 
 the loveliness of Christ." 
 
 When you take up his epistles and read there 
 of his full heart of suffering in his own life, and 
 the unstinted comfort which he poured out for 
 those to whom he wrote, and the courage with 
 which he talked to every soul to whom he found 
 approach, you realize that the task laid upon him 
 is the task that is laid on us ; and the inspiration 
 that inspired him is the same that must inspire 
 us ; and the grace that adorned him is the one 
 
 [70] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 adornment for us. I cannot do more than select 
 a few sentences from his letters to indicate the 
 wealth of fellowship with him. '' It is (as I now 
 know by experience) hard to keep sight of God 
 in a storm, especially when he hides himself, for 
 the trial of his children." In a letter to Lady 
 Kenmure he says : " I and they are not worthy 
 of Jesus Christ who will not suffer forty years' 
 trouble for him, since they have such glorious 
 promises. But we fools believe those promises 
 as the man that read Plato's writing concerning 
 the immortality of the soul ; so long as the book 
 was in his hand he believed all was true, and 
 that the soul could not die ; but so soon as he 
 laid by the book, he began to imagine that the 
 soul is but a smoke or airy vapor, that perisheth 
 with the expiring of the breath. So we at starts 
 do assent to the sweet and precious promises ; 
 but, laying aside God's book, we begin to call 
 all in question. It is faith indeed to believe 
 without a pledge, and to hold the heart constant 
 at this work ; and, when we doubt, to run to the 
 law and to the testimony, and stay there." 
 And when the day comes that you must inspire 
 and strengthen a soul, sorely tempted to sacri- 
 
 [71] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 fice its faith in the face of distressing circum- 
 stances and powerful adverse influences— before 
 you go out to do your work, take a look at 
 Rutherford's letter to Lord Craighall, '' who 
 was tempted to mistake truth and Christ, be- 
 cause they seemed to encounter his peace and 
 ease." When you have read that, you will 
 know that ministers have met your requirements 
 before and have played the man. 
 
 And when you have had fellowship with 
 Rutherford, you can come down to a later time 
 and walk with McCheyne of Dundee. I open 
 my copy of his life at random and read, " Gladly 
 would I have escaped from the Shepherd that 
 sought me as I strayed ; but he took me up in 
 his arms and carried me back ; and yet he took 
 me not for anything that was in me." Thus 
 this saint, who died when but thirty years of 
 age, goes on in his passionate abandon to the 
 love of Christ whom he preached. And the 
 man who would be a minister of Christ, to your 
 day and mine, must get the same experience 
 and touch with the Source of life that McCheyne 
 and Rutherford and all the saints of God have 
 had in every land and in every age. 
 
 [72] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 Fred, in this day when social service is the 
 urgent need, and the social fad, there is great 
 danger lest the minister get confused in the 
 emphasis so frequently laid. The power of the 
 ministry will be, as it has ever been, not in the 
 consequent but in the antecedent relations of his 
 life. Power will not depend on your activity 
 in labor unions, social setdements and clubs. 
 Power will not depend on the experience and 
 achievements you may gain in contact with 
 men. Power will be gained in the fellowship 
 you maintain before you go down to the 
 market, the settlement or the street. The men 
 who have ministered in this work, as you are 
 ministering now, teach us this, that the secret of 
 power, of achievement, of service, is the same 
 in every age — it is with God. The men of 
 whom I have written did great things. There 
 are men like them now who are doing as great 
 things ; and it is your privilege and mine to have 
 fellowship with them and share their triumph. 
 But, above everything, let us share their experi- 
 ence and their fellowship in the secret place of 
 power. 
 
 Then there is the fellowship with those with 
 
 [73] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 whom and for whom you work in your " field." 
 There are the young men and women in that 
 field whose hves are filled with the joy and 
 visions of youth. They share them with you. 
 I have just returned to my study at nine o'clock 
 in the evening. I lunched at noon with a man 
 whom I could not see at any other time. At 
 that luncheon he gave me a confidence which 
 he had ** never shared with another soul." My 
 last visit was with a young man barely past 
 twenty-two years of age. We met ten days 
 ago. I inquired about his relation to Christ and 
 the Church. In reply he invited me to visit him 
 at his room for a chat. I have just returned. 
 While I was in his room he gave me some 
 confidences touching his ambitions in business 
 and his hope to make good in this city to which 
 he has recently come. Having first settled his 
 relation to Christ, the business on which I had 
 come to him, we continued our fellowship on 
 subjects of much interest to him. He shared 
 with me the visions and hopes and purposes of 
 a man of twenty-two, and that made a man 
 twenty years older twenty-two years young 
 again. 
 
 [74] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 In the middle of the afternoon, I visited a 
 man and his wife, over eighty years of age — a 
 far call from the lad of twenty-two. On in- 
 quiring how they had fared since my last call 
 several months before, they told me of long and 
 continued suffering and ill health. Said the old 
 man : " I do not know why I am not taken 
 away. I am no longer of any service to the 
 world. I am miserable myself and a burden to 
 my friends. I do not know why I should stay." 
 He looked to me for an answer which I could 
 not give. So I confessed I did not know, but I 
 said : '' There must be something more for you 
 to do and, possibly, it is to pray. There is 
 great need of intercession to-day. And this is 
 a work you can continue to do. Nothing can 
 hinder you. So long as you have strength of 
 mind to turn to God and carry some petitions 
 up to him, you can go on in service to God and 
 men — a service we greatly need. I need your 
 prayers, and so do your sons, and there must be 
 many others who have needs like ours. If I 
 could know on next Sunday when I enter my 
 pulpit that you were praying for me here in 
 your room, that would give me the experience 
 
 [75] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 of your fellowship in my work." He listened 
 with the attention of a man who had a new op- 
 portunity, after retirement, to begin again. 
 And his wife, perceiving that I was preparing 
 to leave, requested a word of prayer before I 
 should go. Taking my Testament, I read a few 
 verses here and there and closed with Mark 
 II : 24, as bearing on what I had just said. 
 Then we all knelt, the old man doing so with 
 great difficulty, supporting his head upon his 
 cane. As we arose and I extended my hand in 
 farewell, the old man said, with tears in his 
 eyes, " I thank you for this visit to-day. I 
 hope you will come again soon ; you teach us 
 how to pray." 
 
 Ah, Fred, my boy ! Though I fear my teach- 
 ing amounts to very little, there was fellowship 
 in the quiet of that humble home between a man 
 of eighty-eight and another less than half that 
 age. And the younger man went out conscious 
 of having shared with them the felicity and 
 strength of the service men may render upon 
 their knees in the closet with the closed door. 
 As I went on the round of visiting and committee 
 work, and even to the gymnasium for an hour's 
 
 [76] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 play, the words of the old man, " You teach us 
 how to pray," continued to ring in my ears and 
 brighten and lighten the way. 
 
 As I write to you I look on the face of a man 
 whom God gave me the privilege to meet when 
 I was under thirty. Father G was a Scotch- 
 man of the Lachlan Campbell type. In appear- 
 ance he was a patriarch — somewhat above 
 medium height, broad-shouldered and erect. 
 His hair and ample beard were snowy white. 
 His eye was as keen as an eagle's. He had 
 been for many years a herring fisherman off the 
 Isle of Lewis and the Scotland coast. He had 
 lived in Stornaway, of which Van Dyke has 
 written in " Little Rivers," and had some great 
 memories of preachers and scholars in the old 
 land, at Glasgow and Aberdeen. He was mer- 
 ciless when he dealt with shifdess and trifling 
 ministers in fiction or real life. He had a way 
 of arresting his minister in the midst of his re- 
 marks at the midweek service, if he disagreed 
 with the teaching brought ; and there was no 
 possible procedure from that point until he was 
 either satisfied or dislodged from his position. 
 He would begin his interruption by saying 
 
 [77] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 " Master " (he always called his minister " Mas- 
 ter"), ''Master, I don't agree with you." To 
 which the minister would reply, " Very w^ell, 
 
 Father G , state your point." " Take your 
 
 Scriptures," he would say, '* and turn to book 
 
 . and verse and ye'U read [here he 
 
 would read] , and now tell me what ye'll do with 
 that." When the young minister found a man 
 like that he never came to his task unprepared. 
 As the years passed away a sore affliction, 
 cancer of the tongue, befell the Scotchman, and 
 destroyed the power of speech. I visited him 
 every other day for several months before he 
 received the great promotion. It was a privi- 
 lege to sit with him there in his room and talk 
 of the tests of faith, the privilege and power of 
 prayer, the interests of the kingdom of Christ, 
 the fellowship with Christ and the promise of 
 the life to come. One Sunday morning in 
 January, 1904, I went over to his house for 
 prayers before going to the pulpit at the regu- 
 lar hour. He had had a bad night and the end 
 was not far away. I knelt at the foot of the bed 
 and prayed. He sat propped up in his bed. As 
 we opened our eyes at the close of the prayer, we 
 
 [78] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 looked into each other's faces — a long, deep, 
 searching look. I said, *' It's a hard way you 
 have had to travel to the gate." To which he 
 nodded his head in assent. " But He'll meet you 
 at the end of the way." Again he nodded as- 
 sent, while we continued to look into each 
 other's faces. Too full for further speech, I 
 arose and offered my hand, which he took in 
 fervent farewell, and with his look and clasp of 
 benediction I went away. In the gray of the 
 early morning of the following day he passed 
 away. But the benediction and blessing of his 
 kindly, fatherly fellowship abides with me still. 
 
 Fred, communion with saints is the peculiar 
 privilege of the ministry of Jesus Christ. And 
 happy is the man who has his friendship among 
 the saints. 1 remember several years ago Sir 
 W. Robertson Nicoll wrote in the *' British 
 Weekly " : " The man is to be pitied who has 
 never known a great saint. The saints do not 
 know their sainthood. They are the humblest 
 of the humble. Often, indeed, they doubt not 
 Christ, indeed, but their own interest in Christ. 
 They shrink from self-display and oftentimes 
 their earthly opportunities seem to be very few. 
 
 [79] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 If they were to look at things which are seen 
 they might be discouraged, they might feel 
 alone, they might say, ' We have nothing bet- 
 ter than this poor little house in this poor little 
 village and the chance of wiping some tears 
 from some eyes.' They might feel discouraged 
 at the thought of what others have and what 
 others can do. The sweet odors of their life 
 may lie quiet and still till, on some day of storm, 
 the flower bells in God's garden are shaken 
 and their fragrance flows forth." Great indeed 
 is the privilege of dwelling among these flowers 
 of God ! Great is the triumph of the ministry 
 that watches them live and flourish on the hills 
 of God. 
 
 But the triumph of the ministry is in fellow- 
 ship with Christ. " That I may know him, and 
 the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship 
 of his sufferings," says Paul. " Our fellowship 
 is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus 
 Christ," says John. And this is really the thing 
 each one of us must know if we are to experi- 
 ence the triumphant ministry. 
 
 Now let us get a right view of the facts of 
 the gospel and of the message we are to pro- 
 
 [80] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 claim and the ministry we are to make. We 
 live in a day when the vocabulary of fifty years 
 ago is out of date ; — if the ideas back of the 
 words of that time are not out of date. The 
 doctrine of vicarious suffering is not familiar 
 to the present generation. Indeed, suffering is 
 a thing that in popular thought is decidedly 
 out of date. It has no place in the present- 
 day scheme of things, or present-day speech, 
 or present-day life. The gospel of a crucified, 
 atoning, sacrificial Saviour is declared to be- 
 long to the past. These great words are 
 seldom heard in polite circles of pulpit speech. 
 Nevertheless, Fred, do what we may, the 
 gospel of the New Testament is one of a suf- 
 fering, crucified, dying, sin-bearing Saviour, 
 who was wounded for our transgressions, who 
 was bruised for our iniquities, and by whose 
 stripes we are healed. The men and women 
 who have been crowned as saints are men and 
 women who have used language like this — 
 '' He was wounded for me." And, moreover, 
 the men who have become leaders in the realm 
 of religion are men who have seen, down deep 
 in the heart of things, the great essential ele- 
 
 [81] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 merits of the gospel of suffering and sacrifice 
 which we must preach. And the men who are 
 triumphant in the ministry of Jesus Christ — at 
 least those whom I have been privileged to 
 meet — are men who honor the crucified Christ 
 and who relate their conscious experience of 
 sins forgiven, and heart cleansed, and life 
 sweetened, and will renewed, and peace within, 
 to him hanging on the tree at Calvary. When 
 a man faces the " plague of his own heart " he 
 goes to Calvary for deliverance and victory and 
 peace. 
 
 And there comes also to them the conscious- 
 ness that through Christ they are related to the 
 men for whom Christ died. They grieve over 
 the world's sin and shame. Some of them 
 bear about in their lives the burden of the 
 world's woe, and long for the opportunity to 
 bring it peace. As Jesus wept over Jerusalem 
 so do these men of God weep over the Church. 
 They could be accursed for their brethren's 
 sake. And some of those who are not pos- 
 sessed by such a passionate devotion to the 
 race, will nevertheless refuse prospects and 
 privileges of home and native land to go forth 
 
 [82] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 to the ends of the world to tell of the love that 
 gave Jesus to die for them. The sustaining, 
 inspiring note in the lives of such men is a 
 lively consciousness of their fellowship with 
 Christ, who, though he was rich with the 
 Father yet for our sakes became poor that 
 we through his poverty might be made rich. 
 Such men have a peace that possesses them, 
 and that sustains them, and that exalts them 
 — an experience better than understanding that 
 is able to keep their hearts and minds in Christ 
 Jesus. These are triumphant men. They know 
 that Christ is going to bring this world to him- 
 self. And though there may be many a battle 
 fought in which his faltering hosts may fail, or 
 seem to fail, the ultimate victory is sure. He has 
 shared it with them now, and day by day they 
 prevail. They have already triumphed with him. 
 I am writing you at this Lenten season with 
 a consciousness of this fellowship with a risen 
 Lord quickened by a line from a letter received 
 from a dear friend one memorable day years 
 ago. Our families had spent a week together 
 in camp on a beautiful northern stream. My 
 friend's husband complained of indisposition 
 
 [83] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 near the end of our stay and went home to lose 
 in strength and readiness for his task. As the 
 autumn and winter came on he continued to 
 decUne until in midwinter he passed away, 
 leaving her with five little children to care for 
 and educate. She had gone back to dear old 
 Scotland, the scene of her girlhood, meeting 
 the burdens of life with a brave heart and a 
 steady faith. But there was loneliness and 
 longing for the touch of that vanished hand. 
 We approached the Easter time. When it was 
 but two weeks away she sent us a letter with 
 a line in it like this : " Easter is coming again. 
 What a wonderful day it is for those of us who 
 walk the sorrowful way." 
 
 And so it is. But Fred, it is not only so for 
 those who grieve for the touch of a vanished 
 hand, but for all whose life is shadowed by 
 sickness or disease or pain or blighted hopes 
 or circumstances of a " living death." 
 
 The Scriptures are filled with the story of 
 God's broken heart, of his unrequited love. 
 Take Hosea, for example, a story of one whose 
 bosom companion was a traitor to love. There 
 is the plaintive note in the opening chapter of 
 
 [84] 
 
THE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 the Gospel according to John, " He came unto 
 his own, and his own received him not." There 
 is the parable of the Prodigal Son, though it is 
 not rightly named ; it is the story of a Father's 
 unrequited love. But in it and in all the rest, 
 God has shared the heartache of men and in- 
 vited them to bring their burdens to him. 
 
 Those who have yoked with Christ have 
 found that they are not alone. They know that 
 their burden is shared. They have felt the di- 
 vine Presence. They have had given to them 
 a song for the night. They have heard the 
 whisperings of love down at the wicket gate. 
 They have seen the light and glory of the 
 breaking day — when no one else could see 
 through the blackness of the night. And 
 through long years they have waited for him 
 in peace, drawing strength sufficient to sustain 
 them in the consciousness of his fellowship in 
 the sorrowful way. 
 
 Quit you like a man, be strong, Fred ! But 
 
 " Did we in our own strength confide, 
 Our striving would be losing ; 
 Were not the right man on our side, 
 The man of God's own choosing : 
 [85] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 Dost ask who that may be ? 
 Christ Jesus, it is he; 
 Lord Sabaolh his name, 
 From age to age the same, 
 And he must win the battle." 
 
 These things I write unto you that you may 
 have fellowship with me and that our fellowship 
 may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Timothy Kilbourn. 
 
 [86] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE GOAL 
 
 Dear Fred : 
 
 A famous college president has coined a 
 famous phrase : '' The world turns aside to let 
 any man pass who knows whither he's going." 
 I think this is one of the most important ele- 
 ments in the triumphant ministry — that the 
 minister should know whither he is going. 
 The Church does not have the impact that it 
 should have on the oppositions it has to face to- 
 day, for the reason that it lacks organizing prin- 
 ciple and sustaining purpose. Most churches 
 exist through fortuitous circumstances favorable 
 to their becoming and continuing. A certain 
 number of people living in the same com- 
 munity, with like ancestry or training, are 
 gathered together by some zealous missionary, 
 who appoints or leads to the appointment of 
 officers, and the organization formed is called 
 a church. The churches which are organized 
 with a definite and adequate purpose, under 
 
 [87] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 the inspiration and power of an achieving 
 principle, are far less numerous. In conse- 
 quence each church is described, more or less, 
 by the character, vision and purpose, of the 
 minister who happens to be serving them. 
 They are not described by the embodiment of 
 a sustaining, perpetuating, achieving purpose, 
 which survives that minister, his residence and 
 leadership, or the incumbency of any one man 
 who happens to be in office there. From year 
 to year the newly elected officers come into 
 office ; but there is nothing in the life and work 
 of the board that impresses them with its im- 
 portance half so much as did the event of their 
 election. At that time, possibly, several names 
 were considered and voted upon. When the 
 votes were counted they received the majority 
 of votes and the congratulations of their friends, 
 while they and their families went home with 
 the pleasant feeling that they were honored by 
 the congregation. When they met for the first 
 time, with the other members of the board, 
 they had nothing definite given them to do ; 
 they learned of no dominant, masterful purpose 
 to which they, as officers, and the whole con- 
 
 [88] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 gregational life, were to be adjusted ; and when 
 they went home from the meetings in later days 
 they were oppressed with a sense of futility 
 and loss of time. What is the trouble? Lack 
 of policy, lack of goal. There is nothing for 
 them to work toward and to work out. Prin- 
 ciples of organizing power and sustaining 
 strength and commanding effect are not found 
 in their church. The church does not stand for 
 something and work for something. It lacks 
 contact and impact. The forces of evil in that 
 community have no fear of that church. 
 
 Now there are banks in that community. 
 But those banks have an organizing principle. 
 Mr. Jones does not receive credit at the bank 
 simply because he happens to be in the same 
 social set, or belong to the family of Mr. Bill- 
 ings, director of said bank. If Mr. Jones wishes 
 to do business with that bank he must adjust 
 himself to the organizing principles of the insti- 
 tution. And there is the packing house of 
 Hovey and Huston. It is a great institution. 
 Why? Because it is well founded and effi- 
 ciently organized, and described by the char- 
 acter of its founder, who is noted for his in- 
 
 [89] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 tegrity of character, his fairness in dealing, and 
 his insight and understanding of the business. 
 The methods and movements of the men who 
 are in the managing offices of that institution 
 have a character that is their own and symp- 
 tomatic of the life of the institution. If Mr. 
 Hovey should be absent from his place on the 
 Board of Directors for a year or five years, in 
 all probability the business would go on doing 
 as it had always done and would be in perfect 
 harmony with the policy that has described it 
 from the beginning. 
 
 While I write this there lies on my desk 
 •' The Investors' Magazine," published by a 
 great financial house and mailed to their 
 patrons each month. The opening article is by 
 the president of that house, who is going abroad 
 for four months or more. It is his parting ad- 
 dress to the employees of the house. He says : 
 ** I anticipate sales much larger than we ever 
 have known, so perhaps it would be worth 
 while for me to restate the principles I want you 
 all to bear in mind not only during my absence, 
 but at all times. They are the fundamentals of 
 this business, and the traditions of this house, 
 
 [90] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 and they never change. These principles are 
 prudence, conservatism, adherence to the truth, 
 protection of the interests of our cUents, service 
 and loyalty to the house." 
 
 This is the need of the Church — to know 
 where she is going, what she is purposing to do. 
 Our great denomination has made great gains, 
 in the past twenty years in the statement and 
 reiteration of the fact that the Church is a mis- 
 sionary society whose business is to give the 
 whole gospel to the whole world. Following 
 this, she began a definite, organized, systematic 
 effort to get every member to understand and 
 accept this view, and to adopt plans and methods 
 of instruction, education and finance that will 
 give practical effect to the statement. 
 
 Now, Fred, do not get the notion that this is 
 all well and good for Dr. Broadway's church on 
 the boulevard, with its great crowds and its 
 wealthy people ; but that it will not apply to the 
 church at Podunk and Possum Trot. It is the 
 need and the secret of church efficiency down 
 there as well as out yonder in the great city. If 
 there are only two men on the official board at 
 Podunk, and these two men are the minister and 
 
 [91] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 the janitor, if they will get together and define 
 their purpose, and set their object clearly before 
 them, and make for it, they will get somewhere 
 and they will bring things to pass that will 
 arouse, inspire and enlist other men and women 
 to join with them. The sleepy, drowsy world, 
 the wicked, worldly world, will get out of the 
 way and let them go forward when once they 
 see they are making for something. Podunk 
 will become a triumphant church. I know, for 
 I have seen her become triumphant. 
 
 And what is true of the church is also true of 
 the minister. Triumphant men are those who 
 know where they are going. Such men reach 
 their goal, even though their lives are troubled. 
 
 Fred, on the receipt of this, I want you to sit 
 down and say to yourself, as in the sight of 
 God : *' Do I know what I want to be and what 
 I want to do ? Am I doing it ? Has my whole 
 life been conformed to this and is my plan for 
 this week and for next Sunday and for my whole 
 ministry in harmony with this great object ? " 
 
 The prime business of the minister is to pro- 
 claim the Word of God. Some of us do it in 
 the pulpit, with greater power than at any other 
 
 [92] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 time or in any other place. Some of us make 
 rather a poor showing there ; but when we go 
 out to see men and women, boys and girls, in 
 their homes and places of work and play, where 
 we and they are alone, we can do our duty better. 
 And there are others of us who have no facility 
 or power in public speech who can proclaim the 
 Word through the printed page. There are 
 others who proclaim it in the closet with the 
 closed door, who, when they know what they 
 want, ask for it, and stake their claim on the 
 promises of God and the atonement of Christ. 
 But in whatever way, we all can say, *' I de- 
 termined not to know anything among you, 
 save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." Then, 
 whatever may be the emphasis God wishes to 
 make on this world through our personality, 
 men will get it and know that it is the dominant 
 note in our life. It is the organizing principle 
 at work in all our movements. It gives shape 
 and character to every conversation. It is an- 
 nounced in the grace or awkwardness of our 
 carriage as we walk the streets. It shapes our 
 work in the study. It envelops us in its own 
 atmosphere in every place. It will give an 
 
 [93] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 unction, an anointing to our counsel, when we 
 sit on the administrative boards of our parish, 
 city or church. 
 
 The great desideratum in all the social serv- 
 ice, teaching and movements carried on by the 
 Church and Christian workers, to-day, seems to 
 me just this. They do not express the deter- 
 mination to know nothing but Jesus Christ and 
 him crucified. I have followed the efforts of 
 several men to meet the *' down-town proposi- 
 tion " in the cities with institutional methods of 
 work; and I have followed the present-day move- 
 ments of '' the church and country life " with 
 sympathy and hope ; but again and again I am 
 yearning for something that seems to be left out. 
 There is an aroma of spices and sweet perfume 
 belonging to the Spirit's breath that does not 
 blow on my face. I hear the accent, strong and 
 distinct, on soil, and crops, and domestic 
 science, and athletic clubs, and educational 
 classes, and mothers' clubs, and lecture forums, 
 and so forth and so on, and I can see that more 
 or less interest is excited for a time in every 
 place ; but I miss the light and warmth and 
 heating beams of the Sun. And, somehow or 
 
 [94] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 Other, I don't catch sight of the Captain of our 
 salvation as much as I should Hke to. I see 
 some stalwart men who wear the uniforms and 
 are called by the names appropriate to his aides, 
 but too frequently they seem to be in command 
 alone. 
 
 Now, Fred, the human mind is capable of 
 great things and gloriously has it wrought, but 
 there is one thing it cannot do ; it cannot satisfy 
 the longing of the soul for God. There is no 
 word which can do that except the Word of 
 God. At a great convention of his church, Dr. 
 Charles E. Jefferson called attention to the fact 
 that in America '* we have suffered a heart- 
 breaking disillusionment. We expected great 
 things from liberty and education, and have 
 found they are broken reeds. Neither our 
 wealth nor our science has given us either 
 peace or joy. The four wizards — liberty and 
 education and wealth and science — have per- 
 formed their mightiest miracles under our flag ; 
 but they cannot do the one thing essential ; 
 they cannot keep the conscience quick, or the 
 soul alive to God. Our sins are as scarlet and 
 our vices are red like crimson, and we need 
 
 [95] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 prophets to turn the nation to the God who will 
 abundantly pardon." 
 
 Set out, therefore, to proclaim the Word of 
 God. It will keep you steady when the winds 
 of social strife and industrial storm beat against 
 your bark. It. will keep you steady when the 
 popular lecture committee siren calls you to 
 take the platform and spread your wings in 
 oratorical flight. It will keep you steady when 
 some great battle must be fought in civic life — 
 when city ordinances must be passed or revoked, 
 or vile theaters closed, or saloons pushed out. 
 It will keep you steady when the people, who 
 live on the dead level, push bridge and progres- 
 sive euchre into the basement of the churches' 
 social life. It will give you a canon of judg- 
 ment in every perplexity, where, otherwise, you 
 might miss the mark on what is lawful and 
 what is not. It will give you an object to steer 
 by when making the channel that is narrow 
 between the rocks. Keep your eye on the 
 cross, and determine your course by it, and 
 your message by it, and your counsel by it, 
 that when the day is done men may say, *' We 
 have seen Jesus, and Jesus alone." 
 
 [96] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 There came to my hand this morning the 
 parting message of that man of prayer, John 
 Hyde, to the church in India. It has put new 
 life into my faith and joy in Christ and will 
 illustrate the environment and inspiration of a 
 soul that is under the spell of which I speak. 
 '' Tell them," said Hyde, " of my home-coming, 
 of my illness, and that it was walking in dark- 
 ness without any light, but resting on the Lord 
 — walking through the storm back, back to the 
 ship and behold, suddenly the ship was at the 
 land — the Eternal Land. The heart has been 
 full of praise and the time has been passed in 
 singing Punjabi psalms and songs. I was on 
 Mount Carmel, face bowed in worship and have 
 seen a cloud of blessing rise out of the sea of 
 the Father's love bringing such abundance of 
 rain over all the earth, especially to Ludhiani, 
 Moga, Dandar, Ferozpur, and all the mission. 
 Tell them I have gone to Christ shouting, ' Bol, 
 Yisi heasih Ki Jai ! ' ( ' Shout the victory of 
 Jesus ' )." If a man determines to know noth- 
 ing save Jesus Christ and him crucified he can 
 always shout the victory of Jesus. 
 
 With such a song in the heart, and such a 
 
 [97] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 message dominating the life, that minister will 
 win some men and women, boys and girls on 
 the way for Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now I am not advocating some particular 
 class of work that may be associated with the 
 traveling evangelist. You will be interested in 
 knowing that in the eighteen years of my 
 ministry I have never had such a man in my 
 church. In all that time I remember having 
 only one man come and preach for me in a 
 special series of meetings for so long as a week. 
 My work might have been more prosperous if 
 I had had the evangelist. I do not forget that 
 there are diversities of gifts. And, while some 
 men have a gift for approaching men and 
 women in private conversation, and, discovering 
 their need, for presenting Jesus Christ to them 
 as Saviour and Lord, not all men have this gift. 
 There are those who are gifted in the utterance 
 of an awakening and moving message from the 
 pulpit, and who are permitted to welcome large 
 numbers of persons on confession to the Church. 
 But I do not exalt such men overmuch in say- 
 ing that the dominant purpose of a triumphant 
 ministry is to win souls to Jesus Christ. 
 
 [98] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 Fred, get the spirit of the New Testament, 
 which is a '* passion for souls." The misfortune 
 of too many ministers is that they fall into the 
 slough of professionalism early in life, and never 
 escape. They carry its soil on their garments 
 everywhere they go. It gives them a pulpit 
 tone. It gives them a style of dress and ad- 
 dress. It encircles them in an atmosphere that 
 smells of school and library and ancient musty 
 traditions. They have no consuming zeal in 
 God's house. They have no passion against 
 sin or against anything except assaults upon 
 the historic positions of their branch of the 
 Church. They would work long and hard in 
 formulating and defending a doctrinal statement 
 of the Church, but if a man was taking the 
 wrong path and hastening toward the pit, they 
 would not know how to halt him, and they 
 would not go out of their way to do it. Men 
 like that have usually found the ministry an op- 
 portunity for congenial work. And the man 
 who is simply earning his bread and butter in 
 a straight collar, clerical vest and coat, is no 
 more to be honored than any other man who 
 takes advantage of a tradition or custom to 
 
 [99] 
 
THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 practice an art to secure his mattress, meat and 
 malt. There is just one great cure for profes- 
 sionahsm in the Church, and that is love — love 
 for Jesus Christ and our fellow men. And when 
 a man starts out in the ministry with this love 
 burning in his heart to lead men and women to 
 Jesus Christ, there is no mistaking that domi- 
 nant note. 
 
 *' How did McCheyne preach ? " it was asked. 
 *' As if he wanted to save your soul," was the 
 reply. And that made a man an example to 
 the whole Church before he was thirty-two. It 
 determined his method and habit of work. It 
 was expressed in the choice of his reading and 
 scholarly pursuits. It shaped the message 
 which he brought from week to week. It en- 
 circled him with an atmosphere of sweet per- 
 fume that has gone out into all the world, and 
 after well-nigh a century it has not lost its 
 strength. And a passion for souls will do as 
 much for you and for me to-day as it did for him. 
 
 But understand that this does not mean a 
 passion for getting people into the visible 
 Church. To get a man into the membership of 
 the Church without bringing him to Christ is to 
 
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THE GOAL 
 
 make his last state worse than his first. You 
 find now that the presumption that he is not 
 acquainted with Christ embarrasses you in any 
 effort to approach him. When a man has ob- 
 served one of the most important outward signs 
 of an inward grace without the grace, he has 
 hardened the heart against the entrance of the 
 truth. When you preach, you will be constantly 
 facing an auditor who has the form of godli- 
 ness but who is denying the power thereof. 
 And that makes the chariot wheels josde the 
 posts at the gate, if it does not halt you there 
 altogether and keep you from making the race. 
 No, my friend, do not mistake the padding of 
 the church rolls for the work of grace. They 
 are not the same. There is more joy over one 
 sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine 
 that come into the church as strays. There is 
 a chasm of difference between a sinner brought 
 to Christ and a sinner brought in with Christ. 
 And a man who is a mere collector of the un- 
 saved is far from the man who is a winner of 
 souls. They do not have the same ring. One 
 is a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal and 
 the other has the accent of the music of heaven 
 
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THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 in his life. And, believe me, there is more joy 
 and triumph in knowing that you have linked 
 one man with Christ than in having a record of 
 the largest additions in the Assembly Minutes, 
 or Conference Reports, if the people added 
 have not been saved. If through your ministry 
 there be added to the Church daily such as are 
 '* being saved," then you will be shouting the 
 victory of Jesus along the way. 
 
 Your great aim, my dear friend, is the bring- 
 ing in of a better hope. This is one of the 
 greatest words, and one of the greatest needs, 
 and one of the greatest experiences given to the 
 human heart — hope. Those who are without 
 God are without hope. To be without hope is 
 to fall into that dark prison where the sunlight 
 does not fall. It means to lose love, to have no 
 song for the night, to have no experience of 
 trust, to find all our calculations fruitless, to be 
 enveloped in despair, to be lost and damned. 
 The truth is as Celia Thaxter has said : 
 
 There is no day so dark 
 
 But through the mirk some ray of hope may steal. 
 Some blessed touch from heaven which we may feel, 
 If we but choose to mark. 
 
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THE GOAL 
 
 We shut the portals fast, 
 
 And turn the key, and let no sunshine in, 
 
 Yet to the worst despair that comes through sin 
 
 God's light shall reach at last. 
 
 Now, that is the ministry to which we are 
 sent — the bringing in of a better hope to men 
 and women in the dark, to men and women 
 who are blind, who are shrouded in the night, 
 to those who have grown sick at hopes now 
 long deferred, to those who have missed their 
 way, to those who have missed the mark, to 
 those who have failed, utterly failed, to those 
 whose strength is gone, whose treasures are 
 vanished and who face death. To all of them, 
 and those worse than they, we are to bring in 
 a better hope. In the face of facts like these, it 
 is incumbent that a man live much amidst 
 things that are not seen, and that he remember 
 that the things which are seen are temporal but 
 the things which are unseen are eternal. 
 
 You will come some day to a man whose 
 child is afflicted with what the doctors tell him 
 is an incurable malady. The plans and con- 
 solations of years are blighted in whatever 
 direction he turns. When he meets you, he 
 
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THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 must find a man who can bring in a better hope, 
 — the hope that when we have reached the end 
 of our resources we may find God there, and 
 that he is able to do for us when all others have 
 failed ; that prayer is a real and vital thing ; 
 that when God takes hold to do for us we may 
 find a way. 
 
 You may meet a man some day whose life is 
 so blighted in the subnormal lives of his children 
 that he can find no comfort in the present world. 
 And you must have something for him and for 
 his children in the world to come. One such 
 man wrote me that his child was gone. He 
 said that life had meant nothing but darkness 
 here, and asked what he could hope for it in the 
 world to come. I thought of the welcome Jesus 
 gave to a little child, and of that great mys- 
 terious word of his in the eighteenth chapter of 
 Matthew, the tenth and the fourteenth verses, 
 and I ventured the thought that in the world to 
 come the lives that had been cramped and cir- 
 cumscribed here would have greater joy and 
 wonder in the splendors of the world to come, 
 than those of us who made our first discoveries 
 of it here ; that when they arrived in that land 
 
 [104] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 they would experience the joy of what Christ 
 had done for them when they could not do for 
 themselves, and that each hour would present 
 some new discovery which their before-im- 
 prisoned Hves would make with new and 
 liberated zest ; that while they lost much here 
 in the anticipation of faith, they were glad in 
 that there everything was gained. This is my 
 hope and it has been given to three other men, 
 whose broken hearts have received it gratefully, 
 as they would a healing balm. 
 
 But there is the blessed hope in the appearing 
 of our Lord and Saviour in his glory to claim 
 his own. At a great '' Prophetic Conference " 
 this ** better hope " was the subject talked about. 
 Speakers presented papers and addresses on 
 the subject as it is related to many aspects of 
 the present, past and future, world and Church. 
 I was not present, and I have only a partial 
 report, but the representative character of the 
 men who sent out the call is a witness to the 
 fact that this better hope is found in all branches 
 of the Church. While I have no intention of 
 setting forth any teaching on the subject in this 
 letter to you, I do want to point out this : That 
 
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THE TRIUMPHANT MINISTRY 
 
 the men who look for this blessed hope have a 
 simple faith in the trustworthiness of God's 
 Word, that as he fulfilled it in the fullness of 
 time and sent forth his Son, so in like manner 
 will he fulfill it again ; and that this same Jesus 
 whom the disciples saw ascending into heaven 
 will so come again in like manner, as they saw 
 him go. 
 
 Fred, I beg you to remember the kingdoms 
 of this world shall become the kingdom of our 
 Lord and of his Christ. It is a wonderful 
 gospel to preach — bringing in a better hope. 
 Men and women who have sinned unto despair 
 and death may have hope. Men and women 
 who have found their resources of moral ex- 
 cellence too scant, may find riches of inheritance 
 in Jesus Christ. Men and women who are un- 
 equal to the heat and tax of the day, may find 
 here a cooling shade and a fountain by the way. 
 Men and women who have lost their crown 
 may receive it back again. 
 
 Let this be your goal — to know Christ and 
 him crucified, the power of his resurrection and 
 the fellowship of his suffering, and to make him 
 known to others, that as you have fellowship 
 
 [106] 
 
THE GOAL 
 
 with the Father and with his Son, so may 
 others have fellowship with you and him. '' For 
 the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath 
 appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying 
 ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should Uve 
 soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present 
 world ; looking for that blessed hope, and the 
 glorious appearing of the great God and our 
 Saviour Jesus Christ ; who gave himself for us, 
 that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
 purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of 
 good works. These things speak, and exhort, 
 and rebuke with all authority. Let no man 
 despise thee." 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 Timothy Kilbourn. 
 
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