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THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH

BOOKS BY
CHARLES E. JEFFERSON, D.D., LL.D.
THINGS FUNDAMENTAL
THE CHARACTER OF JESUS
DOCTRINE AND DEED
THE NEW CRUSADE
MY FATHER'S BUSINESS
THE MINISTER AS PROPHET
QUIET HINTS TO GROWING PREACHERS
QUIET TALKS TO EARNEST PEOPLE
TALKS ON HIGH THEMES
THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH

THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH

CHARLES E. JEFFERSON
PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE
NEW YORK CITY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910,
Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September,. 1910.
Www L38 .

NoruiooB yrcSB
J. S. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

The lectures of this volume were delivered before
the Divinity School of Yale University, in the months
of April and May, 19 10, on the Lyman Beecher
Foundation.

CONTENTS
LECTURES PAGE
I. The Church Building Idea in the New
Testament  i
II. Building the Brotherhood .... 41
III. Building the Individual .... 79
IV. Building Moods and Tempers . . . 117
V. Building Thrones  155
VI. Building the Holy Catholic Church . 191
VII. Building the Plan  231
VIII. The Building of the Builder . . . 269

LECTURE I
THE CHURCH BUILDING IDEA
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

THE CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN
THE NEW TESTAMENT
The sovereign interest which this lectureship
holds in its eye — the work of Preaching — has not
been overlooked in the choosing of my subject. I
do not forget that I am speaking to men who are in
terested supremely in the art of preaching, but I
invite you to approach the subject through the
Christian church. After so many illustrious teach
ers have spoken on the subject, it would be indeed
presumptuous for any man at this late date to at
tempt to offer additional suggestion or instruction,
were it not that the subject of preaching lies, like the
New Jerusalem, foursquare, with an ideal number of
gates on every side, through any one of which the
lecturer may make his way into the heart of the im
perial theme. The traditional method of approach
has been through the pulpit, an institution estab
lished for the proclamation of the Christian message;
and when this method is adopted it is natural that the
topic uppermost in the discussion should be either
the message, its subject matter and its manner of
treatment, or the messenger, his personality and
3

4 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
character, his pulpit elocution and gestures, his
literary habit and style. This method of approach
is the direct and obvious one, and is not without great
rewards. Like all methods, however, it has its
limitations, and carries with it certain perils which,
unless guarded against, are likely to work mischief.
It is easily possible to think of the work of preaching
too narrowly, to imagine that it is a matter concern
ing supremely one individual — the man in the
pulpit. One may come under the sway of the idea
that in any discussion of the work of preaching the
preacher himself is the primary, if not the sole, object
of study, that it is upon his mental endowments and
spiritual attainments that the success of the sermon
chiefly depends, and that in the education of minis
ters attention ought to be jealously focussed on those
disciplines by which the preacher is most surely
fitted to deliver acceptably a pulpit discourse.
But preaching, when we look at it long enough, is
seen to involve, not one man only, but a society of
men. No preacher lives to himself nor dies to himself.
He is an organ functioning in an organism, finding his
life in the vital relations by which he is bound to other
lives. His endowments and attainments are only
one factor in the work of preaching, another factor
of no less importance being the attainments and en-

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 5
dowments of the Christian society. The sermon is
not the voice of an isolated individual, but the utter
ance of a body of men baptized into the name of
Jesus. The sermon comes not out of the preacher
alone, but out of the church. The preacher gives
back what he receives. He cannot feed himself.
He is nourished by his environment — the family
of Christ. - He cannot shape himself . He is moulded
by the body of believers. He cannot grow in isola
tion. He is a plant dependent on the atmosphere
and the weather, both of which are largely the crea
tion of the Christian people. The church cannot
wisely be ignored in any comprehensive study of the
preacher's work, nor can it be shoved into the back
ground without loss. The traditional method has
been to reach the church through the preacher. Let
us in this course of lectures try to reach the preacher
through the church. It has become the fashion to
come to the congregation through the sermon. It
may prove advantageous to come to the sermon
through the congregation. The church is older than
the pulpit, the congregation antedates the preacher.
It was not the pulpit which created the church, but
the church which created the pulpit. It is not the
preacher who keeps alive the Christian society; it is
the Christian society which keeps alive the preacher.

6 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
In an earnest study, therefore, of preaching, we
are justified in beginning with the church, the
spiritual society through which the preacher first
came to be, and by which preaching is ever nourished
and kept vital.
There are special reasons why this method of ap
proach is just now not only opportune, but likely
to prove most rewarding, one of which is that the
church is in many quarters thrown into the shadow.
Owing to the multiplication of organizations en
gaged in ethical and philanthropic work, the
church does not loom so large in the public eye as
formerly. Surrounded by a host of rehgious and
semireligious bodies, it is partially hidden by
them, and its glory once unique and splendidly
impressive, is somewhat shorn. Moreover, there
is a new world view point, and everything has come
to judgment. All the fundamental institutions of
humanity — the family, the state, the church —
have been thrown into the crucible and are being
tried by fire. There are voices declaring that the
family as hitherto existing is a fountain flowing
plagues and curses, to be superseded by something
better ; and that the state, as the world has thus
far known it, is an instrument of injustice and op
pression, to be thrown upon the scrap heap of worn-

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 7
out institutions. In an age so radical, it is not to
be wondered at that the church of Christ should be
scrutinized with hostile eyes and classed by many
among those curious organisms which have a trick
of surviving their usefulness. There is a great
company of thoughtful people for whom the
Christian church has no significance. Some of them
ignore it altogether, others notice it only to smile
at it as a survival of a waning superstition, or to
curse it as an obstacle to progress. To others it
had a place; but to-day, alas, its creeds are all out
grown, its methods antiquated, its power is dwin
dling, and the wisdom, of perpetuating it in its
present form is questionable. The seat of the
scornful is crowded, and so also is the seat of the
mournful, the seat wherein congregate the good
people who are always lamenting the decay of the
pulpit and the decline of the church. When they
look backward, they see pulpit giants; when
they look round them, they see pulpit dwarfs.
The church was mighty once, but not now. These
are the people who write newspaper articles on
"the decadence of the pulpit," who publish novels
showing that if Christlike people desire to ac
complish anything worth while, they must cut
loose from the church, who deliver lectures in which

8 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
the most sparkling paragraphs are gibes at the
preachers and thrusts at the church members.
The most vigorous and plausible criticism of our
day is directed, not against the person of Jesus nor
•his ethical teaching, but against the institution
which bears his name. It is a good time for all who
intend to preach to think about the church.
Many preachers are thinking httle about it,
and others are thinking about it mistakenly. The
very word "church" is in many pulpits tabooed.
There are clergymen who preach no longer about
the church. Their favorite theme is the "Kingdom
of God." An influential American theologian,
in a valuable treatise on theology, picks up the
word "church" only to drop it, using in its place
"The Christian People." An Enghsh preacher,
whose praise is in all the churches, and who although
dead yet speaks, keeps saying in one of his most
popular volumes that it is to be regretted that
Paul did not say less about the church and more
about the Kingdom, because the characteristic
product of the church is ecclesiastics, whereas the
characteristic product of the Kingdom is philan
thropists. An eminent German theologian has
informed us that the church is not an essential
part of the religion of Jesus. Christianity needs, he

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 0
says, no dogma, no organization, and no ritual.
Christianity, when rightly understood, is simply a
filial disposition in the heart. When those who sit
in the seats of the mighty speak after this fashion,
it is not to be wondered at that men lower down
begin to think of the church with a slackened
reverence and to speak of it with a diminished
enthusiasm. The church has to many Christians
become an object to be apologized for, and has
ceased to be an institution to be sacrificed for and
loved. There is no doctrine of the Christian creed
in which it is so easy for young men to-day to go
astray as the doctrine of the Christian church.
The effect of this widespread scepticism in regard
to the church is manifesting itself increasingly.
The diminished attendance at theological seminaries
on both sides of the sea is a subject of troubled
discussion, and many an explanation has been
offered. It is singular that one of the root causes
has been generally overlooked altogether. Young
men in diminished numbers are preparing them
selves for the ministry, largely because the im
pression is abroad that the pulpit is in a state of
decay, that ministers are no longer men of influence,
that the church is obsolescent, and that there are
other and better ways in which a Christian man can

IO CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
make his life count in the work of social betterment.
Our age is not a whit more materialistic than all
other ages have been. The young men of our day
have as high ideals as young men have ever had,
their impulses are as generous and noble, their
faith in Christ is as deep and secure, their ambition
to serve humanity has never been surpassed; but
never have men been so practical as now. They
want opportunity to do something worth while, they
desire to make their lives count for the utmost
possible, and many of them hesitate to enter the
ministry, because they have heard it said by
Christian men — it may be by a Christian college
president, or a Christian college professor, or a
Christian editor, or a Christian business man —
that the pulpit is a waning power, that it offers
opportunities for service far inferior to those
offered in other fields. Many a young man has
recently turned his back on the ministry because he
was unwilling to consecrate his Hfe to the propping
up of an institution which, in the estimation of so
many Christian men in whose judgment he has
confidence, is anaemic and likely to collapse. It
is chiefly because the church of God as a divine
and mighty and indispensable institution has fallen
into disrepute, that we find ourselves facing the

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT II
question, "How can we increase the number of
candidates for the ministry?"
It is sad to see a man turning away from
the ministry because he does not understand the
church, but it is tragic to see one entering the
ministry with a wrong attitude to the church.
Young ministers sometimes look upon the church
as a necessary evil, an inherited encumbrance, a
sort of device by which preachers are handicapped
in their movements and held back from largest
usefulness. Men of this type are eager to get at
what they call the world. Their desire is to re
construct the social order. They want to do
things on a broad scale. To deal with so small and
insignificant a body as a church seems parochial
and belittling. All they want is a pulpit, a place
in which to stand and thunder forth their message.
They eye church officials with suspicion. They
would rather work alone. They are sorry they
must stay in a church building. A theatre would
suit them better. As for pastoral visitation, they
abhor it. It eats up time which ought to be given
to the proclamation of ideas and the correction of
evils. To be sure, a church has its uses. It can
furnish the minister's salary and pay the sexton,
but, outside of this, its usefulness is problematic.

12 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
Ordinarily it is in the way, and time spent upon it
might better be otherwise employed. When a
minister of this stripe goes into a parish the first
man he visits is the printer. He believes in
printer's ink. Printer's ink will let the people know
he is there. He does not know that a living
church is better for advertising purposes than all
the printing presses in the town. He scatters cards
to reach the masses. He has yet to learn that the
preacher best reaches the masses who knows best
how to reach his church. He is furious to get at
the crowd, and in order to get at it he is willing to
trample on his church. It is as if a school-teacher in
order to educate a community should turn his back
on his school, or a physician in order to heal the
town should ignore his hospital, or that a general
in haste to annihilate the enemy should do away
with his army. He burns to reconstruct the world,
not suspecting that the particular section of the
world which first needs reconstruction at his
hands is his own church. He is burdened with the
conviction that he is ordained to fight the world,
the flesh, and the devil, and in his innocence he does
not know that all these are waiting for him in his
church. If it is a blunder to ignore the church in an effort

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 13
to reach the masses, it is a more serious blunder to
shght the church in one's direct dealings with it.
Some ministers take hold of a church as though
it were a lump of putty or a piece of wood to be
shaped at their will. They do not give it credit for
having a soul of its own. They begin at once to
reorganize it. They set out before breakfast
to make it all over. Nothing about it suits them.
The Sunday-school is on a wrong basis. The
young people's society has faulty methods. The
Woman's Missionary Circle has an antiquated
constitution. Even the Cradle Roll must have
a new set of by-laws. All these changes must be
made immediately. The new minister does not
know that the church has a disposition and temper
ament of its own, that its personality is as distinct
and solid as his, that it is an organism with traditions
which are sacred and customs which are hallowed,
with notions and whims that must be respected, and
with idiosyncrasies which cannot safely be ignored.
Blessed is the preacher who realizes that he is only
a sojourner as all his fathers were. He stands in the
line of a long succession. Other men have labored
and he is entering into their labors. It is not for
him to start out as though the world were just
beginning. The church was there before he was

14 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
born. It will be there after he is dead. He is not a
clerical Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. The
shore is covered with human tracks. If he is a man
of sense he will take note of them, and observe the
direction in which men have been moving. The
first thing in the town for a preacher to take notice
of is his church. Let him begin at once to study
it, to strive to understand it, to come into sympathy
with it, to plan for it, to render himself useful to
it, to make himself a part of it, and in this way he
will come to love it. When he once loves it, he
will possess the first requisite of a successful preacher.
If it is hazardous to shght the church in the
work of administration, it is fatal to ignore it in
the work of preaching. Young ministers are often
rich in note-books when they go into their first
parish, and they begin to work out of their note
books toward the church. This is a blunder and
often leads the saints to say sundry uncomplimen
tary things about theological seminaries. Preach
ers should work from their parish toward their
note-books. It is the church which must deter
mine the character of the pulpit instruction and the
sequence of it. The church is a growing organism
and the preacher must know the stage of its devel
opment before he can feed it. He cannot use the

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 15
material in his note-books before he finds out
whether that is the material which is just now
needed. Possibly the contents of his notes may
be wet sawdust, possibly gunpowder. They may
dampen and deaden, or they may cause an ex
plosion. Men sometimes are blown out of their
pulpit by working from their note-books toward the
church, instead of from the church toward their
note-books. Let a man find out what the church
is able to digest and assimilate, and then go to his
books in search of it. A physician always looks at
his patient before he goes to the medicine chest.
A wise preacher begins, not with his books, but with
his church.
The old question of ministerial liberty is always
coming up to torment us, and the scandals caused
by preachers insisting on what they call their rights
are among the most vexing with which the church
has to deal. Every Christian minister is of course
free, but freedom has its laws. Liberty is precious,
but it has its limitations. Because a minister is free
it does not follow that he has a right to proclaim
from the pulpit everything he reads or everything
which he happens to be thinking. Certain men
are always getting confused at this point. Their
bewilderment is due to a forgetting of the church.

1 6 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
A man comes to think of himself as being the church.
He forgets that the faith was dehvered to the
saints — the entire body of the Lord's followers.
He is only one man among many. A theological
education does not give him the right to set himself
in a class apart, and to count himself independent
of the Christian brotherhood. He is not a pulpit
pope. He has his rights, but so also have other
Christians. He wishes to be free, so also do his
brethren. There is a liberty of hearing as weU as
a liberty of speaking. In asserting what he caUs
his freedom, he may rob others of the fiber ties
which belong to them as Christian men. The
church of Christ stands in the world as the ordained
teacher of definite conceptions of God and man,
of duty and destiny, of Jesus of Nazareth and the
Holy Spirit, of the church and the sacraments;
and if a preacher in the course of his mental evolu
tion comes to reject any of the beliefs which the
church counts fundamental, there is nothing for
him to do but to retire. To promise to teach a
certain set of beliefs and then proceed to repudiate
them, is not exercising the liberty of prophesying,
but simply failing to keep one's word. One is al
ways at liberty to withdraw from the Christian
pulpit as soon as he has surrendered the Christian

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 1 7
creed. The man who wants to know what are his
liberties as a teacher must work, not from himself
toward the church, but from the church toward
himself. Sometimes it is not so much a question of preach
ing fundamental doctrine as of proclaiming certain
ethical principles, and attacking certain undoubted
moral evils. Here again the preacher must begin
by establishing right relations between himself and
his church. It is often said that under our American
plan of ministerial support, a preacher is constantly
tempted to hold back unpalatable teaching, and is
in danger of degenerating into a flatterer or dema
gogue. The danger is real, but can easily be
escaped. If a man has a contemptuous view of his
church he is well-nigh certain to be afraid of it.
But love casts out fear. If a man loves his church
and proves his love by his hfe, he can say to it
anything which is proper for a Christian teacher to
say to his pupils, anything which it is fitting for a
Christian man to say to his friends. The preachers
who get into trouble by talking plainly to their
people are as a rule preachers who do not love their
churches. If a man stays in his study through the
week, wishing he could get a call to a larger church,
secretly despising the flock of which he is the ap-

l8 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
pointed shepherd, and then goes into the pulpit on
the Lord's day, and thunders against his people's
sins, there may be a storm, and there ought to be.
No man has a right to chide or condemn men,
unless he has won the right by loving them. It is a
clear vision of the church which preachers most
need when they come to deal with questions of
liberty in the proclamation of their message.
Another outstanding phenomenon of our age is
the shortening of pastorates. This is due in part
to hazy conceptions of the preacher's supreme
work. If a man thinks his mission in the world is
the delivering of sermons, he is likely to want to pass
from parish to parish, staying only long enough in
each pulpit to exhaust his sermonic stock. Such a
man is a sermonizer, but not a church builder. He
has been trained to write sermons, but not in
structed in the art of church building. He does not
know what the supreme work of a minister of Christ
is. He does not know what preaching is for. His
knowledge does not run beyond the A B Cs of his
calling. He thinks of himself as a man whose sole
business is to convert sinners. Having persuaded
sinners to say they want to follow Christ, and
having induced them to unite with the church, his
labor, he thinks, is ended. It does not occur to

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 1 9
him that the most difficult part of the minister's
work is with people after they have joined the
church. The minister is a teacher, and a teacher's
real work begins only after the pupils are enrolled.
He is the general of an army, and a general's
critical task is drilling his men after they have en
listed, and massing them in such ways as to conquer
the foe. He is a master-builder, and his task is not
simply collecting material, but shaping it into a
structure which shall become a shrine of the Eternal.
The crowning and crucial work of a minister is not
conversion, but church building. A man who does
nothing but convert men is an evangelist, and
should never be intrusted with a church. His
work is of value, but is easily overestimated. He
deserves a high place, but not the highest. The
highest place belongs to the man who, year after year,
in the same parish, instructs men in the high and
difficult art of living together, and trains them by
long and patient processes in the work of bringing
spiritual forces to bear upon the moral problems of
the community. The work of the evangelist is
necessarily spectacular, and often bewitches the
eyes of men who are young. Evangelism seems,
sometimes, to young men a more Christlike and
sacrificial form of service than the work performed

20 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
in the course of the ordinary ministry; but the fact
is that the work of the evangelist is not nearly so
taxing either upon brain or heart as is the work per
formed by a man who through a long series of years
gives himself devotedly to the soul-exhausting labor
of knitting the lives of men together and building
them up in righteousness. Young preachers in
quiet and obscure parishes, reading of the exploits
of famous evangelists moving in triumphal proces
sion across the land, sometimes grow discontented,
and wish that they too might leap upon a larger
stage and play a thrilling part in the great drama
of world redemption. But it should not be for
gotten that it is not simply the men who scatter
seed, but the men also who cultivate the grain and
garner the harvest who win the right to a place
among the world's benefactors. Converting men
only once amounts ordinarily to httle. They
must be converted many times. Faces must be
turned in the right direction, but what avails this,
unless hesitant and stumbling feet are trained to
walk toward the goal. The preacher who induces
men to turn to God and join the church does well,
but his supreme work as a Christian preacher is
building converts into a brotherhood. The young
preacher who at the end of the second year in a

CHURCH BUILDING DJEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 21
parish says, " My work is done," does not know what
he is saying. It may be that his stock of star
sermons is exhausted, or that the available outside
sinners have all handed in their names; but if he
understood a minister's mission, he would see that
his work has scarcely begun. In two years a man
can learn something of the nature of the material
with which he has to deal, but the critical and
arduous work of building hes still ahead of him.
No matter how long he stays, there will be more
work to do than there was in sight at the beginning.
Men who engage in the building of the church know
that the work is never done.
One cannot help wondering if not a httle of the
restlessness and discontent which fill the hearts of
so many pastors is not due to confused notions of
their relation to the church. Many a preacher has
a hungry heart because he has never yet gotten
close enough to his people. Preaching is a lonely
business. A man sweats blood in preaching, and
oftentimes the nerves are left unstrung. How can a
preacher do his work except in an atmosphere made
warm by Christian affection ? In the earher years
it is exhilarating to preach, because one finds relief
in self-expression. But as the years go on, there
is less delight in the mere act of saying things,

22 CHURCH BUILDING H)EA IN NEW TESTAMENT
and the heart craves more and more the fellowship
of kindred minds. A preacher who does not love
his church, and whom his church does not love,
is of all men most pitiable. Many a minister's
career would have been a different one, had he only
come to his pulpit by way of his church.
Turning now from the voices of an age which
has become confused in its idea of the church,
let us open the scriptures and purge our eyes by
gazing upon the church as the writers of the New
Testament saw it. With whom may we more
fittingly begin than with that preacher without a
peer — St. Paul ? In genius and consecration, in
passion and power, no ambassador of Christ in the
long roll of the Christian centuries has written his
name above the name of the man of Tarsus. Like
many a modern critic, Paul at one time looked upon
the church contemptuously. The prophet of Naza
reth, having run his short and ignominious career,
had vanished, leaving behind him a company of
fanatics to be resisted and if possible annihilated.
The fiery disciple of Gamaliel breathed forth
threatenings and slaughter against this novel and
accursed form of heresy. But one day, when
his hand was uplifted ready to strike the httle
church in Damascus, Paul heard Jesus saying,

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 23
"Why persecutest thou me?" In this question
there came a twofold revelation — a revelation of
the character of Jesus, and a revelation of the
relation of Jesus to his church. To his amazement
Paul discovered that Jesus is not only living, but
that he is identified with his church, and that it is
impossible to shght, despise, or oppose the church
without wounding the Son of God himself. From
that hour to his death Paul knew but two sovereign
themes — one was Jesus Christ, the other was the
church. The only sin whose memory burned hke
fire in his heart was the sin which he had committed
against the church. When you find him with his
face in the dust, it is his persecution of the church
which he is bewailing. When he declares he is the
chief of sinners and that he is not worthy to be
called an apostle, it is because the recoUection of
his sin against the church rolls over him like a flood.
When you seek him at his highest, jubilant and
enraptured, you find him thinking of the church.
It is a subject never absent from his mind. He
ransacks his vocabulary in search of figures by which
adequately to image forth his idea of the church's
character and mission. Sometimes he thinks of it
as the household of faith — the family of Jehovah.
At other times he sees it as the temple of God, the

24 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
very seat and shrine of the Eternal. Again it
presents itself to him as the body of Christ, the or
ganism in which Christ's spirit operates, the instru
ment by which the soul of Christ works. Still again
it rises before him beautiful and radiant as a woman
in the hour of her greatest lovehness, the bride
of the world's Redeemer. Now and again he sees
it lifting itself superbly as the pillar and ground of
the truth, holding aloft in the eyes of the nations
the mystery of godliness — Jesus. Always it is
to him the medium of revelation, the organ through
which the Almighty speaks both to men and to
angels. " And now unto me, who am less than the
least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach
unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
to the intent that now unto the principahties and the
powers in the heavenly places might be made known
through the church the manifold wisdom of God."
It was when he wrote to his maturest converts —
those in Corinth and Ephesus — that he had most
to say about the church. The theme of the pro-
foundest of all his letters — that to the Ephesians
— is the church of Christ. To regret that Paul has
so much to say about the church is to repine that
Christianity is not other than it is.
Paul's favorite figure of the church is a temple,

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 25
and he loved to think of himself as a master-builder.
Jesus Christ is the foundation stone and Christian
ministers all build on him. Christian behevers are
little temples to be carefully built into the walls of
a vast temple. "Know ye not that ye are a temple
of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you ?
If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall
God destroy ; for the temple of God is holy, which
temple ye are." It is interesting to note how this
figure haunts the Apostle, shaping and coloring his
language, and cropping out in unexpected ways and
places. For the temples built of gold and silver
and precious stones, Paul substituted the temple to
be built of immortal souls ; and to work for the en
largement and adorning of this temple was to him
the greatest privilege which the good God can bestow .
It was the vision of this temple with which he strove
to inflame the hearts of his converts, and by means of
which he braced his own intrepid spirit when the
sky was full of thunder. "Ye are no more stran
gers," he cries, "and sojourners, but ye are fellow
citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles
and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief
corner-stone, in whom each several building, fitly
framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the

26 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
Lord ; in whom ye also are builded together for a
habitation of God in the Spirit." This then is the
work which the God and Father of Jesus Christ
wishes to accomphsh, and his plan is to do it by the
cooperation of Christian men. Paul considered
not only himself, but aU church officials from the
highest to the lowest as church builders. "And he
gave some to be apostles ; and some, prophets ;
and some, evangehsts ; and some, pastors and
teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the
work of ministering unto the building up of the
body of Christ." The sentence has been marred for
Enghsh readers by a faulty translation and a mis
taken punctuation. It has been cut into three
sections as though there were three separate and
distinct things which Christian ministers are or
dained to do. There is in fact only one thing.
Their work is to equip or furnish behevers for the
work of ministering with a view to the building up
of the body of Christ, which is Paul's name for the
church. The building of the church is the supreme
aim of every minister who holds Paul's view of the
work of the Christian ministry.
The task of building belongs to all behevers,
and in order to train behevers in the art of build
ing, ministers of various ranks and endowments are

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 27
selected and anointed by the supreme head of the
church. It is because Paul always considers himself
a builder that he employs so frequently the word
which in Latin is "edify" but which in Anglo-
Saxon is "build." His conception of himself as
builder dictates to him the vocabulary of his ser
mons. "In the church I had rather speak five
words with my understanding that I might instruct
others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue."
He will not use a tongue because it does not build
up. How can men be built up by words whose
meaning they do not know? If a man forgets
that he is a church builder, he is well-nigh certain
to employ a tongue, it may be scientific, or
philosophical, or literary, or bookish, which while
pleasing to himself is not intelligible to those to
whom he preaches. If all Christian preachers
since the days of Paul had only held fast Paul's
conception of the aim of preaching as church
building, not so many of them would have soared
into the clouds of scintillating phrases, or plunged
into the muddy depths of what they were pleased
to call "thought." It is because Paul was a
builder that he wrote sentences such as this, "If
meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no
flesh forevermore." Why not? Because many

28 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
lawful acts are not expedient. Actions that are
lawful do not always build up. A Christian minister
is not to do the thing which he has an abstract right
to do, but the thing which will build up the church.
The conception of church building then is the
one by which a minister's conduct is to be largely
controlled and directed. Whatever builds up the
church is good for a minister to do, whatever pulls
down the church a minister ought to avoid. The
minister who stands on his legal rights while his
church slowly disintegrates, or who pushes a pet
policy even though he sees that it is splitting the
church asunder, does not act on the principle by
which the first great Christian preacher was guided.
It is possible to be too insistent on one's rights, too
conscious of one's deserts. A man with both eyes
open to his rights is hkely to be blind to the glory
of the church. Knowledge of one's rights puffs up,
love for the church builds up. Stubbornness and
vanity often wear the garb of conscientiousness and
consecration. When the question arises, "Which
shall be sacrificed, the preacher or the church?"
the man who follows Paul will be swift to give the
right answer. The most pious of ministers may
become one of the most dangerous and wicked of
men if he writes himself large and the church

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 29
small. Men who tear churches to pieces deserve
to be cast out with the publicans and heathen.
But laymen and preachers are bound by the
same principles. Laymen as well as preachers are
church builders. A good definition of a Christian
would be, "a builder of the church of Jesus Christ."
"Build one another up," so wrote the master builder
to a company of Christians in Thessalonica. It is
an exhortation of perennial significance. Men
become dilapidated as stone waUs do. The mortar
rots and the stones fall apart. Human nature
crumbles and character goes to pieces. The virtues
of the soul fall asunder and men need to be rebuilt.
This is the work which Christians must do for one
another, and it is a service in which the apostle
exhorts them to abound. "Seek that ye may
abound in the work of building up." "Let each
one of us please his neighbor for that which is good,
unto building up" — so he wrote to the members
of the church in Rome. "Let us follow after things
which make for peace, and things whereby we may
build one another up" — this is the gist of what he
said to all the churches. Many of the church
members of the first century had not grasped the
idea of building. Religion to them was an indi
vidualistic possession, a treasure to be prized, an

30 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
experience to be enjoyed. They did not conceive
of themselves as members of a society, organs of
an organism, stones in a temple; and the result was
frequent discord and distressing scandal. Men
followed their own bent, indulged their vanity,
gave vent to their censorious temper, pulled to
pieces the unity of the congregation. In no church
were conditions worse than in the church in Corinth.
Considerateness and forbearance were virtues
slightly practised, vanity and self-seeking were
vices in fuU bloom. To this church the grieved
apostle unfolds his idea of building. He shows
how the abuses of pubhc worship arise — Christians
forget that they are builders. He feels that the
sins which bring reproach on the name of Jesus
would disappear if men gave themselves to the
work of building. His counsel is summed up in the
single sentence : "Let everything be done with a
view to building."
This is a fit motto for a minister to inscribe above
the desk on which he writes his sermons. The
preacher is first of all a builder. He deals in
affirmations, not in denials. He constructs, and only
incidentally tears down. He is an architect and
not an iconoclast. It is an evil spirit which takes
delight in pulling things to pieces. Let a preacher

CHURCH BUILDING H)EA IN NEW TESTAMENT 3 1
beware of negations, especially during the first
five years of his ministry. Youth has a fatal fond
ness for negations. Let the beginning preacher
preach what he believes, and not tomahawk the
doctrines which he has discarded. The preacher
who brandishes an axe in the eyes of his congrega
tion, hewing down with glee discredited dogmas and
outgrown interpretations, need not be surprised if
the church is shaken and his pulpit is rendered in
secure. It is not courage, but lack of sense, which
usually gets preachers into trouble. Laymen are
as a rule not unwilling to listen to new conceptions
which have a show of reasonableness; but the
man who tears to pieces their old truth with a
chuckle and stamps upon it with a whoop is sure
to be resisted. It is not in human nature to relish
reiterated and gloating declarations that nearly
all one's old beliefs are both false and siUy. If a
man has really worked his way into broader and
nobler conceptions, let him give his new vision in
such a way that the church shall be lifted up and
strengthened. Let every sentence of the sermon
be written with a view, not to pulling down men who
are dead, but to building up men who are alive.
The words which might profitably be written across
the preacher's study wall might wisely be in-

32 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
scribed in characters of gold before the eyes of all
the congregation. What a transformation there will
be in pubhc worship, what a revolution in many a
disciple's hfe, and what a reformation in the
whole temper and conduct of many a Cliristian
congregation, when once the idea is firmly grasped
that aU the followers of Jesus, both the man in the
pulpit and the men in the pew, have for their heaven-
appointed mission the building of the church !
Whence did Paul get his idea of church building ?
Whence did it come to Peter ? To Peter also the
church is the family of God, and his two exhorta
tions stand side by side : "Love the brotherhood,
Fear God." To Peter likewise the church is a
living temple. To Peter, no less than to Paul,
Jesus is the foundation stone, the stone rejected
but chosen of God and precious, upon which living
stone behevers are built up a spiritual house. To
Peter's eyes also the glory has vanished from temples
made with hands, and now resides in the spiritual
temple, the church of the hving God. Whence came
this passionate devotion to the church, and how
did it happen that both apostles loved to think of
it as a building ? The source of both the conception
and the passion was undoubtedly the Son of God.
It was at Ca-sarea Philippi — so Matthew teUs us

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 33
— at a critical moment in Jesus' life, when there
occurred a twofold confession. The first was by
Simon Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
Living God." This was the first full-toned recogni
tion by man of the heavenly origin and character of
Jesus. For this Jesus had been waiting. It is now
time for him to make his confession. "Blessed
art thou, Simon Bar-Jona : for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father which
is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou
art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church :
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."
There is an enthusiasm in these words which
glows and flashes. They carry in their body the
leaping joy of an exultant spirit. The declaration
fell upon the air with the thriU of a new revelation.
One feels that a secret long held back has leaped into
the light. A man has at last recognized the presence
of the world's Messiah, and to him and to his com
rades who share his insight and conviction is now
revealed what the Messiah has come to earth to do.
It is his purpose to establish a society, a brotherhood,
an institution which shall incorporate his spirit
and perpetuate his work. The revelation was not
given to the crowd. The crowd could not under
stand it or make use of it. The highest truths are

34 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
reserved for those who have ears to hear. The
twelve did not at first grasp the full meaning of the
words spoken at Caesarea Philippi. They under
stood them better after the Day of Pentecost.
They are words which even now are often imper
fectly apprehended. They express a plan of God
which can be only spiritually discerned.
Arguments are sometimes urged to prove that the
church was a matter of indifference to Jesus. He
cared only for ideas — men say — and the Christian
church was an after-thought of his ambitious
followers. As evidence for the soundness of this
contention, it is said in triumph that Jesus never so
much as mentioned the church but twice, conse
quently he cared nothing for it. It is indeed a
wooden principle of interpretation, just now in vogue,
which measures the importance of a fact by the
number of times it is mentioned in the Scriptures.
This is surrendering the use of intellect and settling
difficult and spiritual questions by rule of thumb.
It would seem then that he knows best the meaning
of the New Testament who is quickest in the art of
counting. But a thing may exist without the name,
and a mere mathematician will never understand
the gospels. Many things of moment Jesus never
dealt with at all, because those lessons had been

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 35
already learned. There are wide gaps in his re
corded sayings because much was taken for granted
by the men who wrote the gospels. That a rehgion
could live and conquer without organization and
without officials was an idea unthinkable to every
first century Jew. Moreover there were subjects
about which Jesus could not speak in public without
hastening a crisis. One of such subjects was his
Messiahship. He announced it so guardedly and so
incidentally that certain New Testament scholars
have declared that he never taught it at all. It was
a fact to be spiritually apprehended and left to
make its way in the world by the power of its own
spirit. To have shouted it from the housetop would
have forced forward the last act of the drama.
What is true of his Messiahship is true also of his
church. How could he have spoken of his church
before the bigoted devotees of the Jewish church
without precipitating the tragedy which it was
necessary for a season to postpone? Things held
in reserve are not therefore unimportant. It may
be their tremendous importance which makes neces
sary the reticence concerning them. Jesus did not
speak of the church in pubhc for reasons perfectly
clear, preferring to use terms which would excite
least suspicion and create least irritation in the

36 CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT
hearts he was trying to reach. But while he made
no public announcement, he pondered the church
in his heart and gave himself unreservedly, from the
day at Cassarea Philippi onward, to the knitting
of the souls of twelve men into a brotherhood,
which should go on enlarging until it had embraced
the world. To a man whose eyes are not holden, the
church is a towering and ubiquitous fact of the
gospels. In the upper chamber, on the last night,
it is to his church that Jesus speaks. To it and it
only he gives the promise of the Holy Spirit ;
for it and it only he offers his high-priestly prayer ;
to it and it only he presents himself after his resur
rection, and to it and only to it he gives the great
commission. "Go, disciple the nations." Not to
any individual believer, but to the society of
believers, is the assurance granted of ultimate and
unimaginable victory.
When it is said that Jesus did not found the
church, language is used which needs explanation.
If by founding the church is meant giving to a set
of men a definite constitution and by-laws, with
minute regulations as to polity and officials, then one
may correctly say that Jesus did not found the
church. But when one considers his work upon the
twelve, and what the one hundred and twenty did

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 37
immediately after the Spirit — his Spirit — had
come upon them, which Spirit he had expressly
declared would lead them into truth, one is driven
to the conclusion that it was Jesus who organized
the Christian church, and that he and he alone
can rightfully be called its Founder. If we are
to accept the book of the Acts as authentic history,
and are to beheve in the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, then we cannot escape the conclusion that the
organization of the church was the act of Jesus,
because the men who were the nearest to him in
Ufe and in death, and who were flooded with his
spirit after a cloud had received him from their
sight, threw themselves at once into the work of
organizing behevers into churches baptized into his
name. The promise had been : "The Holy Spirit
shall take the things of mine and show them un
to you," and the first thing shown to them was the
Christian church. The church is the inevitable
and indestructible creation of Christ's spirit. That
he founded it and that it is the expression of his
will, is also evidenced by Christian experience. His
tory proves that the continuance of Christianity
is dependent upon the church. The church is an
essential constituent of the Christian religion. The
principles of Jesus do not enthrone themselves in

38 CHURCH BUILDING H)EA IN NEW TESTAMENT
human society without the assistance of the church.
The church is in hteral truth the body of Jesus.
Without it he does no mighty deeds. The amount
of work which he accomplishes in every country is
conditioned on the character of the church in that
country. The kind of service he performs in any
community is determined by the character of the
Christian society in that community. Whenever
the church prospers, society improves. Whenever the
church languishes, society degenerates. When the
church is vigorous and spiritual, the social atmos
phere becomes bracing and clear; when the church
becomes worldly and corrupt, the sun is turned into
darkness and the moon into blood. The principles
of Jesus take root in pagan lands only when they are
planted there and watered by the church. The
gospel would never have gotten out of Palestine
had it not been for the Christian brotherhood, nor
out of Europe into England had it not been for the
church, nor out of the Old World into the New had
the church not sent it. There is no hope for the
triumph of the Christian religion outside the church.
Therefore, "I will build my church." It is his.
He is the architect. Preachers in hours of despon
dency should listen to him saying : "I will build my
church." "Unless the Lord build the house, they

CHURCH BUILDING IDEA IN NEW TESTAMENT 39
labor in vain who build it." He is at work. The
church is no httle private enterprise of ours. It is
his. We are colaborers with him. He is ever by
our side. The gates of death shall not prevail.
Critics rage and brilliant writers imagine a vain
thing. Kings and rulers in divers realms take
counsel together and agree that the glory of the
church is departing. He that sitteth in the heavens
laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. The
church is not obsolescent. Humanity has not out
grown it. Its noon is not behind it. Its triumphal
career has only begun. We are toiling amid the
mists of the early morning. It is the rising sun
which smites our foreheads, and we cannot even
dream of the glory which is to be. We work upon
an enduring institution. After the flags of republics
and empires have been blown to tatters, and the
earth itself has tasted death, the church of Jesus
shall stand forth glorious, free from blemish and
mark of decay, the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it. Therefore, my beloved brethren, in
these confused and confusing days, be steadfast,
immovable in the presence of the world's clamor and
rancor, always building your hfe and the lives of as
many as God intrusts to your keeping, into the
church of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that
such labor is not in vain in the Lord.

LECTURE II
BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
"Brotherhood" is St. Peter's name for the
church. The conception of the church held by the
leader of the Twelve and the man to whom our Lord
first promised the keys of the Kingdom is deserv
ing of sustained attention. That members,
church are brothers, St. Petdfr Wuy where takes
for granted. " Be ye all hke-minded, compassionate,
loving as brothers, tender-hearted, humble-minded"
— this sums up his idea of the disposition which
church members should have toward one another.
He has many bits of advice to give his converts,
but this is chief : "Above all things be fervent
in your love among yourselves. Honor all men.
Love the brotherhood."
St. John holds the same conception. To him the
church is a band of brothers, and the first duty of
church members is loving one another. There is
httle else that the beloved apostle cares to write.
"He that loveth his brother abideth in the hght."
"We know that we have passed out of death into
life because we love the brethren." "We ought
43

44 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
to lay down our hves for the brethren." "This
is his' commandment, that we should beheve in the
name of his son Jesus Christ, and love one another."
"Beloved, let us love one another." "If God so
loved us we also ought to love one another."
"If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother,
he is a har ; for he that loveth not his brother whom
he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not
seen." "This commandment have we from him
that he who loveth God, love his brother also."
With St. John's writings before us, it is easy to
beheve the tradition that when he was old, unable
any longer to walk, the young men in the church
in Ephesus were wont to carry him before the
people, to whom he repeated again and again,
"Little children, love one another." When they
asked him why he said this so many times, his reply
was, "Because it is the Lord's precept, and if only
it be done, it is enough."
St. Paul was not in the upper chamber when the
Twelve received the new commandment, but his
conception of the church is identical with that of
John and Peter. To Paul the church is a brother
hood. "Concerning love of the brethren," Paul
writes to the church in Thessalonica, "ye have no
need that one write unto you, for ye yourselves

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 45
are taught of God to love one another ; for indeed
ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all
Macedonia. But we exhort you, brethren, that ye
abound more and more." This is his exhortation
to all Christians and he gives expression to it again
and again, "In love of the brethren be tenderly
affectioned one to another ; in honor preferring one
another." It is only as Christians are rooted and
grounded in love that they are "strong to appre
hend with all the saints what is the breadth and
length and height and depth, and to know the love
of Christ which passeth knowledge." In his first
letter to the Corinthians, Paul's conception of love
breaks into language of unsurpassed and unforget
table splendor. He declares what love is, how it
acts, feels, thinks, and what victories it wins.
Without it, no matter what else we possess, we
have nothing. This was written to the church
which was most deficient in that which is the
distinctive treasure of a Christian church. Unless
a church is a brotherhood, a company of men and
women whose sympathies and purposes are inter
twined, and whose hves are interlaced and blended,
we may call it a Christian church, but it does not
bear in the body of its life the marks of the Lord
Jesus.

46 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
Whence did these three preachers get their con
ception of the church ? They preached only what
they received. It was Jesus' habit to remind his
disciples that he was their Master and that aU
they were brethren. The crowning period of his
hfe was devoted almost exclusively to the task of
knitting together the hearts of the men who were to
constitute the nucleus of his church. How heavy
this burden lay upon his heart is seen in his behavior
and words in the upper chamber. AU along the
way that day, there had been outbreaks of temper
on the part of the twelve, and the old spirit of ill-
will crops out again as they take their places round
the table. The feast cannot go on. Christ can
hold no festival except where hearts are sweet. He
takes a basin and a towel and proceeds to bathe the
disciples' feet, not because he cares for the dust
on their feet, but because he is pained by the
estrangement of their hearts. This done, he an
nounces a commandment which is to take precedence
over all the instructions which he has hitherto given
them. "A new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another ; even as I have loved
you, that ye also love one another. By this shall
all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have
love one to another," This is indeed startling

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 47
teaching. Let all who would preach the gospel
read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. The
distinctive note of the Christian hfe is here pro
claimed to be love for one's fellow-Christians.
A man proves himself a Christian, not by loving
men in general, but by loving his brethren in Christ.
The first and inevitable fruit of an instructed Chris
tian heart is love for one's brother Christians.
This is a truth which our Lord labored unceasingly
to make clear to his disciples. The things which
are uppermost in one's mind are likely to come out
in his prayers. They are sure to emerge in the
prayers which one offers in the presence of death.
Listen then to the last prayer of Jesus. He prays
that his disciples may be one. He prays for it
again and again. It is the one longing which throbs
through his whole prayer. The outside world
passes for a season out of his thought. The nations
and their needs sink below the horizon. He thinks
only of his church, of the men who are there in his
presence, and of the multitudes who will beheve on
him through their word. He can conceive of no
higher blessing for them than communion of spirit,
comradeship in heart, union in love. "That they
may all be one, even as thou Father art in me and I
in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the

48 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
world may beheve that thou didst send me."
Fellowship, then, is to be the proof of the divine
power of Jesus, evidence to the world that he came
from heaven. The world is not to be convinced and
converted by reasoning or philosophy or eloquence,
but by the love of Christians for one another.
"The glory which thou hast given me I have given
unto them ; that they may be one, even as we are
one ; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
perfected into one : that the world may know that
thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou
lovedst me." This is amazing doctrine. It sounds
novel even now. Christ declares his mission to be
the binding of men together by indissoluble bonds.
It is by the brotherhness of those who beheve in
Jesus that the hard heart of the world is to be
softened and the truthfulness of Jesus' words
estabhshed. The world is to be brought to God
by Christians loving one another.
It is incontrovertible that, according to the New
Testament, the men who were baptized into the
spirit of Jesus looked upon the church from the
beginning as a brotherhood or family. The vocabu
lary and customs of home life were carried over into
the church. The church was known as the house
hold of faith, the family of God. Christians called

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 49
one another not "Christians," but "brethren," and
after the fashion of Eastern lands they greeted one
another at their meetings with a kiss. In their assem
blies they gathered round a common table, enjoying
a love-feast together. The sacrament of the Lord's
Supper was linked to the dinner table, the central
social institution in the home. The church's most
sacred ceremony was a reminder that behevers be
long to one another. The church was a communion
of brothers. High in the hst of graces stood the
grace of hospitality. Christians when they travelled
were never to find themselves away from home.
AU congregations of believers were to be bound to
gether by sacred and spiritual ties, and thus was the
Lord's prayer to be fulfilled. A favorite name
for "church" in the early Christian centuries was
"Brotherhood." Alas, that it was ever lost!
When we close the New Testament and look
around us, we find ourselves in a different world.
There is a change in the atmosphere which is
chilling. The Roman Cathohc idea of the church is
not the idea of Peter. Her definition of the church
as phrased by Cardinal Bellarmine is: "The
one and true church is the congregation of men
united by the profession of the same Christian faith
and the communion of the same sacraments under

50 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
the rule of the legitimate pastors, and especially the
one vicar of Christ upon earth." Everything
mentioned in this definition is external. Love
has no stated place at aU. In Roman Cathohc
practice the church is essentially a hierarchy, the
officials being exalted far above the laity, constitut
ing a class apart, while the rank and file of the
Lord's followers, often reduced to the level of mere
spectators, come to God only through the hierarchy.
How different Christian history would have been,
if from the fourth to the sixteenth century the men
who claimed to sit in Peter's chair had foUowed
Peter, and had said to all priests: "Tend the
flock of God, exercising the oversight, not of con
straint, but willingly, according unto God ; nor
yet for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind ; neither
as lording it over the charge aUotted to you, but
making yourselves ensamples to the flock," and
to all congregations, "Love as brethren, have
fervent love among yourselves, love the brother
hood." Nor has Protestantism ever read with unclouded
eye what the New Testament says about the church.
The definition formulated by the Anglican church
and adopted by the Protestant Episcopal and
Methodist Episcopal churches reads thus : "The

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 51
visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful
men, in the which the pure word of God is preached,
and the sacraments be duly administered according
to Christ's ordinance, in aU those things that of
necessity are requisite to the same." The West
minster Confession says : "The Cathohc or univer
sal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole
number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be
gathered into one, under Christ, the head thereof ;
and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that
fiUeth aU in aU. The visible church, which is also
cathoUc or universal under the gospel, consists of all
those throughout the world, that profess the true
religion, and of their children ; and is the kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of
God, out of which there is no ordinary possibihty
of salvation." These definitions reappear with
minor variations in most of the creeds of Protestant
Christendom. The two features of the church
which Protestants have made conspicuous are the
preaching of the word and the administration of the
sacraments. But preaching is not sufficient to
make a church, nor is the proper "administration of
the sacraments. That a definition of the church
should have in it no reference to what the Head
of the church counts fundamental is indeed calami-

52 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
tous. When did Jesus magnify sacraments and
sermons, passing by the obligations and ministries
of love? The alleged "one vicar of Christ upon
earth " does not make a church, nor does a bishop,
nor a preacher, nor a man who baptizes, nor an
official who offers a prayer over the bread and the
wine. A church is a brotherhood, a school for
training in , fellowship, a home for the cultivation
of the social virtues and the human graces, a society
in which men are bound together in sympathy and
holy service by a common aUegiance to the Son of
God. It is a congregation of faithful men, ever
striving to learn and hve the new commandment,
looking unto Jesus for power to understand and
practice the law of love. The new commandment
is the standard by which aU churches must be
measured, and in the hght of this standard the
church universal knows herself to be poor and blind
and naked. Many city churches are made up of
people who do not even know one another, and
who do not want to know one another. Too many
village churches are composed of people who know
one another, and are sorry that they do. The
very thing which the New Testament asserts to
be the one thing needful, and without which the
world cannot be won for Christ, is the thing which

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 53
is to-day least abundant. To create an ampler and
a warmer fellowship inside the church of Jesus is the
first work for which preachers are ordained, and
yet many of them, instead of staying at home and
attending to their business, have gone scampering
off in wild crusades against the distant Saracens,
wasting their strength in frenzied efforts to recon
struct by a furious blowing of trumpets the economic
and social order. There are many congregations, let
us be thankful, in which the new commandment is
understood and honored, and it is these congrega
tions which constitute the hope of Christendom.
They hold in their hand the key which unlocks all
the doors. They possess the secret for which the
world is waiting. No churches, let us hope, are
altogether devoid of the love for which the Master
and his apostles pleaded. Even in congregations
which seem paralyzed or dead, there is usuaUy
at the centre a httle circle of loyal and devoted
behevers, whose hearts have been fused by the
Holy Spirit, and whose hves have been blended by
feUowship in Christian work and prayer. To
extend this circle of lovers, whether it be larger or
smaller, and endow it with a fuller measure of wis
dom and power is, in my judgment, the distinctive
and crucial work of the Christian minister. It is

54 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
the work which the Master did, and he says,
"Follow me !"
There are probably few important sentences in
the gospels used so seldom by Christian ministers
as texts for sermons as is the golden sentence of
our Lord : "Love one another, even as I have loved
you." It seems to be a difficult sentence to find,
and even more difficult to understand. It is often
made to mean something different from what it
teaches. A common interpretation makes it equiv
alent to "love all men everywhere." But such an
exposition empties it of its content, and robs it of
its power to accomphsh the work which Jesus had in
mind. He is not exhorting here to a vague humani-
tarianism or a wholesale phUanthropy. He is not
proclaiming the brotherhood of man. He is not
thinking of men in general. He is speaking to
members of his church, and telling them how to
live together so as to convince the world that he is
what he claims to be. Victory for his cause is to be
achieved by their love for one another. It is no
ordinary love which is called for, but love fashioned
after his own, and Ufted to its white intensity and
heavenly temper. A Christian owes something
to a fellow-Christian which he owes to no other
human being, his first duty is to his f ellow-behevers,

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 55
his first obhgation is to his Christian brethren, his
first concern is with his comrades in Christ. It is
by Christians loving one another after the sacrificial
manner of Jesus that other men are to become
Christians. Love is the law of the church. Love
is the badge of discipleship. Love is the chief
evangeUst and head worker. Love is the power
which overcomes. It is not love for the community
or love for humanity, but love for one's feUow-
Christians by which the door of the world's heart is
to be opened. The teaching was plain and the
early Christians caught it. The secret of the prog
ress of the early church hes revealed in the excla
mation of the pagan crowd — "Behold how these
Christians love one another !"
The primary work of a preacher, then, is the
cultivation by word and deed of the spirit of
Christlike brotherliness among the members of
his own church. Many ministers shrink from this
work as something narrowing and unworthy. The
very statement that such is a minister's work
sounds like heresy and arouses antagonism and
revulsion in many hearts. Such teaching seems
like harking back to the dark ages. The brother
hood of man and not the brotherhood of Christians
is the doctrine which our century is ready to hear.

56 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
All men are our brothers. A man who is up to date
will make no distinctions but wUl love everybody
alike. Let a preacher, therefore, exhort his people
continually to love humanity, being careful to lay
no special emphasis, as a New Testament writer
mistakenly did, upon those who belong to the house
hold of faith. It is just here that many a minister
makes his greatest mistake. In his eagerness to be
broad he becomes narrow. In ignoring limitations
prescribed by the Lord of hfe he becomes feeble.
By trying to do too much he achieves nothing. In
his hberahty he wipes out distinctions which cannot
be repudiated without loss. In his zeal to rise
above boundaries, he loses himseff in the clouds.
Nothing is more essential to a preacher in our
day than an understanding of the function and
power of limitations. It is only as a man is willing
to confine himself within narrow hmits that he
can do any mighty work. Men aU round us are
frittering away their hves because of their vagueness.
Sermons in appalling numbers amount to Uttle
because of their generalities. Definiteness in
thought and action is the thing above all things
for the twentieth century preacher to cultivate.
Concentration is the supreme prudence of ministe
rial life. It is easy to declaim eloquently about the

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 57
brotherhood of man, but much that is said upon
that subject is vapid and futile. The air is full of
talk about brotherhood, but brotherhood does
not come by poetic quotations and rhapsodical
orating. Brotherhood is a spiritual creation, the
work of men who have been recreated in Christ.
It is a feUowship of souls based upon a feUowship
with God's only-begotten Son. The redemption of
the world is carried onward by the binding of
Christian hearts and hves together. To Paul,
feUowship was everything. His letters were full
of it because his heart was overflowing. To get the
members of the local church closer together, and the
churches of each region closer together, and the
churches of the Jewish and Gentile worlds closer
together — this was the object of his labors and
prayers. Christianity to him is fellowship in the
Lord. Without fellowship faith is empty, hope is
darkened, love is starved. It is through the
communion of saints that this world and aU worlds
are to see what God is and what he is able to do.
Do not be afraid, then, to preach boldly the
doctrine of the new commandment. Preach it just
as the Lord himself taught it. Count it your joy
to train the members of your church in the fine art
of Uving together. It is the most difficult of aU the

58 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
arts, and the church is the school ordained of God
for perfecting men in this art. You are not doing a
narrow work when you teach the members of your
church the range and wealth of Christian feUowship.
The church is the world in miniature. In it exist
aU the forces and relationships, the entanglements
and evils, which the world as a whole presents.
There is not a world evU which can be anywhere so
effectively attacked as within the church of Christ.
There is not an industrial or social or racial prob
lem which can be dealt with outside so profoundly
as inside the Christian brotherhood. When you
straighten out the tangled relations of your church
members to one another, you are contributing to
the solution of social problems everywhere. When
you soften class antipathies and racial antagonisms
within your congregation, you are helping to solve
the most baffling of the world complications. When
you induce aU sorts and conditions of men to Uve
together as brethren in your own church commun
ion, you are hastening the day when men the wide
world over shaU be brothers. Humanity is in the
making, and the church is the institution in which
society is moulded into nobler forms and fitted for
finer issues. When Paul buUt a slave into the
brotherhood at Colossas, he signed the death war-

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 59
rant for slavery in England and America. When
Jesus induced twelve men differing from one
another widely in temperament, idea, and social
standing to sit down together in an upper chamber
in Jerusalem, he contributed to the solution of the
social problem in every city throughout the world.
It is impossible to kindle a fire on your church
hearth without the world feehng the warmth of it.
But you cannot kindle a fire unless you bring the
fagots together. The minister's first business is to
get his people together. Let him preach to his
church, and his church, when converted, wUl
preach to the world. Let him kindle the church,
and the church wUl illumine the community. The
lamp of the town is the church. If the lamp of the
church is darkness, how great is that darkness !
The minister who gives himself to the training of
a church in Christian fellowship is not dwarfing the
affections or curtailing the range of the sympathies
of his people. He is creating the very capacities
and powers by means of which Christ's large wish
for the world can be most speedily fulfilled. Affec
tions are most surely enriched and strengthened
only when cultivated in narrow fields. It is the
man who loves his own wife as he loves no other
woman, who comes to take a chivalric attitude to aU

60 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
women everywhere. By his love for one woman
he grows into a widening appreciation of the dignity
and beauty of womanhood. It is the father who
loves his own chUdren as he loves no others, whose
affections go out farthest toward aU boys and girls
and who is swiftest to gather them into the round
tower of his heart. Men who are most faithful to
their own homes are the men to be first counted on
for the defence and maintenance of the interests of
all homes. It is the man who has come into feUow
ship with his brother men in his own Church who is
most likely to come into right relations with men
who have no connection with organized Christian
ity. Love when once kindled travels far, but it
must first be kindled. The church of Jesus is es
tablished for the express purpose of kindling the
fire of love. Sermons are a part of the fuel by which
the fire is nourished. Pastoral work also feeds and
safeguards the holy flame. The wise preacher is al
ways striving to bring the members of his church
into a richer fellowship. The weakness of the
modern church lies in its dwarfed affections. The
shame of present-day Christianity is its stunted
sympathies. The church is rich in money, ideas,
apparatus, numbers, but poor in love. This is in
part the fault of preachers. Too many of them

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 6l
fail to cultivate the affections. They do not
understand how to open the heart. They are in
terested in problems and what they call the "King
dom," but they are not sufficiently interested in the
group of people of whom they are the appointed
rehgious teachers. They neglect the work of inter
lacing hves, of binding men into bundles, of twining
purposes and sympathies together for the advance
ment of Christ's glory. There are congregations
which have scant sympathy with the outside world,
because their members have meagre sympathy
with one another. If sympathy is cultivated inside
the church, it spiUs over into the outside world.
There are churches which have no interest in the
struggles and hopes of wage-earners, largely because
there is no interest among the members of those
churches in one another. Christian love is expressed
in the hymn-book, but does not exist in the hearts
of the people who sing the hymns; and not loving the
man by his side, it is impossible for the loveless
church member to love the man who is far away.
When love is kindled in the hearts of church
members for one another, it is a fire which burns
its way to the end of the world. Not a httle of the
indifference of many Christians to the work of
foreign missions is due to their atrophied social

62 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
sympathies. Their social nature has become en
feebled, and by neglecting their obligations to their
fellow-townsmen, they find it impossible to respond
to the claims of unknown men on the other side of the
globe. Their lack of the spirit of brotherly affection
incapacitates them also for the worship of God.
Their worship is mechanical and unsatisfying.
The secret of this was told long ago by a man who
laid it down as axiomatic, that if a man does not
love his brother whom he has seen he cannot love
God whom he has not seen. It is the very quintes
sence of the Christian teaching that we can know
God only through man, that we come to God only
through man, and that we worship God best by
loving men. Many a preacher has tried to put
warmth into the worship of his church, and aU
in vain, because he did not know that the source of
warmth is human feUowship, and that the place to
begin working for an enrichment of the devotional
spirit is not among his books, elaborating arguments
going to prove that men ought to dehght in the
worship of God, but in the social meeting where
church members come to know one another.
Christians who are interested in one another in
variably become more interested in God. Loving
men is the only way to grow in the grace of loving

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 6^
God. Unless a church is sociaUzed, how can it be
expected to feel an interest in social movements?
A set of people who are not interested in one an
other wiU not be likely in the house of prayer
to worship God with glad and exultant hearts, or in
the field of Christian service to work effectively for
the advancement of the kingdom. The preacher's
first work is the building of a brotherhood. Out
of this, when once created, aU sorts of reviving
streams wiU flow.
These are good times for preachers to ponder the
meaning of the new commandment and to train
their people in the practice of it. Men are thinking
as never before of solidarity, and organic hfe and
corporate responsibihties. In the commercial world
there is an amazing revelation of the power of co
operation, in the industrial world a growing appre
hension of the possibilities of collectivism, in the
new psychology a deepened insight into the relation
of personahty to society. There is a world-wide
movement caUed SociaUsm. In aU the king
doms of Ufe there is a new vision of the meaning
of social relationships and the miracle-working
power of combinations. In the whole trend of the
world's thought, the Spirit of God is saying some
thing to the churches, and the preacher who has

64 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
ears to hear will receive a revelation. We are Uv-
ing in a social age and the question at the front is
the social question. Man's social nature is unprec-
edentedly ahve and is clamoring for a satisfaction
which cannot be denied it. Men are massing them
selves in cities, not chiefly because they are most
needed there, or because they can secure work there,
but because they find in city Ufe gratification for
their social cravings. Men hunger for companion
ship. They have discovered that it is not good
for them to hve alone. Sohtude is unendurable,
isolation is death. As soon as men come together
they organize, gather themselves into groups, form
fraternities, unions, leagues, clubs. Men Uve by
fellowship. It is only when hearts and hands
come together that existence passes into life. The
multiplication of societies, therefore, goes on in
creasingly. This is a fact of which every alert
preacher is bound to take notice. Many a preacher
has already observed it to his consternation. He
has found the unions and lodges, granges and clubs,
swallowing up the men of the community, leaving
for the church only women and children. In
bitterness of spirit he has cried out against these
secular organizations, denouncing them as enemies
of the church of God. But all such denunciation is

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 65
futile. One cannot change the movement of the
tides. Man is a social animal. God made him
such. Men are made for fellowship, and if they do
not find it in the church of God, they will seek it
where it may be found. The wise preacher will
waste no time in hurling thunderbolts at rival or
ganizations, but will set to work with both hands
to strengthen the church where the church to-day
is weakest. His ambition wiU be to make his church
the warmest and most effective brotherhood in all
the town. No stranger member shall remain un-
greeted. No unfortunate member shall go un-
befriended. No invalid shall be unvisited. No
needy person shall be unassisted. No bewildered
soul shaU go unadvised. No home of mourning
shall be neglected. No act of needed mercy shaU
be omitted. The church shaU be a home. Men
cannot hve by sermons alone, but by every word
which proceeds out of the mouth of God. One of
God's choice words is fellowship, and unless a church
offers fellowship it is doomed. Worship without
fellowship is contrary to nature. The worship in
the New Testament is carried on by brothers. Men
cannot love a church if all it offers is the privilege
of listening to sermons and paying pew rent. It is
the comradeship of coUege hfe which makes men

66 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
love their college. Their devotion to their Alma
Mater springs out of the friendships formed during
their student days. The abstract truths taught
by learned professors will not account for that
undying affection which many a man feels for his
college. His heart is warm because it is bound up
with other hearts. A man's love for his church
depends in large measure upon the relationship
established between himself and his feUow-members.
The friendships formed in church life and work
are among the most sacred and enduring into which
the soul of man can come. Unless a man enters
into the social life of the church, he is practicaUy
not a member of it at all. Listening to a preacher
speak on religious topics every Sunday does not
make one a church member, even though his name
is written on the church roll. Fellowship is of the
essence of church membership, and to cultivate and
enrich this fellowship is the primary task of the
Christian preacher.
A sharp distinction ought to be made between a
church and an audience. It is to be regretted that
we have come to rank churches by the size of their
nominal membership, and to judge preachers by
the number of persons who listen to their sermons.
A superficial man is consequently tempted to work,

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 67
not for a church, but for an audience. An audience,
however, is not worth working for. An audience
is a set of unrelated people drawn together by a
short-lived attraction, an agglomeration of individ
uals finding themselves together for a brief time.
It is a fortuitous concourse of human atoms, scatter
ing as soon as a certain performance is ended. It
is a pile of leaves to be blown away by the wind,
a handful of sand lacking consistency and cohesion,
a number of human filings drawn into position by a
pulpit magnet, and which will drop away as soon as
the magnet is removed. An audience is a crowd,
a church is a family. An audience is a gathering,
a church is a feUowship. An audience is a collection,
a church is an organism. An audience is a heap of
stones, a church is a temple. Preachers are ordained,
not to attract an audience, but to build a church.
Coarse and ambitious and worldly men, if richly
gifted, can draw audiences. Only a disciple of the
Lord can build a church. It is not uncommon for a
supposedly mighty church to wilt hke Jonah's gourd,
as soon as the man in the pulpit vanishes. The struc
ture was of hay and wood and stubble, and it dis
appeared in the fire of God's swift judgment day.
It is because so many churches are audiences,
rather than brotherhoods, that thousands of

68 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
Christians on changing their place of residence
drop out of church connections altogether. Their
old church membership meant nothing to them,
and therefore membership in another church has no
attraction for them. When they joined the church,
it was the minister who welcomed them. The
church took no note of their advent. When death
visited their home, it was the pastor who offered
condolence. The church was not grieved by the
bereavement. When a financial crisis swept the
little fortune away, leaving the world dark, it was
the preacher who spoke a sympathetic word, but the
church cared for none of these things. When the
hour for departure arrived, it was the head official
of the church who said, "Good-by," but the
brotherhood had nothing whatever to say. This is
the tragedy which goes on in hundreds of parishes,
and so long as it continues many preachers must
preach to dwindling congregations and the church
must limp like a giant, not with a wounded heel, but
with a broken leg. A man who has been starved in
one church is not likely to connect himself with
another. When he makes for himself a new home,
he will identify himself with a society which offers
him comradeship and furnishes an atmosphere in
which his soul can live.

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 69
The problem of developing new converts is even
more perplexing than that of retaining the allegiance
of old ones. It is easier to convert men than it is
to educate them. The converts are many, but the
developed workers are few. In a season of spiritual
awakening ten seem to be healed, but when the
preacher goes in search of them, he cries in bewilder
ment, "Where are the nine?" Only a smaU pro
portion of those who start the Christian life ever
reach spiritual maturity. One of the reasons is a
deadly environment. The atmosphere is so cold
that the young convert is fatally chilled. He gasps
for a few months and then expires. There are many
congregations in which church obligations are so
httle known and practised that it is only the ex
ceptional convert who survives the early stages of
Christian discipleship. The atmosphere of the
church has in it no life-giving qualities. The church
is not a brotherhood, and when a new recruit starts
to foUow Jesus, he is not cheered by brotherly
voices or guided by fraternal hands. In the dark
ness of the first days, there is no one to do what
Ananias did for Saul when he laid his warm hand on
the trembling convert's head, saying, "Brother
Saul, receive thy sight." It is often the touch of a
brother's hand which opens the heavens to the

70 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
beginning Christian. In successful church work
the voice of the preacher must be supplemented
by the welcoming hand of a brother. The preacher
is never sufficient when he stands alone. Peter was
mighty on the day of Pentecost, because one hun
dred and twenty — the entire brotherhood — stood
with him. The Bible is not enough to make men
strong. Human hands and hearts are needed.
The revelation which came through holy men of
old must be completed by a revelation coming
through men now living. The human hand has a
power which even the Scriptures do not possess.
There is something in a human heart which com
pletes the power of Almighty God in the work of
saving men. Eloquence is a force, but affection is
a force still more potent. Social intercourse is a
means of grace as truly as are prayer and the sacra
ments, and is of equal rank with these. Warmth
is as essential as light in the growing of souls. The
preacher may furnish hght, but the bulk of the
heat must be supplied by the brotherhood. The
finest and deepest powers of the soul are called into
play only by social contact. Every point of contact
— or, as Paul puts it, "every joint" — is a channel
of divine grace. It is at the points where Christian
lives touch that there springs up the life by which

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 7 1
the church is nourished and made capable for her
work. God's grace flows through social bonds. We
are held in our place by personal attachments. We
save one another. This is why Paul is always ex
horting his converts to subject themselves one to
another. He is not satisfied at times with his
figure of a temple. He supplements it with his
figure of the body. Church members are even
closer together than the stones of a temple
waU. They are knit together like the parts of an
organism. Each organ exists for the hfe and pros
perity of the whole. Each is needed by aU. The
whole is dependent on each. The preacher is im
potent without the assistance of the brotherhood.
His words wiU never catch fire unless the brother
hood creates the atmosphere in which gospel truths
blaze. He cannot, unassisted, hold his converts.
It is impossible for him, single-handed, to keep his
spiritual children from faUing. His success in con
serving the fruits of his labors wUl be measured by
his abUity to build and maintain a compact and
conquering brotherhood. Many a sermon must be
preached on the duties which Christians owe to one
another. Many an hour must be devoted to the
difficult and delicate work of linking the lives of the
new converts into the lives of those who have

72 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
travelled farther along the perUous and glorious
way. Building the brotherhood, this is our work, and
work more taxing and baffling God has never given
to mortals. It brought the Son of God to the cross,
and every man who attempts the same work must
drink of a hke cup and be baptized with a similar
baptism. Not untU a minister strives to build a
brotherhood does he realize how unsocial human
nature is, how narrow and how cold. Not till
then does he discover what havoc sin has wrought,
and what low and crude conceptions of the obliga
tions of Christian discipleship lodge in many a
Christian heart. It is only then that human nature
begins to reveal its deeper uglinesses and that
many interior httlenesses and meannesses come
trooping into the Ught. Even the Lord himself
could not get twelve men to sit together at a table
on the last night of his hfe on earth without an
exhibition of petty irritation and wounded vanity
which cast a deeper shadow over his already break
ing heart. It is comparatively easy for most
Christians to listen to sermons. This lays shght
strain on Christian character. It is easy for many
Christians to give money. Some of them wUl give
it generously. It is not difficult to persuade certain

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 73
of the elect to engage in Christian work. Work
among the submerged has in many places become
even fashionable. But for church members to be
brotherly with one another, this is indeed difficult,
in many quarters apparently impossible. Men
teach boys in mission schools who cannot be in
duced to show an interest in their younger brethren
in their own church. Women work for women in a
settlement or mission who wiU not recognize women
of a different social station in their own church
famUy. Men make contributions for carrying the
gospel into foreign lands who act like heathen in
their home church. To the amazement of the young
preacher, social estrangements flourish inside the
company of the sanctified. Class antagonisms do
not soften under the most fervent preaching of the
gospel. Racial lines remain straight and fixed, and
aU the rivalries and enmities, vanities and prejudices,
of which the world is full, grow rank inside the gar
den of the Lord. Possibly it is for this reason that
certain preachers devote so much attention to
sinners outside their congregations. A man finds
reUef in striking at a distant octopus who has been
discomfited by some unregenerate pigmy within
his reach. The sinners inside his parish are so
hopeless that in sheer desperation the defeated

74 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
preacher gives his attention to the great outside
world, whose tragedies it is easy to portray, whose
colossal culprits it is harmless to castigate, and
concerning whose reconstruction it is refreshing to
give advice.
But the servant of the Master must not foUow
the things which are easy. Let him take hold of the
things which are hard. Let him lay both hands on
his church. He may find that his church is after
all only an audience, and that its members need
to be fused into a body which the Lord can use.
It may be that the older people are not interested
in the younger people and that they eye each other
across a chasm which widens and deepens with the
years. Possibly employers have steadfastly held
aloof from wage-earners, and the rich men have
never shown friendliness for the men who are poor.
It may be that the new members have been aUowed
to continue strangers, and that older members have
sat for years, within six feet of each other without
even so much as a look of mutual recognition.
Possibly there are men who quarreUed ten years ago,
and who have doggedly resisted every suggestion of
reconciliation. They do not speak either in the
church or on the street, and this ill-will festering in
their hearts poisons the atmosphere of the whole

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 75
church. Here is a problem more urgent for the
minister than any of the disputes between labor
and capital. It may be that members of the church
are estranged from one another by differences in
doctrinal opinion. An orthodox brother thinks
that his orthodoxy gives him a right to malign those
who differ, from him, and in defending the truth
he tramples the new commandment under his feet.
To train Christian men to love one another who
differ from one another theologically, is a task
more formidable than converting the toughest
of the publicans and the trickiest of the sinners.
But Jesus is exphcit on this point. Worship must
wait on reconciliation. Get right with your brother,
says the Lord of love, before you set up your altar.
It may be that some Pharaoh has grown up in the
midst of the congregation who lords it over both the
minister and the saints. He has made trouble for
years, and, unless suppressed, he will make trouble
for years to come. Such a man must be dealt with.
His sin is as destructive to the hfe of the church as
habitual drunkenness or flagrant lust. Unbrotherly
conduct in a church member always makes him a fit
subject for church discipline, and the minister is not
doing his duty who allows the church to be torn and
harassed by an ungodly despot who has set up his

76 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
throne in the parish. Nothing worth whUe could
go on in the upper chamber until Judas was got rid
of, and so in many a church the communion should
not be celebrated again until the confirmed mischief-
maker has been cast out. Patience and mercy are
always in order, but there are certain transgressors
who are apparently incorrigible, and their way
ought to be made hard.
These are the arduous and cardinal things which
a minister has to do. It is easy to denounce sins in
general and still easier to unfold beautiful ideas, but
to induce different classes of church members to
live and work together as Christians — this is the
most stupendous and heart-breaking labor to which
a minister of the Gospel can set himself. The
church of Christ if not a brotherhood is a faUure.
To make it a brotherhood, this is the hope and
despair of the minister, this is his cross and his
crown. To build aU types of humanity into this
brotherhood is an aim never to be lost sight of.
Churches organized along social lines are breeders
of mischief. A church made up of people of but
one social grade is a church doomed to a blasted
spiritual experience. A church of the rich is not
a church after the ideal of Jesus, neither is a church
of the poor. It is only when the rich and the poor

BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD 77
sit down together that they come to believe that
the Lord is the maker of them all. A church
exists for the express purpose of knitting together
the hves of those whom the forces of the world
have driven asunder. The rich and the poor are
to come together at the feet of him who, once rich,
for man's sake became poor. The laborer and the
capitahst are to join hands in front of the cross.
The cultivated man and the man without schooling
are to learn each other's worth in Christian service.
The foreigners are to be no more aliens, but full
members of the famUy of God. Brotherhood is
what the world is clamoring for, and it is an example
of brotherhood which the Christian church must
give. The church is the laboratory in which ex
periments in brotherhness are to be conducted first
and farthest. The church is the factory in which
men are to be converted into brothers. A man
with a brotherly heart is a form of power which the
industrial and commercial worlds are waiting for.
That church is doing humanity the largest service
which develops within itself the highest potencies
of love.
Let preachers, then, create in their churches by
their preaching the spirit of love, and the churches
wUl pass it on. The world wnl never hsten to ser-

78 BUILDING THE BROTHERHOOD
mons on sympathy and good-wiU until these exist in
heavenly abundance inside the church. What is
the use of preachers trying to give the world a theory
of something which the church itself does not prac
tise ? No man can preach love effectively over the
body of a loveless church. Our immediate task
is not to Christianize the world, but to Christianize
the church. The church progressively Christianized
wUl gradually Christianize society. God cuts our
piece of work small in order that we may do it weU.
The task, though hmited, is dynamic and far-
reaching. The church, if leaven, wiU leaven the
whole lump. Our first business is not with the
lump, but with the leaven. He is the greatest
preacher who so frames and utters the thoughts
of God as to bind together the largest number of
Christian hearts in closest feUowship for Christlike
service.

LECTURE III
BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
Having viewed the style and proportions of the
edifice, let us consider the living stones which are to
go into it. After looking at the whole, it is time to
study the parts. The fault of the old individualism
was that it began with the individual and ended
with him. It worked upon the single man, with no
clear social end in view. Christian individuaUsm
begins with a social vision. It sees that the individ
ual exists in and for society, and that personaUty
feeds and completes itself only in the group. The
living stones have no abiding hfe, unless built into
the waUs of a growing temple. The preacher must
be an individualist, but he must see in his mind's
eye the completed building, before he begins to
shape the stones out of which the edifice is to be
constructed. Because of its lack of the social vision, individual
ism is to-day discredited, and the danger is that in
casting aside an individualism which is defective,
we may throw away the individualism which is
Christian. Aggregated life has become so important
g 81

82 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
in our eyes, that the temptation is to lose interest in
the human unit. The social vision has for a season
shaken our faith in the individualistic method.
A thousand voices remind us that the world is the
subject of redemption, that society as a whole must
be claimed for Christ, that the church is not a rescue
ship, picking up isolated individuals tossed on the
angry bUlows, but a mighty servant of the Lord
gathering up the total interests and institutions of
the entire race of men. Stirred by these imperial
phrases, not a few have grown distrustful of aU
traditional methods, and are thinking of men ex
clusively in masses. Communities and classes
and races are alone large enough to catch and hold
attention. It is not any one rich man or any one
poor man, but rather the rich and the poor, upon
whom the gaze of the world is fastened. It is
capital and labor, rather than any one capitaUst
or any one laborer, which presents a problem that
appeals to the modern mind. Many leaders and
teachers have a lively concern for the races, white,
black, yeUow, and brown, who care httle for the
individual representatives of those races. It is
not uncommon to lose sight of men altogether and fix
the eyes on the economic system, the industrial
and social order. Rescuing individuals here and

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 83
there seems a puttering and paltry occupation, and
to alter the structure of society, the framework
of the world, is counted the only business worthy
the efforts of a full-statured, far-visioned man.
Preaching in many pulpits has grown increasingly
impersonal. Sermons have become more and more
discussions of social questions. To urge upon the
individuals, in the congregation an immediate
surrender to Christ as Lord, seems to certain
preachers somewhat irrelevant, and to others quite
iU-mannered. It is a problem-loving age, as the
magazines and plays and novels testify, and it is
hardly to be wondered at that the pulpit should
be swept along into this roaring torrent. The sub
jects uppermost in current literature climb into the
pulpit, and before the preacher is aware of it he has
become a professor of economics, a lecturer on soci
ology, a writer of pulpit editorials, a social reformer,
a clerical phUanthropist, an instructor in the litera
ture of modern movements, or a practitioner of the
art of mental healing. His favorite subjects are
Trades-unionism, Socialism, Immigration, Child
Labor, Juvenile Courts, Democracy, Industrialism,
Sanitation, Labor and Capital, Trusts and Syndi
cates, Factory Legislation, Civic Reform, Over
crowding, Sewerage, Sweatshops, Conservation of

84 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
National Resources, Woman Suffrage, Christian
Science, and Old Age Pensions. Men all around
him are discussing these matters, and the preacher
feels that he also must make his contribution.
The individual counts less and less, the world
looms more and more. The preacher is interested
in man, but not in men, in humanity, but not in
the particular persons into whose faces he looks
on the Lord's day.
The scientific doctrine of environment has also
been operative in shaping the pattern of pulpit
teaching. One of the most potent factors in
moulding a man's life is undoubtedly his surround
ings, and science has emphasized and popularized
this fact. The preacher in his parish finds many
evidences that environment is mighty, and this dis
covery when duly pondered is sure to modify and
may revolutionize his whole outlook on life. He
strives to elevate a man in the slums, and faUs.
He makes up his mind that to save a man in a
swamp is impossible. The swamp itself must first
be drained. Disease cannot be kept from the home
when the atmosphere for a mUe around is charged
with poison germs. The first thing to do is to
cleanse the air. He is tempted to forsake the in
dividual altogether, feeling that the first work

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 85
must be done upon the city as a whole. He begins
to doubt the doctrine of personal responsibUity,
and to lay the blame for vicious lives upon society.
The social order becomes to him the transgressor;
the economic system, the mother of criminals.
Until these have been changed, pass condemna
tion, he says, on no man. You cannot redeem
the individual until you change the structure of the
world. This is the style of reasoning by which
men of tender hearts and impatient tempers are
sometimes carried into one of the many camps
of Socialism. Socialism fascinates because it offers
to do things on a vast scale, and in the teUing of its
story uses only words which are passionate and
vivid. Why should a man squander his energy
in puUing an occasional mortal out of his misery,
when, by uniting with other men, he can help to
throw the whole framework of civilization in the
twinkling of an eye on the junk-heap ? It is not
uncommon for preachers whose social conscience is
sensitive to convert their sermons into chambers of
horrors. Sunday gives them an opportunity to
uncover the world's ulcers and running sores.
Their sense of the world's need and the impetuosity
of their temper render them impatient with the old
method of faithful dealing with the individual man.

86 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
One man in their sight counts for nothing. What is
he ? A straw blown by the gale, a fly on the rim
of one of the wheels of the world's chariot, a grain of
sand on an iUimitable shore, a bubble on the crest
of an immeasurable billow, a vapor that appears for
a little time and then vanishes away. The rehgious
leader who is wise — so these men think — will
direct his sermons to the community; his effort will
be to reconstruct the order of the world.
It is unfortunate that this argument should be so
plausible as to seduce many sympathe^c ard con
scientious minds, for it is certainly faUc.acious and
when acted on leads to an impoverishment, of pulpit
power. Many a man is preachEi*g*to -l^.windling
congregation because his sermons ha^re lost me
personal note. He chUls by his vague generalities,
or enrages by his wholesale denunciations. A con
gregation is to be pitied if it has in the pulpit a cleri
cal Hamlet whose every second sermon is a lamen
tation that the time is out of joint, leaving his
people to infer that he was born to set it right.
Such a man would be saved from his aberrations
by looking steadily at the individuals immediately
before him. The preacher who allows his eye to
wander long from the individual man is destined to
lose power as a preacher. That man preaches

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 87
most searchingly, most persuasively, and most ef
fectively who knows best and loves most the
individual. This is not an age in which the preacher can afford
to lose out of his work the personal touch. Many
forces are conspiring to blur the edges of individual
ity and melt men down into a common mass. The
immediate effect of the teaching of modern science
is to create a loneUness in the human heart. Her
revelation of the vastness of the universe beats man
down into a feeling of insignificance, and brings to
the lips with a fresh poignancy the question of the
Hebrew poet, "What is man that thou art mindful
of him ? " Men in our day need to be encouraged
to think of themselves as highly as they ought to
think. They are waiting for some prophet of the
Lord to say to them, one by one, "Son of man,
stand upon thy feet."
It is an age of migrations, and many hearts are
forlorn. Foreigners are coming to us by the mill
ions, and our fellow-countrymen shift their residence
with a frequency never known before in any
land. Electricity and steam have converted us into
a race of nomads. In this ceaseless movement of
population there are gigantic perils. Breaking
up the home often breaks up the foundations of

88 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
morality. When men move in masses, the indi
vidual drops out of sight. Vast populations are
pouring into the city to be swaUowed up in the vor
tex of its boiling Ufe. The man who stands out
distinct in a viUage becomes invisible in a city. In
the village his name is honored. He can speak to
the richest banker, the leading merchant, even to the
postmaster. But in the city he is quite ignored.
His very existence is unknown. If he were in the
penitentiary he would wear a number, but the city
does not take the trouble even to give him a
numbered tag. He could not escape from a prison
without exciting commotion. He can drop out of
city Ufe without an eye winking. Cities are colossal
destroyers of individuality. They are steam roUers,
crushing men down into a common smoothness and
flatness. Here is the preacher's opportunity.
Industrial forces are working ceaselessly to rob
the individual of distinction. Machinery crowds
men into factories and miUs, where they are lumped
together as so many "hands," pieces of an intricate
mechanism turning out a commercial product.
They are not quite animals, and not altogether fuU-
grown men. Here is the preacher's opportunity.
Commercial forces are working to obhterate the
individual. The small proprietor is disappearing.

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 89
Little business houses are swaUowed up, and the
man who once had his name painted above the door
reappears with diminished stature as a manager of a
section in a great department store, behind whose
counters thousands of human creatures carry on a
business for men whom most of them have never
seen, and to whom they one and aU are personally
unknown. Business men are rolling themselves
into corporations, syndicates, and trusts, each man
disappearing deeper and deeper into the ever
increasing bulk of the corporate body. It is a
maxim now that corporations have no souls, so com
pletely has the soul of the individual incorporator
vanished from human sight. Here is the preacher's
opportunity. Even organized philanthropy has a tendency to
lose the individual. Philanthropists interest them
selves sometimes in sociological conditions simply
as scientific phenomena. They study poverty,
drunkenness, tuberculosis, as interesting social
products. They pubhsh volumes of statistics,
giving a bird's-eye view of the dimensions of the
vast ocean of want and woe, while manifesting no
interest in any one broken family or any individual
mangled Ufe. Many good men are interested
nowadays in the ocean, who have no disposition to

90 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
look at the drops as they sUp silently into the aU-
engulfing sea. Here is the preacher's opportunity.
It is the lack of this personal touch which is
multiplying our problems and deepening the black
ness of the human tragedy. One of the alarming
facts of our world is the widespread absence of the
sense of personal responsibUity. In the labor
world outrages are often perpetrated which it is
impossible to trace to the door of any ascertainable
malefactor. Men joined in a union sometimes do
things which no one of them would think of doing
if standing alone. In the business world dishonor
able and illegal operations are often carried on for
which no one, apparently, is responsible. Men
merged in corporations seem to become capable of
performing deeds to which no one of them if left to
himself would ever stoop. The sense of personal
accountabiUty decays when the distinctness of the
individual fades. To keep the Unes of individuality
vivid and sharp, this is the work of the preacher.
"Where art thou?" and "Where is thy brother?"
these are the first questions which a rehgious teacher
is bound to ask, and he must ask them with such an
accent that every man within reach shaU know
that they are addressed to him. Personal responsi
bility both to God and to men is a theme for aU

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 9 1
times and places. If men lose sight of their own
worth, they are sure to hve unworthily. If they
feel they are ciphers, they wiU not much concern
themselves about their conduct. The moral lapses
so common among immigrants in a new country are
due largely to the decay of the sense of personal
importance. In the old home they had a place
which was recognized and a social significance widely
acknowledged, but in the new land they are only
insignificant drops in the human ocean, and what
does it matter whether they cast back the sunlight
from the crest of the billow or sink into the black
ooze of the ocean bed? The demoralization of
morals wrought by great cities is due' to the crum
bling of the sense of individual accountability.
Thousands of men and women in all the world's
cities have lost their grip upon the high things of
life, because no one but God sees them. There is
no one on earth who cares for their souls. Men are
lost to the church as soon as they are submerged
in the crowd. This is the preacher's opportunity.
When other men are thinking and talking about
classes and masses and races, it is more than ever
incumbent on the ambassador of Christ to keep his
eye on the individual man.
In fact the preacher is in danger of losing himself.

92 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
All the brooks have swollen into rivers, and all the
rivers have widened into lakes and oceans. There
is a sea of printed matter in which ministers are
easily engulfed, a flood of administrative work by
which they are frequently swamped, an ocean of
questions and problems beneath whose troubled
waters their pulpit usefulness oftentimes goes down.
It is not hard for a minister to lose himself among
ambitious speculations and Utopian undertakings.
Such words as "society," "humanity," "civiliza
tion," are enticing words to conjure with, and never
has the temptation been greater than now to deal
in spacious platitudes, unbounded generalizations,
sweeping denunciations, and vaulting exhortations
to nebulous duties whose contours are deeply
buried in the mists. There are preachers who seem
to be hke Atlas, conscious that they are holding up
the world. Unlike Atlas, however, their faces wear
an anxious and despondent look. It would be better
for them, and also for the cause of Christ, if they
would roll the world from their shoulders upon the
heart of God, and be content to carry simply the full
weight of the responsibility for the spiritual develop
ment of the individual souls who make up their
congregations. The preacher needs the individual as truly as the

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 93
individual needs the preacher. Each human heart
is a page in the great book of hfe which the preacher
must learn to read. What can a minister know of
death untU he shuts himself up in a room with a man
who is dying? How can he know anxiety at its
highest until he stands by the bedside of the httle
invaUd, and feels the heartbeats of a mother agoniz
ing over the faihng breath of her child ? What can
he know of poverty until he enters the home of a
poor widow who is terrorized by the wolf at her
door ? Remorse wiU be something real to him after
he has witnessed the agony of a conscience-tor
mented man. He wiU preach better on the peace
that passes understanding after he has looked upon
a face in the hour of its spiritual transfiguration.
It is in the experience of the individual soul that the
preacher learns what this world is. The pathos of
hfe comes out in the sob of some one human spirit.
Human nature cannot be understood either in books
or in crowds. It is only when one heart is pressed
close against another heart, that heart secrets are
communicated. The preacher remains cold, and
his sermons are abstractions, until he folds his life
down round the hves of individual men. It is for
this reason that pastoral work is essential to the
highest preaching. Preachers who shirk pastoral

94 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
duty are always losers. They lose much themselves,
and their churches lose stiU more. If orators, they
may attract large audiences, but they do not do the
work which is deepest and which lasts the longest.
It is because preachers do not come close enough
to individuals that they sometimes form an unhu-
man style of speaking. To speak naturaUy ought
to be the ambition of every preacher. He cannot
afford to subtract from the force of his message
by tones which repel or by intonations which offend.
He ought to speak in the pulpit as a gentleman
speaks when addressing his friends on matters of
importance. If he uses tones never heard in the
home, and cadences which would bring a laugh if
used in any circle of society, he hurts the chances of
his truth. The Christian pulpit has been a hotbed
for the growth of aU sorts of curious and unearthly
tones. Twangs of various twists, singsongs of
divers melodies, howls of different degrees of fury,
and roars of many types of hideousness have tar
nished the fame of the pulpit and caused the ungodly
to blaspheme. The cause of these vocal monstrosi
ties and outrages is that the preacher forgets he is
talking to individual men. He thinks he is talking
to the world, and that is why he shouts. He has
the idea that he is preaching to the town, and con-

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 95
sequently he roars. He imagines he is addressing
a crowd, and his vocal mannerisms are caused by
this foohsh imagination. He gets his eye off the
individual and his blunder reports itself at once in
his elocution. The moment he comes out of the
pulpit he speaks naturaUy. The most incorrigible
pulpit howler or whiner speaks like a man as soon
as he reaches the foot of the pulpit stairs. He is
cured by remembering that he is talking to indi
viduals. Let him remember this in the pulpit, and
many of his elocutionary sins wiU fold their tents
like the Arabs. Preachers do not preach to society
or humanity or civilization. They preach to men
like themselves. When they come face to face
with the individual heart their style becomes natu
ral, with every tone genuine and every inflection
true. This is the cure also for diseases of rhetoric.
There are stUts rhetorical as well as stilts elocu
tionary. A preacher who has imagination and a
facile command of words is sure to go on rhetorical
stilts unless he keeps his eye on the individual.
The individual is the preacher's hfe-preserver.
He is saved by him from unnaturalness. The natu
ral style is the clear style. The first duty of a
preacher is to make himself easily understood.
He must keep in contact with his hearers all along

96 BUILDING THE INDP7IDUAL
the sermonic way. To do this he must stand with
both feet on the earth. Most laymen cannot fly.
If the preacher soars into the clouds, he goes alone.
The clouds are a sorry place for a preacher. The
soaring preachers are not* the preachers whom
grown men like to listen to. JuvenUes of aU ages
sit awestruck, but the judicious grieve. The Mas
ter stood ever on the ground. His greatest ser
mons were earnest conversations. He always spoke
directly to the individual. He says, "FoUow me."
It is fideUty to the individual which insures a
preacher's perennial freshness. Many preachers
become after a time intolerable, because of their
monotony. They lack variety both in the character
of their subjects and in the manner of their treat
ment. AU their sermons seem to be prepared for an
imaginary being whose age and sex and spiritual
development never change. Their congregation is
to them simply a huge chunk of humanity, and to
this living chunk they address their sermons. But
a preacher who wishes to escape monotony must
mentally differentiate his congregation into groups,
and then disintegrate these groups into individuals.
Each group must receive its meat in due season.
When Paul wrote to Titus in regard to his work
among the people in Crete, he gave him an outhne

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 97
of the kind of teaching needed by the older men,
another outline was suggested for the young men,
stiU another for the aged women, another for the
young women, and a different outUne still for the
servants. The temptations of age are not the temp
tations of youth, nor are the problems of men the
problems of women. Masters need the emphasis at
one point, servants at another. Paul recognizes
these distinctions and would have each class in
structed according to its capacities and needs. One
cannot preach to everybody in general. There
must be constant and keen-eyed discrimination.
Truth must be cut into pieces according to the
nature of those for whom it is intended. No one
group in the congregation should be allowed to go
hungry. Not one soul should be permitted to fall
to the ground without the preacher's notice.
It is the individual who has much to do with
keeping the preacher a Christian behever. The
preacher who works for the reconstruction of indi
vidual men has no difficulty in believing in the
reahty and power of sin, nor is he likely to lose his
faith in Christ as Saviour. It is when one grapples
hand to hand with a man in the bondage of sin,
that he realizes the hmitations of legislation and the
impotency of reformatory panaceas . He faces for the

98 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
first time the mystery of iniquity, and is not ashamed
of the gospel, for he possesses demonstrative evidence
that it is the power of God unto salvation to every
one who believes. Men who nurse vague ambi
tions to hft the whole world frequently come to
have foggy notions of the person of Christ. Losing
one's grip on the incalculable value of a single soul
seems to loosen one's grasp of the need of a personal
Saviour. With the fading of the majesty of the
individual the glory of the Divine PersonaUty
becomes dim. When the root trouble of the world
is believed to be, not rebellion against God, but a
faulty economic machinery, it is not easy to main
tain a passionate devotion to him who was caUed
Jesus, because he was to save his people from their
sins. There are well-intentioned men who have
much to say about the Christian consciousness,
Christian principles, and Christian influences, who
have allowed the personal Christ to faU into the
background of their thinking. When men aim to
reform society in general they are apt to trust to
social forces and humanitarian influences, but when
they strive to redeem one man only, they are com-
peUed to cast themselves on the omnipotent God in
Christ. Work for the individual is essential not only for

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 99
the maintenance of faith, but for keeping bright the
flame of hope. It is by finding one man that the
preacher saves himself from despair. A crowd is al
ways disconcerting, sometimes appalUng. We are
like Phihp facing the five thousand whom he saw
no way of feeding. It is only when we find in our
congregation some one person — it may be only a
lad — whose resources we can place in the hand of
Christ, that hght faUs on the situation and the heart
dares to entertain high expectations. To work for
the bettering of the world as a whole is at the end
of the day depressing. Changes are slow, steps of
progress are infinitesimaUy smaU, the preacher is
sure to die with the world apparently Uttle better
than it was in his boyhood. Unbehevers throw
at him the taunting question, "Where is the fulfil
ment of the promise of his coming ? " But the
man who brings the gospel to individual hearts has
always at hand a book of evidence more convincing
than any written by the wise men of the schools.
It is the faces of redeemed men in the pews that keep
the preacher's heart singing through the disiUu-
sionments and discomfitures of a lifelong campaign.
The transfiguration of a single Ufe proves that
Jesus is a living and a present power, and makes it
easy to beheve that every knee will some day bow

IOO BUILDING THE INDTVDDUAL
to him. The apostles faced with undaunted hearts
angry and murderous Jerusalem because they could
point to one jubilant man, and say, "By faith in His
name hath his name made this man strong, whom ye
behold and know." The preaching of Jesus
was invincible, so long as one man kept crying,
"Whereas I was bhnd, now I see." Preachers can
work with patience and die in hope, if only they can
see in the faces of men converted by their preaching
the hght of the glory of the knowledge of the blessed
God. The individual is also the nourisher of love. One
can love mankind in general, but it is a faint and
feeble love, not the love that bursts into flame in
sentences that burn their way into human hearts.
It is when one heart touches another heart, that a
fire is kindled which makes the whole church warm.
There may be a growing interest in schemes and
movements, with a progressive ossification of the
heart. Love is the one thing essential for the man
who would preach the gospel, and love is fed and
cleansed and glorified by repeated contacts with
individual hearts and lives.
Let the preacher, then, seek and find the individ
ual. The glory of the temple is determined by the
character of the material which is worked into it.

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL IOI
The stones must be hewn, shaped, and pohshed,
and laid each one in its place with care. It is
impossible to build a beautiful church out of un
lovely material, to construct a glorious brother
hood out of unbrotherly Christians. Everything
depends upon the character of the individual
behever. The first thing to do is to separate him
from his fellows and shut him in with God. Right
relations must be established between him and
the Eternal. The soul must feel its sohtary relation
to the Heavenly Father in order to reahze to the
fuU its obhgations to the community. It is a high
sense of individual responsibUity to the Almighty,
which is the basis of an enduring and fruitful altru
ism. Preaching must be clear at this point. The
axe must be laid at the root of the tree. A man
must be set right in his impulses and motives. He
must be born again. It is easy to talk entertainingly
of the sins of society and the prospects of humanity,
but the critical business of the preacher is to put
truth into the inward parts of the individual man.
The man, having started in the Christian hfe,
must be trained to look upon himself as a builder.
He is the fashioner of the temple of his soul, and the
work of building must be carried onward through
all the years. As Paul says, he is to pass from glory

102 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
to glory, each succeeding character being more
splendid than the character which went before it.
As Peter says, he is to work diligently, " in faith sup
plying virtue, in virtue knowledge, in knowledge
temperance, in temperance patience, in patience
godhness, in godliness love of the brethren, and in
love of the brethren love." Many church members
do not grow in grace or in the knowledge of Clirist
because their minister does not instruct them.
The spiritual hfe has its beginning, successive stages,
processes, crises, temptations, perils, diseases,
lapses, laws of growth; and in all these matters the
preacher ought to be an expert. Many congregations
wander about hke sheep not having a shepherd,
even though there is a man in the pulpit preaching
sermons. He is interested in general truths and in
the world as a whole, but does not understand the
laws of spiritual development nor the kind of in
struction by which the needs of the unfolding soul
are satisfied.
Every follower of Jesus is to be made a positive
force for righteousness in the church and community.
To accomphsh this, preaching must be constructive.
Men must be told what they are to do, rather than
what they are not to do. It is by learning to do weU
that they will cease to do evU. If they are trained

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 103
to walk in the spirit, they wiU not fulfil the lusts of
the flesh. Many pubhcations rail constantly at evil-
doing, and not a few ministers have caught this
denunciatory spirit. But evil is most certainly
overwhelmed, not by fixing the eyes on the things
that are bad, but by turning the heart to the
things that are good. If there be any virtue or any
praise, these are the things worth expounding.
Let the preacher deny himself the luxury of hurhng
thunderbolts, and give himself to the quiet work of
building men in weU-doing. It is better to work
for the growth of one virtuous person, as Milton
long ago pointed out, than to toU for the restraint of
ten vicious persons. It is wiser to train one man to
take an interest in things which are worth while,
than to storm mangificently against practices and
fashions which one would hke to see abolished.
This is to be remembered when you are tempted
to preach a course of twenty sermons against present-
day evUs or popular amusements.
Christians are to be encouraged to develop the
gift that is in them. Every soul is unique. For
this reason the hberty of every individual is inexpres
sibly sacred. The rights of personality are never
to be trespassed upon by the preacher. He must
not expect all Christians to think alike, feel alike,

104 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
work ahke. He must not demand that they aU
shall be converted ahke, pass through similar
emotional experiences, be equaUy confident of the
truthfulness of every phrase in the Christian creed.
It is not necessary that a church member shaU think
and feel and work like the preacher or hke the oldest
and saintliest of the church officials. The church
must be kept spacious. There must be room enough
in it for aU temperaments and constitutions, aU
grades of development, and aU stages of culture.
There must be hberty for many schools of thought
and many types of service. To crush aU Christians
into a common mould is a sin against the Christ
who wiUs that aU men shaU be free in him. The
preacher who considers those laymen who differ
from him as guilty of the sin against the Holy Spirit,
which hath no forgiveness either in this world or in
the world which is to come, is a man too narrow to
be intrusted with the guidance of men's spiritual
education. A preacher should rejoice if he preaches
to men and women who think for themselves, and
who have character sufficient to hold opinions differ
ent from his own. He should encourage every man
to be himself, shining with his own peculiar glory.
He should endeavor to throw round every member
of his church the influences which wUl call into

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL I05
blossom the potential strengths and beauties which
flow native in the blood. It is in the variety of
moral graces, and in the diversity of spiritual attain
ments, that the church finds its richest life and
becomes able to perform its widest service. Build
ers use materials of many shapes and textures in the
construction of a cathedral.
Each member of the church is to be trained in the
graces and obligations of brotherliness. He must
be set at once in the midst of the brotherhood. You
cannot put a man on a glass tripod and teach him
brotherliness out of a book. He must learn brother-
Uness by being brotherly. He can be brotherly only
when among brethren. To place each new convert
in a circle of brothers, and to keep him there, is the
work of the master preacher. A brotherhood can
not be built of men who are unbrotherly. One
unbrotherly man in the circle of brothers works
infinite confusion and mischief. Brotherliness is
not a gift, but an attainment. It must be worked
for through laborious years. It is not enough to
have a brotherly intention, but the spirit must be
disciplined and developed and trained. The obli
gations and duties of brotherliness must be learned
and practised. The apostle who loved to think
of the church as a temple also loved to think of each

106 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
soul as a temple. The human personaUty is a
shekinah. Every man is of value beyond computa
tion. To buUd him foursquare in love is the work
of the preacher. You are not a buUder unless
you build. Unless you build men you are a theori-
zer, a pedant, a declaimer. A doctor's business is
not to know books, but to cure people. Your su
preme business is not to build sermons, but to buUd
characters. The preacher who does not count it a
glorious privilege to build into the temple of God one
particular pillar by whose splendid proportions and
exquisite finish the glory of the entire temple shaU
be enhanced, is not in harmony with the heart of
him who says, "Him that overcometh wiU I make
a piUar in the temple of my God, and he shaU go no
more out ; and I wiU write upon him the name of
my God, and the name of the city of my God."
Peculiar attention to each and every particular
part, this is the way of builders. A builder is a
collectivist in his vision and an individualist in his
method. Stone-masons to-day foUow the fashion
of the early Greeks in dressing one stone at a time.
No matter what the size of the building, each stone
receives definite and protracted attention. Our
bricklayers follow the custom of the ancient Egyp
tians, and lay one brick at a time. No matter

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL I07
how many miUions of bricks are to be laid, each
brick is handled separately, for although the world
is rich in inventions, no time-saving apparatus has
thus far been devised to put out of use the traditional
practice. The carpenter drives one naU at a time.
He persists in this, no matter how large the contract
or how pressed he is for time. The ingenuity of
man has not created a device to supersede the
time-honored procedure of driving nails one nail at a
time. Surrounded by the miracle-working machin
ery of a new age, the builder cUngs doggedly to a
policy which is old. Go to the builder, young
preacher, consider his ways, and be wise.
It is the social aim of the builder which compels
him to be an individualist in his method. A col-
lectivist in vision, he is bound to be an individualist
in practice. A building is an aggregate thing, and
becomes possible only by a careful shaping of its
constituent parts. It is the building as a whole
which dictates to the builder what he is to do with
each particular piece. Every part must be moulded
with regard to every other part, for the parts must
fit together in order to form the symmetrical whole.
The nobler the edifice the more abundant the labor
which is expended upon the individual stones.
When a Parthenon is to be built, there is not a block

108 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
of marble, however small, upon which genius wiU
not do its perfect work.
The preacher is a builder, and like aU builders
he must see things in the large, and he must have an
eye also for things which are smaU. He must gaze
often at the finished temple, the glowing ideal let
down from heaven, and he must study the possibili
ties of each and every living stone whose contribu
tion of strength and beauty is to augment the splen
dor of the completed whole. The world is indeed
the subject of redemption, but the world is to be re
deemed one man at a time. Men cannot be made
Christians in masses. That was the rock over
which the Christian church first stumbled. It was
in the days of Constantine that men first came into
the church in crowds, and with the coming of the
crowds began the early stages of a long eclipse. The
cause of Christ has been indefinitely retarded be
cause the church, eager to make haste, received men
into her fold by tribes and baptized them by battal
ions. It is only when the church is willing to deal
with one man at a time that the thrones of the king
dom of Satan are shaken, and that with the tread
of a conquerer she strides toward the goal. Her
vision must ever be social, but her method cannot be
other than individuahstic. It is her work to trans-

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 109
form society; but society is made of individuals, and
the character of the individuals fixes the character of
society. It is her mission to elevate pubhc opinion;
but pubUc opinion is simply the opinion of indi
viduals, and the ruling opinion of a community is
determined by the character of its citizens. En
vironment is a mighty factor in the moulding of hfe,
but environment is after aU made up of souls.
Material surroundings are simply the creation of
souls. In order to change the environment there
must be a transformation of souls, and souls are
re-created one at a time. The supreme work of the
preacher is the changing of souls. If he turns aside
to anything else, the service which humanity most
needs is left unperformed. If the preacher is eager
to alter the structure of the world, let him devote
himself passionately to the work of bringing men
one at a time to God in Christ.
This was the way of Peter. He began the work of
social betterment by taking by the hand one of the
many lame men in Jerusalem. The hand of one
strong man clasping the hand of one man who could
not walk is the frontispiece of the huge volume of
church history. The beautiful deed at the beauti
ful gate teaches the lesson of Christian individual
ism. When Peter opened the door for the incoming

IIO BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
of the Gentile world, he opened it for one man —
Cornehus. Paganism in the mass did not present
itself as an applicant for baptism. Only individuals
were received to whom had been granted the gift of
the Holy Spirit.
This was Paul's way. It was not aU Europe
which appealed to him in his dreams, but one sohtary
and pleading supphant. When he reached Philippi,
it was not to the city that he announced the good
tidings, but to a few humble women who had
not lost their faith in prayer. Paul found his way
into the heart of a new continent through the
heart of one woman — Lydia. His mission was to
admonish every man, to teach every man, that he
might present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
It was worth while to pray and labor for one poor
runaway slave — Onesimus. Breaking the bondage
of one miserable demented girl was a triumph
never to be forgotten. The particularizing genius
of Paul reveals itself in all his letters. He had an
extraordinary eye for the individual. It was the
names of the men and women whom he personaUy
knew which made much of the music of his prayers,
and it was the memory of the particular persons
with whom he had labored and suffered and
triumphed that braced his heart in hours of loneli-

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL III
ness and peril, and opened up springs of gratitude
and affection which flowed unceasingly. The man
stands revealed in sentences such as these : " Salute
Prisca and Aquila my feUow-workers in Christ
Jesus ;" "Salute Epaenetus my beloved ;" "Salute
Mary who bestowed much labor on you; " " Sa
lute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my
fellow-prisoners." This was the way of the Lord himself. He
startled men by the piercing and particularizing
glances of his eyes. "When sawest thou me?"
was a cry which burst from the lips of many. A
woman supposed that she could hide herself in a
crowd. A widow in the temple casting in her two
mites did not dream that she was observed in the
throng. He singled out a poor invalid at the pool
of Bethesda whom no one had seen for nearly forty
years. His heart was set on winning the classes, and
so he paid assiduous attention to one man — Nico
demus. His soul yearned for the masses, and hence
he gave himself to one degraded woman at the well.
He longed to reach the uttermost part of the earth,
and made the start by changing the heart of one
man. It was the social vision that increased his
zeal in working for the individual. It was because
Jerusalem was on his heart that he was glad to

112 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
brighten the Ufe of one of her blind beggars. It
was because he carried the world in his eye that he
could see so clearly the strategic importance of the in
dividual soul. The social order was iniquitous, and
men begged him to strike it. He struck it by chang
ing the spirit of a few peasants. The pohtical order
was corrupt, and men importuned him to overthrow
it. He undermined it by raising the ideals of a few
citizens. The economic system worked injustice
and oppression, and men hated him because he did
not overturn it with the point of his sword. He
signed its death warrant by writing his name on the
hearts of a few disciples. Outside of Palestine the
nations lay moaning in the darkness. He saw them,
and therefore steadfastly devoted himseff to the
building of twelve men. Of course the world caUed
him narrow, foolish, crazy, devU-possessed; but he
pursued his method to the end. His life's work
seemed a failure. When he hung dying on the
cross, Judea was as sordid, Samaria as lethargic,
Galilee as worldly minded as when with radiant face
he preached his first sermon in the synagogue at
Nazareth. The Roman Empire was as cruel and the
nations were as far from God when he cried upon the
cross, "It is finished !" as when at his baptism he
saw the heavens opened. But he did not die baffled

BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL 113
or discouraged. " Be of good cheer, I have overcome
the world." The world order was apparently un
altered, but here and there a human heart had
caught his vision — the vision of a loving, sacrificing
God, interested in each and every one of all his
chUdren, and with this his soul was satisfied. Just
a few men aflame with the vision of God will
change the atmosphere of society, and if you give
them time, they and their successors will make
new the structure of the world.
Christianity is the rehgion of the brotherhood. It
is also the religion of the one man, the one man in
and for the brotherhood. It is the religion of the
one sheep, the one coin, the one boy. It is the reli
gion which throws its arms around "one of these
little ones," and which hears angels rejoicing over one
sinner who repents. It is the rehgion which closets
each man with God and which beholds each man
alone at the judgment. It is the rehgion which pic
tures the Son of God standing on the doorstep, saying,
"Behold I stand at the door and knock ; if any man
hear my voice and open the door, I will come in
to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."
This is God's way. He is the individualizing
God. He is mindful of the one sparrow. The hairs
of each human head are all numbered. We come

114 BUILDING THE INDIVIDUAL
into the world one at a time. Between the cradle
and the grave we each tread a path wide enough for
only one pair of feet. We pass into eternity one by
one. God dehghts in the work of shaping and guid
ing the individual. Science teUs us that life began
upon our planet in jellylike, undifferentiated masses.
From the beginning, however, aU the forces worked
unceasingly toward segregation and diversification,
until by and by the individual was set free. With the
advent of the individual there began new wonders.
Within the individual the Lord of hfe added miracle
to miracle, untU in a glorious moment human
personahty emerged. The personahty was at first
rudimentary and inchoate, with aU its endowments
embryonic. In the early ages of human history the
individual is obhterated in the tribe, lost in the na
tion, merged in the hfe of institutions ; but through
the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the
individual man graduaUy increases in wisdom and
stature, until he at last steps forth in Christ the
sovereign of the world. What is history but a long-
drawn drama in which the individual comes pain
fully but irresistibly, and with the manifest favor
of God, to his own? Every form of coUectivism
is doomed which does not develop the combined
energies and safeguard the total Uberties and

BUILDING THE INDIVDDUAL 115
rights of the individual man. Evolution has in
many directions come to an end. The evolution
of personality still goes forward. It does not
yet appear what we shaU be. We only know we
shaU be like him in whom and for whom we were
created. His Father had been working for ages
upon the individual man, and Jesus consecrated him
self to the selfsame work. He began always with
" a certain man." His word to us is, " Follow me ! "
God is building human personalities. That is
our work also. We are co-laborers with him.
Great preaching is preaching which sets free the
latent energies of the soul and buUds up rich and
potent personahties. AU great preachers are alike
in this, they create by their preaching resourceful,
masterful, and Godlike men. The greatest gift
which the church can give the world is a full-grown
man, having in him the mind of Jesus. Measure
your success as preachers not by the size of your con
gregation, which may after aU be only a huge eccle
siastical jellyfish, drifting aimlessly and uselessly
through the social sea, but by the stature and girth
of the manhood which you develop in individual
behevers, by the brotherliness and serviceableness
and Christlikeness of the separate disciples whom
you buUd into the Christian brotherhood.

LECTURE TV
BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
Having weighed the importance of viewing men
separately, let us now look at them massed together.
A Christian congregation is a human unit, and in a
sense may be said to have a soul. Each member
of the congregation contributes a separate character
to form a composite character wonderful and unique.
A power proceeds from each individual heart, and
aU these separate powers, when blended, constitute
another and a higher form of power. A congrega
tion of a thousand persons is something more than
a thousand individuals. When men come together,
certain latent forces are set free, and heightened
capacities of thinking and feeling are unfolded in
them. Where two or three are assembled, the Lord
of Life is present in a way in which He is not present
with the isolated soul. When two or three unite in
prayer, heaven is responsive to degrees never reached
when men pray separately. There are things to be
done, therefore, with and for the church as a whole.
A congregation possesses a disposition as pronounced
and characteristic as that of any of its members.
119

120 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
This disposition must be moulded by the preacher.
The moulding process passes through its most critical
stages in the hours of pubhc worship. The preacher
is not simply an instructor, he is a fashioner of
character, a maker of those moods and tempers
which gave character its bent and sinew. He is a
builder, and his business is to construct a frame of
mind. He will do this in part by his sermons, and in
part by other agencies ordained of God for the fos
tering of godly dispositions. Ideas have in them
transforming power, and so also do certain attitudes
and exercises. It is not the inteUect only which is
to be reached, but that great mass of instincts
and sentiments which go to make up what we call
the heart. Young preachers are always in danger
of overestimating the intellect. Hungry themselves
for ideas, and skilful in the art of playing with them,
they not infrequently lose sight of those mighty,
moving forces of the soul which he deeper than all
thought, and upon which rehgious leaders who would
do enduring work must evermore rely. Genuine
and living worship is something which every
preacher covets for his church, but not every
preacher gives himself devotedly to the work of
opening the fountains from which the living streams

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 121
of worship flow. If songs and prayers are not to
shrivel on the hps, there must be a rich interior
life, ministered unto according to laws which the
preacher ought to know. Every preacher is desir
ous that his people shaU abound in good works, but
the impulse to work for God must be hberated
and strengthened, and this impulse has its home
and growth down in the deep places of the heart.
Many preachers accomphsh httle because they
do not go deep enough. They cater to the intellect,
but do not stir the emotions. They offer sacrifices
on the altar of logic and forsake the God-estabhshed
altar of sentiment. They teach men the phrases of
an argument, but do not train them to sing a Te
Deum. They labor to instruct them to understand,
but not to adore and wonder. In one church the
minister is always preaching about work. He goads
his people incessantly to action. If men only are
doing something, Ufe's problem is supposed to be
settled. Themes for contemplation are steadily
ignored. No attention is devoted to the deepening
of the channels of the emotions. The inner springs
are quite forgotten. Men are told what they ought
to do, but no attention is devoted to the creation of
those dispositions out of which fruitful activity
proceeds. Such a church invariably grows thin.

122 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
People are worn out by the everlasting exhortation
to be up and doing. The clank of machinery is al
ways in their ears. The hfe of the church is a dusty
plain. There is no mount of transfiguration. It
is aU street and no upper chamber. The souls of
men are impoverished.
In another church the preacher is always explain
ing something. He has a phUosophic mind, and de
lights in industrial entanglements, moral problems,
doctrinal obscurities, and spiritual paradoxes. He
speaks always to the inteUect, and to that httle
corner of it which is interested in speculative puz
zles. He leaves the heart out of account. He does
nothing to stimulate or nourish the feelings. He
shirks the work of building habits of humility,
gratitude, and rejoicing. He does not know that
men hve by admiration, hope, and love. It is the
heart which makes a preacher, and it is the heart
which makes a church. The emotions give hfe its
glow and glory. A starved heart means an en
feebled church. We have, then, these two classes
of defective churches. In the first class, the
church is an office in which various kinds of transac
tions are discussed and forwarded ; in the second
class, it is a schoolroom in which divers doctrines
and systems are unfolded and adorned. < Blessed is

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 23
the preacher who converts his church into a temple,
and who, with or without pictured windows and
without or with the help of ritual and rich architec
ture, creates by the conduct of the service an at
mosphere in which souls instinctively look Godward.
Atmosphere is everything. If a church lacks at
mosphere, we need not wonder that many will prefer
to stay at home. The church must give something
which no other institution in the town can offer.
There must be something in the sanctuary which
the heart can instantly recognize as having come
from upper worlds, and which wUl compel it to cry
out : "This is none other than the house of God.
This is the gate of heaven." When a Christian man
says he can get more help from books at home than
from the service of pubhc worship, it is because his
nature is abnormal or because there is a fatal defect
in the church service. To build a worshipping
mood in his congregation, to create an atmosphere
in which souls shaU stand awe-struck in the pres
ence of their Creator, is a cardinal part of the
preacher's stupendous task.
He cannot accomphsh this without using aU the
agencies which the Holy Spirit has honored through
the centuries. To make the sermon the be-all and
the end-aU of pubUc worship is a devastating

124 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
blunder. Ministers who crowd praise and prayer
into a corner, labeUing them "prehminaries," do
not know what they do. Among other things, they
cut down the size of their possible congregation.
The worshipping instinct is more deeply seated than
is the sermon-hearing instinct, and more nearly
universal. Many minds and hearts respond to the
call to prayer which make no reply to the summons
of a sermon. Little chUdren drink in the music,
and then faU asleep in the midst of the preacher's
noblest argument. Plain and unlettered folk,
lacking the intellectual discipline which enables
them to follow the thread of a learned discourse,
find reUef and upUft in pouring out their hearts to
God in song and prayer. Cultivated Christians,
uninterested in the particular discussion or exhor
tation of the day, wiU go home edified if the service
has been what it ought to be. Business men,
fagged and jaded by the week's hard work, reluctant
to grapple with a reasoned argument, are more
likely to go to church if they are sure of finding
there that which hfts and cleanses and furnishes
them surcease of care. We preachers minister to a
myriad-sided human nature, with manifold appetites
and cravings, and the sermon is only one of many
channels through which God's grace finds the soul.

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 25
Not only does the preacher increase the size of his
congregation by ministering to men's devotional
nature, but he expands its capacity for assimilating
his message. Preaching is a reciprocal business. It
is a matter of giving and taking, and the taking is
no less important than the giving. A sermon is a
joint product, the creation of the preacher and the
people. The prosperity of a sermon depends both*
on the tongue that speaks and also on the ear that
hears. What matters it how consecrated and able
the preacher, if the minds of the hearers are not
prepared for his message ? After the experiences of
the week, men and women are in no mood on the
Lord's day to listen without preparation to a spirit
ual message. Confusions and distractions must be
removed from the mind. Alienations and resent
ments must be cleansed from the heart. The stains
of recent sin must be washed from the spirit. Men
have been laboring in separated fields, each one shut
in by the bounds of his own specific task, and on the
first day of the week they emerge from their isolation
and all are together in one place. Discordant feel
ings must be reduced to harmony. Wandering
thoughts must be subdued to reverent attention.
The sermon goes forth in vain unless the congrega
tion is unified and hearts have become responsive

126 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
and docile. Music and prayer are God's instru
ments for the taming of lawless impulses, and for the
creation of spiritual unities and harmonies. A
reverent mood is indispensable to the victory of a
sermon. Reverence is the mother of attention,
and men in their reverent moments listen gladly to
truths whose home is in heavenly places. The
more completely socialized the congregation, the
more swiftly will the word of the Lord run and be
glorified. He is an ignorant preacher who strives
to make his sermon everything. By making it
more than it can be, he makes it less than it
might be.
To the preacher who desires the mightiest
possible effect for his sermon, there are no prelimi
naries in the order of pubhc worship. From the
opening tone of the organ onward to the benedic
tion, the service is a high and solemn transaction
with God. The first thing essential in a Christian
congregation is a reverential mood. The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and without it a
church service is empty and debUitating. To create
and sustain this mood, the preacher must understand
the value of silence and the indispensable influence
of forms. It is for him so to plan as to secure those
physical conditions which will enable the service

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 27
to go forward unmarred and unimpeded. The
worship must not be aUowed to be trampled under
the careless feet of late comers. Ushers must not
flit up and down the aisles during the reading of the
Scriptures or the singing of the anthem. Belated
stragglers must not be granted a permit to proceed
to their pews during the prayers. AU late comers
should be detained at the church door, and be
permitted to take their seats only at stated pauses
in the service provided for their accommodation.
It is astonishing how careless many ministers are
in the conduct of pubhc worship. In ignorance or
contempt of eternal spiritual laws, they allow the
worship to degenerate into a slovenly and shpshod
thing, devoid of aU power to solemnize and elevate
the heart.
Forms of worship are sacraments, visible signs of
an invisible grace. There are ministers who seem
to be afraid of them. Informahty alone, so they
think, is pleasing to the Almighty. To act in the
house of God as one carries himself at home, and to
speak to the High and Holy One who inhabits
eternity, in the familiar, unconventional phrases
of everyday life, is to them the only sure safeguard
against formality and superstition. We do well
indeed to be on our guard against formahsm, for

128 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
formalism is the use of forms run to seed. But
forms are ordained of God. When rightly used,
they educate and bless. They are not only the
conservators, but the nourishers, of the hfe of the
heart. Without forms hfe cannot maintain itself
at high levels. It is by its forms that government
renders itself majestic, and society maintains its
tone. Religion is wedded to form by the wiU of
God. Posture in prayer is not a trifle. Behavior
in the house of God is a factor in the moulding
of character. The heart hfe is kept warm and true
by fine fidelity to the modes and patterns by which
it expresses itself. The forms of dev»''~*n in the
church should be kept dignified anl ^gtutiful.
Informahty is not evidence of piety n<*° P?mrn of
forms proof of exalted spirituality. It is fitting that
in the house of God worshippers shaU show in their
outer conduct their sense of their sinfulness and
their consciousness of standing in the presence of an
infinite and holy God. In the making of moods,
forms are as essential as moulds are in the shaping
of bricks. *—-*¦'
In the building of a reverential mood, no form of
worship is so efficacious as public prayer) It is
written that the apostolic church " continued stead
fastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship,

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 29
in the breaking of bread and the prayers." The
men who were converted on the Day of Pentecost
kept themselves ahve by prayer. When the work of
church administration began to absorb too much
of the apostles' energy and time, they threw off this
burden upon the shoulders of other men, declaring
that it was their supreme business to give them
selves to prayer and the ministry of the word.
The preacher must always be a man of prayer. His
spirit must be deeply devotional. If by nature he
is not reverential, then by constant and arduous
discipline he must bring his nature into subjection.
He wiU give his days and nights to the study of the
classics of the devotional hterature of the church,
and wiU meditate often upon the themes which have
in them most power to solemnize and open the heart.
Of Saul of Tarsus it was said, "Behold he prays !"
This is the starting-point of all successful preaching.
Only men constant in prayer preach the gospel
with power. The preacher must lead his people in
prayer. He must pray for them and with them.
His prayers are in reaUty sermons. They are a part
of his publication of the love of God. They are
not picturesque and ceremonious prehminaries,
moving in advance of his sermons, but are in them
selves messages of his soul, opening up the way to

130 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
God. /All pubUc prayer is of necessity seen of men,
and the form of it is consequently not to be despised
or slighted. The form must be such as to help the
flow of the devotional feehng of the congregation.
Any feature of the prayer which rasps or jars, sub
tracts from the power of the Holy Spirit in hfting
hearts to heavenly altitudes. A preacher can shake
the entire fabric of a church's devotion by awkward
and ill-mannered praying. Prayer is a form of
power, and the force of it can be broken by slipshod
sentences and rambling repetitions and effusive
clamorings. The spirit of the prayer must of course
be right, but so also must its substance and form.
It is the duty, therefore, of the preacher to prepare
his prayers, — or at least to prepare for them, — and
no part of his work is more critical and taxing.
So immense is the labor involved that many men
shrink from it, either offering prayers entirely ex
tempore, or entering a denomination which furnishes
the rehef of a hturgy. A man can read a prayer or
he can roU out offhand a string of prayer-shaped
sentences without spiritual preparedness; but to lead
a congregation week after week, year after year,
to the throne of grace along paths of the preacher's
own choosing lays a tax upon human nature to which
it is not easy to submit. The man who uses a hturgy

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 131
is always tempted to rely upon the form rather than
the spirit, and the man who throws away the hturgy
is subjected to a temptation no less insidious and
disastrous. Extemporaneous prayer is a form of
hberty which harbors a multitude of sins. It is
often taken for granted that because a man is given
the privilege of framing each Sunday his own prayers
he holds a hcense to mould them on the spur of the
moment. The result is that in many a church there
is a type of confused and deformed praying which is
both scandalous and insufferable. Many a Chris
tian of cultivation has been driven into a hturgical
church, because he could endure no longer the un
kempt and boorish prayers of his pastor. Men and
women of refinement cannot be led to the throne of
grace by a man who lacerates all the nerves of taste
at every step in his suppUcations. Prayers as
well as sermons must be prepared, not necessarily
in every phrase and word, but by meditation and a
careful survey, first of the needs of the congrega
tion and then of the needs of the church universal.
There was a superstition once that prepared sermons
were an abomination to the Lord, inasmuch as that
they interfered with the operation of the Holy
Spirit upon the preacher's brain and heart in the hour
when he stood before the people. Happily for the

132 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
world that superstition has passed away. Experi
ence has proved that the Holy Spirit has better
opportunity to work his wiU through a sermon
which has been prepared by long and patient labor,
than through the flighty and rhapsodical mouthings
of a preacher averse to study. There is another
superstition from which the church is not yet quite
emancipated, the notion that a man can pray more
sincerely and more nearly in accordance with God's
will, if he trusts entirely to the guidance of the
Spirit as that guidance is offered at the passing
moment. The two superstitions are alike. Effec
tive sermons cannot be, ordinarUy, left to the caprice
or feeling of the moment, nor can a congregation be
most surely led to the throne of God by a man who
starts upon the journey not knowing by what route
he is going. Stumbling here and there, retracing
one's steps now and then, using the wrong adjective
or adverb because the right one wiU not come,
these may be small matters to the Almighty, but
they are not small to men; and as the preacher is
praying for the sake of those who hsten, he is bound
to use such verbal forms as shaU best open men's
hearts for the incoming of God's spirit.
The content of prayer must also be carefully
considered. Paul was particular, not only about

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 133
the spirit and manner of prayer, but also about the
petitions which should have a place in the worship
of the Christian society. He desired that the
prayers should have reach and range. They were
to include not only the men at the bottom, but also
the men at the top. Rulers and kings were not
to be forgotten, even though they had no sympathy
with the Christian faith. AU sorts and conditions
of men were to be remembered, because it is God's
wish that aU men shall be saved. The prayers in
the church were not to be folded round the local
congregation, or even the church universal; they
were to include the wide world. There was to be
a reach to the prayers, and a breadth, and depth.
The length and the breadth and the height were to
be equal. Not every preacher hves up to the
apostle's ideal. Pubhc prayer often becomes con
tracted in range, and is brought down to levels
lower than those on which the prayer of the church
ought to move. By carelessness in the shaping of
his prayers, a preacher may stunt not only his own
nature, but the spiritual sympathies and suscepti
bilities of his people. If in his prayers he carries
on his heart the church universal and all nations
and races, his church wiU do likewise. More
things are wrought by the preacher's prayers than

134 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
the preacher himself dreams of. There have been
ages in Christian history when the prayers drove
out the sermon. There are churches in our age
in which there is danger that the sermon may drive
out the prayers. Both are ordained of God,
and what God hath joined, let no preacher put
asunder. Music is also a form pf power which may be used
for the creation of those particular tempers in which
the Christian rehgion finds deUght. The gift of
song is primeval. Man is by nature musical. By
divine fiat he is a singing animal. Men have from
the beginning loved music. There is a Lamech sing
ing in the early dawn of the history of every people,
and a Jubal fashioning harps and pipes. The
Jewish church seized upon this natural aptitude and
made use of it in the temple service, in every syna
gogue, and in every Jewish home. On the night
on which Jesus was betrayed, he and his disciples,
true to the traditions of their nation, sang psalms.
Our Lord went into the shadows of Gethsemane
singing. What the Jewish church did weU, the
Christian church has done still better. It was never
known how much music lies in the human soul, till
the angels sang their song of peace and good-wiU,
and Jesus mellowed the hearts of men by his heav-

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS I35
enly message. Music as we know it may be said
to be the daughter of the Christian church. By
liberating the heart, Christianity made a new devel
opment of music inevitable. When Pliny hfts the
curtain and enables us to look upon a first century
congregation in the act of worship, we behold it
singing. The church of Christ has been singing ever
since the Day of Pentecost. It is significant that
with the coming of each new baptism of the Spirit
there has come a fuller flood of song. The Lollards
fiUed aU England with their singing, and the followers
of Luther struck terror into the Cathohc hierarchy
by their carols. The Wesleyans announced by their
singing that a new epoch in Christian history had
dawned. From the days of the apostles to the last
church revival, it is true that when the Spirit of
God moves mightily, the people burst into song.
This is because music is the language of the heart.
Song is the natural speech of the emotions. When
the heart is stirred, it s^ngs. By singing it stirs
itself still more deeply. Music not only expresses,
but intensifies, the feelings. The mood which a
song expresses is strengthened and perpetuated by
the singing of the song. No man sings to himself.
He sings also unto others. He communicates his
mood to those who hear him. When men and

136 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
women sing together, they impart to one another
the sentiment of that which they sing, and thus
community of feeling is established, and spirits are
brought into beautiful accord. If by prayer the
human heart is awed and elevated, then by song the
human heart is socialized and broadened. Music
expands the sympathies and feeds the social nature.
Self-centredness and exclusiveness melt down un
der the reign of melody. Touched by the speU
of harmonious tones, minds and hearts flow to
gether, and the congregation becomes one soul.
Music is a language universal. Every heart can
understand it. Sentimentally every man is dis
posed to music, even though organicaUyhe maybe
like Charles Lamb, incapable of a tune. In music
there is something heavenly before which earthly
moods and worldly tempers inevitably give way.
The basest man feels less sordid after he has been
immersed in a fountain of song. The streams of
tone wipe out dividing lines, efface the springs of
bitterness, wear away estranging waUs, and bring
the congregation out into a large and wealthy
place. Music, when rightly used, does the very
work which the preacher wants accomplished. It
develops the sense of fellowship and buUds up the
brotherhood.

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 137
Like all things divine, music is dangerous. Many
churches have what they call the music problem.
Sometimes it is a music scandal. Many a preacher
has heard the most heart-racking discords of his
parish proceeding from the music. Music may con
vert itself into a peacock and exist only for the sake
of display. Display in the house of God is abomi
nable, and music when used for display, instead of
being an angel to build up, becomes a devil to tear
down. The preacher will therefore be watchful
as to the personality and spirit of the man who is
chosen leader of the church music. The musical
director must be a Christian man. He is an ap
pointed minister of Christ, and must therefore have
the spirit of Christ. The man who leads the service
in which emotion is predominant and the man
who leads the service in which thought is regnant
have equal need of the baptism which comes from
heaven. A church should no more think of placing
its music in the hands of an unchristian man than of
inviting to the pulpit a man making no professions
of Christian discipleship. How can a pagan and
a Christian work together in Christ's temple?
More than one church has been unaccountably
blind at this point, and has paid more than double
for its unpardonable blunder.

I38 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
With the musical direction in the hands of a Chris
tian man, large latitude may be aUowed in the selec
tion of musical forms. There is no reason why a
part of the musical service should not be led by one
voice, or by two voices, or by three or four or eight
voices, or by a chorus of a large number of voices.
One voice can do what many voices cannot do, and
a quartette can do things which are impossible to
a soloist or a chorus. In the interpretation of the
musical masterpieces of adoration and thanksgiving,
there are diversities of ministrations, and the same
Lord; and diversities of workings, but the same
God who worketh aU things in aU. The one thing
to insist on is that the people shaU be granted their
rightful place in the worship. AU the people must
be given opportunity to sing. The entire company
of the redeemed must utter praises. Worship must
not be monopolized by a class. AU Christians are
priests unto God. To sUence the congregation is to
quench the Spirit. If the church prefers to remain
dumb, it is because its hfe is at low ebb. A silent
church must be trained to become vocal. Only a
songful cliurch can hsten appreciatively to a sermon
or engage triumphantly in Christian service. If
the people sing badly, the next step is not to chp the
hymns and lengthen the sermon, but to make room

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS I39
for additional hymns. If a church does not like
to sing, it is because it is emotionally depleted.
New hfe can be imparted, not by increased inteUec-
tuality in the pulpit, but by a freer exercise of the
heart in the pews. When Paul exhorts Christians
to awake from their sleep and to arise from the dead,
he bids them to speak one to another in psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs, making melody with
their hearts to the Lord, giving thanks alway for all
things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God.
Singing is not then a preliminary of the sermon,
something to be indulged in until the late comers
have arrived, or an interloper to be watched con
stantly with a jealous eye, but a sort of preaching,
a pubhc proclamation of the goodness and long-
suffering kindness of God. It is a means of grace
and helps one to say, " I beheve in the communion
of saints." The preacher who wishes to bring his
church into the attitude and disposition of Christ,
and to fortify it against unchristian tempers, will
steadily make use of the tongues of his people in the
musical exercises of praise. Many a minister would
to-day have a larger and more responsive congrega
tion, had he only persistently and systematicaUy
encouraged his people to take part in the service of
song.

140 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
Bible reading is another agency ordained by God
for the creation and upbuilding of moods. Like
prayer and song, it is also a form of preaching. It
antedates our modern sermon. Through centuries
of Jewish history the reading of the scriptures was
the chief source of instruction and inspiration to
the people. At the councU of Jerusalem, James
identified preaching and reading when he said,
"Moses from generations of old hath in every city
them that preach him, being read in the synagogue
every Sabbath." Why should we not regard the
pubhc reading of holy scripture as a form of preach
ing, not a preUminary to be hurried through whUe
the members of the congregation are finding their
pews, but an integral and cardinal part of the preach
ing service ? It is strange indeed that any man who
beheves in the unique inspiration of the men who
wrote the Scriptures should be willing to read the
Bible with lukewarm and begrudging emphasis, put
ting his own words in the place of honor, and using
the sentences of prophets and apostles and the
Lord himself as humble avenues leading up to the
splendid palace of his own august creation. If it
be true that God of old time spoke in the prophets
by divers portions and in divers manners, and that
at the end of those days spoke to us in his Son, it

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 141
is certainly unbecoming in preachers to read the
Scriptures with conspicuous negligence or hurry
through them as though they were a barrier shut
ting men out from the rich pastures of the sermon.
And if it be a fact, as Paul declares, that "every
Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
which is in righteousness, that the man of God may
be complete, furnished completely unto every good
work," it would seem that the preacher has no more
important duty than reading these Scriptures to
his people.
There are reasons why Bible reading in the
church should just now be exalted. We are Uving
in a hurried age, and the pressure of hfe is tremen
dous. Men are driven through the days and weeks
as by so many furies, and because of this precipi
tate haste, certain customs which flourished in the
former times are falhng into desuetude. Family
worship is not so common in Christian homes as it
was a generation ago, and the Bible has been sup
planted in many circles by the magazines and papers.
Let the preacher read the Bible to a generation too
preoccupied to read it for itself. /During the entire
lifetime of men now living, the/Bible has been the
subject of vehement and distracting controversy.

142 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
The old theories of inspiration and inerrancy have
been found untenable, and a new conception has
not yet been completely formed in the popular mind
and heart. Laymen in large numbers are bewU-
dered by the swarms of critical theories as to the
origin and authority of the Bible, and from this
bewUderment many preachers themselves have not
emerged. The movement of Biblical criticism was
inevitable. It is not to be lamented, but rejoiced
over. Scores of conscientious scholars have labored
with enthusiasm and fidelity to ascertain the facts
in regard to authorship, and the formation of the
canon. Results have been obtained, numerous,
substantial, and invaluable. But in aU such move
ments there is much human fraUty and imperfection.
Theories are often advanced* with nothing to com
mend them but their novelty, and conclusions are
promulgated upon which it is unsafe to buUd. A
considerable part of aU that has been published in
the name of higher criticism is hay and wood and
stubble, and wiU be some day viewed with the same
amused wonder with which we now look at the
dreary speculations of the schoolmen. Critical
theories, proclaimed with blast of trumpets and
received with a shout, faU dead one after the other,
and no matter what the present dominant theory

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS I43
is, the chances are that the feet of those who buried
its predecessor are at the door ready to carry it out.
Every thinking man must of necessity have a theory
of the Bible, but it is important to remember that
the Bible is more than any theory of the Bible.
Young preachers filled with the latest speculations
of the schools sometimes err in making their no
tions of the Scriptures more conspicuous than the
Scriptures themselves. It is possible so to overlay
the Bible with hypotheses and guesses as to prevent
it doing its God-appointed work. No matter what
your view may be of the composition and structure
of the Scriptures, read them to your people. The
last word of Biblical criticism has not been written.
Many of the conclusions of the latest scholarship
are only tentative and wiU be revised several times
before your heads are gray. Read the Bible to your
people without comment. Do not muffle its music
in the folds of your conjectures. Let its organ tones
sound out, finding those who have ears to hear. Do
not dim its hght by your assumptions. Let it shine
undarkened by interpretations. Do not quench
its fire by your suppositions. Let it radiate its heat,
and who knows how many hearts may be melted.
Do not duU the edge of it by wrapping round it your
conceits or guesses. Let it cut, It may prove to

144 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
be even in the twentieth century "living and active
and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing
even to the dividing of the soul and spirit."
No matter what you may think of the Pentateuchal
sources, or of the number of Isaiahs, or the author
ship of the Psalms, or the extent of interpolated
passages in the Gospels, the fact remains that the
Bible is the book of books, and is able to make wise
unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
It is a world power, and the wise preacher wiU make
generous use of it. He can build up his congregation
by reading the Scriptures. Men who care httle for
his sermons wiU come to church if he knows how to
read the prophets and apostles. His congregation
wiU grow constantly in sensitiveness to rehgious ap
peal and in capacity for assimUating reUgious truth,
if only it is steeped in the Scriptures. The more
of the Bible men hear, the more wiU they want to
hear. It is not because people know the Bible that
they take scant interest in sermons. It is because
they are ignorant of it. It is the children who have
been fed the Scriptures from infancy who become
the men and the women who hsten with keenest
appreciation to what the preacher has to say.
The lad in Lystra who was most attracted by the
travelling preacher, Paul, was the boy who knew

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS I45
from a babe the sacred writings. If you desire a
congregation hungry for your sermons, then read
them the Bible. It contains the food which builds
up the faculties to which a preacher speaks, and
upon which he must rely. It is a book of voices,
thrilhng, piercing, mysterious voices whose accents
stir powers in the human soul which are deep and
sleeping and haunt the spirit with a bewitching
music which wiU not let it go. It finds men both at
their highest and their deepest. It sweeps through
a wider gamut of thought and feehng than any one
man is master of. It offers a more myriad-sided
wisdom than any one soul possesses. It wUl reach
men whom you in your sermons wiU never reach.
It creates moods and chastens tempers as no
other book in aU the world. It produces a climate
in which sermons come to luxuriant growth. For
your own sake you need to read the Scriptures to
your people with mind and heart and soul. It
is when a man is filled with the spirit which burned
in the hearts of the Bible saints and heroes that he
feels most like preaching. It is then that he cries,
"Woe is me if I do not preach." The Bible builds
up both the laity and the clergy. Its words are
spirit, they are hfe. They stir and kindle, they
iUumine and move. They have hands and feet, they

146 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
work miracles. Men who drink them in become
able to stop the mouths of Uons and to quench the
violence of fire./
Prepare yourselves, therefore, to become Bible
readers. Train yourseff with that end in view.
Disciphne your voice until it becomes flexible and
capacious, capable of expressing the emotions which
the prophets felt, and the visions which the apostles
saw. Practise Bible reading every week. Per
fection comes only by practice. The art of reading
is a fine and difficult art, and no man learns in his
sleep how, by modulation and by accent, by into
nation and by emphasis, to interpret the sentences
which have been written for men's comfort. There
is no excuse for shabby Bible reading. Not every
man can be a brilliant preacher, but every man can
be a good Bible reader. If he cannot himseU create
great sermons, he can read with grace and force the
sermons which holy men of old dehvered. Let us
hope the time wiU come when no man wUl be gradu
ated from a theological seminary without having
passed an examination in Bible reading, and when
no man can be ordained to the Christian ministry
who is not a good Bible reader. Neghgence at this
point is not only mental dullness but a moral
delinquency.

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 147
Resolve, then, to read the Bible generously to
your people. Read the Old Testament as weU as
the New, the Epistles no less than the Gospels. Do
not aUow your people to infer that there are only a
few narrow shreds and isolated patches worthy of
a modern man's attention. Keep aUve in men's
hearts reverence for the Bible as a whole. Read its
history and poetry, its biography and letters, its
sermons and its prophecies. Read them in aU the
meetings of the church, in the meetings of pubhc
worship and in the prayer meeting, in the Bible
school and in the missionary societies. Drench
your church in the spirit of the Bible. Read it like
a man of prayer. Read it like a prophet of Jehovah..
Read it like a lover subdued by its message. New
Ught wiU break forth from it every time you take its
words upon your hps. God has spoken often through
the book, and often wiU He speak again. Great
preachers Uve on the Bible. Their supreme dehght
is giving the Bible to the people. Essayists, lec
turers, and clerical adventurers of divers types may
make a stir for a season in the Christian pulpit, but the
ages are not deceived. The church, on looking back
ward and counting up her pulpit princes, admits no
one to the shining company of the immortals save
those alone who have been mighty in the Scriptures.

148 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
The work begun and developed by Bible reading,
praise, and prayer is carried on and perfected by the
sermon. The church of Jesus must be reverent,
grateful, sympathetic, hospitable, jubUant, and lov
ing; and to make it this is the preacher's occupation.
In the growing of moods, we do weU to remember
that nothing in God's universe takes place by chance.
The preacher, hke the farmer, works under a God
of law, and the same obedience and industry which
bring forth corn and potatoes wiU no less certainly
secure the fruits of the Spirit. The flowers of para
dise like aU other flowers are within the reach of aU
who are willing to expend the necessary labor.
Heavenly plants, as weU as plants of the earth, must
be watered and cultivated. If a church is not
beautiful and fragrant it is largely because the
spiritual gardeners have been ignorant or lazy. It is
for them to create the climatic conditions under
which celestial seeds come to blossom and fruitage.
There is no reason why the word of the preacher
should year after year return to him void.
Moods, then, are the preacher's first concern.
His earliest work is to bring his people into a Chris
tian frame of mind. What men are willing to beheve
depends largely upon their mental mood. A
preacher forgets this at his perU. Let him beware

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 149
how he tries to introduce new interpretations and
doctrines into a church whose mind is inhospitable.
Some churches are in a sheU. The new preacher
sees this at a glance. He proceeds forthwith to drive
into it a series of logical and pointed discourses on
the particular doctrine upon which the church in his
judgment needs enhghtenment, whereas he ought
first by the patient exposition of old truths in which
every one beheves create an atmosphere under whose
genial influence the sheU wiU open of itseU. Men
cannot be driven into believing things by argu
mentative sermons, but are made hospitable to new
truths by the gradual transforming of their minds.
It is not by mental force or brilliant argument that
inadequate or erroneous conceptions are gotten rid
of, but by elevating the whole plane of thinking
and raising the temperature of the life of the heart.
A church wiU beUeve what it ought to beheve only
when it is in the right mood.
If the preacher desires to create a sympathetic
and social temper, he wiU pay attention to his
vocabulary. He wiU eschew so far as possible
aU technical and abstract words. Words which
are cold and unfamiliar wiU be promptly banished
and only those retained which the heart knows.
Words used by speciahsts and words born in dis-

150 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
tant lands wiU give place to the native words which
are used in street and school and home. To come
close to men the preacher must speak to them
in the language in which they were born. It is the
words of the mother tongue which find the blood.
There is a necromancy in language and a preacher
ought to understand and use its magic. Words
in themselves are powers and have strange potencies
to awaken desires, quicken impulses, create ambi
tions, give shape to ideals and direction to feelings,
and kindle aU those subtle flames which burn upon
the soul's central altars. Some preachers use a
vocabulary cold enough to form icicles. Their ser
mons sound hke pages torn from an almanac, or a
text-book, or a volume of statistics. They are not
acquainted with the words which poets use nor
can they speak the syllables which start and feed a
fire. Words have moods as people do, and the
preacher must be master of the words which carry in
their hearts the dispositions which he desires to com
municate to his people. There are reverent, kneel
ing words, warm, tender and affectionate words,
open-handed, open-hearted, hospitable words, laugh
ing, shouting, haUelujah words — words which are so
rich in human experience, so saturated with laughter
and tears, that if the preacher breaks them upon his

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 151
congregation they fiU with perfume, like precious
. alabaster boxes, all the place where he is preaching.
Even more careful wiU he be of his themes. He
wUl never remain away long from the great subjects.
If men are to feel deeply and enlarge the organs of emo
tion, they must have something great to think about.
Exhortations to enthusiasm and other emotions are
sounding brass. Feelings come, not by the cudgel
ing of the wiU, but by the contemplation of facts and
truths which pierce and expand the heart. Mighty
moods are created only by majestic visions. Let the
preacher, therefore, avoid thin issues, petty questions,
trifling topics, and devote himseU to the sovereign
features of the revelation of God in Christ, and to
those imperial interests which concern the universal
heart. He wUl not make his sermons chambers of
horrors, dealing constantly with the world's outrages
and scandals, but he wiU on the Lord's day unveU
the face of the One who is the fairest of ten thou
sand, the One altogether lovely. The mind that was
in Jesus is the mind which the preacher is to buUd up
in his people, and it is by looking again and again at
the Man of men that the soul passes from glory to
glory, being changed into his own image. To pro
duce the Christian mood there is no method equal
to that of Paul, preaching Jesus and him crucified.

152 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
But fuUy as important as his theme is the spirit
and manner of the preacher. Moods are conta
gious. "Like priest, like people." There are narrow
and crabbed congregations made such by a big
oted and surly curmudgeon in the pulpit. Some
churches are hard and intolerant because of the pig
headed dogmatism of the preacher. Parishes are
sometimes cynical and misanthropic because a
clerical Thesites stands at the centre. There are
congregations which are irreverent and simpering
because of the jaunty worldling who officiates in holy
things. Many a church is glum and discouraged
because its pastor is lachrymose and drooping. As
soon as a preacher finds himseU pitching aU his
sermons in a minor key, he ought to resign or be
granted a vacation. Preachers are ordained to buUd
up in men the mood of faith, not of doubt; of hope,
not of despair; of love, not of denunciation and
fault-finding. Joy is one of the surest evidences of
the presence of the Lord. A dejected or despondent
church has lost the note which made the apostohc
church invincible. The Christian pulpit hes in
the gleam of a triumphant spirit. In aU true Chris
tian preaching the trumpets are sounding aU the
way. The cross is evermore in sight, and so also is
he who said and says : "Be of good cheer, I have

BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS 1 53
overcome." The preacher must, by word and hfe,
teach his church the art of always rejoicing. We
hve in a world of gigantic wrongs and heart-rending
tragedies. The fires of heU are burning at our
doors. Strong men wiU sometimes flame and
thunder, and weak men wiU often sob and whimper;
but Christian preachers are sent from God, not sim
ply to hurl thunderbolts at the world's demons and
dragons, or to paint with lurid rhetoric society's
cancers and abominations, but rather to inspire the
heart with sentiments which wiU by and by put an
end to ancient slaveries and create a soul under the
ribs of death.
It is not for every preacher to be pastor of a large
church, but every preacher may covet the joy of
shepherding a church beautiful. If men judge a
church by the size of its membership, God judges it,
we may be certain, by the height of its ideals, the
range of its sympathies, the reach of its aspirations,
the depth of its convictions, the fineness of its temper,
the graciousness of its disposition, and the wealth of
those graces which he saw in his weU-beloved Son.
When you find you cannot increase the size of your
church, go to work with fresh energy to increase the
dimensions of its soul. Quahty of hfe, and not
quantity, is what counts most in working out God's

154 BUILDING MOODS AND TEMPERS
plans. The church of Christ must first of aU be beau
tiful. She represents the wooing, winsome Jesus,
and she conquers only by her grace. Her mind must
be sympathetic, her spirit gracious, her touch gentle,
her face radiant, and her temper sweet. She must
be disciphned to walk in the ways the Master loves.
She must have his simphcity and tranquiUity, his
poise and indescribable charm. She subdues, not
by driving, but by the irresistible fascination of her
lovehness. It is by transforming, with God's help,
the mood of the church that we preachers are to
change the face of the world. The church is a me
dium of revelation, and it is only when it incarnates
the disposition of Jesus, that the nations wiU behold
in it the manifold wisdom of God.

LECTURE V
BUILDING THRONES

BUILDING THRONES
In the world's speech, "throne" is the symbol of
power. By the building of thrones is meant in this
lecture the generation and development of moral
forces, the creation and organizing of spiritual po
tencies. The New Testament pictures the Founder
of the Christian rehgion as a man of might. He is a
miracle worker and a fountain of new forces. Streams
of energy flow from him. Nature and humanity
are alike responsive to his touch. People stand
astounded at the things which he does. Wherever
he goes he stirs the crowds mightily, and men con
fess that they have never seen it after that fashion.
He places himseU upon a throne, and the New Testa
ment writers leave him there. AU authority is
given unto him. He is King of kings and Lord of
lords. "Ye shaU sit on thrones," so he said to the men
who were nearest to him, and when he sent them out
he gave them power to tread upon things that hurt.
His parting promise to them was a fresh baptism of
strength. "Ye shaU receive power" — so he said
iS7

158 BUILDING THRONES
as the cloud covered him. What he said to the
Twelve he says to aU. The chmax of his promises
to the churches is, "He that overcometh wiU I give
to him to sit down with me in my throne."
The preacher, then, is a servant of a King, and his
message is a form of power. Such was the concep
tion of the first great preacher. " I am not ashamed
of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto sal
vation to every one who beheves." The man
who carries the message thus becomes a man of
power. An impotent preacher is no preacher at aU.
Preachers are to be ranked by what they accom
plish. They are not to be measured by their learn
ing, or language, or elocution, or reputation, but by
what they achieve. Only he is a great preacher who
brings great things to pass. Sermons are nothing un
less they are social forces. If they do not work, they
are clanging cymbals. It is expected of a minister
that he shall be influential, that an energy shaU flow
from him into the hves of men.
Since every man has immediate access to the heart
of God, and is privileged to share in the divine grace,
every regenerated soul becomes a centre from which
celestial energy is radiated. On the day of Pente
cost there was a hght on every forehead, a song in
every heart. AU were participators in the overmas-

BUILDING THRONES 1 59
tering power from heaven. Under the new dispensa
tion every behever sits on a throne, and influences
go out from him over a kingdom whose boundaries
are known only to the Lord. The faith was de
hvered to the saints, and so also were the keys. The
power of binding and loosing does not belong to
clergymen alone, but is in the hands of the society
of behevers. IdeaUy, every Christian is a prophet,
a priest, and a king. In Christ, God caUs us one and
aU to sit enthroned.
The church, then, is a form of power, a huge com
plex of blended energies, created for the purpose of
working upon the world's thought and conduct. The
church universal is the one supreme world power for
moulding ideals and re-creating dispositions. To
make it increasingly regnant in society's business
and bosom is the work to which preachers are caUed.
AU this is written large across the pages of the
Scriptures. Abraham believed that through him
aU the families of the earth were to be blessed.
Isaiah saw a hght going forth from Jerusalem iUu-
mining the isles of the sea. The church does not
exist for itself. It is a steward of the divine bounty.
Its treasures are aU held in trust. It is elected, not
for the enjoyment of favors, but for service. It lives
and labors for humanity. "For their sakes, I

160 BUILDING THRONES
sanctify myself," these are the Master's words, and
the church, when true to him, makes them her
own. The road to greatness hes through service,
and the true church is the church which says, "I am
among you as one who serves." When Jesus sent
out the Twelve, they were given power to heal as
weU as to preach, to cast out demons as weU as to
teach. His favorite figures aU carry in them this
idea of going forth with power to serve. " Ye are
the hght of the world." Light does not exist for
itself, but for the eyes of those who sit in darkness.
"Ye are the salt of the earth." Salt does not exist
for itseU, but for that which it saves from putrefac
tion. "Ye are the leaven." Leaven does not exist
for itseU, but for the bread which it renders palatable
and nutritious. Light and salt and yeast are en
thusiastic and indefatigable workers. "Go!" was
Jesus' constant exhortation, anfi round his youthful
church he wrapped on the day of his ascension this
great commission — "Go, disciple the nations!"
The church, as Jesus saw it, was not a Noah's ark
in which a favored few were to be carried through
the flood, but rather a brotherhood of workers,
pledged to God and to one another for the cleansing
of society and the getting of Heaven's wiU done upon
this earth. If the . church hides its hfe under an

BUILDING THRONES l6l
ecclesiastical bushel, the members of the world's
household wiU remain in darkness. If the church is
not useful, it is like salt which has lost its savor,
good for nothing but to be cast under foot of men.
If it does not make itseU felt in the community, it
faUs to represent the living, mighty God. If it
does not lay down its hfe daUy for the good of men,
it does not foUow in the footsteps of its Lord. It is
true to its Founder only when it is a society of
saviours, an instrument of social redemption, an angel
troubling the waters of the pool in which humanity
is to be healed. Its work hes in Jerusalem, and also
in Judea, and also in Samaria, and also in the na
tions which Ue in the darkness on the outer edge of
the world. It is a planetary power.
The New Testament church is a working, self-sacri
ficing, conquering society of brothers; and this is the
church which the world to-day is calling for with
a passionate insistence which cannot go unheeded.
The ages in which the church stood dreamy and idle,
waiting for a new heaven and a new earth, have gone,
never to return. The idea of the church as a city of
refuge, into which sinners may flee for the saving
of their souls, is no longer tenable among thoughtful
men. "Come out from among them, and be ye
separate," can no longer receive the monastic inter-

162 BUILDING THRONES
pretation. Individual redemption is the starting-
point, but world redemption is the goal. Rehgion is
more than a personal possession of security and peace
and joy, it is a service, a sacrifice, a gift to others.
Men are praying "Thy kingdom come" with a
new passion. Rehgion is now seen to concern this
world no less than the world which is to come. The
good things which have been promised are not aU to
be waited for until we put on immortality. We have
a right to hope, not simply for the rescue of a few of
the ship's passengers, but for the saving of the entire
ship. The kingdoms of this world are not hopelessly
in the hands of the devU, but wiU become, when
Christian consecration and sacrifice have done their
work, the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.
This transfer of emphasis from the other world to
this is one of the mightiest of aU the changes which
have been wrought in Christian thinking within the
last hundred years, and it brings to the front for
fresh discussion the question, What is the mission of
the church ? Men are asking to-day with irritating
intensity and repetitiousness: "What is the church
doing ? What mighty works does she perform to
day? What evU spirits is she casting out? What
diseases of society is she heahng? Where are the
serpents and the scorpions wiiich she is crushing?"

BUILDING THRONES 1 63
The old-time stress on creeds has been shifted. The
first question now is not, What do you beheve?
but, What are you doing to make a better world ?
The old inquiries as to emotional experiences have
been superseded by queries in regard to good works.
The one parable of Jesus with which the twentieth
century is most familiar is the parable of the good
Samaritan, and the words of the New Testament
which can be seen the farthest, and which are read
by the largest number of living men, are the closing
words of that same parable — "Go and do thou
likewise." It is a humanitarian age. The only
rehgion which appeals to thousands is a rehgion
which exalts and glorifies service. You may quarrel
with this mood if you wiU, and say that it is running
to extremes, but you are not likely to suppress it.
A new spirit is abroad and its voice is heard through
out the world. Men are laying an emphasis on so
cial problems and the social applications of rehgion,
which is quite unique in Christian history. No doubt
this is the Lord's doing, one of the signs of the times
which only bhnd men wUl fail to note and ponder.
It is always weU to meet men where they are, for it is
only as we are wiUing to meet them there, that we
have any chance of leading them where we think
they ought to be. If you take scant interest in the

164 BUILDING THRONES
practical aspects of rehgion, and show ignorance of
the social and industrial movements of your time, you
wiU ahenate many of the noblest spirits in your con
gregation. If you do not give your people tasks to
do, and lead them into spacious fields of practical
endeavor, you must not be surprised when they
wander off by twos and threes, as they surely wUl,
and attach themselves to congregations which are
doers of the word and not hearers only. We hve in
the midst of a restless, energetic people, a people not
over fond of definitions and abstract thought, and the
only way to escape disaster is to cut generous chan
nels through which this tumultuous energy can flow.
The generation of moral power and the apphcation
of it, this is the fascinating problem to which the
preacher wiU again and again return.
It is the complaint of many ministers that their
people will not work, but the fault does not always
lie with the people. It may be that the minister
does not know how so to strike the rock of the human
heart as to cause the streams of force to flow without
which effective action is impossible. The hearts of
men must be cultivated with aU diUgence, for out of
the heart are the moving forces of the world. Con
science is a power, and so are sympathy, affection,
good-will, enthusiasm, loyalty, devotion, aspiration;

BUILDING THRONES 165
and the preacher must preach in such a way as to in
crease the stock of each and all of these. He ought
to ask himself unceasingly: " How can I give a new
edge to conscience and a new height to aspiration ?
How can I arouse the social sympathies and senti
ments? How can I create the moral enthusiasm
and spiritual passion without which society must
degenerate and shrivel ? How can I increase the
capacity of the church dynamo for creating the
moral forces by which all the wheels of philanthropy
and social betterment throughout the town shaU
be kept turning ? How can I replenish the spiritual
forces of humanity, that the material development
of the community may not outstrip its moral
growth?" The man who faces questions such as
these wiU not preach narrow or stupefying sermons.
He will cultivate in his people the habit of looking
outward. He wUl cut windows in his discourses
opening out upon the pubhc square. He will keep
the church doors ajar, and preach a gospel which car
ries the world's horizon in its eye. It is when the
preacher has no vision that the people become slug
gish and perish.
There are preachers who do not know how to use
their people even after they are aroused. They do
everything themselves. Soon or late they become

1 66 BUILDING THRONES
jaded and discouraged and begin to say damnatory
things about the selfishness and laziness of church
members. In many cases the discouragement is
due to the preacher's own ignorance and folly.
He made himself the one and only parish dynamo.
He did not roU the burden of parochial work upon
the shoulders which God had provided to receive it.
He aUowed his people to think of themselves as a
select society to be ministered unto, when it was his
business to train them to minister and to give their
lives a ransom for others. A minister should use
his people. He need not carry them. They are
able to walk. The farther they walk the better.
He need not do their work. The more they work
the more do they grow in grace and in the knowl
edge of Jesus Christ their Saviour. To do their
work for them is to blast their spiritual develop
ment and lay upon their substitute a burden too
great for flesh and blood to bear. Even Moses
tottered under so heavy a load. " I am not able to
bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy
for me. Kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, and let
me not see my wretchedness." And the reply of the
Almighty was, " Gather unto me seventy men of the
elders of Israel and I will take of the spirit which
is upon thee and wiU put it upon them ; and they

BUILDING THRONES 167
shaU bear the burden of the people with thee, that
thou bear it not thyself alone." This was the
method of Jesus. He did not attempt to redeem
Palestine unassisted. He rolled the great enter
prise upon twelve men, and then upon seventy,
and then upon one hundred and twenty. The
apostles would not allow themselves to be crushed
by getting under all the work which the church found
to do. They caUed out the resources of men whom
God had raised up for their assistance. If it be
true that the spirit of God has come upon all classes,
the old and the young, the women as weU as the men,
why should the minister not make use of his entire
church membership in getting done the things which
ought to be accomphshed ?
There are ministers who do not know how to
organize their people, and then censure them for
working ineffectively. To build the principle of co
operation into the hfe of the church is to augment
its power enormously. Capitahsts have learned
how to organize money, and it is by consohdated gold
that they are working their miracles. Industry has
mastered the art of combination, and a new era has
dawned for labor. It is for ministers to organize
character, to marshal conscience, to coordinate and
link together moral forces in such ways as to hasten

1 68 BUILDING THRONES
the coming of the golden age. If one can chase a
thousand, and two can put ten thousand to flight,
what may be expected when a hundred or five hun
dred Christians are amalgamated into a compact
body, inflamed by the spirit of the Lord, and led by a
man who knows how to blow from a bugle a blast
which is not uncertain ?
It is only by patient drilling that armies are
prepared for battle, and it is only by long-continued
training that Christians are fitted for effective
service. Telling church members that they ought to
work is not enough. Some preachers have a gift for
exhortation, and after that there is no more which
they can do. They exalt the glory of performance
and urge the necessity of laboring for God, but they
never point out the specific tasks which it is possible
for their people to work at. Or if they name the
task which is to be attempted, they do not designate
the successive steps which must be taken in order to
reach the goal. Laymen need leadership in the realm
of Christian effort, no less than in the region of Chris
tian thought. It is as easy to overestimate men's
knowledge of how to work as it is to underestimate
their willingness and ability to work if only properly
instructed. A large proportion of church members
are novices in Christian service, and must be led

BUILDING THRONES 169
on from point to point, like children in a kindergar
ten, with infinite patience and particularity of
instruction. Work must be broken into bits, and
the bits distributed to groups and individuals,
with detailed suggestions as to the best way of doing
it. Working for the redemption of a community
is a fine art, and aU of us are bunglers at first, gaining
proficiency only after many pains and botchings.
The gift of encouragement is more valuable than the
gift of exhortation, and the pastor who encourages
his people to take hold of certain definite tasks,
and heartens them step by step as they proceed
along the way, will bring to pass achievements for
ever beyond the vehement exhorter who is everlast
ingly expatiating on the heavenly loveliness of
service, but who never takes the trouble to tell his
people in unambiguous English what they ought
to do.
It must be confessed that not a few ministers
faU because of their inherent and ineradicable
selfishness. They work for the building of their own
throne, and give httle thought to the thrones of their
brethren. Their ambition, perhaps, is to make their
pulpit a throne, and they count themselves the only
preacher, forgetting that there ought to be in every
parish as many heralds of the cross as there are

170 BUILDING THRONES
Christians, and that it is only when the entire church
is at work preaching that the whole parish can be
reached. It may be their ambition to be model
pastors, and they devote themselves to the buUding
of lofty pastoral thrones, forgetting that there ought
to be in their churches as many pastors as there are
members. To every Christian is given the responsi
bility of shepherding souls. The pastor is a shep
herd of shepherds. Because the minister alone
officiates at the Lord's Table, he may lose sight of the
fact that every Christian is a priest, and is anointed
to be a mediator between God and men. It is easy
for a minister to be selfish without realizing how
selfish he is. He may insist on doing everything
himself, because he is unwilling to submit to the
drudgery of training others. He may prefer to do
all the speaking at every meeting because he has not
the patience to develop in others the gfft of speech.
A man of this type gradually gathers up everything
into his own hands, his people degenerating into
auditors and spectators. But his sin finds him out.
By failing to develop the resources of his people,
he curtails the sphere of his influence. The man
who builds masterful workers multiplies himself
manyfold. A preacher is never so surely adding
cubits to the height of his own throne as when he is

BUILDING THRONES I7I
buUding thrones for his brethren. It is by surround
ing his throne by other thrones that he comes into
the fulness of the power which has been promised.
How, then, shall the minister go to work in the
construction of thrones ? He must first of all be-
Ueve in human nature. He must have faith in the
capacity of the average man. God alone knows the
soul and the extent of its undiscovered resources.
The preacher who builds his hopes on brilliant
people only is doomed to disappointment. The
five-talented men and women are few in number,
and even when they use their talents, they are in
adequate to the situation. The preacher who would
make his church a power must begin by trusting
common people. The man with two talents must
be cultivated, and the man with one talent must
not be neglected. Stupid people are bright people
not yet awakened. Mediocre folk are geniuses
whose hour has not yet come. You never know
how many talents a man has from what he says or
from what he is able to exhibit. One of the constant
surprises in this world is the way in which the people
from whom we had expected little surpass those
from whom we had expected much. The pigmies
are always springing into giants, the dull pupils are
constantly passing the best examinations, the

172 BUILDING THRONES
sluggards are continually shaking off their lethargy
and performing the labors of Hercules. It is the old
story, the tortoise arrives before the hare. The
race is not always to the man you caU swift, and the
battle is not always to the man you think strong.
God seems to take delight in surprising us by choos
ing " the foolish things of the world to shame them
that are wise, and the weak things of the world to
put to shame the things that are strong, and the
base things of the world, and the things that are
despised, yea and the things that are not to bring
to nought the things that are." To unlock the vital
energies of immortal souls and set them working in
our human world is a work fit for a god. Many a
preacher faUs because he underestimates the possi
bilities of his people. All of them are created in
God's image. All of them are heirs of immortahty.
All of them are bought by the blood of Jesus. They
are now sons of God and it does not yet appear what
they shall be even this side of death. We only
know that they can pass from glory to glory,
gaining more and more of the power of the Lord.
Some ministers can use old people, but not young
people. They are suspicious of their young people,
and quarrel with them. Others can cooperate with
men, but not with women. They disparage feminine

BUILDING THRONES 1 73
endowments and lack ability to make use of them.
Others can utilize the educated, but not the un
lettered, the rich but not the poor, or vice versa; but
the successful preacher draws boldly on the resources
of all. He puts to use the vigor and hopefulness
of the young, the retrospection and wisdom of the
old, the virility of men and the tenderness of
women, the vivacity of youth and the innocence
of chUdren, for out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings God still perfects praise. He renders
useful the rich and the cultured, and also the
servants and aU who hew wood and draw water,
remembering that the spirit of God has come upon
all flesh, and that every human being is a shekinah.
Show your faith in human nature by expecting the
largest things of your people. Give them abundant
and taxing work to do. A church that is not kept
busy is certain to become fastidious, and a church
given to criticising is a church that encumbers the
ground. There is nothing so deadly to the spirit
of faultfinding, and the entire brood of demons to
which faultfinding gives birth, as work. Work
develops what is best in us, and kills what is worst.
You can cast out demons by training men to labor.
Work is a great sociahzer. It breaks down barriers.
Important work must be done by cooperative

174 BUILDING THRONES
effort. Cooperation increases strength and also
good feehng. Girls who sew together for the poor
sew their hearts together. Women who plan and
pray for missionaries forget their social differences.
Large tasks caU for the strength of the group, and
with the coming of Christians into groups there
descends the spirit of power. Association in labor
is a means of grace. Morbid moods disappear and
bad heart habits are sloughed off in an atmosphere
made warm by social intercourse. Church work
accomplishes many things, and not the least is the
bringing of Christians together. By coining to
gether they get nearer to God.
Trust the people, give them work, and then be
patient with them. The important thing is not that
things be done superbly, but that they be done in
creasingly weU. The head of a church must not be
fussy and must have the love which suffers long and
stiU is kind. Many of those who enter the vine
yard wiU sUnk out of it before noon, discouraged.
Others wUl stand idle in the vineyard, preferring the
shade of the vineyard to the sun of the market-place.
Your first impulse wUl be to castigate. But castiga-
tion is not a preacher's occupation. He is an en-
courager. People need nothing so much as courage.
A scolding pastor lessens the courage even of the

BUILDING THRONES 1 75
brave. The faint-hearted are legion, and to scorn
them is a sin. The blunderers must not be whipped.
Mistakes are numerous and exasperating, but after
aU a minister with eyes can always see a lot of solid
strength and splendid promise. To recognize a
success is better than to caU attention to a failure.
To blow a trumpet over a victory is better tactics
than to play a flute over a defeat. Fix your eyes
on the best things. It is an encouragement to
preachers that Christ had such a fondness for a
grain of mustard seed. What wonderful eyes he had
for seeing the possibilities wrapped up in diminutive
bundles. A preacher needs the eyes of Jesus, for
oftentimes the encouraging symptoms in the parish
are no larger than mustard seeds. He also needs the
heart of Jesus. A bruised reed our Lord would not
break. A smoking wick he would not extinguish.
There come days when to the preacher's eyes there
are no reeds in sight except bruised reeds, and no
wicks except those that are smoking. The church
seems filled with smoke, and the preacher is at the
point of choking. But a builder, working under a
permit granted by Heaven upon a structure which is
to outlast the stars, ought not to become discour
aged. He ought to count the cost before he begins.
Erecting thrones requires the qualities which a

176 BUILDING THRONES
builder needs in the building of a palace or a tower.
It takes time and skiU, fideUty and patience. It
cannot be done in a month or a year. It cannot be
accomphshed without thought. It requires a sweat
of blood. It is impossible without something of the
calm-eyed perseverance and the persistent courage
and the sober joy which Jesus had in the buUding of
the thrones for his apostles. The working force of the
church can be indefinitely increased by a minister
who has mastered the secrets of the art of buUding.
Energies can be coordinated, influences can be
mobilized, power can be built, if only the laws of God
are known and followed.
Keep your church, then, at the centre of the world.
Let the concentric circle, marking off the different
zones, he always luminous in your eyes : Jerusalem,
your town, Judea, your country, Samaria, those prov
inces of your nation's hfe least permeated with spirit
ual forces, and finaUy the great non-christian world.
This is your parish. The man who goes into his
pulpit with these spheres of influence spread out be
fore him wiU not be hkely to let his people go to sleep.
There wiU come into his utterance the tone that
Demosthenes knew, and men wUl say to one another,
wlule he preaches, " Let us march against Phihp! "
It is for the preacher to pick up his congregation

BUILDING THRONES 1 77
and hurl it upon the world. The work of the preacher
is with his church, the work of the church is with the
world. Let the preacher concentrate himself upon
his church, and his church wiU take hold of the town,
the nation, and the nations. Ministers who rush
hither and thither, eaten up with reformatory zeal,
meddling with this and dabbling with that, do not
begin to do so much for the advancement of the King
dom of God as do the men who stay at home and pour
out into the souls of their own people the full meas
ure of their vitality and devotion. What spectacle
is more lamentable than that of a minister struggling
by vociferous speech on misceUaneous platforms to
reform society, when his own church is scrawny and
feeble; striving to set the world on fire when the httle
group of people whom God has intrusted to his keep
ing are chalky and limp. The church is the preach
er's throne, and the man who builds the most vigor
ous and puissant church wields the longest sceptre
and wears the brightest crown.
There are seven forms of power which a Christian
church should be possessor of, or rather there are
seven kingdoms in which its influence should be felt.
The church is first of aU a worshipping body. She
sings praises and offers prayers unto God. She
cultivates the devotional hfe and trains men to bow

178 BUILDING THRONES
their heads and hearts before the King of heaven.
Public worship is a force to be carefuUy safeguarded
and constantly strengthened. A church becomes a
more effective working church when it has once
learned to pray and sing. Bringing the heart to
the throne of grace increases aU its capacities
and makes it capable of larger service. Pubhc
worship, moreover, is the testimony which the
church bears to the community of its faith in the
God who has revealed himself in Christ. For this
reason, pubhc worship should be fuU-toned and ju
bilant. Paul was always concerned about the im
pression which the church in her worship might
make upon a visiting stranger. AU preachers who
have the Pauline wisdom plan and labor for the im
provement of their church worship. To give it a
richer and more penetrating tone, to impart to it a
higher beauty, to suffuse it with a more solemnizing
and subduing spirit, is to increase the power of the
church, not only over the hves of its members, but
over the feeling of the community. Church attend
ance is not for Christians an elective. It is an es
sential part of the confession which a foUower of
Jesus makes to the world, a part of the work which
the Master expects him to perform. The very exist
ence of Christianity depends on social worship, as

BUILDING THRONES 1 79
aU the persecuting Roman emperors well understood.
Could Christians not come together, the power of
the Prince of Glory would be broken. "Forsake not
the assembhng of yourselves together," — so wrote
a New Testament writer to men who ran the risk
of losing their hves by frequenting the assembhes of
the Nazarene. Worship does a mighty work. It
melts the hearts of men together. They forget their
differences of rank and culture and fortune when
they repeat the creed or bow their heads in prayer.
For the effacing of the hnes which separate and the
obliteration of the barriers which estrange, there is an
immeasurable potency in common prayer. A con
gregation devoutly engaged in worship is doing some
thing for the community which cannot be done in any
other way. It is a collective confession of Christ
which outruns in influence the confession of any one
individual, no matter how exalted. It has a power
which the mightiest of sermons cannot exert. A
careless or dwindled congregation retards the prog
ress of Christianity. A hfeless and formal worship
shuts the heavens and makes it difficult to beheve
what Christ has said. Desultory church attend
ance is in Christians a sin. No Christian can absent
himseU needlessly from pubhc worship without
damaging the influence of the Christian society and

180 BUILDING THRONES
bringing loss to his own soul. Such persons are to
be accounted disorderly. They have left their place
in the ranks. They have violated the law of love.
They are to be admonished. The preacher cannot
afford to aUow the worship in his church to become
ragged or meagre. High standards should be held
up. The Lord's army on the Lord's day should
present a solid front. A disorderly or decimated
army suggests demoralization and invites defeat.
Pubhc worship is a form of power. It is one of the
hghts in the seven-branched candlestick.
The Christian society is a teaching body. The
preacher is a teacher. The church is a school. The
name for his foUowers which the Master loved was
pupils. History knows him as the Great Teacher.
The minister is the head teacher of his church, but
he cannot do his work without assistants. What
head teacher can ? He must educate a body of men
and women to whom God has given the teaching
gift and placed them upon thrones. At stated times
the church meets for the study of the Scriptures
by question and answer. Such a session of the
church we caU the Bible school. Whatever its name,
it should not be forgotten that the school is not an
outside institution, or an appendage to the church,
but that it is the church itseU engaged in the study

BUILDING THRONES l8l
of the Bible. The children are pupUs and so also
are the parents. The young are there and so also
are heads which are hoary. The school includes
professing Christians and aU others who are wilhng
to be taught. Here is an opportunity for the
preacher to enlarge the scope of the church's in
fluence. By caUing into the work of Bible teaching
a company of Christians variously gifted, a wider
and deeper impression is made than could be pro
duced by any one man. The choosing and training
of these teachers is a task of stupendous importance.
Through the personahties of the teachers, the gospel
comes with a wide variety of richness and persuasive
ness, supplementing the instruction of the pulpit
and reaching recesses in the community into which
sermons could not travel. Boys and girls who might
never be influenced by pulpit discourses, or even by
the prayers of their parents, are often wooed and
won by the fidehty and love of a teacher; and fathers
and mothers who had lost aU interest in organized
Christianity frequently take their places in the pew
again, because their chUdren are in the Bible school.
The preacher who raises up a consecrated Bible
teacher opens a new channel for the inflow of God's
grace. No Christians grow so rapidly as those who
teach the Bible. It is the Bible teachers who become

182 BUILDING THRONES
the pillars of the church. In training teachers for
their work the preacher is buUding thrones. Bible
teaching is a second flame in the golden candlestick.
The church is an evangelizing body. It exists
to make converts. The Master caUed men to him
only to send them out. He sent forth every one who
took his yoke and learned of him. St. Luke teUs
us that aU the members of the church in Jerusalem
went forth preaching the word. Every Christian
is a witness. The purpose of his witnessing is to
bring others to the truth. A church which makes
no converts is a church which Christ cannot own.
Unless it adds to the number of those who are being
saved, its own hfe is forfeited. It is sometimes
asked if a pastor ought to be an evangehst ? If by
evangelist is meant a man whose business it is to teU
the good news in such a way as to bring men to
Christ, then certainly every minister is caUed to do
the work of an evangehst. His pulpit message
should never lose the evangelistic note. His words
should pierce men's hearts and bring them to re
pentance. His appeals ought to prick men's con
sciences and compel them to ask what they ought to
do. If a minister preaches an entire year to uncon
verted people without a conversion, it is time that
he withdraw from the ministry or ask God to give

BUILDING THRONES 183
him another heart. But the preacher is not the only
evangehst. Laymen are baptized to announce the
good tidings. It is their privilege and their duty to
lead men into the kingdom of God. Church mem
bers must be trained to do evangehstic work. They
are not likely to do it unless they are asked. They
cannot do it weU unless they are trained. It is for
the preacher to gather round him a body of evange
lists and send them forth heralding the King. Lay
men can reach hearts which are closed to the preacher.
They can speak with an accent which the preacher
does not possess. The minister who trains a body
of lay preachers extends immeasurably the range of
the church's power. No one man has sufficient com
pass to his voice to reach aU classes of people. There
should be a varied appeal coming through the tongues
of many consecrated behevers. The church is an
evangehst, and the evangel ought to break into
music on a multitude of tongues. Passion for souls
is a power. Evangehsm is another candle in our
beautiful candlestick.
The church is a humanitarian body, — a servant of
the human race. Jesus was a lover of human beings,
irrespective of their condition or relations, and his
church is bound to show good-wiU toward aU. There
are three classes which must be ever close to the

184 BUILDING THRONES
church's heart, because they are dear to the heart of
Jesus, — the sick, the poor, and the forsaken. Noth
ing so enraged his soul as inhumanity. He began his
pubhc ministry by declaring his mission to be preach
ing the gospel to'the poor, healing the broken-hearted,
preaching dehverance to the captives, and recovering
of sight to the bhnd, and setting at hberty them that
are bruised. When John the Baptist sent inquiring
whether he was indeed the Messiah, the reply of
Jesus was, "TeU him I am doing deeds of mercy."
He declared that the universe was built on this
principle, and that the only men who would be
counted blessed on the Judgment Day would be
those who had ministered to the sick and the poor
and the forsaken. A preacher is not fit to preach
who has no time to visit the sick, to help the poor,
and to befriend the forlorn and neglected. If a
preacher has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of
his, no matter what he says in the pulpit. But this
work cannot be done by the preacher alone. AU
Christians must share in the privilege, that theymay
become partakers of the heavenly rewards. The
philanthropic work of the church should be organ
ized, and the largest possible number of church mem
bers should be enlisted in it. Most of them wUl
not go into it of their own accord. They must be

BUILDING THRONES 185
caUed to it by the pastor and trained by him that
they may do it weU. It is for him to perform the
miracle of multiplying the pairs of consecrated hands
until the entire community feels the church's heal
ing touch. The church is a philanthropist. Social
service is a power. PhUanthropy is an additional
flame-jet in the genial and hospitable candlestick.
The church is a reforming body. Its mission is to
turn the world upside down. It must prepare the
way of the Lord and make his paths straight.
It must torment the demons before their time. It
must put its foot upon serpents and scorpions. It
must be known as the implacable foe of things evU.
The strongholds of iniquity must be attacked, and
if possible puUed down. The ideal minister is a war
rior. He brings not peace but a sword. He wiU
make bad men fear him, he wUl lay siege to the par
ticular evils of his own town. Those of antiquity
may be referred to in a parenthesis, and so may
those of a city a hundred irules away. The preacher
must decide as to which enemies shaU be first as
saulted, and then proceed to lay plans for accom
plishing their overthrow. But the preacher cannot
fight alone. He is only a general, and no general
fights without his army. The church is an army.
This was Paul's conception. To Timothy he wrote,

l86 BUILDING THRONES
"War a good warfare." This assumes that a
preacher is a leader in a long campaign. Some
preachers have a deal to say about the church mili
tant, but their churches do no fighting. A church
which does not fight is a church whose pastor is not a
general. An army never fights unless it is organized
on a fighting basis, and is commanded by a man
who is not averse to battle. The church is the force
with which the preacher is to wage war. He must
driU his soldiers in the art of fighting. Many a com
munity is cursed with abuses which might be thrown
off, if only the churches would stir themselves. The
churches would put on the armor, if only they had
generals with a genius for command. Hundreds
of young men might have been saved to the church,
had only the preachers of the town picked out some
one formidable fortress of the enemy, and organized
the fighting abihty of the youth for a vigorous and
thrilling campaign. Young men want something to
do. By the grace of God they are born fighters. If
the church were only more militant, it might event-
uaUy even in this world become triumphant. Spir
itual mihtarism is a form of power. Zeal for reform
is a fifth lamp in the glorious candlestick.
Can the church be a pohtical force ? If by pohtical
force is meant a force influencing the temper and con-

BUILDING THRONES 187
duct of government, the answer is, Yes. Politics is
one of the kingdoms of hfe, and the church is to be a
power in aU of the kingdoms. A preacher is a
teacher of duty, arid no class of duties can be counted
trivial or unclean. For a preacher to slur or over
look pohtical obhgations is to be recreant to his
trust. Men are to render to Caesar the things which
are Caesar's. The officers of the state are ministers
of God, and the work which they perform is a part
of the plan of the Eternal. Church and state are in
a sense separate, but spirituaUy they are united by
indissoluble bonds. They act and react upon each
other, and both are divine agencies ordained for the
education of mankind. Each must help the other
to be what it ought to be. The church must be held
steadily at the center of the political world. The
mind of Christ must be built into the state.
This does not mean that the preacher shaU cham
pion favorite candidates, or defend party platforms,
or advocate partisan programmes. Party meetings
are always out of place in a Christian church, and
party sermons are always mischievous in a Christian
pulpit. The minister who attempts to dictate to men
how they shaU vote, or who ventures even to advise
a course of pohtical action, is certain to suffer the
retribution which his temerity has invited. Why

1 88 BUILDING THRONES
should a preacher be so short-sighted as to entangle
himseU with policies and parties, when he can do a
work so much greater by rousing souls to a sense of
civic obligation ? Why try to build a poUtical party,
when one can buUd a poUtical power? Why not
be content to quicken civic conscience, exalt civic
duties, keep social problems ever before men's eyes,
infuse the spirit of Christ into pohtical discussion,
so frame the sermons that forces shaU leap out of
them generating devotion to civic ends ? The min
ister is a prophet of the Lord. His work is inspira
tional. He is a buUder of sentiments, a creator of
atmospheres. It is for him to strengthen senti
ments which wiU strangle pohticians of the baser sort,
and create an atmosphere in which many a boss and
heeler wiU meet pohtical death by asphyxiation. His
work is to enlarge the social mind, the mind that con
cerns itself with communal affairs, and that labors to
extend the laws of Christ over widening areas of life.
Let him kindle a passion for social justice, intensify
the hunger for civic righteousness, and make men
daring in the face of depressing situations. Man is a
pohtical animal. His pohtical nature must be stimu
lated and set free. A rehgion wiiich leaves the po
htical interests and activities of men outside its
jurisdiction is not a religion which wiU commend

BUILDING THRONES 1 89
itseU to twentieth century men. The church must
penetrate everything — even the world of the
pohticians. Passion for civic righteousness is an
other torch in the blazing candlestick.
The church is a missionary body, it is sent on an
errand to the whole creation. To a Christian a nar
row life is forbidden. The church is a body of mis
sionaries, organized for the purpose of sending their
thoughts and prayers and assistance to human
beings whom they have never seen. It is by the
constant forwarding of messages of good-will and
tokens of love that isolated congregations are bound
together and chasms between races are bridged. The
missionary force of a church can be amazingly multi
plied and extended. Everything depends on the
minister. If the thoughts of his people do not reach
round the world, and if their hearts are not suffi
ciently capacious to hold all nations and races, it is
because his own vision is narrow and he is lacking in
the skUl to call out of the heart the forces which are
deepest and mightiest. The preacher who informs
himself in regard to missionary heroes and labors,
who keeps before his people missionary principles,
motives, problems, and victories, who organizes
classes among the old and the young for the study of
current movements in the missionary world, wiU in

190 BUILDING THRONES
time create a body of missionary sentiment which
wiU make itself felt to the ends of the earth. The
smallest and poorest congregation can be trained to
carry on its heart, if not a continent, at least an is
land in a distant sea. Missionary enthusiasm is an
other luminous wick in the God-created candlestick.
These are seven ways in which the church brings
its hfe to bear upon the world. They are seven
beams of hght streaming out across human hves and
homes, calling men to glorify their Father who is in
heaven. They are seven thrones on each one of
which Christ is seated, asserting his sovereignty over
the affairs of men. The hghts, if you look at them
long enough, all blend into one hght, and the thrones,
if you consider them intently, mass themselves into
one throne. The one light is the hght that shines
from God in the face of Jesus Christ, and the one
throne is the seat of the King who wears many
crowns. The preacher who, by giving his hfe to his
church, makes it potent in aU the kingdoms of hu
man thought and activity, has sat down with the
King of kings in his throne.

LECTURE VI
THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
Thus far we have been deahng with the local con
gregation. Let us now consider the relation of the
congregation to other congregations of the same com
munion, and the relation of these communions to
other communions of the universal church. No
congregation lives to itself or dies to itself. It is
part of an organism, intimately knit up with other
bodies, forming a hving whole. A pastor is bound
to take heed to aU the flock in which the Holy
Ghost has made him a bishop or overseer, and he
must so conduct his work as to feed the great church
of God of which his particular flock is a tiny frag
ment. Every preacher should do his work in the
radiance of the vision of the church universal. Thus
labored the first great preacher, Paul. He beheld
the church always looming before him as an august
and heavenly creation, at present stained and marred
by human imperfection, but growing up into One
able to make it a glorious church, not having spot or
wrinkle or any such thing. Behef in the Holy Catho
hc church is one of the articles of the universal creed,
o 193

194 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
and the preacher who hnks his behef in the church
with his behef in God the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, works with an unfailing energy and keeps his
heart serene in the midst of the storms.
There is but one church known to the New Testa
ment. Christ never conceived of more than one. His
church is a temple and it is built upon one foundation.
It is a vine of which he is the stock, and behevers are
branches. Two vines are unthought of . It is a flock,
and while there may be many folds, there can never be
more than one flock under the care of one Shepherd.
Dissensions and divisions were the one evU against
which Jesus threw his heart in his high-priestly prayer,
on the last night. That his church may be one
is the deep and constant longing of his soul.
AU of St. Paul's metaphors are stamped with the
idea of unity. He sees but one temple, one piUar,
one body, one bride, one household, one medium
of revelation. When enemies filled the world with
rumors that he and the apostles in Palestine were
building on different foundations, he hastened to
Jerusalem, and by a public conference with his
brother workers endeavored to put an end to the
damaging insinuations. He knew that a divided
church could never win the world. He who buUds
on a separate foundation toils in vain.

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 95
But by unity is not meant uniformity, either of
government or of polity or of ritual. Uniformity is
a surface thing, unity is deep and vital. "That they
may be one in us," which being interpreted means
one in character, fellowship, spirit, love, so runs
Jesus' great prayer, and it is the same sort of unity
which Paul has in mind when he exhorts the Ephe
sians to give diligence "to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace." To Paul, as to all other
New Testament writers, "There is one body, and
one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God
and Father of aU." The unity is not formal, but
spiritual. This spiritual unity manifests itself outwardly,
but not perfectly. The treasure is in an earthen
vessel, and the vessel bears the flaws of its origin.
But the unity is none the less real. Imperfection
mars, but does not destroy, genuine spiritual posses
sions, either in individuals or organizations. The
unity of the church is a growing unity, and passes
graduaUy from less to more. "Each separate buUd
ing, fitly framed together, is growing into a holy
temple in the Lord." The unity wiU express itself
in completer manifestations in the successive stages
of the unfolding process, until all groups of Christians
"attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowl-

196 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
edge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
If aU Christians are only rooted and grounded in
love, then aU will grow up sometime, somehow, in aU
things into him which is the Head, even Christ.
The real unity of the Christian church in the
twentieth century is a fact which every preacher
ought to see, and proclaim with joy. Many sour-
eyed prophets have gone abroad, bewailing in lugu
brious tones the church's deplorable and diabolical
divisions, and by their exaggerated representations
have caused many even of the elect to forget sundry
things which ought to be held steadUy in mind.
The church of Christ is not so divided as it looks.
The confusion is neither so deep nor deadly as it has
been painted. The seamless robe of Christ is not so
badly torn as the disconsolate are asserting. In
ritual and disciphne and government the various
bodies of the Lord's people differ, as they have a right
to do, but in the things which are essential they are
deeply and gloriously united. It is not by differences
in conception of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit,
of character and duty and destiny, but chiefly by
divergent views in regard to forms of ecclesiastical
administration that the various Christian commun
ions are held apart. There is a surprising unity in aU

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 97
the branches of Christendom in the things which are
¦fundamental. All Christians of whatever name unite
in repeating the Prayer which the Lord taught, and
in their extempore petitions they pray substantiaUy,
not only for the same things, but largely in similar
or identical phrases. Every Christian pulpit has
in it the same text-book, the Bible. The words of
prophets and apostles and the Lord himseU are in
every church the same. AU Christian bodies sing
hymns made sweet by the name of Jesus. In nearly
aU the hymn-books church union has already been
consummated. Christian ministers of every ecclesi
astical feUowship baptize men into the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and make use of
the bread and the wine in obedience to Him who
died for aU. All the great branches of the Christian
church repeat the Apostles' Creed. AU Christian
communions produce with minor variations the same
general type of character. The Christian saints, no
matter whence they come, are brothers, and carry in
their faces the same superscription. AU Christians
set before them the same model — Jesus of Nazareth.
There is an expanding feUowship in work. The
Protestant denominations are at the end of each dec
ade closer together in Christian service, and aU the
Christian bodies the world over, when not degenerate,

198 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
perform similar works of mercy. In every commun
ion of the great church, Jesus Christ is the acknowl
edged Head. His name is above every name. AU
Christendom prostrates itself before One alone, Jesus
Christ, proclaimed in sermon, prayer, and song the
King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The glory of the church universal ought to shine
round a man in the hour in which he is deciding which
one of the various households of the common faith
he shaU make his home. It is a matter of critical
moment, both for the man himseU and the cause of
Christ, that the young minister shall throw his hfe
into that particular Christian group which shaU en
able him to render largest service to the church
universal. He should keep out of denominations
which have no solid reason for their continued sepa
rate existence, and give his strength to a commun
ion which is testifying with conspicuous effective
ness to a truth which the great church needs, and
which is keeping ahve in the world a principle which
mankind cannot afford to let die. Protestantism
is needlessly divided, and the time has arrived when
many of the smaUer denominations, having accom
plished the specific purpose for which they were born,
should surrender their corporate existence in the in
terest of a more effective Christianity. Young men

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 199
of education and power cannot afford to identify
themselves with organizations which only needlessly
comphcate the doing of the church's business, and
which render a feeble and dwindling testimony to
the great doctrines of the Christian faith. A man
is under obhgation to hnk his hfe in with men who
are doing something indispensable and enduringly
valuable for the Kingdom of God.
Having decided upon his denomination, the
preacher must then consider to what particular parish
he shaU give himseU. Here again a wise decision can
not be rendered without taking into account the
Holy Cathohc Church. The minister is under obhga
tion to go to that one of the congregations which call
him in which he can render largest service to the great
church. It may be in the city or in the vUlage, in
some older section of the country or on its frontier,
in the homeland or beyond the sea; it may be a
large church or a small church, a rich church or a
poor church, but the one thing essential is that it
shaU give unimpeded scope for the free exercise of
the gifts of a full-grown man. The young preacher
cannot aUow himself to go into a community which
is overchurched, and to become the pastor of an or
ganization which is not needed. He should not hsten
to any advisers who counsel him to squeeze himseU

200 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
into a narrow place, for the sake of maintaining the
prestige of his denomination, or of carrying out the
ambitious plan of some shortsighted, overzealous
missionary secretary. The needless multipUcation
of churches is a wicked foUy, and in many a com
munity aU the churches but one ought to be aUowed
to die. To kiU them outright by ecclesiastical vote,
is at present an impossibility, but young ministers
can possibly hasten their death by keeping away
from them. In a world so needy as this, with mul
titudinous, urgent tasks calling for men, it is a tragic
blunder for a young man to accept the pastorate of
a church in which it is not possible for him to make
his hfe count in the work of his generation. Such a
course is ruinous in every way. The preacher him
self becomes dwarfed in spirit and stunted in intel
lect. He and his wife are likely to wear out their
hearts in trying to hve upon a salary totaUy inade
quate to their needs. Moreover, the dispositions
created in smaU communities in which competing
churches struggle for precedence, watching one an
other's every movement with eyes hke those of
jealous animals, are states of mind which are totaUy
contrary to those which the Gospel is intended to
foster, and render the coming of the kingdom of
righteousness and peace and joy an utter impossi-

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 201
bihty. Keep away from the church that has no ex
cuse for its existence save inherited bigotry or de
nominational pride. A viUage church, or a country
church, if it commands the field, is a great opportu
nity for any man, no matter how wondrously gifted.
Because a church is poor or smaU is no reason why
a seminary graduate should turn his back upon it,
provided it has a field. But to throw one's self away
in the attempt to keep the breath of life in one
of six churches in a community which needs but one
or two, is a piece of foolishness for which there is no
justification. It is not self-sacrifice, it is suicide.
Having chosen your denomination and your
parish, throw yourself into your church in such a
way as to make it a power among the churches with
which it is connected in a common service. A
preacher should never be ashamed of his denomina
tion, nor should he underestimate it. Denomina-
tionahsm is just now receiving many stripes, for its
Umitations and bitter fruits are numerous and con
spicuous. But after the worst has been said, it
remains a fact that denominationahsm has brought
upon the church of Christ innumerable and im
measurable blessings. The revolt from Rome in the
sixteenth century was not a mistake. The course
pursued by Calvin was not a blunder. The re-

202 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
fusal of the Puritans to submit to the tyranny and
insolence of the Anglican Bishops was not an act
to be apologized for by their descendants. The
freeing of the Wesleyan movement from the Anglican
church was ordained of God. It is written large
across the face of the modern world that where the
church is most diversely organized, there is it most
ahve. Uniformity like a bewitching dream stiU
haunts many minds, but it is an ignis fatuus which
leads nations into quagmires. It is where the church
is most uniform that spiritual vitality is least abun
dant. The religious outlook is more favorable in
Germany than in Russia, brighter in England than
in Germany, more promising in the United States
than in England. God seems to love variety in the
church, as he loves it in the fields and in the sky.
Liberty in the choice of ritual and government
may create a temporary and disconcerting confusion,
but it ministers mightily to hfe and progress. If
by its fruits, then, we are to judge denominationahsm
the conclusion is unescapable that it has met inex
orable needs of a growing world. No man need be
ashamed of belonging to a sect. The Roman Catho
hc and Episcopal churches, no less than the Metho
dist and Baptist churches, are sects, sections of the
great Church of God. The Greek church, the Church

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 203
of Rome, the Lutheran church, and the Church of
England, no less than the Presbyterian and Congre
gational churches, are denominations, groups of be
hevers in the great Household of Faith. There
is no more reason why a man should be ashamed of
belonging to a sect, than of belonging to a regiment
in an army. It is only by division and subdivision
that an army is rendered effective, and so it is only
by grouping Christians around regimental standards
that the church of Christ at the present stage of
development becomes manageable and capable of
doing its largest work. A soldier does not show dis
respect to the army when he is loyal to his regiment.
By regimental loyalty he increases the efficiency of
the army. His value to the army is measured by
his fidehty to his own division commander. It is
only when the separate regiments are kept to a high
standard of action, that the army comes into pos
session of conquering power. Every preacher is
most loyal to the whole church of Christ when he is
most faithful to his own denomination. The two
are not contradictory, but denominational fidehty
is an essential condition of catholic effectiveness.
A preacher who is so puffed up by vague ideas of liber
ality as to be indifferent to the welfare and progress
of his own denomination, is a preacher who need-

204 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
lessly circumscribes his influence and incapacitates
himself for rendering the largest service to the
universal church. It is by the careful training of his
church in the art of keeping step with the other
churches of his regiment, that he makes his most
valuable contribution to the fighting strength of
the army of the Lord of Hosts.
Ministers in the early years of their ministry
ought to be diligent students of their denominational
hterature. They ought to know how their denomi
nation came to be, the truths which it has empha
sized, the principles which it has glorified, the work
which it has accomphshed, and the heroes and
saints whom it has presented to the world. They
ought to familiarize themselves with the genius and
features of its organization, and the methods of its
ecclesiastical procedure, paying particular attention
to the achievements and present enterprises of aU
its missionary organizations. No society can Uve
and work without machinery. Machinery is run
by men. To help run the denominational machin
ery is a part of the preacher's work. If he shirks
it, he shows himself to be a selfish man. Laymen
are not to be excused from work which they do not
hke, neither are preachers. If ministers preach
self-sacrifice, they ought to practise it. Denomi-

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 205
national meetings may not be always interesting,
and the details of administrative business may be
irksome, but loyalty to his denomination is one of the
most beautiful of all the ministerial virtues, and to
sacrifice his time and strength for the good of the
related churches is evidence that the preacher is a
Christian man. If ministers accept the emoluments
and honors which come to them as members of a
noble branch of the church of God, and leave the
routine and necessary ecclesiastical work to their
more unselfish brothers, it is because their conscience
is undeveloped, and they have never been instructed
in one of the most important of all the departments
of clerical obhgation and service.
Denominational loyalty brings certain disciplines
which render men more effective in the pulpit. It
is a good thing for a preacher to know his ministerial
brethren, especially those who are not his equals
in attainments or position. The humblest and most
commonplace servant of the Lord honestly toihng
in the obscurest field, is not unworthy the compan
ionship of the most exalted of the pulpit princes.
God still loves the humble and the unnoticed,
and the man who would preach with searching power
must keep near to those whom God loves. A
preacher needs the widened heart, for preaching is

206 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
primarily a business of the heart. It is a means of
grace for a minister to know and love his brethren,
high and low, his comrades in the arduous warfare,
his coworkers in a hard field. He can afford to give
time and thought — no matter how large his parish
— to those who are pledged with him to support the
great cause. It is good also to face strong men in
meetings in which dehcate business is transacted
and estranging questions are debated. A preacher
needs to encounter the views of able men who differ
from him, and to hsten to speeches advocating
positions to which he is vigorously opposed. De
nominational conferences, assembhes, and councUs,
are a school in which the pulpit servants of the Lord
receive a training which can be gotten nowhere else.
A preacher is always speaking to people who are held
by church etiquette from pubhcly expressing dissent,
and, therefore, he above all men needs to face from
time to time an audience which wiU not hesitate to
tear his arguments to tatters, and vote down his
most cherished propositions. Instead of retreating
into his parish and submerging himseU in parochial
affairs, he needs to go out into the denominational
world, and grapple with those larger problems in
which thousands of churches are interested, and to
combat, if necessary, in the open arena, ideas and

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 207
tendencies which in his judgment do not make for
the advancement of the Kingdom. It is dwarfing
for a man to get so interested in his own congre
gation that he loses sight of the multitude of con
gregations whose hfe is bound up with that of his
own. He ought to hft up his eyes and look, and
train his people to hft up their eyes and look, upon
the great company of comrades with whom they
are marching. It is for him to develop in his people
a denominational consciousness, a quickened sense
that they belong to others. The bonds must be
strengthened between his church and its sister
churches. His church must be kept in touchjvith
the movement of the entire body to which it belongs.
Denominational opportunities and problems and
enterprises ought to be given a conspicuous place,
and the sweep of the preacher's thought should keep
his hearers ahve to the fact that they are a part
of an interested company engaged in a common
work, and moving toward a common goal.
When a congregation falls out of sympathy with its
sister congregations, and wraps itself up completely
in its own local tasks, it is the fault of the preacher.
An isolated preacher insulates his church. The cur
rents of the common hfe do not flow through him or
his people. Such a preacher is not a builder, He can

208 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
mould and place a piece of stucco, but he cannot
construct a segment of a great arch. The vaulting
spiritual relationships and the overarching sym
pathies and unities which hung always before the
eye of the master-builder of Tarsus are clean beyond
his ken. Alas for the preacher whose uttermost
horizon is the narrow boundary of his own httle
parish. Why should not every preacher so live and
labor as to help shape the ideals and dispositions
of his entire regiment ? To influence one's denomi
nation, however, one must pay the price. The
price is self-sacrificing loyalty, honest and seU-abne-
gating service. A preacher cannot influence his
brethren unless he loves them. He cannot stand
high in the denominational councils unless he serves.
If any man is to be great among the churches of
his order, he must become the servant of all.
Here again a plea is made for narrowness in the
interest of breadth. The preacher is to concentrate
his powers upon his congregation for the sake of his
denomination. He is to exalt and adorn his denomi
nation for the sake of the Holy Catholic Church.
If his denomination suffers, then aU the denomina
tions suffer with it; or if his denomination is honored,
then aU have reason to rejoice with it. The various
denominations constitute the body of Christ, and are

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 209
members in particular. There should, therefore,
be no schism, but the denominations should have
the same care one for another. Each denomination
does something which no other can do quite so well.
Each performs a function which ministers to the life
of aU. Differing widely in form and structure, they
yet belong to one another. There are diversities of
workings, but it is the same God who worketh all
things in aU. The eye ought not to say to the hand,
"I have no need of thee," nor again the head to the
feet, ' ' I have no need of you. ' ' Even denominations
which seem to be feeble may for the present be nec
essary, and deserve a more abundant honor. There
are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And
there are diversities of ministrations, and the same
Lord. To each one is given the manifestation of
the Spirit to profit withal. Having gifts differing
according to the grace that was given, every denomi
nation ought to do superbly the particular thing
which it feels caUed to do, not for its own self-ag
grandizement, but for the enrichment of the univer
sal church. If a denomination feels itself intrusted
with the work of emphasizing a particular truth,
then the better its work is performed, the sooner
wiU other denominations be impressed by that
truth, and be induced to give it place in their own

210 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
teaching and practice. If a principle is indeed a
thought of God, and one branch of the church is led
by the Spirit to give it a wider apphcation in human
hfe, then with every increase in the strength of this
branch of the church comes a fresh power of this
principle in its operation in the hfe of the whole.
Every denomination intrusted with a special grace
owes it to all the other denominations so to incarnate
the heavenly treasure as to make it seem a desirable
possession. Love does not require that men shall
suppress their deepest convictions, and keep sUence
in regard to truths which the Holy Spirit has to them
made clear. It is only by the brave and persistent
affirmation of those things which keep welling up in
the heart, that the whole truth finds expression and
the church of God becomes the medium for the
transmission of an unmutUated message. It is for
the great church that each branch of the church
lives and labors. Sectarianism of the baser sort
begins with the sect and ends there. It is the
conceit of the branch affirming that it is the vine.
Denominationalism is always a curse when it hfts
the denomination above the church universal. It
is not more disgraceful to belong to a sect than it
is for a leaf to grow on a twig or for a twig to grow
on a branch, but it is disgraceful for the leaf to

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 211
forget the twig, and for the branch to imagine it is
the tree. Sectarianism when baptized into the
spirit of Jesus ends with the great church. The
branch drinks in the sun and the rain in order to
add vigor and fruitfulness to the tree. It is fidelity
to the great whole which saves the parts from petti
ness and decay.
The preacher needs this vision to keep the gospel
vital on his hps. Only men of capacious heart can
preach with power the message which thriUed
prophets and apostles. It is a scandal in the Chris
tian church when a minister is a petty man. A thin
and stunted personality cannot be a fit channel for
the heavenly grace. Conceited pedants, opinionated
snobs, and supercilious dandies may stand in a
Christian pulpit, but they cannot preach the Gospel.
The Gospel is the message of the broadminded,
sweet-hearted, lofty-spirited, brotherly Son of God.
To make himself large enough to transmit even a httle
of the Master's spirit is a true preacher's lifelong
ambition and unending struggle. The great sen
tences of the New Testament shrivel on the lips
of narrow-headed zealots, who excommunicate their
brethren who differ from them. In the eyes of God,
he is both heretic and schismatic who by word or
action breaks the law of love. The preacher who

212 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
wishes to preach with the apostolic accent must
breathe the atmosphere in which the apostles did
their work. He must come under the power of Him
who is the express image of the infinitely sympa
thetic and all-embracing God. Devotion to the
church ought to add cubits to a man's spiritual stature
and new diameters to the circle of his sympathies.
If the word ecclesiastic has taken on a dark and
sinister meaning, it is only an added proof of the
wizardry of the mystery of evU which is able to
corrupt human hearts even when engaged with
things hohest and highest.
It is wholesome to form the habit of speaking of
the church as the Church of God. The phrase is
apostolic and breathes a majesty and elevation
which adjectives coined in denominational mints are
likely to obscure. Along with the books which deal
with the history and teachings of his own denomina
tion, the preacher should find room for volumes
telling the story of other communions which have
also borne the burden, and which are making certain
by their sacrifices the ultimate triumph of Clirist.
In no branch of the Christian church has God left
himself without a witness, and if we are to judge re
ligious organizations by their fruits, then all of them
have won his favor, for aU have received manifold

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 213
tokens of his grace. There is no study more
profitable for the preacher than the study of the
hves of saints and martyrs reared in communions
outside his own. It breaks down native bigotries
and inherited prejudices, and brings the soul to the
place in which the astonished Peter found himself
when he cried out in the hearing of his incredulous
f eUow-countrymen who were resisting the admission
of the Gentiles into the church, "If then God gave
unto them the like gift as he did also unto us,
who was I that I could withstand God ? " To all
the groups of men who have hved and labored in the
power of Christ has God granted repentence unto
hfe, and from every denomination can the preacher
gather wealth with which to make himself and his
people rich.
But better than communing with the souls of
men who are in their graves is holding fellow
ship with men who are now alive. Every preacher
should make friends outside of his own denomina
tional household. It tones up the heart to com
mune with saints of Christian churches far removed
in tradition and custom from one's own. Each ec
clesiastical discipline imparts a peculiar blessing to
those who are subjected to it, which can be com
municated in a measure by its possessors to those

214 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
whom God has educated in a different school.
The preacher who is content to know his denomi
national brethren only, and who has no desire to min
gle with those who see the truth from a different an
gle and express it in a different terminology, robs
himself of a means of spiritual culture which, if used,
would make him a stronger preacher and a nobler
man. Nothing ministers more effectively to the
cause of Christian unity than the bringing of clergy
men of different denominations together. Denomi
national isolation breeds suspicion and raises many
a spectre in the mind. We are always farthest from
the men we know the least. It is easy to say un
charitable things about a body of Christians with not
one of whose members we are acquainted. Men who
have friends in all denominations never degenerate
into bigots, and sometimes become prophets of rec
onciliation. The preacher must be a man with a
friendly heart. He must be the friend of publicans
and sinners, and also of saints who do not agree with
him in many of his customs and ideas. It is a great
thing to be just to those who differ from us in opinion
upon matters which we consider momentous, and it is
a still greater thing to be generous. To value virtues
which are unlike those which our fathers counted
cardinal, and to appreciate teachings which have

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 21 5
to us an unfamihar sound, is not easy. To put one's
self into the other man's place is in every depart
ment of hfe difficult, probably nowhere more diffi
cult than in the realm of religion. But to do this is a
manifest duty of every Christian, and especially of
the preacher. The preacher who makes disparag
ing remarks or ungenerous statements about other
branches of the church, or who caricatures their
doctrines, forfeits the respect of aU right-minded
men. A speaker is never under such obhgation to
be scrupulously correct, down to the last syllable, as
when he attempts to state the position of men from
whom he differs. If the preacher wishes to contro
vert the doctrines of another religious body, let him
study those doctrines as presented by their ablest ex
ponents, and then state them in the most plausible
manner in which it is possible for them to be put.
Christian scholars are not fools even if they do not
foUow after us, and their positions are not to be
overturned by a caricature or a jeer, but by an
argument framed of reasons which will win the as
sent of the unprejudiced mind. Controversy is a
hazardous and exacting business, and the man who
enters it must have clean hands and a pure heart.
Useless controversy is always to be avoided, and
most pulpit controversies are useless. The con-

2l6 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
troversial preacher is as a rule an unprofitable ser
vant. Even if he keeps his own spirit sweet, he is
likely to ruffle the hearts of his hearers. The net
result of his labors is ordinarily nothing. Few
things are settled by controversy. It is by empha
sizing the things upon which aU Christians are agreed,
rather than by harping upon the things about which
they differ, that the divisions of Christendom are to be
healed. Each denomination must work out its own
salvation, and the best thing which surrounding
denominations can do is to hold up a hght. Let the
preacher attempt to reform his own church famUy
rather than try to set right his neighbors. Sending
a chilling gale of criticism against a neighboring
church has a tendency to cause it to draw its obnox
ious, mantle more closely about it. Churches ac
complish most when they shine. It is not when
they cudgel one another, but when each one goes
out with its lamp burning to meet its Lord, that they
get rid of their errors, and come closest together.
The church farthest from our Protestant churches
is the Roman Catholic, and none, therefore, is
better worth our knowing. A Protestant preacher
who is not acquainted with the history and doctrines
of the Roman Cathohc church has been neghgent
at a point at which carelessness is calamitous. Be-

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 21 7
cause of its size, embracing nearly one-half of
aU the Christians in the world, because of its long
history, extending through so many centuries, and
because of its present power over the lives of men
and nations, it deserves above all other rehgious
organizations to be studied and understood. Both
Protestants and Cathohcs are less informed of each
other's doctrines than they ought to be, and it is the
ignorance on both sides which is accountable for
many things which good men have reason to deplore.
The fact that Roman Catholics differ so widely
from us at many points renders patient and sym
pathetic study doubly necessary. It is easy to mis
understand those who are far away. By the haze
of distance virtues are often hidden and vices enor
mously magnified. To understand his Roman Cath
ohc brethren is one of the urgent duties of a Protes
tant minister. The teachings of Cathohcism should
be learned from her own authors, undistorted and un-
colored by the interpretations of Protestant exposi
tors. We do not hesitate to kindle our spirits at the
fire which burns in Augustine's "Confessions," or in
Thomas a, Kempis' "Imitation of Christ," and we
gladly acknowledge our indebtedness to men like
Francis of Assisi, and Bernard of Clairvaux. It is
also worth one's whUe to study Roman Cathohc histo-

2l8 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
ries, and to master the arguments of the great Roman
Cathohc theologians. But better still than knowing
Roman Cathohc books, is knowing living Roman
Catholic men. There is no substitute for feUowship,
and when Roman Cathohc priests and Protestant
ministers come to know one another, the chasm
between the Roman Cathohc and Protestant worlds
will be less deep than it is. It is the separation of the
two sets of men from each other which has perpetu
ated suspicions and ill-will that ought to have
died long ago. To many a Protestant the candles
and the incense and the sanctus beU are so foreign,
that the Roman Catholic church seems to belong to
another world. Between the pomp of the gorgeous
ceremonial before the grand altar, and the unadorned
simphcity of a Protestant order of service, there
appears to be no point in common. But when de
vout Protestants and Cathohcs meet in the feUow
ship of friendly intercourse they discover that they
are not so far apart as it seemed. Underneath the
paraphernalia of Roman Cathohcism there beats a
great Christian heart, and a Protestant preacher
ought to know it and enter into sympathy with it.
It is a blessing to any Protestant minister to num
ber among his friends a few noble Catholic priests.
Through these friends he wiU see the whole Cathohc

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 21 9
church in a new light, and because of them he will
be less incUned to say bitter things of Roman Catho
hc errors. That Roman Cathohcism has overlaid
the simphcity of the gospel with needless mysteries
and bewUdering traditions, and teaches certain doc
trines which are erroneous and therefore mischiev
ous, is a fact of which an instructed Protestant has
no doubt. That some of her practices are dangerous
and some of her emphases overdone, is also a fact
which cannot be hidden. But there is something
more in Roman Cathohcism than error, and all her
actions are not blunders. In every century she has
given the world scholars, saints, and martyrs, and
whUe her sins have been crimson, she is not without
achievements of imperishable renown. If she has
not always treated Protestants with mercy or even
justice, our duty to her remains the same. We
are to remember that she is not the only sinner,
and that we too are not free from guilt. If, ecclesi-
asticaUy speaking, she curses us, we are nevertheless
to bless her. If she hates us, we are to pray for
her, and if she persecutes us and despitefully uses
us in aU countries in which she has the power, we
are, in all ways which are open, to do good unto her.
To brood over wrongs committed centuries ago, to
feel resentment toward men now hving because of

220 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
what men did whose bodies have long since been
dust, to exploit the moral dehnquencies of unworthy
men who may officiate at her altars, to coin suspi
cions into slanders, and convert inferences into
wholesale condemnations, this is not worthy of any
man who calls himself a Christian, and in Protestant
ministers it is monstrous. Wherein the Roman
Cathohc church is in need of reformation, we can
help her most by genuine sympathy and whole
hearted affection and good-will. We cannot refrain
from teaching and preaching certain doctrines which
are contrary to hers, for to be silent would be to be
recreant to the trust which has been given us, and
would withhold from her the blessing which we feel
sure we are able to impart. But we can hold our
tongue from slander, and can keep back our hps
from speaking sentences which stab and burn. We
can speak the truth in love, and when we differ
we can do it in a way which shows unutterable
regret. Instead of dwelhng upon her faUures and
her errors, we can meditate occasionaUy upon the
good things which^she has long been doing and which
she is doing still. We can rejoice that she trains men
to worship. It is her glory that she teaches men to
kneel. She builds up in human hearts the sense of
reverence, and leaves men awestruck and wondering.

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 221
The world is indebted to her for bending the human
knee. She teaches the principle of obedience. She
beheves in subordination. These are divine prin
ciples which need emphasis, and in building them
into the souls of men is she ministering to aU man
kind. She exalts and glorifies the duty of loyalty to
the church. The love of devout Cathohcs for the
church is inexpressibly beautiful. For the church,
Cathohcs will make aU sacrifices. Their devotion
travels aU the way to the gates of death. She has
the sense of sohdarity and feels the power of the
subtle hnks which bind the generations together.
Her saints run backward through the centuries, and
she trains men to think of the church as a vast so
ciety extended over the earth and sweeping into the
heavens, gathering into itself all the affections of the
heart, and the entire circle of the interests of man
kind. Before the eyes of the devout Roman Catho
hc the church of God looms sovereign and glorious,
the very home and shrine of the Eternal. If we
have much to teach her, she has also much to teach
us. If she has overemphasized certain principles,
we have overemphasized others. If she has over
looked important truths, we also have not been free
from dimsightedness. . It is a solace and a strength
to know that Cathohcs and Protestants belong to-

22 2 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
gether, and that, in spite of our many differences, we
are in the depths of our aspirations and hopes one.
Prepare, then, by your preaching the way which
shall lead to a reunited church. It doth not yet
appear what this church unity shaU be, but we know
that when it appears it shaU have a form which the
Lord himself approves. When it shaU come no
man knows, possibly not even the angels of God.
It is not for us to know times and seasons, but
power has been promised, and by that power we are
to conquer the ahenations and separations of Chris
tendom. Every man now entering the ministry
ought to ponder the fact that there is a world-wide
yearning for Christian unity and also for church
union. This is one of the signs of the times which
preachers are caUed to interpret. The Spirit of
God is saying something to aU of our churches, and
it is for the men in the pulpits to train the congre
gations to listen.
But the reunion of Christendom is not coming in a
day, nor as the result of any adroitly devised scheme.
The men who rush up and down the world exploiting
plausible programs for bringing separated commun
ions together, are not the men who are doing most to
put an end to our regrettable divisions. It is not by
propositions or compromises that the mighty mir-

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 223
acle is to be wrought, but by the baptism of the hu
man heart into a nobler spirit, and a f uUer entrance
on the part of Cliristian people into the thought and
hfe of God. Before we have church union we must
aU go deeper and rise higher. Men say, "Lo, here
is a platform upon which we aU can stand," or "Lo,
there are conditions which we are aU able to accept,"
but he who is wise wiU not place undue confidence
in the promises of the vehement and pushing proph
ets. Unity is a growth and not a manufactured prod
uct. Growths cannot be forced without deranging
the processes of hfe. Forced reunions result in fresh
divisions. The churches cannot be welded together
by the hammers of our flaming ecclesiastical states
men. They must be permitted to grow together, for,
be it not forgotten, the building upon which preachers
are working partakes of the quahties of an edifice
and also of a hving organism, and no matter how
industrious and ingenious the workmen, they are
compeUed to wait patiently for the completion of the
foreordained stages of a development which human
ingenuity is unable to hasten or alter. It is a para
dox of Christianity that to go fast, one must go slow.
In the realm of the spirit the shortest distance be
tween two points is not a straight hne. During the
last fifty years the churches have been growing to-

224 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
gether. Much of the bitterness and beUigerency has
already disappeared. Open hostility has weU-nigh
ceased in aU communities in which the people have
emerged from the stone age. In large sections of
the Christian world the various communions are at
present going their several ways, no longer caring
to fight one another, but not quite prepared yet to
love one another. We have the quietude of indtf-
ference, but not the fuh-toned harmony of consent
ing minds. But here and there are signs of a new
era. It is daybreak in many lands. The principle
of denominational comity is receiving a widening
recognition, and cooperation is being extended over
larger fields. Federation on a hmited scale has aUeady
passed from the realm of hope into that of fact, wlnle
a few audacious spirits even dare to dream of an or
ganic union that shaU take in the entire Protestant
world. The young men are seeing visions and the
old men are dreaming dreams, and some beautiful
thing wiU some day come to pass. Whatever a
preacher may think of the present practicabUity
of organic union, or even of federation, he is under
obhgation to make the church of which he is the
pastor increasingly Christian. He cannot escape the
duty of working in season and out of season for a
fuller Christian unity. Out of a richer spiritual unity

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 225
wiU come, in God's good time, new comities, fresh
federations, and amazing organic unions. If he
desires church union, then let the preacher develop
the spirit of Christian unity. Let him exorcise by
his sermons the demons of suspicion, jealousy, big
otry, exclusiveness, and ecclesiastical snobbishness,
and endeavor to set his people in the right attitude
to aU who take upon their hps the blessed name.
Let him build up the art of sympathy, the capacity
of appreciation, and the principle of cooperation,
and give to his church a corporate consciousness,
a cathohc spirit, a friendly disposition toward aU
who bow at the name of Jesus. This is foundation
work, and a deal of it must stiU be done before we are
prepared to attempt any of those imposing super
structures of church union which tantalize the im
agination and set the heart beating. The selfish
ness of the old individualism runs like a virus in the
blood, and the present generation is not prepared
for those larger forms of union which, please God, are
sure to come. Many a man has wasted his hfe in
pushing things which were premature. It is tragic
for men to try to hft the world by ecclesiastical
devices to a position which it is the divine will shall
be attained only by a steady and sUent growth con
tinued through many seasons. The organic union
Q

226 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
of aU Christian bodies is below the horizon of us who
are now hving, but the work of promoting spiritual
unity is practicable and urgent. In spite of dif
ferences in organization and diversities of worship,
the branches of the church can be brought closer
together in aspiration and endeavor. Congregations
can be lifted above the things which divide and
ahenate. We can plan and Ifft together. We can
join our forces in the work of casting out demons.
We can aU join in the sacrament of the Basin and
Towel. It is impossible to obhterate in the present
century aU the marks of division, but every one of
us can contribute something to the growing unity
of the Holy Cathohc Church.
Preachers need the inspiration which comes from
the vision of the great church to keep their hearts
from fainting in the day of battle. It is disastrous
to a preacher to have an outlook which is narrowed.
Human nature is prone to despondency, and, how
ever optimistic the temperament of the preacher,
the down-pulling force of the world's unbelief is sure
to leave its mark upon him. The tremendous power
of evil grows upon the Christian worker through the
years. There is no mystery so deep as the mystery
of iniquity, except the mystery of love. A young
man, confident in his strength, feels during the

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 227
earher years of his ministry that he can successfully
cope with this mystery of evU, possibly overcome it.
So EUjah felt, and so have aU young men felt in the
first flush of their initial victories. But as hfe ad
vances, the battlefield widens, and the warrior be
gins to see that he is wresthng not against flesh and
blood, but against the principahties, against the
powers, against the world rulers of this darkness,
against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places. It is when the implacable enemy
reveals undreamed-of ranges of his infernal and im
measurable strength, that the preacher needs to
throw himseU back on the doctrine of the Holy
Cathohc Church. His own httle congregation is as
nothing in so great a war, his denomination, however
large, shrinks into insignificance, a score of Christian
communions seem aU too few to meet and conquer
so formidable a foe. But when he Ufts up his eyes
and takes in the holy apostolic universal church, with
its thundering brigades and wide-flung battle hne,
and sees how many cohorts of the Lord's soldiers are
contending on the wide field, and notes the splendid
strength of phalanxes of warriors whose courage and
loyalty he had forgotten to count on, and whose
very existence had for a time escaped his mind, it is
then that he sees Satan falhng hke lightning from

228 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH
heaven, and enters into the peace of one who has al
ready conquered.
Give yourself horizon. Keep your sky from be
coming low. AUow your thought wide ranges. Let
your heart roam. Furnish your sympathies spacious
room. Look beyond your parish. Take in other
parishes. Your parish is the world. Look beyond
your denomination. You belong to them aU. AU
things are yours if you are Christ's. Keep ahve in
your people the consciousness that they belong to a
vast multitude whom no man can number. Do not
live exclusively in the present. Live also in the past.
Look back often to the Reformation, that fiery fur
nace in which the makers of our modern world walked
unharmed, because protected by the presence of the
Son of man. Do not stop at the Reformation.
Take in with the sweep of your eye the thousand
years that preceded Luther, in which God moved in
mysterious ways in the work of subjugating barbaric
Europe to a gentler temper. Let your glance take in
all the epochs of the Christian era, back to the days
of the apostles. Link yourseU and your church into
the chain of hfe which runs to Golgotha. Never
get away from the revelation of God in Christ.
Think of the church as an ambassador, treading the
highway of the centuries, holding in her keeping the

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 229
oracles of God, earth's inspired teacher inculcating
truths without which the hearts of nations utterly
faU, a heaven-sent companion upon whose arm hu
manity leans as it pursues with bruised, bleeding
feet the steep and hazardous way, a vast and ever
growing society linking nationalities and races to
gether, the inspirer of music and painting and archi
tecture, the enhghtener of men's minds and the
searcher of men's hearts, taming the wUd ages and curb
ing the fierce forces, bringing under her dominion every
type of genius, and every variety of temper, feeding
the souls of heroes and martyrs and saints, and by
her glorious ideals and imperishable traditions strik
ing a new unity through a disordered and hopeless
world. Let your vision be wide as the earth. Even
its fuU sweeping circumference is not the limit of aU
that is, for touching it are the clouds of glory which
conceal from human eyes the world invisible and
the church triumphant. Your church is a part of
the family which inhabits the world and the ages,
sweeping beyond mortal sight into the upper
splendors. In heaven we shaU understand, as. it is
impossible to understand here, the length and
breadth and depth of the meaning of the worn and
wonderful words : "I beheve in the Holy Cathohc
Church, the communion of Saints."

LECTURE VII
BUILDING THE PLAN

BUILDING THE PLAN
Ip a cardinal condition of success in the Christian
ministry is an unclouded vision of the thing to be
done, a second essential is the formulation of a plan
by which the work shaU be accomphshed. First,
the vision of the goal, then the method of reaching
it. There are two classes of ministers whose careers
are tragic. The first are those who see not clearly
what it is they are to do. The world for them hes
shrouded in a mist. They walk like men in a fog.
The second see with some degree of clearness the
destination, but they are too careless or precipitate
to buUd the agencies by which the goal can be at
tained. Both classes of men arrive nowhere, the
first because they do not know where they want to go,
the second because they lack the wisdom of fitting
means to ends.
If we think of the Christian mimster as a buUder,
the necessity of planning presses itseU at once upon
the mind. What is an architect but a designer, and
what is a builder but a man who makes and foUows
plans ? Before a pencU is put to paper, the architect
233

234 BUILDING THE PLAN
sees the building which is to be ; and before the first
shovel of earth is turned for the foundation, speci
fications have been accurately and voluminously
elaborated. Builders never dash ahead, not know
ing whither they are going. The planning intellect
has gone before them, carefuUy marking out the way.
The depth and thickness of the foundations, the
length and composition of aU the walls, the dimen
sions of every chamber, the location of every door
and window, the position of every pipe and wire and
chimney, a thousand detaUs are thought out and
fixed before the stones are blasted from the quarry
or the first load of lumber is ordered from the mUl.
It is not the way of buUders to plunge blindly into
their work, trusting to the inspiration of the moment
or some happy conjunction of events to guide them
in the shaping of the structure for which the world is
waiting. Doors and windows cannot be located at
the dictate of a passing fancy, nor can the propor
tions of an edifice which is to delight the eyes and
serve the needs of many generations be left to the
caprice of men who have started with no definite
conception of how the different parts of the buUding
are to be organized into a weU-balanced and service
able whole. When men dedicate themselves to the
construction of a cathedral, months, and it may be

BUILDING THE PLAN 235
years, are devoted to the perfecting of the plan. The
voids are spaced, the solids are proportioned, the
contours are traced. There is a central idea, and
everything develops from something else. It is only
by painstaking planning that the proportions are at
last made perfect, and the arrangement becomes so
natural that it seems to be inevitable. Preaching is
a science and an art. Preachers are architects and
artists. Men are hving stones to be built into a
growing temple. They who work upon this tem
ple must understand and obey the subtle and in
exorable laws of spiritual architecture. They must
restrain caprice. They must work with a firm and
steady hand, the hand made steady by a far-seeing
eye. The eye must see what ought to be, and trace
the hnes of what is to be, and aU the preacher's toU
must be cooperant to an end.
The man who is caUed to the work of church buUd
ing ought to study and practise the art of planning.
The plan itseU is a sort of edifice to be built by pa
tient thought and conscientious care. It is not a
waste of time to give hours and days to the work of
pondering and maturing schedules for future opera
tions. Each day should be surveyed from the van
tage point of its earhest working hour, each week
should be mapped before its first day has reached

236 BUILDING THE PLAN
its noon, each month should be laid out before it has
arrived. The preacher should work upon his plan
continuaUy, modifying it from time to time in obedi
ence to the movements of the divine spirit, perfecting
it in the Ulumination of the increasing hght. His
plan is an invisible temple in whose construction the
sound of hammers is never heard, but which, though
a purely spiritual creation, and known to God and
the preacher only, is a potent factor in giving shape
and beauty to the temple buUt of flesh and blood
which is to stand before the world.
The best of aU times for the work of planning is
a minister's vacation. This is one of the two best
uses to which a vacation can be put. The first
object of a vacation is relaxation. The bow which
is always bent deteriorates in value as a weapon.
The field from which the same crop is year after
year demanded, after a whUe runs out. The brain
is hke the soil and must be given seasons to Ue
fallow. No mind can give out perpetually. There
must be extended periods for receiving. The
largest reservoir in time becomes empty if a con
stant stream flows out and no compensating stream
flows in. When ministers cross the deadline at
fifty, it is because they have been lazy, or because
they have worked so continuously as to fag the

BUILDING THE PLAN 237
brain. When the mental field is exhausted, the
sermonic crops are thin, and the saints begin to say
of the man in the pulpit, "He is a good man, but he
cannot preach." In some cases it is the saints which
are largely responsible for this tragic ending of a
minister's career. Because of their ignorance they
aUowed their pastor no sufficient vacation, and by
holding him unbrokenly to his task, they killed his
mind. And they also wore out his heart. His heart
became fatigued, and he could not bring to his work
the elasticity and spring of a healthy spirit, or infuse
into his sermons the freshness of a soul which has
retained its buoyancy and sparkle. A preacher is a
catapult. He is always hurhng things, ideas, argu
ments, exhortations, expositions. To accomphsh
his ends he must project himself. His office compels
him to throw his soul upon the souls of others.
But this work, if continued through too long a
stretch, is hurtful to the man who does it, and may
prove fatal to him. A man cannot be a catapult all
the time. The expulsive muscles of the mind must
be given respite. The receptive faculties must have
opportunity to grow and gather stores. The minis
ter must at times sit down. He must let others feed
him. Like the Man of Men, he must go apart into a
desert place and rest awhile. This is his duty. He

238 BUILDING THE PLAN
shirks it at his perU. Every minister should have
at least one month out of every twelve for relaxa
tion. If the parish is large, two months are better
than one. In any case, two weeks is no vacation at
all. One week is required for clearing out the mind
so that the minister is able to rest, and the second
week loses its heahng virtue if broken into by pre
paration for the sermons for the first Sunday after
his return. Nothing less than a month deserves
the name of vacation for a preacher. If church
officials are unwiUing to grant one month in twelve,
they should be instructed. Men who mean well
often crucify God's servants, not knowing what
they do. Pastorates must of necessity be short,
if ministers are not given reasonable spaces for
recuperation. It should be the ambition of every
church and all pastors to make the pastorate
long. It is when the minister is not driven by the duties
of the ordinary days that he can best plan for the
work of the coming year. One can see his church
best when he gets away from it. Detachment sup
plies the eyes with new lenses. An artist working
in oil steps back again and again from the canvas
in order to see what he is doing. The minister
should every year stand back from his church, and

BUILDING THE PLAN 239
examine it in the light of a changed perspective.
At his leisure he can observe how far the develop
ment of his ideal has progressed, and may possibly
discover defects which had escaped his notice.
He will find that certain things have gotten out of
their true relations, and certain other things do not
exist in correct proportions. The shadows are too
intense, the high hghts are not strong enough. The
emphasis has been too insistent at certain points,
and there are drifts and tendencies which need
immediate attention. Many a valley must be ex
alted, and several hiUs must be brought low in order
that the way of the Lord may be prepared. A care
ful survey of the last year's work is an excellent
discipline for fitting one to plan intelligently for the
year to come. A wise minister is never idle on his
vacation. There are a hundred things which he can
attend to while he is sitting down. He can mend
his nets. They have become worn and possibly
torn by the hard usage of the year, and he can now
look them over and repair them. Certain methods
have proved faulty, and these can be investigated
and improved. What is the church itself but a big
net let down into the human sea? It is always
getting torn, and the minister on his vacation can
leisurely examine the rents. He can deal with his

24O BUILDING THE PLAN
church as a physician treats a patient, making a
careful diagnosis, ascertaining the weak spots in the
organism, and deciding on certain courses of treat
ment which promise to bring the invahd into fuller
health. He can look the church over as a teacher
surveys his school, asking himseU what are the
pupils' chief defects, and what are the graces to
which most thought and time should be devoted in
order to bring the school up to the standard pre
scribed by the Great Teacher. He can inspect his
church as a general sizes up his army, counting
up the troops which are available for action, making
a roll of those who are in the hospital unable to bear
the shock of battle, or even the fatigue of the march.
He can mentally reconnoitre the country of the
enemy, studying his position, pondering his re
sources, speculating as to his probable powers of
resistance, and calculating the chances of a victorious
attack. He can scrutinize his church as a builder
runs his eyes up and down a buUding, noting the
cracks and stains, measuring the extent of the dilapi
dation which time and wear have wrought, and
devising plans for its cleansing and complete res
toration. A minister ought to come back from his
vacation knowing what he is going to do. If, in the
quiet hours of his holiday, he has on mountain side,

BUILDING THE PLAN 241
or by the sea, or under some ancient oak or pine,
or on the waters of some lovely lake, looked at his
church with eyes made keen by love, and has made
mental note of its deficiencies and delinquencies,
and has catalogued its opportunities and immediate
obhgations, and if he has meditated on the difficul
ties of the situation, and weighed the obstacles which
must be overcome, and if he has balanced in his
mind the comparative merits of different plans of
campaign, and has decided which one gives largest
promise of success, he will carry in his soul an in
spiration which will communicate itself to his people,
and wiU find himseU endowed with a strength and
courage which wiU hghten the heaviest burdens and
throw round the most desperate enterprises the halo
of hopefulness. A church hkes to feel itself in the
grip of a man who knows where he is going. Noth
ing is so discouraging to Christian people as to feel
that their leader is not leading. The outlook is
indeed dark if the preacher does not know what
things he and his church ought to bring to pass.
Simply to keep the church machinery running for
the sake of seeing the wheels go round, is a vexation
of spirit, driving church members into the mood of
the man who exclaimed : "Vanity of vanities, all
is vanity." A minister has not made the highest

242 BUILDING THE PLAN
possible use of his vacation unless he comes out of
it with a plan for the next year's work.
The benefits of a plan are manifold. It helps the
minister save his soul. It protects him against the
encroachments of aU sorts of idle and thoughtless
people who are ready to eat up a minister's strength
and time. A man who has not had actual experience
in the Christian ministry has not the faintest con
ception of the pressure, constant and tremendous,
to which a pastor is subjected. His tasks are multi
tudinous, and he is in peril of being dissipated and
broken by them. When one has too many things
to do, he becomes bewUdered and helpless. The
young preacher is hkely to be pushed hither and
thither by people and events, untU the week becomes
a turmoil and a tangle. Driven by forces which are
as pitiless as furies, he feels sometimes like a straw
blown about by the parish wind. His good inten
tions are smashed to sphnters by the impact of
chance happenings. The world is fuU of good-
hearted but inconsiderate people, amiable, but
cruel because they do not think. Men who have no
connection with the church rush to the minister
when they have axes to grind. He is asked to do a
hundred things which he ought not to attempt to do.
The ministry has in it many exhausted men who

BUILDING THE PLAN 243
have frittered away their energies on a multitude
of unrelated errands and bootless projects. Caught
in this seething whirlpool of parochial activity,
the preacher suddenly finds himself face to face with
a new Lord's day calhng for two sermons which he
has had no time to prepare. He goes into the pulpit
shamefaced, knowing that his message is not related
to the message that preceded it, or to the message
which is hkely to come after it, but is a haphazard
thing extemporized to meet the emergency of an
embarrassing occasion. A man who works in this
fashion is not an artist. He is a clodhopper. He
is hving from hand to mouth and therefore belongs
to the shiftless and defective classes. The church of
such a minister will be an unshapely, ungainly thing,
and as soon as possible he will exchange it for an
other. A definite and weU-considered plan is a min
ister's Ufe preserver. It helps him to hold the out
side world in its place, and to keep his parish from
crushing him. A good-natured man, unless he wr
shielded by a plan, is apt to be wheedled into all
sorts of useless undertakings and inveigled into
many kinds of intellectual and social dissipation.
The minister is indeed the servant of all, but this
does not mean that he is to be the drudge of every

244 BUILDING THE PLAN
httle despot who crosses his path and beckons to
him. He is the servant of aU, and therefore cannot
allow himself to be undone by a foohsh few. A
preacher should plan his study hours, and hedge
them in with a waU of fire. He should plan his
social Ufe, and keep himseU rigorously within the
bounds which his own good sense has circumscribed.
He should hve within his income. Are there not
twelve hours in the day, and has not the stock of
nervous energy also its limitations ? A man cannot
do everything he would like to do, or everything
which other people want him to do, or everything
which the world tells him he ought to do. He must
pick and choose the particular things which he is
convinced God wants him to do, and when undiscern-
ing and meddlesome people urge him to do this and
that and beg him to go here and there, let him think
of the Man who never once aUowed himseU to be
elbowed from his path, calmly saying, "My hour
is not yet come."
^ A plan saves the minister from the tyranny of his
own moods and caprices. Most preachers have
moods in abundance, and of luxuriant variety.
Inspirational men are exceptionally sensitive, and
responsive to their environment. It is because they
can be moved that they are able to move others.

BUILDING THE PLAN 245
Coarse-grained and stolid men never make inspiring
preachers. The temperament which fits a man to
become the medium of the spirit of hfe is specially
susceptible to wayward inspirations and depress
ing humors. The preacher, more than most men,
fluctuates in the tone of his feehngs. He is up and
down, exalted and abased, in heaven and not in
heaven. Like Elijah he is jubUant to-day on
Carmel, and to-morrow he is under the Juniper tree.
This week he has the best church in the world,
next week he is meditating the paragraphs of his
letter of resignation. These elations and depres
sions are psychological experiences with which
ministers, with few exceptions, are compeUed to
contend. It is weU to plan for them in order that
they may not work havoc. Many a minister in a
despondent mood has taken a step which has filled
years with regret. No man is himself in his depleted
hours. The judgment gets twisted when the fires
of hfe burn low. Virtue is going out of a minister
all the time, because some one is always touching
him. The drain of the blood of the nerves is con
stant. He should save himself from himself by a
plan. A plan is a bulwark against aberrations.
Every man has his luminous hours, and a plan
formed in the hght can be carried out through

246 BUILDING THE PLAN
hours of gloom. The path which one has seen from
the mountain can be foUowed even after it has been
blurred by the inblowing mist. A plan is a bridge
which carries the preacher over rushing torrents of
dark feehng, an angel which protects him through the
storm of the wild night. The soul of a preacher is
not secure without a plan.
It is by planning that a minister also escapes from
the clutches of the demon of indefiniteness. Vague
ness of expression, vagueness of thought, vagueness
of pohcy, these constitute a trinity of demons which
the preacher must at aU costs overcome. Demons
do not hke plans. They are aU opposed to order,
for order is heaven's first law. They are the
friends of confusion, the makers of chaos. If a
preacher can be induced to foUow his impulses and
to rely on his fitful enthusiasms, the infernal world
rejoices. It is the man who sits down and counts the
cost of the tower who is most likely to finish it.
It is the general who carefuUy calculates the re
sources both of himself and of his enemy who in
creases his chances of winning the victory. The suc
cessful preacher is the man who first of aU takes
time to ascertain precisely what it is he wants to do,
and then takes additional time for working out his
plan of doing it. When a preacher preaches, and

BUILDLNG THE PLAN 247
men go home from the sermon not knowing what
the preacher was trying to accomphsh, and when
he works an entire year among his people and leaves
them at the end of the year in doubt as to what he
wanted them to do and be, he is a workman of whom
the church of God has reason to be ashamed. The
preacher ought to work upon his plan in order to
sharpen his mind. He can dissipate a fog by creating
a program. It is only by building a good plan that
he can save himself from the humiliation of making
a botch of his church.
For the sake also of the people the minister ought
to plan his work. It is a wonderful hberty which is
granted to ministers, and the hberty ought to be
used humbly and in the fear of God. To them is
given the privilege of determining not only what
hymns shall be sung, what truths shall be unfolded,
what duties enforced, what warnings shall be
sounded, what consolations administered, but also,
except in hturgical churches, what Scripture shall
be read, and what shall be the length and character
of all the prayers. The whole ordering, not only
of pubhc worship, but of parochial activity, is left
practically in their hands. It is a heavy responsi
bUity not always appreciated, a solemn trust which
is oftentimes abused. If the minister does not plan

248 BUILDLNG THE PLAN
his work, his people are at the mercy of his impulses
and fancies, his prejudices and idiosyncrasies, pos
sibly his vagaries and hallucinations. He wiU, un
less he guards himself against it, foUow his natural
hkings, choosing always the line of least resistance,
and thus he wiU give his people not what they ought
to have, but what it happens to be easiest for him to
give. In this way he wiU fall into ruts and even
gullies, dragging all his unhappy flock with him.
His instruction wUl lack balance. The hfe of
the parish wiU languish, struck through with the
deadening monotone of a selfish man. The impulses
of the passing hour are poor guides in the realm of
ministerial duty. The preacher must use his reason.
He should present to God and his parish a reason
able service. Having looked backward and forward
and aU around, he should lay out his work on a
rational basis, with due consideration to aU the
different interests which have a right to be recog
nized. A plan drawn by the reason tugs at a man
and pulls him in spite of his biases and preferences
into wider orbits. The man who plans for his people
crucifies many of his own fancies and foibles. The
human heart, even in the breast of a preacher,
is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately
sick. The deceitfulness can be in a measure cir-

BUILDING THE PLAN 249
cumvented by a plan. Who has not seen a minister
riding proudly down the Appian Way of his own
tastes and ambitions, dragging his parish at his
chariot wheels ? But if the church be the bride of
Christ, it is she who is in the chariot, and the
preacher is her servant. She is reading the book of
Life, and hke the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip
overtook, she is perplexed by certain paragraphs
and phrases. It is for the preacher to draw near,
find the enigmatic passages, and proceed to their
systematic unfolding and orderly apphcation. In
building his plan the preacher keeps his eye on his
church. When a minister acts off-hand, without pre
meditation, he may forget to act hke a Christian;
but when he sits down and calmly forecasts the year,
he is certain, unless he be a son of perdition, to look
not only on his own things but also on the things
of others. Planning for his people reduces the self
ishness of the preacher's heart. Paul was a father,
a mother, and a brother to his converts. He was
always anticipating their wants, making some new
provision for their souls.
For the sake of himself and his people every
minister ought to have a church year. If he is not
the servant of a communion which supplies him
with a schedule ready made, let him make one for

250 BUILDING THE PLAN
himself. He can make a better one, possibly,
than can any ecclesiastical council, however august.
The unanswerable objection against all calendars
devised for the use of Christian bodies is that they
are too stiff. Not enough room is aUowed for the
free play of the hfe of the individual churches.
Wide hberty is needed in the planning of pubhc
worship, and great flexibility is desirable in the
framework of the plan. The church of God exists
in different zones, and therefore in different cli
mates; and consequently the almanac is not a safe
guide-book for the church in the work of planning
its worship. Races differ greatly in temperament
and culture, communities differ widely in tradition
and social custom. To try to force aU churches into
a common temporal schedule irritates and fetters.
The church that uses in aU its congregations a table
of Scripture readings made out by men who hved
three hundred years ago needlessly hampers its min
isters in the doing of their work. The appointed
lesson for the day is often inappropriate, either
because of the character of the congregation, or the
season of the year, or the overshadowing of some
great and recent event which calls for Scripture of a
different tone. To have the same theme treated in
all churches on the same day is striving after a uni-

BUILDING THE PLAN 25 1
formity which is not worth what it costs. The
interests of the local congregation should be jeal
ously safeguarded, and every pastor ought to be
granted large freedom in shaping the worship to the
particular requirements of his own parish. For
instance, the descent of the Holy Spirit is an event
which, along with the birth of Jesus and his resur
rection, ought to be commemorated every year, but
there is no compelhng reason why the coming of the
Spirit should be celebrated only on the seventh
Sunday after Easter. For Easter is itself a movable
festival, it being impossible to hold fast to the
precise anniversary day of Jesus' rising from the
tomb. The dates in the almanac are such formal
and flimsy things that there is no necessity for bind
ing to any one of them inseparably any one of the
great events in the hfe of our Lord. If the larger
part of a minister's congregation do not remain in
the city seven weeks after Easter, why should he
not preach his Pentecostal sermon on some earlier
Sunday? To keep the correct sequence of the
events is desirable, but to observe the precise day is
not important.
Several centuries ago the non-conformist bodies
of Great Britain threw away the traditional
ecclesiastical year, and for reason. The church

252 BUILDING THE PLAN
calendar had become a part of the yoke which
it was impossible longer to bear. It was
freighted with associations which were disturbing
to many consciences and hearts. The number of
festivals and fasts, of vigils and feasts, of bishops,
martyrs, confessors, and saints to be commemorated,
had been so multiplied that the church calendar
had become a burden and scandal. But the idea
which lies at the root of the church year is a sound
one, and there is no reason why aU ministers, no
matter what their ecclesiastical connections, should
not make use of it. The root idea is that the funda
mental facts and truths of the Christian rehgion
shall be commemorated at stated times every year.
Such an annual commemoration has many things to
commend it. It is helpful to the minister in that it
keeps him from wandering away from the things
which he is ordained to proclaim. It safeguards the
church against the neglect of vital Christian doctrine.
It fosters the natural growth of the spiritual hfe.
If a minister marks upon his calendar at the begin
ning of the year the cardinal events in the hfe of
Jesus, and the foundation doctrines of the Christian
faith, he will save himself from a variety which is
distracting, and from a monotony which is benumb
ing, and his people from that ignorance of evangehc

BUILDING THE PLAN 253
truth which hes hke a bhght upon so many congre
gations. There are certain themes of such moment
to the soul that the preacher should deal with them
every year. The sovereignty of God, the love
of God, the birth and death and resurrection and
character of Jesus, the work of the Holy Spirit,
the Great Commandment, the New Commandment,
and the Golden Rule, faith and hope and love,
prayer, Bible study, and self-sacrificing service,
the guilt and penalty of sin, the call to repentance,
the offer of forgiveness, civic duty, international
peace, missions at home and abroad, the commun
ion of saints, and the hfe eternal, — surely no year
would be complete with any of these sovereign
themes omitted. They are themes which never
grow old. They can never be exhausted. They
are springs at which our fathers drank, and the last
generation which shall hve upon this earth wiU find
refreshment in them. There are at least twenty
themes on which a minister ought to preach every
year. They are the old things which he is to bring
out of his treasury again and again, giving them each
year a different body, and pouring into them each
year a fresh passion which will make them all new.
StiU other sermons can be decided on before the
year opens. These will be upon themes which were

254 BUILDING THE PLAN
not touched upon last year and which need not be
repeated in the year which is to follow. Truth is a
vast country, and there is no reason why a preacher
should settle down in one smaU corner of it. It
should be his ambition each succeeding year to con
duct his hearers into at least one new region of the
Scriptures, in which the scenery is somewhat un
famihar, and where the flowers and fruits expand
one's conception of the lovely and luscious things
which grow in the garden of the Lord. Many of
these sermons can be coordinated. They can be
organized into groups or courses. Sermons can be
trained to help one another. They are not Christian
sermons if they recognize no neighbors and confess
no duties. They ought to march hke soldiers en
listed for a great campaign. The sermons which
come late ought to support the sermons which came
early, and carry onward the work which they began.
There ought to be a spiritual unity running through
the year, and one increasing purpose. What these
sermons ought to be, the preacher cannot teU untU
he has made a careful study of the spiritual condition
of his church. What does it lack? Faith, cheer
fulness, hopefulness, patience, aggressiveness, rever
ence, love ? Whatever it lacks the sermons ought
to supply. A preacher ought to be as wise as a

BUILDING THE PLAN 255
farmer. A farmer decides what crops he wants,
and selects his seeds accordingly. He knows he
will reap what he sows. The preacher has the
advantage of the farmer in that the preacher can
not only select his seeds, but he can also control the
weather. He can determine the quantity of the sun
and the dew. He can fix the sequence of the seasons.
If he does not get the fruit he desires, it is because
he does not understand the creation and manage
ment of spiritual meteorological conditions.
The skiUed preacher ever works to make an im
pression. Deep impressions are made by concen
trating forces upon definite points. If sermons are
entirely disconnected, and if one sermon does not
care what sermon preceded it, or what sermon is
going to foUow, the best results are impossible. One
reason why the noises of the street weary us is
because there is no unity running through them.
They are disconnected and therefore discordant.
The tones of a symphony soothe and charm because
in the variety of tones there hves a unity. By con
centration the composer produces a mighty effect.
The sermons of a year ought to be a symphony.
A few dominant notes should be carried through all
the music of the year, other notes being held in sub
ordination, and yet even these subordinate parts

256 BUILDING THE PLAN
not being neglected, but organized and compeUed
to contribute to the harmonious whole. The archi
tectonic genius of a man comes out in buUding his
course of instruction for a year.
It is of great advantage to a preacher to carry in
his eye a score of dates on which sermons on particu
lar themes are to faU due. By fixing the dates long
in advance and compelling the mind to faU in with
the predetermined schedule, the minister gains seU-
mastery, and escapes from the intolerable bondage
of an inteUect dependent on moods. It is a great
thing to be dehvered from the crotchets of a reluctant
and recalcitrant mind. After a while the mind comes
to like this orderly procedure, and goes to work
with enthusiasm when the appointed hour strikes.
Men who carry sermon themes long in their mind are
always surprised by the ease with which the sermons,
when called for, come forth. The mind has queer
ways of working below consciousness, and a theme
once given to it is probably unfolding day after day,
although we ourselves are unconscious of its growth.
One never knows what is going to happen when he
puts a truth to soak in the juices of the mind. The
mind is a capacious receptacle and one can put
twenty themes into it as weU as one, and aU the
twenty wUl have room in which to develop. Put

BUILDING THE PLAN 257
twenty subjects into the mind at the beginning of
the year, and no matter what book you open, sen
tences wiU fly out of the book, and hght on one or an
other member of this group of themes, just as bees
when let loose in a field hght on the flower which con
tains the nectar which they most rehsh. Or, to
change the figure, build your arbor at the beginning
of the year, set out your vines, and they wiU grow
day and night, you know not how, for God will
nourish them in ways known only to himself, and
you wiU have in every season abundant fruit for the
nourishment of your people.
It is desirable that the Scripture lessons for the
service of pubhc worship should also be planned.
Their selection certainly ought not to be left to acci
dent or caprice. The man who reads to his people
the first chapter that happens to occur to him, is
related to the man who preaches a sermon on the
first text on which his eye happens to ahght. They
are both brothers of the primitive medicine man.
Luck has no place in the Christian pulpit. Every
thing should be done decently and in order, nothing
at random or haphazard. The pubhc reading of the
Scriptures is a part of the educational system of the
Christian church, and the work ought to be carried
on with premeditation and a clear-eyed, comprehen-

258 BUILDING THE PLAN
sive purpose. If a minister foUows his own inclina
tions, he is hkely to read and reread his favorite
chapters. If he always reads the chapter which
chances to contain his text, he wiU deprive his people
of many chapters which deserve a place in the wor
ship of the church. There was a book of Scripture
which was lost once by the clergymen of the Jewish
church, and, strange to say, it was lost in the temple.
In many a Christian church more than one book of
the Bible is lost. Its message is never heard in
pubhc worship. Even ministers who entertain ex
alted theories of inspiration sometimes have a cu
rious fashion of treating whole books of Holy Writ
as though they were books of straw. They do not
ostracize these books intentionaUy, but drop them
because there is no method in their church adminis
tration. Unless a preacher plans to travel sys
tematicaUy through the Bible in the worship of the
church, he wiU unconsciously come back repeatedly
to a few chapters which are congenial because they
are familiar. It is unwise for a man to make his own
taste dictator in deciding what Scriptures shaU be
read. Many men have many minds and many needs
and many tastes, and the Bible is a myriad-sided book
intended for a myriad-sided humanity. Because a
Bible book does not appeal to the preacher is no

BUILDING THE PLAN 259
sufficient reason for exiling it from the Christian
pulpit. Its lack of appeal may be due to the fact
that the preacher has outgrown it, or that he has
not yet grown up to it. Saints in the pew, maturer
than he is, might feed upon it with thanksgiving, or
immature disciples might find in it the simple food
which chUdren need. The preacher who ignores
the Old Testament in his Scripture reading because
the New Testament is higher, robs and wrongs his
people. The Old Testament was the only Bible of
our Lord. It is the book which the apostles kept
open before them whUe they preached. It is the
book which passed like iron into the blood of the
Puritans, making them strong to overthrow ancient
tyrannies and estabhsh the world on a new founda
tion. There is ethical instruction in the Old Testa
ment which wUl never be outgrown. In the regenera
tion of modern society and the creation of a new world
order, the prophets of Israel have a great role to play.
There is no book in the Bible which the modern
church does not need. Many chapters, to be sure,
deal with things transitory and local, and have no
claim upon the modern church in her worship or hfe,
but the Bible as a whole, and not the Bible in frag
ments or fractions, is a book to be given to the people.
The planning of Scripture readings brings blessings

260 BUILDING THE PLAN
to the preacher. It carries him into regions into
which, if left to his own impulses, he might never go.
Even in Bible regions which seem to be nothing but
rock and sand, he wiU find precious material for the
building of the church. The steady, progressive
movement of pastor and people across the entire
Bible world introduces a variety into the Sunday
service which breaks the monotony of the pulpit
ministrations. If the preacher is a narrow man,
lacking in versatility and range, and preaches ser
mons of but a single type, a rehef is given to the
service by introducing into it the varied voices of a
great company of men who by divers portions and in
divers manners proclaim the character and wiU of
God. Every preacher, no matter how talented,
needs all available weapons for the slaying of that
arch enemy of aU preachers — Monotony. Various
lectionaries — tables of Bible lessons — have been pre
pared by various branches of the Christian church,
but none of them is, in my judgment, satisfactory.
Why should not the preacher make his own ? Let
him go carefuUy through the Bible, culling out the
chapters which contain either milk or meat for the
present generation, and let these selected passages
be arranged in an ordered sequence, which can be
travelled through in at least five years. The buUding

BUILDLNG THE PLAN 261
of this lectionary is one of the first pieces of construc
tive work to which the young preacher may wisely
devote not a few of his leisure hours.
If a minister plans his Scripture lessons for five
years, why not other things ? We are never at our
best unless we are working for results too great to be
attained in a single year. The lines of action must
be long U the pulse is to be even, and the endeavor
steady. A long pastorate is to be craved and planned
for. A minister on taking charge of a parish ought
to lay out his work on the supposition that he will
remain where he is at least five years. He may, it is
true, not remain a year. Any one of many conceiv
able combinations of circumstances may render an
extended pastorate madvisable or impossible, but no
man should aUow contingencies to dictate the plan
ning of his hfe. In a world like this aU things are pos
sible. The preacher may die next year, next month,
next week, to-night, but no sensible man aUows pos
sibilities a chief place in determining what he is
going to aim to do. Some things must be assumed,
and one of them is that the man is going to hve and
that his pastorate wiU not be short. A minister
who expects to die next week cannot do his best work,
neither can a man who expects to change his parish
next year. If with the eye of faith he sees the years

262 BUILDING THE PLAN
stretching out before him, he can work with a clearer
eye and grip the world with a steadier hand. He wiU
possess that which is indispensable to a successful
teacher, — a quiet heart. Men who are restless and
wavering, always anticipating a change, never succeed
as preachers. The feehng of unsettledness burns
like a fever in the blood, consuming the vital ele
ments of strength. With a long pastorate in his eye
a minister is less likely to do shoddy work. He wUl
not cultivate those mushroom growths which flourish
and wUt hke Jonah's gourd. The parish wiU not be
made feverish by being placed under high pressure
methods. The new pastor wiU not go at things furi
ously, as some young men do, striking a pace which
it is impossible for any mortal to keep up, but he wiU
swing into a steady gait which can be maintained
through the years. The difficult thing in the min
istry is not to fly for a spell like an eagle, or to run
for a season hke a race horse, but to walk a long time
and not faint.
With five possible years before him a man has
encouragement to formulate a plan. Men do not lay
long plans who expect to leave their church at
the end of a few months. It is not human nature to
set out trees whose fruit one never expects to eat, to
make sacrifices for a cause whose prosperity one never

BUILDING THE PLAN 263
expects to see, to prepare for triumphs which one has
no hope of enjoying. A man who expects a short
pastorate has many inducements to do surface work.
He is tempted to do only those things which make a
show. The deep and difficult things wiU be passed
by. Such a man dwarfs himseU and bhghts the
parish. If the preacher feels that he is only a tran
sient guest in the ecclesiastical inn, waiting for the
next train to carry him to a more commodious hotel,
all his people wUl know it and no one wiU have
heart to do the things which cost blood. Fidgety
men ought never to go into the ministry. Nomads
are out of place in the realm of pastoral service.
Men who become the pastor of a church simply to
use its pulpit as a stepping-stone to something
higher, ought to be outlawed by aU churches. When
a minister consents to become the pastor of a church
let him settle down, resolved never to leave it until
it is made clear that his work there has been carried
to such a point that he can in justice to the great
church of God pass on to a field which caUs for stiU
harder service.
A man can build great plans if he has several years
over which to stretch them. He can lay out courses
of study for his own inteUectual development, and
by his plan he wiU save himseU from squandering his

264 BUILDING THE PLAN
time on the misceUaneous books which the pub
lishers thrust on him, or which his parishioners ask
him to read. Many a minister has been wrecked by
reading without purpose and method. He had no
plan of his own, and so he was at the mercy of every
one who volunteered a suggestion. He can also plan
his studies in theology, history, biography, and
poetry, four branches indispensable to a man who
wishes to be a master-teacher of men. Certain sub
jects wUl be assigned to each of the years, and certain
volumes wiU be set apart for each of the months,
and no sort of conspiracy on the part of men or
devUs wiU be aUowed to break down the minister's
determination to pursue the prearranged course to its
end. Desultory reading and spasmodic study have
slain their thousands. A man who forms a clean-cut
plan and clings to it heroicaUy through the opposi
tions of the years, is a man who advances in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Even the sermons can be planned for a period of
five years — not aU of them, but those which deal with
truths which come up every year for fresh treatment.
A man can plan five sermons on the doctrine of God,
or the character of Jesus, or the work of the Holy
Spirit, or the Christian church, or the Life Eternal,
or Missionary Work and Workers, each sermon ap-

BUILDING THE PLAN 265
proaching the subject by a different route, and view
ing it from a different standpoint. Unless a preacher
plans his annuaUy recurring sermons, he will find
himseU saying the same things every year, and his
people, wondering why the sermons are so tedious,
wiU make no progress in their apprehension of these
cardinal themes. By cutting a great truth into sec
tions, and assigning one section to each year, the
preacher wiU at the end of a term of years have the
joy of knowing that he himself has made progress
in the mastery of truth, and that his people are in
possession of a wider and wealthier kingdom.
After a minister has served an apprenticeship in
laying five-year plans, he may venture upon the work
of planning for ten years. Having learned how to
map out the work of ten years, he will be ready to
plan the remainder of his hfe. He cannot plan it in
detaU, but the outhnes can be sketched, and these can
be filled in as the needed hght is furnished. No
man's plan can be carried out entirely as he framed
it, for we are under the government of a God who
also makes plans, and when our plans conflict with
His plans, it is our plans which are broken. But,
using the hght we have, we should project long
courses of action, and when another girds us and we
are carried whither we would not go, it is our con-

266 BUILDLNG THE PLAN
solation to know we are in the hands of One who
plans only for our good. Paul planned to go into
Bithynia, but his plan was shattered. He purposed
to enter a province, and God gave him a continent.
While we are weeping over our failure to enter Bi
thynia, we are in fact on our way to Troas, where a
new vision awaits us, and larger fields are to be opened
to us by the generosity of the incomprehensible,
wonder-working God.
It is a good thing for a preacher to look often down
the years which slope toward the sunset, and see him
self as he would like' himself to be at the end of the
day. It is good also to behold in a dream the
Church of God rising in the distance, glorious with
the proportions and graces which it ought to have,
if all the builders do their duty. OccasionaUy one
should picture himself in that bright world where,
the fires of judgment having done their work, it shaU
be made evident how much of the material which
the preacher used was hay and wood and stubble. It
is when the eyes are cleansed by the touch of the
upper worlds that we see the emptiness of reputation,
the hoUowness of cheap successes, and reahze the
transitoriness of the pride of place and the pomp of
learning. In our Patmos hours it is revealed to us
that it is not our predecessors toward whom our

BUILDING THE PLAN 267
eyes should most frequently be turned, but toward
our successors, the men who are to labor after we are
in our graves. It is not for us to strive to equal or
surpass the men who have gone before us, but so to
work as to make it easier for the men who come af
ter us to bring the church to a new perfection. We
stand in the hne of a great succession, and to so hnk
ourselves to the men behind, and the men before, as
to enable God to do through us the work for which
we were created — this is victory.
The first great preacher had but one ambition, to
apprehend that for which also he was apprehended
by Christ Jesus. Can any heart soar to a loftier
height? Paul planned his work. He left nothing
to caprice. He did not run uncertainly. He did
not fight as one who beats the air. He had a burn
ing purpose and a shining goal, and he pressed on
steadily toward the mark. It is a thrilling shout of
victory, his exultant cry, ' ' I have finished the course. ' '
Jesus of Nazareth planned his work. In com
munion with his Father he fashioned his course pa
tiently through the years. He had a cup to drink,
and a baptism to be baptized with, and he was
straitened until it was accomphshed. There is a rap
ture in his confession to his Father, "I have accom
phshed the work which thou hast given me to do."

268 BUILDING THE PLAN
His joy on earth reached its climax in the excla
mation of his latest hour, "It is finished !" When
a man gives himself to the work of preaching, hold
ing back nothing, giving aU, when he plans his hfe
and work with an eye single to God's glory, ever aim
ing to bring his plan into deepening harmony with
the plan of Heaven, he becomes a successor of the
apostles, and enters into the joy of his Lord.

LECTURE VIII
THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
Two queries have no doubt arisen in many an
alert mind while we have been walking together along
the way : Why has there been no lecture on the
"BuUding of the Sermon"? and why has the
"BuUding of the Builder" been relegated to the
closing hour? In all building operations does not
the Builder come first? Does not the plan pro
ceed from him? Does not the edifice depend on
him ? Is he not the first link in the chain, the foun
tain from which aU else proceeds ? Why not build
the preacher, and then proceed to build the church ?
The preacher comes last in this course of lectures,
because in the work of building he comes first. It
is a paradox of Christianity that those who are first
are often last. He who would find himself must
lose himself, and only to him who makes himseU of
no reputation and lays down his hfe, is the promise
given. It was the Master's -way to set men, first
of aU, not face to face with themselves, but face to
face with their task, and it was by the patient doing
of their task that they were to save their souls.
271

272 THE BUILDING OT THE BUILDER
Many things he was wont to teU them about the im
portance and difficulty of the work to which he had
called them, and few things apparently did he say
about their own salvation. They were to seek first
of aU the Kingdom of God, to buUd a brotherhood
in which the love of God should be controlling and by
which the wiU of God should get itseU done on earth,
and, doing this, they would find aU necessary things
being added. The apostles were men, and there
fore interested in their own personal advancement,
but whenever they attempted to induce Jesus to
speak of their own dignities and promotions, he began
to talk again about their work. Even up to the edge
of the ascension cloud they carried their discussions
of rank and dominion, but to the end the only assur
ance which was given to them was that they should
have sufficient strength with which to do their work.
He left them face to face with a church that was to
be built, and it was in the building of this church that
they were to grow into that fulness of stature which
is appointed for the sons of God.
Many of the tragedies of the Christian ministry
are caused by the minister getting into the wrong
place. Everything seems to conspire to push him
to the front. His own native inclinations and am
bitions, the love of place, the love of praise, and the

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 273
love of power, render the first place attractive, and
aU the kingdoms of the world outside of him are
in league with the world inside of him, to keep the
eyes of the minister upon himself. When he comes
to the seminary, he is taken in charge by a group of
experts whose business it is to caU his attention to
himseU. One man lays hold upon his voice, and
asks him to study it, to note its intonations, inflec
tions, cadences, to observe his gestures and keep track
of them. Another selects his diction, and requests
him to criticise it, to keep his eye on his ad
jectives, his relative pronouns, and the structure of
his sentences. Another takes his sermons and bids
him take them to pieces and study each separate
part, inspecting it under the microscope of the crit
ical judgment. Another coUects his doctrinal be
liefs, his conceptions of God and man, the Scriptures
and the Sacraments, and rivets his gaze upon them,
requesting him to sit in judgment on them, to pry
into their origin, to analyze them and to find reasons
for them. It may be that some one wiU even dig up
the roots of his "caU to the ministry." AU young
men come out of the seminary more or less intro
spective and seU-conscious. It is inevitable.
The process begun in the seminary is carried on
by the parish. A minister's task drags him to the

274 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
front. He cannot do his work in a corner. He
must have the uppermost room. At every feast he
is at the head of the table. He is the observed of aU
observers. He must be not only seen but heard. He
must always be speaking or praying or reading. He
cannot help displaying his gtfts. This exhibition of
himself invites criticism. If he is handsome, he wiU
overhear some one remarking it. If he has a good
voice, many wiU teU him so. If his style is effective,
the compliments wiU be abundant. If his success is
conspicuous, the sUver bugles wiU blow a musical
blast across the town. His name will be on many
hps, and the light of many rejoicing eyes wiU Ulumine
his triumphant way. A man cannot hear the band
playing in his honor without thinking of himseU.
No matter how humble, he is hkely to become seU-
conscious in the major key. The buUding of himself
is suggested to him, not by demons but by the saints,
and the building of the church, against his wish,
and it may be without his notice, graduaUy recedes.
Or if his voice is harsh and his gestures are awkward,
if his style is duU and his ideas are thin, the empty
pews will speak to him, and now and then there wiU
be wafted to him on a chilling breeze a whisper which
wiU cut. He will become self-conscious in the minor
key. This last state is worse than the first. A man

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 275
conscious of what he has is stronger than a man con
scious of what he lacks. Adulation and disparage
ment are both deadly. Conceit and despondency
are twin enemies of pulpit power. Both of them are
the chUdren of self-consciousness. A minister is un
done whose eyes are fixed on himself. Only by look
ing away from himself is it possible for him to be
saved. Hence in the training of preachers the
first glance should be not inward, but outward.
Paul, according to an early tradition, began his min
isterial career with the question, "Lord, what wUt
thou have me to do ? " It is because of his critical
and immeasurable importance that the preacher in
these lectures has been kept in the background. For
his own sake his eyes have been turned away from
himseU. The building of the preacher goes forward
during the buUding of the church.
Certainly no one would claim that the weU-being of
the preacher is a negligible factor in the complex prob
lem of church building, for here as almost nowhere
else, is it incontestably and everlastingly true, "Get
your man and aU is got." But how to get the man,
that is the question. ShaU we build him in a vac
uum, detached from the world in which he is to work,
adding virtue to virtue and grace to grace, until at
last, fuU statured, it is announced to him what he

276 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
is to do? Or shaU we seek him in the church, keeping
him under the church ideal, exposing him to church
atmospheres and forces, allowing the Christian
brotherhood to fashion him after the pattern which
the Master gave, and ministering to him through
the bonds of feUowship untU he becomes a workman
of whom no one need be ashamed ?
Humanly speaking, everything depends upon the
minister. Music cannot save a church, nor the
Bible, nor the sacraments, nor pulpit discourses.
Worship dies unless it is kept alive by a living
man. Out of the personahty of the preacher
flow, as Jesus said, the refreshing streams. Most
Christian congregations know this. They are
caring less and less for scholastic attainments,
academic degrees and titles, denominational affilia
tions, even creedal loyalties — what they want is a
man. Things that men pick up in the schools have
their value, but they can never take the place
of the one thing essential in a preacher — charac
ter. Two men go from the same seminary, in the
same year, with the same education and the same
creed. One succeeds from the beginning, and his
successes increase with the seasons. The other faUs
from the start, and his entire career is a disappoint
ment. It is not a difference in rhetoric, ideas, or

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 277
training, but a difference in men. They take their
texts out of the same Bible, preach the same scheme
of doctrinal truth, make use in general of the same
ideas and iUustrations, but they do not preach the
same gospel, for the gospel is truth moulded and vivi
fied by the soul of the man who preaches it. A
preacher makes an impression not simply by his words,
but by his soul. When words do not penetrate, it
is because there is a feeble man behind them. When
ideas do not kindle, it is because there is no divine
fire in the lips that speak them. Bullets may be of
equal size and like material, but the distance to
which they travel depends upon the gun. Sermons
are buUets. How far they go does not depend upon
the text or upon the structure of the sermon, but upon
the texture of the manhood of the preacher. The
building of the preacher becomes, then, a matter of
tremendous moment to every one interested in the
buUding of the church. We cannot afford to run the
risk of spoiling him by aUowing him to think of him
seU first.
The reason why no special lecture has been de
voted to the buUding of the sermon is because the sub
ject cannot be treated adequately in a single lec
ture. AU the lectures have been deahng with that in
teresting and tantalizing theme. Not much has been

278 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
said about the sermon, but everything has been said
in the interest of the sermon. There has been scant
attention to the technique of the sermon, but the
soul of the sermon has been held steadily in view.
There have been no suggestions as to texts, intro
ductions, arguments, chmaxes, and peroratibns, be
cause these things are secondary, and do not reach
the root of power in preaching. We have been deal
ing with things more fundamental. We have faced
the aim of preaching, and peered into the things
which make preaching worth whUe. We have con
sidered the kind of atmospheres in which sermons
catch fire, and have surveyed the world of thought
and feehng from which the streams of pulpit power
proceed. Because one says nothing about the letter
of the sermon, does he disparage it? God forbid.
He exalts it if he uncovers the stupendous work
which sermons are to accomphsh. AU that has been
said is designed to help you in the work of preaching.
Preaching is your highest business. Nothing can
ever take its place. You are to be administrators,
but administration will not fiU the place of preaching.
Unless you are preachers, you are not hkely to have
much to administer. You are to be organizers, but
the organizing gift wiU never compensate for the lack
of the gift of preaching. Men who cannot preach

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 279
have ordinarUy httle to organize. When you see a
man at the head of a large and hving church, display
ing rare gifts of organization and administration,
do not suppose that these are the gifts by which his
church came into being, or which keep it glad and
strong. He or some one else created it by preaching.
Unless a man knows how to present truth in such a
way as to get it into the blood of those who hear him,
he need never hope for a hving, growing, conquering
church, no matter what other gifts he may be
possessed of. Christian people desire of their pas
tors nothing so much as sermons which wiU vitalize
and nourish them. They are always shamefaced if
obhged to say, "Our pastor is a good man, but he
cannot preach." Even faithful pastoral service
wiU not reconcile a congregation to incompetency in
the pulpit. In this the people are not unreasonable.
They have a right to expect and demand that their
pastor shaU instruct and comfort and strengthen and
guide them by his sermons. It is the fashion to-day
in certain quarters to speak disparagingly of ser
mons. One would suppose, from the scornful intona
tions, that it is almost sacrilegious, if not disreputable,
to go to church for the purpose of listening to a ser
mon. We are reminded that the purpose of church
attendance is the worship of God, and that sermon

280 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
hearing is a modern and secular pastime. AU such
talk is based on false assumptions. It is assumed
that preaching is not worship, and that hstening to
a sermon is a less rehgious exercise than that of sing
ing hymns and saying prayers. Both assumptions
are without foundation. The true preacher in the
act of genuine preaching is worshipping the Almighty,
offering to him a sacrifice more costly than any
other which it is possible for him to offer in the house
of God. If in praise he is loving God with his heart,
and in parish work he is loving God with his might,
then in the act of preaching he is loving God with his
mind, which is also a part of the great command
ment. Indeed, in preaching he uses aU his heart, and
aU his soul, and aU his mind, and aU his strength, as in
no other act in aU his life. In a sermon the preacher
offers himself, soul and body, a hving sacrifice unto
God. Those who hsten to the sermon with docUe
and attentive hearts, seeking to find God's voice in
it, are also engaged in worship. If to worship is to
reverence God, and to perform acts of homage and
adoration, what higher reverence can be paid him
than that offered by a congregation in the act of en
tering into a fuller apprehension of the meaning of a
truth uttered by prophet, or apostle, or God's only
Son, and unfolded by a man guided by the Holy

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 281
Spirit ? The sermon is the chmax of pubhc worship.
It summons to the throne of God a larger number
of faculties than any other act of worship. It caUs
upon everything within us to bless God's holy name.
The pastor of a church is preeminently a preacher.
"Feed my sheep," so our Lord said to the leader of
the twelve. It is a command which comes to aU
Christian pastors. " God did not send me to baptize,
but to preach the gospel," so said the Master-
builder, and let every man remember it, when he is
tempted to shirk the arduous duties of a prophet
and choose the easier occupations of a priest. The
history of the nineteen Christian centuries confirms
the wisdom of Paul's great declaration, that it has
pleased God to save the world by the foolishness
of preaching. Experience shows that when preach
ers cease to preach, a darkness falls upon the world.
There are no golden ages in Christian history, save
those made golden by tongues kindled by coals from
off God's altar. The preacher holds the keys which
unlock the gates of aU earth's prisons. The whole
world brightens when a man appears able to unfold in
syllables of fire the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Preaching has had a glorious past. Its future will
be more glorious stiU. The printing-press wiU never
supersede the human, tongue. Books wiU never

282 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
drive out the spoken word. So long as the heart is
human, so long wiU it respond to a tongue fuU of
grace and truth. Never has the world been so rich
in printing-presses as now, and never have the
churches been so clamorous for preachers. The caU
is loud, and it comes from every quarter. Any man
who knows how to preach is certain of a hearing.
There is no question which the authorities of our
schools of theology ought to ask with greater fre
quency and earnestness than "How can we better
train our students to become more effective, master
ful, triumphant preachers ? " No matter what else
a seminary may do, it does not do the chief thing U
it does not send into the churches weU-equipped and
able preachers.
But what is it to preach, and how can one make
himself a preacher? Here again we are thrown
back on the basal fact, that the sermon depends on
the man. The sermon is, indeed, the man. The
man himself must be a sermon. Preaching is not
an art in the sense in which sculpture, music, and
painting are arts. It resembles these, but it tran
scends them all. The work of the artist can be
divorced from his character. In preaching it is the
character of the preacher which is the preacher's
power. Preaching is not a trick which can be

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 283
mastered some bright morning, or a secret which
can be transmitted from one man to another for
a consideration. There is a stupid fellow mentioned
in the Book of the Acts, who supposed he could share
in the apostles' power by the payment of a sum of
money. Stupidity of that sort has not yet vanished
from the earth. Even to-day there are men who
think that the chief thing in preaching is an artful
use of the voice, or a crafty combination of gestures,
or a cunning carving of diction, or an expert jugglery
of illustrations, or a dexterous manoeuvring of ideas,
or a clever and impressive display of learning. In
this view, preaching is a sort of magic, a sleight of
hand or of tongue, an ingenious piece of legerdemain
by which souls are mesmerized and the boundaries of
God's kingdom extended. The sermon is a contriv
ance which can be wrought out by an adroit
schemer, a strategem which can be laid by a long
headed intriguer, a device which can be created
by an industrious artificer. Men who hold this
view sometimes go to hear preachers preach in order
to learn the secret of their power. They never
find out. God hides certain things from the wise
and prudent — and also from fools. 'The man who
thinks that preaching is a trick of voice, or thought,
or language, never learns how to preach. No men

284 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
are so wearisome in the pulpit as the men who know
they have good voices, and are evidently making
an effort to let their hearers know it too. The best
thing that a preacher can do with his voice is to
hide it. The best voice for preaching is the voice
that no one ever hears. Gestures which are striking
make an impression the first few times, but if they
keep on striking they give pain. Eloquence is good
occasionaUy when it comes by the wiU of Heaven,
but no congregation can endure eloquence every
Sunday for five consecutive years. Manufactured
eloquence is declamation, and declamation is not
eloquence at all. It is a wooden imitation of celes
tial fire, and is a great weariness. A beautiful style,
so beautiful that the rustling of the verbal finery
drowns the music of the thought, is also a burden.
When all the sentences roU out after the fashion of
those of Macaulay or of Burke, men sigh for relief.
The best pulpit style is the style that is not seen.
Blessed is the preacher who succeeds in beating his
style down into invisibility. Voice and language
ought to be like the atmosphere, life-supporting
but invisible. IUustrations are also a nuisance, un
less they grow up naturally like flowers along the
path which the sermon takes. Expert iUustrators
grow irksome after the second year. Quotations

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 285
are also gewgaws which entertain for a season, and
then lose their charm. They never impress any but
the unlettered, for aU men who are acquainted with
the world of books know where and how to get them.
Stringing quotations is hke stringing beads, it re
quires no inteUect, and is hardly serious business for
a full-grown man. It is only when the words of
other men force themselves by sheer strength of
undeniable superiority into the company of your
sentences, and bend themselves whole-heartedly to
the task of carrying on your thought, that they
can be considered other than impertinent and mis
chievous interlopers. As for ideas, a preacher can
have too many of them. Great thoughts are op
pressive if too abundant. It is not thoughts but
thought that a congregation wants, and you can
not have thought without a thinker. The ideal
preacher is not a retailer of beautiful thoughts, but
a man who can bring to the discussion of every
moral and spiritual question the iUumination of a
sane and discriminating mind. Learning is also out
of place in the pulpit. Learned sermons are the
easiest of aU to write, and the most fatiguing to those
who hear them. Any one can write a learned
sermon who is alone with an encyclopedia for
haU a dozen hours. Many a church has had its

286 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
hfe crushed out by the learning of its pastor. AU
these things — voice, gesture, rhetoric, iUustrations,
quotations, ideas, learning — have a certain value,
but they are at best superficialities, and aU of
them, unless backed up by something better, soon
grow thin and tame. After a httle time artificial
elocution becomes unbearable, rhetorical display
unendurable, excessive iUustration insufferable, the
exploitation of novel or abstract ideas intolerable.
Nothing wears but manhood. To remain ten or
twenty years in the same parish, a preacher must be
very simple and very true. Goodness never grows
stale. Love never becomes monotonous. An in
dustrious man in good health with disciplined pow
ers, whose hfe is hid with Christ in God, can speak
year after year to the same people with the dew of
the morning always on his message. Preaching
is primarily a matter of manhood. The sermon
depends on the mass of the man. His character
must be massive, or he cannot do the work. One
sometimes hears an expression which teUs much.
"He is not big enough man for the place." Is
he not educated? Yes. Is he not clever?
Very. Bright? Exceedingly. BriUiant? Often.
And yet not big enough for the place! The
world makes a distinction between a man

THE BUILDLNG OF THE BUILDER 287
and his gifts. The Church of God must have the
man. The variety and nature of his talents come
up for consideration later. A sermon is not a
manufactured product, but a spiritual creation. It
is not a machine which a man can construct in his
sermonic shop, and set it running in the pulpit like
the electric toys which one sees sometimes- on
the corner of the city street. A sermon is an exha
lation, a spiritual vapor emerging from the oceanic
depths of the preacher's soul. It is an emana
tion, an efflux, an effluence flowing from an interior
fountain hidden in the depths of personahty.
It is an efflorescence, an outnowering of beautiful
things whose home is in the blood. It is a per
fume from spiritual roses blossoming in the garden of
the heart. It is fruit growing on the tree of a man's
hfe. " A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nei
ther can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."
Make the tree good. A sermon is the hfe-blood of a
Christian spirit. Apreacher dies in the act of preach
ing. He lays down his hfe for his brethren. He
saves others, himself he cannot save. The pulpit is
a Golgotha in which the preacher gives his hfe for
the hfe of the world. Preaching is a great work.
To do it as God wants it done, the preacher must
be a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.

288 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
And now let me speak, not by way of command
ment, but by way of counsel; not as presenting a
revelation, but only my judgment. It is not good,
it seems to me, to resort to various nostrums which
have been prepared for the preacher's uses, or to
lean too heavily upon sundry mechanical devices
which have been created for the purpose of help
ing the minister on his way. Crutches are good for
cripples, and tonics are good for invahds, but young
men starting on their work in the ministry ought to
walk on their own feet, uncoddled. Books of iUus
trations are good books — to keep away from.
They have no place on the shelves of a man who
wants to grow. Let the preacher get his own
illustrations. If he has eyes and ears they wiU
come to him in crowds — crying like free chUdren
of God : "Here we are, use us." The importance
of illustration in the pulpit has been vastly overes
timated, and many a preacher has degenerated into
a relator of anecdotes and repeater of stale stories.
If a man has anything worth illustrating, he wUl
have no difficulty in finding iUustrations, but if
his chief ambition is to collect images, Ukenesses, and
pictures, he is likely to remain a child in inteUect all
his hfe. There is no joy in the ministry, if hfe
is reduced to a haggard hunt after new and striking

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 289
illustrations. The preacher who cries out in dis
may : "Wherewithal shall my sermon be pictoriaUy
clothed?" should read again the exhortation:
"Seek first the Kingdom," with its accompanying
promise that to those who do this, all things needful
will be added. Books of "Great Thoughts" are
also a delusion. No man can entertain ten thou
sand great thoughts, or even one thousand. They
simply encumber and suffocate the mind. The
thoughts which a congregation needs are not numer
ous, and if too many are administered at any one
time the mind is surfeited and sinks into a stupor.
The preacher should also beware of note-books,
scrap-books, envelopes for clippings, cases of boxes
and drawers for the storing away of sermonic
material. All such devices have their legitimate
place, but they can easily become a source of peril.
They take a deal of time, and a man may form the
habit of using his scissors when he ought to be using
his head. It is possible to have a hundred huge
envelopes bulging with sermonic treasures, while the
mind is distressingly spindhng and lean. It is far
more important to keep the heart fuU than to have
a lot of things laid away in drawers. Many a man
has hewed out for himself at infinite pains cisterns
which cannot hold the kind of water for which

290 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
humanity is thirsting. Facts and figures, statistics
and records, odds and ends of information, — this is
not the material on which souls feed and grow. A
man should get his sermons not out of a scrap-book
but out of himself. Like the spider, he should
weave his web out of his own substance.
It is not well to cultivate the homiletic habit, the
habit of demanding a pound of sermonic flesh from
every Antonio you chance to meet. This habit wiU
grow upon you in spite of aU that you can do, and
may possibly drown you along with thousands of
others in the pool of professionahsm. One ought
not to be thinking shop aU the time. A man who
is always working for sermons is as foohsh as the
man who is always working for money. Both men
may say that they are seeking wealth to be used for
the good of others, but it is not healthful to do one
thing — no matter what it is — aU the time. A
preacher ought to be able to look upon a landscape
without screwing illustrations out of it, or enjoy
a sail upon the Rhine without working the castles
then and there into a course of next winter's ser
mons, or play with children without squeezing from
them suggestions which may be put to use in the
prayer-meeting. The homiletic habit is a leech.
It sucks the blood, and leaves the man anaemic.

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 291
Landscapes and historic ruins and children, and
all other lovely things, are to be enjoyed. They
are themselves their own excuse for being, and the
preacher should revel in them with no thought of
ulterior ends. We wrong a book when we read it
simply for things which we can use. It is desecra
tion of a poem to read it for fine phrases with which
to deck a sermon, and we wrong the masterpiece of
an historian when we follow him only for an illustra
tion with which to brighten up an argument. It is
only when we gloriously forget ourselves — as Mrs.
Browning has reminded us — and plunge headlong
into the depths of the author's thought, that we
get out of a book the best thing which the book has
to give. In hstening to great men speak, the
preacher ought to forget that he too is a speaker.
He ought not to fix his gaze on the speaker's voice,
his gestures, or his adjectives. He ought not to at
tempt to put into his note-book the things which the
speaker says. All that he can get into his note-book
is a few fine phrases, a dozen noble sentiments or
ideas. But what are these compared with the great
things which the hearer might be receiving ! The
things most precious are subtle things which cannot
be caught on the end of a pencil — disinthralment,
enchantment, exaltation, the air of a great height.

292 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
While the writer is jotting down a few notions and
phrases, he is losing much of the glow of the speaker's
soul. It is the flash of the spirit and not the words
of the lips which is the best thing which a great
man has to give. Catch that and you have an im
perishable possession. To feel upon one's hfe the
hot breath of a great heart, to drink into one's being
the hfe of a great soul in one of its great moments,
is a privilege which does not come often and which
should be valued above rubies and fine gold. We
are never the same after we have once entered into
the feeling of a man genuinely great, after we have
been fused by the fire of his burning spirit. Do not
sit aloof as a critic, noting in cold blood trifling
incidents of movement and accidents of manner;
get near him, go with him, think with him, feel with
him, hve with him. Let him expand you, exalt
you, cleanse you. Go with him. He sees some
thing. He is following a gleam. Try to see what
he sees. A gleam which the eye once catches never
fades. Phrases fade out of the memory, ideas
lose their distinctness of form, but a hght that has
once shone into the soul becomes a part of the soul's
life forever. Do not be a critic whenever you can
be something better. A critic even at his best is
only a second-rate man. The men of the highest

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 293
rank are creators. It is the creators who make
the world. Preachers are called to be creators.
They are to create new atmospheres, new charac
ters, new worlds. They should develop, therefore,
their creative faculties, the imagination and all the
powers by which the soul admires and hopes and
loves. Receptivity, impressionabihty, spiritual sen
sitiveness, sympathy, responsiveness, the genius for
merging the soul in the souls of others — these are
the powers which the preacher needs. The critic
always thinks that he goes deep, but he never goes
deep enough to find the secret of life. We cannot
go deep by our critical faculty. The critical faculty
is an anatomist, and an anatomist goes only deep
enough to find bones. With the scalpel one can
reach the skeleton, but never the source and home
of life. You cannot find a speaker's power by dis
section. You may analyze his arguments, pick to
pieces his phrases, catalogue his pictures, but these
are only bones. You find his life only when your
soul goes out to meet him. Drink at the fountain
of his hfe, eat his flesh, drink his blood, that you
also may hve. What this world needs is not a
fuller knowledge of bones, but a more abundant
measure of vitaUty.
It is possible to work too long upon a sermon.

294 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
The sermon may become an idol, before which the
preacher prostrates his powers in worship. This
is the temptation that besets men who have the
artistic temperament, and who have an eye for
delicate shadings and an ear for the finer melodies
of speech. Before the preacher is aware of it, he
has forgotten his congregation, and is thinking
exclusively of the masterpiece which is to be ex
hibited in the church salon next Sunday morning.
This is a sin which, when it is finished, brings forth
death. The preacher becomes increasingly fastidi
ous. He is finical in the use of dainty and perfumed
words. He paints his picture in such dehcate tints
that they cannot be seen by persons seated in the
back pew. Hypercritical in his taste, he falls into
various forms of affectation, and, unless arrested
in his downward course, he sinks into the degrada
tion of a rhetorical fop. His sermon is provokingly
faultless, unhumanly regular, gloriously null. It is
possible to increase as an artist, and at the same
time decrease as a preacher. The preacher has lost
his power when his sermons, like superb works
of art, stand out before his congregation in the
marble coldness of finished statues. Work like
this impoverishes a preacher. He spends time
upon his sermon which ought to be spent upon him-

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 295
self. The polishing of sentences is a poor way of
feeding a man who must preach. The preacher
needs constant suppUes of nourishment, and most
of his morning hours must be devoted, not to
sermon building, but to the building of his soul.
The preparation for the specific sermon may be
crowded into a few hours, but the preparation of
himseU should go on all the time. Young men,
ignorant of the laws of soul nutrition, sometimes
wear themselves thin in a few years by devoting
themselves too exclusively to the work of sermon
preparation. They give themselves no time for that
broad and brooding study, extended over many
fields, without which the mind deteriorates and
ceases to be productive. In the earher years, a
young preacher must of necessity spend many hours
each week upon his sermons, for he is as yet an un
practised worker, and must learn by laborious effort
to accumulate material and to give shape and
edge to his style. But every preacher who de
sires to make his pastorate long, must, as rapidly
as possible, cut down the hours devoted to sermon
writing, in order that he may have more abundant
opportunity to work upon himself. He should aim
so to disciphne his powers that by and by he shall
be able to write a sermon in a single morning. If

296 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
a man is industrious and keeps his mind and heart
brimful, there is no reason why he should not,
after a few years of practice, give shape to his Sun
day message between breakfast time and noon. A
genius now and then will do it in a single hour.
Let the preacher then work for increased vitahty.
He can do httle unless he is a vital man. His work
is to vitalize, and a man cannot give what he him
self does not possess. Like the Master, the preacher
comes that men may have hfe, and that they may
have it more abundantly. A preacher impover
ished in his spirit, diminishes the sum of the spirit
ual power of the world. He must in aU his nature
be sensitive and hfe creating. If he cannot feel a
thrill of joy, no one wiU be thriUed by any glad
thing he says. If he cannot suffer an agony, no
heart wiU be pierced by any tone which his voice
can utter. A preacher must be intensely human.
He must be rich in laughter and in tears. He must
be able to rejoice and weep, to entertain those mighty
hopes which make men feel they are immortal, and
to burn with those flaming enthusiasms which the
elect of God in every age have known. The
preacher must avoid all courses of Ufe which lower
his vitahty and cause a shrinkage of the capacities
of the heart. Humanity must throb fuU volumed

THE BUILDLNG OF THE BUILDER 297
in him. No man can keep himself aUve by saying
true and lovely things. He must hve and love and
suffer. He must purchase with his blood the church
for which the Messiah died. He must fill up that
which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ.
Only a man full of Ufe dares to be himself.
Emaciated men are timid, and men stunted by
Uving exclusively with books dwindle into shadows
and echoes. It is when one's hfe is merged in the
hfe of the race, and the tide of humanity ebbs and
floods in one's veins, that one enters into the experi
ences of a son of the Highest. Every soul is orig
inal. There are no duphcates in the world of
personaUty. Every man possesses a combination
of traits and talents never before approximated,
and never to be repeated. Every preacher is origi
nal who dares to be himself. It matters not that
he is ordained to preach truths that have been
preached already ten thousand times. The words
of the New Testament are ancient but not anti
quated, its ideas are antique but not archaic, its
principles are venerable but not out of date, and the
one thing needed to cause the words to burn, the
ideas to glow, and the principles to grip, is a preacher
who has become a new man in Christ. The oldest
commonplaces are no longer trite after they have

298 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
passed through the red blood of a man redeemed.
The preacher who preaches the old doctrines out of
his own heart, will find men Ustening to him as men
listened to Paul and Barnabas, and although men
have been long familiar with the words, they will
go home saying, " We have never heard it after this
fashion." A man who thinks and works and grows is
always interesting. The secret of an extended
pastorate is a growing man. Young men are some
times daunted by the fact that aU the truths of
Christianity are wrinkled and gray-headed. The
Christian preacher is ordained for the proclamation
of commonplaces. Brotherhood and service, love
and forgiveness, hope and mercy, who can make
these verbal bones hve ? Only a hving soul can do
it. A man half dead cannot do it. A man with a
shrivelled heart cannot do it. Only a man in whom
Christ dweUs richly can give sparkle to the trite,
and immortal freshness to things that have lost
their bloom. The Old World needs an old gospel.
Many things that are new are not true, and aU
things that are true are not new. The Old World
tragedy goes on as from the beginning, and there
is no remedy but the one that is old — "Jesus
Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,"

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 299
the old, old story of the changeless love of the un
changing God. It is a commonplace, but it comes
with the starthng flash of a new revelation whenever
spoken by a tongue which throws into it the fresh
joy of an understanding and loving heart. It is
the man that makes the sermon. The man is the
sermon. That is why it is impossible to print a
sermon. No sermon has ever yet been printed.
We print the words, but the words are nothing but
the skeleton, and the spiritual body of the sermon
is the personahty of the man. One cannot account
for Peter's power on the day of Pentecost by reading
the report of Peter's sermon, nor can one account
for the effect produced by any of the kings of
Christian speech by a study of what the reporters
have preserved. Not what the preacher says but
what he is — this constitutes the sermon.
To preach with the power of Christ one must
have something of the heart of Christ. He is
meek and lowly of heart. Humility is the queen of
the Christian virtues. In the hst of the Beatitudes
it is Humility to which the first crown is given.
Unless a man becomes as a little child, he cannot
enter the kingdom of heaven, and unless he remains
a httle child, he can make no progress therein.
The man who is always teaching must be evermore

300 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
a learner. Since he must give many his voice, he
is under bonds to lend every man his ear. There
is no one by whom the preacher cannot be taught.
Everybody knows something which the preacher
has not yet learned. Those who teach must never
cease to be pupils. The constant repetition of the
same words has a tendency to ossffy the organs of
intelhgence, and also to close the doors of the heart.
The work of laying down the law to others some
times leaves men dictatorial and unteachable.
A preacher who has nothing to learn is a man who
can do httle in the buUding of the church. He
has lost the child heart, and must get it again before
the child-loving Christ can work through him.
In a word, the preacher must obey. There are
subtle and inexorable laws under whose sway the
preacher does his work, and every act of disobedience
subtracts from his power. Laziness, cowardice,
vanity, impatience, untruthfulness, envy, ambition,
hypocrisy, meanness — are these not sins which eat
into the hves of preachers and work havoc in the
church of God? The Jewish church was wrecked
by the spiritual deterioration of its leaders, and so
also was the Mediaeval Christian church. Chris
tendom in the eighteenth century was dark, largely
because of the unfaithfulness of Christian preachers.

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 30I
Who knows how much of the weakness of the church
of to-day is due to the disobedience of those who
preach the gospel? What a stride forward the
church of God would make if only the men in the
pulpits were more Christhke men. It is a stroke
of spiritual genius in Bunyan's immortal allegory,
the placing of a path to heU starting near the gate
of heaven. If Judas feU to perdition from the very
arms of Jesus, let any man who thinks he stands
take heed lest he fall. The preachef must subject
himself to rigid and continuous disciphne. He
must walk the way that is narrow. The gate that
opens into pulpit power is strait. Every moral
dehnquency reports itself in his accent, every
secret sin comes to judgment in his preaching.
"What you are speaks so loud" — says Emerson —
"I cannot hear what you say." It is the preacher
who is the sermon, and it is this sermon which the
world remembers. The texts spoken in the pulpit
are soon forgotten, and so are the ideas, and also
the iUustrations, but the spirit of the man who
preaches the sermon passes into those who hsten,
and Uves on in them after the preacher's lips are
dust. For Christhke men in all her pulpits, the
soul of the church pleads with God night and day.
We have been thinking of how the preacher builds

302 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
the church, let us not forget how the church builds
the preacher. The church is the preacher's school
in which he learns his lessons. The church is the
preacher's hospital, in which the preacher's maladies
are healed. The church is the preacher's battle
field, on which he learns to fight the foes of God and
man. The church is the preacher's home, in which
he gains the Christian virtues and comes into
possession of the Christian graces. It is whUe he is
knitting the hearts of men together that his own
sympathies are expanded and his own affections are
enriched. In planning for the church he cultivates
his mental faculties : reason, foresight, discrimina
tion, judgment, imagination; and in working out his
plan he develops the graces of the heart: longsuffer-
ing, patience, gentleness, goodness, temperance,
and meekness. In sacrificing for the church, he
drinks of the cup of which the Master drank, and
comes at last to bear in his body the marks of the
Lord Jesus. Out of the church, texts and ideas come
for the building of his sermons. Out of the church,
illustrations come, simple and natural and Ulumi-
nating, after the fashion of the illustrations of Jesus.
The church is the preacher's guardian angel. It
bears him up, and keeps him from dashing his foot
against a stone. The vision of the church checks him

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 303
when tempted to enter on downward courses, and
braces him in his shadowed hours. Her majesty
holds him upright, her dignity makes him strong.
The greatness of the privilege of working for her
shames him out of cheap ambitions and thrills him
with desires to be a nobler man. Through the
church Christ reaches his hands, moulding him.
Master and servant work together through the labo
rious and glorious days. The preacher learns to love
Christ through the church. The preacher preaches
to the church, and the church also preaches to the
preacher. It breaks the bread of life to him. It
teaches him and admonishes him. It gives him his
theology. It inspires him and consoles him. It
trains him and it disciplines him. It administers to
him the sacraments. It is the servant of the Lord,
and it does what the Lord himself cannot now do.
Christ exists no longer in the realm of space and time.
His home is in the realm of spirit. But his church
exists in the temporal and spatial world, and through it
he communicates with those who love him. To serve
the church is serving him. To love the church is
loving him. He accepts this love and service, and
through the church there flows back to those who serve
and love him the fulness of his grace and benediction.
The church teaches the minister to pray. No

304 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
man needs to pray unless he is engaged in an
impossible undertaking. Not unless he is attempt
ing to do that which is beyond the human, is he
likely to throw himself back into the arms of
God. The man who strives to build the church
works at a task demanding strength transcend
ing human hmits. "Who is sufficient for these
things?" — this is the question which keeps ever
sounding through the chambers of the heart, and
the answer is : " Our sufficiency is from God."
A builder of the church is of necessity a man of
prayer. The church brings him again and again
to his knees. The heights and depths of prayer
are never known until one carries on his heart the
sins and sorrows of the Christian people. The
vastness of the work awes and humbles the most
successful of Christ's servants. It was when Paul
thought of the work to which God had caUed him
that he described himself as the least of aU saints.
To him the church was a medium of revelation.
In it he saw reflected the manifold wisdom of God.
The medium is ever before us, flashing its heavenly
message into our eyes. It is the church which
makes it possible for us to believe the teachings of
the Scriptures. It gives credibility to the doctrine
that God is indeed a Father, and that he wiUs that

THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER 305
aU men shall be saved. With the history of the
church before us, we dare hope for the conversion
of all nations, and can await undaunted the time
when the knowledge of God shall cover the earth
as the waters cover the sea. It is by the love of
the Christian brotherhood binding hearts together
across the barriers of nations and races, that we come
into the deepening assurance that the greatest thing
in the world is love. It is significant that it was the
Master-Builder of the first century who wrote with
the most thrilling confidence of the enduringness
of faith and hope and love. The churches which
he built, built him up in the most holy faith.
The preacher, then, in working for the church
works for God. To do his work he must be a man of
God. To have power with men he must incarnate
the spirit of the Son of God. When he does all things
through the Christ who strengthens him, he will
find himself following in the footsteps of the first
great preacher, and will, hke him, be wilhng to
suffer the loss of aU things that he may gain Christ
and be found in him. He will have but one ambi
tion, "to know Christ, and the power of his resur
rection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becom
ing conformed unto his death, if by any means he
may attain unto the resurrection from the dead."

306 THE BUILDING OF THE BUILDER
May all of you who have listened to these
lectures, and all others consecrated to your same
high calhng, have not only the apostle's purpose,
but also in the final hour his shout of victory : " I
have fought the good fight, I have finished the
course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is
laid up for me the crown."

Dr. ANDREW M. FAIRBAIRN'S
New Work
Studies in Religion and Theology
THE CHURCH: IN IDEA AND IN HISTORY
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A Summary of the Table of Contents
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