THE PASTOR. (continued 3)

3. An occasional exchange of pulpits by the evangelical ministers in the community has many advantages. It is a public recognition of the substantial unity of Protestant Christendom. It gives to the minister a wider audience than if always limited to his own congregation, thus enlarging his acquaintance and tending to secure for him the interest and confidence of the whole people. It is sometimes a relief, enabling him to make use of former pulpit preparations when specially pressed by the exigencies of pastoral work. In such an exchange it is obvious that courtesy and comity require that the minister should conform to the usages of worship observed in the congregation where he is thus officiating, and that the subject presented should belong to the Gospel as held in common by evangelical Christians, and not to matters controverted among them. In this, as in all relations with other pastors and churches, the minister should observe with scrupulous delicacy the requirements of courtesy and honor.

4. Union meetings are sometimes held by churches of different denominations for the promotion of a revival of religion, during the progress of which each church is expected to waive its distinctive peculiarities and all unitedly press on men the claims of the common Gospel. Such a union of effort has undoubtedly proved useful among feeble churches and in neighborhood meetings remote from large centers of population; for there, from the paucity of numbers and gifts, all the Christian forces must needs be concentrated in order to maintain the interest. In such meetings every consideration of honor requires that the subjects presented should be restricted to those common truths of the Gospel in which all are united; a departure from this is always to be deplored. Among strong churches, however, where gifts abound, the utility of such a union is more doubtful; indeed, it is questionable whether there are not positive disadvantages. For, (1.) The members of the participating churches in such a meeting are placed under unusual circumstances which often serve to repress rather than develop their activity, and thus the labor falls on only a few more prominently gifted persons; whereas, a meeting in which the responsibility rested on only one church would have drawn into active work the mass of its members, and secured to it the blessing which such general activity brings. (2.) According to the Baptist faith, the ordinances of the Gospel vividly set forth Divine truth before men, and in the experience of our churches their administration is commonly attended by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit in the consciences of those who witness them. But in a union meeting these cannot be administered, or even alluded to, without impropriety, and this element of power is lost. (3.) It is not unfrequent, at the close of such meetings, that the efforts of such churches to secure members from the converts result in friction and unkind feeling—an evil sometimes more than counterbalancing the good done in the temporary union. While, therefore, it is not denied that union meetings have sometimes been useful, as a general thing they are not desirable. A church will ordinarily develop more effectively its own gifts and its own spiritual power by working alone and in accordance with its own principles and methods. It allows its light to shine most fully and clearly only when it steadily teaches and defends whatever of truth it has learned by the teachings of the Word of God. At the same time, its relations to the other churches in the community will, in the long run, be far less likely to be embarrassed and embittered.

SECTION XV.

CHANGE OF FIELD.

Instability in the pastoral office is the common fact and every pastor, sooner or later, meets the question, Shall I change my field? One cause of this is to be found, doubtless, in the restless spirit of the age, which is impatient with the old and ever clamoring for the new. This is specially the case in our country and is one of the natural results of rapid growth and a widely-diffused spirt of enterprise.

I. Evils of Change.

The evils of a change of field are many and serious and only the most imperative reasons will justify a pastor in making it. For, 1. It involves a serious loss in the pastor’s working capital, for the confidence and love of a congregation, which a true minister acquires, constitute a chief element in his power. These, however unlike mere popularity, are only slowly acquired; but, once secured, they add immensely to the value of his public and private work. But this advantage is all relinquished on leaving the field, and must be again slowly acquired at another post. A pastor’s power also to benefit a people by a wise adaptation of his work to their character and needs must depend largely on his knowledge of them; but in making a change this is lost, and can be regained only by similar study of a new congregation. 2. Few ministers widen their range of original investigation after their first pastorate. At the first post they are compelled to push out into new lines of thought, but in a new field the temptation to use old subjects, if not old sermons, often proves irresistible, and their life-thinking is likely to move round in the same narrow range. Pastoral change often thus checks intellectual and theological growth. 3. This restless expectation of change also discourages broad, comprehensive plans for the instruction and development of the church, and tempts the minister to aim exclusively at immediate results. Hence, his sermons are largely sentimental or sensational, confined within a limited range of topics, and the development of church-life is correspondingly dwarfed. 4. The marked decline in public respect for the ministry is probably in part a result of this feverish restlessness, which weakens confidence in them as men of high, unselfish purpose, and compels a community to regard the minister no longer as a permanent force in its life, but rather as a transient sensation.

II. Inadequate Causes of Change.

Many causes operate to unsettle a pastor which ought not to produce that result; indeed, some of them, if rightly interpreted, would have served rather to strengthen than to dissolve the pastoral relation. Thus, 1. Mental depression. A sedentary, studious life often induces abnormal nervous conditions, and the hypochondriac misinterprets the feelings of the people and underestimates the results of his ministry. A change is in consequence resolved on, which subsequent developments show to have been wholly unnecessary. 2. The loss of popularity. This is often due to real defects in the character and work of the pastor, and its true remedy is not a change of field, but a correction of his faults. Imperfect preparation has, perhaps, made his sermons commonplace and his pulpit a failure. Or he has failed to cultivate executive, pastoral, and social power, and, as a result, the church is not in effective working condition, and no bonds of personal sympathy and affection bind pastor to people. Or there are imperfections in his spirit and life, and these forbid confidence and respect on the part of the congregation. In all such cases a loss of popularity does not indicate so much a change of field as a change in the spirit, plan, and work of the pastor, for these defects would in any field soon lead to the same result. 3. Difficulties in the church. Such trials enter more or less into every minister’s lot, but they may be no indication of duty to change. The trial may be sent as a discipline, designed to develop, through faith and patience, a nobler character and higher power in the pastor. Change in this case is only a cowardly running away from duty, and consequent failure to gain an intended blessing. Many a disruption of the pastoral tie, it may be feared, is thus only a shrinking from trial and intended discipline and results only in loss to pastor and people. 4. Ambitious seeking for distinguished position. There is an unhallowed ambition which, unsatisfied with advancement through natural growth, is ever restlessly seeking, by newspaper notoriety, sensational sermons, and influential friends, to secure prominent places in the ministry. A vacant pulpit in a conspicuous church is usually beset by many such ambitious aspirants for place and notoriety. It is hardly necessary to suggest that such a spirit is at the farthest possible remove from the genuine spirit of the Christian pastor; and in the end it reacts disastrously on the reputation of him who indulges it, for self-seeking and pretense are sure, sooner or later, to be exposed.

III. Valid Reasons for Change.

A change of field is doubtless sometimes the duty of a pastor, and the providence and Spirit of God, which guided him in forming the pastoral relation, will make equally plain the obligation to dissolve it. Some of the reasons which may require a change are the following: 1. Growth in pulpit and pastoral power beyond the scope of the field. A young man has settled, perhaps, in a circumscribed field. Fidelity in study and labor has developed him, so that his capacity plainly fits him for a wider sphere. If this is made evident by the judgment of his brethren and the providence of God, he is required by duty, alike to his own life-usefulness and to the cause of Christ, to enter the wider field opened before him. 2. The necessities of health in himself or family. The severity of the draft made in this age on the intellect and nerves of the minister may sometimes compel change so as to obtain relief by the more free use of previous pulpit preparations. This, though unfortunate for the intellectual growth of the minister, is still to be chosen rather than broken health. Or the climate may prove unfavorable, and on this account a change be demanded. 3. Inadequate salary. The pecuniary support may be insufficient for the growing needs of the pastor, and a new post with larger salary may be opened to him. Here, however, great care must be taken in scrutinizing motives, for a wealthy church and a large salary have glittering attraction and appeal strongly to mere selfishness. The need of a larger income must be real, not fancied. 4. Permanent discomfort and embarrassment in his work. A minister, even after the most conscientious discharge of his duties, will sometimes find controlling influences in the church arrayed against him, or his cherished plans of church work defeated by counter-counsels; so that the pastor and permanent and influential members of the church are in relations wholly incompatible with comfort or efficiency. Now, if these relations cannot be altered, it would seem clearly his duty to leave, and to enter a field where his relations will be congenial and his labors unobstructed.

Finally, I suggest: A pastor must expect trials in any church, and commonly, in a change of place, he will only find a change in the form of trial. It is a serious question whether in most instances of change a simple faith in God, a patient forbearance, and a persistence in faithful work would not have avoided the necessity and added much to the strength of the pastor in the higher development of all the forces of his intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature, and in the enlargement of his influence as a minister of Christ. Certainly, the unrest so widely seen now in the ministry argues a great wrong somewhere, either in pastors or in churches, and is serving to deteriorate the character and weaken the influence of both.

SECTION XVI.

MINISTERS NOT IN THE PASTORAL OFFICE.

All ministers are not called to the pastorate; and it is sometimes the duty of those who were once called to that position to leave it and enter a different department of ministerial work. In the ministry which the ascended Christ gives His church, besides pastors, there are “evangelists” and “teachers”—terms designating important classes of ministers permanently existing in the kingdom of God. A brief characterization of these, and of the functions with which they are charged, may properly be presented here.

First, Evangelists.

Of this class, Philip, Barnabas, Apollos, Timothy, and Titus are examples in Scripture—men having no permanent, local charge, but commissioned to preach and administer the ordinances of the Gospel wherever the Spirit and providence of God might call. These men were engaged, for the most part, in work analogous to that of our foreign and home missionaries—preaching the Gospel where it was not already preached, organizing churches, and supervising them in their incipiency while yet feeble and struggling. It is probable, also, that at times their work resembled that of those men called, in a narrower sense, evangelists—men engaged in assisting pastors and churches in special services for the promotion of revivals of religion. Possibly, Barnabas, when sent by the church at Jerusalem to labor in the great awakening at Antioch, may be conceived as acting in such a capacity, as also Timothy when left in Ephesus by Paul to hold in check certain heretical tendencies in that city (Acts xi. 22–24; 1 Tim. i. 3, 4). Evangelists, therefore, may be considered under the following classifications:

I. Foreign Missionaries.—In considering the question of duty to enter the foreign field, the first inquiry necessarily relates to qualification, since without this no mere desire or emotion in regard to the work can have any weight. As among the more obvious requisites for the missionary work the following may be mentioned: 1. A sound body. Most of our mission-fields are in the East, in an enervating climate, and under conditions such as severely test the vigor of the physical constitution. No person already enfeebled by disease or seriously predisposed to disease should venture into the foreign field, as the probabilities would all be against his ability to labor there. On this point, it is obvious, skilled medical advice should be sought. 2. Common sense. The practical administration of the affairs of the mission, temporal as well as spiritual—its building, its finances, its business contracts and relations, the whole management—usually falls upon the missionary, and requires large practical tact and sagacity. In a new field he has no reliable advisers and must depend on his own judgment in deciding on all the temporal concerns of the mission. In the older fields, while some of the business cares may be devolved on native helpers, he must still move among the native churches as a practical and influential adviser, guiding their affairs, settling their difficulties, and correcting their mistakes. An unpractical, visionary mind, however scholarly and brilliant, is obviously unfitted for such a position. 3. Facility in learning to speak in a foreign tongue. A foreign language, and most of all an Oriental language, is difficult to acquire, especially so as to use it readily and fluently in common speech. Some men of good abilities have here failed in the foreign field, and, though useful perhaps in other departments, have never been effective in preaching. There should be, at least, an ordinary aptitude for language sufficient to ensure that with persevering effort the man will be able to master and use the vernacular of the people. 4. Power as a preacher. Preaching, among the heathen as elsewhere, is the grand means of evangelization, and the conditions of power in it are everywhere essentially the same. The missionary must be “apt to teach,” with a ready command of his faculties for argument and illustration, and a mastery of the art of putting things. In the conversational method of preaching in heathen lands, he is often obliged to meet in popular argument acute and profound reasoners, when his defeat before the people might prove a serious check to the Gospel. 5. Faith, energy, and perseverance. At these outposts of Christianity a timid, wavering spirit, faint-hearted and irresolute, will be sure to fail. Courage, determination, energy, alone will achieve permanent results. Carey and Judson waited years with unfaltering confidence for the first convert, and without substantially the same elements of character no man will succeed in pioneer work.

In deciding on the qualifications of a young man, however, it is to be remembered that he is as yet, in many respects, undeveloped, and qualities now present only in the germ and tendency will often in the actual work reveal themselves in marked power. Abroad, as at home, circumstances and emergencies develop the man. No young man, therefore, may hastily dismiss the question of a personal call to the foreign field on the ground of disqualification. Rather, he should carefully study his own character, and seek counsel of those best fitted to judge his capabilities, that in deciding a question of such moment he may act deliberately, with a full and impartial view of all the considerations, and with a clear conscience, always recognizing the danger that unconsciously to ourselves our selfishness is likely to magnify the reasons adverse to a missionary life and underestimate the force of those in favor of it.

The nature of the missionary work and the manner of its prosecution I shall not here consider: these will be found very fully presented in the work of the late lamented Rev. M. J. Knowlton, D.D., The Foreign Missionary, and in that of Rev. Dr. Rufus Anderson, entitled, Foreign Missions, their Relations and Claims. The position of a missionary is in some respects one of great delicacy, and requires on his part the most careful circumspection. Here may be mentioned: 1. His relation to the Missionary Board at home. Charged with the administration of the funds entrusted to them by the churches, the Board must of necessity exercise a certain measure of supervision and guidance in the conduct of the foreign work. The exact line of demarcation between the authority of the Board and the independence of the missionary in directing movements is not always easy to discover, and without a spirit of gentleness, forbearance, and concession the most serious complications may arise. In the expenditures of the mission, also, the keeping and rendering of an exact account are of the utmost moment, so as to avoid even the suspicion of wastefulness or malappropriation. The rule of Paul is here, as in all financial trusts, the only safe one: “Being careful of this, that no one should blame us in this abundance which is administered by us; for we provide for what is honorable, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men” (2 Cor. viii. 20, 21[1]). 2. His relations to the native pastors and churches are also of great delicacy. In the older missions the work of the missionary is largely that of general supervision of the native churches. But in this the missionary may not exercise an arbitrary power. He is not a bishop with authoritative episcopal power, subjecting the pastors under control and ignoring the independence of the churches. Rather, his power is moral, and his work is to train the churches and pastors for the independent exercise of their respective functions. He should, therefore, carefully guard against an arbitrary spirit or any methods of procedure which could militate against the just independence of pastors and churches. It is a distinguished proof of the high character of the noble men who have gone out as missionaries that, while in these and other respects their relations are of such delicacy, difficulties between them and the home Board have so rarely arisen, and the churches they have trained so fully exemplify in their character, organization, and working the simplicity and independence of the churches of the New Testament.

II. Home Missionaries.—Most of these are pastors of new or feeble churches, and their position differs from that of ordinary pastors only in the fact that their support is derived in part from some missionary organization, and that they are under consequent obligation to render a report of their work to the body which thus aids in sustaining them. Some of them, however, are engaged in purely itinerant ministerial work in the waste places of our cities, or in newly-settled or unevangelized parts of our country, visiting from house to house, preaching as Providence may give opportunity, organizing Sunday-schools, and forming churches. Few positions demand more force of character, soundness of judgment, intellectual ability, indomitable energy, and self-sacrificing devotion. Among the men occupied in this work are some of the noblest and most devoted servants of Christ. Their duties, however, being in most respects the same as those of ordinary pastors, do not need here a separate treatment.

III. Revivalists.—In all ages gifts have been bestowed specially adapted to the awakening and conversion of souls. These gifts may not, and sometimes do not, fit the man for the pastoral office, but as supplementing a pastor’s gifts they are often of high value. The revivalist may not always possess the learning and teaching power of the settled pastor; he might perhaps fail in the qualities essential to the continuous guiding, organizing, and governing of a church; but in power to make vivid the truths and impressions already received by the people, to develop hitherto latent conviction, and to press men to a definite and avowed religious decision, he may be specially gifted. Some pastors eminent in teaching and pastoral qualifications lack the awakening power, and thus it is often true in the spiritual work that “one soweth and another reapeth.” In such cases the revivalist comes as a reaper, with special gifts for ingathering, where the long and patient toil of the sower and cultivator has preceded him and has already prepared in the souls of the people the ripening spiritual harvest.

1. The relation of the evangelist to the pastor, in special religious services, is always one of great delicacy. The most frank understanding and cordial co-operation between them is of the highest moment. Much care, therefore, should be taken not to encroach on the prerogatives of the pastoral office, or to lessen the estimation in which the pastor is held by the people. There is sometimes danger of this. The sermons of the evangelist, limited as they are in number and frequently repeated, not only have the attraction of novelty to the people, but are often spiced with a fulness of anecdote and delivered with a freedom and force which the pastor’s cannot possess, by reason of the different and wider range of subjects which he must discuss and the far heavier and more extended draft made on his resources. The less thoughtful hearers will contrast what seems to them to be the comparative dullness of the pastor with the freshness and spice of the evangelist, and the pastor unjustly suffers. Among the converts also there is often a special attraction to him who had been the immediate agent in their conversion, while the long and patient toil of him who had probably prepared the way for that final step is overlooked or disparaged. Plainly, it is the duty of the evangelist to recognize and hold in check these tendencies, and to strengthen in every possible way the pastor’s position in the convictions and affections of the people. He may thus render his work a permanent blessing in the churches by making it the means of cementing the relation of pastor and people.

2. A young pastor will naturally defer in the arrangements for the meetings to the judgment and experience of the evangelist, but it is doubtful whether, under any circumstances, an evangelist should seek the control of them, or a pastor should concede it to him. Especially should the pastor maintain the control of those meetings in which candidates for admission to the church are examined; for here the pastor, apart from the official duty Christ has laid on him in this vital matter, has by his acquaintance with the people much better qualifications for judging character, and is far less likely to mistake than a stranger. Indeed, the temptation to seek the éclat of a large accession of converts may enter as an unconscious influence in the case of both evangelist and pastor, leading to undue haste and neglect of just discrimination in the admission of members, and resulting in great ultimate injury to the church. No point, therefore, needs to be more carefully guarded.

3. The object of the evangelist is the awakening of souls and the revival of religion; his subjects, therefore, are properly adapted in their nature and in the manner of their presentation to secure that result. The range of topics is thus necessarily limited, and the manner is naturally stimulating and exciting. From this comparative narrowness in the range of his theme and of his biblical and theological investigation, there is danger of one-sidedness in his views of truth. Seeking as he does, also, immediate results, he is liable to fail in perceiving and estimating at their just importance ultimate results in the permanent life and power of the church. Measures have sometimes been adopted in the midst of a religious excitement which the calm after-thought of the people could not approve, and the result has been a reaction in the public judgment, condemning the work and seriously injuring the church.

4. Eccentricity in the evangelist, when it is natural as a part of his individuality, may possibly be an element of power, at least as awakening curiosity and calling the people to the house of God, but when assumed and cultivated with a view to popular effect it is always unfortunate. Sensational subjects, slang phrases, vulgarisms, overcolored anecdotes, exaggerated statements, oddities of manner, though for the moment exciting the attention, and possibly the applause, of the audience, inevitably in the end react to the disadvantage of the speaker and his cause; the sober after-thought of even the irreligious will condemn them in one who is dealing with souls in the great concerns of religion.

“He that negotiates between God and man, As God’s ambassador, the grand concerns Of judgment and of mercy should beware Of lightness in his speech. ’Tis pitiful To court a grin when you should woo a soul; To break a jest when pity would inspire Pathetic exhortation; and t’ address The skittish fancy with pathetic tales When sent with God’s commission to the heart.”[2]

The evangelist, perhaps, is in special danger of seeking the temporary advantage which eccentricity brings, because for the time it gathers the multitude to his preaching; and, leaving soon, he fails to see the disastrous reaction which afterward it is sure to bring.

5. Some of the most eminent evangelists have used substantially the same subjects through their entire career, at each repetition of them adding to their clearness and force of argument vividness of illustration and effectiveness of appeal. Rev. Jacob Knapp, whose work has perhaps been surpassed in extent and power by no preacher of the present century, adopted this method. The writer was with him in three series of meetings, the first near the opening of his remarkable career, the last about thirty years after, near its close, and in each of these that distinguished revivalist used, for the most part, the same subjects. But the advance in all elements of power was immense, especially in the last repetition of his course. Few persons in the vast multitude which gathered daily for six successive weeks to listen to this, which proved the closing series of his life, can ever forget the compactness and force of his reasoning, the graphic power of his illustration, and the wonderful effectiveness in his application of truth to the conscience and the heart. He had gathered into that series of seventy-five or one hundred sermons the richest results of his life-thinking and experience and had made most of them marvels of power. This concentration of the whole force of the man on a few sermons gives the evangelist great advantage in the pulpit and would seem to be the dictate of true wisdom.

6. In his personal religious life the evangelist, while possessing great helps, has a possible danger on the side of spiritual pride. Moving constantly in the midst of revivals, he is liable to forget that for the most part he is simply reaping where other men have sown, and that conversion is but the culminating point in a long series of influences of which his was only the last; and in the grateful affection of revived Christians and of converted souls, which sometimes rises to spiritual adulation, he may fail in that genuine humility which recognizes all spiritual effects as the work of the Holy Spirit, and may unconsciously assume an air of spiritual superiority painfully in contrast with his obvious weaknesses. Power with God is thus lost, and with it, power with men.

There is no ministerial office of higher responsibility or greater usefulness than that of the evangelist. It has been filled by some of the noblest and ablest men in the church of God—men “full of the Holy Ghost and of faith,” whose names are fragrant in the memories of multitudes as heralds of salvation. Ordinarily, only experienced men should enter it; for it requires a purity and strength of character, a soundness of judgment, and a largeness of faith and patience, of practical wisdom and knowledge of men, such as extended experience only will give.

Second, Teachers.

The word “teachers” is employed in the New Testament as the designation of men in churches whose special work was public religious instruction. It is so used 1 Cor. xii. 28—“God hath set some in the church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers”—where the word, while doubtless including evangelists and pastors, evidently extends to all whose official work is Christian teaching. Probably, also, in Eph. iv. 11—“He gave some, Apostles, some, prophets, some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers”—the word has like breadth of meaning, designating men not pastors who publicly taught the Word. There are many endowed with teaching power whose gifts the churches, according to New Testament example, utilize in positions other than the pastoral office. They are called to various departments of work as secretaries and agents of missionary and benevolent organizations, as instructors in institutions of learning, as authors and editors engaged in creating and diffusing a Christian literature, and as laborers in other positions in which there is occasion for the exercise of ministerial functions; and they are, therefore, often ordained to preach and administer ordinances. On this class of ministers, we submit the following remarks:

1. Teachers, like evangelists, have no official authority as governing officers in the church. They are members with all the rights and duties of membership and differ from others only as empowered to preach and to administer ordinances. They are amenable, as others, to the discipline of the church, except that those who have received ordination through the action of a Council should not be divested of the ministerial office except by another Council. They have no right to ignore the ordinary obligations of church membership in pecuniary support, attendance on meetings, and personal devotion to church-work, but rather, from their conspicuous position, they are required to be in these things examples and leaders in the church. 2. This class of ministers in a church always stand in relations to the pastor of peculiar delicacy. Though without official authority, their character and gifts often give them great influence in the church and in society. Much care, therefore, should be used to avoid any intrusion on the prerogatives of the pastor. For example, in marriages and funerals within the bounds of his own church it is ordinarily proper that the pastor should officiate; only very unusual circumstances will justify a minister in allowing himself to set aside the pastor in such services. In the public and social worship of the church he should beware of taking too prominent a place or of occupying too much time, or of obtruding himself into the business and discipline of the church in such manner as to embarrass the pastor. In all relations in the church and in social life he should accord the pastor the just precedence which belongs to his official position, and his influence should be scrupulously used to encourage the pastor’s work and strengthen the pastor’s hands. Resident ministers may thus become to the pastor a source, not of discomfort and embarrassment, but of blessing and strength. 3. In the absence of the pressure of obligation which a pastoral charge brings, the minister is in danger of a secularized spirit, which weakens in him the sense of spiritual realities and impairs his power in the public ministration of the Gospel. To prevent this, he should earnestly cultivate in his own soul the ministerial spirit and should avoid all social or business entanglements which may either militate against his own spiritual life or may weaken his influence as a minister in the community. The secretary or agent whose work calls him from home has need of special care lest, in the constant changes incident to travel, he loses habits of personal private devotion and of biblical and theological study. It is possible thus to retrograde in spiritual character and power, even when pleading the holiest of causes. Indeed, in such an itinerant life, the mind, thus in constant contact with the churches and the ministry, may well be on its guard lest it allow itself to be filled with the current ministerial and church gossip, and yield to the temptation to pass from church to church bearing this rather than “the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ.” Few positions afford such large opportunities to carry blessing to pastors and churches as that of the secretary or agent of our benevolent societies. In counselling the young or the perplexed pastor, in healing divisions in churches and removing misunderstandings between pastors and their people, in inspiring and guiding the action of Associations and other public bodies, their position gives them great power, and opens before them a wide field for beneficent influence. Such men were Alfred Bennett, John Peck, and many others in the past—men whose presence was felt as a benediction in the churches, and whose words gave everywhere an impulse to the spiritual life; and such also are many of those who now fill that responsible office.

Third, Licentiates.

There are many persons whose gifts qualify them for usefulness in the occasional or the stated preaching of the Word, but whose age or attainments or needs do not make it expedient to ordain them. To such it is usual to give a license, authorizing them to preach either within the bounds of the church, or, more widely, wherever Providence may open the door. This confers no authority to administer ordinances; the only ministerial function it authorizes is that of preaching and conducting public worship. Here I suggest: 1. It is evident that such a license should be given only with wise discrimination. A man of unsound judgment, of defective knowledge of the Scriptures, or of doubtful moral and religious character should never be accredited as a preacher of the Gospel, however strong may be his personal impressions of duty or attractive his address in the eyes of the multitude. In the end he will be likely to injure rather than aid the cause of religion. The want of caution in hastily or thoughtlessly granting a license has often resulted in introducing to the sacred office men whose career has been calamitous to themselves and to the churches. 2. No man should, ordinarily, venture to preach without a license or some form of authorization from the church. Every Christian, it is true, is required, in his sphere, to publish the Gospel; but this surely does not empower him to assume the office of the public ministry. A call from God in the soul of the man is, it may be admitted, the matter of prime moment in a call to preach; but an inward impression of duty to preach certainly gives no right to the ministerial function, unless it be confirmed by the church, the Divinely-constituted judge of qualification. To enter on the public work of the ministry self-moved and self-appointed has no warrant in Scripture or in reason and is an act of assumption and disorder which can only result in evil. 3. Churches and pastors, while using a wise discretion, should carefully seek out and develop ministerial gifts. Much power doubtless remains latent which with proper care might be developed and utilized in ministerial work. Many a Christian life now left undeveloped, might be greatly enlarged by being thus placed in its true sphere of activity; and many a waste place within the bounds of our churches, under the culture of a licentiate, might be made to glow with spiritual life and beauty. It is surely one of the highest duties of a church to recognize and make effective the gifts Christ has bestowed on it; and among these none are of greater moment than the gift of ministerial power.

FOOTNOTES:

SECTION XVII.

PASTORAL STUDY.

Study is an oft-repeated injunction on the Christian ministry: “Meditate upon these things: give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all” (1 Tim. iv. 15); “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. ii. 15). The reasons for this are obvious. Knowledge is everywhere power. The ministry, from their position, are the natural leaders in religious thought. To command respect, they must be men of mental grasp and activity, and must be in advance of the thinking of those around them. Besides, no other profession is so heavily tasked for brain exertion. The Senate, the Bar, and the Platform only occasionally demand the highest efforts of the intellect. But the pulpit requires weekly its elaborate sermons. They must have freshness, originality, force, or the pastor loses his hold on the people. And this exhaustive drain on his resources continues steadily year after year. No man can meet such demands without constant, earnest study. He must be ever growing. His mental processes must be ceaselessly active, pushing into new realms of investigation, gathering new materials for thought, increasing his discipline, and making him a broader, richer, deeper man.

In the life of a pastor two extremes are to be avoided. On the one hand, he is not to be a mere book-worm, secluded in his study, with no practical, living contact and sympathy with life around him. Some ministers of large literary culture have been comparatively useless from want of living connection between their thinking and the real needs of the busy actual world in which they lived. On the other hand, a minister may not be a mere desultory man, a gossip from house to house, occupied with newspapers and magazines, skimming the surface of popular thinking in ephemeral books that may attract his fancy, but neglecting the severer processes of self-culture essential to mental growth. Instability in the pastoral office is often a result of this. Freshness, originality in thought and expression, is lost, and the people, weary of repetitions and empty platitudes, cease to respect and love the pulpit. The grand object to be sought, then, is to combine the student and the pastor—a mind growing in knowledge and power by habitual work in the study and growing in executive ability and social force by constant activity in the church and contact with the people. To secure this there must be a system—a system wisely formed and steadily pursued. What shall this system be? In answering this I propose to pursue two lines of suggestion—the method of study and the subjects of study.

First, the Method.

1. Be a student everywhere. The pastor’s business is to deal with the human mind and the actual experiences of men; he should, therefore, go through the world with his eyes and ears open, thoroughly studying men and life around him. In the street, in society, in the social meeting, the mind is to be ceaselessly at work, observing character, studying phases of experience and life, and gathering materials for mental work. Many of the best trains of thought, most interesting views of Scripture, and most effective illustrations will be suggested in conversations and in the prayer-room. No man can afford to lose these; for, springing as they do from direct contact with the people, such trains of thought are most likely to meet the wants of the congregation and deal with the questions most vital to them. The studious pastor who preserves these texts and thoughts and illustrations as they occur will be surprised to find how rapidly they accumulate, and how fresh and rich they often render his thinking and instruction.

2. Have a book always on hand. Every life has its spare moments, and much may be added in culture and knowledge by a right use of them. Most of the current literature of the day, and much in standard biography, history, science, poetry, and art can be read in this way, if the right book is at hand. A half, or even a quarter, of an hour each day will accomplish the reading of a large number of volumes in a year; and if these are well selected, they will greatly add to the minister’s breadth and intelligence, while they will refresh rather than exhaust his mind.

3. Consecrate a specific part of each day to severe systematic work in the privacy of the study. The habit of general observation and reading, before suggested, can be no adequate substitute for this. The time thus appointed for hard study should be sacredly devoted, and no ordinary occurrence be allowed to interrupt. The advantages of this are obvious. (1.) A habit once fixed is an ever-increasing power. The mind acts with greater rapidity and force when the habit of study at fixed, regularly recurring periods is formed. Instead of spending hours in vain attempts to fix attention and concentrate thought on the subject in hand, the mind enters at once with full energy into work. The more fixed and long continued the habit, the more easy, rapid, and powerful the mental processes. This is one secret of the immense amount of brain-work performed by some men: by fixed habits they instantly concentrate mental force, and work at white heat. (2.) If these hours are once fixed, and are fully understood by the people, they will ordinarily be free from interruption. The congregation will conform to the pastor’s plan and will respect his fidelity in preparing for their instruction on the Lord’s Day. What part of the day should be selected for the study cannot be determined by any rule; it must depend partly on the minister’s habits, and partly on the necessities of his position. Ordinarily, the morning is best. The liability to interruption is less, and it leaves the afternoons and evenings free for visitation, meetings, and social life.

Let me add, nothing but a high ideal of the ministry and a fixed purpose to realize it will enable a pastor to persist in such a course of study. He must believe in it as a solemn duty he owes his God, his people and himself, or he will fail. Indolence is often fostered by a false dependence on genius or on the spur of the occasion to give effectiveness and brilliancy to public utterances. Unthoughtful hearers, also, will often praise the off-hand, unstudied sermons and discourage elaborate preparation. Besides this, there are obstacles to study in the pastor’s work. He has cares connected with the sick, the afflicted, the erring; executive work in the organization and discipline of the church; and duties he owes society in the varied relations of life. These are often pressing, and the danger is that they crowd into the hours for study. Many a man circumscribes his own intellectual growth and pulpit power, making himself permanently a narrower and weaker man, by allowing these outside cares to destroy his processes of mental discipline and growth. Here nothing will overcome but a profound conviction that study—persistent, regular, life-long study—is the solemn, first duty of every man who ventures to stand up in the pulpit as an instructor of the people. Let other duties have their place, but the first, the most imperative duty of him who teaches others is to teach himself.

Second, the Subjects.

Let us suppose that the pastor has fixed his hours and made them sacred to severe, thorough mental labor; what shall he study? I answer: Not his sermons only. A grave mistake is often made here. The whole time is devoted to sermon preparation, leaving no room for general culture, biblical investigation, or theological studies. As the result, the mind becomes empty and barren. It lacks material for thought. The man is perpetually pouring out, but never pouring in, and the vessel becomes empty. He faithfully grinds at the mill but puts nothing into the hopper. Some conscientious, hardworking thinkers in this way fail as preachers. They have no freshness. The mind runs perpetually in the same grooves and moves always in the same narrow circle, whereas, if they were reading, investigating, looking on subjects from new standpoints and receiving the mental impulses which contact with other thinkers gives, the mind would be ever growing, ever enriching itself, and the sermons would be full of fresh and interesting views of truth.

Three objects are to be sought in the study: general culture, biblical and theological investigation, and sermon preparation.

I. General Culture.

By this I mean studies adapted to the development of the whole man. The pastor is not to be, in the narrow, technical sense, a mere theologian. He should seek to be a man of broad culture, developing his nature on every side and forming a full, symmetrical manhood. To accomplish this his studies must take a wide range, and open to him all those great realms of truth which science, philosophy, poetry, and history reveal.

1. The sciences. The pastor should not, indeed, turn aside from his sacred work to become a devotee to science. But in this age of scientific investigation, when the problems of science are so largely occupying public thought and so vitally touching the profoundest questions in religion, and the applications of science are so marvelously transforming our whole civilization and life, surely, at such a time, the man who stands up weekly to instruct the people, assuming to lead public thought, ought not to be ignorant of the results that science has reached, although he may not stop to pursue the processes of scientific inquiry. Astronomy, geology, botany, chemistry, each open a new world of truth, pouring light on the interpretation of God’s Word and abounding in richest illustrations of the sacred themes of the pulpit. Standard works on these and related sciences are within the reach of every pastor, and even one on each of them, carefully read, would greatly enrich and enlarge his thinking.

2. Philosophy, or the science of the mind. The preacher undoubtedly mistakes when he aspires to the character of a philosopher, and turns aside from his direct and earnest work for souls to lose himself in dialectics or the mazes of metaphysical speculation. But his work as a minister is to deal with the human soul—to influence the mind by reasoning, by persuasion, by the array of motives; and mind, therefore, in its power and the methods of influencing it, may well constitute one of his life-studies. It is here he comes in contact with the master-spirits in the world of thought—minds which have controlled the thinking of the ages—Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Bacon, Leibnitz and Locke. In the pressure of a pastor’s life all these cannot be read, but a few choice, standard works on mental science, such as Hamilton, Mansel, McCosh, and Porter, may surely be read and carefully digested.

3. Æsthetic Culture. God has not made us mere logical machines, but beings of taste, imagination, sensibility, to be moved by objects of beauty. Much of God’s book is in poetry addressed to the imagination, and the universe around us is crowded with endless forms of the beautiful. Where a cold, impassive logic fails, truth often comes with resistless power through the imagination and the sensibilities. The cultivation of this side of our nature is essential to the development of a full manhood and is important alike to pastoral and pulpit power. For this, one of the best means is the careful reading of the greater poets, the mighty creative minds whose works have stood the test of ages. Among the last occupations of that magnificent man, the late Dr. Wayland, was the re-reading of Shakespeare and Milton; and these wonderful creations of genius afforded his ripened mind the richest instruction and keenest enjoyment.

4. History and general literature. Historical study should, without doubt, find no small place in this general culture. It enlarges the whole range of thought, shedding light on God’s vast plan of providence and grace, and thus interpreting the Bible; while in all its wide extent it is filled with illustrations adapted to enforce the truths of the Gospel. Nor should the higher class of works in fiction be excluded, for they often have great value, both for their delineations of character and life and for the culture they give to the imagination.

Now, in respect to this general culture, the points I here emphasize are, that it should be systematically and earnestly prosecuted, and that on all the subjects studied only the standard, thoroughly-tested authors should be read. Such a plan of reading, steadily pursued year after year, will make an ever-growing mind, developing symmetrically on every side into a noble, intellectual manhood. It only requires conscientious earnestness and persistency. The time wasted by some ministers in mental dissipation over newspapers and ephemeral literature would suffice to put them into communion with those master-minds of the ages, and secure the culture and wealth found in these highest realms of thought.

II. Biblical and Theological Culture.

The great work of a pastor is instruction in the truths of the Bible; and wherever else he may fail, he must at least be a master in the Gospel. Ignorance on some of the topics already mentioned, though unfortunate, may still be tolerated, but in the man who ventures into the pulpit as a public instructor in the Bible, a want of biblical knowledge and the utterance of crude, undiscriminating statements of truth can never be excused. No mere rhetorical power or seeming earnestness can atone for a want of thorough mastery of the themes of the pulpit. Biblical and theological investigation should, therefore, have a large place in the pastor’s plan of study.

1. Here, first of all, and most important, is the direct study of the Bible, bringing the mind into living contact with God’s Word. As students in the Hebrew and Greek, let a part of each day be given to careful, critical study of the Scriptures in the Divine originals as they were indited by the Holy Spirit. No translation, however perfect, can possibly give one the whole impression of the original. A little careful work each day in reading the original Scriptures will soon make the process easy and delightful, and its value is above all price. But, whether in the inspired original or in a version, the Bible should be carefully studied. It is God’s own Word, the great instrument of His power, “the sword of the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit works only through Divine truth, and that must ever be the mightiest pulpit which most fully and clearly unfolds these living words of God. (1.) As accessory to biblical interpretation, I suggest the study of the geography and history of Bible lands. The power to localize the characters and events of Scripture and place them in their historical surroundings is of the highest importance. Thus, in reading the Pentateuch and earlier historical books, how much more vividly are the events conceived if you are familiar with the localities in Egypt, the desert, and Palestine; or in reading Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel if you have clear ideas of the place and history of Assyria and Babylon; or in the New Testament if you have studied the condition and localities of the Roman Empire, then dominant! For this such works as Smith’s Old and New Testament History, Rawlinson’s Five Ancient Monarchies, and Milman’s History of the Jews or Stanley’s Jewish Church, would furnish the historical information, while a good biblical atlas, kept always open before you, would give the needed maps. Full historical and topographical discussions will be found in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Robinson’s Biblical Researches, or Thompson’s Land and the Book. (2.) The Bible, I also suggest, should be studied in its unity. The book of God, from Genesis to Revelation, is one whole, from first to last unfolding, by successive steps, one system of truth and method of redemption. It is not a mere fortuitous collection of sacred writings, but one grand revelation from God, each part related to every other and essential to the whole. The types and prophecies and symbols of the earlier Scriptures contain the germs of the later Gospel, and no man will thoroughly understand the one Testament without a careful study of the other. This interior, vital unity in the several parts of Scripture is developed in such works as Fairbairn’s Typology and the Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation. (3.) The books of the Bible should be studied in their chronological and historical connection. Suppose one is studying the prophecy of Isaiah: he will ascertain its meaning far more clearly if he have carefully studied the period when Isaiah lived, the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah as given in Kings and Chronicles. Or suppose he is reading the Epistles of Paul: their interpretation will be far more clear if he have studied the character of Paul and the circumstances under which he wrote as they are developed in the Acts and the Epistles, aided by such a work as Conybeare and Howson’s Life and Epistles of St. Paul. (4.) The Bible should also be studied analytically. A cursory reading of the Scriptures does not interpret them; they must be carefully analyzed if one would penetrate into their full meaning. For example, one is reading Romans; he begins, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in holy Scripture, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord; who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” Now analyze or extract the propositions here contained. It is affirmed here of Paul, 1. That he is a servant (doulos) of Jesus Christ; 2. That he is a Divinely-called Apostle; 3. That as an Apostle he is set apart unto the Gospel of God. It is said of the Gospel, 1. That it was foreannounced by the prophets in Holy Scripture; 2. That its subject-matter is concerning Jesus Christ our Lord. It is declared of Christ, 1. That as to His flesh, or human nature, He descended from David; 2. That as to His spirit of holiness, or Divine nature, He was clearly shown to be the Son of God by the fact of His resurrection. Now, the man who will patiently, steadily work out such an analysis of God’s Word as he studies it will penetrate the heart of it, and its richness will astonish him. The great thoughts of God will be laid open to his view as they never can be to the careless, superficial reader; and if, with such biblical work in the study, the pastor devotes a part of the Lord’s Day either to expository preaching or to a lecture in his Bible school, this direct connection of the work of the study with that of the pulpit will add interest and force to both.

2. In the study of the Christian doctrines it is, first of all, important to have a system. This plan of work should be so arranged that in a course of years, taking one subject at a time, the pastor may make a thorough investigation of all the leading topics. As the basis take such a work as Hodge’s Outline of Theology, or any good compendium of theology, and, following the order of subjects, work in each until its main points have been mastered. For illustration, suppose the subject is the doctrine of inspiration. First work out carefully the questions in your chosen text-book, and read some of the best authors on the subject, as Lee, Woods, Gaussen, and Hodge. All the points involved will thus be brought distinctly before the mind. Then collect the leading passages of Scripture bearing on it and examine each critically and patiently and note down your own impressions. Follow this by writing a full and careful statement of your own view as the result of the investigation. Or suppose the subject to be that great central doctrine of the Gospel, the atonement. After working out the questions as presented in your text-book and reading the best authors accessible to you, so as to become master of the vital points, then examine the priesthood and sacrifices of the Old Testament, the predictions of the atonement in prophecy, and the passages bearing on this doctrine in the New Testament. Having thus before you the elements of a decision, write out fully your own view. Such a process of theological investigation, steadily pressed year after year, and connected as it would be with the reading of the great masters in theology, could not fail to make the pastor a clear, strong religious thinker and his pulpit a power in leading religious thought. Let me also urge the study of the history of doctrines in connection with such a course of theological investigation. Take such a work as Hagenbach’s or Shedd’s History of Doctrines, in which the course of theological thinking on each of the great truths of the Bible is traced through the ages, and the varying phases of the doctrine through successive periods, and the forms in which it has been held by the world’s profoundest thinkers are presented. Such a study is wonderfully stimulating to thought and affords a broader basis for the formation of opinions. If also, in direct connection with this investigation of a great truth, the pastor should preach on the leading points involved in it, he would greatly add to the definiteness of his own views, while the work of the study would thus come into the work of the pulpit, enhancing the interest and power of the sermons.

III. Sermon Preparation.

The preparation of sermons should doubtless fill the chief place in these hours of private study. This subject, however, belongs to the department of homiletics, and will be found amply treated in works specially devoted to it, such as Broadus on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, Shedd’s Homiletic and Pastoral Theology, and the several courses of Yale Lectures on Preaching. I will, therefore, on this topic only emphasize the importance of high ideals of sermonizing and pulpit preparation.

The sermon is the embodied result of the pastor’s culture and reading, the public expression of his whole spiritual and intellectual manhood, and he is bound to show himself “a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. ii. 15). He dishonors Christ and His Gospel if he habitually preaches without thorough study.

The sermon is the message God sends by him to the people. It unfolds high and holy themes, into which “angels desire to look,” and on which the profoundest minds of the ages have dwelt with wonder and awe. It deals with the souls of men and the great interests of eternity. Surely, the man who ventures to stand up and speak carelessly and thoughtlessly on such themes and amidst such interests has failed to grasp the primary idea of his great office as a Christian pastor.

SECTION XVIII.

PASTORAL RESPONSIBILITY.

The pastor, in a true and important sense, is entrusted with the care of the souls of his congregation; he is, therefore, under obligation to use his utmost power for their conversion and sanctification, “warning every man and teaching every man,” that he “may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. i. 28). Paul said to the Ephesian elders: “Take heed to yourselves, and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood” (Acts xx. 28); and in exhorting the people on their part to obey the ministry, he urges as a reason, “for they watch for your souls as they that must give account” (Heb. xiii. 17). This responsibility plainly includes: 1. A personal life such that it may constitute a fitting example. The pastor is to be “an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim iv. 12). Thus, Paul ever referred to his own life, not as perfect, but as publicly exemplifying the Christian character, saying to the Philippians (Phil. iv. 9): “Those things which ye have both learned and received, and heard, and seen in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you;” and to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. ii. 10), “Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.” A defective, irregular life in the pastor neutralizes the ablest efforts in the pulpit and may become a pre-eminent means of the ruin of souls. 2. Wise and faithful dealing with the individual souls of his charge. Paul went “from house to house,” from soul to soul: he “ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears,” and he proposes this as an example of ministerial fidelity, requiring the pastor to be “instant in season, out of season.” Evidently, he did not regard the work of the minister as done when performed only in the study and the pulpit: it included personal dealing with souls. 3. Earnest effort to become an able minister of the New Testament. The most solemn urgencies press on the pastor the duty of seeking the highest possible intellectual and pulpit power. The themes he unfolds are the grandest that can engage the thought of man or angel. The end to be secured—the salvation of souls—is the most momentous ever committed to a finite being. God will not hold guiltless the indolent, reckless minister who causes the Gospel to be despised and imperils the souls of his people by a careless, unstudied presentation of the message He has entrusted to him. 4. The faithful declaration of the whole counsel of God. He is to show distinctly the threatenings as well as the promises of the Gospel, and the danger as well as the hopes set before the soul. No subject is to be avoided because unpopular or distasteful. No personal considerations are to prevent the plain, distinct enunciation of all the words of God. Jehovah says to the watchman: “If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (Ezek. xxxiii. 8; iii. 17–21).

Pastoral responsibility, however, has its limitation. Christ does not require of His servants impossible labor; but as they have received their talents, so they are to use them, each “according to his several ability.” If faithful to his trust, the pastor is “unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish” (2 Cor. ii. 15–17), and it is his right to feel he has “delivered his soul” and is “pure from the blood of all men” (Acts xx. 26, 27). Such was the ministry of Paul, a mere man, aided in this only by such Divine help as is promised to every other servant of God. It is fidelity, not success, which constitutes the limit of responsibility. Success belongs to God. Paul plants, Apollos waters, but God gives the increase. Jeremiah spoke with the earnestness and tenderness of lips inspired, but he was unpopular, and, as men would measure, unsuccessful; nevertheless, his name stands high among the ancient worthies, because in that degenerate age he was faithful to his trust and work. Besides, a minister’s power is not measured by the immediate, outward result. The powerful revival in which hundreds are gathered into the church finds its occasion, indeed, in the peculiar gifts of some popular preacher, but its real causes often lie hid in the quiet, patient toil of other men differently gifted. Every man has his special adaptation and work—one sows and another reaps—and only in the great harvest at the end of the world will the actual results of each man’s work appear. Hence, Christ says to every servant of His: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. ii. 10). Fidelity, then, is the limit of responsibility; and the earnest pastor, who, with heartfelt loyalty to Christ, has to the extent of his ability and opportunity faithfully fulfilled his calling, may know assuredly that he has the approval of the Master, and that awaiting him at the end is the sure reward of the faithful.

SECTION XIX.

THE OUTER LIFE OF A PASTOR.

The Scriptures require in the pastor a model life. He is to be “an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. iv. 12). As the leader of the flock his outward life will be expected to evince a higher moral tone and furnish a more marked exemplification of Christian principles than that of the private Christian, because his office constitutes him an example, and the prominence of his position renders defects in him especially conspicuous and hurtful. Hence, Scripture is here explicit and emphatic: “A bishop, then, must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach: not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity (for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?): not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them that are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil” (1 Tim. iii. 2–7).

I. Business Relations.

1. Make no debts: “Owe no man anything” (Rom. xiii. 8). In all purchases for personal and family purposes the pastor should pay as he buys. It cultivates a just economy and avoids debts, which often prove a heavy burden on a minister’s life and a most serious drawback to his usefulness. No man is thoroughly independent in the pulpit who is facing a number of unpaid creditors. Ordinarily, this avoidance of debt is entirely feasible, and when understood to be a rule with the pastor it has a beneficial influence in promoting promptness in the payment of his salary. The people will respect such a course in their minister. At the very outset of life, then, let him fix it as a principle never to run in debt. A strict adherence to this will sometimes involve inconvenience and self-denial, but these are more than compensated in the exemption from the anxieties and humiliations of debt, in the sense of independence, in the respect and confidence of the community, and, above all, in the clear conscience which observance of this rule secures. Only the most absolute necessity should ever set aside this rule, for the neglect of this is too frequently a cause of failure in the pastoral office.

2. Use great care and all the proper forms in making business engagements. The pastor is tempted to neglect business forms on the supposition that as a minister he ought to rely on the honor and consideration of those with whom he deals, and as the result, even where there is no dishonesty, there is often misunderstanding, out of which grow heartburnings and disputes. All business transactions, therefore, should be conducted in a business way, leaving no room for misapprehensions, and then all engagements should be met with promptness and honor. A pastor should be delicately sensitive to his reputation in this, for any failure, though it be only an apparent one, in fulfilling a business obligation is sure to provoke unfavorable comment and militate against usefulness.

3. Live within your income. A pastor may not be reckless in regard to the probable future needs of himself and of those dependent on him. Such a course is justified neither by Scripture nor by Providence. “The Lord ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel” (1 Cor. ix. 14). A minister, therefore, should find a life-support in his income from his work, and should so use his salary that a part be laid aside for coming days of need. If the salary is small, he should rigidly cut down expenses that some of it may be reserved. Special exigencies in life, will, indeed, sometimes prevent this, but ordinarily it is feasible, and in the case of the head of a family it is plainly a most sacred duty. The neglect of care to make provision for those dependent on us is not faith, but recklessness.

Here, however, a pastor must beware of covetousness. Instances sometimes occur in which this just and necessary regard for future need degenerates into a selfish greed for accumulation which narrows and belittles the minister of Christ. He compromises his dignity and independence by seeking in various ways gifts from his people, and thus the man is sunk in the mendicant, or he degrades his office by descending to petty meannesses, driving close bargains in business and shirking his just share in the contributions for church-work and benevolence. Nowhere is the love of money more offensive than in the Christian minister.

II. Political Relations.

1. A pastor should always himself exercise the elective franchise and should encourage Christians to do so; in no other way can we have a Christian government. On this continent the great experiment is in progress of a government strictly by the people, and in the absence of religion and virtue it must prove a failure. Christian men should not neglect their duties as citizens; it imperils the life of the nation and the welfare of the Christian cause. The pulpit, therefore, should press on the church the duty of seeking the elevation of good men to official station. 2. As a pastor the minister is bound to refuse all party obligations and all partisan use of pastoral influence; for he is pastor of the whole church, chosen and supported without reference to political distinctions among the members. But as an individual he is entitled to his political preferences and his just political influence; with this the church has no right to interfere. At the same time, it is wise for the pastor to avoid excited political discussions, especially in public places, and quietly to exercise his political rights and perform the duties of a citizen. 3. When public questions have a strictly moral side, I think the pulpit should not be silent, but should seek, as on moral questions in general, to give direction to public sentiment in favor of honesty, truth, and virtue. Occasional sermons, therefore, presenting the obligations of citizens and applying the moral teachings of Christianity to questions on which Christian citizens are called to act, are the duty of the pastor; but the time and manner and spirit of such sermons require the exercise of the most careful judgment.

III. Social Character and Relations.

Two extremes are here to be avoided—the one, in which the pastor lives a recluse life, isolated from the life of the people and unfelt in directing the currents of thought and feeling around him; the other, in which he maintains a loose, familiar intercourse with all society, lounging about in public places, a “hail-fellow-well-met” with everybody. Avoiding these extremes, a pastor should never allow himself to be a cipher in social life but should make himself a vital force controlling and elevating it. The gravity of his character and work, however, requires him to use special care in regard to deportment and associations. He is, indeed, to be and to act out himself, but, while true to his own nature as a man, he is so to control it as never to forget his character and office as a minister of God. Here I offer the following suggestions:

1. The minister should be, always and everywhere, the unaffected Christian gentleman, showing all courtesy to all men. It is here some fail, and either through a neglect of the courtesies and amenities of social life render themselves repulsive, or by a stiff and artificial manner of observing them, without geniality and warmth, make themselves unapproachable. Men ordinarily and justly regard manners as an index of character. Good manners, therefore, cannot be put on from without; they spring from a sense of the relations we bear to others and a disposition to act in accordance with them. A kindly, unselfish heart, a quick, keen sympathy, a sensitive regard for others’ rights and feelings; a ready, generous appreciation for the excellences of others, and a tender charity for their faults and foibles—in short, a well-developed Christian manhood, with refined sensibilities, noble, pure, upright, transparent, touching life on every side, and fitted to bless whatever it touches,—this is the only real basis of correct manners. The cultivation of such a character, therefore, is the prime necessity, for in this will exist all the instincts of the true gentleman from which the gentlemanly manner spontaneously results.

2. In the matter of dress. I do not know that any law of propriety requires the minister to be distinguished either in the cut or the color of his garments. Many, however, prefer some kind of ministerial costume as a matter of convenience to indicate everywhere their vocation, and this is, of course, a subject to be left wholly to individual preference. The principle to be insisted on as important is that the dress be not such as to arrest special attention, as suggesting foppishness and fastidiousness on the one hand, or carelessness and slovenliness on the other. The man, not the dress, should arrest and hold attention.

3. In conversation he should be genial, courteous, affable, avoiding that tone and manner of condescension which carries in it an implied sense of superiority, and exhibiting that breadth of intelligence and culture which will secure respect for his views in general society. Slang phrases, vulgar anecdotes, boisterous discussions, idle gossip, and scandal, it is hardly necessary to say, ill become a pastor, and will in the end seriously militate against his usefulness. Coarseness, indelicacy, and all that is suggestive of impurity should be scrupulously avoided; such words, when uttered by a minister, live and fester in the memory, and are destructive of all pastoral influence afterward over those who hear them. “An obscene story, a lewd double entendre, a filthy joke, a questionable word or gesture, a sentence that would make a pure woman blush in public or in private, in select or in mixed company, is a burning shame and scandal to any minister of the Gospel.” Nor should his chief distinction in society be that of the wit or mimic. Wit and humor, when natural, are often elements of real power, as giving sparkle and flavor to speech, but in the pastor their place is subordinate; when they appear as his chief characteristic, they inevitably injure his influence. Attractive social qualities, such as enable the pastor to exercise a leading and governing power in society, are to be most earnestly sought; their effect on pastoral usefulness can hardly be overstated.

The minister, when a guest, enjoying the temporary hospitality of a family circle, should bring into it the blessing of a genial, sunshiny spirit, showing always a thorough appreciation of kindness received and avoiding all unnecessary trouble to the hosts. If other ministers are present, beware of that ministerial clannishness which centers conversation on topics adapted only to ministers or makes it consist of ministerial criticism, gossip, and scandal adapted to lower the estimation in which other ministers are held. In the freedom and abandon of ministerial society there is often much temptation to this, but words thus thoughtlessly spoken sometimes do incalculable injury, both by lowering the ministerial character in the eyes of the household, and by inflicting an incurable wound on the reputation of those made the subjects of gossip. The injunction of Scripture cannot be too carefully heeded: “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt” (Col. iv. 6); for thus the spirit you breathed and the words you spake will remain a benediction with that household and make your memory fragrant there for ever.

4. In his amusements and recreations a pastor should indulge only in such as are not only in themselves innocent but are not commonly offensive to the Christian conscience. The grand principle of self-denial enunciated by Paul as the rule of his own life is here, undoubtedly, the guiding principle of ministerial duty. He says: “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved” (1 Cor. x. 32, 33). He relinquished self-gratification, even though innocent, rather than put a cause of stumbling before others and hinder their salvation. Recreation is doubtless a necessity—the bow always bent loses its spring—but recreation should never be taken in a form which may give offence to Christian souls, or which may set an example such as, if followed by others, might work their injury. A pastor’s influence also may be impaired by undue absorption in any form of recreation. There is no wrong, it may be, in using a good horse, in playing a game of ball or croquet, in fishing or hunting, or many other forms of recreation; but the pastor who is specially distinguished for his interest in fast horses or for his sporting habits, or as a devotee of amusements, violates most seriously the proprieties of his position, and sinks in the estimation of all thoughtful people.

5. A minister’s associations or special intimacies should not be with bad or loose or irreligious men; the taint will necessarily tarnish and injure his own reputation, even if it does not corrupt his character. He is to be “a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate” (Tit. i. 8). He should show all courtesy and kindness, indeed, to even the worst men around him, but his special friendships should not be sought there, nor his habitual associations. Some ministers have here made wreck of their influence with the better classes in the community, while their association with the loose and irreligious class, so far from winning them to Christ, has only the more hardened them in rejecting Him by lowering in their eyes the character of His servant.

6. The pastor’s relations with the other sex should not only always be pure in fact but should also be such as to avoid even the possibility of misconstruction. No point needs to be more carefully guarded, for even the suspicion or thought of wrong in this, however ill-grounded, is commonly fatal to usefulness, and often follows him through the remainder of life.

IV. Personal Habits.

The pastor is expected to be a model Christian gentleman, showing the refinement, delicacy, and culture which the Gospel inculcates and produces, and improper habits, therefore, in him are more prominent and influential for evil than in other men. Now and then a minister exhibits a foolish bravado of public opinion by affecting brusque, uncouth, eccentric manners and indulging in questionable habits under the mistaken supposition that, in thus setting at defiance the common sentiments of mankind in regard to the proprieties of ministerial life, he is showing moral courage and manhood; nor are there wanting equally foolish people who will applaud this contemptible exhibition of personal vanity. But, apart from such exceptional cases, the ministerial life is always beset by strong temptations to unbecoming habits. Thus:

1. Intemperance in eating. The studious life, as ordinarily pursued, often tends to dyspepsia and an unnatural craving for food. The bodily and mental vigor is often thus destroyed, while the obvious absence of self-restraint degrades the man in the eyes of others. The dullness of the pulpit and the ill-health of ministers are not seldom traceable to an overloaded stomach.

2. The use of tobacco. The highest medical authorities now agree that this is one of the common causes of nervous prostration and early mental decay. The late Prof. Moses Stuart says: “I do not place the use of tobacco in the same scale with that of ardent spirits. It does not make men maniacs or demons. But that it does undermine the health of thousands; that it creates a nervous irritability, and thus operates on the temper and moral character of men; that it often creates a thirst for spirituous liquors; that it allures to clubs and grog-shops and taverns, and thus helps to make idlers and spendthrifts; and finally, that it is a very serious and needless expense,—are things which cannot be denied by any observing and considerate person. And if all this be true, how can the habitual use of tobacco as a mere luxury be defended by any one who wishes well to his fellow-men or has a proper regard to his own usefulness?” The duty of self-conquest in regard to such a habit is evident especially in the minister, whose very office adds emphasis to his personal example; and the principle involved is strongly set forth by Paul when he says: “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Cor. vi. 12). He accounted it an unworthy and dangerous thing for a Christian to come under bondage to any bodily appetite. But he adds: “Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things: now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we, an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away” (1 Cor. ix. 25–27).

3. The use of stimulants. The pressure of intellectual work on the pastor often requires of him the most important public efforts when worn and depressed, and thus at times the temptation to stimulate is very strong. The fact of bodily weakness pleads for a stimulant as a medical necessity. Once indulged, stimulation readily passes into a habit, and the importance of the occasion is made an effectual plea for it as an alternative to failure. Now, in all such cases, the consciousness of self-indulgence, as it weakens self-respect, must needs also weaken the moral power of the minister. He feels himself enslaved and cannot speak with authority. While consciously and deliberately yielding to self-indulgence, how can he preach to others the moral teachings of the Gospel? Such an indulgence, moreover, places the man in fearful peril, for it creates the necessity of repetition, and forms an appetite which in many instances has destroyed the man. Some of the most brilliant men in the ministry have here made an utter and terrible wreck of life.

Right habits are, therefore, of primary moment. A man can respect himself and secure the respect of others only as he exercises habitual self-control, holding passion and appetite in thorough subjection; without this the pastor lacks that consciousness of independence and that true manhood in which alone resides genuine moral power; and his defects, made conspicuous and influential by his sacred office, may be disastrous in their influence on those around him.

SECTION XX.

THE PASTOR’S INNER LIFE.

Ancient asceticism, in demanding for the ministry a hidden life of communion with God, gave voice not only to one of the profoundest intuitions of the Christian consciousness, but also to one of the clearest teachings of Scripture. The men who deal with spiritual things must themselves be spiritual. Our age, while rightly rejecting a perverted asceticism, is tending to the opposite error. It is intensely practical. “Action!” is its watchword. This practicalness often becomes mere narrowness and shallowness. It overlooks the profounder laws of the Christian life. Spiritual force comes from within, from the hidden life of God in the soul. It depends, not on mere outward activities, but on the Divine energies acting through the human faculties, God working through the man, the Holy Ghost permeating, quickening all the powers of the preacher, and speaking by his voice to the souls of the people. The soul’s secret power with God thus gives public power with men, and the mightiest influences of the pulpit often flow from a hidden spring in the solitude of the closet; for a sermon is not the mere utterance of man: there is in it a power more than human. Its vital force comes from the Holy Spirit. Jesus said: “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you” (Matt. x. 20). Its spiritual energy springs from something deeper than logic and rhetoric. As Bushnell has well said: “Preaching is nothing else than the bursting out of life which has first burst in or up from where God is among the soul’s foundations.”

Such was the teaching of Christ. In His farewell words to His disciples He promised “another Comforter”—one who should take His place among them and abide with them for ever. As He had walked with them an Instructor, Friend, Helper, so after His departure the Holy Spirit should dwell among them, teaching, inspiring, guiding them, a true and living Divine Presence ever with them and mighty to help. Blessed as His own bodily presence had been, the presence of the Holy Spirit was of still higher moment, for He declared that it was better for them that He Himself depart and the Spirit come; for the Spirit, whose office it is to take of Christ and show Him, should reveal the Christ-presence within them in accordance with His promise: “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him” (John xiv. 21); “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you” (John xiv. 18). Without this Divine Helper He expressly forbade their entrance on the ministry, and as His last charge before He ascended He said, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke xxiv. 49).

At the Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended, and how marvelous was His power! Plain as had been the words Jesus spake, the apostles yet utterly misconceived the most vital truths; but when the Spirit of truth came, the Gospel, in its grandeur and power, stood clearly revealed before them. The men who before had timidly cowered in the presence of danger now rejoiced that they “were counted worthy to suffer shame” for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts v. 41). They whose selfish ambition had aspired to be “greatest in the kingdom of heaven” now forgot their mean rivalries, and were inspired with single-hearted consecration to the Master; and the multitudes who before had despised and rejected their words, now convicted “of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment,” bowed before this unseen, mighty Power, and cried out, “Men and brethren, what must we do?” (Acts ii. 37).

Now, it is plain that the Holy Spirit, this special “power from on high,” was promised, not to the Apostles only, but to the ministry in all ages. In the New Testament period He dwelt, a living, quickening Divine presence, in all the servants of Christ, revealing truth, inspiring faith, and making their words the power of God unto salvation. They prayed in the Spirit; they spake in the Spirit; they lived in the Spirit. The promise of Jesus was fulfilled: “Lo! I am with you alway” (Matt. xxviii. 20); for the Christ-presence was continually revealed in them—a revelation of Him, not, indeed, to the eye, but to the soul, and unspeakably more blessed than had been His bodily presence when on earth. Not the Apostle only, but every servant of God, could say: “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. ii. 20); and in the hour of peril, when all men forsook him, the Christian confessor triumphantly affirmed: “Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Tim. iv. 17). In every subsequent age the indwelling Spirit of God has been the fountain of power in the ministry; and the mightiest men in the pulpit, renouncing self-sufficiency, have confessed, with Paul: “Our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament” (2 Cor. iii. 5, 6). Conscious of need, they have turned their souls upward to God, and this Divine Helper has entered and filled them; and all the faculties and culture of the man, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, have been transfused, elevated, enlarged, by this invisible but mighty Power. It has been truly said: “The virtue of an electric wire is not in the wire, but in its connection with the voltaic battery. The power of the minister is not in the polish of his style, the pictorialness of his illustrations, the fervor of his manner, the order and arrangement of his discourse, but in his living connection with God and his capacity to act as a connecting-link between God and the human soul. It is God in the soul which is the secret of true pulpit power.”

How, then, shall the pastor maintain an inner life such that he shall be “endued with power from on high” and God shall speak through him to the souls of men? In answer this I suggest as a means of chief importance:

I. The Habitual Practice of Secret Prayer.—For prayer is the bond which links the Divine power with the human. It is the channel through which God pours His life into the soul. It is the uplifted hand of man’s weakness taking hold on God’s strength. It calls down from heaven the sacred fire, which alone may kindle the preacher’s sacrifice. It has the most vital relations to the character and work of a pastor.

1. The relation of secret prayer to the spirit and purpose of the ministry.

Special dangers beset the pastor. The most sacred services, from their frequent recurrence, may come to be performed in a perfunctory spirit, and his life may thus degenerate into mere professionalism. Unconsciously he comes to meditate, read, and even pray with a view only to others and its effect on others. The sense of his personal relation to God is lost. As a public speaker a desire for popularity may unduly influence his preaching, and conspicuous position tempt his ambition, obscuring his vision of the great end of his ministry—the honor of Christ and the salvation of souls. The very respect which his office secures may foster spiritual pride and make him insensible to his defection in heart from God. Few men are environed by such subtle and powerful seductions to a false life as a Christian minister, and against these only a vivid consciousness of his high calling is an adequate safeguard. He is God’s ambassador, receiving his commission and his message, not from men, but from the Sovereign of heaven and earth. The souls of his congregation are entrusted to him, and the words he is charged to speak are the words of God’s saving power. “In them that are saved” he is “a savor of life unto life,” but “in them that perish” “a savor of death unto death” (2 Cor. ii. 15, 16). If faithful to his trust, he “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament” and “as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. xii. 3); if unfaithful, the blood of souls will be found on him in the day of God’s inquisition. Now, only a distinct realization of these responsibilities as an ever-present, living force pervading his spirit will hold the minister in his inmost life true to Christ and to his work.

It is here prayer has its mightiest reflex power. It gives a vital sense of God and of spiritual realities. It lifts the life above the control of lower motives to a loftier moral elevation, with a purer atmosphere and a broader horizon. The whole man is elevated, ennobled, transfused with Divine life, as he holds communion with God. When Moses had been with God in the mount, his face shone with a glory such that Israel could not steadfastly look on it. It was when Jesus was praying that he was transfigured, “and His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light” (Matt. xvii. 2). God imprints His own image on the soul that comes face to face with Him.

The inner life of a preacher always stands revealed in the pulpit; it transfuses itself through his preaching. No mere declamation, no arts of rhetoric, no dramatic simulation of emotion, can conceal the absence of spiritual life. Moral earnestness can never be assumed; it is the attribute only of a soul profoundly feeling the power and reality of Divine truth. The man, therefore, who would speak God’s Word with the pungency and fervor of a Bunyan, a Baxter, a Flavel, or a Payson must, like them, be constant and fervent in prayer. The springs of spiritual life opened in the closet will pour forth never-failing streams of life in the pulpit. Luther said: “Prayer, meditation, and temptation make a minister.” He himself is said to have spent three hours daily in prayer, and those mighty words which thrilled the heart of Christendom were the utterances of a soul thus glowing with the flames of devotion.

2. The relation of secret prayer to the apprehension of spiritual truth.

Spiritual truth is revealed only to the spiritual mind: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; . . . neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. ii. 14). Spiritual susceptibility is the essential condition of apprehending spiritual truth. A soul instinct with Divine life, sensitive to Divine impressions, in sympathy with Divine things—this, and this only, can enter in to a realization of those great truths which constitute the Gospel. Without this the very message the pastor is charged to preach he himself will fail to apprehend. He may, indeed, see the Christian doctrines through the eye of an impassive logic, but such a lifeless intellectualism, even when abstractly correct, has no power. The theology of the pulpit is a theology vitalized by prayer and glowing in the heart as a great, living reality. The hearts of men are most surely moved by living truths vividly realized in the speaker’s soul. The love of God in the incarnation and death of His Son, the guilt and danger of the souls of men, the glories of the saved and the miseries of the lost,—these are not matters of cold intellection. To him who lives in the atmosphere of prayer they stand out as vivid realities. Such men, like Paul, “believe, and therefore speak;” and in words of burning fervor they utter these great truths and press them on the souls of men. Payson, on his death-bed, said: “Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing, necessary for a minister.” Whitefield spent hours of each day on his knees with God’s Word open before him, and it was from the audience-chamber of heaven he went forth to speak those marvelous words of power which stirred the souls of the multitude. These eternal truths thus passed in him beyond mere intellections; they took possession of the whole man, and he could but speak with tender pathos and holy boldness, as he saw light in God’s light, and the spiritual world was thus all ablaze with light around him.