Unsuccessful Men

As a matter of fact there are several scores of educated men who have not been able to secure pulpits in which, to exercise their ministry; there are also hundreds of pastors who would be heartily glad to see a way of escape from their present position to more congenial spheres of usefulness. I cannot pretend to exhaust the reason of this unsettledness; probably it would be safe to say that “there are faults on both sides/ and so leave the matter without going into detail. There are however a few things which have been made so clear to my own mind that a candid statement may be of use to you either in directing your personal ministry or giving you a hint as to the best method of meeting some difficulties in your pastoral relations. It may be prudent to premise that there are several proper though differing interpretations of the word success. One minister may succeed in overcrowding his chapel; another may have a very limited congregation, and yet may succeed in exerting a most stimulating and healthful influence upon special classes of Christian thinkers and workers. One minister may succeed in doing a most useful pioneer work; another may succeed in organising and edifying undisciplined and uninstructed beginners: so also,, one minister may succeed in binding to him the affections of the young; and another may have a special adaptation to teach and comfort the busy, the afflicted, the speculative, or the indifferent. I think it well to point out this difference in the bearings of the word success, and thereby assist to remove the mischievous impression that all success is to be measured by one arbitrary sign or standard. Success is a question of individual adaptation. 1. The first place on the list of unsuccessful men is, of course, occupied by those who, in seeking admission into the ministry, have evidently mistaken their calling. In such cases it is not a question of a distinct call or an indistinct call, there is simply no call at all. A youth, on becoming conscious of living in Jesus Christ, on seeing heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending as ministers of the church, feels a most pure and urgent desire to preach the gospel: with this end in view he appeals to his pastor for the requisite introduction to college. The pastor hesitates, suggests further consideration of the important subject j by-and-by the appeal is renewed, the parents of the youth express a strong opinion in favour of his request, and sanguine friends join in the ill advised importunity; at length the minister yields, with a reluctance which is met by exclamations of angry surprise, and the youth is admitted into college. In a short time the most favourable reports are received; in a few months more, the youth passes an examination in a highly creditable manner; at the end of the fii’st year he takes a prize, at the end of the second he gains a scholarship; thus the opinion of friends is abundantly confirmed, and the hesitation of the minister is openly ascribed to an unworthy motive. Ask the minister himself what his opinion is in the face of this rapid and flattering success: he will probably reply —” My opinion is the

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same now that it ever was; I never doubted the young man’s conscientiousness; I never questioned the young man’s ability to read books and to get off lessons; but I say now what I said at the beginning, you may cover him with gold medals and give him an armful of certificates, but he will never persuade a congregation that he is called of God to preach the gospel.” This reply is perfectly sound: the great error is that fitness for literary pursuits is not distinguished from fitness for public speaking. We need not go far for proofs that literature and eloquence are not interchangeable terms: in the houses of parliament you will find the most learned and polished men, who are quite unable to express themselves with perspicuity and effect; yet, if as Christian youths they had applied for admission to one of our colleges, they would have been instantly admitted and would have passed their curriculum with the unanimous and cordial applause of the professors. The minister, whose case we have been supposing, awaits the justification of time. The young man leaves the college well supplied with the most commendatory credentials, and in the flush of academic success indulges an innocent sneer at the expense of men who know more about preaching than they know about the differential calculus. The parents and friends of the young man perhaps triumph over what they consider must be the disappointment and mortification of the minister whose judgment has been so signally dishonoured. Still the minister bides his time, and what is the upshot? For two years the young man carries his credentials round the churches, but the churches never give him a chance of settlement; the young man then discovers that deacons are valgar and selfish, and quite unfit to guide the opinion of Christian communities; for another year

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he continues his melancholy round of applications but nothing in the way of a settlement is offered. People say they have ^’ no doubt he is a clever man in his own way,’^ or that “his sermons have been elaborately prepared/^ or that “he is more fit to be a professor than a preacher/^ the young man however, cannot live upon these compliments, and therefore, under stress of various kinds, he cannot resist the impression that” the system is all wrong together,” and so he settles down into shopkeeping and churlishness. Or if he succeed in getting a settlement he soon becomes uneasy; he says that his people don’’t appreciate him, that he cannot stoop to their low habits of thinking, and that he is open to an invitation to another pulpit. He thinks if he were in a large town he could do better, he would draw his own class around him, literary people would flock around his pulpit, and he would lead the highest sentiment of the community. But, no! It wont do! He stumbles, falls, lies down, grumbles, and then perishes out of the way. Now it was a cruel kindness to urge such a man to seek admission into the ministry. He was a man of ability, and as a private Christian might have been of much service in the church; but his friends sacrificed him to an unreasoning if not an ungodly ambition. Let me at this point strongly advise you to keep back as many men as possible from the ministry. Of course where you have a distinct persuasion of a young mans fitness for the pulpit, you will encourage him most earnestly to give himself to needful preparation; but be doubly sure of the fitness before you offer him the least assistance. Where there is most fitness, there will often be most self distrust. 2. Another class of unsuccessful men may be ironically described as hyper-super-intellectualistSfSom.ethmg, in spite of the ugly word, very aerial and sublime. These magnificent and unapproacliable royalties, throned among the stars, and clothed with clouds of many colours, expend their lives in one desperate determination to say something that is not in the New Testament. The moment they are about to put one word of gospel into their sermons, they recoil from the vulgarity as from a temptation to be profane. As a consequence they excel in not preaching the gospel. They delight to prove to their pewholders that they “are abreast with the foremost thinking of the day ;^^ they refer with great familiarity to “a certain modern school of thought,^^ and with infinite skill gibbet neo-Platonists, transcendentalists, pantheists, and positivists, before a wondering if not applauding audience. But their chief joy — O their sweet, precious, transporting joy, their joy of joys, their dancing, screaming, delirious joy! — is to discourse upon a most mysteriously dangerous individual called Gomte. When a reverend snob of the hyper-super class can bring in the name of Gomte he is sure that it will instantly show the greatness, and the might, and the majesty, and the glorious glory of the learned minister. He would not for the world refer to Baxter, or Henry, or Doddridge, or Watts; Owen, and Bates, and Charnock, and Howe, he does not deign to know; — he knows Gomte (as far at least as translations can reveal that personage), and is not that the last reach of culture, the crowning point of attainment? M. Comte himself would wonder if he could know how many magnificent nobodies conjure with his name. It is of no consequence that not a soul in the awestruck congregation knows whether Gomte is the French for devil or the Italian for an angel, the one thing to be sure of is that the minister is” abreast with the

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foremost thinking of the day; as to saving the souls of them that hear him, is it not better to extinguish an absent speculator than to save an unlettered man? Cultivated reason can have but one answer to the impertinent inquiry. The congregation of the hyper-super is a curious medley, the chief feature being the advanced young man who belongs to the new Lyceum, and who simpers over the top of the penny newspaper that in his opinion the day of the pulpit is over for ever. This is a very formidable young man; from the serene heights of his noble culture he could not think of descending to consult so ancient a personage as his father, and all filial duty is exhausted when he languidly smiles at the practical suggestions of his mother. The young man loves to hear of Gomte, Comte is so bold a fellow and so very common-sense; he dotes on Comte, he dreams about Comte, and if anybody should innocently suggest in a tremulous and deprecatory tone that he “is becoming quite a Comtist,’^ his manly bosom heaves, his Abashing eyes blaze with double brightness, and his towering head stoops lest he should injure the ceiling which is not more than seven feet higher than himself. The reverend snob glories in the youth: he looks on him with pride; and in grateful recollection of “Vis intellectual presence comforts himself that he will draw around his pulpit the genius and the culture of the neighbourhood. How much genius and culture there may be gathered around his Comtean pulpit, it is impossible in consequence of their invisibility to say. But, as a matter of fact, weary, troubled, sorrowing men do not gather round it; people who are tempted, overborne, crushed in heart, do not gather round it; and in about twelve months the reverend lecturer on Gomtism gathers his neat little essays together and looks out wistfully for another charge. The common opinion of such a man is that he is ‘^ dt for a college “; alas, how many distinguished geniuses there are at this moment waiting for the shoes of honoured professcjrs! You will observe that in all this description of a certain class of unsuccessful men I do not say one word Against learning, culture, or mental ability; my remarks are directed against the chilling pedantry which works at so remote a distance from the sin and sorrow and hunger of the soul. In view of this shocking mockery of all that is honest and effective in Christian preaching, let me pray you to be ever on your guard against the temptation to preach what are mistakenly called ‘’ great sermons ‘’; dont preach for the gratification of your own vanity, but for the salvation of all who hear you; don’t preach, I once more intreat you, to the two or three most intelligent or most pretentious men in your congregation, but speak to the common heart of humanity with the pathos of unaffected sympathy; and the blessings of many will cause the cup of your reward to overflow. You may preach with such ostentationof learning as to excite wonder in the vulgar and disgust in the devout; you may win the reputation of being a clever man, who is not afraid of hard texts and difficult subjects; but no heart will ever own you as a messenger from God. What do we want with all this so called great preaching t Do you say we are obliged to occupy a certain time, and that to do so we must avail ourselves of references and quotations for which we ourselves care nothing? I have an instant and, to my own mind, a sufficient answer to this suggestion: it ougld not to be necessary slavishly to occupy exactly so much time; we should take our time not from the clock, but from

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the heart, and according to the inspiration wliicli may have been granted to earnest prayer, speak to those who trust us as God’s servants. How good it is, when the heart is weary and the sight of the soul fails through long watching, to hear a preacher who speaks simply and lovingly the word of the Saviour! How tuneful, how soothing! But when a man is aiming at something that lies far from the trouble which darkens upon us, when he meets us with sentences artistically turned, in which he proclaims nothing but his own vanity, we shrink with mortification and anger from his sapless, mocking ministry. Nor is it we that shrink, but the dishonoured Spirit of Christ that is in us; the voice of “the stranger” torments and insults the heart. Be you a man who reveals and exalts the mystery of the Cross!

3. A third class of unsuccessful men may be described as consisting of ministers who regard ijreacliing as quite a secondary consideration; ministers they may be, but preachers certainly not. You will express surprise at the statement that men so devoid of common-sense can be found in the Christian ministry; but your surprise will decline as your observation extends. As the class is somewhat diversified, it may be necessary to particularise a little. One of its representative men figures conspicuously at the public library, and is generally seen with a new book and a bundle of newspapers under his arm. He lives on pew-rents, but certainly not among pews; he has a neat little world of his own, well stocked with heretical books and other delicacies; occasionally he may so far condescend to acknowledge his pastoral relations, so called, as to turn a telescope on that dim speck of distant matter which he mistakenly denominates his chapel; otherwise, except on well known quarter-days, he is grandly independent of his people. His people in fact, are very much like a necessary and remunerative nuisance; they read nothing, they go nowhere, they are commonplace and vexatiously uninteresting, a very sore trial, in short, to any man with a taste for reading. Another representative man of this class is known for his appreciation of good society and a strong liking for fine scenery. When he left college he said he would not settle except amongst a refined people, a delicate people, who call hell hades and dilute damnation into condemnation; he could never do with vulgar people who bluntly call a spade a spade; he could only do with shoemakers when they described their places of business as boot-halls, and he always referred to the butter-merchant as one who was in” the provision line.^’ As to saving the souls of those to whom he preached, he would have recoiled from the suggestion, except the said souls could be saved by distant references to moral intuitions and innate ideas; if they chose to be saved from hades, Gehenna, or sheol by that way, he had no strong objection, for their religion might then become a suitable frame for the picture of their social graces. When he settled in the pastorate his boast was that all his people belonged to the uppermost stratum of the middle class; and this he said with the air of one who had made great sacrifices for his principles, intimating thereby that but for conscientious scruples he might have been surrounded by the aristocracy of position and genius. This very refined brother seldom spoke above a subdued whisper, and when in a forgetful moment he shook his forefinger, in sign of earnestness, he received with thankfulness the solaces of those who were sure that he must have exhausted himself. He heard with shudder-

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ing disgust of preachers who spoke in a loud, clear tone, and occasionally lifted up both hands in the pulpit; they were wanting in taste, they were pandering to the wishes of the ignorant mob, they were lowering the dignity of the pulpit, in short they had proved themselves to be very despicable persons. The career of this dear brother was short and not merry; he was so very super refined that even his most longsuffering friends lost patience with him, and those who clipped their own words most gradually grew into the conviction that he was a heartless snob. This made it very difficult for the dear gentleman; he knew that he was a first-class traveller who could afford only a third-class ticket, and the look of annihilating contempt, with which he took his seat in a third-class carriage confounded the ticket collectors and sobered several of his fellow travellers. A cruel providence seemed to dog his elegant footsteps, and but for one consolation he would have fallen into despair, — the consolation that all his mischance befel him because he would not stoop to the habits of the common herd! He persuaded himself that if he would only throw off the gentleman, and do as other people did, success would flow upon him like a river, and he would be the first man of his day. But the sacrifice was too great, — to the last he remained by far too refined for so disorderly a world as this. You will not ask whether it is impossible for refinement to succeed in the ministry; you know perfectly well that I am not condemning or ridiculing refinement, but rather its detestable simulation: there is no necessary discrepancy between refinement and strength; on the contrary true refinement is power, as certainly as pedantry is feebleness. Of course, we must be particular as to the relation between the fineness of the weapon and the special quality of the work which it is intended to do; a razor, for example, has a keen edge and a polished surface, but no razor will ever fell a tree or dress a beam: on the other hand an axe may be sharp and strong, yet it might bo inconvenient to use it for shaving. So with men, and so specially with ministers. We must not be too fine for our work. We must so far go away from our own little preferences, as to live for the advantage of others; we must, in effect, say to our hearers this is not for my own gratification but for your benefit,^^ and by so much as the spirit of the cross regulates our ministry, will the blessing of reward crown our labours.

In thus endeavouring to describe some of the unsuccessful men whom I have known more or less, my object is to point you to the unchangeable conditions of a permanently successful ministry. If in your heart of hearts you do not love the work of preaching the gospel infinitely above all other work, you must fail; for this work must be either the most thrilling joy or the most unendurable torment which any man can experience. I shall assume then that you love it; that you love it supremely; that without it you would be wretched and hopeless. The instant inference from this all-absorbing love is that you will study the best methods of bringing the gospel to bear upon the sin, the sorrow, and the aspirations of the human heart. The gospel will not be to you an abstract science, or a recondite theory; it will be Gods message to the disquiet and need of sinful and hungering souls, and your constant anxiety will be to interpret and apply it accordingly. Under such a hallowed and constraining inspiration, you will not allow yourself to be driven to a position that is remote from the most pressing need of your hearers; you will rather suffer the imputation of being an unlearned and ignorant man than run the risk of concealing any truth that tells immediately upon spiritual character and destiny. You will give men to feel that you hnow them, that you live for them, that your sympathy flows along the whole course of their experience; and you will show that all this knowledge and devotion on your part arises entirely from your incessant and adoring communion with Jesus Christ. To know Jesus Christ is to know man; to be as Jesus Christ was, will be to draw all men unto you. There will undoubtedly arise temptations to discuss speculative subjects, to show off your own talent, and to gratify your own tastes; but you must break such temptations upon the cross, and out of your own crucifixion bring a richer tenderness to bear upon the spiritual condition of your hearers. Believe me, in proportion as a sermon is a mere effort of the intellect will it be a failure, and in proportion as a sermon is an expression of the heart will it succeed in doing good. This leads me to repeat that, to be truly effective, a sermon must bepar of the p readier himself; when it is so it will be delivered naturally, with unaffected pathos, and with a nobler earnestness than can be secured by the most artful preparation. Better not to preach, than not to preach from the heart; better to stand before your congregation dumb and confounded, than to talk merely for talkings sake; when you are true enough to do this, you will be strong enough to put to flight most of the difficulties that interpose between you and the highest success.

You will of course remind me that many ministers known to be most spiritually minded and devoted to their work zealously pursuing what may be called the most intensely moral purpose of the ministry, have failed to secure anything like distinguished success. You can name such godly men in quick succession, and prove how far short their ministry has fallen. All this I allow, as a simple matter of fact, and yet the ground of my exhortation is untouched. You must remember that I have never insisted upon goodness as the sole condition of a successful ministry. The goodness must be vitalised; goodness must, in a word, become virtue, — strength, force, activity; goodness must have manly faculty, an eye that brightens and melts, a heart that rejoices and saddens, with all the sudden changefulness of the worlds daily drama. There is a goodness that is negative rather than positive, contemplative rather than active-; a goodness that must be inquired into, before its existence can be distinctly recognised: on the other hand, there is a goodness modestly self affirming, full of life, revealing itself in a thousand delicate insinuations and in many public proofs of power; a goodness that becomes genial, tender, severe, judicial, pitiful, with a rapidity of alternation that may easily be mistaken by the superficial for inconsistency, — a goodness that rules the intellect, by first correctly determining its province and compass, and that rules the life by a gentleness that is mightier than the most studied austerity. No amount of training can impart this living goodness to any man; it cannot be taught in the schools; it cannot be assumed by an artist; it is the holy and sublime individuality wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost: and where it is absent there can be no true, far reaching, and long continuing service for Jesus Christ. I will not allow that a man is good, simply because he prays reads the Bible and engages in regular religious exercises; he must have life — not life in his bookshelves, his outlines, his sermon book, or his professional desk, but life in his soul — the very life of life, the very eternity of God. When a man is delivered from himself, with all the petty considerations and tyrannies that torment the ill kept soul, and centred in Christ, when his supreme passion is love of his Master, he is good, and his goodness is pungent as salt, purifying as fire. Brother, are we thus deeply and lovingly good? Not ascetics, not churls, not scorners, but saintly, gentle, heavenly minded? O Holy Spirit, bring us evermore under Thy great power: work in us all the mystery of Thy holy purpose; deliver us from the harsh exactions of the mere letter, and prostrate us under the better dominion of the living Spirit: so enlighten us, so enrich us, so inspire us, that we may be amongst the simplest, the wisest, the strongest, of our blessed Masters servants.