What Kills Ministers

“Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.” — Exodus xviii., 18.

JETHRO was pnying a visit to his son in-law, Moses. The tent is lighted, and swarming with a glad levee. Until very late at night I see the swinging of the lanterns, and the glancing in and out of the guests. Good cheer, recital of stirring experiences, accounts of what they have done and what God has done, and innocent conviviality characterize the occasion. In the morning Moses sits down to listen to all the people have to say by way of complaint or appeal. He stands between them and God. It is talk, talk, talk all day long. From morning till night Moses is listening, planning, counseling, praying, preaching. Jethro gets alarmed about his son-in-law’s health. “Why,” he says, “this thing will wear you out. These people and this work will exhaust you. Why don’t you divide up the labors and the burdens among other people? Thou wilt surely wear away’, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee.” Moses takes the advice of his father-in-law, and calls around him some of the best men he can find as assistants, and, instead of being worn out with his labors, lives one hundred and twenty years — as long as any man ought to want to live

* Sixth anniversary sermon.

in this world, -wliicli was intended only as a stepping-stone to something brighter.

Jethro’s warning to his son-in-law is just as appropriate now for all religious pastors, teachers, and Christian workers. You know very well that all Christendom is strewed with worn-out ministers of the Gospel. Some of them went down under brain -softening, others under throat disease, others under paralysis, others under nervous derangement and disorganization.

What is killing so many ministers? Sometimes they are destroyed through excessive use of tobacco, sometimes through culpable neglect of physical exercise, sometimes through reckless exposure; but I think that, in the vast majority of cases, it is through lack of sympathy and help on the part of their congregations. Thousands of these pastors are worried to death by insufficient salary, and pulled apart by unreasonable demands, and rung out of life by the tintinnabulation of their door-bell, and exhausted with perpetual interruptions. Now, my text suggests that no man can do every thing. If a minister of the Grospel has on one shoulder the spiritual affiiirs of a church, and on the other shoulder the financial affairs of a church, his feet are on the margin of an open grave, clear to the bottom of which he can look without movins. Let all ministers of the Gospel, so far as possible, gather around them sympathetic men and women upon whom they can throw much of the care and responsibility and trouble. “Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone,”

Standing before you this morning, preaching my sixth anniversary sermon as your pastor — a style of sermon in which the preacher is generally expected to be more than usually personal — I have to tell you that the burdens of life are getting to me less and less, and that as the years pass on I have fewer and still fewer anxieties. In beautiful Belleville, on the banks of the Passaic, where I began my Christian ministry, it seemed as if all the work came down on my young shoulders. Going to the West, the field was larger and the care less. Going to Philadelphia, the field was still larger and the care still less. And standing to-day, as I do, among hundreds of warm personal friends, whose hands and feet and hearts are all willing to help, I have less anxiety than I ever had. I have taken the advice of Jethro in the text, and have gathered around me a great many with whom I expect to divide all the care and the responsibility; and though sometimes, what with the conduct of this church, where we have a perpetual religious awakening, and the conduct of a religious weekly newspaper, and the conduct of the Lay College, people have often addressed me in words similar to those of my text, saying, “Thou wilt surely wear away: this thing is too heavy for thee,” I am glad to know that this morning I am in perfect health, and ready to recount to you what the Lord has been doing in all these days of our sojourn together, between 1869 and 1875.

It is now six years since I preached to you my opening sermon, on the text, “God is love.” I wish I could pour out my soul this morning in a doxology of praise to God, and of gratitude to this people. The difference between these years has been that the second was to me happier than the first, and the third than the second, and the fourth than the third, and the fifth than the fourth, and the sixth than the fifth. God has led us through many vicissitudes.

WRAT KILLS 3IINmTERS. 383

We are in the third church in six years. Crowded out of the first, burned out of the second, by the mercy of God led into the third.

We look back to the solitary service six years ago in the old chapel, with a congregation that almost could be accommodated on this platform. For many years the church had been in strife, until the three or four parties had exterminated each other, leaving an expanse of empty pews, a wheezy organ, a cramped-up pulpit, and a steeple the laughing-stock of the town. My personal friends applied to me an emphatic word of four letters, and two letters alike, in expressing my folly in undertaking this enterprise. Indeed, it seemed heavier than to start entirely new, for there were wide-spread prejudices in regard to the church. Still we went on. By the blessing of God, in three or four weeks our church was full; and it is astonishing how well an old building looks when it is all occupied, for there is no power in graceful arch, or in carved pillar, or in exquisite fresco to adorn a place like an audience of beaming countenances. I had rather preach in a full barn than in a sparsely attended cathedral. Empty pews are non-conductors of Gospel electricity People came in from all ranks and conditions; and, looking over the audience to-day, I can not see more than four or five families who were with us six years ago. Some of them have been advanced into the better society of heaven, while some of them dropped off” because they thought we were going too fast, and they could not keep up. We went on gathering the people in from all directions, until we have here to-day the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant; those who toil with pen, with printing-press, with yard-stick, and with hammer. Enough physicians — allopatliic, homeopathic, hydropathic, and eclectic — to treat us in all our disorders. Enough lawyers to defend us in all our legal contests. Enough artists to cover our walls with pictures. Enough merchants to give us the necessary fabrics, whether foreign or domestic. Enough mechanics to build and polish and make comfortable for us our residences. And I will say that never did there come together in one church a crowd of more genial, intelligent, sympathetic, enthusiastic, and warm-hearted Christian people than those which assemble here. We are all of one mind and heart. We cordially greet all who come, and give a godspeed to those who go. When any body does not like the’ music, or the preaching, or the plan on which our church is conducted, we say “Good-bye” as cheerfully as when he came we said “How do you do?” This church is now so large that, if a man wants to make trouble, such a small proportion hear of it that he soon gives up the undertaking as a dead failure.

We are all new together. We tarried long enough in the old Tabernacle to learn how to conduct a larger church. Then, when it was time for us to graduate from that, we got our diploma in red scroll of flame, signed, sealed, and delivered on one cold December day in 1872. When that conflagration took place, through inadequate insurance consequent upon the style of material of which the old building was constructed, we lost every thing save our faith in God and our determination to go ahead. We tarried in the Academy of Music long enough to gather up hundreds of the best families of our congregation who are worshiping with us to-day, and to get a baptism of the Holy Ghost such as never descended on any church on this continent. We came into this buildinor with the blessing of God, and with the blessing of all denominations of Christians in this land and in Great Britain; and, since we have been here the Lord has mightily blessed us, pouring out his Spirit from Sabbath to Sabbath, so that I can ask you, well knowing what your answer will be, whether you have made any too great sacrifices for Christ and his kingdom?

During these six years the Lord has sorely tried us; in the first place, by calling us to build a church with a new congregation that had not at all been consolidated; then by the demolition of that building; then by taking us a mile off from the centre of our congregation, to worship in another building; then by the almost superhuman effort of putting up this building during a financial depression such as never before afflicted this century. If God had not helped the architect, and helped the trustees, and helped the people, we should have perished in the undertaking. And while I wish to-day to recognize the indomitable perseverance and sacrifices of the congregation, I must say, to God belongs the glory. He planned this structure, making it perfect in acoustics; raising money for the building out of the very jaws of a national panic; filling the house with worshipers. Oh, let us praise him now, and let us praise him forever. I say you are not sorry for any of the sacrifices or toils through which you have gone. We have had so perpetually the blessing of God in this church, that it excites no remark when from a single service hundreds of souls step out into the kingdom of Jesus. There are in almost all the towns and cities of this country those residents who in this building first woke up to their spiritual necessities. Letters come from North and South, and East and West, from the Canadas and from both sides the sea,

^8Q WHAT KILLS MINISTERS.

telling me of this fact. Oli that to-day we might make some fitting expression to the Lord! Shall it be in carved words upon the pillars? Shall it be in wreaths upon the wall? Shall it be in the organ’s open diapason? All that is well; but rather let it be that our hearts shall rise to God in an intense and all-conquering acclamation of thanksgiving.

We are trying here to maintain a ivell-balanced church, and for that reason we have in all departments of Christian service the old and the young. It is a bad thing for a church when the old people have all the management, or when the young people have all the management. In the one case the church will go too slow, in the other it will go too fast. We want the fast men to keep the slow men from going too slow, and the slow men to keep the fast people from going too fast. Here are many of the aged. They have come down to us from another day. Not on their brow the snows of many winters, as people often say, but the white crocuses of an everlasting spring-time into which they are about to blossom. And how many of the young coming to us Sabbath by Sabbath! We want them all equipped for God. We want them for flying artillery ill a double-quick march. When there is a storming-party to be made up, we want to wheel them into line — old men for counsel, young men for action.

We are also trying to maintain a musical church. We have an inborn antipathy to any thing like stilted and precise song in the house of God. We like oratorios, orchestras, concerts, and prima -donnas in their places; but we want vociferous singing in the house of the Lord. David cries out, “Sing aloud unto God.” In other words, do not hum it or mumble it. Oh for an anthem strong enough to surge this whole audience on the beach of heaven! Persuaded that we could not do the work so well by the use of a choir, we have called into the service of the church two Bible instruments — the organ and the cornet, and so the music of the church has been sustained and led and developed. Oh, what grand and glorious singing we have had during the past years; even people who had bronchitis forgetting their infirmity, and lifting aloud their voice before God; people who could not sing a note opening their mouth reckless as to what kind of a sound came out of it. But the little discord is overwhelmed in the great symphony — a chip drowned in the rush of great waters. And yet we feel this morning that we have not done what we might, or ought, or will do, in this department of Christian service. We want more heart under it, more soul flung into it. We want the whole audience roused up to the sound of jubilee. We want the people to come from their homes on the Sabbath with hymn-books, and after the preacher shall announce the hymn, we want them to find the right page, and clear their throats, and at the first throb of the cornet on the air stretch themselves up to the magnificence and glory of this exercise. History tells us of a shout that the Persian host lifted so loud that the eagles that were flying through the air were stunned, and dropped to the earth. Oh that there might go up such a congregational anthem from this house of the Lord as shall make all heaven drop in blessing on our souls. I take partly the words of the Bible, and partly my own words, and say, “Why are ye so slack to go up and possess the orchards and the vineyards and the mountains of sacred song?” Oh that the music of heaven and earth might join midway the arches. Rise, 0 song of earth! Descend, O song of heaven!

388 WHAT KILLS ilinjstehs.

Still further, ive are trying to maintain in this place a church aggressive and revolutionary. Why build or maintain any other church in this City of Churches, where there are enough to accommodate all the people who are disposed to go to the house of God on the Sabbath, and perhaps more than enough? If you have nothing particular, nothing unique, nothing different, then what a waste of bricks and brawn and brain. But we have an idea of a church. We have built this house of God as a place where we mean to bombard iniquity. We want to smash sin, without any apology for smashing it. We have started in this line, and we mean to keep on, and study to be as well pleased with curses as blessings from the people. If there are any of you who do not like to go to a church which is assaulted of many newspapers and of the outside world, who can not understand its policies and its principles, stand clear of this church! We mean until the day of our death, and for a few days after, to keep society stirred up by the discussion of themes vital to its interests, and vital to the interests of the immortal soul. During the past six months theatrical people have been after us, and the Spiritualists have been after us, and the Unitarians have been after us, and the Universalists have been after us — one of their prominent men recently saying that he did not think there would be any hell except for one man, and that the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle! But still we shall go on, as God gives us strength and health and spirit to do his will. We have only taken, as it were, the outside casement of this great rampart of iniquity. On! on! “If God be for us, ^(.’/io can be against us?”

Still further, ive are trying here to maintain a generous church. AVe have as a church been able to do but little for outside chanties, for the reason that we have been all the time building churches or enlarging them. But we are trying to maintain an organism on the voluntary principle. We believe that a church can be educated up to the duty and the joy of giving. We put no premium on financial meanness. We believe that people ought to give to the cause of God every farthing they can possibly give. Moreover, we believe that all can give something, and that the vast majority of the people could give more in our churches than they do, and be better off. We believe that the grandest investment a man ever makes, for this world or the world to come, is what he gives to the Church of God, since Christ pays him back fivefold, tenfold, twentyfold, fiftyfold, a hundredfold. In other words, we believe that a man is better off in this world if he is generous, and well off just in proportion as he is generous; and we believe that those people who give the most in proportion to their means will after a while have the finest houses on earth, and the grandest mansions in heaven. The stingy people keep poor, the generous get rich, as a general rule. It is the old principle of the Bible: “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.”

So I believe if a man takes the old Bible principle, and gives one-tenth of all his income to the cause of God, he has an insurance of prosperity such as the signature of the Bank of England can not give him. I believe our congregation will yet rise up to the positive rapture of giving. We believe that men can be so built on a large scale of heart, that they will look over their property and then say, “I will give so much toward my spiritual culture. I will give so much toward the spiritual culture of my wife. I will give so much toward the spiritual culture of my children. I will give so mach toward the spiritual culture of the men who have little or no means. How small it seems, this that I am giving to Christ, who gave every thing to me! I wish it were five hundred thousand times more.” Yes, we believe that the time will come when people will be so educated in this matter of Christian generosity, that instead of deciding by what other people give, or what people give in other churches, they shall give according to their own appreciation of the height, and depth, and length, and breadth, and infinity of their spiritual advantages. Do you not wish you had given that three thousand dollars to the cause of Christ that went down in Northern Pacific bonds?

I believe the time will come in the Church when the passing of a contribution plate or a subscription paper will kindle up the fiices of the people as by the illumination of a great satisfaction. But now how many of us begrudge the few dollars we give to the Lord, and only give when we seem to be compelled to give, and so keep ourselves poor at the store, and rob ourselves of eternal dividends! Under the old dispensation, as I intimated, the people gave one-tenth of their property to the Lord, but that was a far inferior dispensation to the one we have. And yet how few in this day who receive a thousand dollars a year give a hundred to God! how few who receive five thousand give five hundred to God! how few who receive a hundred thousand give ten thousand to God! Those Jews, under their dark dispensation, gave one-tenth for a mere taper of spiritual life and light, while we do not give as much as that, though we have noonday radiating the hemisphere, I really think that if those old Jews gave one- tenth for their half-and-half advantages, we ought to give one-fifth for the glorious privileges which God in this day has bestowed upon us.

We talk a great deal about the evangelization of this world and the salvation of men; but there is more talk than contribution; and I do not believe that the prayer of a man for the salvation of this world ever amounts to any thing unless he, by his own generosity, shows that he is in earnest in the matter. I like the style of Elias Van Benschoten, the old man who came into a meeting of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in 1814, and, after there had been a great many long and brilliant speeches made about the education of young men to the ministry, got up, and said he would like to speak. The people looked chagrined. They thought to themselves, “He can’t speak.” He said, “Mr. President, I will give eight hundred and forty dollars in cash toward that object, and thirteen thousand dollars in bonds,” and then sat down.

While the theory is abroad in many of the churches that men give only as they are compelled to give, I believe that the people can be educated up to a grand and glorious voluntary contribution for the support of the Gospel of Jesus; but I can not make the people believe this without your help. Remember the words of Jethro to his son-in-law. Come, let us all rally in this one respect, and try partly to pay God for our Bibles, for our churches, for our families, for our hopes of heaven. If we do not carry out this principle, there will come up, after a while, a stronger generation to execute this commission of Christ, and then they will look back and say, “Ah, what a shriveled-up minister and people that must have been in the Brooklyn Tabernacle in 1875! When the Lord opened before them an opportunity of carrying out a Gospel principle, they had not the courage to carry it out.” I do not expect to bother this world much after I go out of it, but I must start the suspicion that if ever the auctioneer’s hammer cracks on the back of one of these pews, it will wake me up quicker than the prophet Samuel was awakened by the Witch of En-dor.

Still further, ive are here trying to build and organize, and Iceep up a soul-saving church. I mention this last because it is first. “And the first shall be last.” I have by argument, and illustration, and caricature, in these last six years tried to create in your soul an unutterable disgust for much of the religion of this day, and to lead you back, so far as God gave me strength to do it, to the old religion of Jesus Christ and his apostles. I have tried to show you that the meanest cant in all the world is the cant of skepticism, and that you ought to stop apologizing for Christianity, since it is the duty of those who do not believe in Christianity to apologize to you; and that the biggest villains in the universe are those who want to rob us of that grand old Bible; and that there is one idea in a church that ought to swallow up all other ideas, and that is the soul-saving idea. “But,” you say, “are you not going to pay any attention to those who have entered into the kingdom of God, and have really become Christians?” My theory is, the way to develop a man for this world and for the world to come is to throw him chin -deep in Christian work; and if, after a man has been drawn out of the mire of his sin on to the “Rock of Ages,” he wants to jump back, then he will have to jump; I am not going to stand and watch him. I believe the great work of the Christian Church is to bring men out of their sin into the hope and the joys of Christ’s salvation; and then if, with all the advantages of this century, with open Bible, and the constant plying of the Iloly Ghost, a man can not grow in grace, he is not worth a great deal of culture.

We want this a church set apart for the one grand object of bringing men out of their sin into hope of the Gospel. There will, in this coming year, be two hundred thousand strangers who will be seated within these gates. How many of them will you bring to Christ by your prayers and your personal solicitations? Will you bring a score, or will it be a hundred or a thousand? I must tell you that, compared with this work of saving immortal souls, all other work is cold and stale and insipid. To this one work, God helping me, I consecrate the remaining days and years of my life, and I ask you to join with me in this crusade for the redemption of immortal souls.

Now, can it be possible that six years of my pastorate have passed away never to return? How many squandered days and years — squandered by you and by me! God forgive us for the past, and help us to be more faithful for the future. Through what a variety of scenes we have gone! I have stood by you in times of sickness, and by the graves of your dead. When you came back from exhausting sickness that we feared would be fatal, I praised God that the color came to your cheek and the spring to your step. And some of you in the past six years have passed through dire bereavements. How few of the families of my congregation have not been invaded! How many of the old people have gone, in the last two or three years! They went away so gently that they had ended the second or third stanza in eternal glory before j’ou knew they were gone. And, oh, how many of the bright, dear children have gone — the very darlings of your heart!

You tried to hold on to them with your stout arms, and you said, “0 Lord, spare them. I can’t give them up; I can’t give them up. Let me keep them a little longer.” But they broke away from your arms into the light of heaven. It seemed as if Jesus and the angels were determined to have them there and then.

But we have tried to make this church a comforting place for all the broken-hearted. Oh, how many of them there are! We have tried to fill the song and the sermon and the prayer with the solace of God’s promises, and so it shall be hereafter. It is no mere theory with me. I have had enough trouble of my own to know how to comfort those who are desolate, and it is my ambition to be to you a son of consolation. Standing as we do at the open portals of another pastoral year, let us to-day make a new vow of consecration. Let us be faithful to God and faithful to each other; for soon we must part, and all these pleasant scenes in which we have mingled will vanish forever. By the throne of God, our work all done, our sorrows all ended, may we be permitted to talk over the solemn, delightful, and disciplinary occurrences of this my sixth pastoral year in Brooklyn.