The Preacher Among His People
Am now to touch briefly upon Pastoral Conduct, as affecting the pozver of the Pulpit. There is a certain individuality in the best sermon, and this individuality proceeds first, from the experience of the preacher himself, and secondly, from his power to apply the truth to the hearer so as to make the hearer say within himself, “That man knows all about me.” A sermon needs to reach real wants, and the question is, how real wants are to be known. The only solution to this question is that there ought to be personal acquaintance, not social contact only, but spiritual contact. We must make pastoral calls, and pastoral calls which shall have the effect of disclosing to us the inmost spiritual history of the people to which we minister, and disclosing to us their actual personal daily needs. We shall find that
the methods by which we are enabled to reach the needs of one man or woman are the methods by which we reach the needs of all others, of which that individual is a representative. Hence the best sermons will be suggested by personal contact with those to whom we preach. When we find that we can help persons in actual difficulties; when those difficulties have driven us into a corner, and we find that God’s help comes to our aid, we may further utilize the train of thought, argument, or illustration, or appeal, by which we have brought assistance to that distressed or inquiring hearer, and it will be found that these are the most effective sermons for the multitude.
I was accustomed during the later years of my pastorate to carry about with me a book for permanent record, in which in cipher I put down all the facts which affected the personal and family life of my congregation, which I was able in any way to ascertain. For instance, I would inquire where the members of each family were born; whether there were any special besetting sins in the children, known to the parents; whether any children had been specially consecrated to God from birth, etc. I would inquire and make record about those who had died in the family circle; the ages and circumstances; and about members of the family living in other parts; about aged grandparents and their infirmities; about members of the household who belonged to other Churches and communions; about those who had any physical infirmities or deformities — in a word ascertain, as far’as I could, facts of the family history. This enabled me to pray intelligently for my people; and before I repeated a call I would look over my memoranda, so as to be enabled to converse intelligently and sympathetically; and I found that this method of getting at the inmost history of my people was an invaluable source of power to me in reaching their souls.
Moreover, let us remember that it is of the very genius of love that the tie formed by personal contact should invest sermons with strange power. Even what is commonplace in itself becomes uncommonplace and extraordinary when the love of a dear people creates round about the preacher a halo, which is sacred. His words coming through that halo acquire a divine luster and power. There is many a man who is a very ordinary preacher, but who, by devotion to his people, as a pastor, comes to be dearer to them than all other preachers, and actually more interesting to them than any stranger, however gifted. Here is God’s compensation for a lack of intellectual genius, that He bestows on many a man, somewhat defective in mental power — this genius of the heart. He easily works himself into the deepest affections of his congregation, he becomes to them their indispensable guide and helper, the simplest of his utterances becomes to them the wisdom of a sage. They look to him for comfort, counsel, strength, guidance; their experience of contact with him makes him more and more helpful to their spiritual life. He becomes an integral part of their very existence. I have known some of the most efficient and useful ministers to be men of little intellectual ability, and even less intellectual culture, but they occupied a place in the hearts of their people that no stranger could possibly possess. I fear sometimes that, because Mr. Spurgeon, who was an extraordinary man, was a preacher first of all, and to a very limited extent came into pastoral contact with his people, some of his students may be misled into the inference that it will be safe for them to undertake simply to be preachers and to neglect pastoral activities; but, if so, I prophesy, in nine cases out of ten, virtual failure.
I wish to call attention to the relation of the pastor to the beneficence of the Church. It may be taken, as an axiom, that this is a vital relation. The benevolence and beneficence of a congregation are never likely to attain to a normal development apart from the personal influence of the pastor or minister. This is so obvious that it needs no proof. The statement of the position carries with it its own demonstration, and all that we essay to do at this time is to illustrate and apply this principle. For brevity’s sake we divide this theme under four heads; the pastor, as a teacher, a leader, a pleader, and an exemplar.
First, as a teacJier. The pulpit is a great educator or trainer. Sometimes, under its influence, a congregation enjoys a sort of university education. The teaching of the pulpit comes with authority! and specially, if it be a faithful reflection of the sentiments of the Word of God, it comes with the authority of the Holy Scriptures and of
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the ins[)iring Spirit. The duty and the privilege of s)’’stematic beneficence should be among the foremost of the topics treated in the pulpit. The minister of Christ should not be afraid of repetition. The word “inculcation” embodies no little of the ethics of etymology; In-culx — to tread in with the heel. It implies the constant going over and over of the same path, and fixing the impression of truth by the frequency and the emphasis of repetition, which Sydney Smith remarked was, for all purposes of oratorical persuasion, the only figure of speech that is worth a farthing. The teachings of the Scripture on the subject of beneficence, however they may be resisted by carnality and selfishness, nevertheless carry conviction, for they appeal to the normal instincts of the human soul. Men may indulge themselves in all manner of selfish, extravagant, careless, and godless expenditure, but there is something which tells every man from within that this is not only wronging God and wronging man, but wronging himself.
The foundation of all beneficence is the doctrine of divine stewardship, which, briefly stated, means that we possess nothing which is absolutely our own, that every good gift is God’s gift, and is to be used in recognition of the Giver; that property is something held in trust, and that, as trustees, we are bound to expend what we have for the profit of others and the supreme honor and glory of the original and inalienable Owner. Upon this foundation of divine stewardship the minister of Christ must press the privilege as well as duty of systematic beneficence. This is the antidote and corrective of that selfishness which is perhaps the root of all other sins, and the most dangerous foe even of human happiness, itself. Balzac in his Pcau de Chagrin makes use of an old fable which has never lost its pertinency. He represents a young man as becoming the possessor of a magic skin, the peculiarity of which is that while it bestows on its possessor the power to gratify every wish or whim, with every such gratification the skin itself shrinks in all its dimensions. The owner makes every effort to find the cause of such shrinkage, invoking the aid of physician, physicist, chemist, and student of natural history; but it is all in vain. He draws round the skin a red line. That same day he indulges in a longing for some object of gratification.
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The next morning there is between the red line and the skin a little interval, close to which it was traced, and so always, inevitably, as he lives on, gratifying one desire or satisfying one passion after another, this fatal process of shrinkage continues. Then a mortal disease sets in which keeps pace with the shrinking skin, and so his life and his talisman together come to an end. This is but a fable to illustrate the moral atrophy of self-indulgence.
Paul in his Epistle to Timothy, the sixth chapter and ninth verse, warns the rich, or them that will to be rich, that they fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition; and he further warns them that the love of riioney, that is to say greed, is the root of all evil, and that, while some covet after gain, they pierce themselves through with many sorrows. The Apostle James has, if possible, a still more pertinent word in the fifth chapter of his Epistle, second and third verses. He says that the rust which hoarded gold and silver gathers is itself a witness against the miser, for rust is the proof of unused coin: and he also says that this rust acts as a canker and eats the flesh of its possessor as it were with fire. This is very remarkable language. It teaches us that the hoarding of money shall itself witness against its possessor and become a means of the torture of such possessor. Buried capital is something for which men must give account. If we knew the fact, happiness becomes impossible to him who does not make proper use of the gifts of God. When Butler, the author of the “Analogy” went into close retirement in the little country parish of Stanhope, Queen Caroline, the Consort of George IV., asked the Bishop of Blackburn if Mr. Butler were dead. “No, Madam,” he said, “7tot dead, but buried.’” And the same thing might be said of many men who hold property. As property-holders they may not be dead, but they are buried and their property with them.
What a blessing would come to the Church and the world, if rich men could learn to say, as Lowell used to say in college, that “one could spare the necessities but not the luxuries of life;” and if they were more willing to spare themselves the bread and like necessities which are the support of physical life, than to forego the luxury of imparting blessing to those less favored than themselves.
This instruction on the subject of beneficence must begin with children, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined. Those who understand botany know that if you take out from a branch a scion whose natural tendency is upward, cut off the branch and set the scion downward, all others that grow out of that branch afterward will grow downward. If we can set the scion in the branches of a young life with a Godward tendency, all the developments of the future growth will be in the same direction.
Secondly, as a leader. We refer here to the necessary prominence of the minister of Christ as the organizer of the beneficence of his people. In this matter Nehemiah should be his great model. The book of Nehemiah seems to be inserted in the Old Testament canon largely as a spiritual and scriptural lesson on the development of Church life. The intent study of this book will show that the four principles which regulated Nchcmiah’s successful activity, as the restorer of the city of Jerusalem and its government, were, first, thorough organization; second, division of la-THE PREACHER AMOMG HIS PEOPLE. 13:^
bor; third, co-operation between all laborers and, fourth, concentration at any assaulted point. In other words he strove to bring every individual into the general plan of labor; to give each individual such sort and measure of labor as he or she might be able to perform; to make them all participate in a work that was one work; and to repel the adversaries of the work from any point of assault by gathering all the workers into force at the imperiled point in the wall. We know no addition possible to the wisdom of such a course, in developing the systematic activity of a Church on benevolent lines. The pastor must aim at a work large enough and varied enough to adapt itself to each individual member. He wants to secure such unity of work as that all shall feel themselves to be fellow-helpers to one great end. He must seek to divide the labor so that each shall have such work as is adapted to him or to her, and he must teach all to lay aside their particular work and concentrate their efforts in any direction where there is a special emergency or perfl.
A great lack in our church life is a lack of such complete organization. We knew well a prominent pastor in one of the Western cities who was perpetual!)^ urging his people to engage in beneficent activities, but who was so utterly deficent in devising and dividing labor that, when approached after his own discourses by those who were ready to engage in work for Christ, he was absolutely unable to direct them in what way to bestow their activities. Fortunately the economy of all well-organized churches does not leave the pastor to do this work of organization alone. He has his eldership, or his board of deacons, or his committeemen, to assist him in the forming and perfecting of this mechanism of church activity, and he should associate with himself the largest number of wise, sagacious, active men and women in the congregation as the pastor’s working council. They should with him develop modes of activity, and apportion work to every man, woman, and child willing to engage in it. I have found it of great personal value to me, in the pastorate of American churches, to unite the trustees, elders, and deacons in such a pastor’s council, and with them to mature the methods of work to be recommended to the congregation for their adoption. Such a plan has a higher value in this, that each member of such a board of councilors represents a coterie of personal friends and acquaintances in the congregation, over whom he has more or less influence, and whom he can induce personally to take part in the organized work of the congregation.
Third, as a pleader. We mean that the pastor who thus teaches and leads the work of his congregation must not hesitate at a persistent, constant, and bold advocacy of the duty and privilege of engaging in habitual beneficence. He must perpetually emphasize the fact that the law of all noble living is the law of unselfishness, that we must do good for the sake of doing good, and not even for the sake of its returns to us personally. We have fallen upon a day of universal patent automatic sweetmeat machines, which guarantee to return a package of sweets for every penny put in the slot, and their influence seems to be perceptible in our Church life. We have heard of a little fellow who, on putting a penny in the offertory box on Sunday asked his mother which she thought would come out, chocolate or caramels. We shall never have well-developed beneficence in our churches until we get the sweetmeat machines out of our thought; and nothing will impress the true law of unselfishness in beneficence, but a bold and constant advocacy of every form of benevolent work. The pastor must insist that the church doors shall swing open for all benevolent enterprise; and that all waters which carry healing and help to humanity shall find a channel for their stream through the house of God. He must not be afraid of the efTect of such insistence and persistence. The historian Froude, for his singularly bold treatment of historic questions, has had attached to him a new word, Froud-acity. We should be glad to see every pastor deserving some such descriptive title, in view of the courageous perseverance with which he educates his people in benevolent activity. He may seem to be a beggar, but he will lose, with all noble-minded people, no prestige on this account. A church is perverted from its purposes the moment it becomes a religious clubhouse. Whatever purposes the church may answer as a home for disciples, as a place of worship, or even as a school, it must not be forgotten that it is primarily a rallying-point in order that it may be a radiating-point. A pastor who does his duty in this respect may at least compel some of his church members to say, like the man who was asked whether he was afraid to die, “No, I am not afraid to die, but I am ashamed to die.”
Fourth. After all we must emphasize, most of all, the fourth and last consideration which we present. The relation of the pastor to the beneficence of his church is most vital in its relation to personal character as an exemplar. Herbert Spencer says that by no political alchemy can you get golden conduct out of leaden instincts, and I think it was Epictetus who said of some in his day that, while their vessels were silvern and golden, their principles and practices were the commonest sort of earthenware. If the pastor himself is constantly nearing the Divine perihelion, his very face will shine with the beauty of the reflected light, and his contact with his people will be somewhat like the contact of Burke even with complete strangers. It used to be said of him that so great and extraordinary was his mind, and so remarkable his whole character, that no subject came under discussion which he could not treat in so masterly and technical a manner as to induce such as heard him to imagine that he had dedicated a considerable portion of his life to the consideration of that particular subject. If he was not the most accomplished orator, he was, at any rate, the most eloquent man of his day, and perhaps, second to none in any age. No person of sense could meet him under a gateway to avoid a shower who did not go away convinced that he had met the first man in England, whoever he might be.
The pastor must show, himself a man. That is the first condition of influence as a minister of Christ. It behoves him to take heed to his doctrine and to his deportment, but above all to take heed to Jiimsclf. A man who is radically greedy and stingy and selfish can never, for a long time, influence a congregation in the lines of beneficent activity. There is a contagion about self-denial, and there is an infection in selfishness likewise. It is not necessary that a pastor should announce his gifts. He may not let his left hand know what his right hand does, but there is an atmosphere which accompanies a radically generous and unselfish soul that reveals itself, like the fragrance of a flower, by invisible but still sensible methods; and a man in the pulpit who not only advocates giving but gives, not only preaches but practices benevolence, not only inculcates beneficent activity but himself illustrates it, is the man who, though it may take time, will develop a generation of liberal souls; and the outcome of such a man’s ministry is sure to be a people who give — give habitually, and give from the very love of giving, and who regard beneficence as the inevitable outcome of all true and consecrated living.