- . 
 
 BV 4012 .B5 
 
 Bitting, William C. 1857- 
 1931. 
 
 The teaching pastor 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/teachingpastorsaOObitt 
 
THE TEACHING PASTOR 
 
THE TEACHING PASTOR 
 
 THE SAMUEL A. CROZER LECTURES 
 
 IN 
 
 CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 1922-1923 
 
 v 
 
 of pmcefy 
 
 OCT 4 1924 
 
 V N %06ICAL 
 
 By WILLIAM C. BITTING, D. D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JUDSON PRESS 
 
 BOSTON 
 KANSAS CITY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 SEATTLE 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 TORONTO 
 
Copyright, 1923, by 
 GILBERT N. BRINK, Secretary 
 
 Published October, 1923 
 
 Printed in U. S. A 
 
THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 
 IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
 TO THE THOUSANDS OF PERSONS 
 WHO THROUGH MANY YEARS 
 HAVE OPENED EARS AND HEARTS 
 TO RECEIVE THE BEST THAT 
 ONE TEACHING PASTOR 
 COULD BRING FROM HIS OWN STUDY 
 AND THOSE OF COUNTLESS OTHERS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
STATEMENT OF 
 
 THE SAMUEL A. CROZER LECTURESHIP 
 
 IN 
 
 THE CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 The Samuel A. Crozer Lectureship, founded 1880, 
 provides for special lectures to be delivered at the 
 Seminary during each year. The instrument defin¬ 
 ing the object of Lectureship says: 
 
 The person to deliver these lectures shall be chosen by the 
 Faculty of the Seminary, subject to the approval of the Board 
 of Trustees . . . The topics of these lectures to be subjects 
 that are profitable to be presented to Christian ministers or 
 students for the ministry. In selecting lecturers the Faculty 
 shall not be restricted to the Baptist denomination, but 
 may appoint from any denomination termed evangelical, from 
 laymen as well as ministers, and from citizens of foreign 
 countries or our own as they (the Faculty) see fit. The 
 lecturer may give single lectures, or a course of lectures, as 
 circumstances may indicate or the Faculty may appoint. 
 
 On this foundation courses of lectures have been 
 delivered annually since 1880, but very few have 
 been printed. 
 
 The present volume contains the lectures delivered 
 in March, 1923, by the Reverend William C. Bitting, 
 D. D., pastor of the Second Baptist Church, St. 
 
Statement 
 
 Louis, Missouri. Few pastors are better qualified to 
 present the material contained in this volume; and it 
 is issued with the conviction that it will be helpful to 
 others in “ the ministry of the Word.” 
 
 Milton G. Evans, 
 
 President Crozer Theological Seminary . 
 
 June, 1923. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The necessary limitation of the number of these 
 lectures caused the giving up of the first intention 
 to open the course with a treatment of the historical 
 method of Bible study. Every lecture is based upon 
 the use of that method. The writer believes that 
 every part of the Bible is not only literature, but also 
 in conception, utterance, and original publication 
 an historical event that had a definite relation to the 
 author or speaker, and to contemporary conditions. 
 With possibly the exception of some psalms that are 
 general expressions of religious feeling, the Scrip¬ 
 tures cannot be understood, nor their power appre¬ 
 ciated, without some knowledge of the historical sit¬ 
 uations out of which they grew. 
 
 It should further be stated that the subject was 
 chosen because of experiences of the writer who for 
 many years has tried to pursue the methods he 
 advocates. His ministry has thoroughly vindicated 
 both the intellectual sanity and spiritual value of 
 what the lectures so inadequately describe. Ob¬ 
 servation also has confirmed experience. The lec¬ 
 tures are suggestive, not exhaustive. No one could 
 be more conscious of the incompleteness of treat¬ 
 ment of any topic than the writer. Every para¬ 
 graph in the lectures should be expanded for any¬ 
 thing like a full treatment of the subject discussed 
 therein. The reader will be able to enlarge upon 
 the topic. 
 
Preface 
 
 Quotations have been avoided. References have 
 been confined mainly to the Bible itself. There is 
 little literature extant upon the precise topic with 
 which the lectures deal. The volumes of The Bibli¬ 
 cal World from the beginning until that periodical 
 ceased to limit itself specifically to Bible study con¬ 
 tain many articles that bear upon the topics treated 
 herein. There will also be found in some publica¬ 
 tions of the Religious Education Association articles 
 which deal with the same matter in a more or less 
 thoroughly scientific way. The resources of general 
 literature have not been utilized, although the 
 wealth of illustration that could have been derived 
 from poems, novels, essays, and books upon the 
 Bible is limitless. 
 
 The lectures are published with a high sense of 
 the privilege of making known the experiences of 
 one minister, and of the joy in the effort to induce 
 others to make the same experiment. The writer 
 does not at all depreciate any other form of the 
 ministry, every activity of which is noble, useful, 
 and necessary beyond the power of words to de¬ 
 scribe. Nevertheless, the specific work herein advo¬ 
 cated seems to be called for and is opportune in the 
 present generation with its emphasis upon educa¬ 
 tion, and the constantly increasing facilities pro¬ 
 vided by the State, by religion, and by private gener¬ 
 osity. It also seems to be imperative because of 
 conditions now existing in all Christian denomina¬ 
 tions, our own no less than others. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I. The Need and Opportunity for His Min¬ 
 istry .1-24 
 
 Concentration of Functions in the 
 
 Pastor's Work . 1 
 
 I. The Need for the Teaching Ministry 3 
 
 1. Enlightening Ignorance of the 
 
 Bible . 3 
 
 2. Correcting Mistaken Ideas. 5 
 
 3. Preventing Wrong Conceptions . 8 
 
 4. Helping in Practical Living. 10 
 
 I 5. Neutralizing Unintelligent 
 
 Teaching . 12 
 
 II. The Opportunity for This Ministry. . 14 
 
 1. The Official Position as Pastor. . 14 
 
 2. Control of Church School In¬ 
 
 struction . 16 
 
 3. Week-day Classes for Study. 18 
 
 4. The Use of Good Books. 19 
 
 III. Cautions for the Teaching Pastor. . 21 
 
 1. Be Qualified. 21 
 
 2. Gain the Confidence of the 
 
 People . 21 
 
 3. Proceed Slowly. 22 
 
 4. Avoid Making the Pulpit a Lab¬ 
 
 oratory . 23 
 
 5. Be Constructive in Spirit and 
 
 Purpose . 24 
 
Contents 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 II. Reactions of His Ministry on His 
 
 Life . 25-47 
 
 Necessity of Proper Qualifications ... 25 
 
 I. Reactions on Personal Life. 26 
 
 1. Compulsory Systematic Bible 
 
 Study . 26 
 
 2. Fellowship in Pursuit of Spir¬ 
 
 itual Reality. 28 
 
 3. Wide Culture as a By-product of 
 
 Teaching . 29 
 
 4. Ethical Enthusiasm Pervading 
 
 All Processes. 32 
 
 5. Devotional Appreciation of Sa¬ 
 
 cred Literature. 34 
 
 II. Effects Upon His Public Ministry. . 36 
 
 1. Uses of Scriptures in the Pulpit. 36 
 
 2. Choice and Treatment of Texts 
 
 in Sermons. 38 
 
 3. The Joy and Vitality of Preach¬ 
 
 ing . 42 
 
 III. Inevitable Church Educational At¬ 
 
 mosphere . 45 
 
 III. His Oneness with the Educated Com¬ 
 munity .48-71 
 
 The Teacher in the Early Church and 
 
 His Successor. 48 
 
 I. Present Functions of the Teaching 
 Pastor . 51 
 
 1. Uplifting the Uneducated. 51 
 
 2. Identification With the Edu¬ 
 
 cated . 52 
 
Contents 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 3. Competent Interpretation of the 
 
 Bible . 55 
 
 4. Mediating Truth to Modern Life . 57 
 
 5. Evangelization of the Cultured. 61 
 
 6. Recruiting Teaching Forces in 
 
 Religion . 67 
 
 IV. His Ministry to the Young. 72-96 
 
 Young People Must Live Out Their 
 
 Own Lives. 72 
 
 I. Discoveries Concerning Religious 
 Education . 73 
 
 1. Neglected in Most Homes. 73 
 
 2. Unsatisfactory in Many Church 
 
 Schools . 75 
 
 3. Superior Equipment and Methods 
 
 of State Schools. 76 
 
 4. Influence of the Non-academic 
 
 Curriculum . 78 
 
 5. Inevitable Results of These Con¬ 
 
 ditions . 80 
 
 II. The Service of the Pastor. 81 
 
 1. Anticipating College Tests of 
 
 Church-school Work. 81 
 
 2. Guarding Against Teaching That 
 
 Must Be Unlearned. 83 
 
 3. Preventing Moral Shock in Edu¬ 
 
 cational Development. 85 
 
 4. Welcoming College Graduates 
 
 When They Return Home. 87 
 
 5. Helping Those Without Educa¬ 
 
 tional Advantages. 89 
 
Contents 
 
 LECTUEE PAGE 
 
 6. Promoting Educational Evangel¬ 
 ism . 91 
 
 The Forms of This Ministry. 93 
 
 1. Pulpit and Personal Service_ 93 
 
 2. Control of Church-school Cur¬ 
 
 riculum . 94 
 
 3. Supervision of Young People’s Or¬ 
 
 ganizations . 96 
 
 V. His Relation to the Problem of Chris¬ 
 tian Unity ....97-123 
 
 The Fact of Sectarianism. 97 
 
 I. The Harmfulness of Sectarianism .. 97 
 
 1. Inability to Make United Senti¬ 
 
 ment Effective. 97 
 
 2. Disunion in Christian Work. 99 
 
 3. Waste of Money. 100 
 
 4. Waste of Ministerial Service ... 100 
 
 5. Impression on Non-Christians ... 101 
 
 6. Confusion in Foreign Mission 
 
 Work . 102 
 
 II. Conditions Demanding Teaching 
 
 Pastors . 102 
 
 1. Each Sect Appeals to the Bible. . 102 
 
 2. Love and Scholarship the Solu¬ 
 
 tion of the Problem. 103 
 
 3. The Pastors are Leaders of Their 
 
 Groups . 104 
 
 4. Varieties of Biblical Interpreta¬ 
 
 tion . 105 
 
 5. Influence of Dogmatic Preposses¬ 
 
 sions . 108 
 
Contents 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 6. Bondage to Historical and Hered¬ 
 
 itary Accidents . Ill 
 
 7. Failure of All Other Plans for 
 
 Union . 114 
 
 III. The Specific Contributions of the 
 
 Teaching Pastor . 117 
 
 1. Leadership in Sane Bible Study. . 117 
 
 2. Moral Courage in Facing Truth . 118 
 
 3. Emphasis upon Life Above Litera¬ 
 
 ture . 119 
 
 4. If All Ministers Were Teaching 
 
 Pastors . 121 
 
 VI. Some Spiritual Values of His Minis¬ 
 try . 124-150 
 
 Every Form of Ministry Has Its Own 
 Spiritual Value. 124 
 
 I. Personal Values. 124 
 
 1. Mental, Social, Ethical, and De¬ 
 
 votional Values . 124 
 
 2. Repose of Entire Rational Na¬ 
 
 ture . 125 
 
 3. Nourishment of Spirit While 
 
 Feeding Others . 127 
 
 4. The Spiritual Blessedness of 
 
 Teaching . 128 
 
 II. Appreciation of the Bible. 129 
 
 1. Revelation Through History_ 129 
 
 2. The Religious Value of Human 
 
 Experiences . 131 
 
 3. Divine Use of Current Vehicles . 132 
 
 4. The Permanent Values of the 
 
 Bible . 133 
 
Contents 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 III. Values Seen in Human Life. 135 
 
 1. The Place of the Bible in Relig¬ 
 
 ious Life. 135 
 
 2. The Social Value of Biblical 
 
 Ideals . 136 
 
 3. The Democracy of Religious 
 
 Truth . 137 
 
 4. The Increase of Reverence 
 
 Through Knowledge . 138 
 
 5. How the Bible Was Meant to 
 
 Guide Life. 139 
 
 IV. The Knowledge of God . 140 
 
 1. God’s Revelation of Himself Pro¬ 
 
 gressive . 141 
 
 2. The Steady Development Toward 
 
 Theism . 145 
 
 3. The Reality of God. 146 
 
 4. God Works Now as Hitherto . 148 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 THE NEED AND OPPORTUNITY FOR HIS 
 
 MINISTRY 
 
 Concentration of Functions in the Pastor s Work 
 
 We are not unmindful of the work which the 
 modern pastor is called upon to do. All functions 
 of the ministry outlined in the New Testament are 
 now expected of one man, and in addition many 
 other forms of service that were not contemplated 
 by the church in the first century, due to the develop¬ 
 ment of human life and of the church itself. Possi¬ 
 bly in the future, at a time not yet visible to us, 
 all these particular groups which now are separated 
 into denominations seeking to build up themselves, 
 may come together, and once more we may have a 
 number of men and women exercising the functions 
 described by the New Testament. Our present divi¬ 
 sions, with their clamor for money for self-support 
 and sectarian propaganda, make it financially im¬ 
 possible, with rare exceptions, for Christians in a 
 local church to have the ministry existing in the 
 early undivided group. The same sad condition 
 forces upon a single human being not only the func¬ 
 tion for which he is fitted, but many others in which 
 neither personality nor training could make him ex¬ 
 pert. Special endowments for diverse services are 
 recognized in the New Testament, 1 each of which 
 
 1 Rom. 12 : 6-9 ; 1 Cor. 12 : 4-11 ; Eph. 4 : 11-13 ; 1 Peter 4 : 10, 11. 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 the Holy Spirit craves for the upbuilding of the 
 church. It is only one of the shameful results of 
 schisms in the Body of Christ that local churches 
 are denied the help of all these various functions, 
 each performed by a person specially gifted and 
 trained. 
 
 Far be it from our purpose, then, to minimize or 
 underestimate any form of ministry to the church 
 and to the world. The Holy Spirit would use any 
 ability which any individual Christian has and con¬ 
 secrate that to the development of individual life 
 and to the growth of the kingdom of God. The evil 
 days of sectarianism, with its financial burdens and 
 consequent waste, not only prevent church-members 
 from having the full help they need, but impose 
 upon one man the functions distributed among many 
 in the early church. He must be preacher, pastor, 
 teacher, exhorter, administrator, student, counselor, 
 source of knowledge and wisdom, evangelist, mis¬ 
 sionary, and all else. This is too much for any one 
 person. None is so wonderfully gifted in person¬ 
 ality as to discharge skilfully all these offices. No 
 college or seminary training can produce such a 
 prodigy. The time may come when our unhappy 
 sectarian divisions may seem less important than 
 the “ perfecting of the saints for the work of minis¬ 
 tration, for the building up of the body of Christ; 
 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the 
 knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature manhood, 
 to the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ. 1 ” 2 But it will come only when the “ ascen¬ 
 sion gifts ” in all their variety are at work, and the 
 pastor is not expected to converge all in himself. 
 
 2 Eph. 4 : 12 , 13. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 3 
 
 I. The Need for the Teaching Ministry 
 
 If these lectures emphasize the need for one 
 special function, that of teaching, it is not because 
 any others are held to be of less importance. All 
 are necessary. We lay stress upon the teaching 
 function because of the conditions that seem to call 
 for this special ministry. 
 
 Let us think of the need for this function. Is it 
 not as true today as of those early Hebrew Chris¬ 
 tians, and with much less excuse than they had, that 
 our church-members should be teachers and yet have 
 need that some one should instruct them ? 3 How 
 many have left the elements of the doctrine of Christ 
 and have pressed on to maturity ? 4 
 
 1 . Enlightening Ignorance of the Bible 
 
 Consider the lack of intelligence as to the Bible. 
 It is not at all idle to ask the question of Philip to 
 the Ethiopian pilgrim, “ Understandest thou what 
 thou readest?” And the honest answer of the 
 African 6 would be in the mouths of most Christians, 
 “How can I, except some one should guide me?” 
 The simple fact is that the rank and file of our church- 
 members do not know the Bible. They are living 
 upon so much of its truth as has come to them in 
 sermons, or has been obtained through other chan¬ 
 nels. The great ethical ideals of the Scriptures are 
 known not only by church-members, but by the 
 world outside. But the book itself is a sealed volume 
 to most of those who call themselves Christian. They 
 love it, sing about it, give money for its circulation, 
 
 3 Heb. 5 : 12. 
 
 4 Heb. 6 : 2. 
 
 5 Acts 8 : 30, 31. 
 
4 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 read short selections before going to bed at night, 
 with the aid of lesson helps try to extract spiritual 
 meaning from detached sections in Sunday schools, 
 fight about its meaning, dispute over systems of 
 doctrine supposed to be taught in the volume—in 
 short, do everything except faithfully, systemati¬ 
 cally study the priceless literature, which records the 
 highest human experience of God during the days 
 in which its different books were written. 
 
 Our very aphorisms commit us to the knowledge 
 of the Scriptures. Such sayings as Chillingworth’s, 
 “ The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of 
 Protestants,'” or that of Campbell, adopted by the 
 Disciples denomination, “ Where the Scriptures 
 speak we speak; and where they are silent we are 
 silent,” or Paul’s, 6 “ Thus saith the Scriptures,” or 
 the Baptist’s, 7 “ The New Testament is the all-suffi¬ 
 cient ground of our faith and practise,” and others 
 equally well-known would seem to commit all who 
 use them to patient, diligent study of the Bible. In 
 spite of years of handling the material book, of 
 attendance upon the Sunday school, and of faithful 
 churchgoing, the ignorance of the Scriptures is 
 amazing. The minds of most Christians contain 
 the crudest conceptions of what the book really is. 
 Earnest people, sincere in their motives, have re¬ 
 sorted to all kinds of devices to discover so-called 
 spiritual meanings in verses entirely severed from 
 their connections and considered without reference 
 to the purposes of the writer. Councils for the 
 ordination of men to the gospel ministry have put 
 the seal of their approval upon candidates whose 
 
 6 Gal. 4 : 30. 
 
 7 Northern Baptist Convention Annual, 1922, p. 133, Item 118. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 5 
 
 examination showed no knowledge whatever of the 
 mere contents of the Bible, much less of the mes¬ 
 sages of its books. There are in the ministry today 
 many men whose lives indeed are pure and blame¬ 
 less, who have been given a denominational standing- 
 equal to that of the ripest scholar, who have been 
 put in positions of leadership and stand before 
 the public as authoritative interpreters of the Scrip¬ 
 tures of which they know little. No one can wonder 
 at the amazing lack of Biblical knowledge by church- 
 members when such men are shepherds of the peo¬ 
 ple, or when competent pastors are overburdened 
 with the cares of preaching, visiting, administration, 
 public service, and other responsibilities that con¬ 
 sume all the time and strength of one man. If one 
 were asked concerning the efficiency of Sunday- 
 school methods in the past, it would be enough to 
 answer that those who have for years been members 
 of Sunday schools have not become qualified to teach 
 the only book they were studying. What is to be 
 thought of an institution called a “ school ” when 
 those who have pursued its curriculum are incom¬ 
 petent to teach the very literature they have been 
 supposed to study? 
 
 2 . Correcting Mistaken Ideas 
 
 The pastor should correct mistaken ideas, pro¬ 
 duced not only by inaccurate conceptions of what 
 the Bible is, but also by faulty methods of Bible 
 study. Conceptions of God, of providence, of sin, 
 and of many other religious factors have suffered 
 because of erroneous methods of study. No intelli¬ 
 gent minister will live long with the average congre¬ 
 gation before he discovers these errors. This is a 
 
6 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 serious matter. People have rightly been taught to 
 attach high authority to the Scriptures. They have 
 been declared to be the rule of faith and practise 
 among Christians. It is, therefore, no light matter 
 to appeal to them. When a high ideal of Biblical 
 authority is joined with mistaken methods of inter¬ 
 pretation and ignorance of what the Bible really 
 teaches, the lives of sincere but misguided people 
 are harmed. Many have put divine authority be¬ 
 hind their erroneous conceptions. The result has 
 been distortion, deformity, and disease of spiritual 
 life. Here a real healing ministry is possible. Souls 
 that have known the afflictions of their errors can 
 be restored to comfort, peace, joy, and enthusiasm 
 by the teaching of the pastor. Those who have 
 known the delight of this ministry can easily recall 
 many illustrations of deliverance from the blight 
 of mistaken ideas. When one has understood the 
 truth uttered by our Lord 8 that the kingdom of God 
 has developed “ First the blade, then the ear, after 
 that the full corn in the ear,” and that this has been 
 the method by which God has unfolded himself in 
 the experiences of men as recorded in the Scriptures, 
 then such a soul is relieved of the burden of crude 
 beliefs which have come from exalting into finality 
 the early, partial, and incomplete revelations of 
 religious ideas. The correction of these mistaken 
 opinions which control the lives of earnest Chris¬ 
 tians comes by education through the teaching min¬ 
 istry of the pastor. 
 
 The persistence of what is learned in early years 
 is well known. It is hard to unlearn. When Peter 
 was on the housetop at Joppa, and the delayed 
 
 8 Mark 4 : 28. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 7 
 
 dinner only whetted his hunger, he fell into a trance 
 and saw a whole menagerie let down from heaven. 
 God would teach him readiness to receive the mes¬ 
 sengers of the Roman Cornelius. But the heart 
 of the Jew had little hospitality for the Gentile. 
 Three times the vision came, thrice the voice. The 
 only answer was: 9 “ Not so, Lord; for I never have.” 
 Neither in trance nor in sane wakefulness could this 
 apostle understand, for “ he doubted in himself what 
 this vision which he had seen should mean.” How 
 many times the teacher is met by that Petrine con¬ 
 sistency! To all that would introduce new truth, 
 sane but unfamiliar methods, it has been thought 
 an ample reason for clinging to a mistaken notion 
 to reply, “ Not so, I never have.” Peter soon learned 
 that he was not inspired in his refusal, nor was his 
 past experience infallible as a guide. One wonders 
 why he had not learned the lesson before, when in 
 the Petrine Gospel of Mark 10 there is recorded our 
 Lord’s revolutionary teaching concerning the im¬ 
 possibility of defilement by eating. Was it not after 
 this experience and also after his inconsistent ac¬ 
 tions at Antioch 11 that his Gospel was written by 
 Mark, and he added to the words of Jesus about un¬ 
 clean foods the comment, 12 “ This he said, making 
 all foods clean”? If it was so hard for Jesus by 
 direct teaching, and the heavenly Father through a 
 vision, to teach a truth to one of the greatest of the 
 Twelve, we must not expect an easy time now in 
 displacing mistaken conceptions. Yet precisely that 
 ministry is necessary for Christians and the growth 
 of the Christian society. 
 
 9 Acts 10 : 9-17. 11 Gal. 2 : 12. 
 
 10 Mark 7 : 14-23. 12 Mark 7 : 19 A. R. V. 
 
8 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 3 . Preventing Wrong Conceptions 
 
 There is also a preventive ministry which the 
 pastor can exercise. It is far better to teach truth 
 that will never have to be unlearned than to suffer 
 faulty conceptions to take root and then expose the 
 soul to the painful process of pulling out the tares 
 from the mind and heart. The teaching pastor can 
 at least make his people acquainted with sane 
 methods of interpretation, can cause them to see 
 that results depend upon processes, that the teach¬ 
 ings of the Bible are not always to be gathered from 
 the surface of the literature by any silly, fanciful, 
 or lazy saint, that the understanding of the Scrip¬ 
 tures must be the fruit of an intelligent method of 
 study. He can go far to forestall wild speculation 
 from making inroads upon his congregation. Igno¬ 
 rance is the soil in which all kinds of soul-blights 
 flourish. These are fungi that grow upon the tree 
 of knowledge where the pastoral forester does not 
 protect it. They are fads that flourish in the ab¬ 
 sence of real instruction. There are many who 
 wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. 13 Our 
 Protestant churches have become fertile soil for 
 many so-called religious movements that appeal to 
 genuine religious instincts, but poison the minds 
 of men and women with grotesque views of God, 
 the error of the unreality of sin, a wretched carica¬ 
 ture of Jesus, and other hideous distortions of truth. 
 Our people have been taught to revere the Bible 
 as the word of God, but have not been properly edu¬ 
 cated or trained in methods of interpretation. It 
 is easy to realize that these so-called religious move- 
 
 13 2 Peter 3:16. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 9 
 
 ments, many of them so grotesque as to defy any 
 adjective which our vocabulary possesses, could 
 never have been originated and propagated unless 
 they had begun and continued through faulty ideas 
 of the Bible, and erroneous processes of interpret¬ 
 ing it. 
 
 The remedy is not denunciation, nor satire, nor 
 ridicule; it is education. Those who have tried to 
 pursue this ministry have often seen really pious 
 and earnest people in the effort to satisfy their 
 heart-hungers for spiritual reality prevented from 
 going astray by a sane method of interpreting the 
 Bible. Indeed, this prophylactic ministry is the 
 critical thing. The minister who uses his Bible sim¬ 
 ply as a collection of texts without regard to the 
 significance of the words of his text in the mind 
 of the one who wrote or spoke them, is deliberately 
 leading his people into the opinion that it made no 
 difference with Biblical writers or speakers what 
 they were saying, and that it makes no difference 
 with us what they did say or mean, provided we can 
 use their language as a motto from which we can 
 derive divine authority for our own notions. So 
 great is the need for this preventive ministry of 
 the teaching pastor that people are bewildered by 
 counter claims of those who urge the fads and those 
 who combat them. Often it is more difficult to de¬ 
 cide who knows less of the Scriptures, those who 
 seek to establish their mistaken notions by appeal 
 to the Bible, or those who go to the Bible for weapons 
 to destroy such notions. Frequently both alike show 
 equal ignorance of the Scriptures. The teaching 
 pastor will so ground his people in a true idea of 
 what the Bible is, and in sane methods of studying 
 
10 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 it that they will be unaffected by either the queer 
 and fanciful ideas that the incompetent imagine they 
 derive from the Scriptures, or the ridiculous 
 methods by which such ideas are obtained. If Mrs. 
 Mary Baker Eddy had known either what the Bible 
 really is, or the proper way to study it, there would 
 never have been any such thing as “ Christian 
 Science.” And if our pastors now realized the 
 nature of the Scriptures and how to understand 
 them, and faithfully educated their flocks in both 
 these matters, there would be no straying into these 
 grotesque folds except by those who were determined 
 not to know the truth. 
 
 4 . Helping in Practical Living 
 
 This teaching ministry will vastly help the practi¬ 
 cal living of Christians. It is a sad sight upon 
 which no one likes to gaze—this spectacle of souls 
 misled by misused Scriptures. Some persons take 
 the very words of an English translation as talis- 
 manic. They think there is a magical force in the 
 language of the Bible. I have known deeply pious 
 church-members to open the book at random and 
 construe the first words that met their eyes as indi¬ 
 cating the will of God for their guidance in the par¬ 
 ticular perplexity that existed. I have known Chris¬ 
 tians to take the Bible by the covers, and hold it a 
 few inches above a table and drop it, and then put 
 an index finger into the tangled leaves, and assume 
 that the particular text upon which the tip of the 
 forefinger rested was sent to them by the Holy Spirit 
 for their guidance at that particular moment. Many 
 other equally insane methods of dealing with the 
 Bible have prevailed far too frequently. Of course 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry il 
 
 this is divination pure and simple. Such persons 
 are the lineal spiritual descendants of those who 
 sought the will of God through haruspication, as¬ 
 trology, lots, and other fortuitous methods. The 
 evil effects upon the lives of those who treat the 
 Scriptures in this way cannot be exaggerated. 
 There have been used disconnected texts that had 
 absolutely no relation to one another, or to the 
 problems whose solution was sought. These have 
 been strung upon the threads of thought, as beads 
 of different material, shape, and color would be 
 strung, and the necklace of texts thus formed has 
 been worn around the soul as an amulet, as a kind 
 of scapular. We are relating only what has actually 
 been seen. No one can distinguish between the 
 superstition which thus uses texts of Scripture and 
 that which uses other material, ornithological, 
 visceral, or what not to obtain divine guidance. 
 
 There have been many so-called “ Bible readings ” 
 in which “concordance theology ” has been the goal 
 of the reader. Words change during centuries be¬ 
 cause life continually pours its fulness into language. 
 Men have rummaged through the books of the Bible, 
 have assumed that the same words always mean 
 the same thing, that the Scriptures were like a 
 storehouse of automobile parts, and that all that 
 the reader had to do was to pick out a part 
 wherever he could find it under the belief that every 
 part was standardized and all alike wherever found. 
 There is no telling what harm has been done by 
 these unintelligent Bible readings that fail utterly 
 to take into account the differences of situation 
 and purpose which produced different parts of the 
 Scriptures. 
 
12 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 Who can estimate the number of persons who 
 have been misled by the methods alluded to, and by 
 others we will not take time to indicate? When 
 honest and sincere souls surrender themselves to 
 a spiritual conception as being the will of God for 
 human life, the utmost care should be taken that the 
 idea to which we surrender is really and truly the 
 mind of God. All this is only to say that sane 
 methods of Bible study and true methods of pastoral 
 teachings have enormous value for perfecting the 
 saints in the holy life. After all, lives are simply 
 the fruit of ideals. As Jesus was the Word made 
 flesh, so our lives are the incarnations of our concep¬ 
 tions of truth. Jesus declared, 14 “ I am the truth.” 
 He was indeed the reality lived before us, and there 
 is no higher calling of the pastor than so to present 
 spiritual reality that men may love it and live it. 
 “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, 
 but shall have the light of life.” 15 To understand 
 Jesus, to find the principles of living incarnated in 
 him, to interpret his life rightly, and spare no effort 
 to learn from him, is to find the way of life. There 
 is no use of the Scriptures so worth while as this, 
 and to this the teaching pastor can lead his people. 
 
 5 . Neutralizing Unintelligent Teaching 
 
 The need for this teaching ministry by the pastor 
 is also revealed in the unintelligent methods of 
 teaching which have arisen, and of institutions 
 which are based upon them. Some of these are 
 dominated by theories, and the attempt is made to 
 press facts into the molds of these theories. Surely 
 
 u John 14 : G. 
 
 « John 8 : 12. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 13 
 
 in dealing with divine things the spiritual and 
 ethical order must be first the facts, and then the 
 interpretation of the facts, and then the theories 
 which grow out of these realities as understood. 
 The Scriptures themselves are continually revealing 
 to us the misfortunes that come from preconcep¬ 
 tions. When Naaman, the Syrian, went to the 
 prophet, through every step of the journey he was 
 under the spell of a preconception. “ Behold, I 
 thought,” he said, 16 and came near missing the great 
 aim of his journey because of his preconceptions. 
 John the Baptist had a program for the Messiah, 
 and when his program was not carried out he ap¬ 
 pointed a committee of two of his followers to ask 
 Jesus whether he was really the Messiah, or whether 
 he should look for some one else. 17 We cannot en¬ 
 large upon the inevitable disappointments that come 
 to human life when it is either built upon theories 
 which facts do not justify, or orders itself by the¬ 
 ories and then seeks to compress facts into accord 
 with preconceptions. There is a terrible waste of 
 money in sustaining institutions that violate the 
 divine order just alluded to; a junking of life that 
 tries to order itself by first forming theories and 
 then irreverently pressing facts into conformity 
 with theories. The rude awakening which is in¬ 
 evitable when once the majesty of facts is perceived 
 and conscience affirms their authority, and theories 
 are shattered, has often been experienced, and 
 brings no comfort to any soul. If the shepherd of 
 souls seeks to lead his sheep into the pastures which 
 the Bible provides, and feeds the minds and emo- 
 
 16 2 Kings 5. 
 
 ’ 7 Matt. 3 : 7-12; 11 : 2-6. 
 
14 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 tions and souls of his flock upon the great facts 
 which patient, intelligent study of the Scriptures 
 provides, he will save his people from many a jar 
 and from experiences that in the end will inevitably 
 bring all kinds of disappointment. Surely there 
 can be no greater need for Christian people than 
 to become wise in the knowledge of the Holy Scrip¬ 
 tures. They will be made wise unto salvation, which 
 means full of wisdom in the right relation to God 
 and to their fellow men. 
 
 II. The Opportunity for This Ministry 
 
 1 . The Official Position as Pastor 
 
 Sincerity alone is not enough. 18 It demands the 
 aid of intelligence. Well-meaning people need the 
 light that comes from the use of methods that are 
 sane and commend themselves to our rational 
 natures. God never gave us our intellectual powers 
 that we might insult them in the name of Christ. 19 
 Untrained pastors cannot fulfil the teaching min¬ 
 istry. The blind cannot lead the blind without dis¬ 
 aster to both. 20 Nor can an ill-prepared minister 
 hope to accomplish for his people the ideals herein¬ 
 before set forth. Unintentionally, but none the less 
 really, all institutions that would send out into the 
 pastorate men who cannot teach because they do 
 not know, are retarding the development of the 
 church at large. The greatest need of the church 
 today is the leadership of a teaching ministry. Peo¬ 
 ple look to the pastor for instruction. It is possible 
 for him, by virtue of his continuous relation, to 
 
 18 Acts 26 : 9. 19 Matt. 6 : 22, 23. 20 Matt. 15 : 14. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 15 
 
 concentrate and make cumulative his educational 
 ministry, without sacrificing other essential aspects 
 of his work. Churches seldom think about this min¬ 
 istry when considering a pastor. His ability to 
 preach is the main consideration, and the prophetic 
 skill of a “ candidate ” is judged by one or two show 
 sermons. This is but little more sensible than form¬ 
 ing an idea of the architecture of a house, its inside 
 plan, and furnishings by taking a few bricks from 
 the walls as samples. What committee to nominate 
 a pastor ever asks about his equipment and ability 
 for teaching? And yet he is all the time teaching 
 by virtue of his very ministry. Sundays and in 
 midweek services, on all occasions, whether he is 
 conscious of it or not, he is teaching something. 
 Why not use his relation to his charge intelligently, 
 and deliberately plan that his ministry shall be edu¬ 
 cational as well as hortatory? 
 
 When we say “ educational,” we do not mean a 
 mere eruption of information from public addresses, 
 as if the pulpit or platform were to be an encyclo¬ 
 pedic volcano with the preacher as its loquacious 
 crater. Far different is the idea. Education is the 
 unfolding of life, the stimulation and development 
 of all the powers of personality. And for this 
 supreme ideal for the ministry there is no literature 
 so serviceable as the Bible, and no ministerial work 
 so fruitful as that which makes others know the 
 nature of the Scriptures, and endows one’s parish¬ 
 ioners with correct methods of Bible study. Such an 
 opportunity is inherent in the very relation of the 
 pastor. Long after any mere emotion he may arouse 
 has faded away, long after any dazzling rhetorical 
 picture he has painted by the free use of lurid ad- 
 
16 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 jectives has vanished into the cold, gray waste of 
 prosaic life, long after flashings of scintillating 
 phrases have died away into oblivion, there will 
 endure the deep convictions of truth made by the 
 teaching ministry. God forbid that any one should 
 marry dulness to reality, or dryness to the water 
 of life. The teaching pastor will build into lives he 
 touches the very heart-beats of Biblical characters, 
 and will in time lead his flock into fellowship with 
 all the great and good whose lives are recorded in 
 the Scriptures. No other calling offers such an 
 opportunity as does the ministry, and in that call¬ 
 ing only the teaching pastor seizes upon that oppor¬ 
 tunity. 
 
 2 . Control of Church School Instruction 
 
 If the pastor rightly controls instruction in his 
 church school, he can through others further this 
 teaching ministry. He should make the Sunday 
 school a genuine educational institution, organized 
 and constructed upon true educational ideals. The 
 curriculum of the school must rest upon intelligent 
 conceptions of the Bible, a broad and comprehensive 
 knowledge of it, and instruction therein must be 
 based upon correct pedagogical principles. There 
 is no other sane way of giving to both young and 
 old alike the truth which is the instrument of the 
 Holy Spirit in the regeneration of men and their 
 growth in Christian character. The church school 
 should not be a mere Sunday morning or afternoon 
 day-nursery for children to give a period of relief 
 to uninterested parents. The adult members of the 
 church without regard to age should be brought into 
 the church school for this very instruction we are 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 17 
 
 advocating. Under the guidance of the pastor the 
 fruits of the church school should be not only edu¬ 
 cational evangelism for the young; but an intelli¬ 
 gent knowledge of the Scriptures by everybody, and 
 as the crowning achievement of the school the train¬ 
 ing of church-members by virtue of their exper¬ 
 iences therein. It is naturally to be expected that 
 any real educational institution shall so train those 
 who have pursued its courses of study that they] 
 shall become competent to teach what they have 
 learned. Every pastor should redeem the Sunday- 
 school idea from the vain and empty and often con¬ 
 temptuous significance into which it has fallen. 
 Church-members without regard to age should be 
 impressed with the truth that attendance upon or 
 absence from the church school indicates a revela¬ 
 tion of their interest in or indifference to the knowl¬ 
 edge of the Scriptures. Here is a ready-made op¬ 
 portunity for the pastor to emphasize his teaching 
 ministry. 
 
 If it be objected that laymen control the church 
 school and are unwilling to yield to sensible ideals 
 for its educational conduct, or are unwilling to fit 
 themselves to realize these ideals in their manage¬ 
 ment of the institution, then somehow they must be 
 brought to see that their petrifaction, or their Dio- 
 trephesian appetite 21 must yield to the spiritual 
 interests of the young, and the efficiency of the 
 school as an institution. The present gratifying 
 interest in church-school development only enhances 
 the opportunity of the qualified pastor in the realm 
 of religious education where the Bible must continue 
 to be central. 
 
 21 3 John 9. 
 
18 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 3 . Week-day Classes for Study 
 
 There is no reason why instruction should be 
 limited to one day of the week. In many places, 
 and many churches, boys and girls are gathered for 
 an hour after school once or twice a week, and the 
 most helpful results follow. Certain denominations 
 are emphasizing these additional hours for religious 
 instruction, and their achievements should inspire 
 others to imitation. The Bible and stereopticon pic¬ 
 tures and even moving pictures are used. When 
 these week-day sessions of the church school are 
 held they become interesting, provided instruction 
 is given in a way suitable to those who attend, and 
 the work is made to be genuinely educational. Again 
 what better use could be made of the midweek eve¬ 
 ning service than to center it around the Bible? 
 From all over the land there come the tidings that 
 the prayer-meeting is a hard service to maintain. 
 No wonder. The saints do not have spiritual ex¬ 
 periences enough to keep an “ experience meeting ” 
 fresh and without monotony. The faithful who are 
 regular attendants are thoroughly familiar with one 
 another's experiences. They have heard the victrola 
 disk testimonies until these have become monotonous 
 and soporific. No outsiders come to whom can be 
 told these so-called Christian experiences in the 
 effort to allure them into participation in such ex¬ 
 periences, and certainly many narrations are such 
 that none would crave to reproduce them in his 
 own life. Why not use the midweek evening service 
 as a regular hour for sane and systematic Bible 
 study? The men could then attend. In a few years 
 those who came to such a meeting would have a 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 19 
 
 deepened interest in and a fuller knowledge of the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 Again, why not have as a regular part of the 
 pastor’s work a stated morning week-day hour for 
 systematic Bible study? Many women who for 
 domestic reasons could not attend the church school 
 on Sunday mornings, or for reasons of prudence 
 and safety could not go out alone to the midweek 
 evening service, would be present. One pastor has 
 had such an hour from eleven o’clock until noon, one 
 morning each week for many years, except during 
 the World War. In 1916 there were three hundred 
 and twenty women enrolled in the class, seventy- 
 five per cent, of whom were not members of that 
 pastor’s flock. The meetings have been resumed, 
 and the interest is growing. The story of how this 
 class has affected persons and Bible study in other 
 churches would be interesting, but cannot be told 
 here. 
 
 4. The Use of Good Books 
 
 In addition to all this there is an abundance of 
 good books easily understood by the average person 
 which set forth the results of reverent, modern, 
 constructive study. These are cheap and within 
 the reach of the ordinary man and woman. Never 
 before has this literature been so plentiful. The 
 old-fashioned commentary has disappeared. It took 
 up each verse separately, tried to show its so-called 
 spiritual meaning, suggested themes for sermons 
 or thoughts for exhortations by Sunday-school 
 teachers, and sometimes came perilously near twist¬ 
 ing off the tails of commas in the King James' Ver¬ 
 sion in the frantic effort to find religious significance 
 
20 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 in every verse of the Bible. Today the main task 
 of those who issue these books is to help the reader 
 to understand precisely what was in the mind of the 
 author of a Biblical book. We are thus relieved by 
 the help which others have provided from doing many 
 things which have already been accomplished with 
 far greater skill than most pastors could hope to 
 have. There is no excuse today for ignorance con¬ 
 cerning the Bible. Indifference to it is the only reason 
 that can honestly be given for lack of knowledge con¬ 
 cerning it. Every phase of its existence has been 
 well set forth in books clearly written and fascinat¬ 
 ing in contents. The story of the manuscripts and 
 translations, the way the collection came to be gath¬ 
 ered, the historical setting of every book in the 
 Scriptures and how and why it came to be written, 
 are told by masters in the art of telling. All these 
 helps are cheap and easily understood. The pastor 
 should know of them and commend them to his 
 people, see that they are used as text-books in the 
 church school, introduce them into homes, and have 
 them in a church library for the use of those who 
 might not otherwise consult them. It has been found 
 possible to get public libraries to instal these books 
 for the general use of the community. What better 
 service could any pastor render than to increase the 
 circulation of these helps, and through them the 
 knowledge of the Bible? The large number of such 
 volumes covering all phases of Bible study is evi¬ 
 dence of an increasing interest in the knowledge of 
 the Scriptures. This deepening desire to know the 
 Book is a great aid to those pastors who seek to 
 make it the one book with which all Christians 
 should be familiar. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 21 
 
 III. Cautions for the Teaching Pastor 
 
 1 . Be Qualified 
 
 Some cautions must be offered to those who under¬ 
 take this service. The pastor himself should be 
 thoroughly qualified. Any man who consents to 
 serve a church should be equipped to undertake this 
 work. No one will claim that three years in the 
 cloistered life of a seminary will make him a great 
 scholar or a great teacher. At the same time these 
 years of special preparation will put the student so 
 far ahead of the average church that his problem 
 will be to keep in touch with his congregation. Far 
 be it from our purpose to criticize the curriculum of 
 any theological school. Nevertheless, a seminary 
 that does not fit its graduates to pass on to those 
 whom they are to train in the Christian life an 
 enthusiasm for and an interest in the Scriptures, 
 cannot be said to succeed in its work. As in all 
 things else, the secret of successful work in this 
 respect will largely depend upon the qualification 
 of the leader. 
 
 2 . Gain the Confidence of the People 
 
 It is of primary importance that the pastor who 
 undertakes to lead his people into the better knowl¬ 
 edge of the Scriptures should establish himself in 
 the hearts of those whom he leads. When we seek 
 to lead men into thoughts which are new to them 
 we must not only begin with the ideas we find in 
 their minds, but we must have gained their trust in 
 us as leaders. This was the method of the Great 
 Teacher. Violent assault upon traditional or im- 
 
22 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 perfect or mistaken ideas can only produce a tighter 
 grip upon them. At no point in the journey which 
 an intelligent pastor proposes to make with those 
 whom he teaches, should there be a break between 
 himself and them. All assumption of authority must 
 be set aside. People will listen to one in whose 
 Christian life they have confidence, if his methods 
 respect the personality and history of those whom 
 he wishes to follow. The surest way to fail is to 
 begin by antagonizing those whom we would lead, 
 by ruthlessly tearing away ideas that have been 
 cherished. Humbly and modestly we must seek to go 
 before those who follow our pastoral leading. 22 If 
 our lives have shown a Christian character, and 
 our sermons revealed a genuine devotion to Jesus 
 Christ and a sincere love for the Bible, others will 
 listen to us, and will walk into pastures new and 
 fresh to them when their faith in the leader is 
 strong. No locomotive will pull a freight train if the 
 engineer jerks the throttle so quickly as to break 
 the couplings. 
 
 3 . Proceed Slowly 
 
 Too much stress cannot be laid upon the impor¬ 
 tance of proceeding very slowly. Time after time 
 a pastor has wrecked himself by haste. There was 
 profound philosophy in what the limping Jacob 
 said 23 to his athletic brother Esau when they were 
 journeying together: “My lord knows that the 
 children are tender, and the flocks and herds that 
 give suck are with me; and if they drive them hard 
 one day, all the flock will die. I will lead on in 
 my slow way, at the pace of the cattle that are 
 
 22 John 10 : 4. 23 Gen. 33 : 13. 
 
Need and Opportunity for His Ministry 23 
 
 r 
 
 before me, and at the pace of the children until I 
 come to my lord to Seir.” The wise pastor will see 
 that there are no shocks beyond those of pleasant 
 surprises, of beautiful illuminations, and of unex¬ 
 pected acquaintance with the richness of life. Did 
 not our Great Teacher say 24 to his followers, “ I have 
 yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot 
 bear them now ”? All structures that are inadequate 
 or outgrown, such as bridges over streams or 
 chasms, can be replaced by stronger and better ones, 
 without impeding the traffic, if builders will first 
 have the material on the ground, each part accu¬ 
 rately numbered, and then piece by piece remove the 
 old and establish the new. 
 
 4 . Avoid Making the Pulpit a Laboratory 
 
 Nor must the pastor make his pulpit and prayer¬ 
 meeting a place where he exhibits and describes the 
 apparatus that produces results. When people come 
 to worship on Sundays, or to deal with the experi¬ 
 mental and practical concerns of the Christian life 
 at the week-day services, they should not be con¬ 
 ducted into a laboratory. They do not care to be 
 taken into the kitchen, but come to sit down to its 
 finished product in the dining-room. While a pastor 
 in preaching should be rigidly true to sane processes 
 of interpretation, he aims to comfort, inspire, and 
 persuade men and to affect their lives. The exhibi¬ 
 tion of critical processes in the pulpit is not only bad 
 taste, but is an effort to feed hungry hearers upon 
 pots and pans and cook-stoves instead of the whole¬ 
 some and appetizing food which has been prepared 
 in them. 
 
 24 John 16 : 12 ; cf. Mark 4 : 33. 
 
24 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 5 .Be Constructive in Spirit and Purpose 
 
 Above all, the spirit of the teacher should be con¬ 
 structive. It should be made clear that his purpose 
 is not to tear down old notions. He can well afford 
 to be gently positive and let everything else take 
 care of itself. All labels indicating whether things 
 are new or old can be thrown into the waste-basket. 
 The emblem of such a teacher should not be an axe 
 or a knife, but rather a trowel or the tools of a gar¬ 
 den. The brown leaves of last summer still cling 
 to the scrub oak. The ice, winds, and snow of the 
 winter have not torn them away. There is a tough¬ 
 ness in their clinging which is unaffected by outside 
 forces. When the tilt of the earth brings our world 
 into a new relation to the sun, the springtime comes, 
 and the new life awakens the tree from the winter 
 slumber, the sap begins to flow, and the old leaves 
 drop off through the power of the new life within. 
 Let us learn the parable of nature if we would lead 
 our followers into a nobler appreciation of the truth 
 and a more accurate knowledge of the great book 
 which contains the highest religious experience of 
 the race. Let us so constructively present reality 
 that it shall be its own authority and claim the 
 hearts of those whom we lead with its inherent 
 axiomatic power. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 REACTIONS OF HIS MINISTRY ON HIS LIFE 
 
 Necessity of Proper Qualifications 
 
 It has been said that the pastor must be qualified 
 for this work of teaching. His educational career 
 at college and at the theological seminary will give 
 him a good start. It must not be thought, however, 
 that the man of God will be thoroughly furnished 
 unto all good works, especially that of dividing the 
 word of truth aright, 1 simply because he has had 
 such educational opportunities. Indeed, so vast is 
 the equipment necessary that probably no one has 
 ever been thoroughly qualified. The college and 
 seminary prepare us only to start. Real preparation 
 is perennial and continuous. The pastor must be at 
 work all the time upon the great book. 
 
 In addition to, and equally important with, the 
 knowledge of the Scriptures will be the forming of 
 contacts with the people who are to be led, as Jesus 
 did with the Samaritan woman, in their common 
 desire for water; 2 the appreciation of the sincerity 
 of men and women and their praiseworthy clinging 
 to truth as they understand it though they be either 
 faulty or mistaken in their ideas; 3 the tact that 
 would introduce new conceptions only by bringing 
 others face to face with facts that are self-evident; 4 
 
 1 2 Tim. 2 : 15. 
 
 2 John 4 : 7. 
 
 3 Acts 18 : 26; 19 : 1-4. 
 
 4 Acts 3 : 10; 4 : 14. 
 
 25 
 
26 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 the spirit of reverence that will tolerate nothing 
 merely destructive, nor speak lightly of any parts 
 of the sacred literature; and the one purpose to dis¬ 
 cover the truth that it may rule over all lives. There 
 are spiritual qualifications that we must seek to 
 possess, without which a merely intellectual equip¬ 
 ment can never achieve results. The Bible can be 
 understood and taught only by those who are in 
 sympathy with its purposes. No mere master of 
 acoustics could ever be fitted to teach music unless 
 the harmonies were also in his soul. This constant 
 effort of the pastor to qualify himself for this im¬ 
 portant work has certain reactions upon himself. 
 
 I. Reactions on Personal Life 
 
 Beneath all public and professional ministries 
 there is the individual life that is the secret of all 
 we can accomplish. What we are is the secret of 
 all we can say or do. 
 
 1 . Compulsory Systematic Bible Study 
 
 The need of being qualified compels systematic 
 Bible study. “ Thou that teachest another, dost thou 
 not teach thyself?” 5 There are passages in the 
 Bible which are “ More to be desired than fine gold, 
 yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey 
 and the honeycomb,” 6 upon which any human being, 
 however unskilled in Bible study, might nourish his 
 soul. It is true that these may be possessed and the 
 spiritual ideal they contain enthroned over our lives. 
 Nevertheless, we may possess all of these and be 
 ignorant of the Book itself. Yet it cannot be denied 
 
 5 Rom. 2 : 21. 6 Ps. 19 : 10. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 27 
 
 that spiritual reality which is the instrument of the 
 Holy Spirit in the regeneration and development of 
 our lives, can best be discovered, appreciated, and 
 enthroned only by sane methods of Bible study. 
 Too often the minister thinks he is so engrossed with 
 parish details, visitings, chores, and public functions 
 that he cannot give himself to systematic Bible 
 study. The pastor who ceases to be a student of the 
 Scriptures when he enters upon his ministry and 
 fails to develop his knowledge of the Bible is des¬ 
 tined to experience an atrophy of soul, to become 
 a mere mechanic, and a bungling homiletic artisan. 
 He must keep in touch with the sources of life, main¬ 
 tain uninterrupted connection with the reservoir if 
 the waters are to flow through him to freshen and 
 invigorate the lives of others, and nourish his own 
 soul in the process of distribution. The minister 
 may piously read the book through “ from cover 
 to cover,” may know its language and its contents, 
 and yet be densely ignorant of its message. His 
 daily Bible readings may merely salve his conscience, 
 or appease the claims of ministerial duty. But 
 his use of the Bible is to be far different. Only 
 systematic study will put him in possession of the 
 significance of a book, give him the message of that 
 book to the day and generation in which it was 
 written, and help him to understand the view-point 
 of the writer or speaker whose words are therein 
 recorded. Habits of study are essential. The min¬ 
 ister who will every day conscientiously devote a 
 given period to faithful, honest investigation of a 
 book of the Bible will find himself much richer at 
 the end of a month than if he had spent the same 
 amount of time in so-called devotional reading, or 
 
28 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 in desultory and saltatory uses of the Scriptures. 
 There is no excuse for laziness here, nor should any 
 one be satisfied with anything less than the very 
 best study he can possibly give. 
 
 There have been instances where congregations 
 assembled early in the morning for the purpose of 
 hearing the New Testament read through in a single 
 day. Different readers followed one another. It 
 would be unfair to say that no advantage resulted 
 to anybody from such an unusual experience. Never¬ 
 theless, it can hardly be questioned that if the day 
 had been devoted to a single book of the New Testa¬ 
 ment in an honest effort to understand the life out 
 of which it grew, the purpose of the writer in pro¬ 
 ducing it, and the message it bore to those for whom 
 it was written, the results of the day would have 
 been vastly more helpful. 
 
 2 . Fellowship in Pursuit of Spiritual Reality 
 
 Systematic study will bring the minister into close 
 fellowship with others who are seeking to compre¬ 
 hend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, 
 and depth, and height, and to know the love of God 
 that passes knowledge. 7 The pursuit of knowledge 
 is a social matter. No one saint alone could com¬ 
 prehend the love that passes the knowledge of any 
 one person. Each of us needs to have the light that 
 has come into another's soul. Sometimes this cor¬ 
 rects our own views, often increases our perceptions, 
 or modifies our conclusions, and frequently gives us 
 the joy of confirmation of our results. In any event 
 it stimulates any one who is engaged in this system¬ 
 atic study for the purpose of teaching. In all de- 
 
 7 Eph. 3 : 19. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 29 
 
 partments of knowledge men work together. They 
 receive one another’s results, test them, verify them, 
 correct them, modify them in various ways. To be 
 in fellowship with those who have such high purposes 
 is in itself a holy privilege. How can one forego 
 membership in such a consecrated fraternity? Com¬ 
 munion of saints in pursuit of knowledge is blessed. 
 
 The uplift that comes to the pastor’s life in being 
 related to others in this quest for light cannot be 
 surpassed except by the joy that the possession of 
 the light brings. To have one’s ignorance enlight¬ 
 ened, to see one’s mistakes corrected, and his partial 
 visions amplified, to become enriched through the 
 honest workings of another’s brain and heart—these 
 are gains to ourselves that are beyond estimate. 
 The dogmatic spirit is exorcised by such union in 
 efforts. No one can live unto himself in any realm 
 of life. 8 Isolation is fatal to expansion. The teach¬ 
 ing pastor is forced out of all insularity. He must 
 join with others in the common pursuit of spiritual 
 reality as recorded in the Bible. It is true that many 
 lives were necessary to produce that priceless litera¬ 
 ture. It is equally true that many lives are needed 
 to interpret it. Why travel this path like a lonely 
 tramp when a great company awaits our fellowship 
 in the journey? 
 
 3 . Wide Culture as a By-product of Teaching 
 
 The cultural value of this preparation for teach¬ 
 ing is beyond all power to describe. The historical 
 method of Bible study compels each student to know 
 the situation out of which each book of the Bible 
 came and the purposes of the writer to influence 
 
 8 Rom. 14 : 7. 
 
30 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 those for whom his book was written. One must 
 become acquainted with literary methods current at 
 the time the book was produced, make to live again 
 the historical conditions that existed, become ac¬ 
 quainted with geography, archeology, customs, great 
 world movements, relations personal and inter¬ 
 national, and abandon for the time being his citizen¬ 
 ship in the present to live again with those who 
 wrote the Scriptures. How is it possible for any 
 one to understand the Old Testament prophets un¬ 
 less their books are read in the light of the crises 
 that produced them, of the hunger for world-wide 
 empire on the part of Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia, the 
 Hittites, of the geographical location of Palestine 
 as a thoroughfare over which these contending coun¬ 
 tries had to go in order to get at one another ? The 
 fact is that these great world powers are mentioned 
 at all in the Old Testament, which deals specifically 
 with the development of the religion of Jehovah 
 among the Hebrew peoples, only because the 
 prophets were interpreters of universal history and 
 saw in world movements indications of the purposes 
 and the spirit of the God of all the earth. They 
 were students of international politics. Assyria was 
 JehovalTs rod 9 and his razor . 10 Cyrus was Jehovah's 
 Messiah . 11 Isaiah gave us a philosophy of history 
 at the time when Rome was founded. These and 
 numberless other things indicate how lean and 
 meager are interpretations of the Old Testament 
 prophets which ignore the great cosmic currents. 
 How could any one hope to understand the tortuous 
 development of the idea of Messianism unless he was 
 
 9 Isa. 10 : 24. 
 
 10 Isa. 7 : 20. 
 
 11 Isa. 45 : 1. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 31 
 
 acquainted with the religious conceptions of the 
 people who touched Israel in its national develop¬ 
 ment? The same questions might be asked about 
 every other part of the literature of the Old Testa¬ 
 ment. It is not enough for us to have merely a good 
 English translation. We must know thousands of 
 things that are not expressly stated in the litera¬ 
 ture in order that we may understand the literature 
 itself. 
 
 Precisely the same is true of our New Testament, 
 although the life that it records is centuries nearer 
 to our own than the life out of which the Old Testa¬ 
 ment grew. How much light is thrown upon the 
 early Christian literature by recognizing the pre¬ 
 literary period of the early church, and realizing 
 the epistolary period as revealed in the Pauline cor¬ 
 respondence, and that all the letters of the great 
 apostle were written before our earliest existing 
 Gospel was produced! When one goes further and 
 asks why this was the case with this priceless litera¬ 
 ture, and discovers the causes that really produced 
 this situation, the information gained puts a wholly 
 new conception upon the New Testament. In other 
 words, the minister who would qualify himself for 
 the service herein described necessarily is led into 
 large regions of knowledge, the mere acquaintance 
 with which is denied to those who are indifferent to 
 thorough preparation for Bible teaching. The cul¬ 
 tural value of such study cannot be exaggerated. It 
 is not too much to say that countless books have 
 been produced to help us know and appreciate the 
 messages of the Biblical books dealing with these 
 unmentioned but luminous conditions which alone 
 can make clear the sacred pages. 
 
32 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 4 . Ethical Enthusiasm Pervading All Processes 
 
 There is an ethical reaction also that occurs in 
 the life of the pastor who prepares himself for this 
 teaching ministry. His passionate devotion to real¬ 
 ity will force him without reserve to ascertain what 
 the facts are. He will not be content with anything 
 else than exactness and thoroughness. In other 
 words, all that is implied in honest study will rush 
 back in upon his total character. He will find in¬ 
 tegrity in mental work breaking through mere in¬ 
 tellectual bounds and seizing upon and dominating 
 his love, his plans, and his relations. He will soon 
 come to believe that only reality can satisfy any¬ 
 where. No pains will be too severe for him to 
 discover truth. He will be willing to sweat his 
 brains. He will be courageous enough to admit that 
 he does not know. He will never be content with 
 make-believe or with sham anywhere. He will soon 
 come to see that only the truth can make us free . 12 
 Only reality emancipates. All else enslaves. With 
 processes of study so thoroughly ethical, his entire 
 nature soon comes to yield to the ethical ideal as 
 sovereign. He will not take advantage of the 
 ignorance of those with whom he deals to employ 
 unreal methods or to state half-truths simply be¬ 
 cause he may get some response from those whose 
 lives he touches. He will scorn as unworthy of the 
 God of reality or of the Christ who said , 13 “ I am 
 the truth,” anything else or less than exactness of 
 statement, and to the best of his ability will use 
 only that which has verified itself to his sincere 
 studies as being the fact. The only way to escape 
 
 12 John 8 : 32. 18 John 14 : 6. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 33 
 
 bondage from error, ignorance, and superstition is 
 through surrender to reality. If God be the great 
 Reality, he can build no kingdom anywhere upon the 
 foundation of ignorance or of error or of super¬ 
 stition. Still less than any other realm can he found 
 the kingdom of Christ upon any other basis than 
 reality. 
 
 Is it not well worth while to pursue a discipline 
 that shall thus react upon one’s total character ? One 
 of the highest fruits of this preparation for teach¬ 
 ing others will be such ethical fiber in all the minis¬ 
 ter’s life. All prophets of God need it. “ Will ye, 
 for God, speak that which is wrong, and for him 
 will ye utter deceit?” said Job . 14 “Let me alone; 
 and speak will I, let come upon me what will. 
 Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put 
 my life in my hand? Behold—He may slay me; I 
 may not hope; but my ways will I maintain, to His 
 face. Nay, that shall be to me also for salvation, 
 for no false one shall come into His presence.” 15 
 Such will be the stern adherence to facts by one 
 whose whole being is steeped in the ethical baptism 
 of reality. The real God will tolerate no sham. No¬ 
 where do we so learn that truth as in Biblical study. 
 And begirt with its strength the pastor will in all 
 the recesses of his being and in all leadership of his 
 people be courageous enough to scorn all temptation 
 to compromise with unreality anywhere. Is it too 
 much to claim that our Lord himself in the expe¬ 
 riences of his temptation won his battles because 
 his soul was armored in impregnable ethical equip¬ 
 ment partly at least acquired from his study of his 
 
 14 Job 13 : T. 
 
 11 Jo* 13 : 13-15, Genung's translation in the “ Epic of the Inner 
 Lite.” 
 
34 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 Bible? He met all assaults by spiritual and ethical 
 repulses expressed in Old Testament language . 16 
 
 5 . Devotional Appreciation of Sacred Literature 
 
 The devotional value of such study to the pastor’s 
 life is inconceivable. Preachers’ souls need precisely 
 the same nourishment which they wish to bring to 
 others. Nevertheless, we cannot feed ourselves upon 
 husks. No mere words nor any torture of them in 
 the hope of squeezing out spiritual significance can 
 nourish our spirits. If we live again with those who 
 lived in Biblical times, feel their hopes and fears, 
 experience their trials and comforts, our own hearts 
 will glow with the same fires that warmed the spirits 
 of those who broke out into hymns of praise or 
 prayers, because the same humanity, the same trials, 
 and the same God belong to us alike. We shall find 
 the same courage for troubles and dark days and 
 hardships. There will be no part of the Bible grow¬ 
 ing out of human experience that will not yield 
 to us its precious strength for our personal lives. 
 We shall suffer with those who suffered, rejoice with 
 those whose thanksgivings burst forth with such 
 music and power. We shall sit with them in their 
 darkness, and be illuminated with the light that 
 shone upon their careers. This is the true devo¬ 
 tional experience. It is something that is vital and 
 that does not depend upon a misuse of a single 
 word in all the Bible. We enter into life. We see 
 that all expressions of it recorded in this literature 
 are windows through which we can peer into the 
 sacred experiences of the lives of men and women, 
 
 16 Matt. 4 : 4 : of. Dent. 8:3; Matt. 4 : 7 ; cf. Deut. 6:16; Matt. 
 4 : 10 ; cf. Deut. 6 : 13 ; 10 : 20. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 35 
 
 and doorways through which we can enter into their 
 deepest secrets. The soul of the Bible will enter into 
 our own souls, and we shall have the holy communion 
 of spirits which will bring us afresh the feeling that 
 God is in all life and that every place is a sanctuary. 
 Surely a study that will yield such experiences is 
 far more truly devotional than any mere senti¬ 
 mentalism that may rest upon an untrue use of any 
 word even though it be in the Bible. 
 
 The truest devotional use of the Bible is in such 
 study. The fact of the unity of the soul makes it 
 impossible for us to share the companionship of any 
 Biblical character or writer without participating 
 in his emotions as well as his thoughts. Only as we 
 project ourselves back into the history of those who 
 found in God their hopes and deliverances will our 
 own hopes and faith become strong to meet our ex¬ 
 periences. Detached maxims and mottoes, mere 
 quotations from the literature wholly apart from 
 the circumstances that begot them, have no real 
 virility. We may try to warm these isolated sen¬ 
 tences by imagination, and make them take the chill 
 from our cold souls, but the caloric that emanates 
 from our own fancies is only a delusive substitute 
 for the fire that other lives have kindled in their 
 rough friction with fears, distresses, and perplexi¬ 
 ties. Into these flames we can throw ourselves with 
 our own peculiar and personal needs, and become 
 fresh fuel for the proven heat. Only in this vital 
 method of sharing the lives of others can we truly 
 use their words of sorrow and joy. Lives must be¬ 
 come one before language is identical. The real 
 devotional value of sane Bible study far exceeds any 
 other conceivable devotional uses of the Scriptures. 
 
36 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 II. Effects Upon His Public Ministry 
 
 The effect upon the public ministry of the teacher 
 will likewise be most valuable. Our personal ex¬ 
 periences will be reflected in our public life. We are 
 the mediators of divine life to the souls of others. 
 Behind the public ministry is the man. In person¬ 
 ality, private habits, the effects of this preparation 
 for our teaching ministry will reveal themselves. 
 They cannot be concealed. A life that has dedi¬ 
 cated itself as has just been outlined can have no 
 official or professional aspects. It will be genuinely 
 personal, the gift of one’s self. It cannot be conven¬ 
 tionally ministerial. Jesus was what he taught. All 
 his words, deeds, and attitudes were only normal 
 revelations of himself. He was not one being in the 
 interior of his soul, and another before the world. 
 In him there was no professionalism. The Teacher 
 expressed himself, spoke what he knew . 17 His words 
 were spirit and life . 18 He unfolded himself and 
 asked others to be like himself. That is the highest 
 preaching. Alas, that we dare not do the same. 
 Yet that is to be our ideal. 
 
 1 . Uses of Scriptures in the Pulpit 
 
 The noblest public ministry is simply the expres¬ 
 sion of our best personal lives. What then does this 
 mean for our uses of the Bible in public ? 
 
 We shall let our sane study of the Bible determine 
 our uses of the Scriptures in the pulpit. No longer 
 will the reading of the Scriptures in public worship 
 be simply an item in so-called “ preliminary exer- 
 
 17 John 3 : 11. 
 
 18 John 0 : G3. 
 
Reactions on Ills Life 
 
 37 
 
 cises,” or a part of “ introductory services,” as if 
 the sermon were the center of our interest in the 
 house of God. We speak to God in our prayers. He 
 speaks to us in the reading of the Scriptures. The 
 reading of the Scriptures will be far more than a 
 traditional feature in a public service. We shall 
 carefully select it. We shall read it with a con¬ 
 sciousness that in it there is a message for ourselves 
 and for others. We shall be like Ezra at the water 
 gate who “ read in the book in the law of God dis¬ 
 tinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to 
 understand the reading.” 19 There can be nothing 
 more delightful or effective than the reading of the 
 Scriptures by one who understands the significance 
 of the particular passage he is bringing to the people. 
 What could better help to prepare hearts to receive 
 a genuine message from God through the preacher 
 to the people than a passage of Scripture whose 
 reading is also its interpretation. No pastor whose 
 deep study had led him into the very life recorded 
 or expressed in a Scripture selection could be care¬ 
 less in choosing the section to be read, or mechanical 
 in the reading of it. Imagine if you can the feelings 
 of the Teacher when he unrolled the scroll until he 
 came to Isaiah 61 : 1-3, for his text for the sermon 
 in the synagogue of his home town. Study the 
 meaning of that Scripture as originally uttered. 
 Ponder the familiarity of our Lord with the Old 
 Testament as revealed in his choice of those partic¬ 
 ular words. With what interpretative power he 
 read it, because he saw its ideals completely realized 
 in his conception of his mission. 20 Should not all 
 pastors try to make their pulpit use of the Scrip- 
 
 19 Neh. 8 : 8 . 20 Luke 4 . 
 
38 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 tures as effective as our Lord made this section in 
 his reading at Nazareth, so far as is possible? Only 
 the studious pastor who knows his Scripture will 
 be able to say, 21 “ This day is this Scripture fulfilled 
 in your ears.” 
 
 2 . Choice and Treatment of Texts in Sermons 
 
 Such a ministry will govern the preacher in his 
 use of texts for sermons. Hardly anything could 
 be more contemptible than a misuse of passages of 
 Scripture as texts. The people have been brought 
 to believe that the Bible is “ the word of God,” as 
 it certainly is in a real and true sense. Could any¬ 
 thing be more unbecoming than for a supposedly 
 authoritative teacher of the Bible to misuse the 
 text and have the people think that divine authority 
 is behind his misused text? No honest man would 
 so treat a letter which he received from a friend. 
 One of the canons of correspondence is that the 
 reader shall try to discover precisely what was in 
 the mind of the writer. Any deviation from this 
 canon marks the reader as essentially untrust¬ 
 worthy, as really dishonest. In a great picture the 
 idea of the whole pervades every line of the perspec¬ 
 tive, every particle of color, every movement of the 
 artist's brush. Each detail gets its meaning and 
 significance from the idea that the entire picture is 
 intended to give to the beholder. In a classical 
 musical composition the feeling and language of the 
 entire production pervades every phrase, every 
 chord, and every single note. Each sound both alone 
 and in its grouping is intended to minister to the 
 emotion which the composition is intended to pro- 
 
 21 Luke 4 : 21. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 39 
 
 duce in the hearer. It is precisely so with the 
 Scriptures. All sentences in a Biblical book are to 
 be pondered in the light of the purpose of the 
 writer. 
 
 Alas, how many times this has been forgotten or 
 deliberately ignored by preachers who are not stu¬ 
 dents. There has been much contemptible motto- 
 mongering. Because the words of King James’ ver¬ 
 sion seemed to lend themselves to the purposes men 
 had in mind words have been torn out of their 
 context, sometimes infelicitously adapted, occasion¬ 
 ally cruelly mutilated, often grotesquely “ spiri¬ 
 tualized,” and have been made texts and pretexts 
 for so-called sermons. It is to be feared that often 
 the Scriptures have been used only as a collection 
 of proof-texts for dogmas, or of mottoes for sermons. 
 
 One cannot catalog the Scriptures that have been 
 so misused. “ The king’s business required haste ” 
 was the lie of an outlaw, 22 and tells us of the un¬ 
 true statements to which occasionally a good man in 
 desperate straits feels forced to resort. It is in no 
 sense a divine statement that God is in a hurry, and 
 that we who attend to his affairs had better make 
 haste. When Amos said 23 that he saw “ A basket 
 of summer fruit ” he was not handing out a figure 
 for twentieth-century preachers to use in reciting 
 summer vacation experiences, but was describing 
 a rotten condition of Israel’s morals that called for 
 quick judgment. When the same rugged man of 
 the wilderness asked, 24 “ Can two walk together, 
 except they be agreed? ” he was not framing a ques¬ 
 tion for contentious twentieth-century dogmatists to 
 ask in the mistaken supposition that there could be 
 
 22 1 Sam. 21 : 8. 23 Amos 8 : 1, 2. 24 Amos 3 : 3. 
 
The Teaching Pastor 
 
 no spiritual fellowship between those who had differ¬ 
 ences of opinion, nor forging a doctrinal compress 
 to bale guesses into an authoritative creed. How 
 many times have these words been used as a club 
 to scare honest persons from original thinking! He 
 was stating in a beautiful way his idea of the law 
 of cause and effect. In a pathless wilderness two 
 could not meet in a certain spot unless there had 
 been a previous agreement or a trysting. When 
 Laban said to Jacob, 25 “ The Lord watch between 
 me and thee when we are absent one from another,” 
 he was not preparing thousands of years before the 
 Christian Endeavor Society was organized a beauti¬ 
 ful Mizpah benediction which was intended to de¬ 
 scribe the trust that we should have in one another 
 and God’s care for all of us. Nor was he coining the 
 word “ Mizpah ” for the inside of engagement rings. 
 It was the language of suspicion and not of con¬ 
 fidence. Two unscrupulous Semites had made an 
 agreement. One of them said, “ Since we are not 
 to be together to keep an eye on each other, the 
 Lord keep an eye on both of us to see that we 
 are true to our bargain.” When one of the sages 
 said, 26 “ For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he,” 
 he was not framing a psychological truth to express 
 the idea that thoughts really are the indexes of 
 our character. He was describing an insincere host 
 whose guest was told: 27 “ Eat thou not the bread 
 of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his 
 dainties; for as one that reckoneth within himself 
 so is he. Eat and drink, he saith unto thee; but 
 his heart is not with thee. The morsel which thou 
 
 - 5 Gen. 31 : 40. 27 American Revised Version, Margin. 
 
 2fi Prov. 23 : 7. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 r 
 
 41 
 
 hast eaten shall thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet 
 words.” When discerning and intelligent Bible 
 students or sensible persons in the pew hear min¬ 
 isters misuse texts in this way, they are disgusted 
 and lose all respect for a teacher who will so per¬ 
 vert the words of Holy Writ. Some years ago I 
 was asked by a very distinguished pulpit orator if 
 I knew of a volume which classified the texts of the 
 Bible according to their meaning. The question 
 was puzzling, as if any such volume was at all possi¬ 
 ble. He explained that he supposed there must 
 be some book which classified the different sentences 
 of Scripture according to the subjects with which 
 they dealt. He was reminded that modern Biblical 
 study was of an entirely different type, that we try 
 to understand the books as books, and that such a 
 volume could represent only the opinions of the per¬ 
 son who produced it as to the meaning of the de¬ 
 tached Biblical sentences. I told him that when I 
 lived in New York I had such a volume, but when I 
 moved to St. Louis had sold it as junk with many 
 hundreds of others accumulated in the times of my 
 ignorance at which God forgivingly winked. He 
 insisted upon knowing the name of it, because often 
 when he had finished his sermon he was at a loss 
 to find an appropriate text. 
 
 What could be more beautiful and effective than 
 for the hearers of a preacher to know that when¬ 
 ever their minister took a text his exhortations 
 would not be based upon the mutilation or distortion 
 of sacred words! Is it not astonishing how often it 
 is seen that a high sense of verbal inspiration is not 
 incompatible with such a misuse of Scripture as we 
 are describing? Even in the pulpit while he is 
 
42 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 preaching the pastor does not cease to be a teacher 
 of the Bible. There is no justification for making 
 the impression upon one’s hearers that it makes 
 little difference what a Biblical writer meant, so long 
 as a modern preacher can use the words of an En¬ 
 glish translation as a motto. Dr. H. G. Weston once 
 told his class about an institute for ministers he 
 had just held in a certain State, and summed up his 
 work in his homiletic lectures by saying, “ I must 
 have killed at least ten thousand old sermons based 
 upon misused texts.” 
 
 3 . The Joy and Vitality of Preaching 
 
 Such study and dedication to the work of teach¬ 
 ing provides for a joy in preaching unknown to 
 those who are not conscious of having behind their 
 utterances the experiences and lives whose vital ex¬ 
 periences are recorded in the Bible. We too today 
 can teach with the authority of “ Thus saith the 
 Lord ” when we have clearly come to know the will 
 of God and his thought. There is such a thing as 
 subjective homiletics. The sermon is vastly more 
 than an exercise in sacred rhetoric. Far be it from 
 our purpose to depreciate the utmost endeavor on 
 the part of the preacher to give his utterances 
 the best possible form. The best we can do would 
 come far short of appropriate tribute to any truth 
 we are trying to proclaim. Nor could it be too 
 good for those who listen to us. While in every way 
 desirable, form is not essential. The majesty of 
 God’s truth and the needs of human souls are so 
 imperative that no form that could assist the sermon 
 is to be despised. Nevertheless, the essential thing 
 is that the soul of the preacher should be so suffused, 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 43 
 
 saturated, penetrated by the truth that, without 
 despising or neglecting the best possible form, the 
 preacher himself should feel overwhelmingly the 
 power of the truth itself. The Old Testament 
 prophet used forms not only for help in conveying 
 his message, and as devices to aid the memories of 
 his hearers, but mostly as vehicles for his richest 
 power. He did not despise contemporary forms, nor 
 did he set aside any method that would fix his mes¬ 
 sage on the souls of people. He would go barefoot 
 or naked through the streets of a city. 28 He would 
 snatch off his girdle. 29 He would defy convention¬ 
 ality. Nevertheless, one reads the Old Testament 
 prophet to little purpose if he fails to see behind 
 all his literary or oratorical or sensational devices 
 the flaming fire of the divine message in the soul 
 of the preacher. Is not this what is needed today, 
 this accent of life, this “ burden ” the prophet felt, 
 this “ fire in his bones ” ? 30 How else can one so 
 well come to share this passion with prophet and 
 apostle as by the kind of study we have insisted 
 upon, by discovering mighty truth and human need 
 for it? Compelled by our responsibility as teachers 
 we can bathe our souls in precisely the same foun¬ 
 tains of reality. Not only the vision of the truth 
 itself, but the call of circumstances in which we live 
 for the truth that has been revealed to us, will set 
 our hearts aflame. This is what is meant by sub¬ 
 jective homiletics, this penetration of our spirits 
 by the spirit of reality. If as teachers we would 
 bring people to share the enthusiasms of those whose 
 
 2S Isa. 20 : 2, 3. 
 
 29 Jer. 13 : 1-11. 
 
 30 Jer. 20 : 9 ; 23 : 38 ; Mai. 1:1; Isa. 13 : 1; 14 : 28 ; etc. 
 
44 
 
 T1 ie Teaching Pastor 
 
 utterances make our Bible, we can reach that ability 
 through no other process than living again with 
 those whose words send forth heat and light, though 
 their voices have long been hushed in the progress 
 of the ages. 
 
 Was not this precisely the secret of the glow that 
 characterized the preaching of the New Testament 
 times? Contact with life made the preachers vital 
 and courageous. Our Lord chose Twelve to “ be 
 with him, and that he might send them forth to 
 preach.” 31 Contagion from the Teacher was relied 
 upon to produce fervor in the preacher. Not all at 
 once did this effect follow, but it endlessly increased. 
 What mighty courage filled Stephen’s soul as he re¬ 
 viewed national history, and felt the sin of the per¬ 
 sistent refusal to cherish the spirit of receptivity 
 until it reached its climax in the rejection of Jesus. 32 
 “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your 
 fathers did, so do ye.” The same glow is felt when¬ 
 ever we listen to Paul, or read his letters. There 
 is a spiritual power, a bathing of words in his very 
 life’s blood. He was no maker of essays, no rhetor¬ 
 ical mechanic treating subjects in a dainty way. 
 He brought life to bear upon life. Because he had 
 not only yielded himself to the life he propagated, 
 but made himself one with the life he would in¬ 
 fluence, he had a double vitality. Blessed is the 
 studious preacher who so enriches himself by mak¬ 
 ing his own the lives of those whose religious ex¬ 
 periences are recorded in the Scriptures that his 
 own soul is incandescent with the same illumination. 
 Such is the real Scriptural preaching. It is not the 
 
 31 Mark 3 : 14. 
 
 32 lets 7 : 51. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 45 
 
 phonographic repetition of Biblical language, nor 
 the adherence to special types of teaching found in 
 the Bible. It is a personality gleaming with the 
 very same light and virile with the same vitality 
 that filled all prophets and apostles when each one 
 witnessed to divine reality in his day and genera¬ 
 tion. And this joy of preaching can come only to 
 those who have studied these men of old moved by 
 the Holy Spirit, and have come to open their lives 
 to the same Spirit. 
 
 III. Inevitable Church Educational Atmosphere 
 
 One of the inevitable results of emphasis upon 
 the teaching function of the pastor will be a general 
 church atmosphere. If he is faithful to his ideal 
 in the treatment of the Scriptures, in the selection 
 of his texts, in the character of his sermons, and in 
 directing the affairs of his church school and young 
 people’s societies, there will be an educational atmos¬ 
 phere which cannot fail to be noticed. This does 
 not mean that there will be a cold, icy intellectualism 
 pervading the pulpit, the church school, and the 
 various organizations in the church. Education as 
 used throughout these lectures means the unfolding? 
 of the whole human personality, its thinking power, 
 its spirit of love and service, its will in devotion and 
 persistence, its social qualities, its moral possibili¬ 
 ties. The ideal of Christianity is not suppression 
 but expression. If the old Greek idea of self-realiza¬ 
 tion be baptized into Jesus Christ it will express 
 what the Master came to achieve. What could be 
 more beautiful than to have a church known as 
 striving in every department for this development 
 
46 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 of personality and its relations ? Is not this the very 
 idea of salvation, a right relation to God and to our 
 fellow men in this world, Jesus himself being the 
 standard of these relations? Such an atmosphere 
 is the native air in which a Christian church should 
 live. Its ideals are those for which the church 
 exists. If the preacher is devoted to a ministry like 
 this his evangelism will rest upon an appeal to the 
 whole personality. All pulpit teaching and work in 
 the church school will be influenced by this concep¬ 
 tion. The institution will stand for these ideals, 
 and will express them in a thousand ways. 
 
 When Jesus chose the Twelve, he had in mind 
 at least three things. First, he became their 
 Teacher. That was the name by which he was 
 known. He gave them truth as they were able to 
 bear. 33 Secondly, he sent them out to give expres¬ 
 sion to the truth that they understood. It was their 
 practise of what they knew that most concerned 
 him. And thirdly, and most of all, he chose them 
 to be with him. They really learned more from 
 contact with his person and from spiritual reality 
 incarnated in him than they did from any other 
 source. They got inspiration from that blessed asso¬ 
 ciation. Today our pedagogy is catching up with 
 the divine Teacher. We are beginning to see that 
 the three essential things are: Adapted instruction 
 which can be assimilated; the practise of what has 
 been taken into our lives; and the method of con¬ 
 tagion, of fellowship for stimulus, courage, and per¬ 
 severance. Where a pastor can make these ideas 
 dominant in the life of his church, he is suc¬ 
 ceeding. 
 
 33 Mark 4 : 33 ; John 16 : 12. 
 
Reactions on His Life 
 
 47 
 
 After all, it is the man who makes the minister. 
 It is not within the power of a college or a seminary 
 to make him. These may cultivate qualities of man¬ 
 hood that constitute the real minister. Words cannot 
 express the gratitude that the world should feel to 
 institutions of learning for their development of men 
 who seek the moral uplift of humanity. It is not by 
 laying on of hands, or so-called “ ordination,” that 
 ministers are made. There is no digital grace that 
 can be conferred by one person upon another. Rites, 
 ceremonies, and forms are the language of the soul, 
 but they are not the causes of the vitalities of the 
 spirit. It will rest with every man who aspires to 
 the ministry to decide whether teaching in the no¬ 
 blest, highest sense shall be his function, or whether 
 he shall spend his life in other ways that in the end 
 do not count for the full, rounded unfolding of 
 human life that can be secured only by the patient, 
 consecrated teaching ministry of the pastor. Each 
 of us has only himself to give to God and mankind. 
 To give the best self possible is privilege as well as 
 duty. We can make our very “ high calling ” con¬ 
 tribute to the enlarging and enriching of ourselves. 
 There is no way to do this more efficiently than in the 
 ministry of a teaching pastor. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 HIS ONENESS WITH THE EDUCATED 
 
 COMMUNITY 
 
 The Teacher in the Early Church and His Successor 
 
 In the early church there arose those who were 
 called teachers. They were part of the manifold 
 ministry and apparently devoted themselves exclu¬ 
 sively to this function. They had the literature of 
 the Old Testament in which probably only the Jewish 
 Christians were specially interested. They also no 
 doubt had early written Christian documents such 
 as narratives concerning the life and teachings of 
 our Lord, 1 and the logia of Matthew afterwards used 
 in the Gospel that bears his name, and the written 
 decision of the Council at Jerusalem, 2 and the grow¬ 
 ing Pauline correspondence with the churches. It 
 would be easy for our imagination to picture groups 
 of church-members meeting in various homes 3 and 
 under the guidance of teachers studying the Old 
 Testament and the rapidly increasing literature of 
 Christianity. With what delight a new letter from 
 Paul or any other apostle would be hailed! And 
 when our Gospels appeared, what treasures they 
 were to those early teachers and students! How 
 churches would secure copies of the precious docu¬ 
 ments and meet with enthusiasm to study them 
 under the leadership of the teachers! And when 
 eye-witnesses of Jesus’ life had passed away, and 
 
 1 Luke 1 : 1, 2. 2 Acts 15 : 23-29. 3 Col. 4 : 15 et als. 
 
 48 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 49 
 
 those who like Polycarp had known an apostle had 
 died, with what love the literary remains of the early 
 church were cherished! Is it too much to assume 
 that it was the teacher who deserves the credit for 
 preserving and multiplying these pamphlets that 
 were afterwards collected into our New Testament? 
 They deserved the support that Paul urged should 
 be given to them. 4 Their function was differentiated 
 from that of the missionaries, and pastors and 
 preachers. 5 They are also spoken of as among the 
 “ ascension gifts.” 6 
 
 It is not necessary here to describe minutely the 
 particular service they rendered when there was but 
 one church in a city and before Christians had 
 grouped themselves into separate congregations 
 independent of one another. 
 
 1. The early church considered religious instruction one 
 of the two essential features of its mission. 
 
 2. It is believed that in his parting instruction to his dis¬ 
 ciples Jesus had specifically charged them with this work. 
 
 3. In providing for the successful prosecution of this task 
 the church very soon produced a distinct class known as 
 teachers, who were particularly responsible for the edu¬ 
 cational work of the church. 
 
 4. These teachers were given a definite standing in the 
 ministry and were found throughout practically the whole 
 church. 
 
 5. It was understood that this teaching ministry had been 
 originated and appointed by the special activity of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 6. The teachers devoted themselves so exclusively to the 
 work of instruction that they had to be supported at least 
 in part by those among whom they labored and who received 
 the benefit of their teaching. 7 
 
 * Gal. 6 : 6 . 5 1 Cor. 12 : 28. 6 Eph. 4 : 11. 
 
 7 Rev. J. W. Bailey, Ph. D., in the “ Biblical World,” Vol. XXXVIII, 
 p. 58. The entire article on “ The Teacher in the Early Church ” is 
 illuminating. 
 
50 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 No seminary today emphasizes the preparation of 
 fit men for this place in the life of the local church. 
 Short-cut theological institutions are not at all con¬ 
 cerned with this ministry. The products of such 
 schools could hardly work efficiently in this service. 
 We are making preachers, are concerned about 
 administrators of church affairs, are emphasizing 
 the sermon and pastoral service, but have hardly 
 begun to appreciate the enormous value of the teach¬ 
 ing function. True it is that there has been a great 
 awakening in the sense of our duty to care for the 
 young in genuine religious education, but there is 
 hardly the same desire to produce men whose min¬ 
 istry is conspicuous for its teaching efficiency. 
 
 What has become of these teachers in the early 
 church? They survive partly today in the faculties 
 of our schools, but so far as the local church is con¬ 
 cerned, only in the voluntary and for the most part 
 untrained teachers in our church schools. A few 
 churches who are financially able to do so have what 
 are now called “ Directors of Religious Education.” 
 These concern themselves with the management of 
 the church school and young people’s organizations 
 and in training teachers. They are so few in num¬ 
 ber that there are scarcely enough to make even a 
 small showing in any denominational statistical 
 table. Probably the function which they seek to 
 discharge would come closer to that of the “ teacher ” 
 described in the New Testament than any other 
 existing. This ministry of teaching was contem¬ 
 plated by our Lord in “ the great commission ” when 
 he called upon the Twelve to go out and to preach 
 and teach. 8 He himself was called “Teacher” 
 
 3 Matt. 28 : 19. 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 51 
 
 oftener than by any other designation, and his fol¬ 
 lowers were called “ disciples,” or learners. 
 
 There is no need for us to discount the work of 
 the minister as preacher or pastor. These are 
 necessary. Yet in the discharge of these functions 
 we must not forget that the educational work of the 
 pastor in the true sense is evangelistic in the highest 
 meaning of the term. If it be objected that a teach¬ 
 ing ministry adds to the load of an already over¬ 
 burdened man, we can only reply that under present 
 conditions this is inevitable. Since churches are not 
 financially able to have a specialized ministry and 
 one man must do all the work, he must as well as 
 possible seek to realize his manifold service. 
 
 I. Present Functions of the Teaching Pastor 
 
 1 . Uplifting the Uneducated 
 
 With this in mind, what position will the teach¬ 
 ing pastor have among the educated persons in his 
 community? He should not break with any class. 
 His calling demands that he shall identify himself 
 with all men. 9 If he thinks of his relation to those 
 who have not had educational advantages, he will 
 see that it is all the more necessary that one who has 
 possessed them shall join himself hard to those who 
 especially need the development that can come only 
 through his teaching ministry. He is to help these, 
 however, not by sacrificing his own high position, 
 but by lifting up others to share with him the great 
 things that God has given him. He cannot afford 
 to break with the educated element in any com¬ 
 munity. These are the persons who really control 
 
 3 1 Cor. 8 : 19-23. 
 
52 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 public sentiment. They are the men and women who 
 have had educational advantages, who are teaching 
 in the public schools and in higher institutions of 
 learning. This body of persons is so numerous, and 
 their influence so tremendous that no minister can 
 afford to sacrifice his relations with them for the 
 sake of becoming one with those who have not had 
 such advantages. Nor is it necessary to do so. The 
 vision of our Lord begirt with his towel and with 
 the basin in his hand washing the feet of the Twelve 
 in the upper room 10 illustrates the truth that the 
 loftiest consciousness begets the lowliest acts. The 
 mark of real men and women is that they are able 
 to adjust themselves to those whose advantages have 
 been less than their own, and to do this in such a 
 way as not to produce the impression that they are 
 condescending. 
 
 2 . Identification With the Educated 
 
 The teaching pastor automatically identifies him¬ 
 self with the intelligent element in the community. 
 If he be such a one as is described in the previous 
 lecture, this oneness will be apparent. Teachers will 
 soon recognize the sameness between his view-points 
 and theirs. Identity of methods will quickly be dis¬ 
 covered. Teachers of literature will recognize that 
 the teaching pastor is pursuing precisely the same 
 historical methods in the study and teaching of the 
 Bible that they follow in their classrooms. If a 
 pastor appears only as an exhorter, or a functionary 
 whose business it is to hold meetings, officiate at 
 funerals and marriages, be a propagandist of dog¬ 
 mas and purveyor of pious entertainment, and a 
 
 10 John 13 : 1-5. 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 53 
 
 kind of ecclesiastical decoration of public assemblies 
 for making opening and closing prayers, whose mis¬ 
 sion it is to utter formalities miscalled invocations, 
 and dismissions which are misnamed benedictions, 
 it is hard to see how he can make his office an appeal 
 to those whose lives are given to earnest study and 
 honest effort to unfold all the capacities of human 
 beings. 
 
 The minister can compel recognition by teachers 
 only in so far as his own life and work identify 
 him with the teaching fraternity. His very ministry 
 should unite him completely with those who like 
 himself are striving to develop and enlarge human 
 personalities, to widen horizons, to help life breathe 
 the world atmosphere, and to train human beings for 
 the best possible living. It does not work against his 
 recognition by the teaching fraternity that the min¬ 
 ister is supremely concerned with moral and re¬ 
 ligious reality while other members of the teaching 
 fraternity are busy with the intellectual or esthetic 
 or physical or social development of the individual. 
 The teaching preacher can easily profit by all that 
 other teachers are doing, can reveal to the public 
 that he is in the widest, truest sense an educator, 
 and thus rank with the intellectual and the educa¬ 
 tional forces of the community. Where else should 
 he find his rank? Should it not be normally the case 
 that the students of a public school or college could 
 listen to the sermons of a minister, or attend his 
 lectures, or participate in the church school that he 
 directs, and at once feel at home in finding that the 
 methods of study pursued in the church are the same 
 as thost, to which these students are accustomed in 
 their studies in other literature? Is it asking too 
 
54 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 much that teachers and professors in State institu¬ 
 tions of all grades and in all our colleges should 
 recognize in the interpretations of the Scriptures by 
 the preacher, and in the instruction given in church- 
 school classes identically the same scientific and 
 ethically honest processes they are compelled to use 
 in their own classrooms? 
 
 But, it may be objected, the Bible is different from 
 English classics, or those of another tongue. 
 Granted! Yet that difference is appreciated all the 
 more when the same historical methods used in 
 studying Shakespeare are used in Biblical study. 
 Uniqueness can be discovered only in the effort to 
 classify. There is no other way to recognize it. 
 There is a vast difference between the faith, not to 
 say credulity, that rests in the Bible as unique be¬ 
 cause some one else, or a creed, or an ecclesiastical 
 authority has told us so, and the deep conviction 
 borne in upon our souls because of the sane study 
 of the book itself. Such study and teaching by the 
 pastor and his people will cause that “ faith should 
 not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of 
 God.” 11 Indeed, not the least of the causes for the 
 indifference of the teaching profession to the mar¬ 
 velous literature we call the Bible has been that 
 the assumptions, presumptions, and initial demands 
 of its friends upon the scholarly classes have so 
 offended their sanity that they have been repelled 
 from genuine study of it. Allegorizing, fancifuliz- 
 ing, sheer assumption of double meaning as if an 
 honest writer could use words in a double sense, as 
 if religious teaching eschewed transparency and fell 
 from grace into occult and cryptic expression, have 
 
 11 1 Cor. 2 : 5. 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 55 
 
 alienated thousands who did not and could not be¬ 
 lieve that God had given them common sense and 
 culture of brains only to insult them in the name of 
 the Giver. Yes, the Bible is different from other 
 literature, but no one knows that difference so well, 
 or appreciates it so thoroughly as the student who 
 summons the whole of his sanity to understand the 
 Scriptures. The teaching pastor is the only minister 
 who can reach the teaching profession today, who 
 can interest the annually growing product of our 
 schools of all grades. 
 
 3 . Competent Interpretation of the Bible 
 
 The teaching pastor will inevitably reach a posi¬ 
 tion of authority so far as the knowledge of the 
 Scriptures is concerned. No one today can be 
 authority upon every matter. Those who serve the 
 world are divided into specialists. The very de¬ 
 velopment of life compels this. In medical realms, 
 after years of training, specialists are expected to be 
 able to give information concerning the human body, 
 its normal activities, and the abnormalities that we 
 call diseases. After long and severe discipline law¬ 
 yers are supposed to know the principles of law, 
 to be able to state great ideals which have been em¬ 
 bodied in the development of justice. In other 
 words, what a patient rightly expects from a phy¬ 
 sician with regard to his body, and a client reason¬ 
 ably expects from his lawyer with reference to 
 business, the man at large should expect from the 
 minister with regard to the teaching of the Scrip¬ 
 tures and the ideals and processes of the moral and 
 religious life. His rank in his sphere should not be 
 less than that of professional or mercantile men 
 
56 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 in their several realms. It is only when the pastor 
 through the teaching ministry has revealed himself 
 as worthy to hold such a position that he reaches 
 a place of authority. The uneducated minister can 
 seldom attain such a place with those who are the 
 products of our institutions of learning. Some years 
 ago the writer was informed of an overchurched 
 town of about four thousand inhabitants in which 
 there were forty men and women who had received 
 earned degrees of various kinds from our best col¬ 
 leges and universities in the East and in the West. 
 The appalling fact was that not one of the five 
 pastors of churches in that town had ever seen the 
 inside of a college or of a theological seminary. In 
 other words, there were immediately about these 
 ministers many influential citizens who had made 
 themselves inhabitants of the great worlds of litera¬ 
 ture, science, art, and thinking, while the spiritual 
 leaders in the community knew little or nothing of 
 these vast realms, and were not even expert in their 
 own specialty. Moreover, annually there was an out¬ 
 put from the high school of young men and young 
 women bent upon still further intellectual develop¬ 
 ment. These had to go through their training with¬ 
 out any glimpses of the affinity of religion with 
 their culture in all realms, and without the stimulus 
 that might have been theirs had they been shep¬ 
 herded in their mental and spiritual natures by 
 pastors whose teaching was as valuable to their 
 moral and religious lives as their high-school edu¬ 
 cation was to their physical, intellectual, and social 
 natures. The degree men and women of that town 
 could consult libraries about history, science, and 
 art, and the youthful incarnate interrogation-marks 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 57 
 
 could go to the high-school faculty for authoritative 
 information concerning matters within their mental 
 horizon; but who will say that those five pastors 
 could speak as authoritatively about the Bible and 
 religion as the lawyers, doctors, and teachers in 
 their several spheres? One trembles to think of the 
 enormous amount of misinformation possible under 
 such circumstances. And beyond the conventional 
 respect that the laity has for the clergyman, what 
 must be the opinion of cultured citizens as to the 
 educational function of ministers who are not quali¬ 
 fied as teachers in their own specialty? The min¬ 
 ister stands for Jesus Christ and his ideals and for 
 the unfolding of Christian life as revealed in the 
 Scriptures. These are the spheres in which he is 
 to shine, and be as authoritative in his position as 
 the lawyer, the doctor, the professor, and any others 
 of the various social functionaries whose lives min¬ 
 ister to the public good. No pastor can afford to 
 stand aloof from the life he seeks to affect. Nor 
 can he afford to be ignored by those who are giving 
 their lives to the education of the young. Nor is he 
 worthy of his high calling if he fails to qualify him¬ 
 self as thoroughly as possible for his position by 
 becoming both authoritative in knowledge and 
 Christ-like in life. 
 
 4 . Mediating Truth to Modern Life 
 
 The teaching pastor who pursues the historical 
 method of Bible study, and teaches accordingly, can 
 mediate to a growing world the eternal truths of the 
 Bible in such a way as will commend them to the 
 appreciation and acceptance of the educated com¬ 
 munity. He will carefully distinguish between 
 
58 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 vehicle and content. He will know the difference 
 between the water of life and the gourd, or skin, or 
 bucket, or chalice in which it came to thirsty souls. 
 He will be able to disentangle the content from the 
 temporary and accidental form, and to put the eter¬ 
 nal ideal into a current contemporary form in which 
 it will be easily assimilable. This was the master 
 art of our Lord as a teacher. Every parable is a 
 witness to his divine expertness in conveying new 
 and unfamiliar truth through forms and expres¬ 
 sions well known to his hearers. When he said, 12 
 “ The Kingdom of heaven is like,” it seems as if 
 his mind was teeming with vehicles for the spiritual 
 ideals that he would express. Was it not as if, to 
 him, the kingdom was a vast sphere inclusive of all 
 life's relations and processes, and all the so-called 
 “ secular ” spheres of living like globules attaching 
 themselves for the moment to the inside of the com¬ 
 prehensive globe, and their points of tangency 
 furnishing splendid and forever priceless glimpses 
 of the kind of living personal and social he came to 
 establish? One cannot help wondering what he 
 would do today in parables with this modern life so 
 vastly richer than Oriental Palestinian life in his 
 day. However fascinating the vehicle, it was only 
 a transient carrier of an eternal truth. None can 
 doubt that were the great Teacher living now he 
 would use our twentieth-century life of which we 
 are part, rather than require an archeological edu¬ 
 cation in modern hearers by recurring to modes of 
 life long since passed away. The intelligent pastor 
 can retranslate the everlasting principles revealed 
 in Biblical literature into modern terms. 
 
 12 Matt. 7 : 24 ; 11 : 16 ; 13 : 24 ; 18 : 23 ; Mark 4 : 30 ; 13 : 28. 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 59 
 
 Is it not pitiful today when preachers identify 
 the wagon with the food it contains, the words with 
 the thoughts they seek to express, the garments with 
 the person ? All teaching pastors with correct view¬ 
 points and methods will escape such a blunder as 
 the effort to make men accept the accidental vehicle 
 as equal in value with the essential truth. An edu¬ 
 cated element in a community by the very processes 
 and results of its education long since learned to 
 make this discrimination. Probably there is no 
 closer union between vehicle and substance than 
 that between thought and language. Nevertheless, 
 the same thought can be expressed in each of the 
 thousand and more dialects of the world as easily 
 as a human body can change its clothes. Precisely 
 what has taken place in all translations of the Scrip¬ 
 tures where an idea expressed in a foreign tongue 
 has been translated into vernacular speech, is hap¬ 
 pening when ideas and realities are being reinter¬ 
 preted in each age, each race, and generation by 
 teachers who know how to help their contempor¬ 
 aries. The great miracle of Pentecost is being re¬ 
 peated on a smaller scale wherever men of diverse 
 history, temperament, antecedents, racial peculiari¬ 
 ties, and conditions infinitely varied are hearing 
 each “ in his own language ” 13 the same eternal 
 truths. The aspiration to do this is deep in the soul 
 of every true minister of Jesus Christ. He wishes 
 to make “ the truth as in Jesus ” 14 intelligible and 
 assimilable. The ability to do this depends upon his 
 own facility to discover the reality in whatever acci¬ 
 dental vehicle or historical form it has come to him; 
 
 13 Acts 2 : 6. 
 
 14 Eph. 4 : 21. 
 
60 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 and also upon his acquaintance with the life around 
 him, and his skill in taking the truth thus brought to 
 him by his ability to disentangle the eternal from the 
 transient, and through the use of current forms of 
 life and thought to restate the great things he has 
 discovered. Only the teaching pastor can do this 
 with expertness. It is essential in his pedagogical 
 ministry. Indeed, it is questionable whether there is 
 a higher type of preaching than this very ability to 
 teach eternal reality in contemporary forms. Every 
 real sermon based upon the Scriptures is a severe 
 homiletic exercise in this very art. Our Lord seldom 
 exhorted. He stated spiritual reality to those who 
 heard him in the terms of their own lives and of the 
 processes of living with which they were familiar, 
 and depended upon the spirit of God who broods over 
 every heart to warm the ideals and ideas which he 
 thus expressed into power to appeal to the will and 
 the conscience with its attendant emotions. With 
 him preaching was teaching. He took the very best 
 out of the Old Testament and reshaped it for the 
 life of his day. In addition he brought new concep¬ 
 tions, but was careful to give them in a way that 
 could be easily understood. It is one thing for a min¬ 
 ister to state a truth and exhort, appeal, and plead. 
 God be thanked for all who do this! It is a different 
 and more effective method to build into the human 
 mind and conscience a great spiritual reality, and rely 
 upon the Holy Spirit to make this a living and com¬ 
 pulsory power in the lives of men. This latter way 
 is that revealed to us in our modern processes of 
 education. Those who have experienced the benefits 
 of our colleges and universities can best be reached 
 by the pastor who uses precisely the same processes 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 61 
 
 which educated men and women have pursued in 
 their education for propagating the divine ideals and 
 spiritual realities with which he in his ministry 
 is exclusively concerned. The vernacular of our 
 educated classes today is not that of the first cen¬ 
 tury, nor medieval. Our thought forms are not 
 those of the picturesque Orient. Our whole edu¬ 
 cational system is under the dominion of modern 
 science. We cannot change it if we would. And the 
 contemporary preacher would not if he could. We 
 cannot be enthusiastic for our modern education, 
 whole-hearted in devotion to our schools and col¬ 
 leges, and at the same time expect to impress facul¬ 
 ties and students in these institutions that we 
 profess to admire by presenting the truths the Scrip¬ 
 tures contain in terms foreign to the conceptions and 
 methods of the schools. The teaching pastor will be 
 a real mediator, one with Jesus Christ, and also one 
 with the educated people of his community. He will 
 thus bring to those who are the beneficiaries of 
 modern learning, who are also its apostles, the 
 greater benefit of the heavenly realities God has un¬ 
 veiled and is continuously revealing. He will be 
 the neck of the hour-glass through which will come 
 to contemporaries and to posterity the opulent 
 grains of past experience of God in life. 
 
 5 . Evangelization of the Cultured 
 
 The evangelization of the educated community is 
 not the least of the perplexing problems presented 
 to the Christian church. It does seem as if the 
 church has fallen into unfortunate conditions. The 
 great world of labor is alienated. Many working 
 men declare that the church has surrendered to the 
 
62 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 moneyed interests and is under the dominance of 
 capital. In many churches considered wealthy and 
 fashionable there is not to be found a single wage- 
 earner. Even if all our churches were composed of 
 those whom we call working people, the need for 
 the teaching pastor would be unspeakable. On the 
 other hand, while there are many men and women 
 of wealth who are earnest, active Christians, most 
 of those who are rich in this world’s goods have but 
 slight connection with the spiritual interests of our 
 churches. They are not found in prayer-meetings 
 and church schools and at Sunday-evening services, 
 and are seldom active in evangelistic enterprises. 
 One after another these classes seem to have broken 
 with our churches. 
 
 Today the divorce between the intellectual com¬ 
 munity and the church is conspicuous. Many who 
 formerly were church-members have become alien¬ 
 ated through their educational experiences. There 
 should be no dearth of teachers in our church 
 schools when we think of the vast numbers of 
 those who have been trained in higher institutions 
 of learning, and of the large number who belong 
 to the teaching class. Yet it is recognized that 
 the crucial problem in all our church schools 
 is that of securing proper teachers. Shall the 
 church make efforts to minister to the wage- 
 earners and working people by standing for simple 
 justice in the industrial world, and seek also to 
 Christianize the wealth of the earth which is so 
 essential for the establishment of the kingdom of 
 God, to sustain its philanthropies and colleges, and 
 to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth, and not 
 seek to reach the educated elements in the com- 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 63 
 
 munity and bring their influence and talents into 
 captivity to Jesus Christ? It is with this last prob¬ 
 lem that we are now concerned. It must be evident 
 that the ignorant preacher has slim opportunity 
 to reach this influential element of the community, 
 and that the probability of his success is small. It 
 is hard enough for the educated teaching pastor to 
 do this most desirable work, but he has a thousand 
 chances where any other kind of a preacher has one. 
 There are many tangencies the educated teaching 
 pastor can establish which are impossible to one 
 whose ministry is not characterized by the teaching 
 function. All the factors of a given community 
 which make for its higher life should work together. 
 How pitiful is the plight of any pastor in a parish 
 where teachers, lawyers, doctors, and educated peo¬ 
 ple with unbounded respect for one another and con¬ 
 fidence in the culture, expertness, and highminded¬ 
 ness of one another fail to take into their group in 
 their united service for the community the minister 
 who represents the moralization of all life’s proc¬ 
 esses and the spiritualization of all its ideals. A 
 wide-open door to participation with these classes 
 in all community enterprises is offered by the identi¬ 
 fication of the ministry with the teaching element 
 in the community. There is hardly any limit to this 
 service. Once in a while some outstanding character 
 may be able by the sheer weight of his personality 
 and the commanding influence of his position to be¬ 
 come powerful and to attract the educated and the 
 cultured. But for most of us ordinary beings, who 
 must be content to work in comparative obscurity, 
 the direct way to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ 
 to the educated persons of a neighborhood and to 
 
64 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 the teaching force of a community is by our identifi¬ 
 cation with them. Such evangelism as will be effec¬ 
 tive, however, must be of a different type from that 
 pursued by those who rely upon emotions or sensa¬ 
 tionalism, who depend upon appeals to fear or to 
 feeling. 
 
 Modern education tries to do four things for the 
 student, none of which is the mere impartation of 
 information, which is a by-product. At the end of 
 the process it asks, not “ What does the graduate 
 know? ” but “ What has he become? ” These four 
 aims of education are all essentially Christian. Our 
 Lord insisted upon them all. They are: 
 
 First, the enthronement of the 'passion for reality. 
 Only that is worthy of whole-hearted consecration. 
 Tradition, sentiment, mere human authority, custom, 
 and usage have no weight whatever against reality. 
 The modern educated man “ draws the thing as he 
 sees it for the God of things as they are.” The world 
 has too long suffered from the enslaving influences 
 of ignorance, error, and superstition. Education 
 today is redemptive in that it is delivering humanity 
 slowly but surely from bondage to that trinity of 
 blights. 
 
 Again, the educated man trusts himself to dis¬ 
 cover reality. He is not content to accept anything 
 simply upon the assertion of others. He reserves 
 the right to investigate for himself. True it is that 
 where he has confidence in those who are qualified 
 in their several realms for thorough investiga¬ 
 tion he is willing to accept statements. Neverthe¬ 
 less, he has not surrendered his right to investigate 
 for himself if he desires to do so. The highest 
 degree given at a modern college, that of Doctor 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 65 
 
 * 
 
 of Philosophy, simply means that the recipient has 
 proved that he knows how to use his own powers 
 in the search for reality. 
 
 Again, our modern education insists upon the 
 open mind. There is hardly anything more irksome 
 to the truly educated modern man than the demand 
 that something shall be protected from his research, 
 or that any matter be closed, or that he is not at 
 liberty to change his mind if facts compel him to 
 do so. The thought of finality as already achieved 
 is distasteful. We must be free to study anything 
 whatsoever, and we must have open minds to re¬ 
 ceive any new light that God may send upon any¬ 
 thing whatsoever. Education does not produce her¬ 
 metically sealed souls. In our punctuation of think¬ 
 ing we have use for commas when we take fresh 
 breaths, for semicolons to indicate our classifications 
 so far as we have been able to make them, for in¬ 
 terrogation-marks for use of inquiring spirits, for 
 exclamation-points to indicate our delights or dis¬ 
 appointments, for multitudes of asterisks and dashes 
 to show our ignorance, but no use for periods. These 
 are the sealed locks that prejudices or preconcep¬ 
 tions put upon opinions. “ Most men’s conclusions 
 are the places where they grow tired of thinking.” 
 
 Once more, modern education stimulates the social 
 consciousness. The pursuit of knowledge is a social 
 matter. No man can claim to have established his 
 contentions beyond the right of others to test his 
 conclusions. One of the most beautiful and stir¬ 
 ring visions of progress in knowledge is the way 
 in which investigators in all realms work together, 
 test one another’s experiments and researches, and 
 stand together in adherence to results which have 
 
66 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 been obtained by proper methods, and use their 
 results for the common good. 
 
 This brief description of what an educated person 
 is today will raise certain questions concerning the 
 ministry of a preacher who wishes to bring into the 
 lives of educated people the eternal realities of Jesus 
 Christ. We soon discover that these four character¬ 
 istics of an educated person are essentially Chris¬ 
 tian. Only reality emancipates. All else enslaves. 
 If God be the supreme Reality he can build no king¬ 
 dom anywhere upon any other foundation. In re¬ 
 ligion Jesus declared that he was the reality. 15 In 
 the words of our Lord, 16 “ The truth shall make you 
 free,” there is reflected the enthusiasm for reality 
 and the profound ethical passion involved in the pur¬ 
 suit of it. The trust of ourselves to discover reality 
 is also involved in the statement of our Lord, 17 “ The 
 light of the body is the eye.” Our entire rational 
 nature functions in the pursuit of truth. The whole 
 being is involved. The light that is in us illuminates 
 what comes into our souls. We must trust ourselves 
 and must carefully guard all powers of our being 
 so that we may understand and appreciate the light 
 that comes from the Father of lights. “ The pure 
 in heart see God ” 18 here and now. Moreover, 
 Jesus insisted upon the open mind as the very first 
 condition of entering into the kingdom of God. 
 “ Unless you turn and become as little children, you 
 cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” 19 No man 
 has ever entered any kingdom with which God has 
 
 15 John 14 : 6. 
 
 16 John 8 : 32. 
 
 17 Matt. 6 : 22, 23; Luke 11 . 34-36. 
 
 18 Matt. 5 : 8 ; cf. Titus 1 : 15. 
 
 19 Matt. 18 : 3. 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 67 
 
 to do without this spirit of receptivity. Jacob did 
 not win Canaan by cunning, but only as Israel upon 
 his knees. Prejudices, preconceptions, preposses¬ 
 sions, closed hearts, and sealed souls prevent en¬ 
 trance into any of God's kingdoms. Like little chil¬ 
 dren with wide-open minds we must receive the 
 gifts in all God's realms, most of all in spiritual 
 things. We need not dwell upon our Lord’s insis¬ 
 tence upon the social consciousness. The entire 
 ministry of Jesus, as well as many direct sayings, 
 reveals the fact that no man lives unto himself. 
 
 Here are four vital points of tangency between the 
 educated preacher and the teaching classes in our 
 schools and the cultured elements in our communi¬ 
 ties. If the ministry of the teaching preacher will 
 demonstrate his passion for reality as over against 
 the mere acceptance of traditions, will show that he 
 is not afraid to trust himself in the pursuit of 
 spiritual reality, will exhibit a continuously open 
 mind, and will give himself unstintedly to the life 
 of disinterested service, he will have close contacts 
 with the really educated. Our blessed religion not 
 only permits but requires precisely these four things 
 upon which modern education insists. The teaching 
 pastor through these tangencies will find open doors 
 to commune with teachers upon the claims of Christ 
 on their lives. Surely none who ignore or defy 
 these four things may hope to influence truly edu¬ 
 cated persons. Pulpit ravings against science and 
 its teachers reveal ministerial shallowness. 
 
 6 . Recruiting Teaching Forces in Religion 
 
 The ministry is universal. “According as each 
 received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, 
 
68 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 as good stewards of God’s manifold grace.” 20 Why 
 should not the vast army of teachers in our public 
 schools and colleges consecrate their special gifts to 
 the millions of adults in our churches and of chil¬ 
 dren in church schools? Since teaching is known to 
 be vastly different from parrotlike repetition of lan¬ 
 guage, as in Moslem schools for promoting knowledge 
 of the Koran, the skill of those who by profession are 
 expert could be of untold service to all connected 
 with churches. Why should not this gift be seized 
 upon for religious education? Surely the methods 
 expertly used in teaching literature in grammar 
 schools would be as productive of good results with 
 pupils of the same ages in teaching the Bible in 
 church schools. Already there are many kinder¬ 
 gartens in churches whose teachers bring to the 
 moral and ethical development of the little ones the 
 same methods they use in the week-day schools. 
 High-school teachers expert in dealing with adoles¬ 
 cents in secular studies could accomplish wonders 
 with the same youth in teaching sacred literature. 
 And there is reason to believe that far larger num¬ 
 bers of adults would attend Bible classes on Sundays 
 and week-days if these were taught by men and 
 women whose standing in the educational world 
 would guarantee thorough instruction. If the lives 
 of enough teachers could be won to serve Christ and 
 men, and their equipment and professional skill 
 were sincerely consecrated to instruction in our 
 churches and their schools, the entire complexion 
 of religious educational work would be changed for 
 the better. This is in no sense a plea for profession¬ 
 alism in Sunday schools, nor in religious education. 
 
 20 1 Peter 4 : 10. 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 69 
 
 Biblical instruction could never be given in public 
 schools by unconverted, unsympathetic teachers. 
 The essential moral and religious qualification would 
 be lacking. It would be a farce. No less would that 
 be true in the Sunday school. But the finest thing 
 for our church schools would be an ample supply of 
 Christian teachers whose view-points and methods 
 have been recognized by standard educational tests 
 as the best, consecrating their gifts in the ministry 
 of religious education. The union of Christian 
 love and enthusiasm with psychological and peda¬ 
 gogical skill would be ideal. There are many such 
 now at work, yet their number is very small com¬ 
 pared with the need. How can this number be in¬ 
 creased? The teaching pastor holds the key to the 
 solution of the problem. In some cases teachers 
 who would be glad to serve cannot work with pastors 
 whose attitudes and methods do not comport with 
 those of the educational world. In far more cases 
 these teachers have quietly dismissed the thought of 
 consecrating their gifts in religious instruction. 
 And, alas, it is to be feared that in more instances 
 than can be estimated the whole attitude and con¬ 
 ception of churches and ministers has been such as 
 to alienate members of the teaching fraternity from 
 the church as a whole because of hostility to modern 
 learning, insistence upon outgrown creedal tests, 
 condemnation of scientific conclusions, and mistaken 
 characterization of schools as godless. The educated 
 pastor who will exercise a teaching ministry can do 
 much to remove these difficulties and open the way 
 for most efficient additions to the teaching forces of 
 his church. Though the field of instruction may 
 differ from that of the public school and college, 
 
70 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 the methods will be the same, and with the blessing 
 of God the results would compare favorably in re¬ 
 ligious education with those of the secular schools 
 in their work. Here is a promising field for the 
 teaching pastor. 
 
 Such are at least some of the offices that a teach¬ 
 ing pastor can render to one element in the com¬ 
 munity. There can be no question that a specific 
 ministry to that element is needed as much as to 
 any other. Because of the special function of 
 teachers in shaping young life, and of the educated 
 in their influence over life in general, it is of great 
 importance that religion shall have its power over 
 their lives. The Book of all others should not be 
 buried beneath the avalanche of literature of all 
 kinds now rolling from presses that stop not day 
 nor night. Who but pastors competent by training, 
 and devoted to giving the Scriptures their right 
 place in religion and in general culture, can render 
 this service to those who mold personal and social 
 life as does the educated element in the community ? 
 The work is peculiar and more than any other calls 
 for oneness between the pastor and the cultured 
 part of the community life. All factors of social 
 life are to be evangelized; none can be left out of any 
 plans that are as large as Christ's conception of his 
 kingdom. None can say that any factor is more 
 important than any other. The industrial, financial, 
 esthetic, artistic, literary, and educational groups 
 alike come within the hunger of the Saviour who 
 came to bring all into right relation to the heavenly 
 Father and to one another. Yet if means must be 
 suited to ends in order to achieve results, the edu- 
 
Oneness With the Educated Community 71 
 
 cated minister whose idea of service includes teach¬ 
 ing the Bible, will necessarily have special responsi¬ 
 bilities for trying to reach those who like himself 
 have devoted themselves to teaching, and also those 
 who have had the blessings of education in modern 
 schools. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 HIS MINISTRY TO THE YOUNG 
 
 Young People Must Live Out Their Own Lives 
 
 Necessarily the pastor must deal with all ages. 
 He must serve life in all stages. A vast variety of 
 needs will present itself to him. We are concerned 
 now with growing life. The ministry to the young 
 is of special importance. Careers lie before those 
 whose past years are few. To shape the lives of to¬ 
 morrow is a work of great responsibility. Today 
 we discard notions derived from figures based upon 
 the plasticity of youth. We no longer seek to mold 
 life as if it were clay or putty, impressing ourselves 
 upon youthful life to make it in our own image, 
 and denting it with our own peculiarities. We re¬ 
 gard young life rather as a vine with its own vitality, 
 present human experience as a trellis, and stimulate 
 the plant to develop according to its own nature. 
 Every young life conscious of itself feels as did 
 David in his teens when the traditionalists put Saul's 
 armor upon him. He uttered immortal words 1 
 which should be graven deep in the consciousness of 
 every young person: “ I cannot go in these." No 
 human being can kill giants with the equipment of 
 another. His own sling and stone are worth far 
 more than all the accouterment from the arsenals 
 of another. David fought a great battle between 
 
 1 1 Sam. 17 : 39. 
 
 72 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 73 
 
 originality and conventionality. It occurred in his 
 own soul. The world is moved forward only when 
 originality wins in the contest with conventionality. 
 What has served its purpose in the past does not 
 necessarily achieve results in a new day with 
 changed conditions and fresh antagonists. This 
 characteristic spirit of youth claims the skilful atten¬ 
 tion of the pastor. We may not make illustrative 
 excursions into the fields of practical life, for our 
 concern now is specially with the teaching function 
 of the minister. Each generation must live out its 
 own life. Each soul is God’s real estate 2 tilled by 
 all the past and yet enriched by its own contempor¬ 
 ary life and personal efforts. Each generation 
 hands on to its successor the wealth of the past in¬ 
 creased by its own attainments. 
 
 I. Discoveries Concerning Religious Education 
 
 1 . Neglected in Most Homes 
 
 No intelligent pastor can long be the servant of 
 any group of people who does not make certain im¬ 
 portant discoveries concerning both old and young 
 with regard to the knowledge of the Scriptures. 
 
 Education in the knowledge of the Bible is vir¬ 
 tually ignored in the home. Parents no longer ex¬ 
 ercise the mediatorial priestly function. The good 
 old days when the family gathered around the 
 parent who conducted household worship seem to 
 have vanished. This beautiful and helpful service 
 at least produced an impression upon the lives of the 
 
 2 1 Cor. 3 : 9. Cf. I>eut. 32 : 9 ; Jer. 10 : 16, where the word for 
 farm has developed into a name for Israel. 
 
74 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 children which all subsequent experiences did not 
 efface. There was only the devotional use of the 
 Bible, but much of its language stuck to memory, 
 and in after years certain words and conceptions 
 of the Scriptures came out of the storehouses of 
 memory and achieved important results in the lives 
 of the mature. In only a few homes relatively has 
 even this praiseworthy custom continued. Now 
 there is little or no Biblical instruction in the home. 
 However, more than a decade ago, mothers are read¬ 
 ing Bible stories to their children. Books have 
 been issued which tell these narratives so far as 
 possible in the very words of the Bible. Children 
 who read these stories or listen to them are becom¬ 
 ing acquainted with incidents and persons in Biblical 
 history. Occasionally some interested mothers and 
 far fewer interested fathers take the time to go over 
 the church-school lessons with their boys and girls, 
 and try to help their children to obtain a knowledge 
 of the Scriptures. Probably such parents are now 
 learning more than they ever knew before by such 
 aid to their offspring. So far as adult study of the 
 Scriptures in the home is concerned, it is to be 
 feared that very little is now done. Books which 
 give aid to an intelligent study of the Bible have not 
 yet found a place in many home libraries, nor are 
 they read by Christian fathers and mothers as 
 eagerly as the latest novel. Why should not parents 
 who help their children with lessons assigned by the 
 public school, with equal enthusiasm aid their chil¬ 
 dren in studying the lessons given by the church 
 school? We do not refer to classes of boys and girls 
 organized for catechetical instruction with refer¬ 
 ence to church-membership. We are confining our- 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 75 
 
 selves wholly to a real study of the Scriptures. To 
 no appreciable extent are homes factors in promot¬ 
 ing the same real study of the Scriptures that is 
 given to history and literature in lessons assigned 
 by the public schools for home study. 
 
 2 . Unsatisfactory in Many Church Schools 
 
 The efforts of the church school are mostly un¬ 
 satisfactory in spite of the tremendous advances 
 made in the last quarter of a century. Very often 
 boys and girls are forced to go, and find themselves 
 in the church school with a reluctant spirit that is 
 essentially unreceptive. Far too often indifferent 
 parents indulge their children, and absences from 
 the church school are regarded with complacency. 
 The equipment of the school is not such as to make 
 the pupil enthusiastic. The teachers yet constitute 
 the main problem. Often these are for the most part 
 well-meaning, pious people, who, without training or 
 any proper knowledge of the Bible themselves seek 
 to comment upon passages in sermonets for the pur¬ 
 pose of impressing moral lessons, or who strive for 
 letter-perfect recitation of catechisms, or who have 
 gone through various so-called “ lesson helps ” and 
 mentally scissor hortatory patches from these to 
 make a sort of homiletic crazy quilt to throw over 
 youthful souls that they vainly imagine are shiv¬ 
 ering with the chilliness of ignorance or the icy dark¬ 
 ness of sin. Let us cheerfully grant that all who 
 undertake this work, even without training, deserve 
 the highest praise for the motives they have and the 
 efforts they make to help others into knowledge of 
 the way of life. The object of the church school 
 today prevailingly seems to be evangelization 
 
76 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 through appeal rather than through education, to 
 persuade the pupils to join the church through 
 various kinds of importunities, rather than so to 
 present the truth that by its own power under the 
 brooding of the Holy Spirit it shall seize upon the 
 hearts of the pupils. Think of the olden days when 
 there was a uniform lesson system and precisely the 
 same ten verses of the Bible were presented to the 
 little tots ten years old and the grown folks as well. 
 Often these selections from visions of Ezekiel or of 
 the Apocalypse were made to do duty for all ages, 
 from infants to those approaching second child¬ 
 hood, without reference to differences of experience 
 or ability. A happier day came upon us when 
 graded lessons were introduced. Nevertheless, in 
 spite of efforts to make the church school a real 
 school, thoroughly educational in its processes and 
 results, the overwhelming majority of our schools 
 have not yet responded to this ideal, which indeed 
 is not yet appreciated by a very large proportion 
 of them. 
 
 3 . Superior Equipment and Methods of State Schools 
 
 Compare these institutions with the public schools 
 of all grades. Contrast lesson leaflets, too often 
 cheap in material and character, with handsomely 
 illustrated and well-bound text-books. Over against 
 thoroughly trained teachers set the well-meaning 
 volunteers who know comparatively little about 
 what they are to teach and the psychology and 
 pedagogy of instruction. Contrast the voluntary 
 and tardy attendance on Sundays with compulsory, 
 punctual presence on week-days. Set side by side 
 the scanty church-school equipment, which is little 
 
His Ministry to the 1 oung 
 
 77 
 
 more than a shelter, and the handsome, attractive, 
 well-furnished, and adequate buildings for the train¬ 
 ing which the State is giving to its wards. Compare 
 the methods of instruction pursued by the untrained 
 Bible teachers with those followed by instructors 
 in State schools. Think of the difference between 
 all kinds of apparatus at the disposal of the scholar 
 in the public schools and an almost utter deficiency 
 of maps, blackboards, stereopticon pictures, material 
 for making models, and all other facilities for mak¬ 
 ing indelible impressions upon the minds of the 
 scholars. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the same people who attend 
 public schools five days in the week and go to the 
 church schools for an hour and a half on Sunday, 
 receive these impressions: that botany, chemistry, 
 biology, geography, history, and everything else they 
 study on week-days is worthy of the best that can 
 be provided by taxation to enable them to learn and 
 to train their minds in the processes of acquiring 
 knowledge, but that a knowledge of the Bible, Christ- 
 like character, right social relations, and Christian¬ 
 ity itself is content with careless methods, meager 
 equipments, inadequate text-books, untrained teach¬ 
 ers, and the absence of anything that will compare 
 with the equipment of the day-school? Is it a won¬ 
 der that the young come to feel that the State is 
 generously eager to produce intelligent citizens 
 while the Church is willingly parsimonious in ef¬ 
 forts to produce intelligent Christians? Will not 
 the young person also be impressed with the fact 
 that in the public schools he is taught to observe 
 facts, to have a sense of their majesty, and to draw 
 his own inferences from facts, while in the church 
 
78 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 school he is expected to receive certain statements 
 upon an authority which he may not interrogate? 
 Undaunted and unafraid, he attacks every subject 
 brought to him in the public school, and is encour¬ 
 aged to think for himself. In the church school his 
 teachers are apt to tell him that the interrogation- 
 mark must be omitted from his mental furniture. 
 Is it not true that on Sundays religion seems to 
 come to him sealed with an inviolable stamp, while 
 on week-days all other knowledge is open to him and 
 insists upon the spirit of free inquiry? How seldom 
 he is urged to have the mood of the simple shepherds 
 of Bethlehem who said 3 in the face of words from 
 heaven and the vision in the skies, “ Let us now go 
 all the way to Bethlehem, and see this thing that 
 has come to pass.” In other words, does the church 
 school supply the same inspiration and have the 
 same insistent demands for personal investigation 
 in the study of the Bible that are noticeable in sec¬ 
 ular education? Although it may not be sufficiently 
 clear to find expression in language, this contrast is 
 mentally made by our boys and girls. It is felt 
 and acted rather than spoken. Soon the work of 
 the church school comes to take a lower place in 
 the esteem of young people than that of the public 
 school. 
 
 4 . Influence of the Non-academic Curriculum 
 
 Let us also think of what we may call the non- 
 academic curriculum in which all our young people 
 are being more or less educated. Life outside of the 
 home, the public school, and the church school is 
 constantly playing upon the lives of the young and 
 
 3 Luke 2 : 15. 
 
His Ministry to the Y oung 
 
 79 
 
 bringing hardly any suggestion of devotion to spiri¬ 
 tual reality. 4 Newspapers, magazines, novels, bill¬ 
 boards, movies, entertainments, sports, companion¬ 
 ships, the radio, and a thousand other things are 
 pouring their contributions toward character into 
 the souls of young people, and in hardly any of 
 these does there appear the slightest inducement for 
 study of the Bible. Literature of many kinds pre¬ 
 sents itself for perusal, while the Bible is thrust 
 aside and its study is considered optional. Alas, 
 that any parent should ever punish a child for read¬ 
 ing some forbidden book or for any other miscon¬ 
 duct by compelling the boy or girl to read so many 
 chapters in the Bible! What possible good could 
 such a discipline accomplish when the reading of 
 the Scriptures becomes punitive? With what kind 
 of spirit would any real red-blooded young person 
 read the Bible as a matter of discipline except that 
 of reluctance, repugnance, and the desire to have 
 a disagreeable experience ended as soon as possible ? 
 Not in this repugnant way do the truths of Scrip¬ 
 ture soak into the souls of young people. What, let 
 us ask, is the total educational effect of all these non- 
 academic experiences which play upon the lives of 
 growing boys and girls? We might ask identically 
 the same question concerning the adults. Is it not 
 too true, alas, that all these things work against 
 specific efforts which are making for the religious 
 education of young people and for the promotion 
 of their taste for a knowledge of the Scriptures? 
 How can they come to love the Bible when the 
 perusal of it is used for punishment, or when life 
 and time are so crowded with countless diverting 
 
 4 Matt. 13 : 22. 
 
80 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 things, that they do not have nor will they take time 
 for acquaintance with the highest and best that 
 history has given? 
 
 5 . Inevitable Results of These Conditions 
 
 The inevitable results of these legacies of the past 
 and of present conditions is a falling away from 
 attendance upon the church school and a weakening 
 of control by the home at the very period of life 
 when these are most needed. When well into the 
 adolescent stage other interests so appeal to the 
 young that it has come to be thought rather beneath 
 the dignity of the growing person to attend the 
 church school. The Bible is regarded as a queer 
 literature not to be studied as other literature. In¬ 
 terest in the spiritual life ranks below that in sports 
 and social activities. Diligence is given to high- 
 school studies and to preparation for college because 
 of inherent interest or of necessity to attain an 
 objective, and soon the church school has lost its 
 grip. Nor does the work of young people’s organi¬ 
 zations compensate for this disaster. Their em¬ 
 phasis is not upon the knowledge of the Scriptures 
 so much as upon problems of practical life, con¬ 
 temporary occurrences, and the questions that con¬ 
 cern the soul developing in this period of physical, 
 mental, and social ferment. How far our present 
 experiences in these matters are due to the past is 
 a question into which we cannot go. Even if we 
 could thoroughly explain current deflections, that 
 would not correct them. Furthermore, we must re¬ 
 member that our modern ideals of religious educa¬ 
 tion and the methods of securing a knowledge of 
 the Scriptures that have displaced those which 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 81 
 
 formerly existed, have not yet had one generation 
 of life in which to test the efficiency of these newer 
 methods. It is partly because of our higher ideals 
 and better methods, and partly because of changes 
 in life’s conditions and diversions, that we are con¬ 
 fronted with the situations barely outlined. 
 
 II. The Service of the Pastor 
 
 1 . Anticipating College Tests of Church-school W ork 
 
 What then can the teaching pastor do in this 
 state of affairs? If he really be a lover of young 
 life, his longing will be to bring youth into posses¬ 
 sion of the ideals of the Bible which shall dominate 
 their lives in all relations. 
 
 He should remember that the education in the 
 church school will be tested by college life. De¬ 
 ficiency in the knowledge of the Scriptures, even so 
 far as their language is concerned, has been amply 
 attested by examinations of those who have entered 
 college life. Said a young man not long since, “ I 
 could wish either that there had been no Bible, or 
 that the great writers of literature had made no 
 allusion to it.” He had been forced to reveal his 
 ignorance of the Scriptures, and therefore the fact 
 that he could not read intelligently certain great 
 masters in the field of English literature. This is 
 sad enough, though it disclosed only a lack of ac¬ 
 quaintance with the language and characters of the 
 Bible. Worse than this, however, is the fact that 
 such ignorance inevitably proves that there is no 
 knowledge of the meaning and message of the Bibli¬ 
 cal books. The college test was only the trifling 
 
82 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 storm that revealed the foundation of sand in the 
 inability to read English literature understanding^. 
 Worse storms play upon the souls of young men 
 and young women and produce far more damaging 
 wrecks than those in the realm of English literature. 
 The pastor can make it his business to anticipate 
 these judgment days that come not only in college 
 examinations in literature, but far more in the tests 
 of daily life and the temptations that are sure to 
 arise from social environment. To have ignorance 
 revealed is only mortifying. To have a soul un¬ 
 fortified by moral buttresses assailed by temptations 
 is alarming. Some colleges admit matriculates upon 
 certificate of graduation by high schools. This 
 means only that a good foundation has been laid 
 for the freshman year’s work. Is it too wild a ques¬ 
 tion to ask whether the time will ever come when a 
 certificate of graduation from a church school will 
 signify to a denominational college that its possessor 
 has some knowledge of the Bible, and is also ethically 
 and religiously desirable as a matriculate? Be¬ 
 fore that time comes our church schools must 
 make great progress. Do we dare to hint that any 
 well-organized system of denominational education 
 will seek to standardize its church schools, as well 
 as seek recognition for its colleges in standardized 
 State schemes of education? Teaching pastors are 
 the only agencies that can remove the reproach of 
 ignorance concerning the Bible that hinders our 
 youth from becoming intelligent students of litera¬ 
 ture in our mother tongue. When writers of classic 
 literature, and novelists, and contributors to maga¬ 
 zines, and even editors of daily papers use quota¬ 
 tions from the Bible, and make allusion to its events 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 83 
 
 and characters, is it not a shame that products of 
 church schools cannot understand their references? 
 They should at least read literature intelligently. 
 
 2 . Guarding Against Teaching That Must Be Unlearned 
 
 The teaching pastor can also see that there is no 
 teaching that must be eventually unlearned. Why 
 should a child grow up to experience the dreadful 
 shock of discovering that his information and train¬ 
 ing have been mistaken ? He will soon come to have 
 a contempt for an institution that has fed his grow¬ 
 ing mind upon conventional conceptions, when those 
 who are the purveyors of spiritual truth have given 
 him things that he must cast aside. In his high 
 school and college career he will surely learn that 
 the history of our physical universe and of our 
 planet has been turned over to the sciences of 
 astronomy and geology, and that the story of man’s 
 origin and development has been committed to an¬ 
 thropology and kindred sciences. When he faces 
 the modern view of the physical universe and of 
 man, and finds that he must either abandon the 
 Bible as a source of scientific knowledge of anything 
 whatever, or if he clings to the error that the Bible 
 was intended to teach science and history and that 
 he must throw away what his schools teach, what 
 horrible alternatives present themselves to his mind! 
 It is more than foolish, it is wicked to tell youth 
 that it must accept the crude, unscientific ideas of 
 the Bible concerning psychology, anthropology, cos¬ 
 mogony, or other matters relating to the material 
 world or else reject the Bible as a whole . 6 The Bible 
 
 See Article on “ Ancient Hebrew Science,” by Allen Howard Godbey, 
 . D., in Methodist Quarterly Review ” for January, 1923 
 
 6 
 
84 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 was not meant to teach any sort of science, nor his¬ 
 tory. Biblical writers used current ideas prevail¬ 
 ing in their times as vehicles for religious and moral 
 conceptions. They employed historical material for 
 preaching purposes without anxiety as to its histor¬ 
 ical accuracy . 6 For church schools to ignore facts 
 is unethical. To try to force our progressively in¬ 
 telligent youth to believe untrue theories as to the 
 Bible, or to conceal from maturing rational natures 
 the real nature of the Scriptures, is to prepare young 
 people for inevitable personal pain in discarding 
 errors conscientiously believed, and to insure disgust 
 for persons and institutions that cause them such 
 experiences. The teaching pastor who really knows 
 his Bible can prevent all this by seeing that the boys 
 and girls in his congregation are never taught what 
 they will have to unlearn. It is hard to root out a 
 mistake. It is wiser to implant a truth. Pulling up 
 tares also injures the wheat , 7 said Jesus. No one 
 has a moral right to build an error into the mind 
 of a growing human being and cause that person 
 in later years to experience the mental and spiritual 
 pain of casting out the error. In religion we cannot 
 feed the growing mind upon fairy tales with a cer¬ 
 tainty that afterward the adult will escape the agony 
 of unlearning and safely glide into the reality. Not 
 so is the course of religious instruction. The teach¬ 
 ing pastor will see that this calamity is prevented 
 and will guard against such a tragedy in the re¬ 
 ligious experiences of growing youth. The enthu¬ 
 siasm of faith, if not belief itself, is rudely shocked 
 by such needless jolts. 
 
 6 Cf. 1 Sam. 21 : 9 and 2 Sam. 21 : 19 ; and other illustrations. 
 
 7 Matt. 13 : 29. 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 85 
 
 3 . Preventing Moral Shock in Educational Development 
 
 He can also prevent the moral shock that will 
 inevitably come to the misinstructed person when he 
 enters into wider regions of knowledge during a 
 college course. How calamitous this is, and how 
 it vitally affects the future of those who experience 
 it! At a certain college under denominational aus¬ 
 pices the visiting preacher one evening talked in¬ 
 dividually with eighteen young men. The consecu¬ 
 tive interviews lasted until the early morning. 
 Every one of these eighteen was either a junior or 
 a senior. Sixteen of the eighteen had entered col¬ 
 lege with the view of becoming ministers of the 
 gospel. Every one of these had abandoned his pur¬ 
 pose. The seventeenth young man came to ask how 
 as a teacher of his Greek letter fraternity Bible 
 class he could pursue the same methods of historical 
 study of the Bible that were employed in the class¬ 
 rooms of the university where literature was taught. 
 The eighteenth young man came to talk about the 
 possibility of entering the ministry. His initial 
 question was, “ Can I enter the ministry and retain 
 my intellectual self-respect as it has been developed 
 by my university experience? ” He was urged not 
 to enter the ministry if it meant the forfeiting of 
 that self-respect. What was the trouble with these 
 young men? It was not due to university training. 
 They had come from churches where the ministers 
 were pious enough, and thoroughly Christian, and 
 passionately eager to bring young life into church- 
 membership. But these pastors had not been im¬ 
 pressed with the sacred obligation of a teaching min¬ 
 istry. They had allowed to come into the minds of 
 
86 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 these fine young fellows conceptions of the Bible it¬ 
 self and ideas of incidents in the Bible which were 
 inevitably destined to be overthrown when these 
 young men came into contact with modern educa¬ 
 tional experiences and methods in a first-class uni¬ 
 versity. They abandoned the ministry because in 
 their home churches, presided over by men who had 
 led them to join the church, they had seen in the 
 pastor himself no evidence of a knowledge of the 
 very things they had come to know as reality, much 
 less any ability to integrate genuine Biblical knowl¬ 
 edge that was not possessed by their good pastors 
 with the realities discovered in their college life. 
 There were sixteen cases where tradition and bond¬ 
 age to unintelligent conceptions of the Bible had 
 been shivered by contact with the truth. The holy 
 purposes for their lives had been abandoned, and 
 there was none to save. Does this one experience 
 throw light upon the dearth of men in the ministry? 
 Let us not blame our educational institutions. The 
 fault lies further back. It lies with pastors who will 
 not realize their obligations for the teaching min¬ 
 istry. Moreover, if one temporary college pastor 
 had in a single night such an experience with six¬ 
 teen young men, what would be the situation at 
 all colleges if the truth were known? The abun¬ 
 dance of our ministerial supply is partly in the keep¬ 
 ing of intelligent pastors who know how to exer¬ 
 cise a teaching ministry. In the face of facts like 
 these let us not mourn because our seminaries are 
 not crowded and pastors for churches are scarce, 
 but let us send out those who know how to avert the 
 tragedies indicated and to see that young people 
 going from their churches into secondary schools 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 87 
 
 and universities shall have such a conception of the 
 Scriptures and of the religious realities they were 
 intended to convey, that there shall be no shock 
 when these young people come to study sciences and 
 are made the beneficiaries of our educational ideals 
 as outlined in the previous lecture. This integra¬ 
 tion of true knowledge of the Bible with the knowl¬ 
 edge that comes through so-called secular education 
 is one of the holiest obligations in a pastor's rela¬ 
 tions with his people. 
 
 4 . Welcoming College Graduates When They Return 
 Home 
 
 There is also the vital problem of the return of the 
 young man or woman from the college to the home 
 church. How often they look forward with pleasure 
 to resuming social relations in their home towns, 
 but with dread to returning to church connections. 
 The home-church atmosphere they left has become 
 stale compared with the one that is fresher and 
 richer and more congenial to their cultured lives. 
 With what kind of a reception will they meet? Will 
 there be a place for the attitudes they have acquired 
 and methods they have pursued and the deep altru¬ 
 istic ambitions that have arisen in their hearts? 
 Will there be hospitality for them? Will they have 
 to return to a group yet under the dominion of ideas 
 and conceptions which these young people have 
 thrown aside for what is better? Must they return 
 to the stifling air of conventionality, or will there be 
 room for them to breathe the atmosphere of reality? 
 This is a fundamental question. Just here lies the 
 explanation of the fact that so many graduates of 
 our colleges and universities when they return to 
 
88 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 their homes, have a merely nominal connection with 
 their churches. What should the teaching pastor 
 say to his congregation ? Let him give this mes¬ 
 sage: “ You men and women put your hands into 
 your pockets four times partly or wholly for edu¬ 
 cational purposes. First, you pay taxes, part of 
 which goes to support a State scheme of education 
 which begins with the kindergarten and ends with 
 the State university. A second time you contribute 
 to found, support, and endow denominational schools. 
 You do well, for they have an important function in 
 the religious life of young people. The plastic, 
 adolescent period of life is concurrent with the be¬ 
 ginning of a college career, and this is the time when 
 religious impressions can be implanted indelibly. 
 State schools do not dare to attempt evangelistic 
 or religious efforts. A third time you put your 
 hands in your pockets to send your sons and daugh¬ 
 ters to these State or denominational schools which 
 you by taxes and gifts have founded and are sup¬ 
 porting. It costs you something to put into the 
 minds and lives of your children the things for 
 which education stands. You dare not deny them 
 the advantages which a college career gives except 
 at the awful expense of their advantageous future. 
 Will you a fourth time put your hands in your 
 pockets to pay for the salary of an uneducated, in¬ 
 competent minister who will denounce as godless 
 the very schools which your taxes and gifts have 
 established and which you have patronized at such 
 heavy expense, and compel your cultured sons and 
 daughters upon their return from college either to 
 stay away from the church if they wish to main¬ 
 tain their intellectual self-respect, or if they attend 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 89 
 
 from a sense of filial obligation, to leave their in¬ 
 tellectual self-respect with their umbrellas in the 
 corridor ?” This is a vital problem. The solution 
 lies with the minister who can bring to the very 
 flower of his people, the educated adults, and the 
 fresh, beautiful life of cultured young men and 
 women the reality revealed in the Bible in such a 
 way as to integrate itself with the culture of these 
 young people. 
 
 5 . Helping Those Without Educational Advantages 
 
 We have been thinking of young people who have 
 the experiences of school life. What of those whose 
 circumstances prevent their enjoyment of such 
 privileges ? Do they not need even more than others 
 the same care? In countless thousands of cases the 
 church not only must be the source of religious com¬ 
 fort and help, but also must furnish social contacts, 
 and very frequently is the only educational factor 
 in their lives. The very misfortunes that compel 
 many to abandon all hope of educational opportuni¬ 
 ties, only emphasize more keenly the need for such 
 an education in the knowledge of the Scriptures as 
 the church and the church school can bring. It is 
 interesting to discover that in some of these lives the 
 hunger for a real knowledge of the Bible is more 
 keen than with many who have been able to com¬ 
 plete the high-school courses or to enter colleges. 
 About all such lives there play the diversions of 
 leisure hours. Their literary food comes mostly 
 from daily papers and such periodicals as may come 
 to their homes. Not the least-interesting fact is 
 that often in their business occupations there are 
 conversations about religious matters and discus- 
 
90 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 sions concerning the meaning of the Bible. They 
 hear and also read many statements which are mis¬ 
 leading and give them mistaken conceptions of the 
 Scriptures. Is it not of the utmost importance that 
 to these the teaching pastor shall see that there is 
 given, through every avenue possible, accurate in¬ 
 struction concerning the Bible? Indeed, the best- 
 qualified teachers should be in charge of classes of 
 such persons. There is no reason why they should 
 not become thoroughly acquainted with the nature 
 of Biblical literature and the messages of the sacred 
 writings. Any person of average intelligence can 
 easily grasp the facts. Volume after volume of most 
 helpful literature in Biblical study has been issued. 
 Even where it is not possible for persons to pur¬ 
 chase these books, well-equipped church schools can 
 buy them and lend them to the pupils as is now done 
 in our public schools. Even public libraries can be 
 induced to place them on their shelves. The time has 
 long since passed when any one can plead either 
 poverty or a lack of education as an excuse for igno¬ 
 rance. Let us not forget that the uneducated should 
 appeal all the more powerfully to the unselfish 
 motives of those who know. Such persons should be 
 lifted out of the danger of untrue conceptions of the 
 Bible and saved from moral shock which will in¬ 
 evitably come, through the leadership of those who 
 have been misinformed. It has been demonstrated 
 beyond doubt that, without regard to any school 
 advantages, the main facts concerning the Scrip¬ 
 tures and the vital truths that influence life are 
 easily appreciated by any person of average intelli¬ 
 gence. What more gracious service could a pastor 
 render than to gather such young men and women 
 
91 
 
 His Ministry to the Young 
 
 into classes on Sundays or week-nights to be led by 
 thoroughly competent persons whose spirit of love 
 will find keenest joy in leading them into the green 
 pastures and beside the still waters of divine truth? 
 
 6 . Promoting Educational Evangelism 
 
 The teaching pastor will also promote educational 
 evangelism . 8 Each child is born with religious as 
 well as physical, social, and intellectual capacity. 
 Adults unfold these according to methods and ideals 
 that human experience has attained. Educational 
 evangelism proceeds according to the religious ex¬ 
 periences of the race. We do not mean the mere 
 imparting of information, but the unfolding of the 
 religious capacity. That process never ceases. On 
 this native human capacity the Holy Spirit relies 
 in all his appeals to the human heart, no matter what 
 the avenue of approach or the instrumentality used. 
 Upon this same ability of the soul all evangelistic 
 effort relies. The foreign missionary in his appeal 
 to the savage heart also depends upon it. Jesus him¬ 
 self rested his hope of reaching his contemporaries 
 upon the same essential basis. It was to the “ com¬ 
 mon people ” that he said , 9 “ If I do not the works 
 of my Father, believe me not.” He said that com¬ 
 mon sense capable of judging weather signs was 
 adequate enough to make spiritual decisions . 10 He 
 is the true light “ which lights every man.” 11 Edu¬ 
 cational evangelism believes utterly that moral 
 changes wrought in human beings are due to the 
 
 8 See article by the writer in Official Report of the Sixteenth Interna¬ 
 tional Sunday School Convention, Kansas City, Missouri, June 21-27, 
 1922, pp. 129-134. Published by International Sunday School Council 
 of Religious Education, Chicago, Ill. 
 
 9 John 10 : 37. 10 Matt. 16 : 1-3. 11 John 1 : 9. 
 
92 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 Spirit of God brooding over souls. Conversion is 
 that experience, gradual or sudden, when the moral, 
 religious, and ethical capacities of a human being 
 dominated by Jesus Christ control all other capac¬ 
 ities, physical, intellectual, and social, in all realms 
 of life. There is no other sort of conversion worth 
 thinking about. The methods of educational evan¬ 
 gelism are very simple. They are the impartation 
 of assimilable truth, the expression of that truth in 
 life, and association with those who have had the 
 experience of conversion. The teaching pastor has 
 his great opportunity here. More and more truth 
 and the soul which belong to each other, can be 
 brought together. There will come a time when the 
 soul will yield to the truth, especially if the growing 
 life of the young is taught to practise so much of 
 the truth as has been assimilated, and is surrounded 
 by others who likewise live the spiritual reality they 
 know. Such a ministry provided for in the conduct 
 of the church school should result in a steady influx 
 of the young into the church-membership because of 
 the confessions of faith in the Christ who has in¬ 
 creasingly been brought near to the young lives 
 through intelligent presentation of his life. He al¬ 
 ways draws us when he is lifted up . 12 It is possible 
 from the very beginning of a child’s entrance into the 
 church school so to introduce the pupil to the great 
 Teacher that the desire to learn from and to follow 
 him will become growingly strong until a public 
 avowal of discipleship becomes as natural as the 
 blooming of a plant or the ripening of fruit. This 
 ideal should be the normal one with all church 
 schools, rather than the extraordinary and spas- 
 
 12 John 12 : 32. 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 93 
 
 modic methods to which revivalism resorts in its 
 appeals to those who have not had such wise train¬ 
 ing. It should be as natural and easy for a child 
 to go from a Christian home and a properly con¬ 
 ducted church school into church-membership, as 
 for the moonlight to give place to sunshine. The 
 gospel narratives show us the progress of men who 
 first became disciples of the great Teacher, and 
 through years of steady development became apos¬ 
 tles and writers of gospels. Why not expect the 
 same process to be repeated with the same Teacher 
 and the same truth, and the same Holy Spirit to 
 energize souls into spiritual life and progress? In 
 the majority of cases the appeal for open confession 
 of discipleship to Christ will come to those in our 
 church schools who have already surrendered to our 
 Lord, and have yielded because of the gradual and 
 steady appeal of the Master himself and his truth, 
 if educational evangelism has been pursued in the 
 church school. “ Decision Day ” will not be choosing 
 time, but the opportunity for revealing choices prev¬ 
 iously made. It will be the uncovering, not the 
 formation, of “ the will to believe.” And such 
 harvests of confessions may be expected perennially 
 rather than annually. 
 
 III. The Forms of This Ministry 
 
 1 . Pulpit and Personal Service 
 
 What forms will this ministry take ? The methods 
 which the teaching pastor can follow have already 
 been generally described. 
 
 His pulpit and personal ministry will inevitably 
 have a powerful effect. The impact of truth upon 
 
94 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 growing life can be provided for by conversations 
 with the young, through sermons, and through the 
 minister’s attitude toward the Scriptures. A min¬ 
 ister should never be so busy with the mechanics 
 and chores of his pastoral life that he cannot take 
 time to minister to individual souls. One has only 
 to recall the conversations of our Lord with Nico- 
 demus, the woman at the well, Zaccheus, and others 
 to be impressed with a sense of the privilege of 
 teaching individual persons. The best results are 
 accomplished in this way. Dr. Francis Wayland 
 once said that preaching to an audience was like 
 swishing a saturated sponge into the air, and that 
 the most that could be hoped for was that some 
 drops of water would fall into the mouths of the 
 empty bottles in front of the speaker. In conversa¬ 
 tion one takes the bottle by the neck and pours the 
 water into it. There can be no greater joy in the 
 minister’s life nor any more efficient service to a 
 soul than personal teaching concerning the holy book 
 and the things of life. 
 
 2 . Control of Church-school Curriculum 
 
 The minister should have full charge of directing 
 the curriculum of his church school. If the school 
 is designed to be nothing more than a mere aggre¬ 
 gation of human bodies, and its success mostly 
 measured by arithmetical standards, and statistics 
 are to be the criteria by which it is judged, then of 
 course whatever will attract human beings to come 
 will be used to promote such ideals. Or if the ideals 
 of the school are to be simply mechanical, and the 
 pupils are to be drilled in catechisms and in repeti¬ 
 tions of passages of Scriptures and other feats of 
 
His Ministry to the Young 
 
 95 
 
 memoriter gymnastics, then a prepared set of vic- 
 trola discs as well as human beings will answer for 
 teachers. But if the institution is to be really a 
 school with educational ideals and correct pedagog¬ 
 ical methods, then it is of the utmost importance 
 that the intelligent teaching pastor shall have gen¬ 
 eral direction of all instruction which is given. 
 There can be nothing but praise for the devotion 
 of officers and teachers who seek to bring together 
 as many persons as possible in attendance upon the 
 church school. There is still higher praise due to 
 those who use the church school as an opportunity 
 for evangelistic work, who aim to bring its members 
 into church fellowship. Nevertheless, the highest 
 of all questions is not what is the roll strength, nor 
 what is the average attendance, nor even how many 
 scholars have joined the church, but how far is the 
 whole church engaged in the study of the Scrip¬ 
 tures and of divine truth, and what is the quality 
 of the work done in the school. The church school 
 should be something more than a mere recruiting 
 agency for the church roll. It should be thoroughly, 
 deeply educational. For this reason the teaching 
 pastor should have the general direction of its poli¬ 
 cies. Every one knows that there is sore need here. 
 Let the wide-awake laymen lead in administrative 
 affairs, but when it comes to the curriculum of in¬ 
 struction, if the pastor be competent, he should 
 dominate. He can rally around him a board of 
 education composed of those who are intelligent 
 in methods and ideals. Such an arrangement will 
 provide for the best care of the young, and if right 
 methods are adopted, the best results will inevitably 
 follow. 
 
96 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 3 . Supervision of Young People’s Organizations 
 
 The young people’s organization also affords an 
 opportunity not to be despised. So often the topics 
 of these meetings are assigned by the central direc¬ 
 torates with which the organizations are connected, 
 and they relate to every conceivable realm of life. 
 This is as it should be. Nevertheless, all topics 
 should be considered in the light of spiritual prin¬ 
 ciples and ideals revealed in the Scriptures. The 
 pastor can see to it that no mistaken interpretations 
 of the Bible are brought to bear upon the practical 
 concerns of life. Headquarters of denominational 
 organizations of young people should not be al¬ 
 lowed to interfere with a proper development of any 
 local group. As the minister is responsible for the 
 religious lives of all the members of his flock he 
 should have the general direction of all Biblical 
 study pursued by organizations connected with the 
 church. Here is another opportunity in dealing 
 with his young people. “ I have no greater joy than 
 this, to hear of my children walking in the truth,” 
 so said an old saint . 13 The crown of rejoicing in 
 every pastor’s life is the vision of spiritual life in 
 those whom he has helped . 14 Like our Lord, we live 
 that men may have life, and have it abundantly . 15 
 Like the great Teacher, all theological teachers, all 
 school and college teachers, all teaching pastors find 
 their delight and the justification of their lives in the 
 characters and usefulness of those whom they have 
 taught. 
 
 13 3 John 4. 
 
 14 Phil. 4 : 1 ; 1 Thess. 2 : 19. 
 
 15 John 10 : 10. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 HIS RELATION TO THE PROBLEM OF 
 CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
 The Fact of Sectarianism 
 
 The ministry of the teaching pastor has a vital 
 relation to the problem of Christian unity. Every 
 devout Christian must grieve over the divided state 
 of the Christian church. The body of Christ has 
 been dismembered. There are those who apologize 
 for and defend this schism as beneficial to the total 
 work, and promoting the increase of church-mem¬ 
 bers. They quote Paul’s words 1 as justification for 
 their opinion: “ Some indeed preach Christ even 
 
 of envy and strife; and some also of good will . . . 
 What then ? Only that in every way, whether in pre¬ 
 tence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and therein 
 I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” They forget that 
 the whole passage was a plea for unity of sentiment. 
 Lien try to frighten believers in Christian unity by 
 the picture of the difficulties they imagine would 
 exist in the organization and work of one vast ag¬ 
 gregation comprising all Christians. A united 
 church could not be so wasteful and inefficient. 
 
 I. The Harmfulness of Sectarianism 
 
 1 . Inability to Make United Sentiment Effective 
 
 Think of the inability to express united Christian 
 sentiment. Disciples of our Lord are also citizens 
 
 1 Phil. 1 : 15-18. 
 
 • 97 
 
98 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 of the countries in which they reside. They should 
 wish to make effective in political life the ideals 
 they profess. Their first obligation is to Jesus 
 Christ and the promotion of his kingdom. What¬ 
 soever they do, whether they eat or drink, work 
 or vote, should be done to the glory of God and in the 
 name of Jesus Christ . 2 The Christian element in 
 a community or a country is now so divided that it 
 has no way of expressing itself. In our own country 
 over forty-five millions of members of Christian 
 churches are separated into Roman Catholic and 
 Protestant groups. In Romanism there are modern¬ 
 ists and ultra-montaines and various other divisions, 
 unified externally through the strong ecclesiastical 
 bonds of hierarchy. In the Protestant world there 
 are about two hundred sects and insects. Many of 
 these are mere hssures that have occurred upon the 
 slightest provocation and without reasonable justifi¬ 
 cation. In a certain city there was a group calling 
 itself “ The Church of God/' A faction left and 
 organized with the name “ The True Church of 
 God.” Even that faction did not find itself harmo¬ 
 nious. Another cleavage withdrew and organized 
 itself under the name of “ The Only True Church of 
 God.” Any one can mortify his feelings by looking 
 at the United States Religious Census. These forty- 
 five millions of Christians who profess to love God 
 supremely and obey Jesus alone and to love one 
 another according to the commandment of their 
 Lord 3 have no way of uniting their sentiment. This 
 vast number of church-members represents a con¬ 
 stituency of at least eighty millions in the United 
 States, but they have no way of making their united 
 
 2 1 Cor. 10 : 31; Col. 3 : 17. 3 John 15 : 12-17. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 99 
 
 sentiments felt in public life. The low state of 
 Christian life prevailing in millions of these hearts, 
 and the facts of disorganization and disagreement 
 hush their united voice against the selfish, unchris¬ 
 tian policy of isolation in international affairs. The 
 selection of Senators and members of the House of 
 Representatives is left to selfish politics. There is 
 no union of effort to declare to the world that the 
 Christian church is against war and in favor of 
 brotherhood, and that the majority of the eighty 
 millions wish to outlaw legalized murder as a method 
 of settling differences of opinion. There is no way 
 by which this Christian sentiment can join itself to 
 the same Jewish sentiment and the identical opinion 
 of organized labor and thus unitedly make Christ’s 
 ideal of brotherhood felt. If there were no other 
 reason for lamenting schism in the body of Christ, 
 this alone would be ample to bring shame to the 
 heart of every true Christian. 
 
 2 . Disunion in Christian Work 
 
 There is also difficulty in working together for 
 the spiritual, educational, and philanthropic enter¬ 
 prises which Christianity always produces. Is it 
 not true that many young ministers go out from 
 seminaries to propagate denominationalism, that a 
 pastor achieves a reputation far more as a builder 
 of a local denominational group than because he 
 spreads the power of vital Christianity and its min¬ 
 istries to the ignorant, the suffering, and the lonely? 
 Efficiency in propagating sectarianism is too often 
 the standard by which the success of a Christian 
 minister is judged. The whole tendency of this 
 separatism is toward fruitless selfishness. 
 
100 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 3 . Waste of Money 
 
 All this brings in its train a waste of money and 
 becomes an economic scandal among those outside 
 the churches. Business men who consider the rela¬ 
 tion of expense to achievement are repelled by the 
 over-churching of some communities and by the 
 neglect of others. If Christians, more devoted to 
 the ideals of Jesus than to the multiplication of de¬ 
 nominational statistics, protest against this waste, 
 they are accused of disloyalty to principles, if not 
 to Jesus Christ. In the country at a crossroad are 
 three churches of different denominations all closed 
 because none of the three could be supported by its 
 partisans in the community. The treasuries of the 
 respective denominations with which this trinity of 
 idle temples is connected, feel that they are wiser 
 in wasting their money in building more idle tem¬ 
 ples than in using those already erected. This is a 
 wicked squandering of funds given in the name of 
 religion. Many city centers are likewise over¬ 
 churched. No one can look upon the situation at 
 which we have barely hinted without the deep con¬ 
 viction that the blessing of God could not honestly 
 be asked upon such sectarian folly. 
 
 4 . Waste of Ministerial Service 
 
 There is also a waste of men. On the one hand 
 there are thousands of ministers without churches. 
 On the other hand, thousands of churches without 
 pastors. Ministerial unemployment and ecclesias¬ 
 tical destitution are only obverse and reverse sides 
 of this situation. City churches within a few hun¬ 
 dred yards of one another are struggling to meet 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 101 
 
 current expenses for the support of public worship 
 and of Christian activity. They are throwing upon 
 a single man the burden of the pulpit, of pastoral 
 visitation, administration, teaching, and all other 
 offices necessary in connection with the support of 
 the institution. There are cases where one man 
 discharges every duty from that of the pulpit to the 
 work of the janitor. Such a disgraceful situation 
 from the economic view-point is from the religious 
 view-point more than a scandal in the eyes of the 
 world. In the case referred to in a previous lecture 
 of a town of four thousand people with five churches 
 struggling for existence, one church with a proper 
 plant, a preacher of ability, a teaching pastor, and 
 another worker would do more work for the regen¬ 
 eration of men and women and the Christianizing 
 of the community than the five churches combined 
 have been able to do. Sectarianism has robbed com¬ 
 munities of the possession of the multiform ministry 
 mentioned in the records of the early church. 
 
 5 . Impression on Non-Christians 
 
 Perhaps saddest of all is the impression made 
 upon the outside world by the unseemly spectacle 
 of denominational rivalries. Those who are not 
 church-members are perplexed over the clashes of 
 dogmas, battles of creeds, contentions concerning 
 rites and ceremonies, the arrogance of different 
 ecclesiasticisms, and the undignified and unbecoming 
 methods resorted to in the name of the glorious 
 Christ to secure adherents to the various groups. 
 Some pulpits are shut against ministers of other 
 groups. Pipe-line theories of charismatic grace 
 through digital contacts, assumptions of orthodoxy 
 
102 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 that banish to the deserts of heterodoxy all who do 
 not subscribe to dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s, 
 have exiled worthy and powerful preachers from a 
 few square yards of pulpit platform in the posses¬ 
 sion of those who cherish such assumptions. Is it 
 any wonder that when Christ affirmed that all the 
 law and the commandments and the very essence of 
 the life that he came to give to the world, were 
 summed up in the loving God with all the powers of 
 personality and loving our neighbors as ourselves , 4 
 his teaching stands discredited in the eyes of the 
 world by these consequences of disintegration? 
 
 6 . Confusion in Foreign Mission Work 
 
 And what of the impact of Christianity against 
 the darkness of paganism ? The “ heathen ” know 
 nothing of and care less for the historical and per¬ 
 sonal reasons which have produced sectarianism in 
 the church. They are met by the jangling, dis¬ 
 cordant voices of the apostles who propagate schism. 
 Underneath all this is the absurd assumption that 
 each sect has the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth. The perplexity of an African or a 
 Chinaman over this entire situation can hardly even 
 be imagined by those of us who have been born into 
 this tangled theological and ecclesiastical jungle. 
 
 II. Conditions Demanding Teaching Pastors 
 
 1 . Each Sect Appeals to the Bible 
 
 What has the teaching pastor to do with all this? 
 Much every way, for every schism claims Biblical 
 reason for its existence. Each claims that loyalty 
 
 * Mark 12 : 28-34 ; Matt. 22 : 34-39 ; Luke 10 : 25-28. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 103 
 
 to the Scriptures compels isolation, and authorizes 
 the building of middle walls of partitions and the 
 theological and ecclesiastical manufacture of barbed- 
 wire fences to keep its adherents in and to keep out 
 all others who do not agree with its peculiar Biblical 
 interpretations. This is not the least melancholy 
 aspect of the entire situation. We print more Bibles 
 than any other book, sing about it in our hymns, 
 declaim about it in our pulpits, translate it into more 
 languages than any other literature, and fight over 
 it more than over any other volume. We do every¬ 
 thing with the Bible and for it except to live its 
 holy truths as really intelligent study reveals them 
 to us. 
 
 2 . Love and Scholarship the Solution of the Problem 
 
 There are two solutions for the problem and only 
 two. One is moral, and the other is intellectual. 
 The spiritual solution is the enthronement of love 
 in the hearts of all believers. The other solution is 
 to be made by Christian scholarship. This contri¬ 
 bution is always slow in filtering itself through the 
 prejudices of men. The traditional creedal and 
 ceremonial vessels have been glazed by centuries of 
 handling by hierarchies, and established usages of 
 denominations. Christian scholarship is also slow 
 in reaching the minds of those who surrender them¬ 
 selves to fantastic conceptions, who are willing dis¬ 
 ciples of grotesque notions, and who so exalt eccen¬ 
 tricities that idiosyncrasies seem to be the most 
 desirable things in religion. Any hope of healing the 
 schisms in the body of Christ lies with these two 
 agencies of Christian love and Christian scholarship. 
 With them in control all financial waste would take 
 
104 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 care of itself and the church would use its man 
 power intelligently. The ministry would assume 
 a more dignified place in the minds of the thinking 
 elements of a community, and church work would 
 appeal to business men who enthrone common sense 
 in their methods. 
 
 3 . The Pastors Are Leaders of Their Groups 
 
 The pastors are the leaders, the keys to the situa¬ 
 tion. They not only preach the vitalities of religious 
 experience but also propagate the various dogmas 
 and usages that divide the church. Appeals from 
 propagating denominational organizations come 
 through the pastor. Ostensibly the prime considera¬ 
 tion of these appeals is loyalty to Christ and the 
 bringing of men into discipleship to him and the 
 Christianizing of social relations. But a loud under¬ 
 tone is the thought of denominational increase. We 
 worship the great god Statistics, whose standards 
 are mathematical. We judge the growth of Chris¬ 
 tianity by the number of nominal adherents secured, 
 and the number of church buildings erected. We do 
 not emphasize the development of personal charac¬ 
 ter, nor the degree to which we have Christianized 
 business, recreations, social life, and politics. The 
 call to the pastor is that of fidelity to the denomi¬ 
 national group and its enterprises. To make this 
 importunity more powerful it is often clothed in 
 garments of orthodoxy that would force a man either 
 to wear a conventional dogmatic costume, or go 
 naked, or else identify himself with some other 
 ecclesiastical haberdashery. Precisely because the 
 pastor is the acknowledged key to the situation, his 
 opportunity is unique. Both in his local church and 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 105 
 
 as a member of the general bodies with which his 
 church is connected, he can make his voice felt and 
 can bring to bear upon conditions the contribution 
 of Christian love for all men and sound scholarship 
 concerning the Scriptures. So long as churches are 
 led by ministers who think they have been sent out 
 to propagate ready-made sectarian ideals rather 
 than to lead people into the glorious privilege of 
 sharing the very life of Christ, we shall have the 
 existing conditions. So long as the members of 
 churches are not led into the genuine knowledge 
 of the Scriptures and educational processes are held 
 in abeyance, just so long will the uninformed be con¬ 
 tent with the ministry that confirms existing notions, 
 intensifies ecclesiastical narrowness, and stimulates 
 enthusiasm for partisanship. The beginnings of 
 sectarianism cropped out in Corinth . 5 No one can 
 fail to feel the wideness of our Christian possessions 
 when he reads the glorious statement that all things 
 are ours : 6 “ Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, 
 or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or 
 things to come: all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; 
 and Christ is God’s.” Certainly Paul’s attitude as 
 the founder and pastor of the church at Corinth did 
 not favor division of that group. 
 
 4 . Varieties of Biblical Interpretation 
 
 The teaching pastor has a vital relation to this 
 situation because of varieties of Biblical interpreta¬ 
 tion. If there be anything beyond question, it is 
 that this one common basis was not produced with a 
 multitude of meanings. A sane man in writing has 
 
 5 1 Cor. 1 : 11-17; 2 : 3-9. 
 
 fl l Cor. 3 : 22, 23. 
 
106 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 one single, definite, clear-cut meaning in his words. 
 When he is writing about religion the vital issues 
 involved would prevent him from deliberately writ¬ 
 ing ambiguously. Double meanings to Scripture are 
 unthinkable. It may be granted that no Biblical 
 writer could realize the full, far-reaching import of 
 any utterance, since none can ever foresee all the 
 applications of a principle which he enunciates. 
 That, however, is not to say that a Biblical writer 
 did not understand his own words or purposely 
 meant them to be construed in a double sense. More¬ 
 over, if to these two ethical canons of writing and 
 speaking we should add convictions of guidance by 
 the Holy Spirit, the case is all the stronger. Did 
 God trifle with human intelligence? Did he ever 
 mean when he spoke through prophet or apostle 
 that his message should be capable of more than one 
 interpretation? Did the divine plan purpose that 
 heaven’s illumination of human ignorance should be 
 doubtful, that light should be confused, that the lamp 
 to our feet should tantalize us by indefiniteness and 
 uncertainty? On any theory of inspiration, whether 
 dynamic or verbal, none can assume that God meant 
 two things, talked two ways, and intended to justify 
 opposite theories about himself or about our rela¬ 
 tions to him or to one another. To make such an 
 assumption is to dethrone the Scriptures as author¬ 
 ity, to accuse the Almighty of duplicity, of intel¬ 
 lectual insincerity, and of trifling with the highest 
 interests of his creatures. The teaching pastor will 
 insist upon these things and will do his best to dis¬ 
 cover precisely the significance of any Scripture, 
 and also to test it by the revelation of God in Jesus 
 Christ which likewise will be sought in the most 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 107 
 
 honest spirit and method possible. Into such an 
 attitude he will conduct his followers. The very 
 word “ rule ” in the expression “ the Bible is our 
 rule of faith and practise ” is misleading. The 
 Scriptures are not a collection of rules. That mis¬ 
 take the unthinking have made. It is a literature 
 which records life, and in the life thus recorded 
 there are revealed principles, axiomatic, self-evident 
 spiritual ideals according to which God would have 
 men live. In the use of the Bible for guidance in 
 Christian living and thinking there are three ele¬ 
 ments to be considered: First, the conditions of life 
 at the time when the Scriptures were produced; 
 second, the principles involved in those conditions 
 discovered by honest, intelligent study; and third, 
 the specific rule which comes from the application 
 of the principle to the conditions. Rules are the 
 children of the marriage of principles to conditions. 
 Principles are eternal, self-evident and axiomatic. 
 Rules vary as conditions change. For instance, this 
 is the Lenten season. Jesus told people when they 
 fasted to anoint their hair with oil. 7 That was his 
 rule. It is violated today throughout Christendom 
 by all who observe Lent. Hair-oil is not specially 
 used among certain Christians during Lent nor on 
 Fridays. Customs have changed. The principle 
 was that ye “ appear not unto men to fast.” If we 
 observed the rule now we would violate the principle. 
 A principle can be applied to many other situations 
 than that out of which its statement came. Jesus’ 
 ideal that personal religious exercises were not mat¬ 
 ters of advertisement is applicable to many things 
 other than fasting. 8 The same intelligence in the 
 
 7 Matt. 6 : 16-18. » Matt. 6 : 1-7. 
 
108 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 use of the Bible will not send us to it for “ rules.” 
 We shall seek for the eternal principles of righteous 
 living, as good in one generation as in another. We 
 shall emancipate ourselves from the mechanical atti¬ 
 tude that turns the Scriptures into a manual of 
 religious etiquette. It is precisely because of unin¬ 
 telligent teaching in the pulpit that some denomi¬ 
 nations exist and put a “ Thus saith the Lord ” be¬ 
 hind their mistaken conceptions of the teachings of 
 the Bible. 
 
 5. Influence of Dogmatic Prepossessions 
 
 Another cause for divisions among Christians is 
 dogmatic prepossession. This is especially true of 
 denominations that have historic creeds, to which 
 perpetual adherence is demanded. The Russian 
 Church which arrogates to itself the title “ Ortho¬ 
 dox,” boasts that through the centuries of the Chris¬ 
 tian era it has never changed an iota of its creed. 
 More or less of this pride of consistency and tenacity 
 is in the minds of those who rest upon historic state¬ 
 ments of faith. “ Orthodoxy ” in the sense of right 
 thinking is to be commended, but there must be no 
 tolerance for the assumption that the only straight 
 thinking in the history of the Christian church has 
 been done by those who lived centuries or millen¬ 
 niums ago. The youngest of our great creeds, the 
 Westminster Confession, was published in 1646, 
 about a generation after King James’ Version of 
 the Bible was issued in 1611. More interesting yet 
 is the fact that Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1642. 
 The discoverer of the law of gravitation and the 
 author of the Principia was a boy four years old 
 when the Westminster Confession was adopted. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 109 
 
 Modern science had not begun when the youngest 
 of the great confessions of Christendom appeared. 
 The history of symbolics is forced to face this fact. 
 The birth of Newton and the publication of the 
 Westminster Confession were practically synchron¬ 
 ous. Since then the whole field of human thought 
 has changed, a new heaven and a new earth have 
 appeared, the scientific age has come with its new 
 knowledge of the physical universe, a new concep¬ 
 tion of the history of man, a new anthropology. 
 Archeology as now understood was not in existence 
 at the time this confession of faith was made. One 
 has only to compare the knowledge of the middle 
 of the seventeenth century with that of the twen¬ 
 tieth to see how methods and view-points have all 
 been changed. Since God reveals himself through 
 creation and human life, we are forced to say, not 
 that God has changed, but that our conceptions of 
 him have become larger and vaster. In the face of 
 all this shall the pastor ignore the light that has 
 come upon the Scriptures? Moreover, archeology 
 and lexicography have made marvelous advances 
 since that confession was formed. Today we make 
 dictionaries and grammars of New Testament Greek 
 in the light of thousands of papyri, ostrica, and 
 monuments which reveal to us the koine, or the 
 ordinary colloquial language of the first century, 
 which is the language in which our New Testament 
 was written. The space of this lecture does not 
 permit even one illustration of the effect of this new 
 knowledge upon New Testament lexicography or 
 grammar or interpretation. Archeology is throw¬ 
 ing vast light upon both New Testament and Old 
 Testament history out of which the literature grew, 
 
110 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 and the end is not yet. When Casper Rene Gregory 
 was last in this country, he told the writer that he 
 was then gathering a staff of workers for a new 
 lexicon of New Testament Greek. Alas, that he 
 lost his life in the World War! In the face of these 
 and many other facts which cannot be recited here, 
 how preposterous it is for men to buttress denomi¬ 
 national existence by a creed which was published 
 in an unscientific age before the world had received 
 the means for such a study of the Scriptures as we 
 now possess. If the question be put to a sincere 
 pastor, who desires to teach his people the truth 
 and only the truth, whether he shall cling to a tradi¬ 
 tional creed and propagate its conceptions, or 
 whether he shall do the questionably ethical thing 
 of using that creed with a loose interpretation, of 
 which the framers of the creed never dreamed, or 
 whether he shall cut loose from the creed and give 
 the people the truth as God has revealed it to him 
 in the providential revelations that have come 
 through the increase of human knowledge, there 
 can be but one answer for an honest man. But in 
 asking this question we have struck at the root of 
 denominationalism so far as it rests upon dogmatic 
 prepossessions. Why should the men of today, richly 
 blessed indeed by what the men of yesterday per¬ 
 ceived, and enriched by the legacies of their Chris¬ 
 tian lives, be content to think that the same God who 
 revealed light to their ecclesiastical and theological 
 ancestors has stopped the shedding of light? Today 
 with our advantages the obligation should be greater 
 than upon any previous generation. Of this increased 
 opulence the teaching pastor should make as abun¬ 
 dant use as his opportunities will allow. After all, 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 111 
 
 what is the preservation of a creed, or as Baptists 
 call it, a “ confession of faith,” compared with the 
 understanding of the truth of God? Every genera¬ 
 tion should try to learn the will of God more per¬ 
 fectly. We have the best Biblical example for this. 9 
 From vows of loyalty to past confessions of faith 
 made by fallible men like ourselves but not endowed 
 with light as great as we possess, God has absolved 
 every man by the very increased illumination he has 
 sent. The function of a teaching pastor is not to 
 indoctrinate his people with bygone statements of 
 faith which a growing world has left behind, but 
 to lead men into the vital truth. Here is a vast 
 contribution which Christian scholarship incarnated 
 in the teaching pastor can make to the vital problem 
 of Christian union. 
 
 6 . Bondage to Historical and Hereditary Accidents 
 
 Where denominational divisions shelter them¬ 
 selves under great names, or temperamental pecu¬ 
 liarities, or temporary historical considerations, the 
 teaching pastor will lead people to see that the pos¬ 
 session of spiritual reality is above all other con¬ 
 siderations. We may well thank God for the great 
 men who had the courage to stand against what 
 they conceived to be invasions of religious rights 
 and also impositions upon their freedom. We may 
 give due credit to historical conditions that at the 
 time made protest necessary. A retrospect of 
 church history will reveal the large part that Chris¬ 
 tian men have had in religious movements. Far 
 be it from us to minimize their heroic functions. 
 Yet in the light of the newer day and the develop- 
 
 9 Acts IS : 26; 19 : 1-5. 
 
112 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 ments of the years it ought to be easy to review 
 their contentions. The discouraging thing that 
 meets the teaching pastor is the frequency with 
 which these men are quoted as if their utterances 
 justified the perpetuation of divisions, the historical 
 reasons for which have long since ceased. Even 
 their conceptions of the Bible are not necessarily 
 infallible. They are subject to review, and in the 
 spirit of consideration and appreciation should be 
 fearlessly examined by men today. If their conten¬ 
 tions will not stand the test of modern Biblical study, 
 then they should be surrendered as authoritative, 
 no matter how interesting they might be historically. 
 If on the other hand the things for which they 
 stood prove to be of eternal value, there is no reason 
 why these things should not be joined with others 
 of like value stated by other persons. No reality 
 can ever be inconsistent with any other reality. 
 Truth is one. The nearer we approach to reality, 
 the nearer we come to one another. Where denomi¬ 
 national divisions are temperamental, the problem 
 is somewhat keener. Many whose esthetic sense 
 is highly cultured wish to worship God in ways that 
 commend themselves to refined souls. They should 
 not be denied that privilege. Worship is a function 
 of the esthetic faculty, the perception of the worth- 
 ship of God. “ One thing have I asked of Jehovah, 
 that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house 
 of Jehovah all the days of my life, to behold the 
 beauty of Jehovah, and to inquire in his temple.” 10 
 Whoever gave expression to that desire wanted to 
 bring both his esthetic sense and his interrogation- 
 mark into the place of worship. There is no reason 
 
 10 Ps. 27 : 4. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 113 
 
 why they should not be brought there together. 
 How many times the ugly barrenness of a church 
 service has offended the sense of the beautiful. How 
 many times the dogmatism of a church or its 
 preacher has prevented the entrance of the interro¬ 
 gation-mark into the house of the Lord. There is no 
 reason why denominational divisions should be 
 based upon these lines, why one group should em¬ 
 phasize whatever is beautiful in worship, and an¬ 
 other should emphasize the spirit of free inquiry, 
 and neither should have communion with the other. 
 Often sectarian feeling is hereditary. Denomina¬ 
 tional labels have been handed down as heirlooms. 
 In many cases those who wear these labels are like 
 certain hybrid animals without pride of ancestry 
 or hope of posterity. Hereditary ecclesiasticism is 
 seldom based upon conviction. What is the teach¬ 
 ing pastor to do in all these cases? Surely he will 
 be able to show from the Scriptures that the per¬ 
 ception of the worthship of God is the essence of 
 worship, that the Christ turned away no questioner 
 from his illumination but welcomed all inquiries, 
 and that so far as purely hereditary ecclesiasticism 
 is concerned, God is able out of stones to raise up 
 children unto Abraham. 11 The teacher using the 
 historical method will at least show his people the 
 essential truth that God is worshipped both in Jeru¬ 
 salem and in Gerizim, and that neither shrine can 
 monopolize adoration, that what God seeks is com¬ 
 munion of our spirits with his based upon reality. 12 
 If the teaching pastor will exalt Jesus’ idea of the 
 kingdom of God, and get his people to see that 
 
 11 Matt. 3 : 9. 
 
 12 John 4 : 20-24. 
 
114 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 churches exist to realize this matchless dream of our 
 Lord of a state of human society characterized by 
 freedom in thinking and in conduct (unregulated 
 by the devices of legalism), by righteousness in 
 character and in relations with others, and by love 
 expressing itself in service even to the degree of 
 sacrifice, he will do much to take away the pride 
 that many feel in belonging to groups that exalt 
 minor considerations. The kingdom of God as 
 dreamed of by Jesus was human society without 
 regard to race or geography in which every person 
 lives like a child of the heavenly Father, and there¬ 
 fore all live together as God's human family. The 
 church is supposed to consist of those who appre¬ 
 ciate and practise this ideal of Jesus, who through 
 Christian social instinct have banded themselves to¬ 
 gether to promote this ideal throughout the world. 
 In the face of this conception, the trifles that divide 
 Christian people appear insignificant. The pastor 
 who understands his Bible, and who will show the 
 evolution from the narrowness of Judaism through 
 the wide views of the noblest Old Testament proph¬ 
 ets 13 to the perfect teaching of our Lord 14 and the 
 vision of the new humanity expressed by Paul, 15 
 will do more to destroy the blight of crass sectari¬ 
 anism than all the polemics in the world can accom¬ 
 plish. 
 
 7 . Failure of All Other Plans for Union 
 
 The failure of all other devices to promote Chris¬ 
 tian unity drives us back upon education. There 
 
 18 Isa. 19 : 23-25 ; 42 : 1-4. 
 
 14 Matt. 8:11; Luke 13 : 29. 
 
 13 Col. 3 : 11. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 115 
 
 have been conferences to see how people could get 
 together. The world is still studying the recent 
 appeal of Bishops of the Anglican Church. A Con¬ 
 ference on Faith and Order is facing Christendom. 
 In it there will come up for discussion confessional 
 matters; comparisons of creeds, and possibly the 
 effort to construct some new confession of faith, 
 or obtain adherence to one that already exists. There 
 will also be presented views of “ ordination ” and of 
 ecclesiasticism. All differences of opinion that will 
 be presented on these matters will be historical 
 and will be based upon various methods of Biblical 
 study. One of three things is possible: The yield¬ 
 ing of some to others; or, amalgamation of all in 
 some great inclusive movement; or, one more in¬ 
 stance of compromise to be put alongside of many 
 that church history records. How much better it 
 would be if the sane scholarship of the world would 
 set itself afresh to study all mooted questions in the 
 spirit of love and of absolute intellectual honesty 
 emancipated from preconceptions and historical con¬ 
 siderations, and seek to discover just what are the 
 principles that the Bible which is “ the rule of faith 
 and practise ” intended men to believe and live. 
 Even this would raise a question. No one can study 
 the New Testament intelligently without discovering 
 that the early church believed that Jesus himself 
 would soon return to the earth and establish a Mes¬ 
 sianic era. Paul’s letters reveal this hope in very 
 intense forms. So consuming was it that the church 
 did not make creeds, nor establish governments, nor 
 erect edifices, nor concern itself with social reforms, 
 such as abolition of slavery, intemperance, and in¬ 
 dustrial injustice. These matters are virtually ig- 
 
116 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 nored except as general principles of Christian life 
 are stated in the light of which men were to live. 
 Paul advised against marriage because the time was 
 short. 10 He told slaves not to seek their freedom, 
 but to abide in the calling where they were. 17 He 
 sent Onesimus back to Philemon. He declared that 
 the Lord’s Supper was intended to show forth the 
 death of Jesus until he returned, 18 and in the same 
 letter that contains that statement said that the 
 Lord was at hand. 19 Have we not made permanent 
 things which the early church considered transient 
 and temporary, and then divided ourselves into 
 segments by mistaken interpretations of a litera¬ 
 ture the very existence of which was due to the 
 disappointment of the early church in its expecta¬ 
 tion of the speedy return of Jesus to the world? 
 Had he returned when the early church expected 
 him, would we have had a New Testament? Would 
 the communion have existed to the present day? 
 What would have been the course of church history 
 had this expectation been satisfied? We are not 
 discussing the origin of this hope, but simply the 
 patent fact that it was disappointed, and that be¬ 
 cause of this disappointment many things have 
 arisen that are now contributing to our divisions. 
 The teaching pastor who studies his New Testament 
 historically and seeks to account for the very litera¬ 
 ture he is studying and for specific utterances it 
 contains, will so educate his people that they will be 
 immune against many things that today perplex 
 Christendom because we have been lacking in teach- 
 
 16 1 Cor. 7 : 7-9, 27, 29, 32-34, 38-40. 
 
 17 1 Cor. 7 : 20, 21. 
 
 18 1 Cor. 11 : 26. 
 
 19 1 Cor. 1G : 22, Mciranatha. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 117 
 
 ing pastors. We have tried all other methods to 
 promote unity. Is it not time to try this method 
 which should suggest itself to every lover of the 
 Bible as the easiest way to a solution of differences 
 among all those who claim to appeal to the Scrip¬ 
 tures as the authority for their separation from 
 their fellow Christians? 
 
 III. The Specific Contributions of the Teaching 
 
 Pastor 
 
 1 . Leadership in Sane Bible Study 
 
 He can lead into sane Bible study, and strenuously 
 insist that for any passage of Scripture there can 
 be but one meaning, that 'which was in the mind 
 of the writer or speaker, and make honest effort to 
 find out precisely what that meaning was. How 
 gross the departure from this simple, ethical, 
 axiomatic canon of interpretation can be will be 
 seen by a glance at “ Science and Health; A Key to 
 the Scriptures Think of this! 
 
 The name Adam is from the Hebrew adamah, signifying 
 the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness. The word 
 Adam should be regarded as identical with the Latin 
 daemon . 20 Originally demons were not always considered 
 as evil beings, but as partly good, though now the word is 
 used exclusively of harmful and mischievous spirits—some¬ 
 what in this way ought Adam to be thought of: as a dam, 
 an obstructionist, as error opposed to Truth . 21 
 
 All adjectives are defied by the grotesqueness of this 
 glossary. 
 
 20 O ye shades of philology ! 
 
 21 “ Science and Health,” Twenty-first Edition, 1886, p. 381, par. xvii. 
 
118 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 Eve. A beginning; mortality; that which does not last 
 forever; a finite belief concerning life, substance, and in¬ 
 telligence in matter; error; the belief that the human race 
 originated materially instead of spiritually, that man started 
 firstly from dust, secondly from a rib, and thirdly from an 
 egg, self-imposed folly and its consequences . 22 
 
 That may be a dazzling appeal to those who are igno¬ 
 rant of the real nature of Scripture. If such non¬ 
 sense could be accepted, it will only confirm in deeper 
 ignorance than they had before those who show it 
 hospitality. This is only an extreme illustration, but 
 there have been many interpretations of the Bible 
 outside of “ Christian Science ” that will approach 
 these in absurdity. Anything else than honest, pains¬ 
 taking effort to discover the meaning of Scripture 
 will inevitably plunge those who profess to love the 
 Bible into all kinds of variations of opinion, many of 
 them unspeakably absurd. Swedenborg’s “ corre- 
 spondential interpretation ” could furnish instances. 
 The open mind, the spirit willing to surrender all mis¬ 
 conceptions and to admit all light, is the primary 
 consideration. When a scholarly, ethical, and spiri¬ 
 tual attitude exists in the pastors and can be im¬ 
 planted in the mind of followers, then researches 
 as to faith, ecclesiasticism, dogma, and the meaning 
 of words will bring forth essential unity and har¬ 
 mony. 
 
 2 . Moral Courage in Facing Truth 
 
 Teaching pastors can show and inculcate moral 
 courage in facing the truth without regard to con- 
 
 22 From Glossary to “ Science and Health, A Key to the Scriptures,” 
 Twenty-first Edition Revised, 1886. In the Edition published in 1916, 
 in English and German, Eve was mercifully spared the burden of 
 “ self-imposed folly and its consequences ” by the omission of that clause. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 119 
 
 sequence. Whatever may have been believed will 
 be cheerfully surrendered if the discovery of reality 
 compels it. Paul counted as refuse the things that 
 formerly were gain to him that he might win Christ 
 and be found in him. 23 How splendid a vision it is 
 to see that the Bible is the literary record of spiritual 
 experiences in the great laboratory of life, that in 
 this literature men tell what they saw of God, that 
 they hand over to us the apparatus they used in 
 their observations, and say: “ Here are the instru¬ 
 ments we used and the discoveries we made. Take 
 our apparatus, verify our discoveries, try to add to 
 our knowledge, complete our partial visions, correct 
 our mistaken conceptions, and if perchance you can 
 add to the apparatus we used, do not hesitate to do 
 so, for the knowledge God is eternal life, 24 and we 
 desire not to prevent your own effort to know God 
 nor to halt your energies by our discoveries, but to 
 stimulate you to know for yourself and to enlarge if 
 possible what we have found.” 
 
 3 . Emphasis Upon Life Above Literature 
 
 After all, the teaching pastor will place his em¬ 
 phasis upon life and not upon literature. He will 
 use the literature as the vehicle for the discovery 
 of life. Jesus declared that life can come only from 
 life. He told 25 the theologians of his day: “ You 
 are searching the Scriptures, for in them you think 
 you find eternal life, but you are mistaken. Life is 
 not in literature, but only from life. The Scrip¬ 
 tures testify concerning me, and ye will not come to 
 
 23 Phil. 3 : 8. 
 
 24 John 17 : 3. 
 
 25 John 5 : 39, 40. 
 
120 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 me that ye might receive life.” It was his announce¬ 
 ment that what we of this day call the law of 
 biogenesis obtains in religion as well as in biology. 
 By no processes of grammar, philology, lexicog¬ 
 raphy, archeology, or exegesis can men produce 
 the life of God in the souls of men. All these are 
 important essentials for understanding the testi¬ 
 mony of those who lead to the Master. Christianity 
 will become for the teaching pastor the possession 
 and impartation of the life of God revealed in Jesus 
 Christ. Nevertheless, all studies for which we have 
 been pleading will have as their objective the clear, 
 clean-cut revelation of what kind of a life it is 
 that God truly gives to men. We are not quickened 
 by inspired punctuation-marks, but by the life of 
 God that throbbed in men’s lives and determined 
 their relations to others. No lexicon can ever re¬ 
 generate. Life alone can accomplish that miracle 
 in character. This was the method of the Great 
 Teacher. He did not hesitate to say, 26 “ You have 
 heard that it has been said . . . but I say unto you.” 
 He could talk that way because in him was life. 27 
 It was not in the literature, not even in that which 
 he did not set aside, much less in that which he did 
 abrogate. Everywhere he used the life which the 
 Old Testament recorded as the vehicle through 
 which the life of his Father came to the men of 
 old. But most of all it was his own life that he 
 used, his teaching, his living. Men do not raise 
 wheat for the sake of straw or chaff, but without 
 straw or chaff there could be no precious kernel 
 for the food of men. When once we have seen the 
 
 26 Matt. 5 : 21, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34.' 
 
 27 John 1 : 4. 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Unity 121 
 
 life that is life indeed and opened our hearts to its 
 inflow, we shall have made the highest possible use 
 of the Bible. There is an evangelistic power in 
 teaching at least equal to that of mere pleading, or 
 exhorting, or the telling of pathetic stories, or mov¬ 
 ing merely upon the emotions. A deep conviction is 
 worth a thousand tears, unless the tears come be¬ 
 cause of the conviction. 
 
 4 . If All Ministers Were Teaching Pastors 
 
 Lastly, what would be the result so far as healing 
 the divisions of the church is concerned if all min¬ 
 isters of all denominations were for a single gen¬ 
 eration to practise this teaching function? What 
 intelligence would come to the Christian body? How 
 many grotesque, queer, and inexcusable segments 
 of the Christian church would fall away? If just 
 one generation could be free from allegorized, spiri¬ 
 tualized, fanciful treatment of Scripture language 
 and dedicate itself under the guidance of a compe¬ 
 tent ministry to the sane effort to find exactly what 
 the Scriptures do teach, how wonderful the next 
 generation would be in knowledge! With the Holy 
 Spirit resident in the hearts of men, and the spirit 
 of truth and of reality sanctifying the souls of men, 
 what would come from such a treatment of the 
 Bible? Why should men resist the Holy Spirit 
 when he is trying to teach us through the general 
 progress of human knowledge, through the triumphs 
 of scientific methods, and through our own con¬ 
 sciences that the only way to use the Bible is as God 
 in his providence intended us to use it? If the 
 church could have educated leadership for a single 
 generation, its fragments would come together and 
 
122 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 all our unhappy divisions would disappear. The key 
 to the solution of the problem lies in thoroughly 
 educated pastors who are willing to perform the 
 teaching function, and to bring up young and old 
 in the knowledge of the truth. Let the Scriptures 
 be “ the rule of our faith and practise/' but let them 
 be fairly interpreted. Some years ago the late 
 President Harper of the University of Chicago had 
 an experience which well illustrates this. He lectured 
 in the city of New York before the Baptist ministers 
 of that city and vicinity. The impression he made 
 by his lecture upon one of the minor prophets was 
 profound. An editor of a certain Baptist news¬ 
 paper, not published in New York, arose and an¬ 
 nounced that he had engaged Doctor Harper to write 
 twelve articles for his paper upon the study of the 
 Bible, and offered the ministers a year's subscrip¬ 
 tion to his paper at greatly reduced rates so that 
 they could have the advantage of reading the coming 
 articles. Large numbers subscribed. The articles 
 were never published. President Harper himself 
 told the writer the reason. The editor of that paper 
 desired in the announcement of the contemplated 
 articles to make a statement concerning Doctor Har¬ 
 per’s views of the Bible. He handed the distin¬ 
 guished scholar a paper upon which was written, 
 “ I believe the Scriptures to be the rule of Christian 
 faith and practise,” and asked Doctor Harper to 
 sign that statement that he might print it in the 
 announcement. The great man took the paper, put 
 a caret after the word “ Scriptures ” and inserted 
 two words “ fairly interpreted.” The editor declined 
 to allow the insertion of those two words and can¬ 
 celed the contract with the scholar, though he did 
 
Relation to the Problem of Christian Li nity 123 
 
 not return the money to the subscribers. “ Fairly 
 interpreted.” On those two words with mutual 
 Christian love really hangs the solution of the prob¬ 
 lem we have been discussing. What other words 
 could an honest man use ? 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 SOME SPIRITUAL VALUES OF HIS MINISTRY 
 
 Every Form of Ministry Has Its Own Spiritual Value 
 
 Each of the manifold forms of the Christian min¬ 
 istry yields its own specific spiritual values. Whether 
 we give ourselves to missions, philanthropy, evan¬ 
 gelism, consolation, the individual person, or scholar¬ 
 ship, there always comes back to our own souls the 
 benediction of the special kind of work we do. What 
 are some of the values that the teaching pastor 
 will inevitably discover? These will relate to him¬ 
 self, to the literature he teaches, to those whom he 
 seeks to instruct, and to God. 
 
 I. Personal Values 
 
 The teaching pastor will reap spiritual blessings 
 that will become inalienable in his personal life. 
 
 1 . Mental , Social , Ethical , and Devotional Values 
 
 In the second lecture we alluded to some of these: 
 Compulsory, systematic Bible study; fellowship with 
 others in the pursuit of spiritual reality; wide cul¬ 
 ture of mind inevitable to the conscientious student 
 and teacher; ethical enthusiasm in all activities of 
 his being; and genuine devotional appreciation of 
 the Scriptures. Only experience could realize the 
 richness of these blessings. To these we must now 
 add a few others. 
 
 124 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 125 
 
 2 . Repose of Entire Rational Nature 
 
 The repose of his rational nature in sane study 
 of the Bible and in teaching its results will follow. 
 Personality is a unit. We cannot separate mental 
 processes from our feelings. What God has joined 
 together in the oneness of personality no man can 
 put asunder. It is an unspeakable comfort to take 
 the whole of ourselves into any task or service. 
 Peace of mind demands that there shall be no in¬ 
 ward discord, that all powers of our being work in 
 harmony. That is essential for growth of person¬ 
 ality and for its highest service. Unfortunately 
 today some men are called “ pietists ” and others 
 “ rationalists.” One class is supposed to emphasize 
 emotions, conventional religious aspirations, and 
 vocabularies. The other is accused of overemphasis 
 upon intellectual processes. Thinking men should 
 not resign themselves to either of these classes. No 
 man will defend the statement that God gave human 
 beings brains that they might be idle in religion, or 
 that they might be insulted in the name of the God 
 who gave them. The soul finds its ease when with¬ 
 out dismemberment or substraction it gives its en¬ 
 tire self. 1 Such complete dedication the teaching 
 pastor gives, and reaps rest of spirit. “ Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy mind ” 2 is part 
 of the First Commandment. The consequent emo¬ 
 tions are developed, the will forms its purpose ac¬ 
 cordingly, and there come joy and enthusiasm. 
 Years ago an editor of a daily paper who was also 
 trying to teach a Bible class on Sundays told the 
 
 1 Rom. 7 : 15-24. 
 
 2 Mark 12 : 30. 
 
126 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 writer a sad personal history. After preparation at 
 college and theological seminary he declined his first 
 call to a pastorate because he could not put his entire 
 self into the work. His rational nature would not 
 permit him to preach some things required. He be¬ 
 came a traveling salesman. One night after years 
 of selling things his strong religious nature reas¬ 
 serted itself. He yielded to the suggestion of com¬ 
 promise, and tried to walk two paths. On Sundays 
 he would teach such traditional views as he could 
 without too violent offense to his intellectual nature, 
 withholding opinions that went beyond the bounds 
 set by his church relations. Soon the unity of truth 
 demanded his loyalty. He had to face the question 
 of the ethical honesty of giving a fraction of him¬ 
 self to a fraction of truth. That is the worst form 
 of spiritual segmentalism. After a lengthy cor¬ 
 respondence with the writer he surrendered to the 
 first commandment of our Lord 3 and then found not 
 only peace in his soul, but vastly increased efficiency 
 in his Sunday work, and finally gave up journalism, 
 entered the ministry, and constantly rejoices in his 
 work as a teaching pastor. When we love Christ, 
 the Bible, and men with all our hearts and minds and 
 soul and strength, there comes a calmness and har¬ 
 mony of spirit that is an unspeakable asset to a 
 minister’s work. There are only two ways of peace¬ 
 ful rest, that of Jonah with a dead conscience, 4 and 
 that of Jesus in perfect oneness with God. 5 Both 
 slept in storms, but how utterly different were the 
 conditions of soul that made rest possible. In re¬ 
 ligion compromise and contentment are foes. Only 
 when the minister in his study and teaching as well 
 
 3 Mark 12 : 30. 
 
 * Jonah 1 : 5. 
 
 6 Mark 4 : 38. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 127 
 
 as in his life fearlessly follows the light that God 
 sends, can he expect to have the peace that passes 
 understanding. 
 
 3 . Nourishment of Spirit While Feeding Others 
 
 The teaching pastor will nourish his own spirit 
 while he feeds the lives of others. Frederick W. 
 Robertson describes some ministers who are like 
 fountains in parks. The refreshing water flows to 
 slake the thirst of others, but the pipes absorb none 
 of it. Not so could be the teaching pastor. Possibly 
 only through bitter experiences, such as some of us 
 have had, in transition from loose methods of Bible 
 study into the only sane method, can self-nourish¬ 
 ment and teaching become synchronous. The 
 modern locomotive does not stop at water tanks but 
 gets the water from troughs between the rails. 
 “ They shall feed in the ways ” 6 along the exalted 
 highways is the conception of an Old Testament 
 prophet. Wherever a minister will saturate him¬ 
 self with the Biblical life he is studying, he will find- 
 food for himself. His sermons will be autobiograph¬ 
 ical. His words will come with his life-blood upon 
 them. There will be an accent of reality which the 
 best-conceived or written essay cannot imitate. He 
 will deal with life and not discuss topics. He will 
 utter reality, not pious conventionality. The defi¬ 
 nition of a sermon by Phillips Brooks, “ Truth 
 through personality,” 7 will be an actual experience. 
 Expression will be the necessity of possession. He 
 will be speaking things he has seen and heard. 8 No 
 
 6 Isa. 49 : 9-11. 
 
 7 Yale “ Lectures on Preaching,” by Phillips Brooks, 1877. 
 
 8 1 John 1 : 1-3. 
 
128 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 solitude of retreats, no galvanism by intense effort, 
 no frenzy like that of Baal priests 9 can ever produce 
 what will inevitably come if we live with those who 
 have found spiritual reality. 
 
 4 . The Spiritual Blessedness of Teaching 
 
 He will know the peculiar blessedness of the teach¬ 
 ing ministry. There is no higher joy than that of 
 leading a person into intelligent discipleship to Jesus 
 Christ. There is a peculiar blessedness in knowing 
 that some ignorance has given way to light, that 
 error has been corrected by illumination that does 
 not lead astray, and that superstition has retired 
 before clear knowledge of the will of God. Was not 
 this the joy of the great Teacher, as he dealt with the 
 Twelve ? Ponder his deep stirring of soul in thanks¬ 
 giving for his success as the mediator who had re¬ 
 vealed the things of God to the openminded. 10 Think 
 of his joy the night before his death. He had mani¬ 
 fested the nature of the heavenly Father to the 
 Twelve. 11 No wonder he spoke of his joy. Art has 
 never painted the face of a happy Christ. Yet he 
 taught his little school that his joy might remain in 
 them and their joy might be full. 12 It was the joy of 
 perfect self-realization, of perfect social adjustment, 
 and of uninterrupted communion with the Father, 
 a happiness over which circumstances had no con¬ 
 trol, and which is as good for any other world as for 
 this. It is the peculiar joy of the teacher who tries 
 to reveal God and spiritual reality to those to whom 
 he ministers. 
 
 s 1 Kings 18 : 28, 29. 
 
 10 Luke 10 : 21. 
 
 ^ John 17 : 6. 
 
 12 John 15 : 11 ; 16 : 24 ; 17 : 13. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 129 
 
 II. Appreciation of the Bible 
 
 Think of his appreciation of the Biblical record 
 of revelation. God uses every avenue to show him¬ 
 self to men. The material universe, the course of 
 human history, the image of God in man—all are 
 vehicles of revelation. Certain characteristics of 
 revelation recorded in the Bible become valuably 
 apparent to the teaching pastor. 
 
 1 . Revelation Through History 
 
 Its historical character is precious. It has come 
 through life, not through magic. An angel flying 
 through the skies trumpeting truth, or unusual mani¬ 
 festations of the unseen God might seem to some 
 more authentic and influential than the simple story 
 of how men came to know God through life. Jesus 
 discounted faith in such signs 13 and declared that 
 those who sought them belonged to a generation 
 neither good nor pure. 14 He also declared that re¬ 
 velation was discernible in current events, that all 
 life was a sign, and that what men needed was not 
 signs but eyes to understand the signs in the life 
 of which they were a part. 15 That our Father chose 
 the ordinary human life as the means of revealing 
 himself is of the utmost value. The Bible is no 
 Koran, no accumulation of detached, imaginary mes¬ 
 sages dictated by the Almighty without reference 
 to the circumstances under which the revelation was 
 given. The typewriter or phonograph theory of 
 inspiration can hardly be accepted by intelligent 
 students of the Scriptures. Human minds were not 
 
 13 John 2 : 23, 24 ; cf. Matt. 4 : 5-7. 
 
 14 Matt. 12 : 39. 
 
 15 Luke 12 : 54-57. 
 
130 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 holy victrola discs indented with the intonations of 
 the Infinite. Revelations came through historic con¬ 
 ditions, personal experiences, situations current at 
 given times. God was interested in life and wished 
 to teach men how to live. The Holy Spirit brooded 
 over all processes of life. The spiritually-minded 
 discerned the divine element in a given situation and 
 had courage to declare what they beheld. The state¬ 
 ment of our Lord that the pure in heart see God 16 
 is also applicable to Old Testament history. The 
 prophet had spiritual aspirations and receptivity. 
 With singleness of eye he desired to see the moral 
 significance of a condition or event . 17 The veil was 
 lifted and he could say, “ Thus saith the Lord.” 
 Our Father was interested in men, their political 
 situations, their moral aspirations, their backslid- 
 ings. One reads the Old Testament prophets to little 
 purpose if he does not see that many utterances 
 grow out of their conviction of the profound concern 
 of Jehovah in international politics. For these men 
 the dreams of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and the 
 Hittites for world power were not merely secular 
 affairs. The little hyphen land of Palestine that 
 seemed to these great powers to be only a pathway 
 on which to get at one another, was a gorge through 
 which the pent-up floods of aspiration for world 
 dominion swept with terrific power, and yet a calm, 
 placid lake surrounded by the protecting mountains 
 of Jehovah’s care. Some one has said that “ history 
 is His story.” Precisely because the revelation re¬ 
 corded in the Scriptures is historical we are driven 
 back to the history in order to understand the revela¬ 
 tion. The unveiling comes through life, and lit- 
 
 10 Matt. 5:8. 17 Matt. 6 : 22, 23. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 131 
 
 erature as the record of life. In that history men 
 were certainly factors, seeking to work out their 
 own plans. Sometimes these factors claimed that 
 their purposes were inspired by the deities of the 
 territories in which they lived. Nevertheless, the 
 Factor unrecognized by the common people, un¬ 
 dreamed of by the world’s leaders, was clearly 
 perceived by those whose hearts were open to the 
 revelation that came through the history. It is of tre¬ 
 mendous meaning that this method was chosen by 
 the God of all the earth for the unveiling of himself. 
 Does it not sanctify all so-called secular occurrences 
 of human history? Did not God wish us to learn 
 the great lesson that he does not work outside of 
 ordinary normal processes, but uses them all as the 
 vehicles of revelation? 
 
 2 . The Religious Value of Human Experiences 
 
 We thus learn the religious value of human ex¬ 
 periences. God spoke unto the fathers in many frag¬ 
 ments, and multiform ways , 18 as varied as the lives 
 that understood them and the experiences they had. 
 The Old Testament is not above saying that the Holy 
 Spirit helped a man to hammer out some of the brass 
 ornaments of the tabernacle . 19 God brooded over 
 life all the way from primitive metallurgy and archi¬ 
 tecture to the life of our Lord. One is bewildered 
 if he tries to catalog the experiences of men through 
 which God came to them . 20 Nor can we forget stories 
 like those of Abraham, an idolater in his native 
 land , 21 dissatisfied with the worship of his moon 
 
 18 Heb. 1 : 1. 
 
 19 Exod. 31 : 1-5. 
 
 20 See “ Voices of the Spirit,” by George Matheson. 
 
 21 Josh. 24 : 14, 15. 
 
132 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 god and going out in fidelity to the God his own heart 
 called for. Through what experiences Jehovah re¬ 
 vealed himself to this “ father of the faithful,” this 
 “ friend of God.” 22 Nor must we forget Jacob, that 
 heel-catcher, supplanter, who started out to win life's 
 victories through the clever exercise of his pawn¬ 
 broking spirit, and how in the very midst of his 
 emigration between two suns he was forced to his 
 knees and taught that he could not enter Canaan 
 through mere shrewdness, but as a prince of 
 prayer 23 and as a suppliant. What these stories of 
 the Old Testament, and the New as well, teach is that 
 every event in life has its divine significance, that 
 God does not disdain to use ordinary occurrences 
 as well as extraordinary for the unveiling of him¬ 
 self. Because the revelation was historical it had to 
 come through events which taken together make up 
 history. In the experiences of nations as well as of 
 persons God made his nature known to the world. 
 
 3 . Divine Use of Current Vehicles 
 
 God used current vehicles in revelation. Hebrew 
 poetry in the Old Testament and that of the Baby¬ 
 lonians differ not in form but in content. No new 
 literary vehicle was made. Parallelism prevailed 
 throughout Semitic nations. There was no creation 
 of a celestial alphabet, nor of a heavenly grammar, 
 nor of a supernatural vocabulary, none of which 
 could have been understood. Divine ideas did not 
 require extraordinary vehicles. Nor was there 
 miraculous anticipation of types of civilization that 
 developed centuries after an occurrence. God used 
 
 22 James 2 : 23. 
 
 23 Gen. 32 : 24-28. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 133 
 
 what men had. He always does the best he can with 
 the material at his disposal, whether it is literature 
 or life. The kinship between the early narratives 
 of Genesis and current Semitic literature ought not 
 to surprise us . 24 The revelations of God were con¬ 
 temporary, and in terms that could be understood 
 by those who received them. They used current con¬ 
 ceptions of the physical universe. The Almighty 
 did not reveal beforehand nor anticipate our knowl¬ 
 edge of modern science. He could not have been 
 understood had he done so. Surely it should comfort 
 us that God is glad to use whatever we possess as 
 the channel of his revelation. It has always been 
 true of revelation that men had the heavenly treasure 
 in earthen vessels . 25 Every vessel, literary, domestic, 
 commercial, can be sanctified by the Spirit who 
 would use it to convey truth. 
 
 4 . The Permanent Values of the Bible 
 
 We learn the permanent values of the Bible. How 
 hard it is for some to distinguish between the tran¬ 
 sient and the permanent. The world is much like 
 each human heart. Before each of us passes a pro¬ 
 cession of countless vehicles which dump their con¬ 
 tents into our lives and then pass on. School-books 
 from which we learn alphabets, arithmetic, geog¬ 
 raphy, geometry, and literature; playmates, inci¬ 
 dents of youthful life, have passed out into the 
 eternity that has gone. What they have brought 
 abides. Knowledge, largeness of soul, sympathy, in¬ 
 creased social instincts, hungers and thirst for 
 larger manhood, conceptions of God, the values of 
 
 24 See “ The Early Narratives of Genesis,” by Herbert Edward Ryle. 
 
 26 2 Cor. 4 : 7. 
 
134 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 social life, and a thousand other things remain in 
 the treasury of the spirit. In our experiences we 
 never identify the vehicle with its content. This is 
 largely true with reference to much of the Bible. 
 The things which are seen are for a season; the 
 things that are unseen are eternal . 26 This is so 
 about the relation of vehicle and thought, and our 
 conception of the value of the permanent things of 
 the Bible. We shall soon see that we do not regard 
 many things in the Scriptures as of everlasting 
 value. The law of the kingdom of God—of every 
 kingdom with which God has to do—is first the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear . 27 
 With all of us there are things, elemental, germinal, 
 and initial, then crude stages in which life, ideals, 
 and religion are growing, then the ripened stage 
 which explains all that has gone before. No one 
 should be surprised to find in the story of the origins 
 recorded in the Bible much that seems unlike what 
 we today cherish and love, such as crude morals, im¬ 
 perfect ideas of God and of life that will not stand 
 the test of the revelation made in Jesus Christ. This 
 stares us in the face when we study the Scriptures. 
 Out of it all we come to see the permanent values of 
 life and of truth, and these authenticate themselves 
 to us by their own inherent, axiomatic power. Man¬ 
 kind in thinking and living has always followed the 
 advice of Paul to the Philippians , 28 “ Whereunto we 
 have attained, in the same let us walk/’ Truth is 
 often like beautiful water-lilies that float upon the 
 surface of the pond with their roots in the black 
 mire below the flower which explains all previous 
 processes and history. There are the beginnings 
 
 26 2 Cor. 4 : 18. 27 Mark 4 : 28. 2S Phil. 3 : 16. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 135 
 
 and the developments. Not the least of the per¬ 
 manent values of the Bible are precisely those we 
 are now describing. They are the revelations of the 
 processes through which God reveals himself, of the 
 developments of ideals into which he would lift us, 
 of the growth of fellowship and communion with 
 himself which in all ages will be commensurate 
 with our knowledge of him and our spiritual attain¬ 
 ment. 
 
 III. Values Seen in Human Life 
 
 There are also spiritual values which the teaching 
 pastor will discover with reference to his pupils. 
 
 1 . The Place of the Bible in Religious Life 
 
 The place of the Bible in their religious lives will 
 be second only to that occupied by God and Jesus 
 Christ. There may be preachers many and books 
 without number, but the Bible will always stand as 
 the religious classic. With more intelligence con¬ 
 cerning it, its place will be higher than ever. Hith¬ 
 erto it has furnished vocabulary, beautiful quotations 
 and illustrations, material for devout meditation, 
 and incentive to sacrificial service, but most of 
 all it has given Jesus Christ 29 to us. The Bible will 
 never be outgrown. No one who has really studied 
 it sanely will ever speak slightingly of it. The 
 charge that scientific study of the Bible is mutila¬ 
 tion and comparison of the work of scholars with 
 the penknife of Jekoiakim 30 reveal only the igno¬ 
 rance of those who speak thus. The Bible is becom¬ 
 ing more and more influential. In novels, and 
 
 20 Jolin 5 : 39. 
 
 80 Jei\ 36 : 23. 
 
136 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 dramas, and general literature men are driven to 
 read it if they would appreciate our literary heritage. 
 More than all, the life this literature reveals is more 
 thoroughly appreciated as it is understood. Next 
 to the Life that is the light of men will be its power. 
 
 2 . The Social Value of Biblical Ideals 
 
 The social value of Biblical ideals becomes more 
 and more apparent. Great principles which bear 
 upon human relations are sought for. Instead of 
 seeking to find specific teachings about unanticipated 
 forms of sin, or maladjustments in commercial, 
 political, or industrial life which did not exist in 
 Biblical times, or using the Bible as a reference- 
 book, men are going to the Scriptures for ideals of 
 right relations to God and to one another, and are 
 trying to apply these to existing conditions. So¬ 
 cialism without religion, the brute force of war, in¬ 
 tellectual cultivation without spiritual nurture, have 
 been found wanting. Statesmen who are Christians, 
 and some who are not, are declaring that the only 
 help for the world today is in religion, and in the 
 application of its principles to human relations. The 
 solvent of our muddy problems is found only in the 
 ideals of the kingdom of God. That is the ideal that 
 runs through the Scriptures and unifies the pam¬ 
 phlets that compose the sacred volume. That God 
 shall rule in human life in all its relations has been 
 the one purpose revealed in the plan of the Almighty. 
 No one perceives this so well as he who sweeps 
 through the history covered by this literature. At 
 every stage God tries to moralize life, in the individ¬ 
 ual soul, in the relations between persons and be¬ 
 tween nations. The significance of the Bible for in- 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 137 
 
 ternational life has hardly been considered. Yet the 
 book rings throughout with heavenly voices con¬ 
 cerning human fraternity, justice, the contribution 
 of the strong to the weak, and the great tolerance 
 of God for the immature. The sociological value 
 of the Scriptures is yet to be exploited for practical 
 purposes. The greatest earthly art is the art of 
 living together, and toward this art the contribu¬ 
 tion of the Scriptures will be the highest. 
 
 3 . The Democracy of Religious Truth 
 
 In the religion of Jehovah there is nothing esoteric. 
 All souls are equally dear to the heavenly Father . 31 
 All men are entitled to know all truth. No privi¬ 
 leged class can lock up in its custody any revelation 
 of the Father concerning himself or human life. In 
 Judaism and in Christianity there are no places for 
 religious secret societies or esoteric truth. What¬ 
 ever is whispered in the ear shall be revealed upon 
 the housetop . 32 No other volume insists upon the 
 democracy of knowledge so emphatically. Wherever 
 it has been translated into a vernacular, and freedom 
 of study permitted, men have been emancipated. 
 Formerly the lips of the priest kept knowledge . 33 
 Now all men are priests unto God. The few are no 
 longer the custodians of religious reality. Every 
 man must share with others his experiences of that 
 reality. The missionary character of the Scriptures 
 lies in this fact. There is to be no aristocracy of 
 Biblical scholars. Truth discovered must be pub¬ 
 lished. The Bethlehem shepherds went all the way 
 
 * Matt. 10 : 27. 
 
 32 Ezekiel 18. a nivotal utterance in the historv of theology. 
 
 88 Mai. 2 : 7. 
 
138 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 and saw what had occurred, and then proceeded to 
 tell others . 34 That course should characterize all 
 who understand the Biblical spirit and ideals. Self¬ 
 ishness in the possession of religious knowledge is 
 impossible. Altruism in everything that God gives 
 is part of the condition upon which the Almighty 
 bestows. A Bible-knowing people will be mission¬ 
 ary, evangelistic, educational, and philanthropic. 
 
 4 . The Increase of Reverence Through Knowledge 
 
 There will come increasing love and reverence 
 for the Scriptures with increasing knowledge. We 
 used to hear the remark, “ I know the Bible is from 
 God because there are so many things in it I cannot 
 understand.” As if incomprehensibility could ever 
 characterize a God who is struggling to reveal him¬ 
 self to his creatures, and to have them share his life. 
 Precisely the opposite is now said, “ We know the 
 Bible is from God only so far as we understand it.” 
 It authenticates itself to our moral natures as the 
 sun to the eye, the perfume to the nostril, or the air 
 to the lung. Superstition is awe based upon igno¬ 
 rance. Reverence is awe based upon knowledge. No 
 longer is the material book of paper, ink, and leather 
 a fetish. We go deeper than what can be seen and 
 handled. Bibliolatry is passing. Men explore, and 
 when in the presence of divine things they worship. 
 Jacob said, “ The Lord was in this place, and I knew 
 it not.” 35 We search for him in every place and 
 revere him wherever we find him. There is no 
 danger of destroying the faith of those who know. 
 Credulity may be set aside and superstition dis¬ 
 placed, but the abiding confidence that men of old 
 
 31 Luke 2 : 17. 18. 36 Gen. 28 : 16. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 139 
 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 36 can 
 come into our hearts only as we understand what 
 these men said. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit 
 is the critical faculty 37 which does not believe every 
 spirit, but tries the spirits whether they be of God . 38 
 When we exercise this gift of judgment, upon the 
 discovery of the voice of God men become more 
 reverent. Multitudes within the last generation 
 have been emancipated from mistaken conceptions 
 of the Bible and have found new love for it and new 
 life through it. It has not yet been made the book 
 of the people. In this vast ignorance of what it 
 really is and teaches lies unlimited scope for the 
 ministry of the teaching pastor. Unlimited joy can 
 come to him and to those who are taught, when the 
 Bible is no longer a sealed book to the majority of 
 Christians, but when its significance has been made 
 as wide-spread as Christian discipleship. 
 
 5 . How the Bible Was Meant to Guide Life 
 
 We can also understand how the Bible is “ the rule 
 of faith and practise.” Scriptural guidance, coveted 
 by countless devout hearts, will never be achieved 
 while the book is regarded as a collection of dis¬ 
 jointed maxims for modern life, or so long as human 
 conduct is controlled by irreverent and mechanical 
 uses of it. The Bible is no law-book, but a record 
 of growing religious life. God trusts us. This is 
 the meaning of the divinest gift of God to the world 
 —the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Pardon is 
 a legal word concerning the remission of penalty. 
 
 38 2 Pet. 1 : 21. 
 
 37 1 Cor. 12 : 10; 14 : 29. 
 
 38 1 John 4 : 1. 
 
140 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 Forgiveness is a social word relating to the restora¬ 
 tion of personal relations. Because God forgives he 
 trusts. He trusts us with new days when we have 
 abused those that are past; with new friends when 
 we have been disloyal to old ones; with new oppor¬ 
 tunities when we have abused those that have gone. 
 He trusts us when others do not trust us; even when 
 we do not trust ourselves. He trusts us that we may 
 love him with our minds by our right thinking, and 
 with our wills that we may be self-determining in 
 our conduct. In all this he trusts us with those 
 principles of true living revealed in the life of which 
 the Bible is the record. Forgiven men exercise the 
 responsibilities of the divine trust in them because 
 of the Father’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ. 
 In some far-off day, yet too distant for even a glimpse 
 of it, men will accept to the full this trusting for¬ 
 giveness of the Father and will see the Bible more 
 than ever as the guide of life, and in the principles 
 it reveals more than ever the strength and the ful¬ 
 ness of humanity’s joy. Not by minute regulations 
 of life does the Bible become the lamp to our feet, 
 but by disclosing the divine principles of righteous 
 living and loving service that God trusts us to dis¬ 
 cover and to apply in the details of our personal 
 lives and social relations. It is the law in the heart 
 that controls . 39 Only such study as we are advo¬ 
 cating will yield these stars for the nights of our 
 perplexities. 
 
 IV. The Knowledge of God 
 
 The teaching pastor will achieve the highest re¬ 
 sults in the knowledge of God. The historical 
 
 30 Jer. 31 : 33. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 141 
 
 method of Bible study will lead to the discovery of 
 what God did in history and of what he is doing 
 today. It will prevent us from imagining deity and 
 what the deity of our imagination should have done. 
 This a-priori method of theology gives freedom to 
 each wild fancy to conceive a deity and permits as 
 many deities as there are minds who try thus to 
 imagine him. On the other hand, the careful student 
 who seeks from the literature to reproduce the his¬ 
 tory and to appraise the results of study for the pur¬ 
 poses of theology, will have a clear conception of how - 
 God has revealed himself. He will avoid the grotesque 
 results of the a-priori method. “ Thou thoughtest 
 that I was altogether such an one as thyself,” 40 is an 
 expression put into the lips of Jehovah by a Hebrew 
 poet. There is ample justification for this saying 
 in the variations of theology, each colored by person¬ 
 alities that have tried to make gods in their own 
 image. Among the things which the teaching pastor 
 will discover and share with his pupils are the fol¬ 
 lowing : 
 
 1 . Gods Revelation of Himself Progressive 
 
 God has progressively revealed himself. His 
 method has been evolutionary. He spoke as men 
 were able to hear, and unveiled himself as men were 
 able to see. The extent of the revelation was mea¬ 
 sured by the receptive capacity of men. Revelation 
 enlarged life. The growing development of men also 
 produced widenings of spirit and keenness of per¬ 
 ception, and to these widened souls God made larger 
 revelations. The growing life and increased light 
 kept pace with each other. The time has passed 
 
 40 Ps. 50 : 21. 
 
142 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 when men think that all parts of the Bible have the 
 same spiritual value, that permanent revelations are 
 found equally in early Hebrew history and in the 
 fulness of time, 41 that truth spoken in fragmentary 
 and multiform ways has the same value as the reve¬ 
 lation of God made in a Son. 42 In the crescent evolu¬ 
 tion of humanity, God came ever increasingly. There 
 are crude morals in the Old Testament that could not 
 for a moment stand the test of Christian standards. 
 No modern churches would allow some notable Old 
 Testament characters to retain membership in them. 
 Yet these same characters were far above their con¬ 
 temporaries in other nations and even in their own. 
 We have given up the idea that one nation could 
 monopolize the revelation of God. The early thought 
 that Israel could monopolize Jehovah vanished in 
 the thought of eighth-century prophets. Think of 
 Isaiah declaring that the time was coming when 
 Israel should be one-third of God’s people, with 
 Egypt that had oppressed them for so many centur¬ 
 ies another third, and Assyria that had deported so 
 many of the tribes the other third. 43 Think of the 
 book of Jonah as a protest against the spirit that 
 would exclude Assyria from the grace of Jehovah. 44 
 We also lose the thought that foreign religions made 
 no appeal to Jehovah. What meaning there was 
 in the statement that Jehovah would not throw away 
 the bruised reeds with which men tried to walk the 
 journey of life, nor puif out the dimly burning, 
 smoky flame from the lamps they used to light their 
 way until he should send forth human judgment, 
 the rational nature, unto its victory over what the 
 
 41 Gal. 4:4. 43 Isa. 19 : 23-25. 
 
 42 Heb. 1 : 1. 44 Jonah 4 : 11. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 143 
 
 Jew regarded as broken staffs and dim lights! We 
 have abandoned the notion that Jehovah ruled hu¬ 
 manity by whims and arbitrary caprices. It is a 
 far journey from killing a man who works on the 
 Sabbath day 45 to the statement that the Sabbath 
 was made for man ; 46 from the dim days when men 
 dreamed that God commanded them to massacre 
 an entire population 47 to the love of God that came 
 not to destroy lives but to save them. 48 There is a 
 vast moral distance between a beatitude upon the 
 man who beats out the brains of infants against 
 the rocks, and the arms of Christ that snuggled the 
 little ones to his breast and the voice of the Christ 
 who says that of such is the kingdom of heaven. 49 
 There is a long step in morals between the supposed 
 command to borrow jewelry from the Egyptians 
 with no thought of returning it 50 and the noble 
 speech of Zaccheus who would return fourfold to any 
 victim of his extortion. 51 Today in this light of the 
 progressive unveiling of the nature of God we are 
 free from both the intellectual and the moral diffi¬ 
 culties which beset the lover of the Scriptures be¬ 
 fore the historical method of Bible study came to 
 the perplexed student. Men could conceive of their 
 deities only in terms of religions all around them, 
 modified by such differences as God himself had 
 made known. Large numbers did not believe in 
 monotheism. Their creed embraced a belief in 
 Chemosh as much as in Jehovah. 52 It was a matter 
 of territory. Even David thought that if he were 
 driven from Palestine he should be forced to serve 
 
 45 Exod. 35 : 1-3. » Ps. 137 : 9; Mark 10 : 13-16. 
 
 48 Mark 2 : 27. 50 Exod. 3 : 22. 
 
 47 1 Sam. 15 : 2, 3. 51 Luke 19 : 8. 
 
 48 Luke 9 : 56. 62 Judg. 11 : 24. 
 
144 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 strange gods in another land. 53 We no longer con¬ 
 ceive of God as fighting for us because he is obliged 
 to be loyal to his people, whether right or wrong. 
 Our question is whether we are battling on the side 
 of God who cares more for justice and righteous¬ 
 ness than he does for the preservation of lineal de¬ 
 scendants from the loins of Abraham. In the eighth 
 century before Christ ideas of God changed rapidly. 
 Those prophets have recorded the revelations of God 
 that came through their own lives and times. We 
 no longer emphasize the Old Testament law as being 
 binding upon us. The prophets had moral courage to 
 battle against the priests who insisted upon an ex¬ 
 ternal, mechanical routine such as constituted the 
 essence of religion in surrounding nations. No one 
 can read the first chapter of Isaiah, or the sixth 
 chapter of Micah, or the Fifty-first Psalm, and many 
 other portions of the Scripture without seeing how 
 the prophetic ideals brushed aside external per¬ 
 formances and insisted upon internal righteousness 
 and love. Amos represents Jehovah as saying, 54 
 “ Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings in 
 the wilderness forty years, 0 house of Israel ? ” 
 Jeremiah's utterances 55 are more positive: “ Thus 
 saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your 
 burnt offerings unto your sacrifices and eat ye flesh. 
 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded 
 them in the day that I brought them out of the 
 land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacri¬ 
 fices; but this thing I commanded them, saying, 
 Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God and 
 ye shall be my people; and walk ye in all the way 
 
 68 1 Sam. 26 : 19; cf. Ps. 137 : 4. 
 
 w Amos 5 : 25. 
 
 66 .Ter. 7 : 21-23. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 145 
 
 that I command you, that it may be well with you.” 
 All these things and many more the honest teaching 
 pastor will discover and communicate to his people. 
 There is a vast difference between the theology of 
 Jesus and the various theologies outlined in the dif¬ 
 ferent periods of Old Testament history. 
 
 2 . The Steady Development Toward Theism 
 
 This development is steadily toward a theistic 
 conception of God, toward an idea of him distinctly 
 religious that appeals to and calls out the uttermost 
 devotion. The progress is not toward elaboration 
 of rites and ceremonies. Ezekiel’s program never 
 came to pass. 56 Many such programs and predic¬ 
 tions that grew out of ardent hopes failed of realiza¬ 
 tion. They never will be realized, not only because 
 world conditions have changed, but also because 
 these predictions and visions were not along the 
 pathway toward the theistic conception of God fully 
 revealed to us only in Jesus Christ. We need not 
 stop to discuss the matter of “ unfulfilled prophecy.” 
 The bare fact that God wanted to reveal himself , not 
 to make programs for one century or a thousand 
 centuries, is enough to disclose that his purpose 
 was the unveiling of his nature, that he might enlist 
 men in fellowship with him in sharing his life of 
 freedom, righteousness, and love. The current is 
 steady. We need not stop to investigate the little 
 eddies that swirl along the banks. At last we come 
 to him who was Immanuel, and realize that just as 
 the flower explains the seed, the stem, and the leaf, 
 just as the fruit explains the root, the trunk, and 
 the twig, just as the wheat explains the blade and 
 
 36 Ezekiel, chapters 40 ff. 
 
146 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 the ear, so Jesus Christ explained all the past. It 
 should inspire one with profound gratitude that 
 he can see the unfolding of a God not only presi¬ 
 dent over but resident in all life, both transcendent 
 and immanent. At last we have come to realize the 
 Character that was struggling against the limita¬ 
 tions of human life and circumstance in unceasing 
 effort to dissolve all fogs that hid him and stand out 
 in clear vision in the Christ whom we adore. One 
 does not have to undervalue any statements of Is¬ 
 rael’s prophets or psalmists who rose to see the 
 righteousness and love of Jehovah, but wonders at 
 these mountain peaks of personality and the glimpses 
 they had of the shining above the clouds that 
 shadowed those who lived in the plains beneath. We 
 yet use much of their language in our prayers and 
 in our hymns, but consciously or unconsciously we 
 are putting into their words the higher life, the 
 sweeter devotion, and the more wonderful revela¬ 
 tion that has been given to us through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. 
 
 3 . The Reality of God 
 
 We also come to a firmer conviction of the reality 
 of God. Men will not live long in the ministry be¬ 
 fore they realize that two things most needed today 
 are the sense of the reality of God and a proper 
 understanding of the Bible. These two are related. 
 For many God yet dwells in thick darkness. 57 Like 
 Job they hunt everywhere for him and cannot find 
 him. 58 They do not take the right path. A patient, 
 honest study of the Scriptures will beget in men a 
 
 67 Ps. 18 : 11 ; 97 : 2 ; 1 Kings 8 : 12. 
 
 68 Job 9 : 11 ; 23 : 8, 9. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 147 
 
 consciousness that the divine factor is just as real 
 as human factors in the life of the world. When 
 men have seen the progress we have been describing 
 and the passionate struggle of the Infinite One to 
 make himself known to men that his creatures may 
 have fellowship with him, and then come to see Jesus 
 Christ, they will recognize that the sense of the 
 reality of God has been growing all through the his¬ 
 tory recorded in the book. A great theologian not 
 long since declared that the most luminous discovery 
 of theology during the half century before he made 
 the statement was that God was like Jesus Christ. 59 
 The Christlikeness of God is the thought that within 
 the last generation has been increasingly borne in 
 upon the thinking of men. They have come to be¬ 
 lieve the words of Jesus. 60 God has become more 
 real because the historical Christ has become clearer 
 to our minds through the patient study of the last 
 quarter of a century. Our Father is no hazy exis¬ 
 tence who once lived in the dim distance of time, 
 who possibly exists somewhere in the infinite re¬ 
 gions of space. The fact that he works through life, 
 that the revelations of himself are historical, that 
 through the experiences of men and the currents of 
 human history he has disclosed himself, makes him 
 more real to us. Lunching one day with the late 
 Dr. Lyman Abbott, the writer asked him, “ What is 
 the most real thing in your consciousness ? ” He 
 hesitated about answering the question because he 
 did not like to use the language of cant or pietism. 
 At last in the simplicity of his honest nature he 
 said: “ The most real thing in my consciousness is 
 
 59 William Newton Clarke in address at the semi-centennial of Newton 
 Theological Institution. 
 
 60 John 14 : 9. 
 
148 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 God. I realize him most not always when I am 
 preaching, but during the hours of my daily work.” 
 At that time he was engaged in writing a book that 
 caused a certain well-known minister to brand him 
 as an infidel. No man can give himself to the honest 
 study of the Scriptures and to the glorious privilege 
 of sharing the results of that study with others with¬ 
 out increasingly knowing the reality of God. 
 
 4 . God Works Now as Hitherto 
 
 God is working today as he always did. Divine 
 processes have never ended, nor will they end until 
 human capacity becomes equal to that of God. God 
 is revealing himself today. He is still creating. 
 Our scientific men see the processes. Our knowledge 
 like that of the great apostle is only in part 61 and 
 we see by means of dim reflections of a mirror, in 
 enigmas, but we shall know even as we are known. 
 One inch of the circumference of a circle that ex¬ 
 tends billions of miles is all we need in order to 
 know the path of that circle, to locate its center, to 
 measure the area included in the circumference. A 
 thimbleful of ocean water will tell us its nature. 
 The spectroscopes reveal the composition of the 
 stars. Precisely what the arc of the circle is to the 
 whole, or the sample of the ocean is to its leagues 
 of water, or the lines of the spectroscope are to 
 Betelguese, exactly that is the study of God revealed 
 in human life recorded in the Scriptures. We pray 
 to a Father who is now at work, and not to one who 
 used to work. “ My Father worketh hitherto and 
 I work,” said 02 Jesus. God is working in us even 
 
 ei 1 Cor. 13 : 12. 
 
 62 John 5 : 17. 
 
Some Spiritual Values of His Ministry 149 
 
 while we are working out our own right relation to 
 him, to the physical universe, and to our fellow 
 men. 63 Not in spite of ourselves, not wholly ex¬ 
 ternal to us is the activity of the heavenly Father. 
 We are workers together with him. 64 Daily each 
 calling becomes more divine. Every man, wherever 
 the providence of God puts him in an occupation 
 useful and helpful to his fellows, is a minister of 
 God ordained to that particular ministry by virtue 
 of the endowment God has given him. If the sane 
 study of the Bible teaches anything, it shows us that 
 all men in all generations can take with them into 
 their lives the consciousness of a God still at work. 
 The principles and objectives that control his work 
 are those revealed to us by the study of the Scrip¬ 
 tures. What an inspiration there is in all these 
 truths not only for teaching pastors, but also for all 
 our church schools, in our colleges; for the men of 
 commerce who can be thus emancipated from sordid 
 and selfish desires usually associated with business 
 life; for the professional men who may regard their 
 knowledge of health and disease a trust for the use 
 of their fellow men, or their acquaintance with 
 human experience in matters of justice and equity 
 as a gift for the establishment of orderly relations. 
 There is no menial service. There is no life that is 
 a vessel of dishonor if that life has the conception 
 that the same God is working today as in the past 
 and is in all things and over all things. 
 
 These lectures have dealt specifically with the 
 relation of a pastor to his Bible and his privilege of 
 
 83 Phil. 2 : 12, 13. 
 
 64 1 Cor. 3 : 9. 
 
150 
 
 The Teaching Pastor 
 
 sharing all he can get from it with those whom God 
 entrusts to his care. Now as in other days life is 
 found by the knowledge of God 65 that comes through 
 the Scriptures, the physical universe, current his¬ 
 tory, and ourselves. When men did not have access 
 to the Scriptures, they hungered for them. Have 
 we reached the day when this priceless literature 
 floods the earth and has become so commonplace 
 that men no longer care to know the story of the 
 coming of God into human life? If for a single 
 generation all ministers, without regard to denomi¬ 
 national connection, could spend their lives in lead¬ 
 ing those they serve into a knowledge of the Scrip¬ 
 tures, the next generation would witness a world 
 the like of which has never been seen. 
 
 65 John 17 : 3. 
 


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