£xhvavy of tire t:heolo0ical ^tmimxy 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 The Estate of the 
 Rev. John B, Wiedinger 
 BV 4320 .J4 
 Jefferson, Charles Edward, 
 
 1860-1937. 
 Quiet talks with earnest 
 people in my study 
 
QUIET TALKS 
 
 WITH EARNEST PEOPLE 
 
 IN MY STUDY. 
 
PR^ 
 
 QUIET TAL^ ^/CAL ii^ 
 WITH EARNEST PEOPLE 
 IN MY STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES EDWARD 7EFFERS0N 
 
 Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, 
 in New York 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1898, 
 By Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 
 
TO THE 
 
 ilasmen of (!L\}xi^itntim, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 BY A MINISTER 
 
 WHO ESTEEMS AND REVERES THEM. 
 
HOW IT CAME ABOUT 
 
 Now that the talker has finished, let 
 him tell you how he happened to begin. 
 For more than ten years he was a layman. 
 He has never recovered from it. Through 
 all that period it never occurred to him 
 that he should ever be a minister ; and his 
 habit of looking at things from a layman's 
 standpoint became so deeply ingrained, 
 that even to this day he often forgets he 
 is a preacher and finds himself still think- 
 ing and feeling like a layman. He is 
 more at home in a company of laymen 
 than in a company of clergymen. Dur- 
 ing the years in which he sat in the pew 
 he, like all laymen, supposed he under- 
 stood ministers, and was capable of judg- 
 ing their work ; and, like many laymen, 
 he was sometimes harsh in his judgments, 
 vii 
 
viii How It Carne About, 
 
 and unsparing in his criticisms. On enter- 
 ing the ministry he began to see things 
 from another viewpoint. Mysteries once 
 incomprehensible opened up in ways quite 
 surprising. As a layman he had often 
 wondered why so many preachers preached 
 so poorly. As a preacher he began to 
 marvel that preachers preach as well as 
 they do. While an onlooker from the 
 pew, the life of a minister seemed luxuri- 
 ous and free from drudgery ; but in the 
 pulpit it was borne in upon him that it 
 is one thing to be a preacher of the Word, 
 and quite another thing to be a hearer 
 only. 
 
 Throughout his ministry he has listened 
 with amused and profitable interest to the 
 comments upon clergymen which laymen 
 are in the habit of making, and has heard 
 again and again many of the opinions and 
 estimates Which he had formerly held and 
 expressed. One touch of nature makes 
 all laymen kin. The misconceptions of 
 a minister's work, and the misinterpreta- 
 
How It Came About. ix 
 
 tions of his conduct and speech, are often 
 so ludicrous that it would seem incredi- 
 ble that intelligent people should be guilty 
 of them were they not abiding and incon- 
 trovertible facts of current church history. 
 
 As the years have gone on he has found 
 the conviction growing in him that one 
 of the root causes of ecclesiastical disturb- 
 ances is the chasm existing between the 
 pulpit and the pew. A widening knowl- 
 edge of church life, and the critical study 
 of church quarrels, have forced him to the 
 conclusion that it is not total depravity 
 so much as partial ignorance which wrecks 
 so many pastorates and leaves so many 
 churches stranded. As a rule, unpleas- 
 antnesses in the Christian Church have 
 sprung from very trifling matters, and in 
 many cases there would have been no 
 trouble had pastor and people known each 
 other better. 
 
 Being convinced from experience and 
 observation that peace and power in the 
 churches can be deepened and extended 
 
X How It Came About. 
 
 by bringing pastors and peoples closer 
 together, he resolved to throw open the 
 doors of his study and invite the whole 
 Christian world to come in. For just such 
 confidential talks as it was in his heart 
 to give, no place seemed so appropriate 
 as his study. The pulpit was out of the 
 question. Many themes and many peo- 
 ple cannot be taken into the pulpit, but 
 the minister's study is roomy and hospi- 
 table. In his library all ecclesiastical divi- 
 sions and doctrinal differences sink into 
 the background. Look at those shelves 
 of books ! Calvinist and Arminian, Jes- 
 uit and Puritan, Lutheran and Episcopa- 
 lian, Baptist and Unitarian, Methodist and 
 Presbyterian, heretical saints and orthodox 
 martyrs, — all stand quietly together. A 
 live preacher lives on them all. His peo- 
 ple get them all in his sermons. There 
 are at least two places on earth where 
 denominational titles are lost sight of, and 
 where ecclesiastical differences do not es- 
 trange, — a hymn-book and a clergyman's 
 
How It Came About, xi 
 
 library. There is much talk nowadays 
 about the desirability of Christian unity 
 It is comforting to believe that the Church 
 is already one. Most of the differences 
 which inflame and alarm do not go deeper 
 than the skin. Christians are Christians, 
 no matter what their denominational tag. 
 Have you ever noticed that whenever 
 Christians talk on vital themes they inva- 
 riably slip into the same vocabulary and 
 mood } The branches of Christendom dif- 
 fer in polity and definition, but they are 
 all alike in their aims and needs. This 
 is why the study-door was opened so wide. 
 But the door was not open for the ad- 
 mission of ministers. In all his talks the 
 author has spoken only to laymen. This 
 book is for them. Its ambition is to help 
 them. The talks must be judged by their 
 aim. If the frailties and shortcomings of 
 clergymen are touched but lightly, or studi- 
 ously ignored, it is not because the author 
 is ignorant of them, or because he thinks 
 it sacrilegious to lay them bare, but be- 
 
xii How It Came About 
 
 cause ministerial delinquencies do not lie 
 within the scope of his purpose. When 
 he writes on the sins of clergymen it will 
 require a larger book than this to hold 
 what he has to say. If, on the other 
 hand, he seems to bear down hard on the 
 ignorance and perversity of laymen, it is 
 not because he is blind to their excel- 
 lences, or fails to measure the magnitude 
 of their service, but because the aim of the 
 talks is to call attention to those things 
 in which laymen are most apt to go astray. 
 The best people in the world, so the 
 author thinks, are laymen. The tallest 
 and sweetest saints whom it has been his 
 privilege to know have been, not in the 
 pulpit, but in the pew. There is probably 
 no subject on which a true minister of 
 Christ so loves to dwell in his thought as 
 the sacrifices which laymen are making 
 continually to advance God's kingdom. 
 If the author had wished to tell what he 
 thinks of the heroism and nobility and 
 wisdom of the members of the churches, 
 
Hozv It Came About. xiii 
 
 his talks would have filled a dozen vol- 
 umes instead of one. If his estimate of 
 laymen is unwarrantably exalted, the two 
 churches which it has been his privilege 
 to serve must be held responsible. Both 
 of these churches have given him, in gen- 
 erous measure, all the things for which he 
 pleads in the following pages. If the talks 
 seem frank to the verge of bluntness, and 
 if subjects often ostracized are discussed 
 in language which is not minced, it is 
 because the one who does the talking has 
 been long convinced that laymen and cler- 
 gymen have been and are too far apart; 
 and that when pastor and people become 
 willing to sit down together and talk about 
 themselves, their wishes and purposes, 
 with straightforward simplicity and unre- 
 strained candor, the Church of God will 
 enter upon an era of increased usefulness 
 and power. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 L The Unknown Man i 
 
 II. The Maligned Man 9 
 
 III. The Misunderstood Man i6 
 
 IV. The Importance of Knowing Him . 24 
 V. The Sermon 32 
 
 VI. What is the Matter? 39 
 
 VII. Who is to Blame? 46 
 
 VIII. Why Time is Needed 54 
 
 IX. Vacation, and Why 61 
 
 X. Objections to Vacations 68 
 
 XI. Money 75 
 
 XII. Ministerial Liberty 83 
 
 XIII. Liberty Defined 90 
 
 XIV. Sympathy 97 
 
 XV. Co-operation 104 
 
 XVI. Considerateness iii 
 
 XVII. Thoughtlessness 118 
 
 XV 
 
xvi Contents. 
 
 XVIII. Ways of Killing a Sermon 
 
 XIX. Inspiring the Minister . , 
 
 XX. Appreciating the Minister 
 
 XXI. Criticising the Minister 
 
 XXII. Securing a Minister . . 
 
 XXIII. Dismissing a Minister . 
 
 XXIV. The Minister's Wife . . 
 XXV. The Mission of Laymen . 
 
 PAGE 
 132 
 
 146 
 
 160 
 167 
 
QUIET TALKS WITH EARNEST 
 PEOPLE IN MY STUDY. 
 
 The Unknown Man. 
 
 Certainly, come in! I am delighted 
 to see you. Be seated, please. 
 
 And this is your first visit to a minis- 
 ter's study } I am surprised ! The world 
 as seen from a clergyman's study window- 
 is worth looking at, I assure you. You 
 must come often. 
 
 You will pardon me, I hope, if I grow 
 communicative, and even confidential. 
 Your coming has so touched me that out 
 of the abundance of my heart my mouth 
 is sure to say things which I am not in 
 the habit of saying in the pulpit. 
 
 You laymen, excuse me, do not call 
 on the minister often enough. You have 
 I 
 
2 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 magnified the value of pastoral calling 
 beyond reason. I wish that for the next 
 few generations there might be a new 
 emphasis on the "layman's" call. I have 
 heard many church-members complain be- 
 cause the pastor had not called on them. 
 I have never heard many confess that 
 they had neglected the pastor. I shall 
 consider this late call on me as fruit 
 meet for repentance. 
 
 No one can look out upon the uni- 
 versal church without saying, " Something 
 is wrong." Of course that is nothing 
 new. There has always been something 
 wrong, and probably there always will be. 
 But it is the business of Christians to 
 keep prying into the roots of wrong 
 things that they may devise methods of 
 setting the wrong things right. Let us 
 examine a few of the roots. 
 
 The first thing which strikes one on 
 even a hurried survey of the church is 
 the widespread discontent. There are 
 altogether too many dissatisfied parishes, 
 
The Unknown Man. 3 
 
 and I am afraid there are just as 
 many restless and hungry-hearted pastors. 
 Church quarrels get into the papers with 
 alarming frequency, and pastorates are 
 distressingly short. Even where there is 
 no noticeable friction, there is an appall- 
 ing meagreness of energy and power. 
 There is an immense difference between 
 being well and not being ill. One may 
 not know what health is, and yet never 
 be sick. Many churches, not sick enough 
 to quarrel with the minister, are, never- 
 theless, debilitated below the point at 
 which effective work becomes possible. 
 The wrangling, obstreperous churches are 
 not so saddening, I think, as the shrivelled 
 and impotent ones, which have only vi- 
 tality sufficient to save themselves from 
 extinction, and not vigor enough to show 
 the world what robust and conquering 
 Christianity is. One of the roots of all 
 our church troubles, I take it, is the fact 
 that clergymen and laymen do not come 
 close enough together. Were I asked to 
 
4 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 give a recipe for lengthening pastorates 
 and increasing the vitaUty of the churches, 
 I should say, " Shorten the distance 
 between the pulpit and the pew." Dis 
 tance breeds misunderstandings. When 
 pastor and people do not understand each 
 other, the nerve of power and peace is 
 severed. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that Protestants 
 have an inclination nowadays to hold 
 themselves aloof from their leaders. The 
 eagerness with which the saints seize the 
 back seats at prayer-meeting is signifi- 
 cant because illustrative. The chasm of 
 vacant pews to be seen in most churches 
 between pastor and people is the visible 
 sign of a spiritual gulf which ought to be 
 bridged. The evils of mediaeval priest- 
 craft have electrified the laity into a state 
 of chronic repulsion ; and the average 
 Protestant seems to be afraid of being 
 caught in the act of exhibiting too much 
 reverence for a clergyman's office, or 
 paying too much attention to what a 
 
The Unhioivn Man. 5 
 
 clergyman says. The right to read and 
 think for one's self is popularly construed 
 to mean 'that everybody is as good a the- 
 ologian as the minister. " The preacher 
 is no longer an oracle ! He has been 
 hurled from his pedestal ! He is a falli- 
 ble mortal, no wise;" or better than the 
 people to whom he preaches ! He labors 
 under serious limitations, and has inbred 
 and ineradicable biases, and therefore 
 what he says must be taken with a grain 
 of salt." The changes have been rung 
 upon this strain until a multitude of pro- 
 fessing Christians act upon the assump- 
 tion that a preacher is to be endured 
 but not heeded, criticised but not as- 
 sisted, pitied and paid, but not honored 
 and loved. 
 
 But nothing is gained by toppling a 
 man from his pedestal unless this brings 
 him closer to us. The important thing 
 m this world is not to hurl men from 
 their pedestals, but to understand them. 
 And notwithstanding all we have heard 
 
6 Qidct Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 about the dissipation of the atmosphere 
 of mystery in which the '' man of God " 
 was once enshrouded, it is safe to say 
 that the minister of to-day is but little 
 better known than he was centuries ago. 
 Once he was lost in the seclusion of the 
 cloister, now he is lost in the press of 
 the crowd. It is as easy to lose sight of 
 a man in the dust as in the clouds. Al- 
 though the clergyman of to-day is a man 
 mingling constantly with men, no other 
 man in the community is so imperfectly 
 understood. 
 
 But you are not altogether to blame for 
 not knowing him. You are busy, of 
 course ; I know that. His work is differ- 
 ent from yours. He does it in solitude. 
 And he never tells you about himself. If 
 a clergyman talks about himself he is put 
 down as an egotist. If he mentions his 
 work in conversation he is talking "shop." 
 He cannot complain. He cannot protest 
 against injustice. He cannot explain him- 
 self or defend himself, or lay bare the 
 
The Unknown Man. y 
 
 secrets of his interior life ; for Sundays are 
 few, and on those days he must tell the 
 people not of himself, but of One whom 
 to know is life eternal. 
 
 The result is, the preacher is the un- 
 known man of modern society. The 
 world thinks it knows him, but it does 
 not. The most that it says about him is 
 erroneous. Dame Rumor repeats stories 
 about his frailties and his idiosyncrasies, 
 and jocose writers picture him in divers 
 attitudes and colors, but he remains 
 unknown. 
 
 I have often wished that preachers had 
 time to talk now and then to their con- 
 gregations a little about themselves. It 
 would make them less professional, and 
 more human to their people. It is sin- 
 gular no book has ever yet been written 
 giving authentic glimpses of the ministe- 
 rial world for the edification of laymen. 
 Unnumbered volumes have been written 
 by clergymen for the benefit of theolo- 
 gical students, pointing out perils and 
 
8 Quiet Talks WitJi Earnest People. 
 
 burdens, and explaining methods and pro- 
 cesses, and ministers are constantly tell- 
 ing one another of their experiences and 
 needs ; but little has been written or 
 spoken for the purpose of letting laymen 
 into the secrets and mysteries of minis- 
 terial activity and being. And herein the 
 whole church suffers loss. Knowledge is 
 essential to sympathy, and sympathy is 
 indispensable to power ; and power is the 
 one thing which the church has been 
 promised, and which it most conspicuously 
 and lamentably lacks. We may expect 
 a new Pentecost when laymen learn to 
 put themselves into the minister's place. 
 When we know each other better, some of 
 the mists will roll away. 
 
The Maligned Man. 
 
 11. 
 
 The Maligned Man. 
 
 I WAS saying that the clergyman is the 
 unknown man of modern society. Be- 
 cause unknown he is maligned. The 
 world charges the clergyman with three 
 cardinal sins, — laziness, covetousness, and 
 cowardice. It suspects him of a half- 
 dozen others, but it is sure of these three. 
 To multitudes of men the minister is a 
 gentleman of starched and elegant leisure, 
 a lover of filthy lucre, a trimmer who cuts 
 his discourses to fit his congregation. I 
 suspect many Christians are not aware 
 how vast are the areas of society in which 
 this estimate is almost universally ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 That a clergyman should be considered 
 a loafer is not strange. He does his work 
 in solitude. Men see him as he rides in 
 
lO Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 a carriage to marry a couple for a hand- 
 some fee, or as he offers remarks at a 
 funeral, or as he speaks in the pulpit, or 
 as he sits in a rocking-chair discussing the 
 weather with some member of his flock, 
 all of which the average man feels himself 
 capable of performing without effort or 
 fatigue. All other men — the farmer, the 
 mechanic, the merchant, the builder — do 
 their work where they can be seen of men ; 
 but the minister does his work in solitude. 
 Not one of you ever saw a clergyman 
 work. The harder he toils in secret, the 
 more easily he preaches. This ease be- 
 comes added proof that preaching is to 
 him as easy as breathing, and that there- 
 fore he does not work at all. His work, 
 moreover, is mental. It is hard to con- 
 vince hand workers that head workers 
 really work. The perspiring farmer in 
 the cornfield will not believe that the 
 dainty artist at his easel beneath a tree 
 is working. Nor can a mechanic readily 
 believe that a man who reads books 
 
The Maligned Man. 1 1 
 
 through the week and on Sunday exhorts 
 people to be good has as hard a job as 
 he has. It must needs be that to many 
 men the clergyman should seem an idler. 
 
 Shall I shock you when I say that the 
 clergyman belongs to the laboring classes, 
 and that no man has a longer day than 
 he } An eight or ten or even a twelve 
 hour day would not be sufficient for his 
 work. No mechanic in the country works 
 as many hours a day as the faithful clergy- 
 man. Brain work cannot be done in the 
 streets, and timed by the town clock, but 
 it is work. The hardest work done in this 
 world is brain work. Labor cannot be 
 measured by the beads of sweat on the 
 forehead. Work cannot be estimated in 
 hours. It must be computed by expen- 
 diture of nervous energy, measured in 
 ounces of vitality. The artist may pour 
 out in a day more life on the canvas than 
 the farmer on his cornfield. A man in 
 writing a discourse can expend in three 
 hours more nerve-force than a hodcarrier 
 
12 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 will expend in ten. In the higher moods 
 of the mind, a single hour of creative work 
 will leave a man sapless and limp. Never 
 allow yourself to use the term "laboring 
 classes " in referring to wage-earners. 
 The expression is misleading, and perpetu- 
 ates the ancient delusion that breaking 
 down cells in the muscles is labor, while 
 breaking down cells in the brain is play. 
 Why should men who use their hands be 
 considered laborers any more than teachers 
 and doctors and lawyers and preachers } 
 But this brain work is not all. There is 
 heart work. The sweat of the heart has 
 more blood in it than the sweat of the 
 brow. To ride to a funeral is easy ; but to 
 bear daily the grief of wrecked homes — 
 such labor bowed to the earth the Son of 
 God himself. 
 
 It is because the minister is counted an 
 idler that the world is so sensitive con- 
 cerning his salary. It nettles men to see 
 a man paid for doing nothing. The size 
 of a minister's salary is always a matter of 
 
The Maligned Man. 1 3 
 
 concern to the entire community. And it 
 is a saying repeated with rehsh that a 
 minister always feels called of the Lord 
 to labor in the field which offers the lar- 
 gest financial returns. 
 
 That men should say this is to be ex- 
 pected. We always read others through 
 ourselves. A man's heart is the lens 
 through which he sees the world. The 
 average man lives at the level of dollars 
 and cents. How can he be expected to 
 acknowledge that human nature can be 
 swayed by motives. higher than his own.? 
 A few facts are worth remembering. A 
 clergyman has a divine right to compen- 
 sation. He has, ordinarily, at least ;^I5,- 
 000 invested in his head ; and capital is 
 entitled to some 'return. He is a laborer ; 
 and, as a workman, he is worthy of his 
 meat. The vast majority of clergymen 
 are underpaid. No other men do so much 
 work for so little money as they. Brain 
 commands higher prices in every other 
 profession than in the ministry. That 
 
14 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 clergymen always rush to the church 
 which pays best is false. A thousand 
 clergymen in the United States can stand 
 up and prove its falsity. The sneer which 
 condemns a preacher for leaving a small 
 church for a large one is both wicked and 
 silly. A clergyman, unless providentially 
 hindered, ought to accept the leadership 
 of the largest church which he is capable 
 of serving. Every man ought to enter the 
 largest door which Providence opens in his 
 face. Why condemn a minister for follow- 
 ing the dictates of common sense, and for 
 doing what is clearly a duty } 
 
 And is the average minister a trimmer } 
 No ! When you hear men say so, deny 
 it. It is your duty to deny it, unless 
 you know the assertion to be true. No 
 one can injure the reputation of a clergy- 
 man without weakening the influence of 
 the church universal, and hurting souls — 
 it may be fatally. The world suffers 
 more than you are apt to think every 
 time a minister is vilified. "Then I and 
 
The Maligned MaJt. 1 5 
 
 you and all of us " fall down, and earth's 
 base seems to be built on stubble. If 
 your minister, perchance, happens to be 
 a trimmer, then work unceasingly to get 
 him out of the pulpit. Do not simply 
 talk. In God's name act ! To laymen is 
 committed no more important work than 
 deposing ministers who are unworthy, 
 and strengthening the arms of those who 
 are true. There are more brave men in 
 the pulpits of Christendom than in any 
 army which ever followed a general to 
 the mouths of the guns. To be sure, 
 there is an occasional man who, like a 
 coward, strikes only distant evils and sins 
 which may be safely hit ; but even in the 
 apostolic band there was a man whose 
 name was Judas. 
 
1 6 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Misunderstood Man. 
 
 A POET has suggested that much might 
 be gained could we see ourselves as 
 others see us ; but the gain would be 
 even greater if others could see us as 
 we really are. It would from many a mis- 
 conception free them. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes has called attention to the fact 
 that in every conversation between two 
 people there are six persons present. 
 There is the first person as God sees him, 
 as the second person sees him, and as he 
 sees himself. There is the second person 
 as God sees him, as the first person sees 
 him, and as he sees himself. If this is 
 true, there must be a regiment of minis- 
 ters in every parish of a thousand people. 
 Each member of the parish sees the 
 minister at a different angle, and these 
 
The Misunderstood Man. 17 
 
 thousand imaginary men form a nimbus 
 around the real minister, conceahng him 
 from everybody but God alone. Just 
 as Agassiz could form a fish from a single 
 scale, so many persons have a fashion 
 of constructing ministers from a splinter 
 of a sermon, or a fragment of a course of 
 action. An album containing a thousand 
 portraits of himself as photographed on 
 the minds of a thousand people would 
 be an interesting volume for a pastor's 
 library. It might humble him in the 
 dust, but it would also bring consolation. 
 If some of the portraits were black as 
 Beelzebub, others would grace him with 
 the glory of an archangel. 
 
 It is a current saying that clergymen 
 do not understand people. Let us turn 
 it round, and say that people do not 
 understand clergymen. Why cannot a 
 minister understand people .'* He works 
 with human nature all the time. His 
 library is stocked with books that analyze 
 it, and discuss it in all its manifold varie- 
 
1 8 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 ties and operations. He is brought into 
 closer contact with men than any other 
 man in the community. He touches men 
 on more sides of their nature. He hears 
 death-bed revelations. He knows secrets 
 which are intrusted to none other. He 
 hears confessions of guilt and crime 
 which do not get into the papers. He 
 knows closets with skeletons in them of 
 whose existence the community does not 
 dream. He has an e^ttr^e into homes 
 whose doors are shut to the world. He 
 is with the sick, and the remorseful, and 
 the poor, and the heartbroken. He lis- 
 tens to men's aspirations and doubts and 
 fears, and complaints and anxieties, and 
 loves and hates, and blasphemies and de- 
 spairs. And yet he does not know 
 human nature ! It makes me smile to 
 hear a business man say, in a supercilious 
 tone, that preachers do not know people. 
 This business man knows several church- 
 members who do not pay their debts, 
 and therefore the guileless minister would 
 
The Misunderstood Man. 19 
 
 be very much surprised, if he only knew 
 how many wolves in sheep's clothing are 
 masquerading under his very nose — as 
 though the clergyman does not know 
 more of the hypocrisies and inconsisten- 
 cies and unworthinesses of professing 
 Christians than any merchant in the 
 town ! Ministers may seem innocent and 
 nawe^ but they know more of what is 
 going on than the average man gives 
 them credit for knowing. 
 
 I suppose they are counted ignorant 
 of the world because on Sunday they do 
 not manifest that sort of omniscience 
 which the daily press displays. But a 
 wise clergyman, knowing that his people 
 through the week have had their minds 
 stained and marred by the base and dis- 
 mal, endeavors on Sunday to fix their 
 hearts on things above. His refusal to 
 go into the puddle does not prove his 
 ignorance of it. Or is it because minis- 
 ters do not indulge in the common vices 
 of men } A man may know what is in 
 
20 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 men, and yet not accompany them in their 
 sinning. Every clergyman has in him all 
 the passions and powers by whose wrong 
 use men become scapegraces and villains. 
 
 But this notion is overtopped in pre- 
 posterousness by the idea that a clergy- 
 man has a better chance to be good than 
 anybody else. The opinion is quite gen- 
 eral among laymen. They ground their 
 conviction on the fact that a minister is 
 obliged by his calling to move in good 
 society. Men hide their vices and curb 
 their tongues in his presence. He need 
 not touch anything unclean. He lives 
 in his study and in the pulpit, and into 
 neither place can the devil make his way. 
 So it seems to many a layman. Many 
 men are obliged to do their work among 
 profane and foul-mouthed companions. 
 Multiplied incitements to evil solicit them 
 on every side. It is not strange that 
 such men should look upon the clergy- 
 man as sheltered from the darts of the 
 evil one, and as enjoying an immunity 
 
The Misunderstood Man. 2 1 
 
 from temptation which is denied to all 
 other mortals. 
 
 A minister on a pedestal has little in- 
 fluence over men. Unless he is in all 
 points tempted like his brethren, he can- 
 not be touched with the feeling of their 
 infirmities. It is important, therefore, 
 for laymen to remember that the battle 
 of life is for all. Men may fight at dif- 
 ferent levels ; but no matter where they 
 stand, they are on a battlefield. Some 
 sins are coarse and carnal, and others fine 
 and subtle ; but all alike separate the soul 
 from God. There is no hedge around 
 the minister. He has all the temptations 
 of other men, and some additional of his 
 own. The devil has access to his study. 
 He was in Luther's study when the re- 
 former threw his inkstand at him. He 
 can ascend the pulpit stairs. He often 
 does. What a host of demons the clergy- 
 man is obliged to meet and conquer ! 
 What opportunities for him to be a dem- 
 agogue, a coward, a mischief-maker ! 
 
22 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 How easy to pose as a defender of the 
 faith, and cast insinuations on his brother 
 minister who reads the gospel with a dif- 
 ferent emphasis ! How easy to be vain 
 of a fine voice or a superb presence ! 
 How easy to be envious of men just a 
 little ahead of him in power and fame ! 
 How easy to be lazy, uncharitable, deceit- 
 ful, domineering, autocratic, or peevish ! 
 How easy to wilt under discouragement ! 
 How easy to commit any of the sins to 
 which our frail humanity is prone ! The 
 number of Christian ministers who in 
 each generation have gone down the 
 broad road while urging men to choose 
 the narrow one is conclusive proof that 
 clergymen, above all other men, need to 
 put on the whole armor of God in order 
 to stand against the wiles of the devil. 
 
 The fact that the minister deals con- 
 stantly with spiritual things is proof to 
 the unthinking that saintship to him 
 comes easy, whereas the constant han- 
 dling of high ideas and moral truths is 
 
TJie Misunderstood Man. 23 
 
 a source of constant danger. Familiarity 
 has a tendency to deaden sensibility ; and 
 just as soldiers often become blasphe- 
 mous on the battlefield, and undertakers 
 sometirnes come to look on death without 
 a trace of awe, so a minister, unless he 
 prays and watches, will have at last a 
 heart unresponsive to the very truth 
 which he is sent to teach. It is some- 
 thing to be remembered always that the 
 Scribes and Pharisees fell into a deeper 
 ditch than did the publicans and harlots. 
 
24 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Importance of Knowing Him. 
 
 Every layman believes that the minis- 
 ter should know his people. Every cler- 
 gyman believes that too. All through 
 his seminary course the importance of 
 knowing his people, their names, dispo- 
 sitions, occupations, habits, and needs is 
 dinned into him. Every minister who 
 understands his business works constantly 
 to establish a personal friendly relation 
 between himself and his people. With- 
 out this relation his preaching comes to 
 naught. 
 
 But it is equally important that a lay- 
 man should know his pastor. It is not to 
 be expected that the clergyman should go 
 all the way. He cannot if he would. The 
 distance between two souls is so great 
 that while both together can bridge it, 
 
The Importance of Knowing Him. 25 
 
 the bridging can be accomplished by 
 neither one alone. If it is Christian and 
 necessary for a minister to enter into the 
 needs and experiences of his people, it is 
 no less necessary and Christian that lay- 
 men should enter into the life and labors 
 of their pastor. It is important for the 
 layman himself. If he does not know his 
 pastor, he cannot love him. If he does 
 not love him, he will not be moulded by 
 him. Love is the only flame hot enough 
 to render the soul plastic. For the min- 
 ister's sake also it is essential that his 
 people should know him. His work is 
 the building of men. He cannot trans- 
 form men who are not responsive to his 
 touch. And thus if laymen fail to under- 
 stand their pastor, his efforts are nullified, 
 the power of the church is crippled, and 
 the progress of God's kingdom checked. 
 
 Let me suggest, then, brethren, that 
 you get closer to the minister. Get as 
 close to him as you can. In the church 
 meetings get near him. The world con- 
 
26 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 demns the clergy for poor speaking. The 
 world forgets that the majority of min- 
 isters are obliged to speak under con- 
 ditions which render effective speaking 
 impossible. The most expert operator 
 cannot send a telegram if the wire is cut, 
 nor can the greatest orator speak with 
 power if separated from his audience. 
 Cultivate, I beseech you, a love for the 
 front pews. 
 
 Get near him in your difficulties. The 
 abuse of the confessional in the Roman 
 Catholic Church has made Protestants 
 shy of confession. But it should be 
 borne in mind that it is the confessional, 
 and not confession, against which Protes- 
 tantism protests. The former is mis- 
 chievous and dangerous, the latter is 
 good for the soul. The confessional is 
 built on a heaven-implanted instinct, — 
 the instinct which prompts us to seek 
 relief by sharing our sin or sorrow or 
 perplexity with another. The institution 
 would not have survived its monstrous 
 
The Importance of Knowing Him. 27 
 
 abuse had not the instinct been deep- 
 seated and ineradicable. Compulsory con- 
 fession is tyranny, but voluntary personal 
 conference is rational and Scriptural. 
 Why not use your pastor more } A half- 
 hour's conversation with him may bring 
 you more relief than a score of sermons. 
 Every life has its doubts and perplexi- 
 ties, its remorses and despondencies ; and 
 many a Christian flounders in darkness 
 for years rather than let his pastor know 
 that he is floundering. Many difficulties 
 and doubts vanish in the light of larger 
 knowledge, and all burdens are lightened 
 when told to a friend. Make the pastor 
 your friend. 
 
 Get close to him in his work. Seize 
 his view-point. Grasp his plans. He 
 will not command you, but he advises 
 you. His advice ought to have in it 
 something of the urgency and majesty of 
 a command. Do not be afraid to obey 
 him. Obedience is a virtue worth culti- 
 vating. There is none greater or rarer. 
 
28 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 The mediaeval doctrine of priestly author- 
 ity we Protestants have discarded, but it 
 was based upon a truth. In the New 
 Testament the minister is given a place 
 which we are just now in danger of deny- 
 ing him. 
 
 If you are close enough to him, you 
 will not allow men to rehearse in your 
 presence the stock yarns about clergy- 
 men which the world delights to repeat. 
 Human nature is prone to act upon the 
 principle, "From one learn all;" but never 
 does it so act with such alacrity as when 
 sitting in judgment upon ministers. A 
 minister marries a rich wife, and almost 
 immediately discovers that his throat is 
 weak. Whereupon it becomes an adage 
 that clergymen, like other men, loaf when 
 they can. The son of a clergyman de- 
 generates into a scapegrace ; and in time 
 that one boy becomes in the world's ears 
 a million boys, and the lying remark that 
 a minister's children are always the .worst 
 in the community hardens into imperish- 
 
TJie Importance of Knowing Him. 29 
 
 able tradition. An absent-minded, unprac- 
 tical clerical bookworm fails to measure 
 the value of money or the nature of 
 men, and a story illustrative of the folly 
 of the simpleton is published from Dan 
 to Beersheba as an example of the nin- 
 nies and theorizers who have set them- 
 selves up as prophets in Israel. An 
 indolent Reverend preaches old sermons, 
 and jokes about his barrel which he 
 keeps turning over ; and his stupid joke 
 is told wherever the gospel is preached, 
 not so much as a memorial of him as a 
 condemnation of the whole race of preach- 
 ers. A clergyman is at the mercy of 
 the community. If church-members do 
 not defend him, who will t His reputa- 
 tion lies all exposed, and any one can 
 injure it who chooses. A clergyman 
 with a reputation spotted is impotent. 
 His reputation is as important as his 
 character. Other men can dispense with 
 reputation, and do their work success- 
 fully. To the clergyman both reputa- 
 
30 Qidet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 tion and character are indispensable. The 
 farmer can sell his pigs and oats no mat- 
 ter what his neighbors say of him. The 
 shrewd merchant can amass a fortune, 
 even though a reputed libertine. The 
 able lawyer can command an extensive 
 practice, however rumor may busy her- 
 self with his name. But a clergyman 
 cannot do his work if on his reputation 
 there is a single stain. God is satisfied 
 with character alone, but men are not. 
 They demand reputation too. No mat- 
 ter how wise a clergyman may be, he 
 can have little influence if supposed to 
 be a dunce. No matter how saintly, his 
 words are without weight if men suspect 
 his piety. His influence is conditioned 
 on the confidence and love of those to 
 whom he ministers. To lie about him 
 is to shut men's hearts against him. It 
 was not from idle curiosity that Jesus 
 asked the question, " Whom do men say 
 that I am } " His influence over men 
 depended not simply on what he was, 
 
The Importance of Knowing Him. 3 1 
 
 but on men's estimate of him. And as 
 soon as he found a man whose concep- 
 tion of him was adequate and true, he 
 mounted at once into a great joy, and 
 saw in vision a church against which the 
 gates of Hades could not prevail. 
 
32 Qidet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 V. 
 
 The Sermon, 
 
 I THINK I heard one of you say a little 
 while ago that in your opinion the preach- 
 ing of to-day does not come up to the 
 demands of the times. I knew you would 
 say that, and I agree with you. A great 
 many ministers are just as certain of that 
 as you are. It is not enough to say, as is 
 often done, that the preaching of to-day is 
 far superior to that of any preceding age. 
 As a statement this is true, but as an ar- 
 gument it is fallacious. It does not cover 
 the case. The vital question is, Has 
 preaching in the last half century kept 
 pace with the general advance in culture .-* 
 And to this question the answer, I think, 
 must be. No. That the average preach- 
 ing in America to-day is far below the 
 legitimate demand of the pews is, to my 
 
The Sermon. 33 
 
 mind, a fact which cannot be successfully 
 evaded. 
 
 You laymen, I imagine, are generally 
 agreed that there is something wrong with 
 the sermon. You find it difficult to say 
 just what is lacking, but of the lack you 
 are altogether certain. You do not agree 
 among yourselves when you offer expla- 
 nations, and I am afraid many of your ex- 
 planations will not bear analysis. Some 
 of you say that the cause of all the trouble 
 is laziness, others say stupidity, others say 
 profundity, others say other-worldliness, 
 while still others of you confess that you 
 are all at sea, and do not know how to 
 diagnose a disease so complicated and dis- 
 tressing. You are sure of one thing, and 
 that is that the culprit is the preacher. 
 
 It must be confessed that there are 
 sluggards in the pulpit. But there would 
 not be so many if the laymen did their 
 duty, and drove these sluggards out. 
 There is also an occasional minister who 
 has not many convolutions in the gray 
 
34 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 matter of the brain. But these men con- 
 stitute so small a minority of the modern 
 army of preachers that we may drop them 
 from our discussion, and pass on to con- 
 sider the alleged sin of preaching sermons 
 too profound. 
 
 When laymen fail to take an interest in 
 their pastor's sermons, and try to follow 
 his arguments in vain, they are some- 
 times generous enough to attribute their 
 failure to their own stupidity and their 
 pastor's extraordinary powers of thinking. 
 It is comforting to many laymen to feel 
 that their pastor's sermons are profound, 
 even though the sermons fail to give them 
 either light or strength. And occasionally 
 a clergyman, doomed by his limitations to 
 preach to a drowsy dozen, consoles him- 
 self with the delusion that it is nothing 
 but the profundity of his thought which 
 prevents the common people from listen- 
 ing to him gladly. 
 
 But no sermon ever fails because of 
 its depth. The deep preachers whom 
 
TJie Sermon. 35 
 
 nobody cares to hear are not deep at all. 
 He is a shallow man who, commissioned 
 to bear a message to the people, fails to 
 speak that message in a language which 
 the people can understand. A man ca- 
 pable of keen thought sees at once that it 
 is his business to preach sermons which 
 will feed and build up the men to whom 
 he speaks. A preacher only dimly under- 
 stood is no preacher at all. It is an 
 awful condemnation on a preacher to say 
 that his sermon is above the comprehen- 
 sion of the congregation to which it is 
 delivered. No minister has ever yet been 
 hampered by excessive profundity of 
 thought. Many, however, have been 
 handicapped by ignorance in the use of 
 words. It is not excessive thought, but 
 defective language, which puts people to 
 sleep, and empties the pews. The plain- 
 est congregation can take in the greatest 
 thoughts which the brainiest thinker can 
 clothe in words. The sublimest concep- 
 tions can be expressed in homely sen- 
 
36 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 tences. The two profoundest preachers 
 whom America has yet produced, Henry 
 Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks, were 
 also the simplest in language, and the 
 most easily understood. 
 
 Simplicity is one of the marks of great- 
 ness. So it has been from the beginning. 
 Jesus of Nazareth, whose eyes pierced the 
 depths, spoke always in familiar words, 
 and never did he rise higher than when 
 talking to an unlettered woman who gave 
 him a drink at the well. What is taken 
 for profundity of thought in the pulpit is 
 often only technicality of language. The 
 simplest thoughts may become obscure 
 when couched in language which is 
 cloudy. It is the misfortune of min- 
 isters that throughout their seminary 
 course they read almost exclusively 
 heavily Latinized English, and become 
 addicted to the use of the dialect of 
 criticism and the patois of philosophy. 
 Unconsciously to himself a clergyman 
 often drops the language of the home 
 
The Sermon. 37 
 
 and the street, and speaks the language 
 of the schools. Unless he keeps a sharp 
 and constant eye upon his language, and 
 reads with care the most human novelists 
 and sweetest poets, he will find himself 
 preaching in some other language than 
 that wherein his congregation were born. 
 There are no Pentecostal miracles unless 
 preacher and people speak the same lan- 
 guage. You are to be pitied, brethren, 
 if your preacher preaches to you in the 
 technical vocabulary of modern science 
 or the cold and abstract phrases of meta- 
 physics. 
 
 Nor are you correct when you say 
 preachers are too doctrinal. Many are 
 not doctrinal enough. It is doctrine 
 which a preacher is ordained to preach. 
 If he ceases to be doctrinal, his occupa- 
 tion is gone. The great doctrines of the 
 Christian faith — such as the fatherhood 
 of God, the deity of Christ, the presence 
 and power of the Holy Spirit, the brother- 
 hood of man, the forgiveness of sins, the 
 
38 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 judgment day, the life eternal — cannot 
 be preached too frequently. Congrega- 
 tions fed on doctrines such as these have 
 red blood and endurance. All others are 
 scrawny and impotent. When you cry 
 out against doctrinal preaching, you are 
 using the wrong adjective. You mean to 
 say that you do not like preaching which 
 is metaphysical or speculative or scholas- 
 tic. You have no taste for theories. 
 You love truth. You are weary of 
 speculations. You are hungry for facts. 
 You do not want the guesses of men, but 
 the doctrines of Jesus. You desire not 
 only the sky ends but the earth ends of 
 the gospel. And you ought to have 
 them. Blessed are you if you have in 
 your pulpit a man who can breathe easily 
 the difficult air of the steep mountain-tops 
 of spiritual experience, and who can tell 
 you on the Lord's Day, in the sweet, fa- 
 miliar words of home, the things which 
 he has seen and heard. 
 
What Is the Matter f 39 
 
 VI. 
 
 What Is The Matter? 
 
 No, I have no objection to telling you 
 what I conceive to be the radical defect 
 in much of the preaching of our time. It 
 is lack of spiritual passion. The tone of 
 authority is faint. Too much of the preach- 
 ing is like that of the Scribes. Clergymen 
 are numerous, but prophets are few. 
 
 Here lies the trouble. Only a prophet 
 can achieve genuine success in these hur- 
 ried and fascinating days. Time was when 
 a scholar could do it. When books were 
 expensive, and locked up in the libraries 
 of the elite, a man versed in book-lore could 
 find a Sunday audience eager to listen to 
 the information which he was willing to 
 impart. Those days are gone. Before the 
 rise of the daily paper, the preacher could 
 be an editor, and make his sermons running 
 
40 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 commentaries on current events. That 
 sort of preaching was once counted suc- 
 cessful. It is a failure now. Before the 
 multiplication of lecture platforms and 
 music-halls and art-galleries, and other 
 sources of intellectual entertainment and 
 aesthetic gratification, fine music from the 
 organ loft, and exquisite essays from the 
 pulpit, seemed to satisfy all reasonable 
 demands. But music, while it may still 
 have charms to soothe the savage breast, 
 is not conspicuously successful in attract- 
 ing non-church-goers into the house of God. 
 And much of the finest literary work dis- 
 played at present in American pulpits 
 seems to be hopelessly lost on this un- 
 kempt and stiff-necked generation. Even 
 the pulpit reformer does not wear his 
 crown long. He has had his day, like the 
 editor preacher and the rest. By striking 
 one special evil hard, he may cause the 
 world to resound for a season with the 
 echoes of his blows, and may even succeed 
 in chipping off a fragment of some false 
 
IV/iaf Is The Matter f 41 
 
 custom or established wrong ; but unless 
 a preacher is a great deal more than a 
 reformer, he cannot long hold the attention 
 of an intelligent congregation, or hope to 
 build an enduring Christian church. In 
 short, the poor preacher has been ousted 
 from the snug position of editor, lecturer, 
 essayist, reformer; and there is nothing 
 left him now but the arduous vocation of 
 a prophet. 
 
 And this has been his true place from 
 the beginning. His other positions were 
 either usurped or thrust upon him by the 
 exigencies of the times. The printing- 
 press has pushed him up at last into his 
 proper sphere. If he attempts now to 
 compete with other men in their fields of 
 labor, he invites the failure which he 
 deserves. The position of a minister is 
 unique. His mission is momentous. His 
 work, while fitting into the labors of all 
 other servants of the Lord, is different 
 from theirs. The moment he forsakes 
 the task appointed him, and attempts to 
 
42 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 share the work and honors of other men, 
 swift retribution follows in his track. 
 Woe to the preacher who in these mod- 
 ern days shirks the wrestlings and agonies 
 of the prophet, and attempts to perform 
 the duties assigned to others ! 
 
 And yet this is the very thing which 
 many preachers are doing. Notwithstand- 
 ing the discussion ad nauseam through 
 the week in the daily press of every hap- 
 pening and event, there are preachers who 
 have the temerity to expect people to 
 come to the church on the Lord's Day to 
 hear the old newspaper straw threshed over 
 again. And notwithstanding every cen- 
 tre-table groans with periodicals and mag- 
 azines edited with consummate ability, and 
 filled with articles written in many cases 
 by the pen of genius, there are ministers 
 who dabble on the Lord's Day in literary 
 discussion and philosophical speculation, 
 and then wonder why the blessing of the 
 Almighty does not rest upon their labors. 
 There is an itch abroad just now to work 
 
What Is The Matter? 43 
 
 reforms. Everything is being overhauled, 
 from systems of theology to boards of 
 aldermen. The social order is rotten, the 
 industrial system is accursed, the ecclesi- 
 astical regime is ripe for burning — so men 
 assert. There is a hubbub of discordant 
 voices, each voice screaming out a pana- 
 cea, and promising the golden age ; and 
 in this fury for readjustment and recon- 
 struction, too many pulpits, I am inclined 
 to think, waste their time and strength. 
 It is a proof of Christ's matchless great- 
 ness that he stood in the presence of the 
 Roman empire and never struck it. His 
 work was to strike the heart. By strik- 
 ing the hearts of peasants, he overturned 
 the empire. He says to his heralds, 
 " Follow me! " 
 
 Unless a sermon is different from all 
 other forms of address, the world to-day 
 does not care to hear it. If tired men 
 and women are to be expected to attend 
 public worship Sunday morning, the at- 
 mosphere of the house of God must be 
 
44 Qidet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 made different from that which these 
 people breathe through the week. The 
 late R. H. Hutton, in one of his essays, 
 says that Walter Bagehot once asked him 
 to hear one of the afternoon sermons 
 of the chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, Fred- 
 erick D. Maurice. Bagehot assured Hut- 
 ton that he would feel that something 
 different went on there from that which 
 went on in an ordinary church or chapel 
 service, that there was a sense of "some- 
 thing religious" in the air which was 
 not to be found elsewhere. Bagehot's 
 word was fulfilled. Hutton heard and saw 
 and felt that day things which lived in 
 his memory through life. He heard a 
 prophet. Maurice spoke for God. The 
 intense and thrilling tones, the pathetic 
 emphasis, the passionate trust, the burn- 
 ing exultation, the atmosphere of reve- 
 rence and devotion, awed and subdued the 
 worshippers. The church became indeed 
 a holy place. The words of the service 
 seemed put into the preacher's mouth, 
 
What is the Matter f 45 
 
 "while he, with his whole soul bent on 
 their wonderful drift, uttered them as an 
 awe-struck but thankful envoy tells the 
 tale of danger and deliverance." 
 
 It is this '' something religious " which 
 one misses in too many of our American 
 churches and in too much of our modern 
 preaching. Bright things, true things, 
 helpful things, are said in abundance, but 
 the spiritual passion is lacking. The ser- 
 vice smacks of time and not of eternity. 
 The atmosphere of the sermon is not 
 that of Mount Sinai or Mount Calvary, 
 but that of the professor's room or the 
 sanctum of the editor. The intellect is 
 instructed, the emotions are touched, but 
 the conscience is not stirred, nor is the 
 will compelled to appear before the judg- 
 ment throne and render its decision. The 
 old tone of the " Thus saith the Lord " 
 of the Hebrew prophets is lacking. Men 
 are everywhere hungering and waiting for 
 it, but in many churches they have thus 
 far waited for it in vain. 
 
46 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 VII. 
 
 Who Is To Blame? 
 
 Nor is the minister altogether to blame. 
 He is the victim of circumstances and 
 the Zeitgeist and — laymen. The time 
 was when people lived largely in villages. 
 In those rural days the minister was 
 preacher and teacher, and pastor and ad- 
 ministrator, and counsellor and general 
 public servant. The world to-day lives 
 largely in cities, and it is the carrying of 
 rural traditions into city conditions which 
 is in part responsible for the present 
 dearth of strong preaching; It is the old, 
 old story of laying aside the command- 
 ment of God and holding the tradition 
 of men. 
 
 In village days every man was expected 
 to be able to do a dozen different things, 
 and the preacher was not an exception to 
 
W/io Is To Blame ? 47 
 
 the rule. The farmer understood a dozen 
 different trades, and why should not a 
 clergyman fill a dozen different positions ? 
 But 
 
 New occasions teach new duties ; 
 Time makes ancient good uncouth. 
 
 The village has developed into a city, 
 and all the problems have changed. The 
 process of specialization has gone steadily 
 forward, by which each man is given 
 some one specific thing to do. Each de- 
 partment of work is divided and subdi- 
 vided indefinitely, thus securing greater 
 concentration and an increase of effi- 
 ciency. The expert lawyer masters only 
 one province of law, the expert physi- 
 cian confines himself to one class of dis- 
 eases, the expert editor writes on only 
 one line of subjects, the expert teacher 
 teaches only the fragment of one branch 
 of knowledge ; but the minister is still 
 expected to preach, and at the same time 
 do a hundred other things. The work 
 connected with the average city church 
 
48 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 is sufficient to fill the time and exhaust 
 the energy of several men, but in the 
 majority of cases the minister is left to 
 bear all the burdens alone. He must be 
 the director of the church's manifold 
 activities ; he must make pastoral calls, 
 after the fashion of his country ancestor ; 
 he must be public servant, answering let- 
 ters innumerable, speaking at banquets, 
 serving on committees, presiding at meet- 
 ings, acting as director or trustee of col- 
 leges and societies, orating at anniver- 
 saries, pushing forward lagging reforms, 
 encouraging numberless enterprises ; and 
 then, fagged in body and jaded in mind, 
 he goes into the pulpit to preach ! And 
 you laymen — some of you — wonder why 
 preachers preach no better than they do ! 
 The wonder is that we can preach at all. 
 The average preacher is simply sapped 
 and overwhelmed by the avalanche of 
 demands which the modern world makes 
 upon him. 
 
 The spirit of the age — Matthew Ar- 
 
Who Is To Blame f 49 
 
 nold's Zeitgeist — comes in to make mat- 
 ters still worse. A mania for organiza- 
 tion has seized the world. The distemper 
 has penetrated the life of the churches. 
 The average church boasts more societies 
 and meetings than an industrious rose- 
 bush displays roses in June. In this fury 
 for organization, the life of many a church 
 is being ruthlessly dissipated. So much 
 time and energy are expended in keeping 
 the ponderous and complex machinery in 
 motion that healthy Christian life is sac- 
 rificed, and effective work becomes well- 
 nigh impossible. The church suffers, the 
 home suffers, weary mortals suffer — es- 
 pecially the minister. He finds himself 
 the business manager of a large concern. 
 He must keep his eye on all sorts of so- 
 cieties, clubs, and guilds. He must attend 
 the meetings of these at stated intervals 
 or be suspicioned of lukewarmness in 
 the Master's cause. The modern church 
 may win applause by multiplying its 
 agencies for serving men, but all such 
 
50 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 apparent progress is dearly paid for when 
 secured at the expense of the preacher. 
 A boys' brigade drill or a soup-kitchen or 
 a gymnasium will never do the work of 
 a searching and inspiring sermon. The 
 word of the Lord coming hot and strong 
 from prophetic lips is the one thing 
 which the church can never dispense 
 with without forfeiting her life. Any- 
 thing — no matter how excellent in itself 
 — will in the long run, if it diminishes 
 the power of the preacher, cripple the 
 efficiency and retard the progress of 
 the church. It is not by philanthropic 
 agencies nor the creation of new societies, 
 but by the " foolishness of preaching," 
 that the world is to be redeemed. 
 
 Therefore, brethren, guard your min- 
 ister with all diligence, for out of his 
 heart proceeds the word of life. If you 
 convert him into an errand-boy or a pack- 
 horse, you not only kill him, but you check 
 the progress of the kingdom. If you per- 
 mit him to fritter away his time on or- 
 
W/io Is To Blame f 51 
 
 ganizations, and squander his strength in 
 administration, he cannot speak to you on 
 the Lord's Day with an energy that will 
 stir you, and with a knowledge that will 
 build you up. There is nothing more pa- 
 thetic in the religious history of America 
 than the cruel way in which ministers are 
 sacrificed to the ignorance and thought- 
 lessness of Christians. One layman by 
 himself is not cruel ; but five hundred or 
 a thousand laymen, when banded together 
 in a Christian church, can do things which 
 a savage would blush at. They can sacri- 
 fice without compunction the health and 
 growth and domestic life and usefulness 
 of their pastor, and finally leave him a 
 wreck. Much is said about the dead line, 
 and clergymen are roundly condemned for 
 reaching it. A minister must inevitably 
 reach it, and early too, if he does not have 
 sufficient will-power to resist with dogged 
 pertinacity and martyr-like heroism the 
 encroachments on his time and energy 
 which good-hearted but inconsiderate peo- 
 
52 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 pie are sure to make. Many a faithful 
 servant of the Lord has in early life, in 
 order to meet the voracious demands of 
 his parish, cut short his hours for study 
 and for prayer, and then been subjected 
 to the galling humiliation later on of 
 hearing from the lips of the very per- 
 sons whose foolishness had undone him, 
 the damning assertion, " He is a very 
 good man, but he does not hold the 
 people ! " 
 
 Let your minister preach. When he 
 tells you what hours he needs for study, 
 let him have them. If he does not call 
 so frequently as his predecessor, say noth- 
 ing. Measure him not by the number of 
 door-bells he rings, but by the impulse he 
 gives the community toward God. When 
 he is absent from some occasion which 
 you wished might have been graced by 
 his presence, do not complain or con- 
 demn. When he declines to say "yes" 
 to vour every invitation, remember that 
 you are only one of a thousand persons 
 
IV/io Is To Blame f 53 
 
 who have a claim on him, and that min- 
 isters have rights which laymen ought 
 to respect. When ministers do less they 
 will do better, and when churches demand 
 less they will receive more. 
 
54 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Why Time Is Needed, 
 
 I KNOW how a layman looks at it. He 
 thinks that a minister can begin Monday 
 morning to write his sermons, and can 
 write straight on till Saturday night. 
 With a clean sweep of six long days at 
 his disposal, what more can a reasonable 
 man demand.^ But it should be remem- 
 bered that according to God's law a man 
 must drop his work one day in seven. 
 The clergyman who does not do this pays 
 the penalty like any other transgressor of 
 the law. Moreover, few clergymen have 
 more than their mornings in their study. 
 The afternoons are filled with parish 
 duties, and the evenings with social func- 
 tions and religious meetings. Thus the 
 vast week dwindles down to five short 
 mornings in which two sermons must be 
 
Why Time Is Needed. 5 5 
 
 prepared. And as if even this were too 
 much, frequently a funeral or some other 
 imperative call steals away one of these 
 five precious mornings. 
 
 Within these narrow hours what tre- 
 mendous work must be done ! It is a 
 popular notion that the preacher's hardest 
 work is the writing of his sermons. His 
 most arduous labor is preparing, not his 
 sermons, but himself. Any one can write 
 down a sermon after he has the sermon 
 in him ; but to get one's soul into that 
 mood in which sermons blossom, to lift 
 one's self to those high altitudes at which 
 the word of God is audible, ah, there's 
 the rub ! What study ! What meditation ! 
 What prayer ! A sermon is not a thing 
 that can be dashed off at any moment 
 and without heart-strain. A sermon 
 grows. Growth requires time. A ser- 
 mon eats up the life-blood of a man. To 
 keep the fountains of his life from run- 
 ning dry is the minister's most critical 
 problem. He must be an indefatigable 
 
56 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 worker. Intellectual treasures from every 
 quarter must be swept into his mind by 
 reading, wide and constant. He must be 
 a student. He must dig deep in the 
 mines of thought, and wrestle with the 
 problems which distress the age and 
 the ages. He must meditate. He must 
 have time to keep still that great thoughts 
 may take shape in him, that opinions may 
 crystallize into convictions, and that dim 
 truths may become clear. He must pray. 
 He must continue long in prayer. 
 
 No man can pray in a hurry, or medi- 
 tate in haste, or study with a hundred 
 duties standing at the door and shouting 
 at him. But the modern preacher has 
 little time. He goes through the week on 
 a hop, skip, and jump. He is in a constant 
 flurry to meet his next engagement. He 
 is a Martha busied about many things. 
 The better part has been taken from him. 
 A thousand odds and ends of parish work 
 keep him in a frenzy of activity, which 
 saps the springs of intellectual energy and 
 spiritual life. 
 
Why Time Is Needed. 57 
 
 Brethren, we have now reached the root 
 of one of the great problems of our day. 
 The various distressing pulpit phenomena, 
 which we all lament, and whose correction 
 seems to be beyond our skill, can nearly 
 all be traced, I think, to the crowded and 
 feverish life which a modern minister is 
 obliged to live. 
 
 It is lack of time which drives so many 
 preachers to palm off editorials as ser- 
 mons. There is a vast difference between 
 an editorial and a sermon. The former is 
 an opinion, a comment, a discussion of 
 a problem. It may be written without 
 emotion, and oftentimes in haste. The 
 sermon, like a poem, is a creation of 
 the spirit, and comes into existence only 
 through an experience which melts and 
 transfigures the heart. Editorials may be 
 written in the street ; sermons come to 
 the soul only at high levels. The minister 
 must, like Moses, go up into the mountain 
 alone. 
 
 It is lack of time which is cutting pas- 
 
58 Qidet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 torates short. Preaching becomes thin, 
 and laymen rebel. Preaching is thin be- 
 cause preachers are thin. Preachers are 
 worn thin by endless activity. A man, to 
 keep intellectually robust and spiritually 
 rich, must have leisure for contemplation 
 and wide study. Pastorates are becoming 
 short, not because preachers are lazy, but 
 because they are so busy in doing things 
 that they preach themselves empty in 
 three or four years. Many a minister's 
 lamp goes out simply because he has no 
 time to supply himself with oil. 
 
 It is lack of time which is partly re- 
 sponsible for the increased demand for 
 evangelists, and for the numerous cheap 
 devices adopted by preachers for whee- 
 dling men into church attendance. If 
 preachers do not have time to read great 
 books and assimilate great ideas, it is not 
 surprising they should fall back on pic- 
 tures and choirs, and call in as often as 
 possible an outsider to lighten the drudg- 
 ery of their sermonic work. The increased 
 
Why Time Is Needed. 59 
 
 dependence on travelling preachers is, in 
 my judgment, one of the most ominous 
 and deplorable signs of the times. 
 
 And how shall we account for the ab- 
 sence of that fire without which preach- 
 ing is vain ? A sermon is nothing unless 
 touched with emotion. Emotion cannot 
 be manufactured. It is the result of med- 
 itation. The Psalmist says, "While I 
 mused, the fire burned." Without mus- 
 ing there is no burning. James Russell 
 Lowell, in one of his letters, says, 
 " My brain requires a long brooding-time 
 ere it can hatch anything. As soon as 
 the life comes into the thing, it is quick 
 enough in chipping the shell." From 
 London he wrote to a friend, " I am 
 piecemealed here with so many things to 
 do that I cannot get a moment to brood 
 over anything as it must be brooded over 
 if it is to have wings. It is as if a sitting 
 hen should have to mind the door-bell." 
 That is the experience of the preacher. 
 He is piecemealed. He is the victim 
 
6o Q2iiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 of the door-bell. He cannot hatch his 
 thoughts fairly out as he goes along. 
 Little opportunity is given his nature 
 to kindle into flame. 
 
 If preachers are to speak for God they 
 must be given time to find out what God 
 says. The words of John the Baptist 
 rolled out upon his hearers like molten 
 lava because he had brooded so long ovei 
 the soul's need and God's will that when 
 he emerged from the desert there was a 
 fire burning in the marrow of his bones. 
 Jesus in the quiet of Nazareth meditated 
 and mused through the years until he was 
 caught up by a spirit which carried him 
 from the shop to the cross. No wonder 
 he spoke as one having authority, and 
 that men wondered at the words of grace 
 which proceeded out of his mouth. And 
 throughout his short public life he again 
 and again turned his back on men in 
 order to be alone. 
 
Vacation^ and Why, 6l 
 
 IX. 
 
 Vacation, and Why. 
 
 A VACATION for a minister is not a 
 luxury, but a necessity. Of course a man 
 may preach every Sunday for years ; but 
 if a man is to preach at his best, he must 
 have annual periods of rest. If through 
 mistaken zeal a clergyman declines to 
 take a vacation, his church should stoutly 
 insist on his obeying the laws of psychi- 
 cal health. If through carelessness or 
 ignorance a church fails to provide for 
 an annual vacation, the minister should 
 take it anyhow. No servant of the Lord 
 should ever allow himself to be robbed by 
 any company of men of the conditions 
 essential to largest usefulness and power. 
 A vacation is as necessary for the rural 
 clergyman as for his brother in the city, 
 but for different reasons. The village 
 
62 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 deadens, the city exhausts. The foe of 
 the rural minister is rust ; the enemy of 
 the city minister is mental and spiritual 
 dissipation. A thousand influences play 
 on the minister in the city to keep him 
 alive. He is in danger of dying of excess 
 of life. In the hamlet the minister is 
 himself the fountain of life. He is the 
 magnetic battery from which every enter- 
 prise must be charged. His mission is 
 to quicken and arouse. But in order to 
 stimulate others, one must himself be 
 stimulated. Every village pastor should, 
 if possible, spend at least one month of 
 every year away from his parish. His 
 people ought to insist on his doing this. 
 He should make an annual pilgrimage 
 to some intellectual centre. He will 
 bring back in new impressions and fresh 
 ideas more than enough to compensate 
 the community a hundredfold for all that 
 his vacation has cost. Who can walk 
 through the drowsy streets of the ordi- 
 nary village without appreciating the mag- 
 
Vacation, and Why. 63 
 
 nitude of the task laid upon the country 
 parson of keeping enthusiasm intense and 
 thought-horizons wide ? 
 
 The city pastor must have a vacation 
 to keep his nature from wearing thin. 
 The endless round of engagements, the 
 enormous correspondence, the awful bur- 
 den of poverty and woe, the constant 
 drain on the centres of vitality, render 
 unceasing work dangerous, if not fatal. 
 Even if a man were physically strong 
 enough to stride through the months 
 without a pause, the nature of the mind is 
 such that unceasing sermonic activity is 
 fatal to highest pulpit power. A preacher 
 is a teacher. A teacher's worth is meas- 
 ured by his ability to inspire. Inspiration 
 is conditioned on vitality and vigor of the 
 creative faculties of the mind. A preacher 
 must create impulse. A jaded preacher is 
 no preacher at all. The man in the pulpit 
 must give forth life. The more life he 
 radiates, the greater his service to the 
 world. Truth must in him become incar- 
 
64 Qtdet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 nate, and burn with a flame which fasci- 
 nates and transforms. No man can teach 
 even language or science with highest 
 efficiency straight through all the months 
 of the year. Universities make no mis- 
 take in granting professors long annual 
 vacations, and in giving them one com- 
 plete year in seven. Without opportuni- 
 ties to recuperate and blossom, the teacher 
 degenerates into a hack, a machine, a 
 pedant. Much more necessary is periodic 
 rest to the man who deals, not simply 
 with the intellect, but with the affections 
 and the will. To cleanse and stir life at 
 its fountain-head requires a man intensely 
 human, and in every fibre of his soul alive. 
 Human nerves are not steel. If always 
 stretched, they deteriorate or break. A 
 preacher must be a thinker. He ought 
 to think closely, consecutively, accurately. 
 Only a fresh mind thinks truly. A fagged 
 mind cannot be trusted A wearied 
 preacher tires his congregation. He does 
 worse, — he misleads. He does not see 
 
Vacation^ and Why. 65 
 
 things in their right relations, and cannot 
 present them in their true proportions. A 
 man may exhort or retail anecdotes ever- 
 lastingly, but that is not preaching. 
 
 More than the preacher's intellect is 
 in danger. His spiritual life is at stake. 
 It is possible to work for God until all 
 sense of God is lost. An overworked 
 preacher finds himself asking with Pon- 
 tius Pilate, " What is truth .? " The 
 eclipses of faith, alarmingly frequent in 
 the ministry, are largely the result of 
 overwork. A clergyman must get away 
 occasionally from the Bible. He must 
 touch God in the sea and sky and woods. 
 He must listen, not always to Hebrew 
 prophets, but sometimes to American 
 frogs and katydids and birds. He must 
 drop the idea of saving others, and be 
 still that God may save him. In the 
 months of work he must be self-assertive. 
 His aim is to impress men. He hurls 
 himself upon them. He looks for results. 
 This mood, if never broken, becomes de- 
 
66 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 structive of the higher life of the soul. 
 There is nothing more pathetic than 
 the degeneration which often goes on 
 in the character of men ordained to 
 preach the gospel. As the years go on 
 the temper loses its sweetness, the dis- 
 position becomes autocratic or peevish, 
 the mind is sicklied o'er with a morbid 
 cast of thought, the very structure of 
 the soul seems in some cases to crumble 
 into hopeless decay. Many a minister, 
 whose head is full of foolish fears and 
 whose sermons are weighted with morbid 
 fancies, would be born again if he could 
 spend a few months under the trees or 
 on the sea. Anything which will widen 
 the minister's outlook, elevate his ideals, 
 cool the fever of his nerves, quicken his 
 impulses, and restore the balance of his 
 judgment, ought to be sought after by a 
 congregation as rubies and fine gold. 
 
 Indeed, it is for the sake of the people 
 rather than for the sake of the preacher 
 that a vacation is necessary. A church 
 
Vacatio7t, and Why, 67 
 
 whose pastor takes no vacation is of all 
 churches most miserable. It does a 
 church good to escape occasionally from 
 the man who is its head. It is not best 
 for a congregation to listen continuously 
 to the same man, no matter how wise or 
 good he may be. It is of vast advantage 
 for laymen to sit at the feet of men 
 who see truth at different angles, and 
 who enter hearts by different avenues of 
 approach. A voice, no matter how sweet, 
 loses its edge if heard too often, and 
 fails to reach the heart as a voice does 
 whose accent is fresh, and whose intona- 
 tions have in them the charm of un- 
 familiar music. A church is roused to 
 new intellectual alertness, and lifted to 
 higher levels of spiritual vision, by listen- 
 ing now and then to voices that are 
 new. For his people's sake, as well as 
 for his own, no minister can afford to 
 stand in his pulpit every Sunday in the 
 year. 
 
68 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 X. 
 
 Objections to Vacations, 
 
 I THINK one of you remarked a little 
 while ago that the devil never takes a 
 vacation. The tone in which you said 
 it compelled an inference and outlined 
 an argument. But the argument rests 
 on two erroneous suppositions. It is not 
 true, as is sometimes assumed, that a 
 clergyman is under obligation to follow 
 the example of the devil, nor is it true 
 that a community is completely at the 
 mercy of his Satanic majesty the moment 
 the minister goes out of town. If the 
 devil can in one month undo all the work 
 which the minister has done in eleven 
 months, the loss is not so great as you 
 imagine. Such work as that ought to 
 be done over again. It is only when 
 men build of hay and stubble that their 
 
Objections to Vacations. 69 
 
 work goes up in smoke under an August 
 sun. Church-members who live and work 
 like Christians only when the minister's 
 eye is on them are not sufficiently Chris- 
 tianized to stand the test of the judg- 
 ment day. The minister is not the 
 church, and it is foolish to take it for 
 granted that if he is absent the church 
 of God practically ceases to be. 
 
 You say that many churches are too 
 poor to afford the luxury of a summer 
 supply. What of it > A summer supply 
 can be dispensed with. There are forms 
 of church service other than the preach- 
 ing service. A praise or prayer or Bible 
 study or conference service, or a service 
 copied after the model set us by the 
 apostolic church, in which each Christian 
 had a Psalm or a doctrine or a tongue 
 or a revelation or an interpretation, is as 
 legitimate and Scriptural as a service in 
 which the minister does it all. If you 
 feel your church cannot survive a month 
 without a weekly sermon, then why not 
 
70 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 have the four best readers in the church 
 read in turn sermons from four mod- 
 ern pulpit princes ? Such an innovation 
 might prove as refreshing as the dew of 
 Hermon. 
 
 Ah, I have not struck the difficulty 
 yet ? It is the pastoral work that can- 
 not be neglected. Of course not! But 
 it is an error to suppose that only a 
 clergyman can do pastoral work. Every 
 Christian is by divine appointment a pas- 
 tor, and it is of the essence of the Chris- 
 tian life to shepherd some of the Master's 
 sheep. Laymen when living up to their 
 privileges are pastors, and are abundantly 
 able to pray with the sick, assist the 
 poor, advise the perplexed, and comfort 
 the dying. If the church has no mem- 
 bers except the pastor who are able and 
 willing to do this, it is high time for that 
 church to put on sackcloth, and confess 
 that it is wretched and miserable, and 
 poor and blind and naked. But you say 
 sick people prefer the pastor. Suppose 
 
Objections to Vacations. yi 
 
 they do. Some sick people have a habit 
 of preferring a lot of things which are 
 unreasonable, and which it is not best for 
 them to have. Persons when sick have 
 no more right to be selfish than other 
 folks, and should learn the high art of 
 sacrificing their preferences and likings to 
 the welfare of others. 
 
 But how about the dying and the dead ? 
 Surely a clergyman is indispensable in 
 such cases ! Not at all. A Roman 
 Catholic can go into heaven without 
 extreme unction, and there is no reason 
 why a Protestant should not die in peace 
 without a pastor's prayers in his ears. 
 Moreover, a clergyman is not indispen- 
 sable at a funeral. No clergyman offici- 
 ated at a funeral in New England for 
 more than a half century after the land- 
 ing of the Pilgrims. Neither the living 
 nor the dead, so far as can be ascertained, 
 suffered from this singular procedure. 
 The clerical custom of conducting funeral 
 services is an innovation. Jesus never 
 
'J2 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 did it. He did not lay it down as one of 
 the duties of his apostles. Neither the 
 twelve nor the seventy were instructed 
 to bury the dead. If Paul had ever been 
 twitted on being out of town when some 
 Christian saint needed burial, he would 
 no doubt have replied with swift alacrity, 
 " Christ sent me not to attend funerals, 
 but to preach the gospel ! " If ministers 
 of the Lord need a vacation, surely dead 
 people must not be allowed to block up 
 the way. That church is poor indeed in 
 which there is no layman worthy and 
 able to offer a prayer above a casket, or 
 repeat " dust to dust " beside a grave. 
 
 A minister's vacation should not be 
 less than a month. A two weeks' vaca- 
 tion is no vacation at all. A clergyman 
 cannot drop his work as a clerk drops 
 his yardstick or a bookkeeper his ledger. 
 The minister's burden is spiritual. It is 
 not easily shaken off. It wears down into 
 the fibre of the soul. Deliverance comes 
 only in time. At least a week is needed 
 
Objections to Vacations. 73 
 
 for working one's self out of the sermonic 
 mood ; and if at the end of this first week 
 the preacher must begin to work out 
 new sermons for the coming Sunday, his 
 vacation practically amounts to nothing. 
 
 In many cases one month's rest in 
 twelve is not sufficient. The time de- 
 manded depends on the man and the 
 parish. Tough and callous men, who 
 radiate little energy, require less vacation 
 than men of sensitive nature and vast 
 genius for expending life. It is cruel to 
 expect equal things of all men. Dray 
 horses and race horses demand different 
 treatment. One man will burn up more 
 life in one sermon than another will burn 
 up in twenty. To give the first man no 
 more vacation than the second is both 
 foolish and wicked. The coarse-fibred 
 and lethargic man may boast that he 
 never takes a vacation ; but if he were 
 more finely conscientious in his work, 
 and more tremblingly alive in body, mind, 
 and spirit, he would suffer the same ex- 
 
74 Qtdet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 haustion which overtakes his fine-grained 
 and passionate brother. And parishes 
 differ in their demands. When paro- 
 chial duties are multitudinous and pulpit 
 work is unusually exacting, a vacation 
 of two or even three months is not 
 unreasonably long. Ministers with ex- 
 tended vacations do not spend all their 
 days in idleness. In the vacation months 
 they store up food with which to feed 
 their people through another year. By 
 travel or by study and long, uninter- 
 rupted meditation they freshen the spirit 
 and enlarge the heart that those whom 
 the Lord has given them may enjoy a 
 richer ministry at their hands. Study 
 your minister, brethren, his tempera- 
 ment and constitution. Measure his 
 strength, and the tax which his work 
 levies on it, and then, paying no atten- 
 tion to what other churches are doing, 
 give him all the time for rest he needs. 
 
Money, 75 
 
 XL 
 
 Money* 
 
 Money is my theme. It is a delicate 
 subject — for a minister. Other men 
 may talk about it, but not a minister. 
 If he talks about it he is mercenary and 
 worldly minded ! But a minister thinks 
 about money. He cannot help it. God 
 has made money a part of his world. He 
 has ordained that money shall play a 
 prominent part in all human life. Clergy- 
 men, like other mortals, cannot live with- 
 out it. It is not disgraceful, therefore, 
 for a minister to earn money and spend 
 it and talk about it. What God has made 
 necessary let no man call unclean. If 
 ministers had discussed church finance 
 more frankly, laymen would now under- 
 stand it better than they do. Subjects 
 too delicate for discussion gather round 
 
'j6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 them a mass of spontaneous and erro- 
 neous opinion. Erroneous opinion con- 
 cerning matters of moment cripples the 
 church, and blocks the progress of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 The salary of the minister is not an 
 alms, but a debt. This is fundamental. 
 Unless a church grasps this, all its after 
 life is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
 A minister is not a beneficiary or a 
 pauper or a beggar. He is a laborer, 
 and the laborer is worthy of his hire. 
 To give him donations and discounts is 
 to demoralize the man and degrade his 
 office. His salary is a debt ; and, like all 
 debts, it should be paid fully, promptly, 
 ungrudgingly. A church which holds 
 back a dollar of its pastor's salary is a 
 rogue. If there were a penitentiary for 
 roguish churches it would be full. An 
 honest man's the noblest work of God ; 
 a dishonest church is the crowning work 
 of the devil. A minister does wrong in 
 allowing a church to impose upon him. 
 
Money, 77 
 
 A church which cheats must be disci- 
 plined. If, after repeated offences, it re- 
 fuses to repent, he should shake off the 
 dust of his feet against it. 
 
 It is well to pay the minister liberally. 
 A church cannot afford to do otherwise. 
 If church officials drive a hard bargain, 
 and secure a man at the lowest possible 
 figure, they lose more than they gain. 
 A niggardly financial policy will wreck 
 any church. The question should be, 
 not how little shall we pay, but how 
 much .? " There is that withholdeth more 
 than is meet, but it tendeth to pov- 
 erty." Deacons feel mean after they 
 have higgled a week about the pastor's 
 salary. It takes the heart out of a 
 preacher to feel that he is preaching to 
 skinflints. 
 
 The average minister is not paid gene- 
 rously. Unless a man is sought after by 
 several churches, his salary is almost sure 
 to be small. If sought after, his salary 
 goes up, not because of Christian liberal- 
 
78 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 ity, but because of ecclesiastical competi- 
 tion. The average clergyman is under- 
 paid. Often a faithful man works hard 
 for years for small pay, and men of large 
 income in the congregation allow him to 
 do it. But when a call comes from some 
 other church, then the brethren come to 
 their senses, and offer to do what they 
 should have done years before. Such 
 action is contemptible. It should be 
 resented by every minister who has self- 
 respect. No church should offer to 
 advance its minister's salary when he is 
 considering a call to another parish. Such 
 an offer is a bribe. If from a church 
 which has long imposed upon its minister 
 because he was too modest to protest, it 
 comes too late ; if from a sudden spasm 
 of enthusiasm the church is stirred to 
 offer more than its resources warrant, its 
 folly should be resisted. A minister's 
 heart is made glad by a people who are 
 generous, not by a people who are shrewd 
 bidders at an auction. A church at all 
 
Money, 79 
 
 times should pay its pastor up to the level 
 of its ability. 
 
 But the chief cause of inadequate sal- 
 aries is not depravity, but lack of consid- 
 eration. Laymen are too busy to put 
 themselves in their pastor's place, and 
 reason out his needs. There is nothing 
 more amusing than the way the average 
 layman reasons out a minister's *' neces- 
 sary expenses," and calculates the amount 
 he can save. The man in the moon could 
 probably calculate better. A mechanic 
 lives on a certain amount a week. Why 
 should not the minister do the same 1 
 Because he is a public character and the 
 mechanic is not. A minister must live in 
 public. He owes duties to the community 
 which it costs money to discharge. He 
 cannot live where he pleases, or dress as 
 pleases, or order his life as he pleases. 
 His position necessitates expenses which 
 other men can escape. His grocer's bill 
 — if he is hospitable — is double that of 
 the average man in his congregation. To 
 
8o Qtdet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 preach well he must eat more than beef- 
 steak. He must eat books straight through 
 the year. He should be allowed at least 
 one hundred dollars a year for his library. 
 Thrice or quadruple that amount is not 
 extravagant. To expect a man to preach 
 fresh and juicy sermons while withhold- 
 ing from him nutritious mental food is 
 cruel. A lean library means a scrawny 
 preacher. 
 
 A vacation costs money. Many a 
 clergyman stays at home the year round 
 because he cannot afford to take his 
 family out of town ; or, if he goes, he 
 preaches in other pulpits every Sunday 
 to pay his travelling and hotel expenses. 
 This is not right. There are a few men, 
 to be sure, who will preach every Sun- 
 day during their vacation, no matter what 
 their salary may be ; but how is it with 
 your minister } Why does he preach 
 through his vacations.^ 
 
 You cannot know all the channels 
 through which a clergyman's salary trie- 
 
Money, 8i 
 
 kles away. He owes duties to his denom- 
 ination ; and every council, conference, 
 or convention he attends makes demands 
 upon his purse. You cannot know the 
 cases of need he meets continually, many 
 of which it is impossible to escape. Peo- 
 ple whose names you would never guess 
 come to him for assistance. In fixing 
 the minister's salary, a generous sum 
 should be added for the express purpose 
 of meeting just such demands. To ex- 
 pose a man to incessant calls for help, 
 and furnish him no funds with which to 
 meet these calls, is an act of short-sighted- 
 ness as frequent as it is lamentable. 
 Any man worthy to be your pastor may 
 be trusted with a salary liberal enough to 
 enable him to be generous toward the 
 jieedy individuals and deserving causes 
 which have a reasonable claim upon him 
 as your representative and head. In 
 short, the necessary expenses of a clergy- 
 man are unique. His table, his corre- 
 spondence, his library, his travels, his 
 
82 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 benevolence, all eat up money with in- 
 credible swiftness ; and this should be 
 borne in mind when the church discusses 
 the question, ** What salary shall we 
 
 pay?" 
 
Ministerial Liberty, Zi 
 
 XII. 
 
 Ministerial Liberty. 
 
 How to secure it is an age-long prob- 
 lem. Arduous efforts have been made to 
 gain it, but success has been only partial. 
 The Roman Catholic Church has made 
 the clergy independent of the laity, but 
 this has not set the clergy free. When 
 men are bound together in a system in 
 which they rise one above another, rank 
 on rank, opportunity is furnished the men 
 above to lord it over the men below. 
 The Catholic priest may pity the Protes- 
 tant minister because the latter is at the 
 mercy of his fastidious and fickle parish- 
 ioners, but to be dependent on a congre- 
 gation for daily bread is not a whit more 
 demoralizing than to be dependent for 
 ecclesiastical preferment on one's eccle- 
 siastical superiors. As a device for gag- 
 
84 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 ging men, the hierarchy has proved fatally 
 effective. 
 
 The Anglican Church, to escape the 
 tyranny of the pope, has lodged final 
 authority in the state. This is a sur- 
 render of the Roman position, and gives 
 supreme power to laymen. But it does 
 not solve the problem. How may clergy- 
 men be free.-* Monarchs and prime min- 
 isters are no less formidable than popes 
 and cardinals, and every state church pre- 
 sents to its clergy the temptation of shap- 
 ing their message to please the men who 
 have political power. In America our 
 Protestant churches, on the whole, vest 
 authority in the people. Majorities, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, rule in church as well 
 as in state. The consequence is, that our 
 churches are exposed to all the dangers 
 and maladies which are inseparable from 
 democracy. 
 
 For the people may be as tyrannical 
 as despots and hierarchies. They can 
 degrade the clergyman to a puppet or a 
 
Ministerial Liberty. 85 
 
 parrot. They often do. They can wreck 
 a church whose pastor discredits their 
 opinions, or runs counter to their preju- 
 dices. Many a man has been ousted from 
 his pulpit simply because he dared to 
 speak the truth. 
 
 How to keep the pulpit independent is 
 one of our greatest problems. It is morQ 
 than a church problem. It is a question 
 in which every citizen of our republic has 
 a vital interest. It is essential to the life 
 of a republic that it have in it a body of 
 public men free to speak their deepest 
 convictions without fear or favor. We 
 need leaders who are absolutely untram- 
 melled. A large part of the press cannot 
 be relied on. The ledger dictates its poL 
 icy. It echoes the opinions of the street. 
 It cares nothing for moral leadership, 
 and everything for immense circulation. 
 Many editors are not free men. Neither 
 are many of our political leaders. The 
 exigencies of political warfare render them 
 diplomatic, and compel them to tone down 
 
S6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 their utterances. They dare not attack 
 evils which ought to be annihilated, or 
 advocate policies which ought to be en- 
 throned. Even college presidents and pro- 
 fessors are liable to be called to account 
 by frightened trustees for the utterance 
 of opinions which cut across the grain 
 of popular conviction. In such a land 
 and time it is of sovereign importance 
 that the pulpit should be without a fetter. 
 Its message should be free from every 
 taint of private interest, and from every 
 trace of external constraint. Nothing 
 cuts the ground from under a minister's 
 feet like the suspicion that he is saying, 
 not what he thinks, but what his hearers 
 expect him to say. The church can have 
 no influence over people who believe that 
 clergymen are the hired exponents of the 
 views of the men who rent the pews. 
 The fact that so many clergymen in sla- 
 very days apologized for slavery, or winked 
 at it, has done more to bring organized 
 Christianity in this country into disrepute 
 
Ministerial Liberty. S^ 
 
 than all the infidel publications of the 
 century. 
 
 In wide circles of our people the con- 
 viction is deeply rooted that ministers are 
 the slaves of their congregations, repeat- 
 ing a story put into their mouth, afraid to 
 strike established wrongs, or to pass judg- 
 ment on perfumed sins. And that such 
 pulpit cowards actually exist cannot be 
 denied. The pressure has been too great, 
 and many an unhappy man has fallen. 
 
 And what shall be done about it .? Some 
 say give us churches generously endowed 
 by the gifts of men who are in their 
 graves, thus making ministers indepen- 
 dent of the people to whom they preach. 
 The suggestion is plausible, but hardly 
 wise. The only adequate relief — so it 
 seems to me — is to be found in recon- 
 structed manhood. Not in dead men must 
 we seek salvation, but in men who are 
 alive. The cowards must be driven from 
 the pulpits. Laymen should see that this 
 is done. A man too timid to oppose any- 
 
88 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 thing but ancient evils, or condemn any- 
 thing but distant sins, is too timid to be 
 a herald of the Lord. There should be 
 a healthy sentiment generated in all our 
 churches, making it easier for ministers 
 to speak boldly, and more disgraceful for 
 them to be craven. The preacher should 
 be encouraged to speak out his deepest 
 thought. Lynx-eyed critics, watching for 
 a chance to pounce down upon him for 
 a mis-step in the statement of a doctrine, 
 should be converted or excommunicated. 
 Laymen should be large-minded, chari- 
 table, and fair. They should not expect 
 the pulpit to reproduce their own ideas, 
 and confirm them in their favorite notions. 
 Oh, for a layman — who has seen him.!* — 
 large enough to say to his minister at the 
 close of a sermon full of teaching which 
 he cannot accept, " I cannot agree with 
 you now, but I thank you for your sermon. 
 It has done me good, for it has made me 
 think." For a layman to cut down his 
 contribution to the church because the 
 
Ministerial Liberty. 89 
 
 minister has expressed an idea to which 
 he is unable to assent is the act of a man 
 who would bribe a judge — if he dared — 
 to decide in his favor a case in the courts. 
 But there is no excuse for cowardly- 
 ministers. If laymen attempt to intimi- 
 date, they, like the devil, should be re- 
 sisted. Better lose one's pulpit than 
 one's honor. The preacher must do his 
 duty, no matter if it cuts his salary in two. 
 If he is content to mouth the safe opinions 
 of the ruling set in his congregation, he is 
 not a prophet, but a toady. If he is a 
 puppet, manipulated by a few rich men 
 who contribute generously toward church 
 expenses, he deserves the contempt of 
 men, and is sure of the condemnation of 
 God. No mortal on earth is so despicable 
 as a pulpit coward. And the man who 
 stands next to him in the roll of dishonor 
 is a pious despot in the pew. 
 
90 Qidet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Liberty Defined, 
 
 No, that is not what I meant. Liberty 
 does not mean license. A minister's free- 
 dom ends where the rights of his congre- 
 gation begin. He has no right to say 
 everything in the pulpit that chances to 
 pop into his head. It is not his province 
 to discuss political parties and measures, 
 and harangue people on questions of 
 political economy and physical science. 
 He is a teacher of religion ; and if he be- 
 gins to manifest a sort of omniscience 
 which compels him to expound every 
 species of knowledge, he is unquestion- 
 ably insane, and should be promptly dis- 
 missed. 
 
 Nor should he be allowed to preach 
 even the text of the New Testament if his 
 spirit is spiteful and bitter. A preacher 
 
Liberty Defined. 91 
 
 is ordained to preach Christ, and no man 
 preaches Christ who is not dominated by 
 the spirit of love. A sermon is full of 
 Christ if it is full of love, though the 
 name of Christ is never mentioned in it ; 
 and a sermon, if captious and hateful, is 
 of the devil, even though the name of 
 Jesus opens and closes every paragraph. 
 Laymen have a right to rebel if their 
 minister is not willing to speak the truth 
 in love. 
 
 Nor is a clergyman at liberty to preach 
 interpretations of Scripture which over- 
 throw the conceptions of truth for which 
 his pulpit stands in the community. 
 There seems to be lamentable confusion 
 at this point. Every now and then a 
 clergyman appears who feels it to be his 
 inalienable right to preach anything he 
 pleases in any pulpit he is able to get 
 into. If checked in his course he at once 
 poses as a martyr ; and the world — which 
 has a strange fondness for martyrs — 
 rends its raiment, and throws dust on its 
 
92 Qidet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 head, and pours forth its stock denun- 
 ciations of the ineradicable bigotry and 
 inexpressible depravity of the Christian 
 church. All of which is exceedingly 
 funny, and also pathetic. 
 
 Now, the fact is that a man of ordinary 
 discernment and honesty will not attempt 
 to become the pastor of a church whose 
 fundamental doctrines he doubts or de- 
 nies. To do so is impudence, if not some- 
 thing worse, and deserves the condemna- 
 tion both of sinners and saints. What 
 right has a Roman Catholic to preach in 
 a Protestant pulpit } and why should a 
 Unitarian desire to smuggle himself into 
 a Trinitarian pastorate } The chasm be- 
 tween Romanism and Protestantism is 
 deep and wide, and so also is the chasm 
 between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism ; 
 and nothing is gained by attempting 
 to conceal those chasms. A man is at 
 liberty to make his home in any branch 
 of the Christian church whose creed his 
 mind can accept and his heart rejoice in, 
 
Liberty Defined. 93 
 
 but to steal as a teacher into a company 
 of Christians whose basal tenets he dis- 
 cards is the act of a thief and a robber. 
 To cast such a man out of the place 
 which he has usurped is not bigotry or 
 tyranny, but beautiful and necessary jus- 
 tice. There is the widest liberty of reli- 
 gious thought in America ; and, with our 
 multiplicity of denominations, there is no 
 reason why any clergyman earnestly desi- 
 rous of delivering a message should fail to 
 find a congregation willing to grant him 
 all the latitude his soul may desire. It 
 is no infringement of a man's liberty to 
 insist that he stay where he belongs. 
 
 But in many churches there are petty 
 tyrannies which ought to be abolished. 
 The pastor of a church is by divine right 
 a leader. As its executive head he is 
 held responsible for the successful admin- 
 istration of its affairs. A man who is 
 held responsible for the conduct of an 
 enterprise must be granted large liberty 
 in the prosecution of his work. A gen- 
 
94 Qidet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 eral cannot be condemned for defeat if 
 he is not permitted to lay out his cam- 
 paign. A business manager who is not 
 allowed to manage is not responsible for 
 the bankruptcy which overtakes his house. 
 A guide who is obliged to follow is no 
 guide at all. A minister is not answer- 
 able for the outcome of his ministry if 
 he is thwarted at every step by men who 
 will not approve his methods or adopt 
 and work out his suggestions. 
 
 Many a minister is robbed of power by 
 the unreasonable demands of his people. 
 They demand church prosperity, and 
 promptly vote down every measure which 
 is likely to produce it. They lie down in 
 the ruts of outgrown methods, and then 
 berate the poor man who in vain urges 
 them to move forward. They weight him 
 down with the armor of his predecessor, 
 and then stand amazed because he cuts a 
 poor figure in fighting the foe. Every 
 man must work in his own way, and so 
 far as possible the church should endeavor 
 
Liberty Defined. 95 
 
 to adjust itself to the temperament and 
 ideas of its leader. 
 
 The reluctance to back up the minister, 
 so frequently met with in our churches, 
 is due no doubt in part to the training 
 which laymen receive in the business 
 world. In business they lay down their 
 own plans without advice or interference. 
 They say to one man, "Come," and he 
 comes; to another, "Go," and he goes. 
 Such experience begets in many men a 
 sort of absolutism which works mischief 
 whenever it is introduced into the church. 
 It is easier for a camel to go through the 
 eye of a needle than for men of a certain 
 type to accept graciously outside advice, 
 or to co-operate in the execution of plans 
 forged in the brain of another. The re- 
 fusal of church-members to subordinate 
 individual wishes and purposes to the 
 working out of a consistent and definite 
 policy has crushed many a minister and 
 wrecked many a church. Jesus himself 
 could do no mighty work among people 
 
96 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 who had no confidence in him ; and unless 
 laymen have sufficient confidence in their 
 pastor to follow him, his ministry must 
 be disappointing to them and disastrous 
 to him. Brethren, if your minister is ca- 
 pable of leading, follow him. If he is 
 incapable, hand him his resignation, and 
 secure his successor. To call a man your 
 leader, and then tie him hand and foot, is 
 action unworthy of sensible men. 
 
 But here, again, liberty has its limits. 
 Laymen have a right to help devise as 
 well as to execute. It is not to be ex- 
 pected that they will consent to be au- 
 tomata in the working out of ministerial 
 ideas. If a minister is crotchety or auto- 
 cratic or bull-headed; if he refuses to take 
 laymen into his counsel ; if he insists on 
 having everything his own way, and that, 
 too, before sundown ; if he attempts, in 
 short, to be a czar, — he need not be sur- 
 prised to find some morning that his 
 sceptre is broken and that his throne 
 has passed to another. 
 
Sympathy. 97 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Sympathy. 
 
 But time and money and liberty are 
 not enough. A minister, like other men, 
 must live by every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God. And one of 
 God's words is sympathy. By sympathy 
 I do not mean that pinched and insipid 
 thing which the word sympathy often- 
 times suggests. Sympathy is more than 
 pity or commiseration. A man does not 
 like to be pitied. Pity suggests inferi- 
 ority, and easily slides into contempt. 
 "How I do pity ministers!" is a senti- 
 mental ejaculation often heard on the lips 
 of persons who know something of the 
 trials which fall to the average parson's 
 lot. But why pity ministers more than 
 other men.? Their life is no harder than 
 that of others. Do not all mortals have 
 
98 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 their drudgeries and bitter cups, their 
 burdens and crowns of thorns ? Why 
 should a minister be exempt ? Suppose 
 he is gossiped about and maligned, mis- 
 understood and hated? It is enough for 
 the servant that he be as his Master, and 
 the disciple as his Lord. A man who 
 expects to be kept done up in cotton 
 has no business to enter the ministry. 
 He must take up his cross daily, and 
 ought not to whine about it. Constant 
 commiseration is debilitating. Whatever 
 the clergyman's distresses and miseries, 
 he should never be petted or coddled. 
 
 But sympathy warms and feeds the 
 heart. It is fellow-feeling. It is feeling 
 in company with another. Every true 
 man needs it. It is tonic. It is life. 
 Without sympathy the minister sickens 
 and starves. The nobler the man, the 
 more dependent he is on human compan- 
 ionship and love. Coarse and callous men 
 are indifferent to environment, but men 
 of fine sensibilities faint and fall unless 
 
Sympathy. 99 
 
 braced by hearts which love them. There 
 is nothing more pathetic in the Gospels 
 than Jesus' question to the disciples in 
 the Garden of Gethsemane, " Could ye 
 not watch with me one hour ? " 
 
 The loneliness of the minister — have 
 you ever thought of it ? He is one of 
 the most solitary of mortals. He moves 
 among men, but he is isolated from them. 
 Like his Master, he treads the wine-press 
 alone. The world for which he labors is 
 openly hostile or chillingly indifferent. 
 The words are still sadly significant : " Be- 
 hold I send you forth as sheep in the 
 midst of wolves." The wolves do not use 
 their teeth as they did in the days of the 
 Roman Empire ; but teeth they still have, 
 and every minister who does his duty is 
 doomed to be torn to pieces in many a 
 circle of the godless and at many a dinner- 
 table of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. 
 No man can proclaim with unfaltering 
 accent the message written in the New 
 Testament without encountering the vin- 
 
100 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 dictive and strenuous opposition of the 
 world. The Sabbath-breakers and the 
 libertines and the rumsellers, and the gam- 
 blers of all stripes and sizes, and the 
 fops and cynics and idlers, will all turn a 
 deaf ear to his teaching, and will either 
 hoot at him, or pass by on the other side 
 in sullen silence. It is a cold and unre- 
 sponsive world to which the preacher 
 brings his message. 
 
 Since, then, the world is unsympathetic, 
 the church should glow with enthusiasm 
 and good-will. Alas ! many churches are 
 almost as dead as the world. Laymen in 
 discouraging numbers do not rally round 
 their pastor like brothers round a brother. 
 They do not feel with him. They con- 
 sider him an alien. Such laymen are 
 often interested in the social prestige of 
 the church, and take pride in its financial 
 prosperity, but they have no fraternal in- 
 terest in the man who fills the office of 
 shepherd and teacher. They forget that 
 a minister is human, and needs encourage- 
 
Sympathy. loi 
 
 ment and affection. They are good men, 
 but sympathy is not one of their graces. 
 
 It is not hostility but indifference which 
 kills preachers. Opposition on the part 
 of obstreperous saints may at times prove 
 medicinal, and prepare a minister for 
 larger work. But apathy — it is fatal. It 
 will take the heart out of a giant. It can 
 discourage even a St. Paul. To plan and 
 hope and toil and pray while all around 
 him professing Christians stand as list- 
 less and unconcerned as were the crowds 
 which watched the progress of the aw- 
 ful tragedy on Golgotha, — this is a form 
 of crucifixion which many a minister has 
 suffered, and in many a parish the tragedy 
 still goes on. 
 
 Even at the best a minister's work 
 is full of discouragement and disappoint- 
 ment. All that is good and bad in the 
 human heart comes to the surface in a 
 Christian church. One never knows men 
 until he attempts to live with them. 
 Working together in the bonds of church 
 
I02 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 fellowship gives surprising revelations of 
 human nature, and furnishes added proofs 
 of the need of redemption through Christ. 
 Scoffers often grow voluble over the self- 
 ishness and hypocrisy inside the churches, 
 but ministers can add several chapters 
 to the scoffers' doleful story. No matter 
 how faithfully a clergyman may labor, 
 he must bear always on his heart the 
 burden of work done apparently in vain. 
 Under his ministry some men degenerate 
 into hypocrites, others fall into open sin, 
 others are carried away by heresies and 
 superstitions. The sword passes through 
 his heart again and again. Because he 
 keeps his despondencies and despairs out 
 of his sermons, do not imagine he has 
 none. There are crises in every minis- 
 ter's life in which a cheering word is 
 meat and drink for forty days. Such 
 words are cups of cold water which con- 
 siderate laymen will never fail to give. 
 
 It is a pernicious heresy that all the 
 church wants of men is their money. No 
 
Sympathy. 103 
 
 church can live and grow on gold alone. 
 There are other things not a whit less 
 necessary which laymen have it in their 
 power to give, and which they too often 
 thoughtlessly withhold. Just a word of 
 rejoicing when the Spirit works mightily 
 in the parish, and the sterile fields burst 
 into bloom ; just a word of regret when 
 the wheels of the Lord's chariot drag 
 heavy and slow — such a word dropped 
 occasionally into the ear of the leader is 
 one of the most valuable contributions 
 which any layman is able to offer. And 
 to offer this is within reach of the hum- 
 blest. Even the mightiest of the proph- 
 ets has his strength increased by the 
 whispered "Godspeed" of the poorest 
 and obscurest of God's saints. If the 
 Son of God himself in a darkened hour 
 craved the support of steadfast and sym- 
 pathetic hearts, be assured that no one 
 of his ministers in these hurried and 
 earthy-hearted times is above the need 
 of the sympathy of his brethren. 
 
104 Qui^t lalks With Earnest People. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Co-operation. 
 
 But sympathy is not complete until it 
 expresses itself in action. Good feelings 
 are not enough. They must blossom in 
 good deeds. Sympathy without works is 
 dead. Minister and laymen must work 
 together. When they do this, all things 
 are possible. It is because they do not 
 do it that the millennium is so far away. 
 
 The curse of the centuries is the delu- 
 sion that religion is a thing which can be 
 conducted and controlled by the clergy 
 alone. For a thousand years the policy 
 of the Church of Rome fostered this delu- 
 sion. The entire administration and wor- 
 ship of the church were monopolized by 
 the hierarchy, while the laity degenerated 
 into disfranchised spectators. In many 
 countries this is Catholicism still. One 
 
Co-operation. 105 
 
 of the sounds which every tourist through 
 Europe brings home with him is the 
 monotonous droning of the priests heard 
 in all the cathedrals and churches. 
 Whether any one is present or not, the 
 industrious repetition of unintelligible 
 words goes on. Christianity seems to be 
 a vast machine whose wheels must be kept 
 everlastingly turning, and whether the 
 turning has any effect on human life or 
 not, it is the business of the clergy to keep 
 the machine grinding. From such foolish- 
 ness Martin Luther endeavored to deliver 
 Christendom, but three hundred years 
 after his death we have not yet reached 
 the promised land. The virus of the 
 Romish poison is in us still. Errors in- 
 grained by the precept and practice of 
 centuries are not easily eradicated. The 
 luxury of looking on while the priest does 
 the work is too sweet to be surrendered. 
 We count ourselves Protestants, but retain 
 the temper and habits of our Roman 
 Catholic ancestors. In theory we hold 
 
io6 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 that every Christian is a king and priest 
 unto God ; that the veil has been rent in 
 twain, giving every follower of Jesus un- 
 hindered access to the holy of holies ; 
 that to every redeemed soul the command 
 is given, "Go, disciple the nations;" and 
 that all church-members — both laymen 
 and clergymen — are brethren in the 
 Lord. This is our theory, but we shrink 
 from living it. 
 
 In many a Protestant parish the min- 
 ister is practically a priest. To him are 
 committed all the mysteries. His privi- 
 leges and powers are unique. He must 
 do all the thinking, planning, planting, 
 harvesting. He is responsible for every- 
 thing that happens, from the conversion 
 of a soul to the creation of a deficit. To 
 him are given the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven. Whatsoever he binds is bound, 
 and whatsoever he looses is loosed. The 
 church is known by his name. Its own 
 members have a habit of speaking of it 
 as though they were outsiders. If for 
 
Co-operation. 107 
 
 any reason prosperity lingers, the fault 
 lies at his door. The laity are spectators. 
 They look on, listen, put money into the 
 contribution-box. This latter makes them 
 bold to do more. They criticise, pass 
 judgment, even crowd into the seat of the 
 scornful. The church is a Sunday theatre, 
 and they take a box for the season. The 
 preacher is the star actor, and the quartet 
 is the orchestra furnishing music between 
 the acts. This is not caricature. It is a 
 photograph — a snap shot taken on the 
 spot — of a section of current Christi- 
 anity. The photograph may suggest why 
 we have so many distressing and unsolved 
 problems. Until laymen become helpers, 
 yoke-fellows, servants, fellow-laborers, her- 
 alds, pastors, fishers of men, co-workers 
 with their leader and with God, the church 
 is, of all institutions, most miserable, and 
 we are yet in our sins. 
 
 Is there a church problem which co- 
 operation will not solve } Take, for in- 
 stance, that of the Sunday evening service. 
 
io8 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 Church-members are rapidly reaching the 
 conclusion that for them one Sunday ser- 
 vice is sufficient. Their conviction is also 
 steadfast that the pastor should preach a 
 Sunday evening sermon. The pastor goes 
 into the pulpit, and his people remain in 
 their parlors. The result is a disheart- 
 ened preacher, and an appalling area of 
 unoccupied pews. This is the Sunday 
 evening problem ! How can it be solved } 
 Simply by laymen going to church 
 Sunday evening. Why should they not 
 go } If the need for an evening service 
 has vanished, then by all means let the 
 service be abolished. Each church must 
 determine this for itself. What sense is 
 there in squandering the time of the 
 sexton and the nervous energy of the 
 preacher in keeping up a service the need 
 of which has disappeared } But needed or 
 not, so long as the service is maintained, it 
 is the duty of laymen to attend it. 
 
 "We must keep the church open," cry 
 the stay-at-homes, not knowing what they 
 
Co-operation. 109 
 
 say. When is a church open ? When the 
 doors are unbolted and the gas is lighted ? 
 No ! When a church keeps open house 
 it itself must be present to welcome the 
 guests. An open church means a church 
 with Christians in it ready to welcome all 
 comers. The world cares nothing for 
 empty church buildings. Without people 
 in them they are cold as refrigerators and 
 depressing as sepulchres. A dwindling 
 and deserted church service is one of the 
 deadliest of all enemies of faith. Better 
 hold no service whatever than a service 
 with an occupant in every tenth pew. 
 The Sunday evening service is not attrac- 
 tive unless made so by the Lord's people. 
 Where people in large numbers congre- 
 gate, other people want to go. It is a cold 
 world, and a fire always draws a crowd. 
 There is no fire so congenial and attrac- 
 tive as that kindled by a large worshipping 
 congregation. To suppose that the un- 
 converted are going to rush into church 
 buildings left vacant by the very men who 
 
1 10 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 profess to believe that "he that believeth 
 and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that 
 disbelieveth shall be condemned," is to 
 indulge in the suppositions of a fool. A 
 preacher of extraordinary gifts may draw 
 a crowd into a building, but little is gained 
 unless laymen are present to draw the 
 crowd into the kingdom of God. It is not 
 the preacher but the church against which 
 the gates of Hades shall not prevail. 
 When laymen work to fill the churches, 
 preachers will preach better than they do. 
 Every minister ought to have as many 
 assistant pastors as there are members 
 of his church. Unless backed up by his 
 church, he can do nothing. Peter was 
 mighty on the day of Pentecost, not be- 
 cause he had a fluent tongue, but because 
 there stood behind him one hundred and 
 twenty men and women in whose faces 
 there lingered traces of the glory of the 
 tongues of fire. 
 
Considerateness. Ill 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Considerateness. 
 
 It is a high virtue, and a rare one. 
 It involves throwing one's self into an- 
 other's place. And that takes time. And 
 folks are busy. And that is why there 
 are so many inconsiderate people. 
 
 Have you ever made a serious effort 
 to put yourself into a minister's place? 
 Do you realize that he is a public ser- 
 vant, and that a thousand people have a 
 claim upon his strength and time .? There 
 are only twenty-four hours in the day, 
 and for every waking hour there are 
 at least a dozen claimants. Evidently a 
 minister cannot do everything which he 
 may be asked to do. 
 
 " I wonder where our pastor is. I do 
 not see why he is not here ! " petulantly 
 exclaimed one evening in my hearing a 
 
112 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 leading church woman at a Y. M. C. A. 
 
 anniversary. She was a saint. She was 
 zealous to have her pastor foremost in 
 every good work and conspicuous in the 
 highest seat at all the feasts. It nettled 
 her to think that he of all men should 
 be absent from an occasion so important. 
 She did not stop to think that a minis- 
 ter cannot attend all the meetings held 
 in his own church, much less those of 
 all the philanthropic and religious organ- 
 izations which may be doing business in 
 his town. On that very night the sup- 
 posed culprit was helping forward two 
 other deserving enterprises, one early in 
 the evening by his presence, and the 
 other later on by an address. It is self- 
 evident, and yet needs to be frequently 
 asserted, that a minister cannot be in two 
 places at the same time. 
 
 Laymen, as a rule, expect too much ; 
 not too much thought in sermons, not 
 too much Christlikeness in character, but 
 too much pottering around at miscellane- 
 
Considerateness. 113 
 
 ous things. In many a parish too much 
 pastoral calling is demanded. There are 
 church-members whose chief end in life, 
 apparently, is to be called upon ; and 
 there are clergymen foolish enough to 
 cater to this morbid craving. They cod- 
 dle the soreheads to reduce their croak- 
 ing. They steal time from their study 
 to keep people in a good humor who 
 have an abnormal liking for attention. 
 This is all wrong. The chief end of 
 man, or woman, is not receiving pastoral 
 calls ; and church-members who grow 
 grumpy if not called upon up to the 
 level of their fancy ought to be excom- 
 municated as disturbers of the peace. 
 There are sins as unchristian and mis- 
 chievous as drunkenness and prize-fight- 
 ing, and chronic grumbling is one of 
 them. It is a demon to be cast out of 
 a church at all hazards. No sensible 
 pastor will ever squander time on a pro- 
 fessing Christian who has made it the 
 rule of his life not to minister but to 
 
114 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 be ministered unto, and who compels 
 many to give their lives a ransom for 
 him. Pastoral calling has its place ; and 
 a minister who turns his back upon it 
 commits, in my judgment, a serious 
 blunder. Sermons are warmer and juicier 
 after the pastor has been in the homes 
 of his people. There is no book quite 
 so inspiring and suggestive to a genuine 
 preacher as the life of his parish. But 
 pastoral calling may become a millstone 
 round the minister's neck. He may do 
 too much of it. He may wear himself 
 out in the attempt to satisfy the vora- 
 cious demands of unreasonable people. 
 
 Laymen can help the pastor in pastoral 
 work by being considerate. It is not for 
 them to dictate how many calls shall be 
 made each year, or who are the people to 
 be called upon. All such exactions are 
 arbitrary and tyrannical. The pastor 
 knows his parish better than any one 
 else. He knows the people who need him 
 most, knows his own strength and the 
 
Considerateness. 1 1 5 
 
 various demands upon it, and should, 
 therefore, be given large liberty in plan- 
 ning his pastoral labors. To you out- 
 siders the calling may seem haphazard or 
 partial or slovenly, but it will be neces- 
 sary for you to know a great many things 
 which you do not know now before you 
 are fitted to pass judgment on him. Be 
 considerate. To throw at him as he en- 
 ters your door the number of months 
 which have elapsed since his last call, or 
 to remind him that some one else has 
 received two calls to your one, or to in- 
 sinuate that his predecessor was ever so 
 much more faithful in calling than some 
 men you have known, is a species of re- 
 fined cruelty which Christian love ought 
 to abolish. The only Christian way to 
 get even with the minister, who in your 
 judgment is remiss in coming to see you, 
 is to call upon him yourself. If, as you 
 think, he is doing you an injustice, why 
 not heap coals of fire on his head .? Have 
 a quiet talk with him in his study. 
 
Ii6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 Or if you are not brave enough to ven- 
 ture into the parsonage, request him by- 
 letter to call on you. If you have a sor- 
 row that you want to talk about, or a sin 
 which you desire to confess, or a problem 
 on which you seek light, send for him. 
 He will be glad to come. It delights a 
 minister to have his people lay their per- 
 plexities before him. He is ordained 
 to help people. He cannot help them 
 unless they tell him what it is that 
 troubles them. How much more sensi- 
 ble to invite him into your house, and 
 receive from him the help you need, than 
 to sit and sulk and make the heart bitter 
 by counting up the weeks which come 
 and go before the door-bell rings. And 
 if you are sick, of course you will send 
 for him. Why not } You send for your 
 physician, why not for your minister.? 
 Your physician does not know you are 
 sick unless notified. How can the min- 
 ister be expected to know .? He is a 
 representative of the omniscient God, but 
 
Considerateness. 1 1 7 
 
 he himself has all the limitations of men. 
 The Almighty does not see fit to indicate 
 to his prophets by special revelation the 
 physical condition of the members of 
 the church. When you are sick let the 
 pastor know it. That is sensible, consid- 
 erate, Christian. But to lie in bed for 
 one week or six, wondering why he 
 doesn't come, telling every caller in plain- 
 tive tones that the pastor has not yet 
 called, and to keep on whispering to 
 your friends for six months after you 
 get well that during your illness the pas- 
 tor never came to see you — that is neither 
 sensible nor considerate nor Christian. 
 Let your considerateness be known unto 
 all men, especially your pastor. 
 
Ii8 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Thoughtlessness. 
 
 It causes a deal of mischief in the 
 Church of God. It is not an inhospitable 
 disposition, but thoughtlessness, which 
 leads many church-members to neglect 
 strangers who come to worship with 
 them. Let us hope it is the same dis- 
 temper which glues men sometimes to 
 the end of their pew, so that late comers 
 are obliged to clamber in over their knees. 
 It is not malice, but heedlessness, which 
 impels a layman to rummage under his 
 pew for overshoes and umbrella during 
 the singing of the closing hymn. What 
 is it but absent-mindedness that starts 
 belated pew-holders up the aisle during 
 the singing of the anthem ? Not lack 
 of mind, but lack of thought, is respon- 
 sible for the conduct of the woman who 
 
Thoughtlessness. 119 
 
 disturbs her neighbors through prayer 
 and Scripture reading by her incessant 
 whispering. And what but paralysis of 
 the organ of thought can account for the 
 fact that a congregation of courteous peo- 
 ple will sometimes turn their back at the 
 close of service upon a minister who has 
 preached in exchange with the pastor 
 without a word of greeting or thanks ? 
 To-day, as in the days of Isaiah, the 
 Almighty has just cause to complain, 
 " My people doth not consider." 
 
 Thoughtlessness is one of the demons 
 which every minister soon learns to fear. 
 For instance, if some good brother seizes 
 him while on the way to the pulpit, and 
 pours into his ears the latest gossip, it is 
 not considered ministerial to say to such 
 a man, " Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 Though oppressed and afflicted, he must 
 not open his mouth. Or some nervous 
 saint may keep turning over the pages 
 of the hymn-book straight through the 
 preaching of the sermon, not knowing 
 
I20 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 that the constant turning of pages may- 
 be to a sensitive man as distracting as 
 the buzzing of a full-fledged sawmill. 
 Or at the close of the service some one 
 may rush forward, and drag him from the 
 pulpit stairs into a subject a thousand 
 miles away from the sermon. This is 
 "the most unkindest cut of all." To 
 labor hard to bring a congregation into 
 the central glory of a truth, and then 
 have some one dash forward at the 
 earliest opportunity — presumptively to 
 render thanks for the help he has re- 
 ceived, but in reality to ventilate his 
 mind on some subject totally foreign to 
 the day, or to propound a curious conun- 
 drum which has no conceivable relation 
 to anything which has been said — is in- 
 expressibly galling and disheartening. 
 After a preacher has struck with all his 
 might on the heart-chords of a congrega- 
 tion, and then discovers that in at least 
 one of his apparently most attentive lis- 
 teners there is no hint of a response, he 
 
Thoughtlessness. 12 1 
 
 instinctively looks around for Elijah's 
 juniper-tree. Why God allows the devil 
 to play such pranks on ministers in the 
 very hour of their exhaustion is not yet 
 revealed. It may be to bring them more 
 completely into the fellowship of the suf- 
 fering of his Son. At the close of one 
 of Jesus' sermons on the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost, a preoccupied egotist 
 shouted out, " Master, speak to my 
 brother, that he divide the inheritance 
 with me." It would be hazardous to say 
 that the Son of man ever lost his temper ; 
 but if there is a trace of impatience vis- 
 ible anywhere in his recorded sayings, it 
 is in the answer which he gave to this 
 exasperating and incorrigible sinner. 
 
 But a dash of cold water at the close 
 of a sermon is not so fatal as an inter- 
 ruption in the midst of sermon-building. 
 It is difficult for the average man to 
 realize the value of uninterrupted time. 
 He himself does not get a day without 
 its interruptions, nor does he want it. A 
 
122 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 minister, however, if he is to do his best 
 work, must have at least a part of certain 
 days absolutely free from all intrusion. 
 " But I want to see him only a minute," 
 pleads the importunate inquirer, not know- 
 ing what he asks. He who thinks that 
 only a minute is a trifle does not know 
 the nature of the mind, and has probably 
 done no sustained and constructive think- 
 ing. "Only a minute" may ruin the 
 work of a day. In a minute an express- 
 train can be thrown from the track, but 
 to place it again on the rails requires the 
 arduous labor of hours. The mind in its 
 highest operations moves more swiftly 
 than the limited express, and the inter- 
 ruption of only a minute may hurl the 
 train of thought down an embankment 
 and stop all progress indefinitely. In 
 the hot hours of sermonic creation, when 
 the mental furnace is seething and the 
 molten thought is ready to be poured 
 into words, an outsider who asks for a 
 minute not only checks the momentum 
 
Thoughtlessness. 123 
 
 of the mental process, but chills the glow 
 of the emotions, and introduces into the 
 mind a foreign substance which is not 
 easily cast out. In those hours when 
 your pastor goes into the mountain to 
 commune with God, do not let the devil 
 tempt you to ring his door-bell. 
 
 This seems all foolishness to some of 
 you. You know ministers who are not 
 so cranky. They are open at all times to 
 their people. They say so with swelling 
 pride. Morning, afternoon, and night the 
 latch-string is out, and whosoever will may 
 come. But it must be borne in mind 
 that there are preachers and preachers. 
 Some are carpenters and others are poets. 
 Some men build sermons as carpenters 
 build houses, — they manufacture them. 
 They cut out the material piece by piece, 
 join the pieces together, and sandpaper 
 and varnish them at their leisure. They 
 can drop their work at any moment as 
 easily as the carpenter drops his ham- 
 mer. The poet-preacher is a different 
 
124 Qjt^i^t Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 man. His sermons are not made ; they 
 grow. Sermons come to him as poems 
 do, in rare and luminous hours, which 
 hours when they come must he seized 
 and used. Some days are opaque. No 
 light streams through. And then there 
 comes — 
 
 One of the charmed days 
 
 When the genius of God doth flow. 
 
 Mind and heart are ready. In a few 
 hours the work of weeks bursts into blos- 
 som, an argument is forged, a truth is un- 
 folded, a vision is worked out into speech 
 which will make glad many hearts. 
 
 As a rule, the preachers who see peo- 
 ple at all hours through the week do not 
 see many people at the hour of service 
 on Sunday. If your minister lacks the 
 will-power to protect himself from peo- 
 ple who steal his time, you ought to buy 
 him a large-mouthed bulldog, which shall 
 serve as a sort of flaming sword to guard 
 the study door. 
 
Wajs of Killing a Sermon. 125 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Ways of Killing a Sermon. 
 
 A LAYMAN may, with a little practice, 
 develop amazing dexterity in counteract- 
 ing the influence of his pastor. After the 
 preacher has kindled by his sermon a fire 
 in many hearts, a layman may, if indus- 
 trious and enterprising, extinguish the fire 
 in all the people near him. It is a criti- 
 cal season in the week, — the brief period 
 immediately succeeding the benediction. 
 In those few moments a layman can, if 
 he will, do infinite mischief. He can turn 
 his back on the stranger that stands near- 
 est him, and show by his conduct that the 
 pastor's sermon on Brotherliness is a mere 
 theory, not intended to be reduced to prac- 
 tice, at least in that church. Or, if he 
 chooses to be talkative, he can smother 
 the sermon in his conversation. He can 
 
126 Quiet Talks with Earnest People. 
 
 plunge into a discussion of the music. 
 That theme is very fascinating and fatal. 
 He can say : " How did you enjoy the 
 music .'* How did you like the Soprano V 
 or, " What did you think of the Bass ? " 
 Such questions are exceedingly effective 
 in the mouth of an expert sermon-killer. 
 
 A dozen members of the church pro- 
 pounding such questions to every one they 
 meet convert the house of God into a 
 concert-hall, and train people to look upon 
 public worship as a performance to be 
 measured by the aesthetic gratification 
 which it affords to the congregation. 
 Many a minister, after pouring out his 
 very life to convict men of their sins, or 
 to lift them to the level of some arduous 
 duty, has been cut to the heart by hearing 
 his best people discussing in the aisles 
 the excellences or defects of the anthem, 
 and passing judgment on the voices of 
 the singers. 
 
 But the question concerning music is 
 not a whit more demoralizing than the 
 
Ways of Killing a Sermon. 127 
 
 question heard even more frequently, 
 " How did you like the sermon ? " Ask- 
 ing that question has become a habit 
 which it will probably take centuries to 
 eradicate. It is a demon which can be 
 cast out only by prayer and fasting. Even 
 the saints are addicted to the use of it. 
 When strangers come to the church, the 
 first question at the close of the service 
 often is, '' How did you like the sermon } " 
 No wonder spiritual results of preaching 
 are so meagre. What can be expected 
 from preaching unless laymen realize that 
 they are to follow up the work of persua- 
 sion by driving home the word set forth 
 by the preacher.? Sermons are not toys 
 to be played with, or pretty pieces of rhet- 
 oric on which every member of the con- 
 gregation is expected to pass judgment. 
 To ask, How did you like the sermon t 
 is to drag it down to the level of a crazy- 
 quilt, or a piece of crochet-work. A ser- 
 mon is not an exquisite bit of literary 
 bric-a-brac, to be chattered over and judged 
 
128 Qtciet Talks with Earnest People. 
 
 by the technical rules of art. It is not a 
 dumpling into which every self-constituted 
 critic is invited to stick his fork that he 
 may praise or condemn the cook. A ser- 
 mon is a solemn warning, a bugle-call to 
 duty, a burning condemnation, an earnest 
 stroke against a giant wrong, an exhorta- 
 tion to high endeavor, the illumination of 
 a majestic truth. What a question for an 
 earnest Christian to ask inside the house 
 of God, — " How did you like it .? " 
 
 Sermons are preached, not to be liked, 
 but to be accepted and lived. Suppose, 
 pray, you did not like the sermon ! What 
 of it } Suppose that scapegrace who sat 
 with you in the pew went away disgusted ! 
 When the arrow goes in, curses often 
 come out. John the Baptist, Jesus of 
 Nazareth, Peter and John, were not anx- 
 ious that their sermons should be liked. 
 Why should you be so solicitous concern- 
 ing the opinion of the critics } Never ask 
 again that insipid question, How did you 
 like the sermon t Such a question in- 
 
Ways of Killing a Sermon, 1 29 
 
 jures the one who asks it, and debauches 
 the person who answers it. It trains men 
 to measure sermons by false standards, 
 and to seek for entertainment rather than 
 for truth. 
 
 No wonder so many ministers have been 
 spoiled, and are to-day preaching sermons 
 full of everything else but the gospel. 
 They itch to catch the crowd, and cater 
 for applause, because they have been ruined 
 by churches which have trained them to 
 think of the sermon as something to be 
 admired, eulogized, exulted over. A true 
 preacher speaks for God, and whether the 
 people like the message or not is the very 
 last of all questions to be considered. No 
 church can have conversions in it whose 
 leading members ask the unconverted, 
 How did you like the sermon } When a 
 man is wrestling with problems of life and 
 destiny, it is an insult to throw at him 
 such a frivolous inquiry. It calls him off 
 from a decision unspeakably momentous, 
 invites him to pose as a critic, and requests 
 
130 Quiet Talks with Earnest People. 
 
 him to pass judgment on the instrument 
 which in the providence of God is being 
 used for his regeneration. Many an aroused 
 soul has been hurled from a serious mood 
 of conviction into the mood of a trifler by, 
 How did you like the sermon ? 
 
 It is impossible for earnest men to do 
 anything in the pulpit unless they are 
 seconded by earnest men in the pews. 
 Of what avail are passion and solemnity 
 and burning earnestness in the preacher 
 if the sermon is followed up by a swarm 
 of triflers propounding idle questions ? 
 Holy impressions are easily dissipated. It 
 does not take much to strangle new-born 
 aspirations. One silly interrogation may 
 crush a rising impulse toward God. The 
 church should carry on and complete the 
 work begun by the preacher. All conver- 
 sation at the close of the service should 
 deepen and fasten the impression of the 
 hour. The church should be a trumpet 
 through which the voice of the preacher 
 gains volume and power. But if the 
 
Ways of Killing a Sermon. 1 3 1 
 trumpet gives an uncertain voice, who shall 
 prepare himself for war ? If the preacher 
 cries, " In God's name, act ! " and the 
 saints stand around and ask, " How do you 
 like that ? " who of the unconverted will 
 prepare himself for the marriage supper 
 of the Lamb? 
 
 The crucial question is not. Did you 
 like it? but. Did it help you? Did it 
 comfort you ? Did it give you new visions 
 of duty ? Did it bring you nearer to the 
 Lord ? The parable of the sower has an 
 abiding significance. Those birds which 
 devour seeds are like the poor: they are 
 always with us. In our days such birds 
 have no feathers, but in instinct they are 
 true to the nature of the birds which Jesus 
 saw; and one of their favorite methods of 
 rendering vain the work of the Sower is 
 asking. How did you like the sermon ? 
 
132 Quiet Talks with Earnest People. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 inspiring the Minister, 
 
 What means the clamor of the churches 
 for young men ? It means that youth has 
 vim and passion, and that the gospel has 
 fresh stimulus and tonic on the lips of 
 men whose hearts have not been saddened 
 by disappointment or worn out by burdens 
 too heavy to be borne. He is a rare man 
 who in our day can do the work of a pas- 
 tor for thirty years and maintain his energy 
 undiminished and his enthusiasm unim- 
 paired. With multiplied experiences to 
 draw the fire out of him, no wonder many 
 a minister becomes in later life as cold as 
 an extinct volcano. 
 
 If you wish to keep your minister young, 
 be regular in your church attendance. 
 Possibly a minister ought to rise superior 
 to his environment, and speak with as 
 
Inspiring the Minister. 133 
 
 much unction to quartered oak as to liv- 
 ing hearts ; but a minister after all is only 
 human, and in the course of time empty 
 pews wear on him. Laymen, as a rule, 
 do not realize the importance of church 
 attendance. If they did they would not 
 so often allow a cloud, or a shower, or a 
 wind, or a snow, or a caller, or a news- 
 paper, or a headache, or a fit of laziness, 
 to keep them at home. A minister de- 
 serted by his representative men dies. 
 He dies by inches. No man can preach 
 with sustained fire and hope whose lead- 
 ing people show by their desultory atten- 
 dance that public worship is to them one of 
 the incidentals or electives of life. Noth- 
 ing will so surely take the spring and snap 
 out of a man as speaking on great themes 
 to empty pews. It makes a man prema- 
 turely old. Brethren, be in your place at 
 the hour for public worship. The church 
 is expected by the world to render worship 
 on the Lord's Day to God. The rendering 
 of this worship is one of the sacrifices to 
 
134 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 be offered perpetually by the followers of 
 Jesus. The world's redemption is delayed 
 by Christians who mar the sacrifice by 
 selfish neglect to take part in it. Be in 
 your place every time. Your presence 
 gives life to the preacher. Your face 
 helps him more than you can ever know. 
 Your faithfulness strengthens the grip of 
 Christ upon your community, and hastens 
 the coming of the golden age. 
 
 And take heed how you hear. Listen- 
 ing is a high art. Among many Christians 
 it is a lost art. Make it your business to 
 pay attention. Whip your mind whenever 
 it runs off. Go after it a hundred times 
 if necessary. Cudgel it back to its work. 
 The church is not a place for lounging or 
 dreaming. Public worship is work ; and no 
 one can worship truly unless he girds 
 up the loins of his mind, and makes ener- 
 getic use of all the intellect and will-power 
 which the Almighty has given him. The 
 failure of intelligent people to take in 
 spoken discourse is something disheart- 
 
Inspiring the Minister. 135 
 
 ening. He is an exceptional Christian 
 who is able to follow a sermon closely 
 from the first sentence to the last. Hence 
 the ignorance of many church-members. 
 Hence the misunderstandings and mis- 
 interpretations. Many persons mishear. 
 Mishearing is chronic with them. They 
 invariably drop out the critical qualifying 
 phrase of a sentence and the cardinal 
 paragraph of a sermon. They do this 
 because their mind takes cat -naps. Like 
 a worn-out sewing-machine, it drops 
 stitches. What minister has not blushed 
 on hearing some of his best listeners en- 
 deavor to give a resume of his sermon. 
 Every preacher has reason to be devoutly 
 thankful to God that he is not responsi- 
 ble for everything which people think he 
 has said. It was his insight into human 
 nature which led Christ to end his dis- 
 courses with, "He that hath ears to hear, 
 let him hear." 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that laymen are 
 an important factor in the preaching of 
 
136 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 a sermon. The sermon is determined by 
 the preacher, the theme, and the congre- 
 gation. A public speaker, some one has 
 said, gives back in flood what he receives 
 from his audience in vapor. But suppose 
 there is no vapor arising from the people, 
 and that the audience is a Sahara desert, 
 arid and dead. How can a man speak 
 with glowing tongue unless his hearers 
 help him } Preachers in larger numbers 
 will preach with genuine Pentecostal power 
 when their people supply the atmosphere 
 in which great speech becomes possible. 
 
 Work, then, for the sermon through 
 the week. You have a part in it as well 
 as your pastor. Subscribe for at least 
 one religious paper that you may keep 
 in touch with the great movements in 
 which God is expressing himself in your 
 time. Buy the best books. Read church 
 history. Study the history of doctrine. 
 Own the great volumes which throw light 
 on the Scriptures. A few men and women 
 in a congregation, informed and truth- 
 
Inspiring the Minister. 1 37 
 
 hungry, capable of appreciating the best 
 thought which the preacher can give, are 
 a safeguard against ministerial laziness, 
 and a ceaseless spur to more strenuous 
 labor. Such persons call out his reserves 
 and resources. Are you an inspiration to 
 your pastor.^ 
 
 Keep your Sundays free for earnest 
 reading. Burn up the Sunday newspaper. 
 It is an indefensible, intolerable curse. 
 It exists simply and solely to swell the 
 income of wealthy and greedy newspaper 
 proprietors. A Christian ought to be 
 ashamed to have it in his house. Is not 
 a man sufficiently secularized by six days' 
 contact with the world without dipping 
 his mind on Sunday morning once more 
 into the muddy stream in which he has 
 dipped it on the preceding six days } 
 What can be expected of a Christian in 
 public worship who comes to church with 
 a newspaper stuffed into his mind 1 He 
 is cold as a clod to the touch of the 
 preacher, and lowers the spiritual tempera- 
 
138 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 ture of the entire congregation. William 
 E. Gladstone was an ideal worshipper in 
 God's house. He concentrated all his 
 great powers upon the sermon. He was 
 interested because he was informed. He 
 was informed because throughout life he 
 had made diligent use of his Sundays. 
 He declared in old age that he would 
 not have lived so long had he not always 
 kept his Sundays quite apart from his 
 political life. It was pure refreshment to 
 him to turn to holier things on that day. 
 It enabled him to learn more of religious 
 subjects than perhaps any other layman of 
 our century. It gave him that firm and 
 splendid ground which ennobled and hal- 
 lowed all his actions. " Go thou and do 
 likewise." 
 
Appreciating the Minister. 139 
 
 XX. 
 
 appreciating the Minister. 
 
 Ministers are human. They have 
 hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affec- 
 tions, passions. If you prick them they 
 bleed, and if you appreciate them they 
 are strengthened. They are more sensi- 
 tive to appreciation than most men be- 
 cause of the nature of their work. Their 
 work is heart work. It is arduous and 
 exhausting. It involves their sympathies 
 and affections. To have a thankless con- 
 gregation is an agony something like that 
 of having a thankless child. 
 
 Moreover, a minister has many things 
 to worry him. He is subject to constant 
 and merciless criticism. He is never 
 eager to hear all the things that people 
 are saying, but in the course of the year 
 he is certain to catch enough of the tittle- 
 
140 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 tattle which goes on around him to trouble 
 and depress him. In this way anxieties 
 and suspicions often arise which faith is 
 not able to shake off. The flippant re- 
 mark of some petulant critic may lie like 
 lead on his heart for weeks. He loses 
 confidence in himself. He imagines his 
 critics more numerous than they are. 
 It has happened more than once that a 
 good man has been worried into insanity, 
 or the grave, by the impression that his 
 parish was hostile to him. The impres- 
 sion may have been created by the bad 
 feeling known to exist in only two or 
 three homes. A minister, to do his best 
 work, must live in an atmosphere of good 
 will. Laymen ought to create such an 
 atmosphere. While the busybodies are 
 carrying to the pastor stories of dissatis- 
 faction, the saints ought to bear to him 
 messages of affectionate good cheer and 
 enthusiastic approval. 
 
 The finest results of a minister's labors 
 are below the reach of the eye. They 
 
Appreciating the Minister. 141 
 
 cannot be computed or tabulated. They 
 are spiritual satisfactions, heart impul- 
 sions, soul inspirations, which only those 
 who receive them know anything about. 
 A minister often fails to realize the mag- 
 nitude of the work he is doing. Because 
 the people say nothing, he concludes his 
 ministry is in vain. Many a clergyman 
 has carried a burdened heart through 
 years of disappointing labor, hungry for 
 a word of appreciation which never came, 
 finally throwing down his work in de- 
 spair, only to find on the eve of his de- 
 parture to another parish or the other 
 world, how wide was the satisfaction, and 
 how genuine the affection for him in the 
 hearts of the people. Just a word of com- 
 mendation now and then through the 
 silent years would have brightened many a 
 day that was dark, and made lighter many 
 a burden which almost crushed. Tell 
 your minister, brethren, that you appre- 
 ciate what he is doing. Praise, like 
 mercy, is twice blessed. It blesses those 
 
142 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 who give as well as those who receive. It 
 is a shameful thing to sit for a year under 
 preaching which makes you a nobler and 
 happier man without letting your pastor 
 know that in at least one heart the seed 
 has fallen, and is bringing forth many fold. 
 
 Laymen ought to practise Paul's words : 
 "I praise you." Why not praise your 
 pastor } Are you afraid of spoihng him } 
 Do not fear. Praise spoils no one who is 
 not spoiled already. It is true, as Words- 
 worth says, that " Praise is dangerous." 
 But so also is every other good thing. 
 For every man hurt by praise, a thousand 
 are starved to death by lack of it. There 
 is nothing which humbles a true man like 
 generous appreciation. 
 
 Many persons are so unaccustomed to 
 speak complimentary words that when 
 they attempt it, the words stick in their 
 throat ; or if the words get out, they are 
 badly bungled. No man under thirty can 
 be told that his sermon is very good for a 
 young man, without resenting it. He has 
 
Appreciating the Minister. 143 
 
 Paul's authority for refusing to allow men 
 to despise his youth. It is galling to a 
 man over sixty to receive compliments 
 with a reference to his age tucked away 
 in one end of them — a sting, as it were, 
 in their tail. Nor is it edifying to hear a 
 person begin with, " I don't want to flatter 
 you, but " — Such a remark is equivalent 
 to saying, " Please don't think I'm a liar 
 because I say I enjoyed your discourse." 
 Nor does a sensible man want to be as- 
 sured that his sermon was " grand," or that 
 his prayer was *' splendid." Such enco- 
 miums are almost as bad as the eulogy 
 of the brother who invariably prefaces his 
 remarks with a declaration that he believes 
 it to be his duty to encourage a man when 
 he does well. Grown men do not like 
 to be patted patronizingly on the head. 
 Words of commendation, when squeezed 
 through the lips by a hard sense of duty, 
 bring a chill, instead of a glow, to the 
 heart. Praise is best when it comes easily 
 and naturally, — 
 
144 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 "As showers from the clouds of summer. 
 Or tears from the eyelids start." 
 
 A quiet, " I thank you for your prayer," 
 or " Your sermon helped me," is worth 
 more than all the stilted English which 
 a voluble enthusiast is able to pour into 
 a preacher's ears. 
 
 There are ministers who seldom receive 
 a word of praise. Their big, eloquent 
 brothers go through life with hozannas 
 ringing perpetually in their ears, while 
 they drudge on unnoticed, with no one to 
 stir their pulses by shouting, " Well done." 
 It is a mistake to suppose that God's com- 
 mendation alone is sufficient. Moses was 
 strong, but he was not strong enough to 
 hold up his hands to the end of the day. 
 " Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the 
 one on the one side and the other on the 
 other side, and his hands were steady 
 until the going down of the sun." Happy 
 the minister who is steadied and sustained 
 by Christians who appreciate the work 
 that is being done, and who hearten their 
 
Appreciating the Minister. 145 
 
 leader by a frequent word of gratitude and 
 appreciation. A minister was one day 
 surprised at the close of his sermon to 
 have a stranger greet him thus : " I thank 
 you for that sermon ; it did me good." 
 He had preached faithfully for a year, 
 and no member of his congregation had 
 in all that time expressed to him a word 
 of appreciation. The words of the stran- 
 ger overcame him. To be assured that a 
 sermon of his had reached the heart was 
 like rain on thirsty soil. He hurried 
 home and told his wife the good news. 
 They bowed their heads and wept to- 
 gether. 
 
146 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Criticising the Minister, 
 
 It is a difficult task, but there are times 
 when it must be done. By criticism I 
 do not mean that aimless detraction in 
 which undeveloped church-members occa- 
 sionally indulge, but the brave and open 
 disapprobation of a minister's conduct, or 
 the condemning judgment of his work. 
 Ministers are not infallible. Like other 
 mortals, they fall into ruts. They some- 
 times allow idiosyncrasies to become so 
 pronounced as to narrow their influence 
 and cripple their power. Alas for a man 
 who is placed beyond the reach of intel- 
 ligent and discriminating criticism ! There 
 is scarcely any limit to the number of 
 foolish things a minister may be guilty 
 of. He may come to church meetings 
 habitually late, or he may sniffle at the 
 
Criticising tJie Minister. 147 
 
 close of every paragraph, or he may 
 whoop Hke a wild Indian in delivering 
 tame ideas, or he may practise elocution- 
 ary slides in his prayers, or he may make 
 faces which frighten the children, or he 
 may stare at the wall instead of looking 
 at the people while preaching his ser- 
 mons, or he may make the church a place 
 in which to rehearse the chapters of his 
 next book, or he may refer in every ser- 
 mon to his trip to the Holy Land, or he 
 may make Missions or some other equally 
 good theme his hobby, and ride it straight 
 through the year, or he may allow his 
 voice to drop into inaudibility at the close 
 of every important sentence, or he may 
 repeat old sermons so frequently that 
 even people with a poor memory find 
 him out, or he may go gadding over the 
 country shining at all sorts of celebrations 
 while his people sit in darkness at home, 
 or he may keep on for years mispronoun- 
 cing a half-dozen common words to the 
 disgust of every high-school girl in the 
 
148 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 congregation, or— What does your min- 
 ister do ? " Oh, if he would only quit 
 that ! " is the distressed cry of many a 
 long-suffering saint who wants to cure 
 his pastor of a bad habit, and does not 
 know how to go about it. 
 
 What can be done ? The providential 
 remedy is a wife, but the remedy is not 
 always sufficient. Some men do not 
 marry, and some wives do not know how 
 to criticise. Some women are adepts in 
 criticism ; but their husbands, being stiff- 
 necked and rebellious, refuse to hearken 
 to their strictures and admonitions. It 
 is not uncommon for both the minister 
 and his wife to tumble into the same 
 ditch. What can you do } Will you 
 write him an anonymous letter 1 Never ! 
 It is the work of a coward and a sneak. 
 A minister who values his time will not 
 read anonymous letters. Life is too short 
 to waste it in reading communications 
 whose writers are ashamed to own them. 
 If a minister is foolish enough to read 
 
Criticising the Minister, 1 49 
 
 an anonymous, faultfinding letter, he is 
 almost sure to think it the production of 
 some crank or knave, and consequently 
 its appeal does not lead him to repent- 
 ance. Do not write such letters. If you 
 know something you are convinced that 
 your pastor ought to know, stand up and 
 say it to him like a man. " I withstood 
 him to the face," says Paul, in describing 
 the way in which he rebuked Peter. Paul 
 knew how to censure as well as how to 
 praise. 
 
 The object of Christian criticism is to 
 edify. To edify is to build up. A man 
 is not built up by criticism which he 
 never hears. Consequently it is foolish 
 to criticise a minister behind his back. 
 Such disparagement may offer an outlet 
 for one's bad humor, but it does not 
 redound to the glory of God. 
 
 If the talk is carried on in the presence 
 of children, it becomes a tenfold greater 
 sin. What deeper wound can a parent 
 inflict upon his child than to render the 
 
150 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 minister of religion ridiculous to him by 
 laughing at his mannerisms, or depreciat- 
 ing his intelligence or his piety ! Chil- 
 dren are easily prejudiced, and their hearts 
 can be readily closed. They are naturally 
 trustful and receptive, their affections are 
 fresh, and their confidence in adults is un- 
 bounded. They give their hearts readily 
 to those who are placed over them, and 
 it is in their docility of heart that there 
 lies the possibility of education and cul- 
 ture. To criticise in their presence those 
 whose business it is to mould them, de- 
 stroys in them the very capacity which 
 it is the duty of parents to safeguard 
 and develop. The more deeply a child 
 loves his pastor or teacher, the more ke 
 will learn from him. How can a boy be 
 helped by a minister whom his father 
 picks to pieces every Sunday? How can 
 the life of a girl be moulded by a man 
 whose methods and attainments are con- 
 stantly sneered at by her mother .? Many 
 parents have lamented in later life that 
 
Criticising the Minister. i 5 1 
 
 their children did not join the church, not 
 knowing how to account for such conduct, 
 when the reason was that the children 
 lost confidence in the church on account 
 of the conversations they heard at the 
 dinner-table. No matter how limited in 
 wisdom or goodness the minister may be, 
 it is wicked to criticise him in the pres- 
 ence of boys and girls. The office of the 
 minister of Christ is sacred, and the child- 
 heart should be trained to reverence the 
 office by being taught to honor the man 
 who fills ■ it. 
 
 Whenever, therefore, you want to cen- 
 sure your pastor, follow the directions given 
 by the Lord in the eighteenth chapter 
 of St. Matthew's Gospel. The minister 
 is your brother, and if he has trespassed 
 against you by actions which offend, go 
 and tell him his fault between you and 
 him alone. If he is willing to hear you, 
 you have done both him and the church 
 an invaluable service. But if he will not 
 hear you, then take with you one or two 
 
152 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 more, that he may know your criticism is 
 not a personal crotchet, but the sober 
 judgment of representative members of 
 the church. If he shall neglect to hear 
 them, tell it unto the church. A minister 
 too touchy and stubborn to listen to the 
 counsel of his best people is a fit subject 
 for church discipline. If he insists on 
 acting like a heathen, he ought to be 
 treated like one. Many a clergyman has 
 injured his influence for years by some 
 oddity of behavior or crudity of character 
 which might have been corrected in a day 
 had a few sane and substantial laymen 
 been brave enough to call his attention 
 to the thing wherein he gave offence. 
 
Seciirmg a Minister, I 5 3 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Securing a Minister, 
 
 There is only one thing more difficult, 
 and that is getting rid of one. In say- 
 ing this, I take it for granted that you 
 are under a democratic form of church 
 government. If your church is a mon- 
 archy, the problem is a simple one. In 
 that case the preacher is ordered to his 
 post by his superior officer. The congre- 
 gation has nothing to say. The preacher 
 is sent. The church accepts him. 
 
 But Christians in increasing numbers 
 are insisting on the right to say who 
 shall be their spiritual leaders. Even in 
 churches whose government is monarchi- 
 cal, there is a growing disposition among 
 the laity to transfer the appointment of 
 the clergyman from the hands of the 
 hierarchy into the hands of the congrega- 
 
1 54 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 tion. It is a privilege highly prized, but 
 for it Christendom is paying a great price. 
 If monarchy has its dangers and tyran- 
 nies, so also has democracy its limitations 
 and madnesses. When the local church 
 is officered by external authority, there is 
 often friction, and sometimes open rebel- 
 lion. When the local church is left to 
 select its own leader, there is often a 
 storm at his coming, and a battle over 
 his departure. 
 
 One of the first steps to be taken in the 
 needed reform is to abolish the ancient 
 and pernicious custom of candidating. It 
 is a device of Satan for humiliating min- 
 isters and dividing churches. The sys- 
 tem is plausible, and ingenious arguments 
 can be made for it. But "there is a 
 way which seemeth right unto a man, 
 but the end thereof are the ways of 
 death." A minister preaches as a can- 
 didate. His voice and gestures, his neck- 
 tie and theology, his coat and rhetoric, — 
 all come under severe scrutiny. At the 
 
Securing a Minister. 155 
 
 close of the sermon a canvass is made to 
 ascertain what the popular estimate of the 
 man is. There are usually a few who 
 have heard of another son of thunder 
 who looms up as a possible prize, and 
 this man must of course be heard be- 
 fore the vote is taken. He preaches, and 
 the church is immediately divided. A 
 congregation of intelligent people cannot 
 be expected to agree in their tastes. 
 Preachers differ from one another as 
 widely as fruits do. Some people like 
 apples best, others prefer peaches, others 
 plums, others pears, and others grapes. 
 There is no use arguing about tastes. 
 As with fruits, so with men. One man 
 prefers Shakespeare, another Milton, an- 
 other Burns. There is no use trying to 
 persuade them to agree. Whenever two 
 preachers of equal ability are placed in 
 competition before a congregation, a di- 
 vision is inevitable. The amazing thing 
 is that so many laymen do not see this. 
 After the church has been split into two 
 
156 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 factions, it is customary to hear a third 
 candidate, which usually results in the 
 creation of a third faction. This leads to 
 a fourth candidate and an additional fac- 
 tion. Multitudes of churches have taken 
 this broad road which leads to destruc- 
 tion, and other multitudes are rushing on 
 to wreck themselves by indulging in the 
 same inexcusable folly. 
 
 If a candidate is heard at all, every 
 wise man in the church should strenu- 
 ously insist on a vote being taken before 
 another man is allowed to go into the 
 pulpit. The candidate himself should de- 
 mand this. If a church is unwilling to 
 grant his request, then he should pass 
 by on the other side. Such a church 
 is too wilful and foolish to deserve a 
 sensible man for its leader. 
 
 The best advice to a church is. Candi- 
 date not at all. It is a useless piece of 
 business at the best. What can you tell 
 from one sermon } A shallow man, con- 
 fident and magnetic, may please you at 
 
Securing a Minister. 157 
 
 first hearing, while a worthy man, from 
 humility or physical trepidation, may dis- 
 appoint you. You must hear a man 
 preach for a year before you have a 
 right to judge him. Good preachers are 
 better in their twentieth sermon than in 
 their first. Candidating does not tell you 
 enough. A minister is more than a 
 preacher. He does various kinds of work. 
 Fidelity in these other labors is as im- 
 portant as ability in pulpit ministration. 
 Manhood is the supreme qualification. 
 You cannot judge of manhood in one 
 sermon. 
 
 Candidating is a disgrace to the house 
 of God. Who thinks of God when a 
 candidate is preaching t Not the preacher, 
 because he is thinking of the people ; not 
 the people, because they are dissecting 
 the preacher. Nothing is so demoralizing 
 to a Christian church as candidating. It 
 converts public worship into a farce. 
 
 Moreover, it is humiliating to the 
 preacher. To be inspected like a pumpkin 
 
158 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 at a fair, to be put through the paces 
 Hke a horse at a race, to be judged by a 
 miscellaneous assembly many of whom do 
 not know what a good sermon is, is an 
 outrage upon clergymen which ought to 
 be abolished forthwith. 
 
 But how shall a church know whom to 
 choose ? Let it choose a man on his 
 record. A clergyman is an epistle known 
 and read of all men. He does not do his 
 work in a corner. Fidelity in one field 
 is a better recommendation than a dozen 
 sermons preached on exhibition. If cer- 
 tain brethren feel unable to vote for a man 
 whom they have not seen and handled, let 
 them hear that man in his own church. 
 It is their duty to travel to him, and not 
 his duty to come to them. But suppose 
 the preacher is just out of school.-* Let 
 him be called on his record as a student 
 and a man. We shall have a new conse- 
 cration among ministers when it is once 
 fully understood that a man is called on 
 his record. But a church might be dis- 
 
Securing a Minister. 1 59 
 
 appointed ! Of course it might. The 
 chances for disappointment, however, are 
 not so many as under the present system. 
 Many a man who goes up like a rocket in 
 his first sermon, comes down like a stick 
 in his tenth. Hundreds of churches suf- 
 fer to-day under the ministry of men who 
 were chosen on the impulse of first im- 
 pressions, rather than on the record of 
 faithful and successful work. 
 
 This is no new theory. It has been 
 acted on again and again. Many leading 
 pulpits are now filled by men who were 
 called to their places without preaching as 
 candidates. As a rule, it is the little 
 churches which are most fussy and fastid- 
 ious, and are capable of greatest tyranny 
 and folly. Every church which by its 
 action registers its disapproval of the 
 custom of candidating, does an invaluable 
 service, not only to the clergy, but to the 
 entire Christian world. 
 
i6o Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Dismissing a Minister. 
 
 If all ministers had the ability to sense 
 a situation, there would be less tribula- 
 tion among the saints. But alas ! some 
 of the best of men are the stupidest in 
 discerning the signs of the times. Some 
 times it is not blindness, but a wrong 
 philosophy which causes the trouble. The 
 minister sees that he is not the man for 
 the place, but he hangs on under the 
 impression that hanging on is one of the 
 rights delivered once for all to the apos- 
 tles and their successors. Some clergy- 
 men start out wrong, and they stay wrong 
 to the end. They place themselves first, 
 and the church second. Any minister 
 who does that is fated to cause mischief. 
 If a man in the ministry is unwilling to 
 sacrifice himself for the good of the 
 
Dismissing a Minister. i6i 
 
 church, he is a dangerous man. Beware 
 of him ! There are men who all the way 
 through argue every church question from 
 the ministerial standpoint. *' I ought to 
 receive so much salary — therefore!" — 
 It is just such an argument which ac- 
 counts for hundreds of ministerial loaf- 
 ers. They never get a pulpit, because the 
 salary never reaches their standard. "I 
 have a majority of the people with me 
 — therefore!" — A man who so argues 
 has a devil in him, and is sure to split 
 a church. "I have my children to edu- 
 cate — therefore ! " — As though the chief 
 end of a clergyman is to send his chil- 
 dren through college. " I have preached 
 here many years — therefore ! " — That 
 is a pillow on which many a worn-out 
 herald of the cross is sleeping. When 
 ministers are the slaves of false logic, 
 the only relief is to be found in the 
 laity. It is the duty of laymen to safe- 
 guard the interests of the church, and 
 they must do this, though the doing of 
 
1 62 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 it costs them sacrifice and causes good 
 men pain. The long-suffering patience of 
 church-members under pastors who are 
 intellectually or temperamentally or phys- 
 ically unfit for their position, is indescrib- 
 ably pathetic. To be sure there are here 
 and there crotchety and fickle churches 
 which have no mercy on ministers ; but 
 for every such church there are a score 
 of churches which are willing to bear to 
 the uttermost with a minister whose min- 
 istry is a long-drawn affliction. 
 
 The forbearance, however, is often the 
 product of necessity rather than of grace. 
 In sheer helplessness the people submit 
 to a scourge which they know not how 
 to escape. What is more pitiable than 
 the predicament of a church with a min- 
 ister who ought to resign and who does 
 not have the grace to do it t The usual 
 method is to allow things to drag on 
 until both sides are worn out. An im- 
 mense amount of growling is done behind 
 the minister's back, but of square, manly 
 
Dismissing a Minister. 1 63 
 
 action there is little. Sometimes a slight 
 cut in the salary is given as a hint. 
 Sometimes the hint takes the form of 
 irregular church attendance. But all such 
 methods of beating around the bush are 
 unbecoming to Christian men. 
 
 Laymen should not hesitate to exercise 
 their rights. If a minister is not intel- 
 lectually strong enough to lead a parish 
 he ought to resign. If he does not re- 
 sign of his own accord, he should be 
 requested to do it. What right has a 
 minister unequal to his task to wreck a 
 church simply because the church, in ig- 
 norance of his ability, once gave him a 
 call.'* Or if he has crossed the dead line, 
 he should be promptly retired. Some 
 men cross it early. Some men never 
 cross it. Age has nothing to do with it. 
 A man crosses it whenever he ceases to 
 study. No man who is not a student 
 should be allowed to remain in a Chris- 
 tian pulpit. It is a burning disgrace that 
 so many laymen are indifferent at this 
 
164 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 point. They allow their pastor to dawdle 
 away his time without protest. It is the 
 duty of a layman to be up and after a 
 minister who commits the unpardonable 
 sin of starving his church. Any minister 
 who, ordained to preach the gospel, goes 
 into the pulpit Sunday after Sunday to 
 rehash a few stale exhortations or retail 
 a half-dozen insipid anecdotes, ought to 
 be driven out of the pulpit by laymen 
 burning with the same fiery indignation 
 which led the Son of God to hurl thunder- 
 bolts at the men who sat in Moses' seat. 
 
 It is not true, as is sometimes taken 
 for granted, that a minister has a right 
 to hold his pulpit until he dies. His 
 term of office is measured by the dura- 
 tion of his ability to perform efficiently 
 the duties of his ministry. The progress 
 of the kingdom of God has been lamen- 
 tably delayed by the obstinacy of clergy- 
 men who have held on to their places 
 long years after their usefulness had 
 ceased. What sadder spectacle can there 
 
Dismissing a Minister. 165 
 
 be than a church gradually disintegrat- 
 ing, its congregations dwindling, its Sun- 
 day-school shrivelling, its young people 
 scattering, its finances shrinking, its in- 
 fluence dying, and all because the good 
 man in the pulpit cannot see that the 
 hour for his departure is at hand. The 
 hoary head is a crown of glory if it be 
 found in the way of righteousness, but 
 when the gray-headed man is so un- 
 righteous as to be willing to kill a church 
 rather than have an assistant or get out 
 of the way, he ought to receive the re- 
 buke which his selfishness deserves. The 
 fact that in his prime he did valiant ser- 
 vice is not sufficient reason for his re- 
 tention. Why rob one generation by 
 foisting upon it a man who wore him- 
 self out serving the generation preced- 
 ing } Nor ought his limited bank account 
 to be a controlling factor in determining 
 the policy of the church. What an out- 
 rage, to stunt and starve the spiritual 
 life of a community because the minister 
 
1 66 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 needs a living ! Every church should pay 
 its minister so generously that ample pro- 
 vision can be made for old age. A few- 
 hundred dollars added each year to his 
 salary to pay for an endowment life in- 
 surance policy would take away the neces- 
 sity of keeping him in the pulpit after 
 his pulpit power has vanished. Courage 
 and frankness then are of sovereign im- 
 portance. Church officials should express 
 to their pastor their deepest convictions. 
 Many a minister has been allowed by his 
 most intimate friends to go on. in utter 
 ignorance of the rising feeling against 
 him, suffering at last needless and un- 
 speakably bitter humiliations, simply be- 
 cause his brothers in Christ were too 
 timid and tender-hearted to do their 
 duty. 
 
The Minister s Wife, 167 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Minister's Wife, 
 
 I KNEW you would want to talk about 
 her — people always do. I do not blame 
 you. I cannot refrain from saying a word 
 about her myself. Since a man and his 
 wife are one, no revelation of a minis- 
 ter would be complete which ignored or 
 slighted the mistress of the manse. 
 
 Yes, she has a hard time, but not so 
 hard as some of you imagine. Her trib- 
 ulations have been greatly overestimated. 
 When she has a harder time than other 
 women, it is frequently her own fault. A 
 parson's wife has unique opportunities for 
 blundering. When such opportunities are 
 numberless, it is a rare woman who is able 
 to turn her back upon them all. Many a 
 minister's wife makes herself wretched by 
 attempting the impossible. It is impossi- 
 
1 68 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 ble, for instance, to please everybody ; and 
 woe to the mortal foolish enough to at- 
 tempt it. The chief end of woman is not 
 to please people, but to do her duty. A 
 failure to learn this has wrecked the hap- 
 piness of many hearts. Or she may at- 
 tempt to keep pace with her husband in 
 pastoral calling. A woman who takes 
 upon herself the pastoral work of a large 
 parish need not be surprised to find her- 
 self, sooner or later, in a nervine hospital. 
 God punishes women who break his law 
 in a foolish ambition to satisfy public ex- 
 pectations. Or she may try to walk in 
 the footsteps of her predecessor. This 
 is a gratuitous method of self-immolation. 
 No two women have the same nature, and 
 it is foolish to wear one's self out in try- 
 ing to do things simply because somebody 
 else did them. Or she may allow the 
 good women of the parish to place her 
 on the twelve thrones of Israel — a pro- 
 ceeding which invariably invites disaster. 
 Uneasy lies the head that wears twelve 
 
The Minister ^s Wife. 1 69 
 
 crowns ! It is much better, as a rule, for 
 a minister's wife to let other women sit 
 on the thrones, while she takes her place 
 among the loyal workers who engage in 
 obscure and unofficial labors. Because a 
 woman is married to a minister, it does 
 not follow that she must be the president 
 of every organization in the parish, or pre- 
 side at every public meeting which women 
 may hold. No minister's wife should bear 
 any more parish burdens than her own 
 good sense tells her she ought to carry. 
 To carry them simply because some good 
 and officious sister thinks she ought to 
 do it is consummate foolishness. 
 
 Much depends upon the way a minis- 
 ter's wife uses her tongue. It is not ne- 
 cessary for her to talk about her ideas 
 of what a church has a right to expect 
 of her. People will find out her ideas 
 from her conduct. Ministers frequently 
 start antagonisms on entering a parish by 
 blowing a trumpet at the gate announ- 
 cing to the faithful what they propose to 
 
1 70 Qidct Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 do. If they would quietly do what they 
 propose to do, and say nothing about it, 
 there would be less friction and more 
 progress. A minister's wife who blows 
 a trumpet on entering the town, publish- 
 ing what she will do and what she will 
 not do, inevitably stirs up oppositions 
 which she will never be able to overcome. 
 If she intends to perform marvellous feats, 
 her intention should be kept a profound 
 secret ; if she proposes to shake off most 
 of the burdens which the wives of clergy- 
 men usually carry, she should be exceed- 
 ingly meek and say nothing. The people 
 of a parish will allow a minister's wife to 
 do practically what she pleases, if she does 
 not challenge their criticism by shouting 
 from the housetop what she considers her 
 privileges and rights. It is remarkable 
 how sensible most Christians are if they 
 are not provoked to act the fool. Just a 
 spark of folly in the pastor or his wife will 
 often kindle a conflagration of foolishness 
 which no one can extinguish. Whenever 
 
The Minister' s Wife. 171 
 
 you hear a clergyman or his wife laying 
 down in public the limits of their obliga- 
 tions and the extent of their duties, look 
 out for a squall. If a minister and his 
 wife offend not in tongue, the same are 
 a perfect couple. 
 
 But the minister's wife is not always to 
 blame. There are women in every parish 
 who are adepts in the art of making the 
 wife of the minister uncomfortable. They 
 can call on her at all hours of the day, 
 upsetting her plans and interrupting her 
 work. They can everlastingly urge her 
 to call on them. If she accepted every 
 invitation to call, there would be no time 
 left for anything else. They can repeat 
 to her all the dismal stories afloat in the 
 parish. They can insist upon her tak- 
 ing the leadership in every good cause, 
 whether God created her for leadership 
 or not. They can give her advice with- 
 out being asked for it. They can say 
 uncharitable things, and make damaging 
 comparisons, and — it would take a woman 
 
I ^2 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 to enumerate all the things which women 
 can do. 
 
 Let her alone. If she has children, and 
 wants to stay at home with them, let her 
 do it. It is her right to do it. If she 
 prefers to give her time to her husband, 
 helping him in his correspondence, and 
 bearing the burden of household cares, 
 let her do it. There are other kinds of 
 Christian work besides work done at sew- 
 ing-bees and missionary meetings. It is 
 work enough for any woman, just taking 
 care of a minister. If she is timid and 
 retiring, let her alone. What right have 
 you to haul her out in public places when 
 every fibre of her being revolts against it ? 
 If she wants to dress plainly or superbly, 
 let her alone. If her husband is satisfied, 
 you ought to be. If, on the other hand, 
 she insists on running everything, — from 
 her own kitchen up to the missionary con- 
 vention, — forgive her. Some women are 
 made that way ; they cannot help it. If 
 she has an unbridled tongue, and persists 
 
The Minister's Wife, 173 
 
 in saying things which ought to be left 
 unsaid, do not repeat them. A woman 
 who rehearses through the parish the fool- 
 ish remarks of injudicious women is more 
 blameworthy than the women who first 
 spoke them. If she has poor taste in 
 dress, and slight tact in conversation, and 
 scant ability in housekeeping, you cannot 
 cure her by talking. Minister's wives are 
 very much like their husbands, — they are 
 not perfect. They could, no doubt, have 
 been created perfect, but God made them 
 to match the men. It is not to be ex- 
 pected a woman should be your ideal min- 
 ister's wife. It is sufficient that she be 
 the ideal of her husband. 
 
1/4 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 The Mission of Laymen, 
 
 The New Testament likes laymen. It 
 knows nothing of that unique dignity and 
 supernatural authority of the clergy which 
 have been the curse of the Christian 
 world. The church on the day of Pen- 
 tecost was a democracy. From the days 
 of Moses onward the deepest wish of 
 Israel had been, " Would God that all the 
 Lord's people were prophets, that the 
 Lord would put his spirit upon them." 
 Prophecy at its highest had dared to say 
 that such a time was coming. Peter in 
 his opening sermon declared that the 
 dreams and prophecies of the ages were 
 at last fulfilled. God had indeed poured 
 out his spirit upon all flesh, — upon women 
 as well as men, upon the young as well as 
 upon the old. All were prophets. All 
 
The Mission of Laymen, 175 
 
 spoke for God. Upon each head there 
 sat a tongue of fire. They were all filled 
 with the Holy Ghost. The greatest word 
 in the Book of the Acts is ''All." All were 
 baptized ; all spoke ; all prayed ; all spread 
 abroad the good tidings ; all participated in 
 public worship ; all exercised authority in 
 church government ; all were thrilled by 
 the rapture of a great love, ennobled 
 by the weight of a great responsibility, 
 and zealous in the performance of a great 
 task. The apostolic church was mighty 
 because it was a brotherhood, and all 
 believers had all things common. 
 
 But into this new Garden of Eden a 
 serpent crawled, — ecclesiastical ambition. 
 By slow advances the clergy encroached 
 upon the rights of the laity, crowding lay- 
 men from the position given them by the 
 Lord. The Church of God ceased to be 
 a brotherhood. It became a monarchy, 
 with rulers and subjects. All authority 
 passed little by little into the hands of the 
 clergy. With the growth of the hierarchy 
 
1/6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 the power and the glory of the church 
 of the apostles vanished. The dark ages 
 were the ages in which the hierarchy was 
 supreme. 
 
 The Reformation in the sixteenth century 
 was a triumph of laymen. Martin Luther 
 could have done nothing had it not been 
 for the laity of Germany. In England 
 the head of the Reformation was a layman. 
 It was largely by the energy of laymen 
 that the English Church was reconstructed ; 
 and it was by the laymen of Cromwell's 
 army that the Stuart despotism was 
 crushed, and the history of political liberty 
 was opened. The great event of the six- 
 teenth century was the rise of the laity 
 in the Christian church. Modern history 
 began when the laity resumed their right- 
 ful place in public worship. For a thou- 
 sand years they had simply assisted at 
 rites wrought for them by priestly hands. 
 A new day dawned when " the people 
 were called into the chancel," and public 
 worship became a common prayer of the 
 
The Mission of Laymen. 177 
 
 whole body of worshippers. The Book 
 of Common Prayer is the monument of an 
 immortal triumph. As soon as the Mass, 
 which is a sacrifice wrought through 
 priestly intervention, was superseded by 
 the "communion service," laymen once 
 more enjoyed the privilege which belonged 
 to them in apostolic days, and tasted anew 
 the blessedness of Christian fellowship. 
 The stream of centuries was turned out 
 of its channel by allowing laymen their 
 New-Testament rights as worshippers. 
 
 But the world awaits a new reformation. 
 The church to-day is not yet apostolic. 
 It limps and halts. In the midst of vast 
 opportunities it stands impotent and be- 
 wildered. Hundreds of ministers are sick 
 at heart. Many of them have grown pes- 
 simistic. Occasionally one of them drifts 
 into infidelity. The majority of them are 
 discouraged. It would be a revelation to 
 the world should clergymen speak out 
 plainly what they know and suffer. 
 
 We shall never get out of the ditch 
 
1/8 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People, 
 
 until laymen realize that they also are suc- 
 cessors of the apostles. They stand in 
 the line of a great succession. They are 
 called to be kings and priests unto God. 
 The trouble now is that laymen in large 
 numbers are not in the church. Their 
 names are in the church book, but they 
 themselves are not in the church. Some 
 of them are in their business, and others 
 in their lodge, but too few of them are in 
 the church. No man is in the church 
 whose heart and mind are not in it. The 
 church is hungering for the thought and 
 affection of her men. There is enough 
 brain-power in every church to solve all 
 its problems if this brain-power were uti- 
 lized. The problems will never be settled 
 so long as men think that paying their 
 pew-rent satisfies all the legitimate claims 
 which organized Christianity makes upon 
 them. The great need of the church is 
 not money, but life. With new volumes 
 of mental and spiritual energy, money 
 would flow in like a mighty stream. Lay- 
 
The Mission of Laymen. 1 79 
 
 men have won their rights as worshippers, 
 they have not yet accepted their privileges 
 as workers. This is the next step in the 
 world's redemption. 
 
 According to the New Testament every 
 Christian is a herald, a pastor, a mission- 
 ary. Every follower of Christ is ordered 
 into the vineyard. Unless he takes up 
 his cross daily, he does not belong to 
 Christ. But this is a page of the New 
 Testament little heeded. " The fields are 
 white unto the harvest, but the laborers 
 are few." The minister goes into the 
 field, and the majority of his people go 
 somewhere else. This, in a sentence, is 
 the running sore of Christendom. Why 
 are churches half empty } Laymen do 
 not work to fill them. Why are deficits 
 so universal } Laymen do not plan to 
 abolish them. Why does the church make 
 so few converts ? Laymen do not talk on 
 the subject of religion. Why does church 
 life flow in such feeble streams 1 Laymen 
 do not pour their life into it. 
 
i8o Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 
 
 The baptism for which the church is 
 waiting is the baptism of larger knowledge. 
 We do not seem to know the things which 
 belong unto peace. They are hid from 
 our eyes. We do not comprehend what 
 this means : *' One is your Master, and all 
 ye are brethren." We stumble over this : 
 "As my Father hath sent me, even so 
 send I you." We forget to whom this is 
 spoken : " Go and make disciples of all 
 the nations." We cannot say with Paul : 
 " I rejoice in my sufferings, and fill up on 
 my part that which is lacking of the afflic- 
 tions of Christ," because we do not realize 
 that we, laymen as well as clergymen, are 
 called to be "laborers together with God." 
 And yet, " It is a faithful saying : For if 
 we be dead with him, we shall also live 
 with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign 
 with him."