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Book 
 
 
Real Preaching 
 
 THREE ADDRESSES 
 
 Theological Students of Oberlin 
 
 REV. NEHEMIAH BOYNTON, D. D. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Zbe pilgrim press 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 ONE COPY RECEIVED 
 
 
^ 
 
 Copyright, 1897 
 By Nehemiah Boynton 
 
 Copyright 
 
 Imperfftct 
 
 Claim. 
 
Oberlin Theological Seminary, 
 
 Oberlin, O., Feb. 27, 1897. 
 Dear Sir :— The faculty of Oberlin Theologi- 
 cal Seminary cannot refrain from expressing to 
 you their appreciation of the lectures on "The 
 Preacher," recently given by you in Council Hall 
 to the students of the Seminary. The views they 
 set forth, with rare eloquence and ample learning, 
 were eminently just and stimulating. We enjoyed 
 them greatly, for their inspiring effect and wise 
 adaptation to confer lasting benefit on the young 
 men that heard them. The ideal tHey presented 
 of the Christian ministry and its work cannot 
 fail to exert upon these young men a salutary 
 influence. We desire that the pleasure and profit 
 thus received from hearing them may be extended 
 to a wider circle, that shall include, as far as 
 possible, both those preparing for the ministry 
 and those performing its duties. 
 
 We therefore express to you the hope that 
 you will at your earliest convenience give the 
 lectures to the world in a published volume. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. H. Currier, 
 G. F. Wright, 
 Owen H. Gates, 
 Committee of Faculty. 
 
 To Kev. Nehemiah Boynton, D. D. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These addresses, prepared in the eager desire of 
 inspiring the young men of Oberlin Theological 
 Seminary with a sense of the royal character of the 
 preacher's calling, are not intended as compendi- 
 nms of the topics suggested, but are rather tran- 
 scripts of impressions and convictions which have 
 been gradually realized in a most delightful and 
 reasonably ample ministerial experience. They 
 are printed substantially as delivered, and are 
 given publicity because of the request of those 
 whose judgment the author respects, and with 
 whose wishes he is glad to comply. The addresses 
 will have fulfilled their mission if in any slightest 
 way they help the younger ministry to understand 
 that the life of the sacred calling is one, 
 
 "Whose least distinguished day 
 Shines with some portion of that heavenly lustre 
 Which makes the Sabbath lovely in the sight 
 Of blessed angels, pitying human cares." 
 
 Nehemiah Boynton. 
 First Congregational Church, 
 Detroit, Mich., Nov. 1, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chaptek. Page. 
 
 I. The Real Man . ... . 5 
 
 II. The Real Sermon 49 
 
 III. The Real Audience .... 89 
 
I 
 THE REAL MAN 
 
THE REAL MAN 
 
 The lecture of Thomas Carlyle upon "The 
 Hero as Priest" is a ministerial pharmaco- 
 poeia. With what profit it can be consulted 
 is best known to those who have dared fol- 
 low faithfully its drastic but effective pre- 
 scriptions. By it many a case of "heart 
 failure " has been subdued ; many a slug- 
 gish circulation has been quickened to its 
 normal rate ; many a victim of melancholia 
 has recovered spirit, purpose, hope ! Every 
 student for the ministry should pass before 
 that chief of all examiners, his own con- 
 science, a strict, searching, and uncompro- 
 mising examination upon every page of this 
 trenchant, single-purposed utterance ! Speak- 
 ing of Martin Luther, the man who "had 
 to ivork an epic poem, not write one," Car- 
 lyle remarks : " It was his task to get ac- 
 quainted with realities, and keep acquainted 
 
8 REAL PREACHING 
 
 with them, at whatever cost; his task was 
 to bring the whole world back to reality, 
 for it had dwelt too long with sem- 
 blance." 
 
 Luther had no monopoly of this business 
 of world recovery. Every other hero priest 
 in the past struck hands with him ; every 
 genuine, sincere minister of to-day makes 
 like confession of his faith, and cherishes 
 like interpretation of the meaning of his 
 life endeavor. 
 
 A minister is no Don Quixote, resplen- 
 dent in shining armor, hurrying his spur- 
 driven steed to death in his fantastic tilt- 
 ing against windmills ; he is no skeleton in 
 armor; he is a real knight, the red cross 
 emblazoned on his breast, riding upon the 
 King's business, which requires haste ; en- 
 tering the lists "against principalities, against 
 powers, against the rulers of the darkness 
 of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
 in high places." For himself a minister 
 must recover the sense of the unveiled 
 actuality of life, before he can hope to 
 convey that sense to the dreamy, somno- 
 lent world about him : he must be real 
 himself! So far as he is concerned, the 
 
THE BEAL MAN 9 
 
 mote will always blind his brother's vision 
 so long as the beam blurs his own. The 
 essential of the ministry is neither theologi- 
 cal, nor homiletical, nor oratorical ; it is 
 personal. It is the man, inspired by the 
 reality of a great love, ennobled by the 
 absoluteness of a supreme ideal, and bent 
 beneath the royal burden of a strenuous, 
 exacting, but world-enriching and actual 
 service. 
 
 " When God calls very loud at the time 
 you are born," remarked one of the princely 
 preachers of our century, "standing at the 
 door of life, and says, ' Quarter of a man, 
 come forth ! * that man is not for the min- 
 istry. ' Half a man, come forth ! ' no : that 
 will not do for a preacher. ' Whole man, 
 come ! ' that is you ! The man must be a 
 man, and a full man, that is going to be 
 a true Christian minister, and especially in 
 those things which are furthest removed 
 from selfishness and the nearest in alliance 
 with true divine love." 
 
 A man's ministry must be the natural, 
 sequential corollary of the real proposition 
 of his life : any other will be spurious, 
 fatuous, imbecile. Not until the house built 
 
10 REAL PREACHING 
 
 on the sand can rival the security of that 
 founded on the rock, in the face of de- 
 scending rain, coming floods, and blowing 
 wind; not until sounding brass and tin- 
 kling cymbal, masquerading as love, can be- 
 come such, will a hollow-souled, artificial, 
 unreal man become a true minister, or a 
 " priest after the order of Melchizedek," 
 " burning with mild, equable radiance, as 
 the enlightener of daily life " ! 
 
 It is of the first importance, therefore, 
 that he who looks toward the most sub- 
 lime, exalted, and soul-satisfying of all life- 
 work, the ministry, should explore himself; 
 work the deep mines of passion and pur- 
 pose in his soul; assay the ore, that he may 
 be assured at the start if the mine is worth 
 developing, if the investment of his life — 
 the only one he will ever have a chance 
 to place — will yield a return with which he 
 will be content, after a score, after two 
 score years. 
 
 A superficial motive, sw T aying the sceptre 
 of your life, means a supercilious, emascu- 
 lated ministry, the end of which is some- 
 times a degenerate book agent, sometimes 
 an itinerant insurance solicitor, sometimes a 
 
THE REAL MAN 11 
 
 "devourer of widows' houses" through ill- 
 advised land speculation, but, always, a 
 Sahara, with crows and carrion, and never 
 one oasis to relieve the dreary waste of 
 unmitigated failure. 
 
 Many come to the ministry, drifting upon 
 the swelling tide of a besetting influence, 
 fanned by the gentle, grateful breezes of 
 fond and admiring friends. Young men are 
 told of their remarkable qualifications for 
 the ministry by those whose ignorance is 
 only surpassed by the brazen assurance of 
 their unsanctified confidence. As a result, 
 there is no deep-souled grip of purpose, no 
 resolute heroism, no utter sincerity or genu- 
 ine self-committal. " Yet hath he not root in 
 himself, but dureth for a while : for when 
 tribulation or persecution ariseth because of 
 the word, by and by he is offended." Cer- 
 tain as the rigorous and unaccommodating 
 coming of Sunday, with its peremptory de- 
 mand for two sermons, is it that such a 
 soul will loathe "this light bread," and 
 sigh for " the cucumbers, and the melons, 
 and the leeks, and the onions, and the gar- 
 lick" which it "did eat in Egypt freely"! 
 
 Contemporary history illustrates — substi- 
 
12 REAL PREACHING 
 
 tuting a pseudonym. The following ap- 
 peared recently in a metropolitan journal: 
 
 "WILL BECOME A BOOK AGENT. 
 
 "Rev. Lookalokg The Backward way 
 
 Temporarily gives up his Rectorship ! 
 
 " Rev. Mr. Backwardway says he is tired 
 of preaching, and needs a rest; therefore he 
 is going to become a book agent. He has 
 secured a position with a certain magazine 
 exchange and will hereafter hustle for it. 
 His full explanation of the change is that 
 his creative faculties are on the wane or 
 have become worn out temporarily. He has 
 fallen into a rut, and he had to choose 
 between becoming a drug on the preaching 
 market or embarking into something else 
 and giving his brain a chance to recuper- 
 ate. He hopes by the end of six months 
 that he will be able to resume his place 
 in the ministry. He came to this city fresh 
 from a theological seminary, and without 
 other experience plunged enthusiastically into 
 reform work. He will preach his farewell 
 sermon next Sunday." 
 
 Farewell, Rev. Mr. Lookalong The Back- 
 
THE BEAL MAN 13 
 
 ward way ! Doubtless the pulpit will never 
 ring again with your nasal, hollow verbi- 
 age, and doubtless, too, this will be your 
 noblest contribution to the coming of the 
 kingdom of God ! 
 
 It is safe to affirm that the colored 
 brother never celebrated the fiftieth anni- 
 versary of his ordination who gave as his 
 reason for entering the ministry, — 
 
 "Dis ere sun am so hot, 
 
 Dis ere cotton row am so long, 
 
 Dis ere hoe am so heavy, 
 
 Dat dis ere nigger suspects he is called to 
 de ministry." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Cream Cheese, adored rec- 
 tor of Mrs. Potiphar, queen of "our best 
 society," will not have strength sufficient 
 through a series of }^ears for the arduous 
 toils of a great parish, especially by reason 
 of the sacred confidences he must cherish, 
 the discriminating advice he must dispense, 
 when beneath the inspiring and exhausting 
 joy of his pastoral ministry he spends a 
 whole afternoon with Mrs. Potiphar, sipping 
 wine, tasting cold chicken, and announcing 
 a judgment, weighty and memorable, upon 
 
14 REAL PREACHING 
 
 the vexed question of the appropriate color 
 of the velvet upon the cover of her prayer- 
 book: "Bind your prayer-book in pale blue, 
 the color of skim-milk, dear Mrs. Potiphar, 
 which is so full of pastoral associations." 
 
 Dear soul ! he will not die in the har- 
 ness unless one of those swift, and some- 
 times satisfactory providences, shall cut him 
 off and relieve the world ere half his life 
 is spent ! 
 
 Sir Walter Besant has written a short 
 but powerful story, in which, with keen 
 insight, is depicted the awful consequence 
 of the union of an ambitious purpose and 
 a hollow heart. " Before the altar rails in 
 the chancel of an old Norman cathedral, 
 stand a company of young men, seeking 
 admission into the holy office of priesthood. 
 Among them is one distinguished from 
 all the rest by the priestly qualities which 
 are apparently his, the noble form, open 
 countenance, rich, musical voice, and a 
 'fervor of devotion amounting almost to 
 rapture.' " This is your introduction to 
 Rev. Paul Leighan ; your leave-taking is 
 through a warden's letter written after 
 Leighan's death in a prison, between which 
 
THE REAL MAN 15 
 
 and the cathedral rolls the expanse of the 
 mighty ocean. 
 
 Paul Leighan had a " love for things 
 ecclesiastical, but he had no religion at all," 
 and, consequently, to the highest bidder he 
 would sell everything he had, himself in- 
 cluded. It is not necessary to trace his 
 treading of the tortuous downward path. 
 He became a liar and a thief ; he plagiarized; 
 to ease the strain upon his pocket-book, he 
 traveled, now as leading tenor of a min- 
 strel company, now as star in a theatrical 
 venture, his specialty being that of the 
 " comic curate " ; he reformed, became a re- 
 markable exhorter and soldier in the Salva- 
 tion Army under the name of " The Frisky 
 Deacon " ; he abased a loyal woman's love, 
 fled across the sea for safety, took a parish, 
 in which for a time he was regarded as a 
 man of exceptional eloquence and deep 
 piety; he joined a company of swindlers; 
 was imprisoned, and in prison died. His 
 characteristic was the "form of godliness"; 
 his hideous lack was " the power thereof." 
 He is an exaggerated, but nevertheless a 
 real, illustration of the inevitable fruition of 
 a spurious or of a secondary motive. There 
 
16 REAL PREACHING 
 
 is but one consummation, but one finale, and 
 that is utter, absolute, irremediable disaster. 
 Language cannot be too explicit, words too 
 plain, influence too powerful, in exploiting 
 with all sympathy, but with equal fidelity, 
 the life peril of espousing the ministry 
 through ill-considered, inadequate, or insuffi- 
 cient motives. 
 
 This motive is the keystone of your life 
 arch. Quarry for it, and when you have 
 once exhumed it, put it in its elevated 
 position in your soul, where you may re- 
 affirm it every day, and where you can be 
 reinvigorated by its genial, strengthful com- 
 panionship. It must be great enough to 
 make you content with the limitations you 
 will encounter. A white tie about the neck, 
 a clerical vest over the chest, and a scowl 
 on the brow will breed more practical un- 
 belief than a score of heretical sermons. 
 The minister whose calling has lost its hope- 
 fulness, its content, its smile, and has re- 
 tained only its ecclesiasticism and a few old 
 sermons, is always " a quarter of a man " 
 who has lest his other " three quarters," 
 which is the towering grandeur of a motive 
 which can sway him. 
 
THE REAL MAN 17 
 
 The motive must be great enough to 
 choke to death any incipient jealousy of 
 your college classmate who has received his 
 life portion in abounding wealth, while you 
 are daily growing poor. If you are not wil- 
 ling to be poor for the sake of the opportu- 
 nity of ministering to others, in heaven's 
 name quit now, for your motive is not 
 strong enough. You will evolve into an 
 elongated grumbler, not a Christian minister. 
 Your motive must be supreme enough to 
 grant you decision in peremptorily refusing 
 to be high priest of expediency, and to offi- 
 ciate at the elaborate but eviscerated cere- 
 monials at which principle is slain, amid 
 hosannas and hallelujahs, upon the brazen 
 altar of policy. 
 
 The mariner can sail without a compass ; 
 the mechanic can work without a forge ; the 
 merchant can trade without capital ; but the 
 minister cannot live without a motive : it is 
 absolutely for him a sine qua non. With it 
 he is a giant; without it he is not even a 
 germ. Every minister knows how Savo- 
 narola felt when he wrote to his needy 
 mother " to forgive him if he has nothing 
 but prayers to offer to his family, since his 
 
18 REAL PREACHING 
 
 religious profession precludes him from help- 
 ing them in other ways." But also does 
 every minister claim kinship with him as he 
 further writes, " Know, then, that this heart 
 of mine is more than ever bent on devoting 
 my soul and body and all the knowledge 
 granted to me by God, to his service and 
 my neighbor's salvation." Problem : Sub- 
 tract from Savonarola his motive, and what 
 is the probability of his ever being Prior of 
 St. Mark's, or yielding his life in his en- 
 deavor to make Jesus Christ King of Flor- 
 ence ? 
 
 There is in existence a short but precious 
 paper, dated March 3, 1822. These words, 
 among others, are written there: 
 
 " What can I do? Lord, here I am, a sin- 
 ner. Take me. Take all that I have and 
 shall have ; all that I am and shall be ; and 
 do with me as seemeth good. If Thou hast 
 anything for me to do ; if Thou hast any- 
 thing for me to suffer in the cause of that 
 Saviour on whom I rest my all, I am ready 
 to labor, to suffer, or to die. I am ready to 
 do anything for Thee." Oh, think you that 
 Horace Bushnell had no need of that radi- 
 ant self-committal in his after-life, that life 
 
THE REAL MAN 19 
 
 so tangled, so twisted, so tempest-tossed, but 
 so calm, so noble, so expanding? I tell you 
 that enthroned motive, that swelling purpose, 
 saved Bushnell to his God, his world, his 
 ministry, himself. 
 
 A young man, brilliant as a diamond, keen 
 as a stiletto's edge, is turning away from 
 the law as a profession, and is attracted to 
 the ministry. He is wide-eyed, he is expert 
 in consequences, he is not drifting, he is sail- 
 ing by the stars. Here is his memorandum: 
 
 " June 12, 1841. My birth night. I have 
 been for the last hour on the sea-shore, not 
 dreaming, but thinking deeply and strongly, 
 and forming determinations which are to 
 affect my destiny through time and through 
 eternity. Before the sleeping earth and the 
 sleepless sea and stars, I have devoted my- 
 self to God : a vow never (if he gives me 
 the faith I pray for) to be recalled." 
 
 Can you think of Charles Kingsley, who 
 used to sign himself in letters to personal 
 friends, Boanerges Roar-at-the-clods ; who said 
 as his final word to his Eversley charge, " to 
 live with Christ in the next world you must 
 live like Christ in this"; whose life was 
 such a complete compendium of his words — 
 
20 REAL PEE ACHING 
 
 can you think of him as really achieving, 
 apart from the sacred coronation of that 
 holy hour before the sleeping earth and the 
 sleepless sea and stars ? 
 
 If Savonarola, Bushnell, Kingsley and 
 every other minister who has wrought 
 mightily has done it in the strength of an 
 enthroned motive, surely you and I can ill 
 afford to ignore what was to them the essen- 
 tial. You cannot be either one of these. 
 You can be something better — you can be 
 yourself, commissioned by your God, charged 
 with your message, electrified with your mo- 
 tive. Oh, get a motive for entering the 
 ministry ! Get a commission from God, a 
 call which shall evidence itself through the 
 sentinel of a victorious motive forever tri- 
 umphantly making his rounds in your life. 
 Espouse the undergirding life purpose ; not 
 in the dream which "came to a pale poet's 
 sleep," but in the decision of a holy and 
 luminous waking hour, gratefully confess: 
 
 "I am singled out by God, 
 No sin must touch me." 
 
 This emerging, essential motive, indeed a 
 new birth from above, a new power from 
 
THE REAL MAN 21 
 
 on high, will never permit itself to become 
 quiescent, docile, occasional : at once it is 
 evidential, imperative, constant. Its mission 
 is to deliver the life to its glorious pur- 
 pose and from whatever obstacles and hin- 
 drances cut right and left with flaming 
 sword and dispute the soul's passage through 
 their territory to its own. The characteris- 
 tic of this motive for which I plead is 
 wholeness : it is complete. Therefore it- 
 demands the area of a whole life for its 
 exercise ; nothing less will grant it a suffi- 
 cient orbit. 
 
 The mere ecclesiastic has devoted a por- 
 tion of himself. He has set his affection on 
 organization, ritual, ceremony. He wakens 
 in you the resentful temper which in Kings- 
 ley found explosive vent: "I begin to hate 
 these dapper young ladies' preachers like 
 the devil." 
 
 The mere theologian has contributed his 
 hair-splitting and logic-chopping faculties. 
 As a student he may be preeminent, but 
 as a minister among men he is more cer- 
 tain to be a Mr. Dry-as-dust than a Mr. 
 Great-heart. 
 
 The mere preacher — oh, God deliver the 
 
22 REAL PREACHING 
 
 ministry from the mere preachers ! — toys 
 with the ministry on Sunday, and during 
 the week regrets his inability personally to 
 visit the people. 
 
 The mere pastoi dispenses through the 
 week calling cards, keeps a most elaborate 
 record of visitation, sometimes even noting 
 topics of conversation for future use, and 
 on Sunday " occupies the pulpit." 
 
 Each has attempted the impossible ! You 
 cannot get the whole ministerial motive 
 into part of your life. So towering, so 
 sublime, so godlike is this motive that it 
 will never accept a percentage as an equiv- 
 alent for the whole. Jonathan Edwards 
 discovered this and early wrote: " Resolved, 
 that I will live with all my might while 
 I do live." Robertson, too, was no stranger 
 to it, and resolved, that "I will believe in 
 myself." Since this motive calls for all your 
 life, no part of that life can be indifferent. 
 
 St. Francis used to call his body his 
 brother Asinus, and declared that it needed 
 rough treatment. The old idea of spiritual 
 health was always bodily mortification. The 
 true idea is bodily perfectness in order to 
 spiritual robustness. 
 
THE BEAL MAN 23 
 
 The care of health as a ministerial duty 
 may be urged on many grounds, but ulti- 
 mately on this : You are giving your lives 
 to the expression of a deep-souled motive, 
 therefore let there be in bodily vigor no 
 impediment to its largest manifestation. A 
 minister needs a physique, because no other 
 calling makes so varied and exhausting a 
 drain upon vitality. 
 
 It is sometimes asked why a minister 
 with but two sermons a week should be 
 more weary than a lawyer who prepares a 
 brief and makes a plea every day. The 
 answer of experience is. that a minister's 
 strength is tapped at more points than a 
 lawyer's. To throw one's self into a mood 
 is an exhausting process, but to throw one's 
 self into a dozen is very much more so. 
 What a draft upon the physical resources 
 of a man a day's record of the scenes of 
 a clerical life will exhibit ! In the morn- 
 ing there is the study — more close, faith- 
 ful, intense, as the man is beneath the 
 influence of his motive. This is the men- 
 tal draft. In the afternoon, his sympathy 
 is stirred by the suffering of the sick-room; 
 his indignation boils at the confidential nar- 
 
24 REAL PREACHING 
 
 ration of some dark outrage of iniquity on 
 innocence, of strength upon weakness; his 
 courage must buttress some tottering spirit; 
 his calm faith must fit out a soul evi- 
 dently setting sail on a boisterous sea. 
 On the way from the home within the val- 
 ley of the shadow of death, to the home 
 which has just experienced some bounding 
 family joy, he must readjust himself, that he 
 may not tarnish, by sombre look, the bright, 
 glad lustre of the shining hour. In the even- 
 ing, it is an address, a business conference, 
 a social function, so that at the end of the 
 day he finds that the varied moods into 
 which he has been obliged to throw himself 
 to accomplish his ministry have taxed him 
 at every point. His legs are weary, brain 
 tired, nerves twitch, sympathies are lacerated, 
 risibles exhausted! The whole man has been 
 exercised by the whole motive. And this 
 is his business ! How can it be transacted 
 by a physical incompetent! You do not 
 help your case by pleading that some noble 
 ministers have been physical underlings. 
 Exceptions never establish. If you fail of 
 conscience in the care of your body — the 
 temple of the Holy Ghost — you may pos- 
 
THE REAL MAN 25 
 
 sibly secure the second or third, but never 
 the first, achievement of your ministry. 
 
 So, also, does the whole motive enlist 
 the habits of your life. Soiled linen, 
 unbrushed clothing, muddy boots, teeth 
 which have been left to their own destruc- 
 tion, finger nails dressed in deep black, 
 mourning the loss of all things, a general 
 unkempt, slack appearance, is sufficient evi- 
 dence, in some cases, to demonstrate that 
 the possessor has mistaken his calling. 
 
 The use of tobacco, which is probably 
 on the increase in the ministry as in other 
 life, and which is gradually being esteemed 
 as an indifferent habit, I do not regard as 
 such. No habit is indifferent. Everything 
 counts. The distinguished divines who 
 evolve their great thoughts amid the curl- 
 ing smoke and grateful incense of the 
 fragrant Havana are quite unanimous in 
 their paternal counsels to the young to 
 avoid their peccadillos. Very many of 
 them cannot shut their consciences up in 
 their cigar boxes or tobacco pouches, write 
 over them the inscription, " Mequiescat in 
 pace" and dwell in content. The uneasy 
 corpse will once in a while turn in its 
 
26 REAL PEE ACHING 
 
 coffin, and the turning very frequently 
 introduces an embarrassing and delicate 
 situation. 
 
 Young men, a meerschaum cannot make 
 — it can unmake — a minister! A sermon 
 is not better for being conceived in smoke, 
 nor can a pastor's visit in a sick-room be 
 more welcome because he leaves a nauseat- 
 ing odor behind him ! The ministerial motive 
 which challenges your whole life will not 
 fail to throw its gauntlet before all your 
 habits of personal indulgence, and, as you 
 value your largest life accomplishment, you 
 will not, in the lofty disdain of your 
 selfish complacency, dismiss this particular 
 challenge as unworthy of your steel. 
 
 The habit of courtesy is among the most 
 important of those conspicuously swayed 
 by the ministerial motive. Politeness is 
 "polished civility"; courtesy is " respectful 
 address and manner." The home of polite- 
 ness in society is on the surface; of cour- 
 tesy, in the depths of the soul. The valet 
 of politeness is suavity ; of courtesy, sincer- 
 ity. The polite man may be like Words- 
 worth's moralist, 
 
TEE REAL MAN 27 
 
 "One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling 
 Nor form nor feeling great or small." 
 
 The courteous soul is Shakespeare's "no- 
 blest Roman of them all," 
 
 "the elements 
 So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up 
 And say to all the world, ' This was a man!'" 
 
 Courtesy is character in high relief ; it is 
 the shining of the soul, the transfiguration 
 of the spirit. The polite man may be 
 courteous, the courteous man must be polite. 
 
 A minister must expect to be interviewed, 
 interrupted, and, to a degree, imposed upon 
 by all sorts and conditions of men! The 
 hobby rider wants to make a pleasure park 
 of an hour or two of a minister's precious 
 time in which he may exercise his usually 
 spavined Bucephalus, which like Alexander's 
 famous steed, " only himself can or cares 
 to ride " ! 
 
 The sonorous-voiced reformer, whose 
 apology for intellectual astigmatism is an 
 impudent, conceited cock-sureness of vision 
 of the land o' the leal, and the highway 
 leading to it, and who, by the way, has 
 never meditated upon Carroll D. Wright's 
 
28 REAL PEE ACHING 
 
 stinging bon mot, " When any one pro- 
 poses a solution, I move to adjourn," — this 
 bumptious individual makes frequent incur- 
 sions into the territory of a minister's 
 choicest seclusions, and wages the sham 
 fight of his guerrilla warfare with ministers 
 — " stall fed, hypocritical, cowardly minis- 
 ters " — as his imaginary foes. You will be 
 expected to witness the engagement, praise 
 the valor of this skeleton in armor, confess 
 the righteous doom of your brethren in 
 Christ, marvel that you yourself have been 
 thus far spared, and pledge your troth that 
 henceforth you will renounce all allegiance 
 save to this bold cavalier, who poses not 
 alone as a mighty warrior, but as 
 
 "A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, 
 An intellectual All-in-all! " 
 
 This Moses-deliverer, this " second Daniel 
 come to judgment" is to me the most 
 exasperating, gall-stirring, spleen-exciting son 
 of Adam who ever crosses the threshold of 
 my ministerial life. But he crosses it ! 
 
 The man with his petty spite wants to 
 unload. The woman with her impossible 
 and visionary scheme for the amelioration 
 
THE BEAL MAN 29 
 
 of the condition of her sex, which usually 
 includes a position for herself as matron, 
 wants your endorsement and contribution. 
 The irritable man wants to display his 
 usually harmless and uninteresting pyrotech- 
 nics. The keen, pitiless sister, who detected 
 a mispronunciation, or an unseemly use of 
 grammar in your last Sunday's sermon, but 
 who is innocent as a new-born babe of 
 the intent of your discourse, desires an 
 interview that she may solace herself, and 
 for once observe you arrayed in dust and 
 ashes! The " little ones" come whose burdens 
 are so great to them, and who find such 
 comfort and relief in displaying their small 
 wares in the minister's presence that they 
 forget that possibly this may be his busy 
 day. The. natural logician, who, having 
 never studied theology himself, for that 
 reason thinks himself competent to be 
 censor of yours ; that most to be pitied 
 spirit, not quite brainless enough for an 
 asylum, nor quite equipped for the life 
 struggle, a harmless, ignorant, but frequently 
 present bore — all these, as well as the 
 strong, sweet, inspiring visitations, are part 
 of a minister's daily experience. To be a 
 
30 REAL PREACHING 
 
 minister to them all, self-contained, digni- 
 fied, approachable, sympathetic, courteous, 
 yet manly, courageous, independent — in this 
 ability resides no small part of a minister's 
 acceptability among men. 
 
 Small considerations are not only the 
 tomb but the tabernacle of great things. 
 Many and many a man, laying aside for 
 trivial cause and in humble presence the 
 royal robes of his native courtesy, and 
 pompously arraying himself in the gaudy 
 fabrics of scorn, impatience, anger, has 
 snapped the spinal cord of his influence. 
 Many and many a man, by his courtesy in 
 a boisterous, passionate hour, permitting 
 billows of boiling wrath to dash against 
 his impervious manhood, harmless as the 
 spray-flinging waves against the granite of 
 the shore, has in that hour . established 
 himself. A minister is a man ! 
 
 This principle of courtesy reaches to the 
 pulpit. It takes a young minister some 
 time to sharply distinguish between the 
 vigorous enunciation of principle and the 
 unmanly, unwise, unchristian use of person- 
 alities. It is greatly to be regretted that 
 the fathers in Israel are in many instances, 
 
THE BEAL MAN 31 
 
 in this regard, so poor examples for the 
 young Timothys to follow. 
 
 Nowhere is it so " excellent to have a 
 giant's strength," and nowhere is it so 
 "tyrannous to use it like a giant," as in the 
 pulpit. Men do not bring in the kingdom 
 of God by an unworthy use of a great 
 advantage. The minister who, safely barri- 
 caded behind the proprieties of the house of 
 God, which deny the privilege of formal 
 reply from the pew to formal statement by 
 the pulpit, uses his sacred trust to vent 
 small spite, air petty grievances, assail per- 
 sonal character, is beneath the contempt of 
 decent men. The evacuation of his soul by 
 the spirit of courtesy will leave him a prey 
 to his own insincerity. It requires a deal 
 of moral courage at times to withstand the 
 popular demand for the pommeling by the 
 pulpit of some special sinner above others ; 
 but a noble restraint, a heroic courtesy, an 
 incisive handling of the involved principle, 
 served without the hard sauce of personality, 
 saves the pulpit, the preacher and the 
 principle. It is by incarnation of principle, 
 not by inveighing of personalities, that men 
 
32 REAL PREACHING 
 
 climb on " stepping-stones of their dead 
 selves to higher things ! " 
 
 Beyond the corraling of habit to the ser- 
 vice of the masterful motive, the real man 
 forever strives to inform himself. 
 
 Ministers are of two classes. There are 
 those whose profession springs from their 
 lives; there are those whose lives spring 
 from their profession. The one class is 
 continually, in the spirit of a large vision, 
 getting ready for life; the other, in the 
 small horizon of a microscopic glance, is 
 always preparing for next Sunday. The one 
 believes in the development of self holding — 
 
 " Self is the man: who thrones and crowns 
 would claim 
 Must personally be worthy of the same." 
 
 The other esteems the development of the 
 theme for Sunday the consequential busi- 
 ness of the week. The latter reads in a 
 narrow, partisan and scrappy fashion. His 
 sermons have an unction which suggests a 
 lurking doubt in the recesses of his own 
 soul ; and the doubt is usually there ! In 
 his pulpit utterances there is a combination 
 of the hortatory and the hysterical, a sug- 
 
THE BEAL MAN 83 
 
 gestion of the emptiness of flying foam, 
 rather than of the endurance of firm foun- 
 dations. 
 
 Ecclesiastical dime museums on the Lord's 
 day, where sensational preachers dishonor 
 God in their zealous but mistaken regard 
 for man, are usually operated by those 
 before whose life stalks forever the tall, 
 ungainly interrogation point, with its soli- 
 tary, parrot-like accomplishment in language, 
 "What shall I do for next Sunday?" An 
 article in the magazine received late Sat- 
 urday, a social scandal, a proposed munici- 
 pal reform, or a rustle among the branches 
 of the wide-spreading tree of temperance, 
 is to him like a sail to a castaway on his 
 raft in mid-ocean, or a sentence in his 
 native tongue to a man in the land of the 
 stranger. " Getting ready for next Sun- 
 day," as the business of a man's life, is 
 like building a road from Boston to San 
 Francisco merely to carry a morning and 
 an evening passenger. Before long this 
 minister's life will become a parasite within 
 the shell of his profession ! 
 
 On the other hand, the minister whose 
 profession springs from his life will forever 
 
34 REAL PREACHING 
 
 be striving for self -equipment ; for more 
 stately mansions for his soul "as the swift 
 seasons roll." A continual recessional greets 
 his departure from his "low-vaulted past." 
 His mind is a reservoir into which he con- 
 tinually pumps the living water from many 
 a mountain spring, and from which he 
 slakes the thirst of the people ! His read- 
 ing is wide; his food is brought from afar; 
 he studies the opposite side; he puts him- 
 self in the other's place; he seeks not for 
 triumph, but for truth; his concern is with 
 great subjects, and his experience is that 
 from these the Sunday sermon 
 
 " droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath.'' 
 
 A life made more ample by a varied, broad, 
 and sumptuous literary diet, means an en- 
 riched profession — a Sunday sermon which 
 shall be not merely a smile, a tear, or a lisped 
 and vapid " God bless you," but a brain, a 
 backbone, a heart. 
 
 It was emancipation day in the life of 
 Wilberforce when by his own . confession 
 "in his later years he gave up preparing 
 sermons and simply prepared himself ! " 
 
THE REAL MAN 35 
 
 The minister who " prepares himself," makes 
 the most virile, the most conscientious, and 
 the most effective preparation for Sunday. 
 
 Among the many possible departments of 
 literary self-culture — poetry, science, fiction, 
 history, biography, — I select at this time, 
 for emphasis, a single one, namely, the 
 great lives of your otvn profession! It will 
 exalt your conception of the calling to 
 which you have consecrated your life, to 
 know Moses not simply as a patriarch, 
 Isaiah as a prophet, Paul as an apostle; 
 but each as a minister laying his life to 
 the same splendid purpose as your own ; to 
 appreciate as your fellow-craftsman Ignatius, 
 on every fragment of whose martyred heart 
 was found written in letters of gold, so 
 the legend runs, the name of Jesus, and 
 whose thrilling word, which made Polycarp, 
 and has made many a man since, was : " Be 
 steadfast as a smitten anvil, for it is the 
 part of a great athlete to receive blows 
 and conquer." To know him as a brother 
 is to add new wealth to your capital. 
 That St. Francis and St. Bernard are of 
 your fraternity, Savonarola of your ilk, yokes 
 your life with the noblest born of earth. 
 
36 REAL PREACHING 
 
 Nor does the lustre fade in modern times. 
 Newman, Maurice, Kingsley, Robertson, Stan- 
 ley, Spurgeon, in England; Edwards, Brain- 
 erd, Beecher, Bushnell, Goodell, and latest — 
 and I had almost said most beautiful — 
 A. J. Gordon, in America; the study of 
 these fascinating, diversified, hope-exalted, 
 doubt-driven, heresy-scorned, toil-smitten, 
 faithful, royally noble lives, will widen out 
 a man's conceptions, lift his ideal, stir his 
 soul purposes, till in heartfelt, prideful 
 gratitude he will exclaim, " Thank God, I, 
 too, am a minister ! " 
 
 They were so splendidly human, these 
 giants of the faith, while so utterly earnest! 
 Their lives were so diverse, their tastes so 
 singular, their experiences so individual! 
 They found their recreations in different 
 employments; they did "battle royal'' on 
 widely separate fields of war; they lived 
 their great-hearted years under clear and 
 cloudy sky; they studied, served, suffered, 
 with uncompromising fidelity. So royal, so 
 brave, so towering are they all that you 
 want to write beneath the life of each, 
 Longfellow's description of the theologian 
 "of Cambridge on the Charles," who — 
 
THE REAL MAN 37 
 
 1 'preached to all men everywhere 
 The Gospel of the Golden Eule, 
 The new commandment given to men, 
 Thinking the deed and not the* creed 
 Would help us in our utmost need. 
 "With reverent feet the earth he trod, 
 Nor banished nature from his plan, 
 But studied still with deep research 
 To build the Universal Church, 
 Lofty as is the love of God 
 And ample as the wants of man." 
 
 Beyond books, there are men ; and the 
 study of persons is quite as essential to an 
 informed soul as that of parchments. 
 
 Practical observation is a university of 
 itself. Dickens could not more profitably 
 employ midnight hours than by walking 
 London streets, finding and watching char- 
 acters ; Burns could write no more touch- 
 ing poem than that of the "Wee Mousie," 
 whose home, on the bleak winter's day, he 
 saw so rudely destroyed by the cruel plow- 
 share, and whose unceremonious ejectment 
 taught the lesson that 
 
 "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 
 Gang aft a-gley. " 
 
38 REAL PREACHING 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Morgan, of Greenwich, 
 Conn., if he knew little of books, still had 
 a sense of his parishioners' vexations and 
 difficulties, which, on the practical side, 
 made him a minister not to be despised. 
 
 "Wall, our minister," said the venerable 
 deacon, "gives so much attention to his 
 farm and orchard that we get pretty poor 
 sermons, but he is mighty movin' in prayer 
 in caterpillar and canker-worm time ! " 
 
 There was a deal of philosophy in the 
 practice of that outrageous pedagogue, Mr. 
 Squeers, who, having taught the boy to 
 spell and parse "horse," sent him to groom 
 the aforesaid animal, with the promise of a 
 sound thrashing if the grooming did not 
 reveal an intimate acquaintance with the 
 beast's pelt ! 
 
 Robertson was a student, but he became 
 the apostle of the Avorkingmen by entering 
 into their lives. Kingsley loved to burn 
 the midnight oil, but on the cholera com- 
 mittee he probably gained information which 
 was invaluable. Bushnell was an inspira- 
 tional theologian, but his efforts for a pub- 
 lic park were high-priced yet competent 
 tutors to his great spirit. 
 
THE BEAL MAN 39 
 
 A priest and a Protestant minister have 
 been sitting on the jury in New Haven. 
 The duty has put dynamite beneath their 
 habits of work. The rude noises of the 
 world have supplanted the quiet of their 
 morning's study, but besides their ministry 
 to the public, they have beyond doubt 
 embossed their shields and sharpened their 
 swords. Bringing their ideals to court has 
 blessed justice and the ideals, too ! Their 
 sermons have not suffered from being con- 
 ceived in the halls of the blind-eyed god- 
 dess, nor been injured by being tinctured 
 with the essence of actual life. 
 
 It is a constant declaration concerning 
 ministers that, in Josh Billings's phrase, 
 "they know a great many things that ain't 
 so." Measurably true is the charge, it must 
 be confessed, but usually that minister is 
 acquitted whose motive is strong enough 
 to drive him daily to his study, and daily, 
 also, to his parish. A healthy ideal forever 
 seeks a human incarnation. The really 
 spiritual will seek for clothing the royally 
 practical. A well-informed minister knows 
 books, and he knows men, who are the raw 
 
40 REAL PREACHING 
 
 material out of which books, which " are 
 the life-blood of master spirits," are made. 
 
 The real man, the executive of the swell- 
 ing monarchical motive, which dominates his 
 habits and informs his life, aspires to lead- 
 ership. A minister, if he is anything, is a 
 leader. 
 
 Tennyson, singing his immortal requiem 
 to the sacred memory of Arthur Hallam, 
 chants, — 
 
 "How pure at heart and sound in head, 
 With what divine affections bold, 
 Should be the man whose thought would hold 
 An hour's communion with the dead." 
 
 What, then, of the man who has resolved 
 upon a life's communion with the living ; 
 who is to interpret men to themselves, to 
 inspire their nobility, to lead out the lag- 
 ging resolutions of their overlaid con- 
 sciences ? 
 
 An effective leader is composite. He 
 must possess not only resolution but re- 
 straint. His must be not only a patient 
 faith, but a noble fear. His reserves must 
 be as disciplined as his advancing hosts. 
 He must thoroughly master that difficult 
 
THE REAL MAN 41 
 
 but essential lesson, that to wait is con- 
 quest ofttimes, where impetuous advance is 
 but the prelude to ignominious defeat. 
 They laughed at a Massachusetts governor 
 in the colonial days, because he was so 
 thoroughly controlled by his wife. "A 
 man," said the sage publicist, "must learn 
 to be governed himself before he can gov- 
 ern others." 
 
 To come to the kingdom at such a time 
 as this, an aspirant for the leadership of 
 love, is to combine a rare privilege with a 
 stupendous responsibility. If ever the min- 
 istry were under bonds to "play the man," 
 it is so to-day. On the one hand crum- 
 bling, on the other, construction; here a 
 fond grasp of an outworn tradition, there 
 a bold capture of a citadel of error; the 
 capitalist seeking support, the workingman 
 justice; small race wars in communities in 
 which the dirty immigrant infringes upon 
 the comfort of the dainty life resident, and 
 the wages of the man who arrived the day 
 before him ; the tendency to the separa- 
 tion of classes; the need of democracy in 
 churches, — a need not always sure to be 
 clearly discovered by politic deacons or for- 
 
42 REAL PREACHING 
 
 revenue-only trustees ; all these call pite- 
 ously to-day for men of God, who will not 
 only emit diatribes, but who will develop 
 measures ; who will construct as well as 
 condemn. A leadership which rouses only 
 the pugnacious spirit of the church, a spirit 
 which is the very opposite of that wrath 
 which is slow to rise and ready to abate, 
 makes at best only a meagre contribution 
 to the urgent situation. A leadership which 
 quits the church, as if it were a sinking 
 ship, and advocates independent action, is 
 likewise, usually, of questionable value. 
 
 Mrs. Phelps-Ward, in "A Singular Life," 
 has drawn with rare insight and with truly 
 sanctified sagacity the character of a real 
 leader. You follow him in his manly 
 efforts, his brave struggles and modest 
 achievements with increasing sympathy and 
 admiration. You cannot forget, however, 
 that he is all the while doing what, 
 though for him, perhaps, a necessary thing, 
 would bring untold calamity to great inter- 
 ests if generally espoused by the open- 
 ing ministry of the day. Nor can you 
 escape the longing that the same pen 
 would give you a sketch of another Bay- 
 
THE BEAL MAN 43 
 
 ard, who in church fellowship should work 
 out his leadership. The present clay prob- 
 lem, the burning question, is not how to 
 conduct an independent mission, important 
 as that may be : it is how to lead the 
 great, strong, sleeping Church of God to 
 Bayard's work! It is not how to touch 
 low, needy life without the church — any one 
 can do that — but how to touch it within 
 the church, by making the church esteem 
 her privilege and accept her responsibility. 
 He who, in the eager, restrained, plodding, 
 but uncompromising spirit of a determined 
 leadership, quietly but increasingly infuses 
 his own God-given convictions into the life 
 of his church, and one by one opens blind 
 eyes, unstops deaf ears, and quickens lag- 
 ging footsteps, is a braver man than he 
 who, loving "the garish day," turns his 
 back upon the Church as anti-Christ, and 
 single handed attempts to "hew Agag in 
 pieces before the Lord." 
 
 Do you know Bishop Welcome, that 
 stately, sublime, and, above all, spiritual 
 creation of Victor Hugo, in "Les Misera- 
 bles"? Have you caught his spirit? To 
 me he is the towering character in all fie- 
 
44 REAL PREACHING 
 
 tion, — certainly the most ideal portraiture 
 of a minister I have ever found. The first 
 hundred pages of " Les Miserables " con- 
 tain the choicest suggestions upon pastoral 
 theology in literature, and by every ear- 
 nest student should, in the solitude of his 
 soul, in presence of his supreme life reso- 
 lution, be carefully, even prayerfully, conned 
 and lingered over till they are his own. 
 A minister can always recover a flicker- 
 ing confidence, or a receding courage, by 
 an hour with Bishop Welcome. 
 
 The Episcopal palace adjoined the hospi- 
 tal. The palace was very grand; spacious 
 its drawing-rooms, ample its chambers. The 
 principal courtyard was large; the walks 
 encircling it led beneath arcades in the 
 old Florentine fashion, and in the gardens 
 grew magnificent trees. The hospital was 
 a small, one-story building, with a meagre 
 garden. It was overcrowded. The bishop 
 created unspeakable consternation by declar- 
 ing at the outset that there must be some 
 mistake. " There are thirty-six of you in 
 five or six small rooms," said he to the 
 director of the hospital. " There are three 
 of us here, and we have room for sixty. 
 
THE BEAL MAN 45 
 
 There is some mistake, I tell you ; you 
 have my house, and I have yours." 
 
 The bishop regulated his household ex- 
 penses so that one fifteenth went to him- 
 self and fourteen fifteenths to his work. 
 He entered into the real lives of his flock 
 and shared hardship with them. " He 
 stripped himself!" The only luxury he 
 would tolerate was his garden. This he 
 kept in exquisite order. His haughty house- 
 keeper reproved him, saying, "You, who 
 turn everything to account, have at least 
 one useless spot. It would be better to 
 grow salads there than bouquets." " Mad- 
 am," retorted the bishop, " you are mis- 
 taken. The beautiful is as useful as the 
 useful." He added after a pause, "More 
 so, perhaps," 
 
 The peasant bishop went to a synod once. 
 He came back before the session was over. 
 " I embarrassed them," he said. " I pro- 
 duced on them the effect of an open door." 
 
 He displeased his brother bishops. Among 
 other strange things, it is said that in an 
 Episcopal residence of marvelous beauty, he 
 remarked, " What beautiful clocks ! What 
 beautiful carpets ! They must be a great 
 
46 REAL PREACHING 
 
 trouble. I would not have all those super- 
 fluities crying incessantly in my ears : ' There 
 are people who are hungry! There are peo- 
 ple who are cold ! There are poor people ! 
 There are poor people.' " 
 
 He was leading others all the while. 
 
 He gave the hospitality of his home 
 once, with royal brotherhood, to an ex- 
 convict and a tramp. His reward was, 
 that the tramp stole his silver — his spoons 
 and forks. Arrested and brought back by 
 the police, judge the amazement of the 
 culprit to hear the bishop take his part, 
 declaring he had given not only these, but 
 the valuable candlesticks as well. " Jean 
 Valjean opened his eyes wide and stared 
 at the venerable bishop with an expression 
 which no human tongue can render any 
 account of." 
 
 " You may retire, gentlemen," said the 
 bishop to the police. 
 
 " Jean Valjean was like a man on the 
 point of fainting. The bishop drew near 
 to him and said in a low voice : ' Do not 
 forget, never forget, that you have prom- 
 ised to use this money in becoming an 
 honest man.' 
 
THE REAL MAN 47 
 
 M Jean Valjean, who had no recollection 
 of ever having promised anything, remained 
 speechless. The bishop emphasized the words 
 when he nttered them. He resumed, with 
 solemnity, 'Jean Valjean, my brother, you 
 no longer belong to evil, but to good. It 
 is your soul that I buy from you. I with- 
 draw it from black thoughts and the spirit 
 of perdition, and I give it to God.' ' 
 
 Here was princely manhood. Here was 
 royal leadership. Jean Valjean saw light 
 for the first time that hour. His whole 
 being was changed. He never saw the 
 bishop again, but when that good man died 
 the ex-convict put on mourning. He himself 
 developed a wonderful character, and when 
 the death dew was on his brow, and his 
 friends asked him if he desired a priest, 
 he simply said, " I had one once ! " 
 
 The bishop was a real man, a true 
 leader, rearing what he loved to call the 
 most beautiful of altars, — " The soul of an 
 unhappy creature consoled and thanking 
 God/' " 
 
 But the illustration of the u Real Man " 
 is before us in life. We may be grate- 
 fully proud that he is in our own denomi- 
 
48 REAL PREACHING 
 
 nation. Easily the prince among our 
 preachers, Dr. Richard Storrs is no less 
 prince among our men. No honors were 
 too choice for the celebration of the fiftieth 
 anniversary of his ordination only a few 
 weeks ago. But among all the gifts of 
 the admiring, and the encomiums of the 
 elect representatives from those wide-reach- 
 ing spheres of life and thought, which he 
 had so nobly dignified by his influence, or 
 promoted by his patient and brilliant schol- 
 arship, surely none was more grateful to 
 him than the loving cup presented by 
 his brothers in the sacred calling. The 
 ivy about its brim spoke of the immortality 
 of friendship. The water lily, delicately 
 traced, symbolized that eloquence of which 
 he is so charming a master, while the legend 
 encircling all, not only italicized his own 
 conviction, but fittingly expressed the great, 
 deep-souled truth of a true preacher's essen- 
 tial and real manhood. - 
 
 " Sermo animi est imago : qualis vir, talis et 
 oratio est." The sermon is the reflection of 
 the soul: as is the man, so also is his 
 utterance. 
 
ir 
 THE REAL SERMON 
 
THE REAL SERMON 
 
 The ecclesiastic has had his day, and his 
 face is towards the setting sun. Gradually 
 his power declines, for life is becoming too 
 tense and the struggle between the modern 
 Ormuzd of light and Ahriman of dark- 
 ness too engaging to permit leadership in 
 the person either of the spurious or the 
 artificial. The ecclesiastic is the disciple of 
 form, and the plea and demand of the 
 world to-day is for faith, rugged, coura- 
 geous, independent faith. 
 
 The temptation to a ministry of mere 
 exhibition is, happily, removed from modern 
 life in a very large degree; but in its place 
 has come a temptation opposite in charac- 
 ter and no less pernicious in effect. 
 
 It will one day be discovered that the 
 minister as an executive is at quite as much 
 of a remove from his real office as the 
 
52 REAL PREACHING 
 
 mere ecclesiastic. The last quarter of a 
 century lias witnessed the growth of spe- 
 cialism everywhere. The student in college 
 specializes. The country store no longer 
 exists; in its place are half a dozen others. 
 If the great department stores, which are 
 a doubtful blessing, are a returning ap- 
 proach to the country store, the approach 
 is thoroughly vaccinated with the virus of 
 specialization, for the store is really a 
 dozen or twenty shops under one roof and 
 one management. The doctor is a surgeon, 
 an oculist, an aurist, and a general prac- 
 titioner only to splice his slender resources 
 till he can devote himself profitably to his 
 chosen specialty. Likewise the lawyer; like- 
 wise, too, the servant girl. The man of all 
 work has become a restricted spirit; the 
 inside man is one, the outside man an- 
 other, and, like the Jews and Samaritans 
 of old, they have no dealings with each 
 other. 
 
 The church is the last of all institutions 
 to accept and adopt the principle. Most of 
 our churches are conducted on the plan of 
 the old country store, and where you find 
 inefficient churches in cities of considerable 
 
THE REAL SERMON 53 
 
 size, it will not infrequently be found that 
 the reason is that these churches are being 
 conducted on the same lines which were 
 efficient when the city was a village, but 
 which, -under municipal or metropolitan con- 
 ditions, are woefully and sometimes ridicu- 
 lously antique. To Garry the church over, 
 and reinvigorate it with modern methods 
 for present urgencies, is the task of most 
 open-eyed ministers just at this present 
 moment. 
 
 This task brings the great temptation, 
 especially to active temperaments, to be- 
 come an executive ; to spend one's major 
 forces in bringing things to pass ; to be 
 transformed into a " religious promoter," a 
 church " captain of industry." Many a 
 time there seems to be nobody but the 
 minister either to be concerned about the 
 necessities or to provide for them, which 
 makes the temptation greater and calls for 
 a principle of resistance, the nerves of which 
 shall be fed with the tonic of a definite con- 
 ception of ministerial business and purpose. 
 " Small considerations are the tomb of great 
 things," and many a preacher is being 
 ruined to-day to make an overseer or 
 
54 REAL PREACHING 
 
 a floor-walker, an entry clerk or petty 
 accountant in the church. 
 
 Now the fact is that you can be but 
 one thing predominantly; and still another 
 fact is that the one great business of the 
 minister is to be the evangelist, — the herald 
 of glad tidings, the preacher of righteous- 
 ness. If the influence of the pulpit de- 
 clines, it will be because its moral author- 
 ity has been weakened by reason of partial 
 abandonment. Men have been planning 
 societies instead of sermons. I confess my 
 great concern for a remodeled church, but 
 my even greater concern for a recovered 
 pulpit. A minister's great occasion is his 
 exposition of truth. If he minds his own 
 business in royal fashion, all these other 
 necessary things will be added unto him. 
 
 I have never found a better definition of 
 preaching than that given me when I was 
 sitting, as you are, in presence of the cher- 
 ished anticipation of future usefulness. 
 " Preaching," said my honored professor, 
 "is making men think and feel in propor- 
 tion as they think. The sermon thus is 
 truth clarified in thought and kindled in 
 feeling. It is potential when completed in 
 
THE REAL SERMON 55 
 
 the study; it is actual only when sent 
 forth from the pulpit." 
 
 "It takes two," says Thoreau, "to speak 
 truth: one to speak; one to hear." The 
 preparation is one ; the preaching is an- 
 other: both make the sermon. 
 
 Dr. Holmes tells us that if we want to 
 be healthy we must have a care to select 
 discreetly our ancestors, and by his pleas- 
 ant wit reminds us that the sources of 
 health are quite a remove from the supply 
 of it. Healthy sermons have ancestors, 
 antecedents. They are not made the week 
 they are delivered. They are special drafts 
 from fountains of living waters, which are 
 fed from distant mountain springs. General 
 preparation includes first, observation. 
 
 John La Farge, lecturing to students in 
 the Metropolitan museum at New York, 
 speaks thus : "I remember how a well- 
 known oculist, who had little experience 
 with painters, tested the sight of a patient 
 who was an artist. He was surprised at 
 the artist's avoiding the traps that are laid 
 to detect defects in sight. Said the doc- 
 tor, ; I have only two cases of eyes with 
 worse defects than yours, but I have never 
 
56 REAL PREACHING 
 
 met any one who seemed to see so cor- 
 rectly.' ' That,' answered the artist, ' is my 
 profession. My profession is to see cor- 
 rectly.' " 
 
 It is your profession, as well, to see cor- 
 rectly: to find sermons where the artist 
 finds pictures, the novelist, romances, the 
 poet, songs ; not of necessity specific ser- 
 mons, but real homiletic material. 
 
 Some one writing about the " Puritan in 
 Art," says: "When I asked Mr. Broughton 
 whether he contemplated painting any more 
 Puritan pictures, he said, ' One does not 
 contemplate subjects ; they come to you 
 fully armed, and 3^ou have to do them.' : 
 
 You can never tell when your observa- 
 tion is to prove your homiletic salvation, 
 but that it will is assured. 
 
 Dr. R. F. Horton, upon a recent vaca- 
 tion, saw the sun rise. He watched the glo- 
 rious procession of the monarch of the day, 
 and then remarked, "If that vision does 
 not make me a better man, it is my 
 fault, not God's." That was a soul cap- 
 ture, in the early morning, far from his 
 pulpit, but later the observation developed 
 in one of his Lynhurst Road sermons really 
 
THE REAL SERMON 57 
 
 made the sermon. School yourself to see ; 
 it is your profession. 
 
 Just here I desire to insert a plea for 
 early travel for ministers. As part of your 
 homiletic training, get in presence of new 
 sights. Travel. I know you are poor. So 
 are all ministers; so you will ever be; but 
 travel. Get an early vision of some great 
 world metropolis. Go to London ! You 
 can, if you will pay the fare. The price 
 of a bicycle will take you there and back. 
 Probably not in the first cabin. Well, there 
 is a world to observe in the steerage. A 
 vision of Westminster ; a service in St. 
 Paul's ; a ride along the Strand on an 
 omnibus ; a meeting in St. James Park, 
 where socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and 
 every son of man who has a hobby to 
 ride is in fine fettle, will be worth a 
 whole year amid familiar scenes and native 
 surroundings. But, wherever you are, train 
 yourself to see beneath the surface. 
 
 The second characteristic of general prep- 
 aration is reading. 
 
 John Wesley once said that a Christian 
 had no more right to be a gentleman than 
 a dancing master. He meant that a man's 
 
58 REAL PEE ACHING 
 
 religion was to be the preeminent thing 
 about him. Your religion is the preemi- 
 nent thing about you, and your sermon is 
 the choice opportunity for you to deliver 
 yourself. But you, yourself, are made by 
 what you feed upon, and your reading is 
 food. 
 
 Some plead for old books. There are 
 only a dozen or two of men who have 
 really influenced the world by contribution. 
 The rest are imitators. Drink at the 
 spring, they say. But there is always 
 something musty about such a man's ser- 
 mons. Some plead for one Book. Be men 
 of one Book — the Bible. 
 
 A young friend of mine, fitting himself 
 to be an evangelist, once said to me in my 
 library, in the presence of the works of 
 many master minds, ancient and modern, that 
 he had determined to know only one book 
 — his Bible. History, literature, magazines 
 and newspapers were henceforth to be dis- 
 missed, and the blessed Bible was to be-^ 
 come his meat day and night, in order 
 that he might preach a pure and uncon- 
 taminated gospel. It is useless to argue 
 with, much less to advise, such a soul, 
 
THE BEAL SERMON 59 
 
 and therefore I simply said, " If ever you 
 feel the need of reading any other book 
 besides the Bible, I would be glad to help 
 you to a wise selection." He worked out 
 his own blunder, and came ■ back for the 
 books. Experience is a great thing for a 
 young preacher. 
 
 You are to preach to the people, and 
 therefore you are to know a little about a 
 great many things. The old adage, that 
 it is better to know one thing well than 
 to know a great many things partially, has 
 decided limitations and exceptions. The 
 minister who specializes his reading will be 
 very likely to widen the gulf between his 
 pulpit and the pews. 
 
 It is a good plan to keep half a dozen 
 courses of reading on hand all the time. 
 I am speaking now my own experience, 
 and, therefore, make bold to illustrate from 
 my own study. Just now on my table are 
 three poets : Browning — he is always there ; 
 Kipling, with his billowy Seven Seas ; Paul 
 Dunbar, the first colored American poet, 
 with his remarkable dialect songs. The 
 novel is " Quo Vadis," the latest work of 
 the Polish Sienkiewicz ; the history is of 
 
60 REAL PREACHING 
 
 Poland; the biography is " Life of George 
 Romanes " ; the theology is, two volumes 
 upon God, by Professor Harris of Yale, 
 and " Moral Evolution," by Professor George 
 Harris of Andover, which has passed to a 
 third reading; the homiletic is Van Dyke's 
 " Gospel for an Age of Doubt," and Mr. 
 Nicoll's "When Worst Comes to Worst." 
 
 One reads and reads and reads in such 
 companionship, and finds that he grows. 
 You should devour some books — you will. 
 You should detest others — you will. And 
 both processes will have homiletic value. 
 The truth is, there are different ways of 
 reading. You read different things for dif- 
 ferent purposes, and the purpose covers the 
 method. Some books you skim; some you 
 study. In the one case, your quest is 
 illustration; in the other, ideas. The first 
 may be a novel; the second, a theology. 
 
 Current magazine literature is specially 
 valuable. Take all the magazines you can, 
 and borrow the reading of what you cannot 
 personally afford. An illustration drawn 
 from a common source has very great 
 power over the people who have met it in 
 its home. It gratifies them to feel that 
 
THE REAL SERMON 61 
 
 they have noticed it themselves, and all 
 the more that you, the minister, have 
 noticed it, too. Do not be ashamed to be 
 known as a great reader, or a rapid reader; 
 it is an essential of your equipment. It 
 makes a full man. 
 
 The training of the memory is a third 
 characteristic of general preparation. 
 
 The advance of civilization has for its 
 inevitable counterpart the retreat of capa- 
 bility. New abilities arise, to be sure, but 
 old ones retire. Gladly do we confess 
 gain, upon the whole, but sadly, too, we 
 plead guilty to special and deplorable 
 losses. Fingers grow less deft, for machin- 
 ery works in place of them. The eye will 
 never be more keen because spectacles do 
 its work for it. No more will Hercules be 
 found among men, or Atlas bearing a world 
 upon his shoulders, because we have 
 hydraulic lifts to do their ponderous 
 feats. 
 
 The marvel of the Old World to a lit- 
 erary man is the extent to which the 
 memory was trained. One longs to sit at 
 one of those old banquets and hear some 
 learned slave recite book after book of 
 
62 REAL P BEACHING 
 
 ancient lore. The absence of the printing- 
 press was a blessing to memory; the pres- 
 ence of it is the bane of memory. No 
 man needs his memory more than a minis- 
 ter, and the young minister who wakes up 
 to this truth and begins at twenty-five to 
 train and develop his memory, will bless 
 the day he began, a score of years hence. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards began early, and used 
 to pin a bit of paper on his coat as he 
 walked, to represent every idea which he 
 would detain, to be put in irons later, and 
 sometimes when he came home his coat 
 would be white with the pickets of his 
 ideas. 
 
 Thoughts, worthy, suggestive, and vital,, 
 are frequently compacted into a sentence. 
 Hold the sentence, and you hold the 
 thought. The man who has in his mind 
 a company of thought-laden sentences, will 
 never cherish that idle brain which in 
 ministers, as in others, is the devil's work- 
 shop. 
 
 Poetry enshrines the very noblest of 
 human conceptions. To commit poetry to 
 memory is never a waste of time. For a 
 minister, there is hardly a more compen- 
 
THE REAL SERMON 63 
 
 sating occupation. The temptation of reacU 
 ing is to allow it to become a luxury 
 rather than a labor, an affair of comfort 
 rather than of conscience. It may be tan- 
 talizing to stop in the midst of an excit- 
 ing passage to capture a luminous idea 
 set in a unique phrase or fine sentence, 
 but the promise you make, as you hasten 
 on, that you will return later to the jewel, 
 is almost never fulfilled, and a distinct loss 
 to your mental integrity, as well as equip- 
 ment, is the result. The conscientious train- 
 ing of the memory, the making your own, 
 with whatever labor, the best things others 
 have said and written, is one of the open 
 secrets of a good sermonizer. 
 
 Meditation is first assistant to the memory. 
 
 Charles Darwin was accustomed to greet 
 his favorite pupil, George John Romanes, 
 with outstretched hand, a bright smile, and 
 the quiet exclamation, " How glad I am 
 that you are so young ! " And then the 
 great scientist would seriously advise his 
 young friend, "Above all, Romanes, culti- 
 vate the habit of meditation." 
 
 Introduction to a new idea, flashing in a 
 novel, glistening in a poem, or embedded 
 
64 REAL PREACHING 
 
 deep in a theological volume, is a critical 
 moment for you. The idea will never 
 come again as it does now. It has at 
 this moment attendants ; it is escorted by 
 a brilliant pageant of retainers ; it suggests 
 a whole fraternity of allied conceptions. If 
 you excuse yourself from further compan- 
 ionship with this idea on account of press- 
 ing engagements, and in your selfish rude- 
 ness hasten on with your story, your mono- 
 graph, your poem, when at your lordly 
 convenience you come back, the idea has 
 excused itself from you, and you will have 
 to confess, as somebody does about departed 
 youth, — 
 
 " Something beautiful has vanished, 
 And we search for it in vain; 
 We behold it everywhere — 
 On the earth and in the air, 
 But it never comes again." 
 
 The ghost of a snubbed idea will haunt 
 a minister's mind, sting his conscience, and 
 generally disturb his peace in a way abso- 
 lutely unique among all the weird caprices 
 of these shadowy forms. An idea hospi- 
 tably entertained, memorized, meditated upon, 
 
THE REAL SERMON 65 
 
 will become a contribution to one's mental 
 capital, which will pay compound interest, 
 and which will never pass a dividend. 
 
 I remember to have heard Dr. Lyman Ab- 
 bott say that his literary habit was to read 
 a little, and then think about what he had 
 read. You must hold yourself under strict 
 discipline if you would be a profitable reader. 
 A traveler may cover many miles in a day, 
 but when he arrives at a city, he must 
 tarry long enough to get into the life of 
 the place, if he is to appreciate it or it is 
 to influence him. The secret of good read- 
 ing is knowing when you are in the city, 
 and compelling yourself to stay there till 
 the city gets into you. 
 
 Note books are second assistants to the 
 memory. Jewett, master of Balliol, could 
 not too strongly urge his students to keep 
 commonplace-books, citing his own habit as 
 illustration, while this advice from Charles 
 Kingsley, reveals the source of the versatil- 
 ity of his own style : — 
 
 "Keep a commonplace-book, and put into 
 it not only facts and thoughts, but observa- 
 tions on form and color and nature, and little 
 sketches, even to the form of beautiful leaves. 
 
66 REAL PREACHING 
 
 They will all have their charm, all do their 
 work in consolidating your ideas. Put every- 
 thing into it. Strive to put every idea into a 
 tangible form, and write it down." 
 
 This is a practical way of keeping your 
 memory in line. 
 
 I was in a minister's study not long 
 since, in which was a great letter case ar- 
 ranged for " clippings." He always reads 
 with a blue pencil ; his stenographer clips 
 and files. That is one way of preserving 
 material. This minister's sermons always 
 betray his method — scrappy. 
 
 An elaborate system of note taking is 
 unprofitable, but certain notes are essential. 
 Have a note-book, a fountain pen, a bottle 
 of mucilage, and a pair of scissors always 
 at hand. Read with your note-book at hand. 
 Put into it everything which has homiletic 
 value, with your comment. Read it over 
 frequently. It will be invaluable. Old Cap- 
 tain Cuttle had a monstrous truth alongside 
 when he gave the order — " When found 
 make a note of." 
 
 The special preparation of the sermon must 
 now engage our attention. 
 
 Whatever may be said to you upon this 
 
THE REAL SERMON 67 
 
 subject must be of general, rather than of 
 minute, suggestion. The inevitable fact is, 
 that next Sunday comes not only promptly, 
 but always with the unexpected celerity of 
 those things that travel in seven-league 
 boots. And with the coming Sunday, the 
 work must be accomplished. Some toil 
 specifically at the sermons all the week. 
 They get the text Monday; write intro- 
 duction Tuesday ; first point, Wednesday ; 
 second, Thursday ; third, Friday ; revise, 
 Saturday; and trust in the Lord for what 
 they are to say at the second service Sun- 
 day, and find that in the hands of the 
 aforesaid trusted Lord they are " reeds 
 shaken by the wind." Others wait till 
 Saturday, and barn the midnight oil. Occa- 
 sionally, one like Beecher does his specific 
 work Sunday morning. To every man ac- 
 cording to his several ability. Some work 
 with great rapidity, others plod. No rule 
 can be laid down for the special prepara- 
 tion of a sermon, but every man must 
 bear his own burden. There is, however, 
 this which is absolute. No tyranny is so 
 cruel as that of a dissipated homiletic habit. 
 No slave ever drudges in utter loyalty for 
 
68 REAL PREACHING 
 
 its master like the homiletic habit when 
 once it has been thoroughly mastered. 
 
 It is said of Dr. F. L. Patton, the bril- 
 liant president of Princeton and the incisive 
 preacher, that he will plan a sermon on 
 the back of an envelope on his way to 
 its delivery. It is conceivable. He is a 
 professor of ethics and philosophy, a Bible 
 student, a great leader. Once let his mind 
 accept a theme, and from every direction 
 his thoughts and illustrations come flocking 
 like doves to their windows. But Presi- 
 dent Patton and Beecher are the experts, 
 not the beginners. They illustrate, how- 
 ever, the essential thing for you to acquire, 
 namely, the mastery of the homiletic habit. 
 If the habit masters you, alas for you ! If 
 you master it, your joy in preaching is 
 assured. 
 
 A good reader and observer will always 
 have plenty of themes. The difficulty of 
 selection from a good stock of subjects is, 
 on the whole, more to be desired than 
 that of a forced three days' journey into 
 the wilderness each week in search of one. 
 
 One of the brightest of our young Mas- 
 sachusetts preachers, speaking of his ser- 
 
THE REAL SERMON 69 
 
 mons, said, " I always have a number of 
 themes in my mind. When I want a ser- 
 mon, I stick my homiletic fork into them 
 as a cook does into boiling potatoes to see 
 if they are done. I choose the one near- 
 est cooked, give it special fire, and use it 
 Sunday." 
 
 The theme in mind, it is a valuable 
 exercise to read its opposite. If you are 
 to preach on love, read about hate ; if 
 about the spring and flowers — don't do it 
 too often, — read about winter and roots ; if 
 about hope, get the literature of despair. 
 Your mind will fly for refuge to the oppo- 
 site pole, and there you frequently will 
 catch your sermon in hiding. It is safe 
 to wait for the plan to come and lay its 
 sword at your feet, like a knight before 
 the fair lady, if you are really engaged in 
 mastering your theme. Plans are like — 
 
 "The snowflake on the river, 
 A moment seen, then gone forever." 
 
 Woe to the man who has to go in 
 search of pen and note-book when a plan 
 sends its light athwart his dark pathway! 
 He will find it darker than before, when 
 
70 REAL PREACHING 
 
 he comes to attempt the capture of the 
 eluded vision. Write down every plan, 
 good, bad, indifferent, which comes to you, 
 when it comes. Write out in full all 
 illustrations suggested. Write page after 
 page of ideas with the freedom and aban- 
 don of a pen driven by a time limit. Do 
 not fear if the week hastens to its clos- 
 ing; you are getting ready. The plan 
 will come in a moment, in the twinkling 
 of an eye, and the elaborated ideas and 
 illustrations will fall into line as regularly 
 and as surprisingly as a company of well- 
 drilled soldiers when the call "To arms!" 
 summons them from their slumber. 
 
 One of the luxuries of a faithful minis- 
 ter's homiletic experiences is that at even- 
 tide, when it is light, an hour's work sets 
 in order a week's labor. The sense of mas- 
 tery is most refreshing. 
 
 The question of the preaching of the 
 prepared sermon is one which will be 
 answered largely by a man's own habit. 
 The exact writer is quite liable to scorn 
 the exclamatory speaker; and the man 
 whose flowing speech can sway an audi- 
 ence is not always sure that there is room 
 
THE REAL SERMON 71 
 
 in the world for the quiet speech and 
 elegant diction of the disciple of the 
 manuscript. 
 
 The pastor of one of our great churches 
 traveled for his health, not long since, across 
 the sea. His physician would not allow 
 him to preach, so he was obliged to attend 
 church and listen to his brethren. On his 
 return to his own country, he made the 
 startling announcement that the only effect- 
 ive sermons he heard were from manu- 
 script; that the extemporaneous or spoken 
 sermons were all sonorous, on the sound- 
 ing brass or tinkling cymbal order, and he 
 drew the conclusion that the written ser- 
 mon is the only proper method of pulpit 
 address. Now the fact is, that this min- 
 ister preaches, himself, a strong, able, writ- 
 ten sermon; but his own extemporaneous 
 utterances are as dreary as the monotonous 
 tinkle of a bell-buoy in the fog. He wishes 
 he could, but he cannot, deliver with effect 
 a spoken sermon, and because he cannot, 
 it is, of course, a serious question whether 
 it is not a reflection on himself to admit 
 that anybody can or does. There is just 
 a suggestion of prejudice in his opinion. 
 
72 REAL PREACHING 
 
 It will be conceded, I think, that the 
 spoken sermon for the average audience is 
 the great present demand. Times are too 
 rushing; the defiance of the gospel too 
 spiteful; the crying need of the world too 
 piteous, to allow the calm, deliberate, un- 
 impassioned utterance of truth to carry 
 men over to highest resolutions and noblest 
 endeavors. A great occasion in public life, 
 a threatening war, an overshadowing calam- 
 ity, always stirs the extemporaneous habit. 
 Heat expands ; it is difficult to confine it 
 within walls of iron. It is a distinct 
 advantage to have one's whole self to 
 bestow upon an audience, and however a 
 man may boast — and every man does — that 
 he is not hampered by his notes, still the 
 care of his manuscript is a subtraction 
 from himself, and, in so far, from his effi- 
 ciency. Because the spoken sermon is the 
 sermon at its best, every student should 
 strive for it. The great majority can 
 become effective extemporaneous preachers, 
 if willing to make a sufficiently strenuous 
 effort. 
 
 Darwin once encouraged Romanes in a 
 certain grafting failure, by saying, " Trol- 
 
THE REAL SERMON 73 
 
 lope, in one of his novels, gives us a 
 maxim of constant use by a brickmaker, 
 ; It is dogged as does it,' and I have often 
 thought this is the motto for every scien- 
 tific worker." Yea, verily, and for every 
 homiletical worker, too. "It is dogged as 
 does it," young gentlemen; not facility, 
 not natural gifts ; these are usually barri- 
 ers to an effective extemporaneous habit. 
 Relying on these, you substitute for a ser- 
 mon merely an utterance. 
 
 Said a presiding elder to me about a 
 young preacher in whom we were both 
 interested, " Young men are so foolish ! " 
 Our friend was appointed to preach at 
 camp-meeting. It was an honor, as well 
 as a responsibility. He worked hard upon 
 his sermon, but when it came time to 
 preach, judge my surprise to hear him say 
 that as he had been sitting under the 
 green trees that day, the Lord had given 
 him a different message from that he had 
 prepared. Thereupon he announced that 
 holy text : " Ye shall receive power, after 
 that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." 
 "For two minutes," said the grim elder, 
 with a smile, "all was well, but for the 
 
74 REAL PREACHING 
 
 other twenty-eight he said nothing, but 
 roared 'like a pelican in the wilderness.' " 
 
 " Roaring like a pelican in the wilderness" 
 is not extemporaneous preaching. It is too 
 easy, too frothy, too purely animal for that. 
 The spoken sermon, at its best, is the 
 evolved sermon. It comes up through the 
 written and the memorized. It is based 
 upon these. It is a triumph of habit, a 
 goal of long-planned and long-prosecuted 
 endeavor. There is no escape from careful 
 writing and painstaking elaboration for any 
 man who w r ould by any method preach his 
 noblest. 
 
 The memorized sermon is a step in ad- 
 vance of the written sermon. It is the 
 written sermon delivered through the mem- 
 ory rather than through the eye. It need 
 not be an exercise in elocution or resemble 
 the performance of a public reader: it can 
 be natural, effective, and almost sponta- 
 neous. 
 
 The memorizing method will quicken the 
 eagerness for the spoken method. It is a 
 sort of look into the promised land. It is 
 the second step toward the spoken sermon. 
 To attempt it, you will need as much 
 
THE REAL SERMON 75 
 
 heroism as a general must summon who 
 goes a-wooing. 
 
 How at this moment my own experience 
 comes back ! I was preaching in a small 
 fishing village on the back side of Cape 
 Cod. The church was upon the beach, 
 and the pounding of the great, white- 
 capped billows on the shore punctuated 
 for me my discourse in the morning, for 
 I could distinctly hear them. A storm 
 arose, and in preparing for the second ser- 
 vice I was challenged with the idea of 
 leaving my manuscript and preaching the 
 sermon from memory. I was very familiar 
 with the sermon. I only had two, and 
 every theologue is thoroughly acquainted 
 with the " first-born" among his homiletic 
 progeny. . I thought the waves would help 
 me out if I broke down. I resolved to 
 try. It was, soberly, a great resolution. 
 
 The audience was small. The text was 
 announced, and never did the whistling 
 winds of the old Atlantic chase each other 
 with greater celerity across those sandy 
 wastes than did my swift-footed words in 
 their half-terrified and half-exhilarated scram- 
 ble- for the end of the discourse. I trip- 
 
76 REAL PREACHING 
 
 ped, but eagerly pressed on ! Once I 
 tumbled down, but not waiting even to 
 brush the dirt off, or pity myself because 
 I had been bumped, I pressed on, and fin- 
 ished. It was hard on the audience. Not 
 many complimented the effort, but it was 
 my great sermon. It revealed to me a 
 new and powerful approach to men. I 
 followed the method till I could preach 
 with composure out of my memory. This 
 method is excellent discipline for the mind, 
 and is usually acceptable to the people. 
 
 The spoken sermon is a great consumer 
 of homiietic material. You cannot econo- 
 mize. You must be lavish, even prodigal. 
 Your hearers must be delivered from the 
 idea either that you are walking in slip- 
 pery places, or that you are skirting the 
 borderland of your mental preserves. They 
 must be impressed with the idea that there 
 is behind your utterance a great reserve, 
 and respect for your reserve is cultivated 
 by your generous packing of every sermon 
 with virile but versatile thought and apt 
 illustration. The aspirant for the extempo- 
 raneous ability must be, beyond others, a 
 wide observer, an omnivorous reader, and a 
 
THE REAL SERMON 77 
 
 constant thinker, otherwise he will preach 
 in a small circle, illustrate every sin by 
 drunkenness, every virtue by charity, and 
 begin his home-made illustrations with 
 "When I was in Europe," or words to 
 that effect. Will Carleton's "Traveled Par- 
 son" illustrates the good small preacher: 
 
 "And the way he went for Europe! oh, the way 
 
 he scampered through it! 
 Not a mountain but he clim' it — not a city but he 
 
 knew it; 
 There wasn't any subject to explain, in all crea- 
 tion, 
 But he could go to Europe and bring back an 
 
 illustration! 
 So we crowded out to hear him, quite instructed 
 
 and delighted; 
 'T was a picture show, a lecture, and a sermon — 
 
 all united; 
 And my wife would rub her glasses, and serenely 
 
 pet her Test'ment, 
 And whisper, 'That 'ere ticket was a splendid 
 
 good investment.' 
 
 Now after six months' travel, we was most of us 
 
 all ready 
 To settle down a little, so's to live more staid 
 
 and steady; 
 To develop home resources, with no foreign cares 
 
 to fret us, 
 
78 BEAL PREACHING 
 
 Using home-made faith more frequent; but our 
 
 parson wouldn't let us! 
 To view the same old scenery, time and time 
 
 again he 'd call us — 
 Over rivers, plains, and mountains he would any 
 
 minute haul us; 
 He slighted our soul sorrows, and our spirits' 
 
 aches and ailings, 
 To get the cargo ready for his regular Sunday 
 
 sailings! 
 Why, he'd take us off a-touring, in all spiritual 
 
 weather, 
 Till we at last got homesick and seasick all 
 
 together! 
 And 'I wish to all that's peaceful,' said one 
 
 free-expressioned brother, 
 'That the Lord had made one cont'nent, an' 
 
 then never made another!' 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, he 'd take us into old, famil- 
 iar places, 
 
 And pull along quite nat'ral, in the good old 
 Gospel traces; 
 
 But soon my wife would shudder, just as if a 
 chill had got her, 
 
 Whispering, 'Oh, my goodness gracious! he's 
 a-takin' to the water!'" 
 
 Further quotation is unnecessary, but the 
 traveled parson is a warning to every stu- 
 dent to have more than one ability. 
 
THE REAL SERMON 79 
 
 Goethe's pet compliment was that he was 
 a man of panoramic ability. 
 
 The three great characteristics of a 
 spoken sermon are point, picture, and 
 passion. One is to have some distinct 
 thing to say ; one is to picture his thought ; 
 one is to glow in saying it. The analysis 
 must be clean, the points in as few words 
 as possible. The illustration must be apt. 
 Some decry illustration as taking the place 
 of thought. Illustration is thought. One 
 good illustration will provoke more thought 
 than a dozen finely-spun and intricately- 
 woven sentences. The story-teller in the 
 pulpit is a pigmy, but the illustrator is a 
 giant. Whitefield is a fine example. He 
 could describe a storm and a shipwrecked 
 crew with such vivid reality that when in the 
 critical moment he exclaimed, " What next?" 
 an auditor could not help exclaiming, " For 
 God's sake, man the life-boat ! " 
 
 Benjamin Franklin knew Whitefield well, 
 and tells a story of going to hear him preach 
 for his orphanage in Georgia, with which 
 Mr. Franklin had no sympathy. " I silently 
 resolved," says Franklin, "that he should 
 get nothing from me. I had in my 
 
80 BEAL PEE ACHING 
 
 pocket a handful of copper money, three 
 or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in 
 gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, 
 and concluded to give the coppers. Another 
 stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of 
 that, and determined me to give the silver; 
 and he finished so admirablv, that I 
 emptied my pocket wholly into the collect- 
 or's dish, gold and all." Descriptive preach- 
 ing which can empty pockets like that is 
 despised by any minister at his peril. 
 
 The spoken sermon presents the oppor- 
 tunity of expressing passion. This is the 
 great lack in the modern pulpit. A whole- 
 some respect for proprieties has become 
 impudently monarchical, and relegated 
 passion to the Methodists and the Salva- 
 tion Army. The result is, the Methodists 
 are eagerly sought for Congregational pulpits, 
 and the Salvation Army has, as it should, 
 a cordial welcome at our Congregational 
 hearthstones. Do not, I beg of you, young 
 men, do not be afraid to wear your heart 
 on your sleeve. A tear is not unmanly — 
 if it is a manly tear. If every Congrega- 
 tional minister were unable to preach next 
 Sunday without weeping, there would be 
 
THE BEAL SEBMON 81 
 
 a transformation in the congregations which 
 would be astonishing. Throw your whole 
 self into your sermon. Preach, not in the 
 old phrase as a " dying man to dying men," 
 but, as a " living man to living men." Get 
 beneath the sense of the supreme splendor 
 of your privilege. Bushnell said, — " No other 
 calling would permit me sufficiently to be." 
 
 There are multitudes of sermons like that 
 which Elspeth Macfadyen heard "Maister 
 Popinjay" preach, — Mr. Popinjay, "as neat 
 an' fikey a little mannie as ever a' saw 
 in a black goon. His bit sermon wes six 
 poems — five a' hed heard afore— four anec- 
 dotes — three aboot himsel' and ain aboot a 
 lord — twa burnies, ae floo'r gairden, and a 
 snowstorm, wi' the text thirteen times, 
 and 'beloved' twal." 
 
 Ah, this is a different thing from the 
 impassioned utterance which fell from the 
 lips of the young preacher of Drumtochty 
 when he delivered his first sermon — his 
 mother's sermon. His mother, in the lin- 
 gering moments before entrance into the city 
 which hath no need of the sun, had said 
 to her boy, "If God calls ye to the min- 
 istry, ye 'ill no refuse, an' the first day ye 
 
82 REAL PREACHING 
 
 preach in yir ain kirk, speak a gude word for 
 Jesus Christ, an', John, I'll hear ye that 
 day, though ye 'ill no see me, and I '11 be 
 satisfied." 
 
 Years passed, education was finished, 
 the call accepted, and the preparation 
 for the first sermon had been com- 
 pleted. "He had finished its last page 
 with honest pride that afternoon, and had 
 declaimed it, facing the southern window, 
 with a success that amazed himself. His 
 hope was that he might be kept humble, 
 and not called to Edinburgh for at least 
 two years; and now he lifted the sheets 
 with fear. The brilliant opening, with its 
 historical parallel, this review of modern 
 thought reinforced by telling quotations, 
 that trenchant criticism of old-fashioned 
 views, would not deliver." 
 
 His audience had vanished, and in its 
 place was one sweet face, and "then in 
 the stillness of the room he heard a voice, 
 'Speak a gude word for Jesus Christ.' 
 Next minute he was kneeling on the hearth, 
 and pressing the magnum opus, that was to 
 shake Drumtochty, into the heart of the 
 red fire, and he saw, half smiling and half 
 
THE REAL SERMON 83 
 
 weeping, the impressive words, 'Semitic 
 environment' shrivel up and disappear. As 
 the last black flake fluttered out of sight, 
 the face looked at him again, but this time 
 the sweet, brown eyes were full of 
 peace." 
 
 Next day John went to his pulpit re- 
 splendent in gown and band, without his 
 notes to be sure, but with his heart. 
 His " gude word for Jesus " found the 
 hearts of his hearers. Donald Menzies 
 said, " There was a man sent from God, 
 whose name was John." 
 
 Genuine, heartfelt, hot-souled, " gude 
 words for Jesus Christ" are not only the 
 great urgency, but the rewarding satisfac- 
 tions of our modern pulpit. Great souls 
 are won, not by argument, but by sin- 
 cerity. 
 
 Eecall the noble fancy through which a 
 great English poet has taught this truth. 
 It is Christmas Eve, and out from a little 
 nonconformist chapel pompously strides a 
 man whose sensibilities have been outraged 
 by the plebeian crowd, the coarse worship, 
 the illiterate discourse. Congratulating him- 
 self that he is not as other men are, and 
 
84 REAL PREACHING 
 
 that Nature is his church, he suddenly 
 beholds a vision of Christ, but from him 
 the Master's face is turned, because he has 
 despised Christ's friends. Eagerly does he 
 pray for pardon, when, enfolded in the 
 garments of the Lord, he is transported to 
 St. Peter's at Rome, where the majestic 
 service is being conducted in presence of a 
 great multitude. He sees the formalism, 
 the ritual, the error, but underneath it all 
 he cannot be blind to the love which here 
 finds an imperfect expression. Again he is 
 transported to the lecture-room of a Ger- 
 man professor where the " Christ myth " is 
 being analyzed, and where the " pearl of 
 great price " is being pulverized to dust 
 and ashes, but where as a last word the 
 professor bids his students " venerate the 
 myth," and here again he cannot fail to 
 see a glimmer of love. Back now to the 
 chapel, and all that seemed so crude, so 
 revolting, is clothed in the radiant gar- 
 ments of a new light. The old defects 
 exist — a new spirit transforms them. 
 
 " First, the preacher speaks through his nose: 
 Second, his gestures are too emphatic: 
 
THE REAL SERMON 85 
 
 Thirdly, to waive what 's pedagogic, 
 The subject matter itself lacks logic. 
 Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. 
 
 " Great news! the sermon proves no reading 
 Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me 
 Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy! 
 And now that I know the very worst of him, 
 What was it I thought to obtain at first of 
 him? 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 "It were to be wished the flaws were fewer 
 In the earthen vessel, holding treasure 
 Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; 
 But the main thing is, does it hold good 
 
 measure? 
 Heaven soon sets right all other matters!" 
 
 The result of it all is, that in spite of 
 the plain house, peasant congregation, illogic- 
 al preaching, since love is here, our pomp- 
 ous friend, humbled and enlightened by 
 Christ's evidence of love, himself joins the 
 humble company and becomes an admiring 
 parishioner of the illiterate, but intense and 
 genuine, dominie. 
 
 "I put up pencil and join chorus 
 
 To Hepsibah tune, without further apology, 
 
86 REAL PREACHING 
 
 The last five verses of the third section 
 Of the seventeenth hymn of WhitefielcTs Col- 
 lection, 
 To conclude with the doxology." 
 
 The real sermon thus is truth kindled by 
 the hot fires of an earnest purpose and a 
 sincere heart. That man will preach who 
 will deliver himself in God's stead ; others 
 will but parley. 
 
 Young gentlemen, with all my soul I 
 congratulate you that you are entering the 
 ministry to-day. It is a wonderful time to 
 be alive. Bring the abandon, the enthusi- 
 asm, the heart of your young lives with 
 you. Cultivate passion, restrained, con- 
 trolled, but burning, flaming passion. It 
 will give you your approach to men; it 
 will undergird your preaching, for preach- 
 ing is not alone making men think; it is 
 making them feel in proportion as they 
 think. 
 
 Archbishop Sutton is said to have given 
 Bishop Heber, on his consecration to the 
 See of Calcutta, this charge : " Place before 
 your eyes two precepts, and two only. One 
 is, Preach the Gospel; the other is, Put 
 down enthusiasm ! " Herein, like the call of 
 
THE REAL SERMON 87 
 
 Mohammed's prophet to prayer, is a great 
 truth yoked to a great lie. Let us have the 
 whole truth! Place before your eyes two 
 purposes: Preach the Gospel; punctuate your 
 preaching with enthusiasm. 
 
Ill 
 THE REAL AUDIENCE 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 
 
 Some years ago, when the perennial 
 question of the evening worship was agi- 
 tating the minds of many ministers who 
 were discouraged by the meager attendance 
 upon the second service, one of our most 
 scholarly, eloquent, and spiritual leaders, 
 whose church, crowded in the morning to 
 the doors, had in the chapel in the even- 
 ing but here and there a traveler, wrote 
 an article to the effect that the real ques- 
 tion about any service is not, What is 
 there ? but, Who is there ? 
 
 A young brother, who was reveling at 
 the time in a full congregation at the sec- 
 ond service, but who has had his expe- 
 rience since in ministering to vacant pews 
 at eventide, in his conceit regarded the 
 above statement as an apology for ill suc- 
 cess, as a clever hiding place from the 
 
 91 
 
92 REAL PREACHING 
 
 storm. But gradually the suggestive truth 
 has risen upon him, and he understands 
 that the what of an assembly is insignifi- 
 cant when compared with the who of it. 
 
 Your congregation consists of what is 
 there, the mere numerical total ; your audi- 
 ence of who is there, the roster of spiritual 
 or soul presence. 
 
 We are so infatuated with modern book- 
 keeping that the usher's tally will elevate or 
 depress our spirits as it grows or shrinks. 
 The size of the congregation lords it over 
 the spirit of the audience. 
 
 Some time, when the present ebbing spir- 
 itual tide flows again, the real estimate of 
 assemblies will obtain even among church 
 officers. The tally will be ordered to the 
 rear; the spirit will again take the field. 
 You see your congregation; your audience 
 sees you. You dismiss your congregation, 
 but your audience cannot be divorced from 
 you. 
 
 When "heart leaps forth to wed with 
 heart ere thought can wed itself with 
 speech;" when spirits fellowship, time stops 
 the clock and eternity begins. The con- 
 gregation thus is the transient; the audi- 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 93 
 
 ence, the everlasting. You change your 
 parish; your congregation becomes the con- 
 cern of your successor, but your audience 
 is still your own. Neither shall any man 
 pluck it out of your hands. The actor is 
 seeking a congregation ; without it, he quits 
 the stage. The minister yearns for an 
 audience ; once let him secure it, and he 
 has fulfilled his ministry. The woman of 
 Samaria was, as a congregation, small, but 
 as an audience, of more value than all 
 the scribes and Pharisees Christ ever ad- 
 dressed. 
 
 Francis Xavier, born of lordly and noble 
 but impoverished parents, early developed 
 special literary ability, so that his father, 
 in the amplitude of a generous heart, 
 "strained his slender resources" to send 
 the promising son to the University of 
 Paris. Nor were the fond parent's expec- 
 tations quenched, for the brilliant son in 
 time became a lecturer upon the Aristote- 
 lian philosophy, and gathered about him 
 a large company of rich and noble stu- 
 dents, admiring his genius and hanging 
 upon his words. One day he spied among 
 the company of the great and gay, a stern- 
 
94 REAL PREACHING 
 
 visaged, sordidly-clad individual, whose con- 
 tinued presence furnished the occasion of 
 many a witty sally and contemptuous sar- 
 casm. But Ignatius Loyola could not 
 thus be driven from Xavier's lecture-room. 
 The students were Xavier's congregation ; 
 Loyola alone was his aadience. Loyola 
 saw Xavier's soul. Beneath all the aca- 
 demic rubbish it glistened like a diamond. 
 Xavier's words gripped Loyola's spirit with 
 hooks of steel. The spiritual affinity could 
 not be dissolved by Xavier's impatient, 
 impudent and insulting manner and address. 
 Loyola followed him everywhere, — to his 
 lectures, to his lodging, — and always con- 
 cluded every interview with the pointed 
 query : " What shall it profit a man, if he 
 shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
 own soul ? " The congregation after a 
 while deserted Xavier; the audience re- 
 mained. When Xavier, in despair, aban- 
 doned himself and followed evil courses, 
 Loyola was close to him, meeting his ne- 
 cessities with the patience of a great con- 
 fidence, and always accompanying his min- 
 istry with his searching question. 
 
 At last the tables turn. The lecturer 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 95 
 
 becomes audience ; the audience becomes 
 lecturer. Xavier becomes a disciple of 
 Loyola, and by his sacrificial fidelity, one 
 of the most immortal of the missionaries 
 of the cross. What a distance, by spiritual 
 measure, from the frozen sarcasm of the 
 academic lecture-room, to the impassioned 
 utterance of the dying saint, raising himself 
 on his crucifix from the cold sands by the 
 waters of a foreign sea, and exclaiming, 
 his face " irradiated as with the first beams 
 of approaching glory," — "In te, Domine, 
 speravi — non confundar in oeternum." 
 
 The illustration incidentally reveals the 
 very inspiring truth of the reciprocal in- 
 fluence of the audience upon the speaker, 
 but its primary mission is to emphasize our 
 fundamental contention that the important 
 question concerning any assemblage is not 
 what, but tvho, is there. The congregation 
 hears the speech ; the audience listens to 
 the spirit. The congregation will forget 
 your words — 
 
 " They fly forgotten, as a dream 
 Dies at the opening day. 1 ' 
 
 The audience will remember your meaning, 
 
96 BEAL P BE ACHING 
 
 and will not only remember but will re- 
 incarnate it in themselves. 
 
 The great desideratum of a preacher is 
 not a congregation, but an audience. A 
 growing audience is not incompatible with 
 a diminishing congregation. Nor is a dimin- 
 ishing congregation, thank God, an inevita- 
 ble attendant of a growing audience ! 
 
 It takes, then, a real man to discover 
 an audience and develop a congregation, 
 for, as Mrs. Browning so pithily re- 
 marks, — 
 
 "It takes a soul 
 To move a body; it takes a high-souled man 
 To move the masses, — even to a cleaner stye; 
 It takes the ideal to blow a hair's breadth off 
 The dust of the actual." 
 
 This audience of which I have been 
 speaking, which is an open soul into which 
 you pour spiritual nectar which has been 
 distilled in your own, is not always in 
 evidence. You do not recognize it at the 
 time it listens to you. You will never 
 appreciate its full importance, and will only 
 catch glimpses of its presence now and 
 then, when some disturbance of sorrow or 
 sickness in others' lives, or some change 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 97 
 
 in your own plan or parish calls it in 
 grateful acknowledgment from its hiding. 
 
 Dr. Dale, in a lecture about the congre- 
 gation helping the minister, relates the 
 following : 
 
 There are times when the most buoyant sink 
 into despondency, when a gray, chilly mist 
 creeps over the soul of those who have the 
 largest happiness in the service of God, and 
 when they feel as if all their strength was 
 gone. Not very long ago, if I may venture 
 once more to speak about myself, one of these 
 evil moods was upon me; but as I was pass- 
 ing along one of the streets of Birmingham, a 
 poor but decently-dressed woman, laden with 
 parcels, stopped me, and said, "God bless you, 
 Dr. Dale!" Her face was unknown to me. I 
 said, "Thank you, but what is your name?" 
 "Never mind my name," she answered, "but 
 if you could only know how you have made 
 me feel hundreds of times, and what a happy 
 home you h'ave given me! God bless you!" 
 The mist broke; the sunlight came. I breathed 
 the free air of the mountains of God. 
 
 A minister, having changed his parish, 
 was passing through the city in which his 
 former church was located, when a hack- 
 man stopped and, touching his hat, said, 
 
98 REAL PREACHING 
 
 " Glad to see you back, Doctor. I used 
 often to hear you preach in your church, 
 and it 's mighty sorry a lot of us are to 
 have you gone ! " 
 
 These doctors of divinity were greatly 
 cheered by such evidences of an audience 
 of the existence of which they had been in 
 entire ignorance. The unknown quantity 
 is no inconsiderable factor in a minister's 
 audience, and he can generate a world of 
 inspiration and of comfort for his despond- 
 ing soul if he will but challenge it with 
 its certain but unnamed listeners, whom 
 his eye hath not seen. 
 
 Besides these precious audiences which 
 are not in evidence, but which are never- 
 theless real and actual, there are the occa- 
 sional audiences, which demand a passing 
 word. 
 
 The occasional audience is the minister's 
 opportunity of sending his spirit, in an 
 unusual manner, upon its usual quest. He 
 still has his chance to preach, in making an 
 after-dinner speech, delivering an oration, or 
 expressing the public conscience on some 
 common platform. Not infrequently, the 
 passion of his spirit kindles other life, 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 99 
 
 when his utterance is at a long remove 
 from his pulpit. The faculty of spiritual 
 adjustment to an unusual situation is the 
 secret of many a minister's power over 
 men. 
 
 The Jesuits in North America, whose start- 
 ling and brilliant spiritual accomplishments 
 Parkman has chronicled in faultless diction, 
 possessed in an unusual degree this adjust- 
 ing faculty, and knew the value of the 
 occasional. A paper of instructions prepared 
 at Paris for their guidance among the Hu- 
 rons, is replete with sagacious suggestion. 
 "You should love the Indians like brothers, 
 with whom you are to spend the rest of 
 your life. Never make them wait for your 
 embarking. Take a flint and steel to light 
 their pipes and kindle their fire at night, 
 for these little services win their hearts. 
 Do not make yourself troublesome to a single 
 Indian. Bear their faults in silence, and 
 appear always cheerful. Be not ceremonious 
 with the Indians; take at once what they 
 offer you ; ceremony offends them. Be very 
 careful when in the canoe that the brim of 
 your hat does not annoy them. Perhaps it 
 would be better to wear your nightcap. 
 
 LtfC, 
 
100 REAL PREACHING 
 
 There is no such thing as impropriety 
 among Indians. Remember that it is Christ 
 and His cross that yon are seeking ; and if 
 you aim at anything else, you will get 
 nothing but affliction for body and mind." 
 
 This estimate of the occasional at its real 
 value, this strenuous sacrificial effort to 
 appropriate it, is well worthy the spiritual 
 meditation of those of us who are holding 
 up the banner of the cross on the territory 
 where these missionaries raised it. 
 
 Beecher, pleading the American cause 
 before English audiences, tinctured, to say 
 the least, with Confederate sympathies, is, 
 though far from his pulpit, yet preaching 
 mightily. Hugh Price Hughes, passionately 
 demanding the abolition of unsanitary dwell- 
 ings, though grieving exceedingly a dull 
 saint who mourned that he lost so fair an 
 opportunity to " preach the gospel," is yet 
 a minister of Christ. Perhaps F. W. Rob- 
 ertson is, of all preachers of our time, the 
 man who esteemed the occasional audience. 
 He was more than once challenged for his 
 unclerical tendencies, but his constant reply 
 was a new approach to the workingmen 
 from their own side. Once a lady reminded 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 101 
 
 him of his heresies, and of their present and 
 future consequences. " I do n't care," was 
 his calm reply. " Do you know, sir," said 
 she, "what don't care came to?" "Yes, 
 madam," was the grave reply, " He was cru- 
 cified on Calvary." Still he went on speak- 
 ing for, planning with, the workingmen, de- 
 fending their rights, boldly challenging their 
 false positions, putting his rich spirit at 
 their service, and dying in their love. 
 
 A young minister may well learn by heart 
 the closing words of his biography : " There 
 were united around his tomb, by a com- 
 mon sorrow and common love, Jews, Uni- 
 tarians, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and 
 Churchmen ; the workingmen, the tradesmen, 
 and the rank and wealth of Brighton ; for 
 once all classes and ail sects merged their 
 differences in one deep feeling. They have 
 raised above him a simple and massive mon- 
 ument. On two of its sides there are bronze 
 medallions, — one given hy his congregation, 
 the other by the workingmen of Brighton. 
 They record in touching words the gratitude 
 of thousands. The thoughtful affection of 
 the workingmen has entrusted to a commit- 
 tee of four the task of keeping, even in win- 
 
102 REAL PREACHING 
 
 ter, flowers blooming on his grave. They 
 speak to many who make their pilgrimage to 
 the spot, of the fair immortality which is 
 given to the faithful soldier of Jesus Christ." 
 
 The demands of public address are mightily 
 increasing. The minister is wanted upon 
 social, literary, patriotic occasions, to voice 
 the sentiment or the duty of the hour. 
 He may not with propriety make in every 
 address a specific plea for immediate repent- 
 ance. It is not proper on every occasion to 
 conduct a revival service. But he can make 
 his spirit disclose his heart without in the 
 least violating the proprieties of the occasion. 
 You have no business in, and no time for, 
 any gathering in which your real spirit 
 must wear a mask, but you can speak with 
 other tongues as the spirit gives you utter- 
 ance. 
 
 The Algonquin convert gave the Jesuit 
 Joques the suggestive advice, "Say nothing 
 about the faith at first, for there is nothing 
 so repulsive in the beginning as our doctrine, 
 which seems to destroy everything that men 
 hold dear; and, as your long cassock 
 preaches as well as your lips, you had bet- 
 ter put on a short coat." He did ; but he 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 103 
 
 was preaching all the time. The value of 
 an occasional audience is the opportunity it 
 furnishes of expressing your spirit, not in a 
 "long cassock," but in "a short coat." 
 
 But let us now turn from the precious 
 audience, unseen, and the occasional audi- 
 ence, to the usual audience, the congrega- 
 tion, the flock. 
 
 Phillips Brooks makes the keen remark, 
 "There is something remarkable in the way 
 in which a minister talks about c my con- 
 gregation.' They evidently come to seem to 
 him different from the rest of human kind. 
 There is the rest of our race, in Europe, 
 Asia, Africa, and America, and the islands 
 of the sea, and then there is c my congre- 
 gation ! ' " 
 
 " My -congregation ! " How smoothly and 
 with what complacent satisfaction the words 
 roll from the new-fledged minister's grateful 
 lips ! His parish he verily believes to be a 
 quarter section of Paradise; his people, of 
 the essential spirit of the angels about the 
 great white throne. When the disillusion 
 comes, and the parish unmasks, what he 
 thought was to be Paradise turns out to be 
 at least a suggestion of purgatory, and some 
 
104 REAL PREACHING 
 
 of his angels are found to be under con- 
 tract to the arch ftend himself! 
 
 Paul Leicester Ford wrote some years ago a 
 book entitled " The True George Washing- 
 ton." The idealized, fictitious, impossible 
 Washington had so possessed the public 
 mind that it was necessary in order to save 
 this great character from passing into legend 
 that his actual life should be recalled. The 
 ideal sometimes paints and powders the real 
 till it is unrecognizable, and when the paint 
 is gone and the powder can no longer cover 
 the deception, there is a shock which is 
 indeed terrible. 
 
 Many a minister has parted the cable of 
 his hope and trust, when by the swinging 
 tides of actual experience his boat has 
 shifted position and given him a vision of 
 the principalities and powers and spiritual 
 wickedness in high places, ensconced in that 
 parish, which to his imagination was a sam- 
 ple of the new Jerusalem. 
 
 Your congregation, then, understand it at 
 the outset, is composed of men of like 
 passions as your own. They are real flesh 
 and blood ; they can bite and snarl, as 
 well as bless and sympathize ; they are 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 105 
 
 capable of meanest tricks, as of most gen- 
 erous consideration; they can be bigoted 
 as well as broad ; they can surprise you by 
 their lack of, as by their loyalty to, Chris- 
 tian principle. It is yours to expect reve- 
 lations ; you will surely have them. It is 
 yours to cling in any event to your faith. 
 
 " Trust God. See all, nor be afraid." 
 
 Iii your congregation will be found the 
 sin-smitten soul. Even " the devil goes to 
 church." Daniel Defoe sung, — 
 
 " Wherever God erects a house of prayer 
 The devil always builds a chapel there, 
 And 't will be found upon examination 
 The latter has the largest congregation." 
 
 That is a specimen of the miserable dual- 
 ism which has always tricked men's thoughts. 
 The devil's chapel, so far as he has any, 
 is the church; and when he " worships," 
 he takes his seat in the house of God. 
 When the devil quits going to church, the 
 millennium will have dawned, and with the 
 dawning the minister's distinctive occupa- 
 tion will have vanished. It is your busi- 
 ness to flash the resplendent light of your 
 
106 REAL PREACHING 
 
 faith into the revolting darkness of his folly; 
 to pierce with the gleaming spear of your 
 holy aspiration the pale form of his grovel- 
 ing spirit. His presence is your opportunity. 
 Whether he sits fashionably attired in empty 
 pride and lordly selfishness in the body pew, 
 or, clad in the tawdry garments of Pharisaic 
 self-righteousness, officiates as deacon and 
 sits on the side aisle; whether he comes 
 driving with loose rein the mettlesome pas- 
 sions of youth, or curbing with restraining 
 calculation the shriveling generosities and the 
 small exactions of on-creeping age ; whether 
 subtly or openly he reveals himself, he has 
 a right in your church, and to a taste of 
 the living water you freely furnish. 
 
 There is a disposition to restrict the privi- 
 leges of God's house to a certain class of 
 the iniquitous and to deny those privileges 
 to a certain other class. As an example 
 of denial, take the liquor seller. A tem- 
 perance sentiment with more strength than 
 spirituality would hound him out of God's 
 house and warn a young minister against 
 any contact with so open a violator of 
 God's law. Some ministers, if they see such 
 a man in the congregation, immediately 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 107 
 
 begin a fusilade of personal pyrotechnics, 
 which light his path from the church, to 
 be sure, but do not illumine his sin, or in 
 any way reveal to him its awful character 
 in God's sight. Now, any minister is a 
 coward who waters his truth because some- 
 body in the congregation cannot bear it full 
 strength. Some sermons are like the stock 
 of the Nicaragua Canal, of which it has 
 been said that if the water could be ex- 
 tracted from it there would be enough to 
 float the navies of the world. Now while 
 truth is to be bravely and completely spoken, 
 at the same time there is a proportion of 
 truth, a discretion of truth, a stating of 
 truth, as well as a broadside of truth. I wish 
 every liquor dealer went to church twice on 
 Sunday. I detest, loathe, and abhor his 
 business, but the only chance of winning him 
 from it is to get him beneath the power of 
 the truth, of which you and I are supposed 
 to be flaming exponents. Christ came to 
 call sinners to repentance. When the sinner 
 comes to your church, remember that you 
 are Christ's representative, and when you are 
 tempted vigorously to use the flail, remember 
 that your Master, always brave and unflinch- 
 
108 REAL PREACHING 
 
 ing, could yet by the spirit that was in him 
 hold his influence, even while dining with 
 publicans and sinners. 
 
 The leaders of our u best society" go to 
 church. They sit in the broad aisle. They 
 sometimes greatly desire to regulate, if not 
 to control, the utterances of the preacher. 
 Too often, by their long pocketbooks, they 
 have made themselves apparently indis- 
 pensable to the financial prosperity of the 
 church, and a weak spirit of sycophancy, 
 on the part of the church renders to these 
 Caesars the things that are God's. The 
 minister is expected to observe the pro- 
 prieties, as do their other dependents, or he 
 may expect their small revenge of a thrust 
 at his living by giving up their pew. 
 
 If their son is a prodigal, the minister 
 must carefully avoid reference to fast young 
 men. If their real estate is leased for un- 
 righteous purposes, a sermon upon land- 
 lords is distinctly out of order. If their 
 income is not altogether clean and whole- 
 some, it will be well for the preacher to 
 "guard his utterances" concerning false bal- 
 ances and kindred themes. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bulson, whom Dr. Parker 
 
THE BEAL AUDIENCE 109 
 
 found in "Might Have Been," whose in- 
 come was large, piety small, and spirit 
 exacting ; whose pew was No. 13 ; who 
 urged the minister to preach practical and 
 pointed sermons, assuring him of their loyal 
 support, have sailed to America, and are 
 found in every congregation, — that is, until 
 the minister preaches the sermon, and then 
 cometh the end. It came with the 
 English parson. He cleared his conscience 
 by preaching the sermon, and " before the 
 following Sunday pew No. 13 was cleared 
 of cushions and hassocks." 
 
 Young Timothy is greatly perplexed by 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bulson of pew No. 13. To 
 retain the courage of his convictions in 
 their august presence ; to remember that 
 he is not the minister of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Bulson, but of Jesus Christ; to carry him- 
 self in loyalty to his commission, and at 
 the same time in generous sympathy with, 
 and courteous independence of, his congre- 
 gation ; to be great enough to fail appar- 
 ently, while succeeding really, this is the 
 emergency which sends a minister to his 
 knees in importunate prayer that he may 
 at once walk softly and have the stride 
 
110 REAL PREACHING 
 
 of a Colossus; may be tactful, but abid- 
 ingly true; always adorning, never adul- 
 terating, his profession. Mr. and Mrs, 
 Bui son, however, represent nobody but 
 themselves. They are not in a position, 
 with all their influence, to overthrow the 
 genuine gospel. Remember that, and act 
 accordingly. 
 
 The inquirer goes to church. He comes 
 from the sway of other influences from 
 those to which you have been accustomed. 
 He is wakened to earnest questioning by 
 your words. He wants to be your audi- 
 ence. He lays his misgivings, his doubts, 
 before you. Let us suppose him very 
 heretical doctrinally. Science has over- 
 turned his faith. You shudder as he re- 
 veals the long list of his disbeliefs. He is 
 a great opportunity to you. If you meet 
 him as a real man should, you may guide 
 him safely through his Sahara. If you are 
 unmanly, autocratic, small, you may spoil 
 a rare spirit. The soul which is wide- 
 awake enough to ask questions and to 
 think for itself, and protestant enough to 
 decline to take its great truths upon au- 
 thority alone, is a soul on which no time 
 
THE BEAL AUDIENCE 111 
 
 spent in suggestion or sympathy is wasted. 
 Doubt need not be noxious. Some plants 
 bloom only in the dark; but you will sit 
 till the small hours to feast your eyes on 
 the radiant beauty of the night-blooming 
 cereus. 
 
 "You say, but with no touch of scorn, 
 
 Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes 
 Are tender over drowning flies, 
 You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. 
 
 "I know not: one indeed I knew 
 
 In many a subtile question versed, 
 Who touched a jarring lyre at first, 
 But ever strove to make it true: 
 
 "Perplexed in faith, but pure in deeds, 
 At last he beat his music out. 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds. 
 
 "He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
 He would not make his judgment blind, 
 He faced the spectres of the mind 
 And laid them: thus he came at length 
 
 "To find a stronger faith his own; 
 
 And Power was with him in the night 
 Which makes the darkness and the light, 
 And dwells not in the light alone, 
 
112 REAL PREACHING 
 
 "But in the darkness and the cloud, 
 As over Sinai's peaks of old, 
 While Israel made their gods of gold, 
 Although the trumpet blew so loud." 
 
 When a minister once confessed his doubts 
 to Kingsley, the reply of that transparent 
 spirit was this : "All I can say is, this 
 may be the most fruitful and precious of 
 your life experiences ! " That was no word 
 of compliment. It was desperate appeal. 
 It was a strong hand reached out to a 
 soul in the swirling currents of melancholy 
 despair. It saved that soul. 
 
 God sometimes subtracts a man's pre- 
 tended beliefs in order to restore real ones 
 to him. Many a soul is sentenced to 
 work out its own salvation. It does not 
 believe ; it only believes that it believes ; 
 and that that one belief may pass through 
 its spirit and vitalize its real life, a benign 
 Providence permits the cyclone of denial 
 to cut its jagged trail through cherished 
 formulas and boasted faiths. But after the 
 whirlwind, the still, small voice! This was 
 Robertson's experience, and the numbers are 
 legion who have found the jewel of their 
 faith in the debris of their beliefs. The 
 
THE BEAL AUDIENCE 113 
 
 doubter who still hovers about the church 
 and will open his perplexities to a minister's 
 appreciative, sympathetic, but at the same 
 time trenchant, treatment, is, indeed, a choice 
 parishioner because of the opportunity he pre- 
 sents. He is to be met not as an alien, a 
 wanton, a heretic ; but as a lost child really 
 seeking his Father. He is to be made to 
 know that his Father is really seeking him. 
 He will often be found to be the possessor 
 of a true spiritual rushlight in the midst of 
 his intellectual darkness, and will be an ex- 
 ample in person of that paradox in poetry — 
 
 " You ask for faith: I give you doubt 
 To show that faith exists." 
 
 The ivorshiper goes to church. The haughty 
 Emperor of antiquity, whose conceit framed 
 the presumptuous edict that every retainer 
 should address his royal highness as "Your 
 Eternity," was promulgating, after all, a uni- 
 versal truth in the heart of a colossal error. 
 He meant the appellation for his sovereignty, 
 which was soon crushed to powder in the 
 icy hand of that relentless and ever conquer- 
 ing monarch — death. Had he meant it for 
 his soul, even death would have kissed its 
 
114 REAL PREACHING 
 
 scepter in submission. The title belongs to 
 the emperor, to you, to every man — "Your 
 Eternity." The grandest thing you know 
 about yourself is this, that the red cor- 
 puscles of your spiritual blood are quick 
 with the life of the everlasting. 
 
 "It must be so! Plato, thou reasonest well! — 
 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond 
 desire, 
 
 This longing after immortality ? 
 
 Or whence this secret dread, and inward hor- 
 ror 
 
 Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul 
 
 Back on herself and startles at destruction ? 
 
 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us, 
 
 'T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter 
 
 And intimates eternity to man. 
 
 Eternity ! Thou pleasing, dreadful thought ! " 
 
 One of the thrilling chapters in ecclesi- 
 astical literature is that in which Tertul- 
 lian summons the soul into court, places it 
 upon the witness stand, and cross-examines 
 it concerning itself. "Take thy stand in 
 the midst, O soul, and say whether thou 
 art a divine and eternal substance, or the 
 very opposite of divine, a mortal thing; 
 whether thou art received from heaven or 
 
THE BEAL AUDIENCE 115 
 
 sprung from earth. Stand forth, I say, and 
 give thy witness." He summons not the 
 prejudiced soul, "trained in libraries, fed 
 in attic academies and porticoes," but the 
 rude, unkempt, savage soul, and concludes : 
 " These testimonies of the soul are as true 
 as they are simple ; as simple as they are 
 common ; as common as they are universal ; 
 as universal as they are natural; as 
 natural as they are divine." We have 
 not outgrown Tertullian's plea ; still it is 
 our joy to hold that 
 
 in all ages 
 Eyery human heart is human, 
 That in even savage bosoms 
 There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
 For the good they comprehend not, 
 That the feeble hands and helpless, 
 Groping blindly in the darkness, 
 Touch God's right hand in that darkness 
 And are lifted up and strengthened." 
 
 This great truth of eternity is the meet- 
 ing house of humanity. It is here alone 
 that it has all things in common. Here 
 the king lays aside his purple, and forgets 
 his scepter. Here the peasant disregards his 
 
116 REAL PEE ACHING 
 
 blue jeans, and is careless of his kit of 
 tools. Here the king is no lord, the peas- 
 ant no laborer; both are souls, heirs of 
 immortality, kinsmen of God. 
 
 You cannot repress an eternal instinct; 
 it will find some way to express itself. 
 The king and the peasant cannot stay at 
 home, snug and quiet, in castle or cot- 
 tage, alike walled about with the bulwarks 
 of eternity. They are bound by the very 
 necessities of their nature to go forth to 
 seek, to find, to fellowship with the eter- 
 nity with which they know themselves to 
 be vitally and everlastingly related. This 
 is why every man worships. Worship is 
 the soul going out to acknowledge, address, 
 and adore. It is the eternal in a soul 
 voicing itself. 
 
 The minister is charged with the con- 
 duct of public worship. It is his mission 
 not only to lead the services, but to pro- 
 vide such helpful accessories that the soul 
 may find itself in congenial environment 
 and sympathetic atmosphere as it pays its 
 vows in the presence of all the people. 
 
 The church building is a not insignifi- 
 cant factor in worship, and few more inter- 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 117 
 
 esting or instructive chapters could be 
 written upon this theme than that which 
 should portray the reflection of the growth 
 of the spirit of worship as seen in the 
 development of church architecture. 
 
 Our own denomination furnishes in this 
 respect a conspicuous illustration. In our 
 historic revolt from ritual and formalism, 
 we abandoned the idea of beauty as a sac- 
 rilege. The meeting-houses were built 
 severely plain, not more from necessity than 
 from principle. The principle was mixed 
 with a strong flavor of prejudice, and our 
 denominational task was to liberate the 
 principle of purity in worship from the 
 prejudice in which it had been incarcer- 
 ated, and by our spirit of flexibility, adapt 
 our provision for worship to current needs. 
 It was thus that gradually the idea of 
 appropriate church architecture changed from 
 the severe to the symmetrical. To-day we 
 build churches beautiful as art can suggest, 
 costly as our ability will allow, and per- 
 manent as the granite of the everlasting- 
 hills can make them. Growth in our idea 
 of worship has caused a return to the 
 Gothic and Byzantine forms of architecture, 
 
118 REAL PREACHING 
 
 from which in the interests of a pure 
 worship we so strenuously revolted. The 
 increasing attention given to church architec- 
 ture, even with respect to our mission chap- 
 els, is a most hopeful indication of our grow- 
 ing sense of helpfulness in public worship. 
 
 The order of service, too, is a worthy 
 concern in public worship. When King 
 James said to our fathers, " You must have 
 a prayer-book and a ritual," those iron spirits 
 replied in thunderous accents, " We won't," 
 and, like many a hunted, hounded heretic 
 since, went to the very opposite extreme 
 and expressed their worship in coldest and 
 most barren fashion, — no beautiful hymns, 
 no inspiring orchestral strains, not even 
 Bible reading in many churches. The ser- 
 mon was the worship and the intellect out- 
 raged the heart. From this there is to-day 
 a decided and grateful return. Not that 
 the sermon is being disparaged, for the 
 demand for trenchant pulpit utterance was 
 never more clamorous than to-day, nor the 
 quality of sermons superior, but there is a 
 gracious recognition of the need of an 
 enriched public worship, which, according to 
 its expression, is being satisfied. 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 119 
 
 The Episcopal Church in America has 
 been recruited largely from those who have 
 felt the need of a helpful, worshipful ser- 
 vice, and Congregationalism has been a rich 
 contributor alike to her priesthood and to 
 her laity. Now there is a distinct pur- 
 pose among us to afford within our own 
 communion the satisfaction of the needs of 
 our membership. We recognize the Apos- 
 tles' Creed as our own; the chants, too, 
 are ours ; the prayers of the ancient saints 
 are capable of expressing our spiritual aspi- 
 rations, and upon appropriate occasion we do 
 not hesitate to use them. The character- 
 istic of our polity is adaptability, so that we 
 can employ those forms, responses, creeds, 
 and litanies which meet our need, with per- 
 fect propriety and with perfect freedom. 
 
 While no Congregational church would 
 desire or permit the imposition of a ritual 
 more than of a creed, still there is an 
 increasing company of those who hope that 
 in the not distant future an order of ser- 
 vice may be suggested, possibly by the 
 National Council, which will contribute to 
 the spirit of orderliness among us, and be 
 a model of suggestion for any who may 
 
120 REAL PREACHING 
 
 be attempting to meet a growing sense of 
 need in their own congregation. 
 
 But whatever be the special order of ser- 
 vice, its mission is ever the same — to assist 
 the worshipful spirit. A performance of any 
 sort, in the pulpit or choir gallery, is dis- 
 tinctly alien to the spirit of worship. The 
 service of song has been largely taken away 
 from the people, and placed in the keeping 
 of professional musicians. To recover the 
 music to its rightful place in the service of 
 public worship is an imperative necessity. 
 On the one hand, the taste of the people 
 needs elevation, for while we are rich in 
 aspiring hymns and inspiring tunes, a lamen- 
 table preference for unworthy music is pain- 
 fully evident. On the other hand, the choir 
 must regard the religious rather than the 
 financial or artistic ministries of sacred song. 
 Of course the best music is greatly to be 
 desired, but there is a choice of the best, 
 just as "there's odds even in deacons," 
 and the quartettes are few who do not 
 need Paul Dunbar's prayer, and fewer still 
 who could not benefit by his " extry trainin'." 
 
 " An' I hope you'll tell the singers 
 'At I bear them no ill will. 
 
THE BEAL AUDIENCE 121 
 
 'At they all may git to glory 
 
 Is my wish and my desire. 
 
 But they'll need some extry trainin' 
 
 Tore they join the heavenly choir." 
 
 It requires long and persistent effort, 
 generous tact, and a fine determination to 
 rescue a congregation from the quartette 
 and choir master, but when once it has 
 been accomplished the liberty in which the 
 sons of God praise him in his sanctuary 
 reveals itself as indeed glorious freedom 
 when compared with the servitude of sister 
 congregations to professional musicians. 
 
 The Scripture lessons and responsive read- 
 ings are not the least important of the ser- 
 vices of public worship. It is not their 
 mission " to fill up the program," or " to 
 occupy the time." They are acts of wor- 
 ship, and as such demand care in selection 
 and dignity in utterance. Many a minister 
 defeats his influence by the shiftless, me- 
 chanical, and slovenly manner in which he 
 reads from the book of God. 
 
 Concerning public prayer, no words can 
 too strongly portray its importance, or its 
 privilege. To pass the needs, the desires, 
 the hopes, the gratitude of a congregation 
 
122 REAL PREACHING 
 
 through your own spirit, and give these 
 sincere and appropriate utterance, in adora- 
 tion, thanksgiving, and supplication, is a 
 minister's most precious prerogative. The 
 best preparation for it is the quiet hour of 
 personal communion, in which the minister's 
 own soul is kindled and his own heart 
 melted. True prayer is never formal. You 
 cannot pray to order. It is spirit meeting 
 with spirit, soul fellowshiping with soul, 
 life communing with life. Hence simplicity 
 and fervency are two characteristics of pub- 
 lic prayer. A young minister must guard 
 against the temptation to deliver a discourse 
 to God, a sort of a second Sabbath sermon. 
 Be simple, natural, sincere, and permit your 
 heart to have its way, and your public 
 prayers will indeed be expressive of your 
 people's souls and will bestow upon the 
 congregation the blessing of your God. 
 
 In concluding these addresses, young gen- 
 tlemen, suffer the word of exhortation: — 
 
 Be real men ! Preach real sermons ! Dis- 
 cover real audiences ! Do not be " dapper 
 young lady preachers ! " You have the 
 most glorious of all earthly callings, if you 
 live it gloriously. It will satisfy you in 
 
THE REAL AUDIENCE 123 
 
 proportion as you sacrifice for it. Hard, 
 splendidly hard, it is, also noble, magnifi- 
 cently noble. Adorn it with the wealth 
 of your enthusiasm and of your fidelity, 
 and its very difficulties will be revealed to 
 you as its resplendent treasures. 
 
 It was a preacher, tried, tempted, sus- 
 tained, who wrote what ought to be called 
 The Minister's Hymn. 
 
 " Oh, it is hard to work for God, 
 To rise and take His part 
 Upon the battle-field of earth 
 And not sometimes lose heart ! 
 
 (t Workman of God ! Oh, lose not heart, 
 But learn what God is like, 
 And in the darkest battle-field 
 Thou shalt know where to strike. 
 
 " Thrice blest is he to whom is given 
 The instinct that can tell 
 That God is on the field 
 When He is most invisible. 
 
 " Then learn to scorn the praise of men 
 And learn to lose with God, 
 For Jesus won the world through shame 
 And beckons thee His road."