The Warriors - Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
Homiletics is not a series of nursery-rules for man--formal, didactic
droppings of a pedant's tongue. Homiletics is the appeal of man to man,
for the welfare of his soul, and the true progress of mankind. Exegesis
is not a matter of Hebrew or Greek alone. It includes the spiritual
interpretation of the great problems of the race. Homer, Tennyson,
Browning, and Dante are exegetes, no less than Lightfoot, Lange,
and Schaff.
Pastoral Divinity is not the etiquette of a polite way of making calls:
it is an entering into the social spirit of the time; the learning of
friendliness, unreserve, sympathy, persuasion, and a way of approach. It
is the mastery of spiritual _savoir-faire_.
Outside of this group of technical subjects there are yet others of
vital importance from a scientific understanding of the world, and of
one's work. They are Psychology, Ethics, Sociology, and Politics.
Since we have known more of the psychological meaning of adolescence, a
new theory of Conversion has sprung up; and whether or not we accept it,
the whole outlook over the underlying principle of conversion has been
changed. We must at least recognize that conversion is a scientific
process, as much as digestion is, or respiration; it is not a purely
emotional occurrence.
The minister must learn what society really is, and how the far still
forces of time act and react upon each other, producing group-actions,
institutions, customs, ways. There are social fossils as well as
physical ones. Sociology is not a system of fads and reforms. It is the
scientific study of society, of its constitution, development,
institutions, and growth. He must also breathe largely of the great
governmental life of the race--understand the primary principles of
politics and administration. He should have some knowledge of commercial
interests, of the formulas, incentives, and right principles of trade.
There should also be in the seminary an inspirational atmosphere of
music, literature, and art. Literature is a revelation of the life of
the soul. The man who reads literature and comprehends its message is
receiving a fine training which shall fit him for a thorough
understanding of the heart; of its practical, ethical, and spiritual
problems; of its domestic joys and sorrows; of its human cares and
burdens; of the appeals that will come to him for sympathy; of the
temptations that beset the race; and of the hopes and trials of
the world.
Literature is one of the best tools a minister can have. He should be
read in the great literary and sermonic literature, the work of Bossuet,
Massillon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Fenelon, Marcus Aurelius, mediaeval
homilies, Epictetus, Pascal, Guyon, Amiel, Vinet, La Brunetiere, Phelps,
Jeremy Taylor, Barrows, Fuller, Whitefield, Bushnell, Edwards, Bacon,
Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Davies, Law, Bunyan, Luther, Spalding,
Robertson, Kingsley, Maurice, Chalmers, Guthrie, Stalker, Drummond,
Maclaren, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks, yes, even John Stuart
Mill. All these men, by whatever name or school they are called, are
writers of essays or sermons which appeal to the most spiritual deeps
of man.
He should read the novels of Richter, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Eliot,
and Victor Hugo. He should know intimately the great verse which
involves spiritual problems, and human strife and aspiration,--Milton,
Beowulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the
Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert,
Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell,
Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman,
Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, and Arabian verse.
In music his heart should wake to the beauty of oratorios, symphonies,
chorals, concert music, national and military music, and inspiring
songs, not to speak of hymns and of anthems, the progress of Christian
song! The _Creation_, the _Messiah_, the _Redemption_, Bach's _Passion
Music_, the _St. Cecilia Mass_, Spohr's _Judgment_, Stainer's
_Resurrection_, the _Twelfth Mass_, Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,--these are
monumental works and themes.
What is a hymn? We think of it as being some simple churchly words, set
to a serious tune. A hymn is the rhythmic aspiration of the race. No one
can look through a good hymnal--through _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, for
instance, or the Church Hymnary--without feeling that therein is bound
up the devotional life of the world. The spiritual outlook is cosmic.
Our every mood of penitence, praise, and aspiration resounds in
melodious and time-defying strains.
In art, the religious spirit broods over the great work of the world. In
Angelo, Francesca, Veronese, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto,
and Correggio, the brush of the painter has set forth the adoration of
the Church of God.
Thus, taken all in all, to be educated as a minister should be to be
educated in the Higher Life of the race.
Finally, above all else is the spiritual study and interpretation of the
Word of God. A minister may be fearless of the investigations of
scientific criticism. Every truth is important to him, but not all
truths are vital. When a man such as Caspar Rene Gregory speaks,
something of the holy mystery and inspiration of biblical research, as
well as a scientific result, is presented, and one gains a new
conception of what it really means to study and to understand the
Word of God.
Under all is the life of ceaseless and prevailing prayer. By the life of
prayer, many mean merely a way of learning to make public petitions, an
objective appeal to God. The true life of prayer is as simple, as
unteachable, and as vital as the life of a child with its mother--the
little lips daily learning new ways of approach to its mother's heart,
and new words to make its wants and interests and sorrows known.
Prayer is the true World-Power. Just as there are vast stretches in the
world where the foot of man has never trod, so there are unmeasured
regions whereon prayer has never been. The more we pray, the more
illimitable appears this spiritual realm. And all about us in the
universe are also great hidden forces: nothing will lay hold of them
but prayer.
Each prayer enlarges the soul. The measure of our praying is the measure
of our growth. No man has reached his full possibilities of achievement
who has not completed the circuit of his possible prayers. Power is
proportionate to prayer.
And last of all, there is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What it
is, who may say? But that it is real, who can doubt? To read the lives
of Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, is to feel a strange, deep thrill.
They are men who spake, and men listened; who called, and men came to
God. Others, alas, so often call, and there is no response. They cannot
make headway through the indifference, the sloth, the materialism, and
the inherent vulgarity of the world.
The life itself is arduous. After all is said, it is not quite the same
task to examine and classify either protoplasm or the most highly
organized forms of nature, that it is to analyze and understand the
mysterious workings of the heart, the intricacies of conscience and
conduct, the possibilities of spiritual development or of moral
downfall, and the many questionings, agonies, and ecstasies of the soul
of man. And they are to be studied and understood with the definite and
positive aim of the absolute reconstruction of the world-bound spirit--a
change of its motives, purposes, affections, ideals. More than this,
there must be at the heart of the more thoughtful minister a philosophic
basis for the reconstruction of society itself.
Youth is not an adequate preparation for this task: a man must live and
grow. To deal with such themes and occasions, there must appear in the
world lives of such vigor that they can command; of such charm, that
they can attract; of such wisdom, that they can guide and comfort; of
such vitality, that they can inspire. And hence there rises before the
mind's eye a figure that is both knightly and kingly--a man earnest in
the redress of wrong, and who yet holds a subtle authority over the
forces that make for wrong; a man burdened with the cares and sorrows of
many others, and yet conducting his own life with serenity, enthusiasm,
dignity, and hope; a man to whose keen yet tender gaze a life-history
is revealed by a word or tone, but whose own eyes receive their light
from God. A prophet and a father, a priest and a counsellor, a brother,
friend, and judge, a sacrifice and an inspiration should he be who, in
reverence and love, brings before a waiting congregation the very
Word of Life!
SECOND: OF SPIRITUAL RULE
1. The primary rule is over conscience. The man who sways a conscience
sways a human life. The man who sways a nation's conscience controls
that nation's life. To rule conscience, a man must himself be
unprejudiced and well informed. He must strive, not to keep up an
unhealthy excitement which shall make conscience introspective and
morbid, but to preserve a sane moral outlook, to encourage freedom of
thought and judgment, and to develop a normal conscience which reacts
promptly against wrong. Conscience measures our inner recoil from evil.
The power of a preacher is in direct proportion to the energy with which
he reveals sin in the heart of man, and wakes his whole nature against
its insidious power.
Sin is. To-day, sin is thought a somewhat brusque word, lacking in
polish. To use it frequently is a mark of lack of '_savoir-faire_!
Indeed to speak of it at all is as archaic as to speak of the
Ichthyosaurus. But sin is a root-fact of the life of man. It is the
office of the spiritual teacher to pluck out sin; to pierce the heart
with a recognition of the enormity of sin, and of its far-reaching
consequences; to stir the seared conscience, rouse the apathetic life,
thrill the spiritual imagination, and to quicken the heart to better
love and to nobler dreams. He rebukes the private sins of individuals
and the public sins of nations. In the _Faerie Queene_, the
"soul-diseased knight" was in a state
"_In which his torment often was so great,
That like a lyon he would cry and rare,
And rend his flesh, and his own synewes eat_."
But Fidelia, like the faithful pastor, was both
"_able with her word to kill,
And raise againe to life the heart that she did thrill_."
This power has at times been misunderstood and misapplied. No human
authority can bind the conscience, nor set rules and regulations for the
soul of man. The prerogative of final direction belongs to God alone. No
man may arrogate it--no pastor for people, no husband for wife, no wife
for husband, no parent for child. The sadness of the world has been,
that men have not always been spiritually free. Freedom has been a
social growth--a phase of progress. It has taken wars and persecutions,
revolutions and reformations, the blood of saints and martyrs, the
sorrow of ages, to plant this precept in the mind of man.
The evangelist warns. He speaks of sin, death, hell, and the judgment
to come. It is for these things that he is sent to testify. These are
not the catch-words of a new sort of Fear King who uses oral terrors to
affright the soul of man. Heaven and hell are not a new sort of
ghost-land: retribution is not a larger way of tribal revenge.
No. The latest facts of science present this universe as not only
progressive, but as retributive. There is a rebound of evil which makes
for pain. Each broken law exacts a penalty. Each deed of sin is a
forerunner of personal and of social disaster. The generation that sins
shall be cut off, while the stock of the righteous grows strong from
age to age.
The scientific vista opening to the eye of man is impressive and
appalling. Each man has within himself a future of joy or sadness for
the race. Do you remember the sermon of Horace Bushnell on the
"Populating Power of the Christian Faith"? Do you recall the history of
the infamous Jukes family? That of the seven devout and noble
generations of the Murrays? The Day of Judgment is not only the Last
Great Day--it is to-day and every day. "Every day is Doomsday," says
Emerson. Nature is unforgetful. Nature is accountant. Each iniquity must
be paid for out of the resources of the race.
It is of these grave omens that the Man of God must speak. He dare not
be tongue-tied by custom or by fear. He must proclaim hell in the ears
of all mankind. For wherever hell may be, and we do not yet know, and
whatever hell may be, and we cannot even imagine, Hell _is_; and the
soul of man must be kept mindful of these great things.
The evangelist comforts and consoles. The heart of man is wayward and
goes oft astray. No one can be belabored into righteousness. The true
lover of souls allows for the hereditary weaknesses of man, for his
infirmities of will and temper, for his excuses, wanderings, and tears,
and presents to him Jesus, in whose sight no one is too wretched to be
received, too wicked to be forgiven.
We must have forgiveness in order to know God. The most comforting
thought in the world is that God knows all we do. There can be no
misunderstanding between us: He cannot be misinformed.
The evangelist must come close, in sympathy and counsel, to the personal
and individual life of those whom he would help. Perhaps the best way to
emphasize this point would be to insert here words written by a woman
who has been thinking on this subject.
She says: "I have never had a pastor. It is the one good thing lacking
in my life. I have grown up among ministers, and have had many friends
among them--some of them have cared for me. But there has never been one
among them all who stood in an attitude of spiritual authority and
helpfulness to my life. We church-going and Christian men and women of
the educated class are almost wholly let alone; apparently no one takes
thought for our souls. We are not in the least infallible; we come face
to face with fierce temptations; we have heart-breaking sorrows; we are
burdened with anxiety and perplexity. But we are left to grope as blind
sheep; there is no one to point out the path to us, however dimly; no
one to say, at any crucial moment of our lives, Walk here!
"Once, however," she continues, "one of my friends, a minister, knelt
down by me and prayed. It was a simple and ordinary occasion--others
were present. But every word of that prayer was meant for the uplifting
of my heart. In that hour, I was as if overshadowed by the Holy Ghost;
new aims and purposes were born within me. My friend loves me--that does
not matter--it is his spiritual intensity I care for. And this is his
reward for his fidelity and tenderness: In the hour when I come to die,
when one does not ask for father or mother, or husband or wife, or
brother or sister, or friend or child, but only for the strong comfort
of the man of God--in that hour, I say, if I be at all able to make my
wishes known, I shall send for that man to come to me. He, and no other,
shall present my soul to God."
Reading the above words, more than one minister will cry out, his eyes
blazing: "I say the same to you! Who is there that tries to shield the
minister from sorrow and from pain? Who is there to comfort and help
_him_? You think we can just go on, and preach, preach, preach, standing
utterly alone, and with no one on earth to keep our own hearts close to
God! I tell you, it is a lonely and weary work at times, this being a
minister!"
Yes, there must be a people, as well as a pastor. The relation is
reciprocal. Wherever there is a strong man, leaning down in fire and
tenderness to help the lives about him, there must be a loyal and loving
congregation, with here and there in it some one who more fully
appreciates and understands. Nothing beats down and discourages a man
more than to feel that he is preaching to cold air and not to human
folks, and to get back, when he offers sympathy, a stare.
A congregation is a mysterious and subtle social force. Its effect on a
minister he can neither analyze nor explain. But he knows that its power
is mesmeric and cannot be escaped. He goes into its presence from an
hour of exalted and uplifted prayer, serene, happy, strong, and prepared
to speak words of power and life. Gazing at his people--he can never
tell why--the words freeze on his lips. An icy hand seems laid upon his
heart, and he makes a cold and formal presentation of his glowing theme,
and wonders who or what has done it all. Something satanic and
repelling has laid hold of his tongue and brain.
Or again, he may have had a worried and troubled week, full of personal
anxiety and sorrow. He has not had full time to study--he feels quite
unprepared, and enters the pulpit with a halting step, and a choking
fear of failure at his heart.
In a moment, the world changes. Something imperceptible, but sweet and
comforting, steals over him,--an uplifting atmosphere of attention,
sympathy, affection. He begins to speak, very quietly at first, with
quite an effort. But the congregation leads him on, to deeper thoughts,
to nobler words, to modulations of voice that carry him quite beyond
himself. His voice rises, and every syllable is firm and musical. His
language springs from some far centre of inspiration. He is conscious of
superb power, and as sentence after sentence falls from his
lips----sentences that amaze himself more than any other----he enters
into the supreme height of joy, that of being a spiritual messenger to
the hearts of longing men and women. He and they together talk of God.
This sympathetic atmosphere makes great preachers and great men. In
return, there flows from a pastor toward his people a love that few can
know or understand.
2. His rule is also over spiritual enthusiasm. What is a revival? We
confound it with a local excitement, a community-sensation of an
hysterical and passing type--with sensational disturbances, falling
exercises, shouts, weeping, and the like. A revival is something far
different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It
is a quickening of dead, backsliding, or inattentive souls.
Man as an individual is quite a different person from the same man in a
crowd. One is himself alone; the other is himself, plus the influence of
the Social Mind. A revival is a social state, in which the social
religious enthusiasm is stirred up. It is a lofty form of religion, just
as the patriotism which breaks forth in tears and cheers as troops go
out to war is a finer type than the mere excitement and fervor of one
patriotic man. What would the Queen's Jubilee have been, if but one
soldier had marched up and down? A great commemoration! If we grant the
reality of national rejoicing in the royal jubilees, commercial
rejoicing in business men's processions, university enthusiasm on
Commencement Day--shall we not grant the reality of the religious
interest and enthusiasm of a great revival, in which whole communities
shall be led to a clearer knowledge of spiritual things?
The Crusades were a magnificent revival. The Reformation was a revival.
The Salvation Army movement is a revival. But the greatest revival of
all times is even now upon us: it is a revival in the scientific
circles of the race. Time was when science and religion were supposed to
be at odds; to-day the intellectual phalanxes are sweeping Christward
with an impetus that is sublime! Thinkers are finding in the large life
of religion a motive power for their thought, their growth--a reason for
their existence--a forecast of their destiny. We are beginning to
realize the dynamic value of Belief. This revival is coming, not with
shouts and noise, but with the quiet insistence of new ideas, of new
facts--with the still voice of scientific announcement. The atheist is
being overcome, not by emotion, but by evidence; the scoffer is being
put down by cool logic.
Hence the evangelist of to-day is more than a man who can popularly
address a public audience, and by tales and tears arouse a weeping
commotion. The evangelist is a man of intellect and prayer, who can
preach the gospel to a scientific age, and to a thinking coterie--a
coterie of college men and mechanics, of society women and
servant-girls, of poets and of mine-diggers, of convicts and of
reformers. To-day calls for the utmost intellectual resources of the
teacher of the truth, for a great imagination, great style, great
sympathy with men, large learning, and unceasing prayer!
3. His rule is over social ideals. He must be a man of social insight.
The social spirit is abroad in the world, but it is woefully erratic
and misguided. Any one thinks he can be an altruist. Why not? Take a
class in a college settlement, make some bibs for a day nursery, give
tramps a C.O.S. card, with one's compliments, and attend about six
lectures a year on Philanthropy--the lectures very good indeed. One is
then a full-fledged altruist, _n'est-ce pas_?
The philanthropy of to-day has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each
present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a
hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called
philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach
themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy gown will gather burrs.
It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at
ignorance, and to go a-peeping through the slums! We have not yet
realized the fulness of redemption. Of what avail is it to save one
street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain
unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not only the individual,
but his environment, his friends, and his future state.
The true minister is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes
the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and
sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a
bad custom? What is an abuse? They are social standards which are out of
harmony with true concepts of God, life, and duty. Behind the work of
the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic,
the seer. He must first have in mind a plain, clear conception of what
the relation is of man to God, of what man's environment should be, and
of what the society of the Kingdom should be. The reformer is one who
changes an existing social environment for approximately this ideal
environment of his own thought. When he breaks an idol, it is not the
idol itself that he everlastingly hates, it is the materialistic concept
of the community. What he wishes in place of the idol is a right
conception. No man could break up every idol in the Sandwich Islands.
But a man went about implanting a spiritual idea of God, and the idols
disappeared.
Hence the work of the reformer is deep and heart-searching work. It
means constant study of the spiritual needs of the age, continual
insight into the material forces which are moulding the age-images,
money, conquest, or whatever they may be. He wishes to maintain a
spiritual hold on civilization itself, so to transform the ideal within
a man, a community, a nation, in regard to custom, observance, belief,
that the outer rite shall follow.
To reform is not to rush through the slums, and then preach a
sensational sermon about bad places in the slums, of which most people
never knew before! To reform is to know something of the conditions
which produce the slums--it is not to scatter the slum-people broadcast
elsewhere in the town; it is not alone to give them baths, playgrounds,
circulating libraries of books and pictures, dancing-parties, and social
clubs. To reform the slums is to set up a new ideal of God, and of
righteous conduct in the heart of the slum-dwellers. One must know
something of the slow processes of social change, of social
assimilation, growth, and stability, to have an intellectual perception
of the problem, as well as a spiritual one. One does not make an ill-fed
child strong by stuffing five pounds of oatmeal down its throat!
The reformer must not only be a man of energy, he must be a man of
patience. Great reforms come slowly. As man has advanced, idleness,
indolence, brutality, tyranny, drunkenness, cant, and social scorn are
gradually being cast out. But behind these simple words lie hid
centuries of strife and endeavor, and limitless darkenings of
human hope.
To fly against vice is merely to invite enmity and opposition. To
present a pure and noble ideal, to breathe forth a holy atmosphere for
the soul, are constructive works. The trouble is not, that the ministers
preach on social themes--all themes that concern the life of man are
social themes. It is that they do piece-work and patch-work of reform,
instead of plain, direct upbuilding work in the souls and consciences of
men. To preach upon horse-stealing is one thing. The horse-stealer may
be impressed, convicted, made penitent, and return the stolen horse. But
not until his heart is imbued with a spiritual conception of honesty, as
the law of God, will he steal a stray horse no more. Hence the first
questions in reform are not: How many groggeries are there in my parish?
How many corrupt polls? How many hypocrites on my church-roll? The
question is: How is my parish society in enmity to the highest spiritual
ideal I know? Many men preach about saloons, when they ought to be
preaching about Christ.