075. GENERAL CULTURE IS REQUIRED

GENERAL CULTURE IS REQUIRED The amount of training that was sufficient for a halfcentury ago is not sufficient for to-day. Our common schools have greatly added to the intelligence of our 3 communities. The daily and weekly press, the magazines, and even the books of our Sunday-schools, have been making a larger culture necessary in the preacher. He has to compete with others. In the days when our seminary received half-trained students, one of these read the hymn "What horror then my vitals froze," as "What horror then my vittles froze." Fortunately, it was only before his class. Slips in grammar and incoherence in thought can no longer be made up for by mere fervor and floods of emotion. Even the children see through the pretense, and require real teaching. This general culture can be best gained in the college, even though many men have it who have never pursued a college course. In college there is a certain amount of knowledge communicated, and a broadening acquaintance with the world gained. The college student has before him men of high intelligence whom he loves and reveres, and these personal influences wonderfully mold his ideals and shape his life. He comes into close contact with other young men of high aims, and in spite of himself is moved to do better by their example. But the greatest benefit of college life is after all the learning to concentrate one’s powers and to do much in a little time. The duties of the modern pastor are so multifarious, and his time is so much at the disposal of others, that he will never be able to prepare two sensible sermons in a week unless he has a good degree of mental discipline. A great English statesman said once that he had been successful because he was a whole man to one thing at a time. The psalmist prays: "Unite my heart to fear thy name." And the minister of Christ needs to pray: "Unite my powers, enable me to gather them into one, that I may preach thy gospel." Yet this ability to concentrate one’s mind, to think intensely when the time comes to think, to put one’s whole soul into the work of the hour, is very largely a natural acquisition, the result of training and practice. And the college is the best place in the world in which to acquire it. So far I have spoken of natural qualifications,—the gifts and the culture which belong to many others besides ministers of the gospel, and which are essential to the greatest success in any profession. I now come to speak of qualifications that are supernatural, because they are imparted only by special operation of God. A Christian experience is the first of these. Says John Wesley: "Inquire of applicants for admission to the ministr}-, Do they know God as a pardoning God." The blind have no right to lead the blind, for both will fall into the ditch, and we have no right to install as shepherd a man who cannot distinguish the sheep from the goats. How can one who has never felt the dreadfulness of his own sin and the depths of his own guilt bring home to others the charges of God against them? How can one who has never found deliverance at the foot of the cross lead others to the Lamb of God who alone can take their sin away?