A 01 - The Minister In His Study

CHAPTER ONE IN HIS STUDY THE MINISTER IN HIS STUDY

IT WILL stand upon my watch, and set me I upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will, say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. “ (Hab 2:1.) Habakkuk wanted to know God’s message for men through him; and that is the high privilege and plain duty of all ministers. His Study is the “ watchtower j” the “Holy of Holies” where Shekinah glory illumines his soul with visions and messages; Paul exhorts ministers to “study to show themselves approved unto God; workmen that need not be ashamed.” This suggests “a study; “ and, this study is the mint where his gold is coined. Here he broods over kingdom questions, weighs soul-interests, meditates upon eternal destinies, and prepares for assaults upon the citadels of wrong. The minister’s study is larger than the room that contains his books and in which he communes with God in prayer. His study includes all subjects, all worlds, all peoples, all ages, and all of God’s plans for redemption. His horizon is larger than that line where earth and sky seem to meet and mark the limits of the world.

There is no line of truth that may not run into his fountain of knowledge. If he confines himself within the walls of his study, he will be narrow and contracted; yet he should have such a study; and it should be the hotbed of his garden, the arsenal of his warfare, the pilothouse from which he looks over the sea of ’humanity and steers the ship of Zion. In his study books should be examined, great minds consulted, information gathered, problems solved, and inspiration received for the duties of his calling. Riehlieu says “that all great things are done in silence.” Pilgrim’s Progress was born in Bedford jail; and some of Paul’s great epistles were written in a Roman prison. But the minister should not use the forms in which he finds truth stored in books outside of the Bible. He should reduce all reading in the mill of his own mind to such fineness that it is meal and not corn. He should break up the crystallized thought of others as workmen break up granite and mix with sand and cement to manufacture concrete. They make a new substance out of old material, and the minister can do the same. He can use books, sermons, comments, magazines, and the Bible; but he dare not copy them. He must make concrete all his own. He may create new archways that will sustain the tonnage of a nation’s thought. He can rightly divide the word of truth. The study is not a place for rest or ease; but a place of prayer, research, testing, decision, creation. Like the camp of the Romans the work here is twice as heavy as on the field.

Here all the past, all the future, and all the live questions of the present, converge in the minister’s mind like sun-rays in the sunglass.

Here his mind and heart mature in the silence and deep reflections of his soul. Here is the place of growth. All growth is under hidden conditions. The, germination of seed, the development of rootlets, real, contact, with soil and air, the: forces, that enter into life, and burst out into flower and fruit, all work in silence and in darkness. Here self and God are discovered in their holiest relations, and character is crystallized in the quiet of the study. Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, as he paced his palace floor, “Is not this great Babylon that 7 have built?”

“But the kingdom departed from him.” The woman who was healed said “within herself” within the secret chambers of her own soul “If I may but touch His garments I shall be healed.” The explosion in Vera Cruz was the result of the quiet loading of the shell in the factory. The Panama Canal was worked out by the engineer, and an act of Congress, before the thousands of tons of earth were removed and two oceans met and kissed each other at the cost of nearly four hundred millions.

What sort of a man must the minister be in his study? Sincerity and self ^surrender to God should characterize the minister in, his study. His Tieart miist be engaged as well as Ms head.

He must hot only seek after human wisdom, but spiritual inspiration. He is not working out science, he is seeking a message from God. The mineral wealth of the world was fashioned in the quiet recesses of the mountains or underneath the rocks of the plains long before the mines were opened or the iron was wrought into use. The Bessemer process fashions the steel rails that glisten across a continent and bear the tonnage of an empire. The chick comes forth after those brooding weeks of the mother, the most trying and exhausting of her life. It is brooding over the thoughts in the library, in the study, that brings forth new ideas to move mankind to Jesus Christ and a new life. Ideas are not born in the crowd. Great thoughts are born in solitude. Jesus retired from the multitude to prepare Himself for great service and ministers can do no less. He spent most of that time in prayer. Napoleon spent whole nights in histent mapping out his plans for battles and campaigns. Napoleon did not depend on the inspiration of the occasion to win battles. He worked out his plans in histent. The minister ought to study the map of his own work, of his own country, of Bible lands, and of the whole world. This will give him a vision of missions and fire his heart with a zeal according to knowledge. The field is the world and the minister ought to know the field. Geography is close to the Bible. It is “The Land and the Book.” The study is the place of prayer. There is no harder work than prayer; it is easier to read than to pray; but prayer is of more importance than reading. Jesus spent whole nights in prayer. Prayer was the only exercise that drew from Him drops of blood. Prayer engages the whole being and it is the only effort that does.

Study puts us in touch with all that is material and human; prayer puts us in touch with the spiritual and divine. Paul and Silas prayed at midnight, in the Philippian jail, and the Roman prison trembled and the doors opened; and the jailer trembled and opened his heart to let the Savior in. Thought touched the mine under the last ledge of rock in the Panama Canal, by an electric wire from Washington, and opened the isthmus between two great seas; but it was the power of God that turned the Nile into blood and opened the Red Sea to set a nation at liberty. Moses got out of trouble every time by resorting to prayer. It was not his eloquence but his faith that made him the emancipator of millions. The world is slow to learn that knowing the truth sets men free.

Daniel’s habit of prayer was a power greater than the king’s decree, and the lion’s den could do him no harm. It was that quiet prayer chamber in Jerusalem that witnessed the noise and tongues of fire and, later, the conversion of three thousand souls. The scales never fell from Saul’s eyes till he prayed; the prayer chamber is the dark room where the image of Jesus Christ is developed in the soul. It is in this chamber where the care of the church weighs heavily upon his whole being, where the factious spirit among members clamors for is solution; where poverty cries from rags, huts, and domestic broils; where pride and ambition look in upon him with vulgar eyes; where shame threatens his church; arid lynx-eyed jealousies and complaints fret his being so that he cannot study. Then his only resource is prayer. He must have a new sense of God’s help; that “His grace is sufficient.” There is no book on church methods that can tell him how to deal with these grave problems. He must get divine help not only for himself, but for those lives that fret his own. It was fasting and prayer that saved Esther, and the Jews in the hundred and twenty-seven provinces in the empire of Ahasuerus; it was prayer that held out the golden scepter and granted the queen’s request. The study is the altar where the minister offers his sacrifices, makes his vows, communes with God, and renews his strength. The spirit said to Ezekiel, “Go, shut thyself up within thy house * * * * but when I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them. Thus saith the Lord. ’’Eze 3:24-27.

There are times when the minister must retire, and keep silence, till God unlooses his tongue and puts words into his mouth and power in the words. His study is his waiting place for orders and a message.

He stands between the living and the dead. His library is peopled from the past Abraham, Moses, Elias, Paul, Luther, Elizabeth, Mary, Florence Nightingale, Victoria a multitude which no man can number, who ’have come up through great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Moses and Elias appeared with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration; a mighty host surrounds me in my library. Peter, James, and John did not see as much nor hear as much as the minister in his library. Jesus is here, too, in the Bible and by the Spirit. There are more people in my library than in my church.

They speak to me, they kindle the fires of my imagination, they quicken my faith, humble my pride, rebuke my wrong-doing and wrong thinking, warn me against sin, and point my soul to the living Christ. I find tombs with angles, deserts with fountains, gardens with Saviors, prisons with praises, and crosses with crowns. Above the roar of the tempest,’ the flap of the split sails, the creak of the breaking timbers, and the cry of endangered men, I hear Jesus say: “Peace, be still.” I hear Nebuchadnezzar say: “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like unto the Son of God. ’ ’ I hear Paul in the midst of darkness and the raging sea, say, “There stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, Fear not.” The past is a mighty host, their thought, faith, love, and lives still speaking to our own. The library is a transfiguration scene, crowning lofty summits, silently and sweetly speaking to the minister so as to inspire him with renewed strength and satisfaction that arms him for the good fight of faith. Beyond this teeming past are the living millions moving to and fro, loving and hating, helping and hindering, neglecting age, crushing childhood, desecrating the Sabbath, greedily preying upon their fellows, preparing for war and killing the flower of the age. The study should be the tower from which the minister looks out upon this age of living humanity, with all of its progress, religious movements, charity institutions, educational forces, its pleasure-loving and pleasure-seeking peoples, that he may come forth with a message of rebuke for sin, of hope for the despondent, and life for the lost. The minister should seek to interpret the present age in the light of the gospel and past civilizations. From his study as a tower, he should get his vision of mankind and God and then go forth to preach salvation to a sinning world. His sermon should be a message from God, supported by His word, fired by His Spirit, and delivered in the spirit of love. Lectures and tirades may have their place on the platform, but they should not come from the minister’s study in place of a message from God. His study is the mint for purer gold.