1.A 08. Questions and Answers
Questions and Answers.
Now for questions, if you want to ask any Q. In keeping an eye upon the congregation, and looking forward to a ministry which may be for years, would you not think best to follow in the general system of thought which we call Calvinistic? Can we pass by the teachings of the schools and construct our own theology? Or shall we have for a background, for a corner-stone, if you please, of all our systems of thought and preaching, that system which is called Calvinistic?
Mr. BEECHER. I admire the discretion with which you put that question. If you had asked me whether you ought to follow that system which is Calvinism, I should say, No. But if you ask whether you ought to follow that system which is called Calvinism, I say it is very well to follow that; for I have noticed what that which is called Calvinism may be defined to be. For instance, I consider myself Calvinistic, you know; and in this way: I believe what John Calvin would have believed if he had lived in my time and seen things as I see them. My first desire is to know what is true; and then I am very glad if John Calvin agrees with me; but if he don t, so much the worse for him! While I accept the work that God did by him in the interpretation and in the systematization of truth and I shall have a good deal to say about Calvinism, and in favour of Calvinism, before I get through, in respect to its doctrines and its historic work yet it seems to me that I have the same Lord Jesus Christ that John Calvin had, the same Paul, the same John, and nothing that hinders me ill any way from looking right into their hearts and forming my own idea of what they were and how they felt, just as he did; with the additional advantage that I have in the light of hundreds of years unfolding of the Christian Church which he had not; for he constructed his system under the drippings of the old Roman hierarchy. Besides, John Calvin had an inordinate share of intellect and not half his share of heart. Have I answered sufficiently?
Q. If yon wore requested to preach on Election and Predestination in a Church whose members held the old faith on these points, how would you meet that request?
MR. BEECHEH. I should preach it as I find it in the New Testament. I should not ask the catechisms, which are helps to those whom they help.
I should take it as I find it in the NCAV Testament, that God has a plan in the world; that he works according to laws; and that natural laws are divine decrees. I very frankly admit that those truths can be stated in a way so as to be very offensive and discouraging; but I thankfully believe that they can be stated in another way so as to be the foundation and groundwork of hope and courage. What ever else you do, don’t slam the door of possibility in any man’s face. Don’t hold up any of the truths of the gospel in such a way that the man who looks at them shall say it is not possible to be saved. The teaching of Christ and the Apostles was that God wanted all men to be saved, and made overtures to them; that there is a possibility of every man’s being regenerated by the power of the Holy Ghost. Build up such a spiritual superstructure that every little child shall feel it to be easier to live a Christian life than an ungodly life.
Q. If you went into a neighbourhood where Universalism or Spiritualism prevailed, would you preach against them or pass them by?
MR. BEECHER. I cannot answer that question precisely, it would depend on so many considerations; the first of which might be how far the preacher were himself infected with it. Secondly, what class of the community was infected. If the thinking class, and the influential, three or four families, I might take one course; but if it was only the ignorant, and those that had no influence upon society, I might take another course. That is a theme which I shall take up more fully by-and-by, in speaking of entering a new community; but I am quite willing to consider the question now, for I do not fear to exhaust the subject.
I recollect hearing my father say that when he went to East Hampton and began to preach there, he was surrounded by the influence of French infi delity, and the leading men of that community were infidels. Said he, “ I did not undertake to argue with them. I preached one or two great sermons, to show them I had big guns and was not afraid of them; and after that I preached right to their consciences; and the result was that a great revival of religion came up there; and after that I never heard anything about infidelity.” One of the most affecting little things came to my knowledge the other day. There was one man in that congregation who was never converted, who never gave up ostensibly his infidelity; although he loved my father very much indeed, yet he never seemed to bo brought into the kingdom during his time there.
There was one little child, Harriet, born into our family, which after a short time fell asleep. This little baby was the only thing we left behind in moving from the place. So this man, twenty or twenty-five years after father had gone away, said one day to his wife, “ I cannot bear to have that little child of Dr. Beecher’s left there all alone; “and he had the child taken up, and put it in his own ground, where his wife now lies on one side and he upon the other, and the little baby snugly gathered in their bosoms there. Such was the effect produced upon his mind by my father’s preaching and example; and although he did not outwardly come into the community of the faith, the impression never wore off, and I should not wonder if he were in heaven.
Q. If you wont into a neighbourhood in which there were petty troubles among families, would you preach against such things?
MR. BEECHEU. Generally speaking, meddling with families is dangerous business; and as it is dangerous personally, so it is dangerous pulpitly; inasmuch as you would instantly, for the most part, produce sides, and they would take your sermon and turn it into artillery to fire at each other, backward and forward. No; if you want to cure one malign feeling, recollect that our feelings act, as it were, in poles; that there is an antagonistic feeling. If a child cries, the nurse, who is a better philosopher than many wiser heads, makes the child laugh.
She makes up faces, makes herself grotesque; the child struggles against it for a while, but finally bursts out laughing, and that moment the crying and the anger are all gone. Two opposite feelings can not coexist. If anger is up, good-nature is down.
If you want to get anger down, don’t try to push it down that won’t do; but go to the other end and pry up good-nature.
Q. Going into a small place, where there are few educating influences, would not you preach a fair proportion of educating sermons?
MR. BEECHEB. Is not the arousing influence of the revival system an educating one? Is there any education that proceeds so fast as that which takes place under a warm and newly developed moral feeling? Men in the ordinary stage are like robins eggs in the nest; you cannot feed them. Let the robin sit on them a little while, and by-and-by there will be nothing but four mouths, and as fast as you put in worms they will gulp them. To educate man in the cold and natural state is just like feeding eggs. Warm them, and give them life, and they will eat.
Q. You speak of presenting the truth as a man thinks it and feels it and lives it, himself. Is there a danger connected with that of being too egotistical in our preaching, so that when we present a truth as we feel it and think it, men will say, “ Here is a man thatprofesses to have a great deal deeper thoughts, and a great deal deeper feelings than we have,” and an antagonistic feeling will be aroused against us? How can that be overcome?
MR. BEECHER. You will never preach so wisely or so well, if you preach continuously, as to guard against all these dangers. You cannot help yourself. If a surgeon were ten times as skilful as he is, and he had to probe a wound, he could not probe it so that it would be a luxury to the patient. If anything is to be cut off, or tied up, or changed radically, changed in such a way that the pride must come down, it will cause pain. It is not easy to take the yoke or the burden of Christ, in the taking of it; it is only after you have got your neck accustomed to it that the yoke is easy and the burden is light. No matter how wisely or well you put it, there will be trouble, and it will be just in proportion to the disturbance you make. And the disturbance will be according to the wisdom and the love which you manifest. No man is such a master of his business that he can go into a community and preach, saying to himself, “This is ideally perfect.” Your mode of presenting the truth will be imperfect. Your partialisms are full of danger. For instance, if you are a quiet man, you will have a tendency to preach so as not to arouse any feeling. On the other hand, if you are pugnacious and energetic, your sermons will be apt to be full of lances and thrusts. There is a great deal about a man’s personality that has got to be educated. If one is frank, genial, warm-hearted, and if he is going to be a minister, and pulls down his face and says, “ Now I must walk with the utmost precision,” and he begins to walk just so, and to administer just so, thinking that coldness and sanctity have some peculiar relation to each other, he does violence to his nature. When God made him warm-hearted and gushing, he gave him a power with which to do his work. Take your strongest point and make the most of it. The modifications and limitations of this will come up for more remark hereafter.
Q. Don’t you think it is a good plan to preach a variety of sermons, intellectual and emotional?
MR. BEECHER. Never two alike, if you can help it. I heard described the other day a style of preaching which was likened to the way they are said to build ships down in Maine. They build them down there by the mile; and when they have an order they cut off so much, round up a stern and a bow, and send it. Thus some sermons seem to have been built by the mile. There seems to be no earthly reason why the preacher should begin in one place rather than another, or why he should stop in one place rather than another. He could preach ten hours, if not ordered to stop; and wherever he stops he is ready to begin again; and so to go on until the judgment-day. That kind of iteration is the most hurtful of all things. A man keeps a boarding-house, and the boarders like bacon for breakfast. So he gives them bacon on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, arid Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, until by-and-by one of them comes to him and says, “Mr. Jacobs, we like bacon pretty well, but lately we have got tired of it; we should like something else.” “Well, what will you have?”
11 Let us have pork and beans.” So he gives them pork and beans on Monday, pork and beans on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and keeps feeding them on pork and beans until they protest again.
Now, everybody gets stale on any one thing. Seven teen sermons on the doctrine of retribution as it is found in nature, rather tire a man out. Mrs. Stowe said, when she returned from Germany, that she really enjoyed the German church singing until they reached the eighteenth or nineteenth stanza, but she generally got tired then; and it is about so with preaching.