1.J 07. Love Makes a Free Preacher
Love Makes a Free Preacher. When you kindle to a full sympathy with God and man you can preach anything you please. You can say anything you please; if it goes with a reason able degree of wisdom and a great degree of sympathetic love, it will be warmly received. Recollect the apostle’s manner. When he wanted to rebuke the Ephesian Church he bethought him of all the good things he could, for encouragement. “ Never theless, I have somewhat against thee,” adds he, and then he brought in his rebuke, having prepared the way for it.
Some ministers seem to feel that men are totally depraved, and that it is the duty of every preacher to secure the evidence of it by stirring men up to, bitterness and resistance. Your business is to tone), that down, and to prepare men’s hearts by skilful address that shall put to sleep these repellent forces in them, so that they will hear your message and accept your influence upon the nobler side of their minds. When you are like a wise teacher or an affectionate parent, and prepare your congregation for what you wish, you can say almost anything to them.
Young gentlemen, the great art of managing a congregation lies in this, I am supposing, now, that a man has a good substance of thought and common sense, and I am speaking of the qualifications that reside in the heart alone, be good-natured yourself, and keep them good-natured, and then they will not need any managing. It is the most difficult thing in the world to control a great audience when they are irritable and fault-finding and peevish; and they will be apt to be so if the minister’s own gifts lie in that direction, and his service is irritating and arrogant. On the other hand, if the ministration of the pulpit is a balm to them, not by keeping down their moral sensibilities, but by keeping the sweeter and nobler part of their nature uppermost, you can reprove and rebuke, with all long-suffering, and they will accept it at your hands.
It is out of this spirit, too, that you can deal with topics that otherwise would not be allowed. Minis ters often think they cannot preach what they feel they ought to preach. There is a reformation going on, and it will affect vested interests, and there are men in the congregation, involved in these matters, 011 whom one’s influence very largely depends, and it would be dangerous to irritate them. _ One man is a factory-owner, and the whole church turns on that pivot; and yet it becomes necessary to preach on the duties of employers to labouring men, and their sympathies with working men. Capital is largely represented, and it is suspicious and watchful. Now, you cannot afford to let this topic alone; and you have sold yourself to any man fear of whom makes you silent. Yet you can discuss any topic if you only love men enough; your heart will tell you how to approach it. In a neighbourhood you can preach stringent temperance, though there are many in your church who are interested in the prevalence of drinking-usages. Slavery can be preached against, and so it could in the olden times. Of course there are some who will take offence, but, in the main, you will hold your own and save others. It is to be done by being perfectly sweet-tempered and perfectly fearless. A congregation knows when a minister is afraid of them, just as well as a horse knows that his driver is afraid of him.
If you want to stay in a place, be willing to leave it. He that would save his life must be willing to lose it, and he that will lose his life shall save it.
If you are willing to go out of any parish just as soon as they want you to go, and are perfectly willing to lay down your work to-morrow if they say so, they will know it. If you want to stay very much, they will know that too, and will take advantage of it.
Stand fearless, speaking the truth in love and in a good deal of love in love multiplied just in proportion as the theme is critical and dangerous. Be willing to take the responsibility of saying it, when they attack you out of the pulpit, bearing in mind that your business is to take care not only of your self, but of all men. If one of your parishioners behaves badly, you must tax yourself with his bad behaviour, and say it is partly your fault, and not altogether his. If you take the stand indicated by such instances as I have alluded to, there is no reason why your pastorate should not be long, and there is no reason why you may not preach upon any subject you choose.
I recollect one thing, which I may have told you before, but if I have, you will have a chance, as I have heard Gough say, to see whether I am capable of telling the same thing twice alike. It is inreference to what Calvin Fletcher, a wise old lawyer in Indianapolis, said to me 011 one occasion, and which has been a help to me all my life since. He said, “ If I do business with any man and he gets angry at me, or does not act right, it is my fault. My business is to see that everybody with whom I do business shall do right; I charge myself with that responsibility.” Now you must charge your selves, in the same way, with the responsibility of your parish. If, after the lapse of some consider able time, people get angry and act wrongly, it is in part your fault, and not theirs alone. If people want to hear the truth with freshness and new life, do not go clucking around the country, and say, “ I was ousted from my nest, where I was brooding, because the people have itching ears and want novelties.” If people are discontented with you, they have a right to be so. In closing, then, I urge you to see that you are competent for all things, by study, by the weight of your thought, and by the skill of your administration of the truth to men; but, above all, and beyond all, have in you the propelling power of that genial, yearning love which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.” For “whether there be prophecies “doctrines, teachings “they shall fail; whether there be knowledge “-such partial and incomplete systems of thought as men work out “it shall vanish away.” There is but one thing that stands. “LOVE NEVER FAILETH.”