1.A 03. A Bit of Experience

A Bit of Experience.

I remember the first sermon I ever preached. I had preached a good many sermons before, too. But I remember the first real one. I had preached a good while as I had used my gun. I used to go out hunting by myself, and I had great success in firing off my gun; and the game enjoyed it as much as I did, for I never hit them or hurt them. I fired oflf my gun as I see hundreds of men firing off their sermons. I loaded it, and bang! there was a smoke, a report, but nothing fell; and so it was again and again. I recollect one day in the fields my father pointed out a little red squirrel, and said to me, “ Henry, would you like to shoot him?” I trembled all over, but I said “ Yes.” He got down on his knee, put the gun across a rail, and said, “ Henry, keep perfectly cool, perfectly cool; take aim.” And I did, and I fired, and over went the squirrel, and he didn’t run away either. That was the first thing I ever hit; and I felt an inch taller, as a boy that had killed a squirrel, and knew how to aim a gun.

I had preached two years and a half at Lawrenceburg, in Indiana (and some sporadic sermons before that), when I went to Indianapolis. While there, I was very much discontented. I had been discontented for two years. I had expected that there would be a general public interest, and especially in the week before the communion season. In the West, we had protracted meetings, and the people would come up to a high point of feeling; but I never could get them beyond that. They would come down again, and there would be no conversions. I sent for Dr. Stowe to come down and help me; but he would not come, for he thought it better for me to bear the yoke myself. When I had lived at Indianapolis the first year, I said: “There was a reason why when the apostles preached they succeeded, and I will find it out if it is to be found out.” I took every single instance in the Record, where I could find one of their sermons, and analyzed it, and asked myself: “What were the circumstances? who were the people? what did he do?” And I studied the sermons until I got this idea: That the apostles were accustomed first to feel for a ground on which the people and they stood together a common ground where they could meet.

Then they heaped up a large number of the particulars of knowledge that belonged to everybody; and when they had got that knowledge, which every body would admit, placed in a proper form before their minds, then they brought it to bear upon them with all their excited heart and feeling. That was the first definite idea of taking aim that I had in my mind. “Now,” said I, “I will make a sermon so.” I remember it just as well as if it were yesterday.

First, I sketched out the things we all know. “You all know you are living in a world perishing under your feet. You all know that time is extremely uncertain; that you cannot tell whether you will live another month or week. You all know that your destiny, in the life that is to come, depends upon the character you are forming in this life.” And in that way I went on with my “You all knows,” until I had about forty of them. When I had got through that, I turned round and brought it to bear upon them with all my might; and there were seventeen men awakened under that sermon.

I never felt so triumphant in my life. I cried all the way home. I said to myself, “Now I know how to preach.”

I could not make another sermon for a month that was good for anything. I had used all my powder and shot on that one. But, for the first time in my life, I had got the idea of taking aim. I soon added to it the idea of analyzing the people I was preaching to, and so taking aim for specialties. Of course that came gradually and later, with growing knowledge and experience.

Young man, when you get a parish, don’t be discouraged for the first ten years, no matter how poor your work. There is no trade that requires so long an apprenticeship as preaching; and yet there is no trade to which they admit a man so soon, or in which he learns so fast. It is easier to study law and become a successful practitioner, it is easier to study medicine and become a successful practitioner, than it is to study the human soul all through to know its living forms, and to know the way of talking to it, and coming into sympathy with it. To make the truths of God and the divine influences a part of your daily, enthusiastic experience, and to bring to bear out of your treasury what is needed here or there, that requires a great deal of experience and a great deal of study.