1.F 12. Questions and Answers
Questions and Answers.
Q. How about living in those little places that don’t pay enough to live upon?
MR. BEECHER. Live within your income.
There was a Mr. Bushnell, quite as famous in his way, in Ohio, as Horace Bushnell was in Connecticut, although of different make. He was a man like Paul, insignificant in presence, small, and weak eyed, and, I believe, now is blind entirely. He was a man who, besides having a heart consecrated to God and humanity, was also fearless, brave, and enterprising. There was a little settlement be low Cincinnati, called Cleves. The people there had driven out every minister they had had. The Methodists tried it, and if they cannot stick, you may say it is a tough place. They had to abandon that neighbourhood. Bushnell determined that the gospel should be preached there, and thither he went; and it was at a time, too, when it was enough to burn a man to have it known that he was an abolitionist. Bushnell went there and preached, and took no pains to hide the fact in the neighbourhood that he was an abolitionist, although he was so near Kentucky, which was just over the river. He could not get a man in that region who would take him to board. Finally, he found an old cabin that was abandoned by some negroes. He daubed it over with mud, and fixed it up so that it would shelter him. He went into the place, lived in it, cooked for himself, took care of himself, and preached to this people. At first they wouldn’t go to hear him. He started out after them. He went into the fields and talked with them. He said, “ Now, I will tell you, you may just as well come to church; if you won’t come where I preach, I shall go to you.”
They began to admire the man’s pluck. “He is a little fellow,” they said, “but he is so courageous! They had threatened him with everything; but they finally began to listen to him. The first man that came was an infidel. He had been made an infidel by the teachings of Christian Churches and ministers that the Bible justified slavery. lie was a man of groat benevolence and great justice, and he said, “If Christianity teaches that, I will never be a Christian.” When he heard of a minister who denounced slavery, and proved from the Bible that it was unjust, he said, “ I want to hear that man.” When he found what manner of man he was, he joined himself to the new-comer. He was converted, and became an active Christian man. The result was, that Bushnell very soon gathered up a little church, and they had prayer-meetings and other Christian gatherings in the neighbourhood, which effectively began the work of regenerating it.
Now I want to know what success Bushnell would have met with if he had put on a broadcloth coat, and had questioned and paltered with the people, saying, “How much salary will you give me? “ or if he had asked himself, “ Is it my duty to settle down there? “ I believe that the Word of Christ is the best charter of every Christian minister, “ Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” There is nothing that makes salary so fast as not to care for it, and to put your whole life and soul into the work of God’s ministry, so that men feel to the bottom of their hearts that there is a man who has got hold of them. No man will starve.
I do not mean by that that there is to be no consideration for the future, but I mean to say that a generous trust in the people and an earnest devotion to work will insure a man all the support that he needs.
Q. Would you advise a young man to settle immediately upon leaving the seminary, especially in going West?
Yes; the quicker you get to work after you are through your studies the better. People sometimes say, “ Do you think it would be better for me to go to Edinburgh and take a course there?” or, “ How would it be if I should go to Germany?” Well, if you are going to be a critical student, a professor, or if you are going to compile a dictionary or take a chair in a theological seminary if your life is going to be a scholar’s life, in contradistinction from a preacher’s life I should say that a post-seminary course is advisable. But if you are going to be working among men, do not delay your work one unnecessary moment after getting through your seminary course. An academical education is some what exclusive in its character, and tends to foster a class-spirit. You are separated from the people, and are kept out of the ordinary run of human life; you are, as it were, made monks of. If you are fit for your work, the sooner you get into real business in the field the better for you.
Q. Would you have a man preach while he is in the seminary?
I should say, Yes. The habit of bringing your minds to bear on other people, in a moral point of view, ought to be kept up all the way through, from beginning to end. A habit of thinking of other people’s welfare, labouring for it, and accumulating the material by which you will accomplish it, carrying your heart warm all the time, is a good thing for a man who is going to preach and to be a minister of Christ.
Q. Are not these little mean places very unfavourable for the culture of grace, &c.?
MR. BEECHER. They are not mean.
Q. I think your first settlement, Lawrenceburg, was mean.
MR. BEECHER. No; it was not. It was a good place to train a yoting minister. We are all sinful. My church was sinful, and its pastor was. There were various degrees of sinners all the way through. But that little town had one woman in it thatredeemed the place; and if I had the making of a Catholic calendar, I would enroll her as a saint.
Old Mother Rice taught me more practical godliness than any one else, except my own father. She was a labouring-woman, the wife of an old, drunken, retired sea-captain. They were so poor that they had to live above a cooper’s shop, with loose planks for a floor, which wabbled as you walked over them, and through which you could see the men at work below. Her husband would abuse her and swear at her. But there was never any person in distress in the town that Mother Rice did not visit. No case of sickness occurred that she did not consecrate the chamber with her presence. There was nobody who was discouraged and needed comfort that did not experience her kind offices. She was one of the sweetest, gentlest, and serenest of women. This place was like the mud and rubbish brought up by the diver, which yet contains a beautiful pearl. This woman would have redeemed that town from being mean, even if it had had no other good thing in it. You can always find goodness and nobility by looking for it. A STUDENT. I know something about the Bushnell of whom you have spoken, and although he is a man whom everybody regards with respect, yet he is not a man who comes up to your idea of what a minister should be.
MR. BEECHER. I only mentioned his name to illustrate how a man will succeed by going into the lowest and most hardened community with a consecrated spirit, with courage, and with a determination to succeed. I do not hold him up as a model minister throughout his whole ministerial life by any means. THE SAME STUDENT. I simply brought up his name in this connection to show the difficulty there is connected with going West, into these little places, in regard to culture. You hold that we ought to have a certain grace and ease of bearing. It seems to mo that that kind of a place is very undesirable for such training.
MR. BEECHER. Then carry it there. That should be part of a minister’s influence out there. The theory that lies behind every other is, that a minis ter is a little Christ; that he teaches men about Christ, by acting the life of Christ over again right before them, with the same humiliation, self-denial, and self-sacrifice that Jesus Christ displayed when on earth among men. Now this, as a model, is so high that we shall all fall short of it; but it is an ideal that will do you a great deal of good to keep in your mind if you are going to set yourself up before your fellow-men as teachers and preachers of the life that is reserved for God’s people. You must be to them what Christ was in his time to those around him. Did you ever read Park man’s “ History of the Jesuits,” in relation to their missions in Canada among the Northern Indians? That book ought to be read by every Protestant clergyman, and especially by those who think there is no piety in the Catholic Church. No matter how erroneous their teaching may be, they displayed some of the sweetest and noblest traits of self-devotion ever recorded in the pages of history in their missionary work among the Indians. They went among them in their rudest estate, lived in their smoky huts, were derided, hooted at, and contemned, year after year. They were men of culture and refinement, and men who had earned at home a world-wide reputation; yet they lived in these wigwams without a single convert, and were willing to live forty years there, faithful in labour, and then die without a sign of success. They rebuke us in our missionary work.
Q. May it not be desirable to spend a year in an Eastern parish before going West?
Mr. BEECHER. No, sir! -You will never go West if you do. If you go West and endure hard ships, like a good soldier, you will gradually become worthy to occupy an easier post when you shall be called to one.