POOR PREACHING.
There never was a time when in all denominations of Christians there was so
much attractive sermonizing as to-day. Princeton, and Middletown, and
Rochester, and New Brunswick, are sending into the ministry a large number
of sharp, earnest, consecrated men. Stupidity, after being regularly
ordained, is found to be no more acceptable to the people than before, and
the title of Doctorate cannot any longer be substituted for brains.
Perhaps, however, there may get to be a surfeit of fine discourses. Indeed,
we have so many appliances for making bright and incisive preachers that we
do not know but that after a while, when we want a sleepy discourse as an
anodyne, we shall have to go to the ends of the earth to find one; and dull
sermons may be at a premium, congregations of limited means not being able
to afford them at all; and so we shall have to fall back on chloral or
morphine.
Are we not, therefore, doing a humanitarian work when we give to
congregations some rules by which, if they want it, they may always have
poor preaching?
First. Keep your minister poor. There is nothing more ruinous than to pay a
pastor too much salary. Let every board of trustees look over their books
and see if they have erred in this direction; and if so, let them cut down
the minister's wages. There are churches which pay their pastors eight
hundred dollars per annum. What these good men do with so much money we
cannot imagine. Our ministers must be taken in. If by occasional fasting
for a day our Puritan fathers in New England became so good, what might we
not expect of our ministers if we kept them in perpetual fast? No doubt
their spiritual capacity would enlarge in proportion to their shrinkage at
the waistcoat. The average salary of ministers in the United States is
about six hundred dollars. Perhaps by some spiritual pile-driver we might
send it down to five hundred dollars; and then the millennium, for the lion
by that time would be so hungry he would let the lamb lie down inside of
him. We would suggest a very economical plan: give your spiritual adviser a
smaller income, and make it up by a donation visit. When everything else
fails to keep him properly humble, that succeeds. We speak from experience.
Fourteen years ago we had one, and it has been a means of grace to us ever
since.
Secondly. For securing poor preaching, wait on your pastor with frequent
committees. Let three men some morning tie their horses at the dominie's
gate, and go in and tell him how to preach, and pray, and visit. Tell him
all the disagreeable things said about him for six months, and what a great
man his predecessor was, how much plainer his wife dressed, and how much
better his children behaved. Pastoral committees are not like the
small-pox--you can have them more than once; they are more like the mumps,
which you may have first on one side and then on the other. If, after a man
has had the advantage of being manipulated by three church committees, he
has any pride or spirit left, better give him up as incorrigible.
Thirdly. To secure poor preaching, keep the minister on the trot. Scold him
when he comes to see you because he did not come before, and tell him how
often you were visited by the former pastor. Oh, that blessed predecessor!
Strange they did not hold on to the angel when they had him. Keep your
minister going. Expect him to respond to every whistle. Have him at all the
tea parties and "the raisings." Stand him in the draught of the door at the
funeral--a frequent way of declaring a pulpit vacant. Keep him busy all the
week in out-door miscellaneous work; and if at the end of that time he
cannot preach a weak discourse, send for us, and we will show him how to do
it. Of course there are exceptions to all rules; but if the plan of
treatment we have proposed be carried out, we do not see that any church in
city or country need long be in want of poor preaching.