THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT.
The children after quitting the tea-table were too noisy for Sabbath night,
and some things were said at the table critical of their behavior, when old
Dominie Scattergood dawned upon the subject and said:
We expect too much of our children when they become Christians. Do not let
us measure their qualifications by our own bushel. We ought not to look for
a gravity and deep appreciation of eternal things such as we find in grown
persons. We have seen old sheep in the pasture-field look anxious and
troubled because the lambs would frisk.
No doubt the children that were lifted by their mothers in Christ's arms,
and got His blessing, five minutes after He set them down were as full of
romp as before they came to Him. The boy that because he has become a
Christian is disgusted with ball-playing, the little girl who because she
has given her heart to God has lost her interest in her waxen-doll, are
morbid and unhealthy. You ought not to set the life of a vivacious child to
the tune of Old Hundred.
When the little ones come before you and apply for church membership, do
not puzzle them with big words, and expect large "experiences." It is now
in the church as when the disciples of old told the mothers not to bother
Christ with their babes. As in some households the grown people eat first,
and the children have to wait till the second table, so there are persons
who talk as though God would have the grown people first sit down at His
banquet; and if there is anything over the little ones may come in for a
share.
No, no! If the supply at the Lord's table were limited, He would let the
children come in first and the older ones go without, as a punishment for
not having come in while they themselves were children. If the wind is from
the northeast, and the air is full of frost and snow, and part of the flock
must be left out on the mountains, let it be the old sheep, for they can
stand it better than the lambs. O Shepherd of Israel, crowd them all in
before the coming of the tempest!
Myself.--Dominie Scattergood, what do yow think of this discussion in the
papers on the subject of liturgies?
Scattergood.--I know there has been much talk of late about liturgies in
the churches, and whether or not audiences should take audible part in
religious service. While others are discussing that point, let me say that
all the service of the Church ought to be responsive if not with audible
"Amen," and unanimous "Good Lord, deliver us," then with hearty outburst of
soul.
Let not the prayer of him that conducts public service go up solitary and
alone, but accompanied by the heartfelt ejaculation of all the auditory. We
sit down on a soft cushion, in a pew by architectural skill arranged to fit
the shape of our back, and are tempted to fall into unprofitable reveries.
Let the effort be on the part of every minister to make the prayer and the
Scripture-reading and the giving out of the hymn so emphatic that the
audience cannot help but respond with all the soul.
Let the minister, before going into the pulpit, look over the whole field
and recall what are the styles of bereavement in the congregation--whether
they be widowhood, orphanage or childlessness; what are the kinds of
temporal loss his people may recently have suffered--whether in health, in
reputation or estate; and then get both his shoulders under these troubles,
and in his prayer give one earnest and tremendous lift, and there will be
no dullness, no indifference, no lack of multitudinous response.
The reason that congregations have their heads bobbing about in prayer-time
is because the officiating clergyman is apt to petition in the abstract. He
who calls the troubles of his people by their right names, and tenderly
lays hold of the cancers of the souls before him, will not lack in getting
immediate heartfelt, if not audible, response.
While we have not as much interest in the agitated question of liturgies as
would make us say ten words about it, we are interested more than we can
tell in the question, How shall the officiating ministers, in all the
churches, give so much point, and adaptedness, and vigor and blood-red
earnestness of soul to their public devotions as shall make all the people
in church feel that it is the struggle for their immortal life in which the
pastor is engaged? Whether it be in tones that strike the ear, or with a
spiritual emphasis heard only in the silent corridor of the heart, let all
the people say Amen!
Myself.--What do you think, Dominie, about all this talk about
sensationalism in the pulpit?
Scattergood.--As far as I can understand, it seems to be a war between
stagnation and sensationalism, and I dislike both.
I do not know which word is the worst. It is the national habit in
literature and religion to call that sensationalism which we ourselves
cannot do. If an author write a book that will not sell, he is apt to
charge the books of the day which do succeed as being sensational. There
are a great many men who, in the world and the Church, are dead failures,
who spend their time in letting the public know that they are not
sensationalists. The fact is that they never made any stir while living,
nor will they in dying, save as they rob the undertaker of his fees, they
not leaving enough to pay their dismission expenses.
I hate sensationalism in the pulpit so far as that word means the preaching
of everything but the gospel, but the simple fact is that whenever and
wherever faith and repentance and heaven and hell are proclaimed with
emphasis there will be a sensation. The people in our great cities are
hungry for the old gospel of Christ. If our young men in the ministry want
large audiences, let them quit philosophizing, and hair-splitting, and
botanizing, and without gloves take hold of men's sins and troubles, and
there will be no lack of hearers. Stagnation is worse than sensationalism.
I have always noticed that just in proportion as a man cannot get along
himself he is fearful of some one else making an excitement. Last week a
mud-turtle down by the brook opened its shell and discoursed to a horse
that was coming down to drink. The mud-turtle said to the horse: "Just as I
get sound asleep you are sure to come past and wake me up. We always used
to have a good quiet time down here in the swamp till you got in the habit
of thumping along this way. I am conservative and like to keep in my shell.
I have been pastor of thirteen other mud-turtles, and we always had peace
until you came, and next week at our semi-annual meeting of mud-turtles we
shall either have you voted a nuisance or will talk it over in private,
eight, or ten of us, which will probably be the more prudent way." Then the
mud-turtle's shell went shut with a snap, at which the horse kicked up his
heels as he turned to go up to the barn to be harnessed to a load of corn
that was ready for the market.
Let us all wake up and go to work. There are in the private membership of
our churches and in the ministry a great many men who are dead, but have
never had the common decency to get buried. With the harvest white and
"lodging" for lack of a sickle, instead of lying under the trees
criticising the sweating reapers who are at work, let us throw off our own
coat and go out to see how good a swathe we can cut.
Myself.--You seem, Dominie Scattergood, though you have been preaching a
great while, to be very healthy and to have a sound throat.
Scattergood.--Yes; I don't know any reason why ministers should not be as
well as other persons. I have never had the ministers' sore throat, but
have avoided it by the observance of two or three rules which I commend to
you of less experience. The drug stores are full of troches, lozenges and
compounds for speakers and singers. All these medicines have an important
mission, but how much better would it be to avoid the ills than to spend
one's time in trying to cure them!
1. Speak naturally. Let not incompetent elocutionists or the barbarisms of
custom give you tones or enunciations at war with those that God implanted.
Study the vocal instrument and then play the best tune on it possible, but
do not try to make a flute sound like a trumpet, or a bagpipe do the work
of a violin.
2. Remember that the throat and lungs were no more intended to speak with
than the whole body. If the vocal organs get red hot during a religious
service, while the rest of the body does not sympathize with them, there
will be inflammation, irritation and decay. But if the man shall, by
appreciation of some great theme of time and eternity, go into it with all
his body and soul, there will be an equalization of the whole physical
organism, and bronchitis will not know whether to attack the speaker in his
throat, right knee or left ankle, and while it is deciding at what point to
make assault the speaker will go scot-free. The man who besieges an
audience only with his throat attempts to take a castle with one gun, but
he who comes at them with head, eyes, hand, heart, feet, unlimbers against
it a whole park of artillery. Then Sebastopol is sure to be taken.
Myself.--I notice, Dominie, that your handwriting is not as good as your
health. Your letter in reply to my invitation to be here was so indistinct
that I could not tell whether it was an acceptance or a declinature.
Scattergood.--Well, I have not taken much care of my autograph. I know that
the attempt has been made to reduce handwriting to a science. Many persons
have been busy in gathering the signatures of celebrated men and women. A
Scotchman, by the name of Watson, has paid seventy-five thousand dollars
for rare autographs. Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has a collection
marvelous for interest.
After we read an interesting book we want to see the author's face and his
autograph. But there is almost always a surprise or disappointment felt
when for the first time we come upon the handwriting of persons of whom we
have heard or read much. We often find that the bold, dashing nature
sometimes wields a trembling pen, and that some man eminent for weakness
has a defiant penmanship that looks as if he wrote with a splinter of
thunderbolt.
I admit that there are instances in which the character of the man decides
the style of his penmanship. Lord Byron's autograph was as reckless as its
author. George Washington's signature was a reflection of his dignity. The
handwriting of Samuel Rogers was as smooth as his own nature. Robespierre's
fierce-looking autograph seems to have been written with the dagger of a
French revolution.
On the contrary, one's handwriting is often the antipodes of his character.
An unreasonable schoolmaster has often, by false instruction, cramped or
ruined the pupil's chirography for ever. If people only knew how a brutal
pedagogue in the academy used to pull my ears while learning to write, I
should not be so often censured for my own miserable scribble. I defy any
boy to learn successfully to make "hooks and trammels" in his copy-book, or
ever after learn to trace a graceful calligraphy, if he had "old Talyor"
bawling over him. I hope never to meet that man this side of heaven, lest
my memory of the long-ago past be too much for the sense of ministerial
propriety.
There are great varieties of circumstances that influence and decide the
autograph. I have no faith in the science of chirography. I could, from a
pack of letters in one pigeon-hole, put to rout the whole theory. I have
come to the conclusion that he who judges of a man's character by his
penmanship makes a very poor guess. The boldest specimen of chirography I
ever received was from a man whose wife keeps him in perpetual tremor, he
surrendering every time she looks toward the broomstick.
Myself.--What do you think, Dominie, of the fact that laymen have begun to
preach? and what is your opinion of the work they are doing in Scotland?
For the first time in many a day the old Dominie grew sarcastic, and said:
What are we coming to? Get out your fire-engines. There is a conflagration.
What work Messrs. Moody, Sankey, Phillips, Bliss, Jacobs, Burnell, Durant
and fifty other laymen have done. Wherever they go they have large
concourses of people, and powerful revivals of religion follow. Had we not
better appoint a meeting of conference or presbytery to overhaul these men
who are saving souls without license? No! What we want is ten thousand men
just like them, coming up from among the people, with no professional garb,
and hearts hot with religious fervor, and bound by no conventionalities or
stereotyped notions about the way things ought to be done.
I have a sly suspicion that the layman who has for seven years given the
most of his time to the study of the truth is better prepared to preach the
gospel than a man who has given that length of time in theological
seminaries to the study of what other people say about the Bible. In other
words, we like water just dipped from the spring, though handed in a gourd,
rather than water that has been standing a week in a silver pitcher.
After Calvin has twisted us one way, and Arminius has twisted us another,
and we get our head full of the old Andover and New Haven theological
fights, and the difference between Ante-Nicene Trinitarianism and
Post-Nicene Trinitarianism, it is a luxury to meet some evangelist who can
tell us in our common mother-tongue of Him who came to seek and to save
that which was lost.
I say let our learned institutions push theological education to its
highest excellency, preparing men for spheres which none but the cultured
and scholarly are fit for, but somehow let us beat the drum and gather a
battalion of lay-workers. We have enough wise men to tell us about fishes,
about birds, about rocks, about stars--enough Leyden jars, enough
telescopes, enough electric batteries; but we have not more than one man
where we ought to have a hundred to tell the story of Christ and the soul.
Some cry out, "It is dangerous to have laymen take such prominent positions
in the Church." Dangerous to what? Our dignity, our prerogatives, our
clerical rights? It is the same old story. If we have a mill on the stream,
we do not want some one else to build a mill on the same stream. It will
take the water off our wheel. But, blessed be God! the river of salvation
is deep and strong enough to grind corn for all nations.
If a pulpit is so weak that the wave of religious zeal on the part of the
laity submerges it, then let it go under. We cannot expect all other
shipping to forsake the sea lest they run down our craft. We want more
watchmen on the wall, more sentinels at the gate, more recruits for the
field. Forward the whole Christian laity! Throw up no barrier to their
advancement. Do not hang the Church until dead by the neck with "red-tape."
I laughed outright, though I ought to have cried, when I read in one of our
papers a statement of the work of Moody and Sankey in Edinburgh, which
statement closed with the luscious remark that "Probably the Lord is
blessing their work." I never saw a word put in more awkward and forced and
pitiable predicament than that word probably. While heaven and earth and
hell have recognized the stupendous work now going on in Scotland under God
and through the instrumentality of these American evangelists, a
correspondent thinks that probably something has happened.
Oh how hard it is to acknowledge that men are doing good if they do not
work in our way and by our methods! One's heart must have got awfully
twisted and near being damned who can look on a great outpouring of the
Holy Ghost and have any use for probabilities. The tendency is even among
Christians to depreciate that which goes on independent of themselves and
in a way oppugnant to their personal taste. People do not like those who do
a thing which they themselves have not been able to accomplish.
The first cry is, "The people converted are the lower population, and not
the educated." We wonder if five hundred souls brought to Christ from the
"Cowgate" and "Coalhole," and made kings and priests unto God, and at last
seated on thrones so high they will not be able to reach down with their
foot to the crown of an earthly monarch, is not worth some consideration?
Then the cry is, "They will not hold out." Time only will show that.
They are doing all they can. You cannot expect them to hold out ten
years in six weeks. The most faithful Christians we have ever known
were brought in through revivals, and the meanest, stingiest, dullest,
hardest-to-get-on-with Christians have joined when the church was dead.
When a candidate for admission comes before session in revival times, I ask
him only seven or eight questions; but when he comes during a cold state of
religion, I ask him twenty questions, and get the elders to ask him as many
more. In other words, I have more faith in conversions under special
religious influence than under ordinary.
The best luck I ever had in fishing was when I dropped the net in the bay
and brought up at one haul twenty bluefish, with only three or four
moss-bunkers, and the poorest luck I ever had was when, after standing two
hours in the soggy meadow with one hook on the line, I felt I had a bite,
and began to pull, more and more persuaded of the great size of the
captive, until I flung to the shore a snapping-turtle. As a gospel
fisherman I would rather run the risk of a large haul than of a solitary
angling. I can soon sort out and throw overboard the few moss-bunkers.
Oh for great awakenings all over Christendom!
We have had a drought so long we can stand a freshet. Let the Hudson and
the Thames and the Susquehanna rise and overflow the lowlands, and the
earth be full of the knowledge of God as the waters fill the seas. That
time is hastening, probably!