In Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ there is the legend of the Sword of Assay.
In the church against the high altar was a great stone, four-square,
like unto a marble stone. In the midst of it was an anvil of steel, a
foot high, and therein stood a naked sword by the point. About the sword
there were letters written, saying, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of
this stone and anvil, is righteous king born of all England." Many
assayed to pull the sword forth, but all failed, until the young Arthur
came, and, taking the sword by the handle, lightly and fiercely pulled
it out of the stone! By this token he was lord of the land.
Each man's life is proved by some Sword of Assay. The test of a man's
call to the ministry is his power to seize the Sword of the Spirit:
wield the spiritual forces of the world, insight, conviction,
persuasion, truth. To do this successfully at least five things appear
to be necessary: a sterling education, marked ability in writing and in
public speaking, a noble manner, a voice capable of majestic
modulations, and a deep and tender heart. These phrases sound very
simple, but perhaps they mean more than at first appears. Have we not
all met some one, in our lifetime, whose acquaintance with us seemed to
have no preliminaries?--some one who never bothered to say anything at
all to us, until one day he said something that leaped and tingled
through our very being? This is the power that a minister ought to have
with every soul with whom he comes in contact: his word should quickly
touch a vital spot. No one to-day cares much for mere oratory, literary
discussion, polemics, or cursory exegesis; "marked ability in writing
and in public speaking" means that grip on reality which makes people
quiver, repent, believe, adore!
Sincerity is the basis of such power. At heart we worship the man who
will not lie; who will not use conventions or formulas in which he does
not believe; who does not give us a second-hand view of either life or
God; who does not play with our conscience because it is not politic to
be too direct; who does not juggle with our doubts, nor ignore our hopes
and powers; who also frankly acknowledges that he, too, is a man.
A call to the ministry also involves an over-mastering spiritual desire.
Tell me what a man wants, and I will tell what he is, and what he can
best do. If a man desires above all things to conduit a great business,
he is by nature qualified for trade; if he desires knowledge, he is
designed for a scholar; if he is always observing form, rhyme, aesthetic
beauty, and striving to produce verse, he is a born poet. But if the one
thing that rules his dreams is the longing for spiritual power--the
thought of impressing God upon his generation, and leading men to a
clearer view of life and duty--he is a born minister of the Spirit, and
to the spirit of the sons of men. Along with this goes the great burden:
"Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel!"
Wherever, to-day, there is a young man in whose heart is stirring a
great devotional dream for the race, who longs to project his life into
the most enduring and far-reaching influence, who craves the exercise of
great gifts and powers, there is a man whose heart God is calling to
possibilities such as no one can measure, and to triumphs such as no one
can forecast! The highest triumphs of these coming years are to be
spiritual. The leader is to be the one who can carry the deepest
spiritual inspiration to the hearts of his fellow-men. Do not let the
hour go by! This day of vision is the prophetic day!
But if the call be answered, if certain high-spirited and noble-minded
men ask thus to stand as spiritual ministrants to the souls of men, how
shall they be trained for the high office?
The old way will not do. Sweeping changes, in these last days, have come
over the commercial, academic, and social world. We do not go back to
the hand-loom, the hand-sickle, the hand-press. What is true of these
aspects of life is true of the spiritual training. It must be larger,
freer, grander, than before. Time was when a theologian, it was
thought, must be separated from the world--an ascetic working in the dim
half-light of the old library, or scriptorium, or hall. To-day, he must
gain much of his training from the great life of the world--learn how to
meet men and occasions, and be prepared to deal with modern forces and
energies with courage, knowledge, and decision.
We read of the earnest Thomas Goodwin: his favorite authors were such as
Augustine, Calvin, Musculus, Zanchius, Paraeus, Walaeus, Gomarus, and
Amesius. What Doctor of Theology takes the last six of these to bed with
him to-day?
Our theological courses are too dry. Look carefully over the catalogues
of thirty or forty of our own seminaries, and notice the curious, almost
monastic, impression which they make. Then realize that the men who
pursue these abstruse and mediaeval subjects are the men who go out into
churches where the chief topics of thought and conversation are crops,
stocks, politics, clothes, servants, babies! There is a grim humor in
the thing, which seems to have escaped those who have drawn up the
curriculum.
Life is not monastic. It is very lively. We scarcely get, in all our
post-collegiate life, a chance to sit and muse. We go through
sensations, experiences, and incongruities, which stir a sense of fun. A
man reads (I notice) in his seminary, St. Leo, _Ad Flaeirmum_, and makes
his first pastoral call on a woman who proudly brings out her first
baby for him to see. _Ad Flaeirmum_ indeed! What does St. Leo tell the
youth to say?
What should be breathed into a man in the seminary, is not the mere
facts of ecclesiastical history, but the warm pulsating currents of
human life; the profound significance of the founding and the progress
of the Church; a deep psychological understanding of human desires,
motives, joys, ambitions, griefs; the relentlessness of sin; the help
and glory of Redemption; the quickening of the Christ; the vigor and the
tenderness of faith. Coincident with these must be a growth in depth and
dignity of life. No one likes to take spiritual instruction from men who
are themselves crude, foolish, sentimental, or conceited. Many social
snags on which young ministers are sure to run, are simply the rudiments
of social conduct, as practised by the world. Noble manners are one's
personal actions as influenced and guided by the great behavior of the
race. Under the impulse of ideals, much that is untoward or superficial
in one's bearing will disappear. It is impossible to think as noble men
and women have thought--to dream, love, and work as they have dreamed,
loved, and wrought--and not have pass into one's mien the high
excellence of such lives.
The first education is spiritual. Until mind and heart are swept by the
spirit of God, chastened, purified, ennobled, and inspired, vain is all
the learning of the schools! To this end, there should be a more deeply
spiritual atmosphere in our seminaries, less of the mere academic
impulse. In every age, there are men just to come in contact with whom
is a benediction and a help for years. Such a man was Mark Hopkins, Noah
Porter, James McCosh. Such the leading men in every seminary should be.
The plan of education must be of principles, not of facts. The
university research-men gather facts, and scientific men everywhere
collect, analyze, and classify them. But each small department of human
learning--each minute branch in that department--needs a lifetime for
the mastery of that one theme. Hence the work of the college is quite
apart from that of the school of theology. It is the place of the school
of theology, not to ignore the New Learning, but to group, upon the
basis of a thorough college training, certain great interests and
pursuits of mankind, in such a way as to afford, by means of them, a
leverage for spiritual work.
After all is said and done, it is not the grammar-detail of Latin,
Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic dialects that makes a minister's power. It is
the strange language-culture of the race which should enter in; the
inner vitality of words, the beauty of poetic cadences, the strong flow
of rhythm, noble themes, great thoughts, impressive imagery and appeal.
We should know the Bible as literature, not as one knows a story-book,
or a dialect-exercise, but as one knows the melodies and memories of
childhood.
The vital thing is not a knowledge of the historical schisms and decrees
of Christendom--not the external Evidences of Religion, Ecclesiastical
History, Ecclesiastical Polity, monuments, texts, memorabilia--the vital
thing is the power to think about God, and the problems of mankind. It
is a heart-knowledge of the difficulties and questionings of a race that
yearns for virtue.
Man thirsts for God. No one is wholly indifferent to the Spirit. I fear
that some ministers do not know--and never will know--the heart-hunger
of the world. When they rise to speak, there is always some one present
whose breath is hushed with longing to hear spoken some real word of
truth, or strength, or comfort. If he receive but chaff!--
Theology is not a dry thing, and ought not be made so. It is quick with
the life of the race. Each dogma is a mile-stone of human progress. It
is the sifted and garnered wisdom of the centuries, concerning God, and
His ways with men. Each student should feel, not that a system is being
driven into him, as piles are driven into the stream, but that he is
being put in philosophic contact with the thought of the race on the
great topic of Religion, with liberty himself to experiment, think, and
add to the store.
Homiletics is not a series of nursery-rules for man--formal, didactic
droppings of a pedant's tongue. Homiletics is the appeal of man to man,
for the welfare of his soul, and the true progress of mankind. Exegesis
is not a matter of Hebrew or Greek alone. It includes the spiritual
interpretation of the great problems of the race. Homer, Tennyson,
Browning, and Dante are exegetes, no less than Lightfoot, Lange,
and Schaff.
Pastoral Divinity is not the etiquette of a polite way of making calls:
it is an entering into the social spirit of the time; the learning of
friendliness, unreserve, sympathy, persuasion, and a way of approach. It
is the mastery of spiritual _savoir-faire_.
Outside of this group of technical subjects there are yet others of
vital importance from a scientific understanding of the world, and of
one's work. They are Psychology, Ethics, Sociology, and Politics.
Since we have known more of the psychological meaning of adolescence, a
new theory of Conversion has sprung up; and whether or not we accept it,
the whole outlook over the underlying principle of conversion has been
changed. We must at least recognize that conversion is a scientific
process, as much as digestion is, or respiration; it is not a purely
emotional occurrence.
The minister must learn what society really is, and how the far still
forces of time act and react upon each other, producing group-actions,
institutions, customs, ways. There are social fossils as well as
physical ones. Sociology is not a system of fads and reforms. It is the
scientific study of society, of its constitution, development,
institutions, and growth. He must also breathe largely of the great
governmental life of the race--understand the primary principles of
politics and administration. He should have some knowledge of commercial
interests, of the formulas, incentives, and right principles of trade.
There should also be in the seminary an inspirational atmosphere of
music, literature, and art. Literature is a revelation of the life of
the soul. The man who reads literature and comprehends its message is
receiving a fine training which shall fit him for a thorough
understanding of the heart; of its practical, ethical, and spiritual
problems; of its domestic joys and sorrows; of its human cares and
burdens; of the appeals that will come to him for sympathy; of the
temptations that beset the race; and of the hopes and trials of
the world.
Literature is one of the best tools a minister can have. He should be
read in the great literary and sermonic literature, the work of Bossuet,
Massillon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Fénelon, Marcus Aurelius, mediaeval
homilies, Epictetus, Pascal, Guyon, Amiel, Vinet, La Brunetière, Phelps,
Jeremy Taylor, Barrows, Fuller, Whitefield, Bushnell, Edwards, Bacon,
Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Davies, Law, Bunyan, Luther, Spalding,
Robertson, Kingsley, Maurice, Chalmers, Guthrie, Stalker, Drummond,
Maclaren, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks, yes, even John Stuart
Mill. All these men, by whatever name or school they are called, are
writers of essays or sermons which appeal to the most spiritual deeps
of man.
He should read the novels of Richter, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Eliot,
and Victor Hugo. He should know intimately the great verse which
involves spiritual problems, and human strife and aspiration,--Milton,
Beówulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the
Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert,
Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell,
Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman,
Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, and Arabian verse.
In music his heart should wake to the beauty of oratorios, symphonies,
chorals, concert music, national and military music, and inspiring
songs, not to speak of hymns and of anthems, the progress of Christian
song! The _Creation_, the _Messiah_, the _Redemption_, Bach's _Passion
Music_, the _St. Cecilia Mass_, Spohr's _Judgment_, Stainer's
_Resurrection_, the _Twelfth Mass_, Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,--these are
monumental works and themes.
What is a hymn? We think of it as being some simple churchly words, set
to a serious tune. A hymn is the rhythmic aspiration of the race. No one
can look through a good hymnal--through _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, for
instance, or the Church Hymnary--without feeling that therein is bound
up the devotional life of the world. The spiritual outlook is cosmic.
Our every mood of penitence, praise, and aspiration resounds in
melodious and time-defying strains.
In art, the religious spirit broods over the great work of the world. In
Angelo, Francesca, Veronese, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto,
and Correggio, the brush of the painter has set forth the adoration of
the Church of God.
Thus, taken all in all, to be educated as a minister should be to be
educated in the Higher Life of the race.
Finally, above all else is the spiritual study and interpretation of the
Word of God. A minister may be fearless of the investigations of
scientific criticism. Every truth is important to him, but not all
truths are vital. When a man such as Caspar Rene Gregory speaks,
something of the holy mystery and inspiration of biblical research, as
well as a scientific result, is presented, and one gains a new
conception of what it really means to study and to understand the
Word of God.
Under all is the life of ceaseless and prevailing prayer. By the life of
prayer, many mean merely a way of learning to make public petitions, an
objective appeal to God. The true life of prayer is as simple, as
unteachable, and as vital as the life of a child with its mother--the
little lips daily learning new ways of approach to its mother's heart,
and new words to make its wants and interests and sorrows known.
Prayer is the true World-Power. Just as there are vast stretches in the
world where the foot of man has never trod, so there are unmeasured
regions whereon prayer has never been. The more we pray, the more
illimitable appears this spiritual realm. And all about us in the
universe are also great hidden forces: nothing will lay hold of them
but prayer.
Each prayer enlarges the soul. The measure of our praying is the measure
of our growth. No man has reached his full possibilities of achievement
who has not completed the circuit of his possible prayers. Power is
proportionate to prayer.
And last of all, there is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What it
is, who may say? But that it is real, who can doubt? To read the lives
of Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, is to feel a strange, deep thrill.
They are men who spake, and men listened; who called, and men came to
God. Others, alas, so often call, and there is no response. They cannot
make headway through the indifference, the sloth, the materialism, and
the inherent vulgarity of the world.
The life itself is arduous. After all is said, it is not quite the same
task to examine and classify either protoplasm or the most highly
organized forms of nature, that it is to analyze and understand the
mysterious workings of the heart, the intricacies of conscience and
conduct, the possibilities of spiritual development or of moral
downfall, and the many questionings, agonies, and ecstasies of the soul
of man. And they are to be studied and understood with the definite and
positive aim of the absolute reconstruction of the world-bound spirit--a
change of its motives, purposes, affections, ideals. More than this,
there must be at the heart of the more thoughtful minister a philosophic
basis for the reconstruction of society itself.
Youth is not an adequate preparation for this task: a man must live and
grow. To deal with such themes and occasions, there must appear in the
world lives of such vigor that they can command; of such charm, that
they can attract; of such wisdom, that they can guide and comfort; of
such vitality, that they can inspire. And hence there rises before the
mind's eye a figure that is both knightly and kingly--a man earnest in
the redress of wrong, and who yet holds a subtle authority over the
forces that make for wrong; a man burdened with the cares and sorrows of
many others, and yet conducting his own life with serenity, enthusiasm,
dignity, and hope; a man to whose keen yet tender gaze a life-history
is revealed by a word or tone, but whose own eyes receive their light
from God. A prophet and a father, a priest and a counsellor, a brother,
friend, and judge, a sacrifice and an inspiration should he be who, in
reverence and love, brings before a waiting congregation the very
Word of Life!