"_able with her word to kill,
And raise againe to life the heart that she did thrill_."
This power has at times been misunderstood and misapplied. No human
authority can bind the conscience, nor set rules and regulations for the
soul of man. The prerogative of final direction belongs to God alone. No
man may arrogate it--no pastor for people, no husband for wife, no wife
for husband, no parent for child. The sadness of the world has been,
that men have not always been spiritually free. Freedom has been a
social growth--a phase of progress. It has taken wars and persecutions,
revolutions and reformations, the blood of saints and martyrs, the
sorrow of ages, to plant this precept in the mind of man.
The evangelist warns. He speaks of sin, death, hell, and the judgment
to come. It is for these things that he is sent to testify. These are
not the catch-words of a new sort of Fear King who uses oral terrors to
affright the soul of man. Heaven and hell are not a new sort of
ghost-land: retribution is not a larger way of tribal revenge.
No. The latest facts of science present this universe as not only
progressive, but as retributive. There is a rebound of evil which makes
for pain. Each broken law exacts a penalty. Each deed of sin is a
forerunner of personal and of social disaster. The generation that sins
shall be cut off, while the stock of the righteous grows strong from
age to age.
The scientific vista opening to the eye of man is impressive and
appalling. Each man has within himself a future of joy or sadness for
the race. Do you remember the sermon of Horace Bushnell on the
"Populating Power of the Christian Faith"? Do you recall the history of
the infamous Jukes family? That of the seven devout and noble
generations of the Murrays? The Day of Judgment is not only the Last
Great Day--it is to-day and every day. "Every day is Doomsday," says
Emerson. Nature is unforgetful. Nature is accountant. Each iniquity must
be paid for out of the resources of the race.
It is of these grave omens that the Man of God must speak. He dare not
be tongue-tied by custom or by fear. He must proclaim hell in the ears
of all mankind. For wherever hell may be, and we do not yet know, and
whatever hell may be, and we cannot even imagine, Hell _is_; and the
soul of man must be kept mindful of these great things.
The evangelist comforts and consoles. The heart of man is wayward and
goes oft astray. No one can be belabored into righteousness. The true
lover of souls allows for the hereditary weaknesses of man, for his
infirmities of will and temper, for his excuses, wanderings, and tears,
and presents to him Jesus, in whose sight no one is too wretched to be
received, too wicked to be forgiven.
We must have forgiveness in order to know God. The most comforting
thought in the world is that God knows all we do. There can be no
misunderstanding between us: He cannot be misinformed.
The evangelist must come close, in sympathy and counsel, to the personal
and individual life of those whom he would help. Perhaps the best way to
emphasize this point would be to insert here words written by a woman
who has been thinking on this subject.
She says: "I have never had a pastor. It is the one good thing lacking
in my life. I have grown up among ministers, and have had many friends
among them--some of them have cared for me. But there has never been one
among them all who stood in an attitude of spiritual authority and
helpfulness to my life. We church-going and Christian men and women of
the educated class are almost wholly let alone; apparently no one takes
thought for our souls. We are not in the least infallible; we come face
to face with fierce temptations; we have heart-breaking sorrows; we are
burdened with anxiety and perplexity. But we are left to grope as blind
sheep; there is no one to point out the path to us, however dimly; no
one to say, at any crucial moment of our lives, Walk here!
"Once, however," she continues, "one of my friends, a minister, knelt
down by me and prayed. It was a simple and ordinary occasion--others
were present. But every word of that prayer was meant for the uplifting
of my heart. In that hour, I was as if overshadowed by the Holy Ghost;
new aims and purposes were born within me. My friend loves me--that does
not matter--it is his spiritual intensity I care for. And this is his
reward for his fidelity and tenderness: In the hour when I come to die,
when one does not ask for father or mother, or husband or wife, or
brother or sister, or friend or child, but only for the strong comfort
of the man of God--in that hour, I say, if I be at all able to make my
wishes known, I shall send for that man to come to me. He, and no other,
shall present my soul to God."
Reading the above words, more than one minister will cry out, his eyes
blazing: "I say the same to you! Who is there that tries to shield the
minister from sorrow and from pain? Who is there to comfort and help
_him_? You think we can just go on, and preach, preach, preach, standing
utterly alone, and with no one on earth to keep our own hearts close to
God! I tell you, it is a lonely and weary work at times, this being a
minister!"
Yes, there must be a people, as well as a pastor. The relation is
reciprocal. Wherever there is a strong man, leaning down in fire and
tenderness to help the lives about him, there must be a loyal and loving
congregation, with here and there in it some one who more fully
appreciates and understands. Nothing beats down and discourages a man
more than to feel that he is preaching to cold air and not to human
folks, and to get back, when he offers sympathy, a stare.
A congregation is a mysterious and subtle social force. Its effect on a
minister he can neither analyze nor explain. But he knows that its power
is mesmeric and cannot be escaped. He goes into its presence from an
hour of exalted and uplifted prayer, serene, happy, strong, and prepared
to speak words of power and life. Gazing at his people--he can never
tell why--the words freeze on his lips. An icy hand seems laid upon his
heart, and he makes a cold and formal presentation of his glowing theme,
and wonders who or what has done it all. Something satanic and
repelling has laid hold of his tongue and brain.
Or again, he may have had a worried and troubled week, full of personal
anxiety and sorrow. He has not had full time to study--he feels quite
unprepared, and enters the pulpit with a halting step, and a choking
fear of failure at his heart.
In a moment, the world changes. Something imperceptible, but sweet and
comforting, steals over him,--an uplifting atmosphere of attention,
sympathy, affection. He begins to speak, very quietly at first, with
quite an effort. But the congregation leads him on, to deeper thoughts,
to nobler words, to modulations of voice that carry him quite beyond
himself. His voice rises, and every syllable is firm and musical. His
language springs from some far centre of inspiration. He is conscious of
superb power, and as sentence after sentence falls from his
lips----sentences that amaze himself more than any other----he enters
into the supreme height of joy, that of being a spiritual messenger to
the hearts of longing men and women. He and they together talk of God.
This sympathetic atmosphere makes great preachers and great men. In
return, there flows from a pastor toward his people a love that few can
know or understand.
2. His rule is also over spiritual enthusiasm. What is a revival? We
confound it with a local excitement, a community-sensation of an
hysterical and passing type--with sensational disturbances, falling
exercises, shouts, weeping, and the like. A revival is something far
different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It
is a quickening of dead, backsliding, or inattentive souls.
Man as an individual is quite a different person from the same man in a
crowd. One is himself alone; the other is himself, plus the influence of
the Social Mind. A revival is a social state, in which the social
religious enthusiasm is stirred up. It is a lofty form of religion, just
as the patriotism which breaks forth in tears and cheers as troops go
out to war is a finer type than the mere excitement and fervor of one
patriotic man. What would the Queen's Jubilee have been, if but one
soldier had marched up and down? A great commemoration! If we grant the
reality of national rejoicing in the royal jubilees, commercial
rejoicing in business men's processions, university enthusiasm on
Commencement Day--shall we not grant the reality of the religious
interest and enthusiasm of a great revival, in which whole communities
shall be led to a clearer knowledge of spiritual things?
The Crusades were a magnificent revival. The Reformation was a revival.
The Salvation Army movement is a revival. But the greatest revival of
all times is even now upon us: it is a revival in the scientific
circles of the race. Time was when science and religion were supposed to
be at odds; to-day the intellectual phalanxes are sweeping Christward
with an impetus that is sublime! Thinkers are finding in the large life
of religion a motive power for their thought, their growth--a reason for
their existence--a forecast of their destiny. We are beginning to
realize the dynamic value of Belief. This revival is coming, not with
shouts and noise, but with the quiet insistence of new ideas, of new
facts--with the still voice of scientific announcement. The atheist is
being overcome, not by emotion, but by evidence; the scoffer is being
put down by cool logic.
Hence the evangelist of to-day is more than a man who can popularly
address a public audience, and by tales and tears arouse a weeping
commotion. The evangelist is a man of intellect and prayer, who can
preach the gospel to a scientific age, and to a thinking coterie--a
coterie of college men and mechanics, of society women and
servant-girls, of poets and of mine-diggers, of convicts and of
reformers. To-day calls for the utmost intellectual resources of the
teacher of the truth, for a great imagination, great style, great
sympathy with men, large learning, and unceasing prayer!
3. His rule is over social ideals. He must be a man of social insight.
The social spirit is abroad in the world, but it is woefully erratic
and misguided. Any one thinks he can be an altruist. Why not? Take a
class in a college settlement, make some bibs for a day nursery, give
tramps a C.O.S. card, with one's compliments, and attend about six
lectures a year on Philanthropy--the lectures very good indeed. One is
then a full-fledged altruist, _n'est-ce pas_?
The philanthropy of to-day has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each
present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a
hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called
philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach
themselves to any social movement, as a shaggy gown will gather burrs.
It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at
ignorance, and to go a-peeping through the slums! We have not yet
realized the fulness of redemption. Of what avail is it to save one
street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain
unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not only the individual,
but his environment, his friends, and his future state.
The true minister is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes
the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and
sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a
bad custom? What is an abuse? They are social standards which are out of
harmony with true concepts of God, life, and duty. Behind the work of
the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic,
the seer. He must first have in mind a plain, clear conception of what
the relation is of man to God, of what man's environment should be, and
of what the society of the Kingdom should be. The reformer is one who
changes an existing social environment for approximately this ideal
environment of his own thought. When he breaks an idol, it is not the
idol itself that he everlastingly hates, it is the materialistic concept
of the community. What he wishes in place of the idol is a right
conception. No man could break up every idol in the Sandwich Islands.
But a man went about implanting a spiritual idea of God, and the idols
disappeared.
Hence the work of the reformer is deep and heart-searching work. It
means constant study of the spiritual needs of the age, continual
insight into the material forces which are moulding the age-images,
money, conquest, or whatever they may be. He wishes to maintain a
spiritual hold on civilization itself, so to transform the ideal within
a man, a community, a nation, in regard to custom, observance, belief,
that the outer rite shall follow.
To reform is not to rush through the slums, and then preach a
sensational sermon about bad places in the slums, of which most people
never knew before! To reform is to know something of the conditions
which produce the slums--it is not to scatter the slum-people broadcast
elsewhere in the town; it is not alone to give them baths, playgrounds,
circulating libraries of books and pictures, dancing-parties, and social
clubs. To reform the slums is to set up a new ideal of God, and of
righteous conduct in the heart of the slum-dwellers. One must know
something of the slow processes of social change, of social
assimilation, growth, and stability, to have an intellectual perception
of the problem, as well as a spiritual one. One does not make an ill-fed
child strong by stuffing five pounds of oatmeal down its throat!
The reformer must not only be a man of energy, he must be a man of
patience. Great reforms come slowly. As man has advanced, idleness,
indolence, brutality, tyranny, drunkenness, cant, and social scorn are
gradually being cast out. But behind these simple words lie hid
centuries of strife and endeavor, and limitless darkenings of
human hope.
To fly against vice is merely to invite enmity and opposition. To
present a pure and noble ideal, to breathe forth a holy atmosphere for
the soul, are constructive works. The trouble is not, that the ministers
preach on social themes--all themes that concern the life of man are
social themes. It is that they do piece-work and patch-work of reform,
instead of plain, direct upbuilding work in the souls and consciences of
men. To preach upon horse-stealing is one thing. The horse-stealer may
be impressed, convicted, made penitent, and return the stolen horse. But
not until his heart is imbued with a spiritual conception of honesty, as
the law of God, will he steal a stray horse no more. Hence the first
questions in reform are not: How many groggeries are there in my parish?
How many corrupt polls? How many hypocrites on my church-roll? The
question is: How is my parish society in enmity to the highest spiritual
ideal I know? Many men preach about saloons, when they ought to be
preaching about Christ.
The force of this reform-energy is uncomputed. We hear of occasional
great reformers, but forget that there has been a prevailing influence
extending over the ages, of holy men of God, who have preached and
taught and prayed; who have preserved our social institutions of
spiritual import, and have been a mighty and continuous force working
for righteousness and peace.
Missions are a higher form of politics. To further missions is to
further government, international comity, world-peace.