Letters of an old Methodist to his son in the ministry

Letter One I

Tippecanoe, Ind.

Dear Henry : I am glad to hear that you are well again, though I confess that I am still a little troubled about your health. A man like you, with an ancestry that helped to make the West in the pioneer days and helped to make the East a little further back and with a constitution built up on an Indiana farm behind a plow and which has never been undermined by tobacco or liquor, has no right to be sick. I don't go much on Christian Science but at the same time I don't believe that sickness is a particular means of grace. I think that the Creator wants us to be well-- every one of us — just as He wants us to be sensible and right-minded about all things.

Of course I am not saying that the Lord cannot use sickness for our good. Some people cannot learn their duty except through neuralgia and rheumatism and toothache. And then there are a good many who get sick through waiting on the people who are too weak or incompetent or lazy to look after themselves. Besides, there are the men and women who become invalids over worrying about boys away at college or in the theological school who have eaten too much ice cream or have neglected to take enough exercise.

My boy, take care of your health. It is the io Letters of An Old Methodist

best gift God has given you, for without it none of His other gifts will be of much help to you or to any one else through you, and the Lord will not take it well if you trifle with it.

I know there are some preachers who think if they go around looking pale and solemn like and talking in a whisper their congregations will have more sympathy for them and that perhaps this sympathy will take the form of a trip to California or Florida or Europe. Now there was Brother Simpson who, you remember, preached for us the year you went away to college. He used to walk in a measured sort of way with his eyes on the ground and talked as though he was half-choked all the time. When he preached you could hardly hear him twenty feet away. He hinted several times about his need of a change. At last, at the fourth quarterly conference, old Brother Gibson got up and said he thought our minister was too delicate for our climate and that he believed, much as we loved Brother Simpson, we ought to consent to have the bishop transfer him to another field. At that the minister jumped up and said, in a voice that was certainly stronger than he had shown for several months, that he was much better than he had been and that he hoped by conference time he would be almost a well man. And he was. The very next Sunday after the quarterly conference he preached with a good round voice on the text, " Be strong and of good courage."

Now I don't mean to say that our preacher was trying to deceive any one, but he had somehow got it into his head that he needed pity and that the only way to get it was to appear to be sick. That is a great mistake. Real trouble does make people sympathetic, but sniffling arouses only opposition and disgust. At least that has been my observation. It is strength, not weakness, that we need to-day in our preachers. The Lord knows there is enough for them to do. We want men, not weaklings and invalids, to lead us. It is manhood that appeals to the people, not sentimentality.

I say it is manhood the people want; and the foundation of manhood is a good body. Of course, I don't believe that the body is all or the principal thing. So far as hogs are concerned I don't care what they think, or whether they think at all. What I want of them is meat. But with a horse it is different. I look for brains in a horse. At the same time, an intellectual horse that can't pull his load on a straight road I have no use for. I look at the matter about the same way in the case of men. I don't believe the body is everything, but it is the foundation of everything, at least of all that has to do with this life. How we shall get along in the other world I don't pretend to know and I ain't bothering my head about it. Here we have bodies, and if they ain't kept in good order we not only can't pull our loads, but it won't be long before there will be something the matter with the thinking machines inside them.

I believe a whole lot of these fads we read about are due to late hours and pink teas and that sort of thing. I may be mistaken, but I believe when it is run down you'll find that Christian Science was born of eating the new breakfast foods. The Christian Scientist believes that matter is nothing, and certainly those foods are the next thing to nothing.

Speaking of foods, I want to say that you are making a mistake in trying to live too cheaply. Cut down your expenses on neckties, cut out the barber's bill by letting your hair and whiskers grow, cut down on underwear if necessary, but see that you get food that is well cooked and plenty of it. J don't like your students' clubs very well and the restaurants are not much better. Get into a good boarding-house or, what is better, a good private home, if possible the home of a man who works out of doors and whose wife is a wholesome, motherly woman that knows how to cook plain food well and has a lot of respect for a man's stomach.

Begin the day right by taking a cold bath with a hard rub afterwards, saying your prayers, reading your Bible and eating a good breakfast. Have confidence in your teeth and enough respect for your food to chew it awhile. Then when you have swallowed it, let it go on its journey without any concern about how it is faring. Take an hour's outdoor exercise after breakfast. Your gymnasium is all right in its place, but it is at best only a makeshift. The world is your gymnasium. Think of our dog or cat or my trotter needing a gymnasium in order to develop their muscles. Of course, if there was no out-of-doors, it might be all right to put them through a course of training in a gymnasium. But as things are I think they will be kept in pretty good condition without the gymnasium. At least, they are eating their regular meals without showing any loss of appetite. Take your hour's exercise after breakfast, not before, either walking or riding your bicycle, and make the last fifteen minutes of the hour tell. Limber up and make the sweat glands do their full work. At four o'clock in the afternoon drop your books and walk or ride until supper time. If your studies interfere with this programme change your hours of exercise, but do not shorten them. Just before you go to bed take a good run or a sharp walk for half a mile. You ought to sleep eight hours at least.

If you follow this plan strictly, I will not promise you big muscles, but I will assure you what our cat has — quickness of limb, vitality and a good appetite. And you will like your study. I have no patience with the people who have to drag themselves to their books, nor on the other hand with those who overstudy, as it is called. No one can overstudy unless he steals from exercise or sleep or his three good meals a day. The harder you think the better. Don't be afraid of hard study. It is close rooms, too little sleep, poor food, lack of outdoor exercise and meanness that kill. Hard thinking, like hard work, if everything else is all right, is good for every one. 1 know it, for I have done some hard thinking myself two or three times in my life and it always had a good effect on me. There are thousands of people suffering from underthinking for one who thinks too much. 1 mean nothing personal, of course.

I note what you say about breaking into one of the students' rooms and helping yourself to his apples. It must have been very amusing, especially to the owner of the apples. Now, don't you think it is about time you gave up this schoolboy nonsense ? Isn't it time you began seriously to consider the practical bearings of the golden rule ? Or is it true that college and seminary students are so busy studying ancient history that they haven't got along as far as the beginning of the first century anno domini?

I know what you will say: that I cannot appreciate college spirit. Perhaps not. But I think I do know something about the difference between children and men. Let me see, was it not St. Paul who said that when he became a man he put away childish things ? You are old enough now to cut out the " Rah, rah" business altogether. You are preparing for serious work and you ought to be serious. You know well enough that I don't want you to look as though your whole work was to preach funeral sermons-^ though I never could understand why a minister should look so wonderfully sad even at a funeral.

Do we not say, " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord " ? But you are not preparing — at least I have not been paying your expenses with that in view — to lead the rooting, hooting, tooting, or whatever you call that tin-whistle business, at your college games. If I understand aright, you are getting ready to save men's souls. To do that as well as possible is the reason for your spending three years at the seminary and why your mother and myself are skimping along as well as we can and denying the other children in order to keep you there.

You are our first-born, and in a tender moment we dedicated you to the ministry in the church in which your mother was raised and at whose altars I was converted. I can see the scene yet. I was a young fellow, somewhat wild and wayward it must be admitted, but I had begun going to church — going with your mother, who was then the handsomest girl, as she now is the handsomest woman, in the county. One night the Methodists were having protracted meetings and Elder Morgan — he was young Morgan then — was preaching. I don't know just what he said, I don't remember the text, but I do know that it was a wonderful sermon, for it made me see myself the sinner that I was — everything lost unless God had pity on me. But just then it seemed to me that the Lord showed me His hands — those wounded hands — and said, " This was done for you; come and follow Me." Well, I rose right then and walked up to the mourners'

bench and knelt down there. I don't know what was said or done, but I had hardly knelt down before the burden of sin rolled off my back just as though all the strings had been cut at once and I felt as though I could jump over the ten-rail fence on our farm. But I didn't jump, for old Sister Bennett shouted "Glory!" so loud and several more said ''Amen " with so much energy that I was a little relieved. And then the tears came, tears of rejoicing they were, and then I rose and told how happy I was. But I need not have told, for every one could have read it on my face, I guess.

But I mustn't trouble you with this story, which you have heard in one way or another ever since you were born. Somehow, I haven't much else to tell but this story of Christ's love. I have grown a little, but it is His love I see all along the way. But what I was going to say was this: It was in memory of that night and that experience that your mother and I, before you were an hour old, prayed that God would choose you to be one of His ministers. You know that we have not forced you to enter the ministry, or even urged you. We wanted you to be influenced only by the still small voice and to enter the ministry on your own conviction of the inward call. Now that you have decided the matter yourself and will soon be ready to take up your great work of saving men, I want you to be serious, attentive to your books and training your body so that it will stand any strain you are called upon to bear. The call to preach I regard as a call to preach with all your Godgiven powers developed to their very highest point of efficiency and all working in beautiful harmony together.

Robert Allen.

II Tippecanoe, Ind

Dear Henry: I was much pleased with your last letter— at least, with a part of it. It shows that you have the making of a man in you, for you seem to be able to take advice without getting mad about it. How well you follow advice I don't know. You were always a little headstrong, though you came by it all right, for your mother is wonderfully set in her way. I have had pretty hard work at different times bringing her round. But I think she is finding it easier as she gets older and then, perhaps, I am a little easier coaxed than I used to be from the straight and narrow path of duty. At least, I call it duty, though your ma says that I don't always seem to know the difference between duty and having my own way. Well, there may be something in that, but I warn you, Henry, that women will have the last word. It seems to be their nature. Still, in most cases, their last word is their best

You spoke in your letter about taking elocution at $4.00 an hour/ Well, I don't want to say you can't do it, but if you had to earn that $4.00 as a farm hand, would you spend it for elocution at that price ? Let me see, I think it would take you something like three days to earn that I4.00. Is one elocution lesson worth three days' hard work ? Look at it another way. Is the elocution worth $4.00 of my money ? Now, don't think that I don't care to have you speak well. You must do that or you can't hope to be a preacher at all. All the great preachers are good speakers. They don't speak like the elocutionists, but they speak well. Their voices are good. They speak distinctly and loud enough for every one to understand what they are saying. Now, I thought when you were home at Christmas that you had no particular trouble with your talking apparatus. And at prayer-meeting, I remember, you spoke so that almost every one could understand you. You did use some pretty big words, I admit, but your voice was real good. You spoke just as you do to us at home; in a conversational sort of way that was real pleasant to hear. You didn't have any preacher tones — which I liked. I never could understand why a preacher should not preach and pray in the same voice that he uses when he talks to his mother. Isn't God our Father and shouldn't we talk to Him and about Him in the voice He gave us, rather than in some other voice that some people think is a little more polite and reverent ? Henry, whatever else you do, don't be guilty of cant. I know God hates it and I am pretty sure all honest men do, whatever may be their own faults.

But I must come back to my text, as one of our preachers used to say — and then he would turn his back on the text for another quarter of an hour or until he was afraid we might think he had forgotten that he had ever taken a text. To come back to the text, I want to impress this upon you, that it's just good, plain talking we want from our ministers, not any sort of skyrocket oratory with waving of arms and stagey attitudes. I know very well that that sort of thing is praised by some people, but it is not held in much respect by the solid portion of the church. Somehow, it makes me feel just a little creepy when anything theatrical is indulged in by our preachers. I am afraid of how it will end and then the attention is taken from the message. As I understand it, the preacher is not called upon to impress people with his learning or his fine speaking; nor is he expected to please his hearers merely, but to declare his message so that it will take hold of the heart and the head, but principally the heart; for I have observed that the head seldom, if ever, leads, but always follows, the heart.

But about this matter of elocution, I can imagine you saying that I don't know anything about it. Why, Henry, the elocutionists are thicker down here than blackberries. You remember old Brother Ryder's daughter — the one with the red hair — I believe they call it golden brown now, but it is-red all the same. Well, that same red-headed girl of Ryder's went away for a year to an elocution school and I declare, Henry, if she don't act as though she had gone plumb daft. She can't go to a neighbour's to borrow a cup of flour but she must walk as though she was on stilts; and when she gets into the house she strikes an attitude, or whatever you call it, for all the world like a turkey gobbler when he wants to show off his feathers and his voice to the lesser fry of the barnyard. And for the life of me 1 can't make out what it's all about — I mean the elocution of the Ryder girl. She twists her mouth into all kinds of shapes, rolls her eyes round as if she was going into a fit and talks in about ten different tones at once. I suppose she calls that tragedy. Well, I fear there will be a tragedy in this neighbourhood if that girl keeps on much longer. For the sake of variety she gives us what she calls a humorous piece, but for the life of me I can't see any joke in anything the girl says or does. Perhaps I am getting too old to see a joke any more. Certainly, I don't see much to laugh at in the rising generation, though I don't want to be understood as condemning it wholesale. I am an optimist, Henry, but I am far from thinking everything is right. No, indeed. And I know that the goings-on of Brother Ryder's daughter are not right or even sane. You ought to hear her laugh — I mean, when she is speaking her piece. She reminds me of a member of our chicken-coop trying to crow. He starts in all right, but it seems he can't finish, and the whole barnyard stands round in sympathy or disgust — I can hardly tell which — waiting for him to end that crow. Now, no human being laughs like that, unless he has been taking elocution.

Then we have a preacher in our pulpit once in a while, when our pastor is away, who tells us right in the start that he is an elocutionist. He does not say so in so many words, but the tones of his voice, his care to bring out ev-e-ry syllable with dis-tinct-ness, his churning of the air with his hands, the swelling of his chest, all tell us, more plainly than words, that he has taken elocution. He could not advertise it more conspicuously if he had written it across his back. Henry, if I had to endure that sort of thing very long I should certainly backslide or else I would have to keep out of the way of temptation altogether.

These are my sentiments about elocution as I have seen it; it is nothing against the man or the school that really teaches people to speak the English language as it should be spoken and in a way that will help those who hear to understand what is being said. If you can find some one who will teach you how to manage your voice so that you will not get out of breath when you are half through a sentence and will make you speak distinctly and loud enough for every one to hear who is supposed to be listening to you, and will help you to be yourself rather than the teacher, I would advise you to take his instruction. But I warn you that he is not to be found in every town and that you can't count on what he himself or his pupils say about his instruction.

Speaking of teachers, why can't you be your own teacher, with the help you can get from one of your student friends P Ask the help of some sensible fellow who is not afraid to criticise you and whose judgment is good. That student will represent pretty well the sort of criticism you will meet in your ministry. Remember that you are to learn to preach to the multitude — the common people, I mean — and not to a lot of university professors, who seem to me to be men apart from the masses, with more or less peculiar views of the common life. With the help of that student critic, who is probably nearer to the masses than his teacher, learn to breathe deeply in the open air and when you are in the woods let your voice out a little. Watch out for false tones, which are the result of false feeling, of sentimentalism and that sort of thing. When you really feel deeply your voice will naturally show it. When you don't feel never try to make folks think you do, for that is the beginning of insincerity. To try to put pathos in the voice when there is none in the heart is not only bad morals but poor judgment. It is putting the cart before the horse. The voice should always be responsive to the heart and it will be if it is not cheated out of its rights. See that your heart is always right; that is the beginning of all things in a preacher. Get into sympathy with the people you are going to lead. Feel for them, not by manufacturing sympathy but by opening your heart to the Spirit. Get right with the Lord, so that He can use you and you will have all the feeling you need. Then say just what you mean — no more, no less — and you will find that your elocution will come along all right and in good time.

This is my opinion formed after some experience and a good deal of observation. Perhaps you don't know that I stumped the county once for the legislature. I didn't get the office but I made quite a reputation as a public speaker. Some of my friends thought I ought to run for Congress some time, but I was not sure that I was qualified for so high a place. And then I was not quite certain that the people wanted me or that I wanted the honour. In fact, I am seeking no higher honour — and that is, by the way, the highest honour a parent could have — than to be the father of a first-rate Methodist preacher, one who believes in his calling, in his church, in himself and in God. Somehow I have the feeling that that will not be denied me before I pass on.

I have never doubted that you were called of God to the ministry, and those whom God calls He will not suffer to fall unless they fail to follow His leading after they have started on the good way. I have always been much affected by the case of the man that the Lord speaks of, who began a work but was not able to finish it. I have always thought there was nothing against the beginning of the work, but that the man got lazy or lost heart after he had begun. You must always remember that it is not enough to begin well ; you must also finish well. God's call to begin a work is also a call to go on to perfection.

You see I believe in the good old Methodist doctrine of perfection. There is no place short of that we dare to stop. Is there any place this side of that where a true Christian wants to stop ? I think not. No, God has called us all to be like our Master and we must improve every minute, never resting until He calls us to rest, and always watching against sin of every sort and for opportunities to do what we can to bring in the kingdom or, as I would put it, to bring sinners into the kingdom, for I am convinced that the kingdom will never have come until sinners have come into the kingdom. That means that we shall all have to work very hard, not wasting any time over foolish and useless things. I never had many talents of my own, but the Lord seems to have made me responsible for a lot of people who have talents but don't know what to do with them. But I am not complaining. No, every day I pray the Lord to save me from whining. Your affectionate father,

Robert Allen.

LETTER THREE Ill

Tippecanoe, Ind.

Dear Henry : It gave much pleasure to us all here at home to hear that you had been chosen to speak at the commencement exercises of the seminary. It shows that your teachers have confidence in you that you will represent them well on that occasion, and this confidence you must do all that you can to keep. Without the confidence of your fellow-men, especially of those who know you best, it will be impossible for you to do them any good. On the other hand, you must remember that the standing of every school such as yours is in the hands of its graduates. They are the product of the institution, and by the product everything is judged. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

But what in the world is this you propose to speak on — "The higher criticism of the Hexateuch; or ninety-nine reasons why Moses did not write the books that bear his name " ? Henry, what does all this mean ? Have you gone crazy, or is this another of your jokes ? Of course, if you have gone insane you won't acknowledge it and I can hardly believe that you would deal so lightly with so solemn a matter. You must know by this time how I look upon such things. And, besides, you must know how it affects your mother. When I read that part of your letter to her she gasped for breath and would have fainted if I had not thrown cold water in her face. My first thought was that this was some more of your college fooling, and let it go at that. Had I thought you were in earnest 1 believe I would have fainted along with your mother.

Reading your letter again and putting two and two together, I am about convinced that you are serious in what you say of your choice of a subject for your commencement address. That means that my suspicion of your sanity is gaining ground. I fear that you have not been following my advice about outdoor exercise, food and sleep. Cobwebs have been getting into your brain or else a maggot has. Anyhow, you are not yourself or you are too much yourself, I hardly know which. Go and have a talk with a good doctor. Tell him all about yourself, and if you are not afraid of being hurt tell him what you propose to speak on at commencement. It's a little risky, but you had better confess all and be done with it.

I tried it yesterday on Pat McGuire. I said to him,

"Pat, what is the higher criticism of the Hexateuch?" (1 pronounced it "heck-a-tooth.")

Pat looked rather hurt at first, for he prides himself on being able to answer, right away, any question that is put to him. After thinking over the matter for quite awhile he turned to me with a quizzical smile, that showed he was not quite sure of his ground, and said:

By the way, how do you pronounce that word ? Is it heck-a-tooth or hecks-a-tootch ? Why don't you send along a dictionary with your letters so that we will be able at least to pronounce the words correctly even if we can't understand their meaning?