The making and the unmaking of the preacher : lectures on the Lyman Beecher Foundation, Yale University, 1898

Front matter

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Contents

LECTURE PAGE

I. Preaching, under Modern Conditions . i II. The Making of the Preacher by Education 31

III. The Unmaking Process . . . .61

II The Making Of The Preacher By Educa- Tion

In the opening lecture, after considering the motive and reason for our subject, we passed at once to the question, Who, under present conditions, is the Preacher ? Modern preaching, as we saw, lays the emphasis upon the humanity of the preacher, upon his authority, and upon his faith. The questions which it is asking all the while, and with the greatest solicitude about every man in the pulpit, are these : Does he compel other men to help him in his work of persuasion : does he make his audience preach for him ? Has he a sufficiency of truth in command : does his preaching rise to the stress of a gospel ? Is he reaching the spiritual man who is in bondage to the material wealth of the age : is he able to give elevation and outlook to those about him ?

These questions, as we judged, revealed the inexorable conditions of modern preaching, — hard conditions, we granted, were they not matched by the greatness of the preacher's task, and by the joy of accomplishing it.

There is another question which lies upon the threshold of our discussion. It is so much a part of our inquiry into the Making of the Preacher, that we cannot afford to pass it by. How far can we expect to educate the Preacher ?

I address myself to-day to the answer to. this question, premising that it is in no sense limited to the training in our seminaries.

We are met at the outset by the classification in some minds of the preacher with the poet and orator, as born, not made. Let us not altogether ignore this classification. The preacher may be the poet or the orator, according to his birthright. And to the extent to which he justifies either claim, it is to be admitted that there is a personal element which is a law unto itself. " Genius," John Foster says, "lights its own fires." The independence of genius is to be acknowledged. If any considerable part of those entering the ministry or any profession bore the unmistakable mark of genius, I confess that our systems of education would be strained to make room for them. Somebody has asked what chance Carlyle would have in a modern university. Tennyson refers with little satisfaction or gratitude to his student days at Cambridge. It is not enough to reply with the cheap sarcasm that it will be sufficient time to consider this matter when the number of Carlyles and Tennysons entering our universities is appreciable. We are not to trifle with the personal element in any man. It is as sacred to society as to the individual. I concede that it must be allowed the largest freedom which it can show a right to, and that it must be put under the full stimulus to which it is entitled. Education cannot be conditioned in mediocrity. It must have regard to the exceptional as well as to the average man. Indeed, there is an increasing reason, which I will adduce in a moment, why I think that in the training or recruiting for the ministry especial regard should be had for the exceptional man. We are beginning to recognize the fact that in the interest of the social economy, for the very necessities of society, we must draw upon the widest sources of intellectual supply, and open the way out toward all the unknown possibilities of genius. Let me quote the word of Professor Marshall in reference to the large duty of education at this point, assuming that what he says has its proportionate application to the use of opportunity and incentive toward the ministry :

" The laws which govern the birth of genius are inscrutable. It is probable that the percentage of the children of the working classes who are endowed with natural abilities of the highest order is not so great as that of the children of people who have attained or have inherited a higher position in society. But since the manual-labor classes are four or five times as numerous as all other classes put together, it is not unlikely that more than half of the best natural genius that is born in the country belongs to them; and of this a great part is fruitless for want of opportunity.

There is no extravagance more prejudicial to the growth of national wealth than that wasteful negligence which allows genius that happens to be born of lowly parentage to expend itself in lowly work. No change would conduce so much to a rapid increase of national wealth as an improvement in our schools, and especially those of the middle grades, combined with an extensive system of scholarships, which would enable the clever son of a working man to rise gradually from school to school till he had the best theoretical and practical education which the age can give."

Now the special reason for consideration in behalf of the ministry, of the unknown or exceptional man, lies in the change which has taken place in the outward incentives toward the ministry. Under the New England traditions the ministry was an aristocracy, and therefore had the social incentive at work for its supply. Family life was set toward it. It passed as a profession from father to son. Children were consecrated to that form of service, and not infrequently bore names to remind them of their high calling. Mr. Beecher used to say that " none of the boys in his father's family ever thought of trying to get away from the ministry, except one, and that he made no such success in his waywardness as to encourage the others to attempt to follow him." The ministry of that time was more than a profession, it was a class. Our non-conformist brethren from England who visit us think that traces of this distinction still remain.

And as the family life was set toward the ministry, so was the higher education. College after college arose, that " the light of learning should not go out, and that the study of God's word should not perish." If one wanted the best education, he must find it in the courses leading to the ministry. These were full and abundant. They had the acknowledged right of way. They moved on in easy confidence to the remotest bounds of theological learning. The contract with the first professor of languages in Dartmouth College ran as follows : " Mr. Smith agrees to settle as professor of English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, etc., in Dartmouth College, to teach which and as many of them and other such languages as he shall understand, as the trustees shall judge necessary and practicable for one man, and also to read lectures on them as often as the president and tutors, with himself, shall judge profitable to the seminary."

We may not say, perhaps, that the change in regard to these two early incentives to the ministry is equally great. The tendency of the family toward the ministry is probably still stronger than that of the school. But from both directions the change is very manifest. And the compensation for this change is in the fact that in place of these intermediate influences we have now the more direct appeal of the ministry to the individual man. More men are to-day, I believe, entering the ministry of their motion than at any previous time. I have in mind not a few candidates who are making their way into it out of hindering and diverting surroundings. I see those in our colleges who want to cross the lines of study that they may put themselves into connection with a theological training, indicating that the earlier direction was unadvised. I take account of those who are leaving other professions while it is yet early enough to study for the ministry. Nothing, I think, impressed me so much, when in the service of a theological seminary, as the number and the quality of men who had turned to the pulpit out of mature conviction, and under purely personal and independent incentives. I am convinced that the recruiting ground of the ministry must be more and more among undesignated, uninfluenced, unknown, and exceptional men. The ministry must find its recruits, like any calling, among those who are so minded ; only that in this regard it has the mighty advantage, in the case at least of the exceptional man, that he is consciously and imperatively called of God.

As we pass then to the direct question, How far can we educate the preacher ? we must keep in mind the fact that education no longer makes a favorite of him. The favorite now is the student of science. The larger increase of subject matter, the accepted method, and the enthusiasm from discovery and from application, are to his especial advantage. So it appears. But I am not sure that it is really any more to his advantage than it is to the advantage of the preacher. In any event what matters it whether we be favorites or not ? Who wants more than his opportunity ?

Education, meaning by it that organized system which is now open to every one, can do these three things to make ready the preacher :

First, it can do more than at any previous time to develop and furnish the man, provided he has insight and patience. The old education, which specialized from the beginning straight toward the ministry, produced some very clear and noble results, the like of which you may see to-day in the Romish priesthood. It was an education with clearly prescribed ends, which were reached by clearly prescribed methods. But something often seems to be lacking in the lives of those who came under that training, and sometimes the lack is pathetic. We are aware that the whole man is not always before us. Some part of the nature is untouched, or if touched undeveloped. Occasionally we get a hint of what the life might have

4 o THE MAKING OF THE PREACHER

been under a broader or freer training. Does any one suppose, after reading Jonathan Edwards' study of the spider, that it would have been a loss to theology if he had opened his mind wide to the study of nature ? To the extent to which we allow ourselves to be less than we are capable of being, we make ourselves of less use to society. Society wants the full man, the live man, the sincere man. I do not refer to the after straightening which may come to every one. The first business of education is to make sure that the discovery of one's self is reasonably complete. And at this point modern education can serve the preacher better than the old, provided, I have said, he be patient. Impatience, haste, will neutralize the larger opportunity. It is the danger which confronts every one to-day in the process of education. The contention is now stoutly urged that the schools deliver too late into life, therefore the time of preparation must be abridged. I take issue, in behalf of the ministry, with the premise. As Mr. Greeley replied to the man who demanded a job of him on the ground that he must live, — " That remains to be proven."

Why should one take less time to enter upon those callings which are preceded by what is known as an education, than to enter upon those callings which are preceded by an apprenticeship ? Mark Twain has stated the present business situation in an aphorism, — " No occupation without an apprenticeship ; no pay to the apprentice." In what business may one expect to find himself thoroughly established, with influence or authority in the firm or corporation, with a generous income, and possessed of a home, while as yet he is within the twenties ? Is it in banking, or in manufacturing, or in railroading, or in general trade ? How much farther along is the man of business at thirty than the lawyer or doctor at that age, unless he has unlimited capital or is of exceptional capacity? The open fact is, that society is growing more complicated, its demands are more exacting, and consequently personal advancement is slower. As surely as the rate of interest is declining, so surely are * we all coming under the law of diminishing returns; which means that for the same results we must do harder work or secure a better equipment, which in turn means that we must take a longer time in preparation. I see no reason, therefore, why a man who proposes to enter upon his life work by way of an education should complain of the time required to prepare for it, and especially in view of the fact that the working time of life has been greatly extended. If society calls a man later to his tasks, it allows him to remain longer at them. The age of retirement has been advanced. Whatever the young man in his impatience seems to be losing reappears in the unspent force of later years.

A second result to be expected from modern education — I cannot overestimate its value to the preacher — is that it can give him contact with the mind of his time. Without question the minds of men are finding their chief training to-day in the school of utility. When Thoreau graduated at Harvard — it was about sixty years ago — he made the statement in his graduating address " The world is more beautiful than useful.' , That is a statement which no one could dispute then or now. Every one's opinion must depend upon his point of view. But whatever may have been the proportion in Thoreau's time, it is now evident that where one sees real beauty in the world, ten see more clearly some kind of utility, and without doubt the proportion is increasing. Here then is a vast amount of mind to be reached, some of it thoroughly trained. It does not follow that a preacher must therefore become a utilitarian in his thinking. It does not follow that he must use the motives which lie on the low plane of utility. It does follow that he has an immense advantage if he knows and understands through his own training the working of this kind of mind. For one thing, he will not offend and alienate it by inexact methods of thought. His statements will bear verification. His arguments will hold true to the laws of evidence. Having made contact with the mind thus trained, he will be able to move to his own ends. Imagination, sentiment, emotion, will not be wasted. Exact thinking is not opposed to high thinking, nor logic to feeling, nor carefulness of speech to the freedom of the imagination.

I have a practical suggestion to offer to our seminaries. I find that there is a considerable number of men who have been trained in the scientific or semi-scientific courses in our colleges, who wish as they near the close of their college course to study for the ministry. Usually they are men of assured strength. Their decision shows that they are of mature and independent mind. No motive could influence men in these conditions except the overruling desire to enter the ministry. What can be done for them ? They will bring strength and consecration to the pulpit. They will be a special power in bringing the pulpit into contact with the type of mind which we have been considering. I do not hesitate to ask for a place for them in our seminaries, in our best seminaries, and that facilities be offered them for gaining the necessary technical knowledge, especially in Greek. Otherwise we shall lose, out of the trained ministry at least, more and more of the best mind which our colleges are producing.

The third result which education ought to be expected to give to the preacher is the clear and sure access to truth. Not possession of it in any large degree, that is the work of a lifetime, but access to it.

I desire, gentlemen, to enter my protest and warning in your presence against the assumption that truth in any form can be had for the asking, that it lies within easy reach of the mind. That is never the fact. Truth there may be within us or above us, written " on the black bosom of the night," for the guidance of our feet in plain paths ; but that is not enough. The paths of men are no longer plain ; they cross and recross in bewildering confusion ; the world thickens; and he who makes too easy a thing of duty or of truth only adds in time one more bewildered or wayward soul to the care of the great shepherd and his church.

In spite of what we rightly call progress, in spite of the great and sure gains of knowledge, in spite even of revelation, nothing is more evident and more impressive than the remoteness of truth from each new age. What is it which calls out the finest energy of each new age except the search after truth ? This is no pastime. It is the serious business of serious men, lovers of their kind as well as lovers of truth. Who are scholars, and what are they trying to do ? Men who want to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and who want to have their fellow-men know, as they know, that, as Descartes said, " they may walk surefootedly in this life."

It is well to remind ourselves of these motives and aims of all true scholars, and of the urgent necessities which rest upon them, in view of the still remaining attitude of a part of the church towards its most advanced scholarship. We cannot do too much to correct the mistake in many honest minds, that scholarship creates confusion, and introduces doubt where before there was faith. And to make this correction, we must show how simplicity of thought and life has given way to complexity, which means that much hard, brave, patient thinking must be done by somebody in every department of life before anybody can act. There never was a time when the motto of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts Bay, was more pertinent than now — "When you don't know what to do, don't go and do it."

In fact, it has now become evident that there are but two valid positions for the church to take, to fall back upon authority and go to Rome, or to encourage all clear, straight, honest, reverent search after the truth. The truth we want and need and must have for the ordering of faith and the conduct of life is not so accessible that we can dispense in the least degree with scholarship, unless we are prepared to accept authority. The most serious business therefore in the education for the ministry is to give to the men who are to assume its responsibilities access to the truth. If there is any distinction between an educated and an uneducated ministry, it is here : not simply that one man can use better English than another, or quote more authors, or answer men with quicker wit, but that the educated preacher can give light, restore confidence, guide more safely and farther, and if need be take command when there is a call for a spiritual leader.

You do not ask me how this access is to be gained. You are in the process.

I cannot forbear, however, a word as to the range of the work. The same kind of eager but patient thought is needed in every department of theological training. The Bible is no more inaccessible to us than to our predecessors, when measured by the separating effect of language ; but it does offer a more arduous task to us, since we have undertaken to find its place in history, and more than that, to put ourselves within its great historic order and movement, and let it carry us along according to the providence of God.

It is no easier task when we turn to theology, when we consider either what the Bible has to say, or nature. Nature seemed to the theologian of the past generation simplicity itself. Our fathers preached Paley's Natural Theology as easily as they preached the Levitical law. They may not understand the embarrassment of those who must now take account of the theory of Evolution, but they have no right to say to us, after this long and pleasant experience in the use of " Paley," that the pulpit has no further use for what they called natural theology. There is no option about the use or disuse of truth.

And when we turn to our social problems, we find ourselves under no less a necessity for painstaking and thorough study. The difference between the old philanthropy and the new, or between the lower and the higher, has been well put in the statement, " The lower philanthropy tries to put right what social conditions have put wrong: the higher philanthropy -tries to put right the social conditions themselves." The difference is immense. It is the difference between the charity which expresses itself altogether in relief and rescue and the charity which expresses itself in restraint and precaution, in the effort to rescue the rights of the individual, and in the greater effort to effect at some vital points the readjustment, if not the reconstruction, of society. If the good is the foe of the best, then it is true that there is a sense in which the old-time charity hurts the new. As Jacob Riis said a little time ago in a convention, in which the scripture " Charity covereth a multitude of sins " had been made to do its accustomed work, — " Brethren," speaking with his Danish idiom, " it was time to take that cover off."

Whichever way, then, we turn in our present work, we see that education puts the newer demands upon us, and offers us everywhere the new privileges. We get much in method : we get something in actual results : we get more in the sense of the strain and toil which truth demands, no, I will not say demands, but allows, of those who are to use it for the good of their kind. Is there not an unmistakable joy to-day in the companionship of scholars, an exultation in the atmosphere of scholarship ?

These three things we ought to expect of education as an organized system, which takes a man up on his way to the ministry: it ought to develop him and furnish him as a man, not simply as a preacher; it ought to give him contact with the mind of his time ; and it ought to give him access to the truth ; not the means simply, but the strenuous spirit of search.

I would like to devote the remainder of this lecture to the somewhat informal consideration of certain influences, which, though not strictly and technically educational, are operative within the period of education.

Among these influences which I have in mind, I put first the influence of some one person, be he instructor or author, upon the mind and heart of a student. In the old version, there stood out in the margin of the book of Malachi a phrase which expresses by a happy turn what I want to say. The phrase has been incorporated into the new version, but in the change its power as a definition has been lost. God was threatening, as one of the penalties of disobedience, that He would cut off from Israel master and scholar. The margin said, " For master and scholar read, ' him that awaketh, and him that answereth.' ' That is the influence I have in mind as I speak, the influence of " him that awaketh " upon " him that answereth." It is something beyond the constant impression which comes from good teaching. It is the spark, which at some fit moment is dropped into the nature, which is ready to be kindled.

As these lectures allow personal experience, I will recall an illustration from my own life. Near the close of my seminary course, when I was in no little doubt about the reality of what I had to preach, and was therefore hesitating between the law and the ministry, I chanced upon the " Life and Letters of Robertson." One letter which caught my attention contained a statement of his personal feeling toward Christ. I had never known till then that a man could feel in just that way about Christ. Here at last was reality. It gave me what I wanted. I began at once on my own account the study of the life of Christ. I began with the temptation, the point I judged of greatest reality to him. And from that time on I had no question about the ministry. Robertson, with his passionate loyalty to Christ, wakened the answering passion in my soul.

There are many ways in which this more personal influence may be expressed. One man is able to impart something of the quality of his own thought to the thinking of those who come under him. The virtue which goes out of him lies in a certain sentiment which spiritualizes his thought. This imparting of the quality or sentiment of one's mind may mean more in the way of personal influence than a founding of a school of disciples. The influence of Coleridge was, I judge, of this order. It held together many minds which differed widely in their theological positions. Another form of influence may be traced to those who deal in method or impression, to those who are distinctively preachers, whether they are thinkers or not. In times just gone by, we recall at once Mr. Beecher and Mr. Spurgeon. The influence of these men was profoundly spiritual and ethical, albeit it produced as a secondary result not a little imitation on the part of those who could not look below their methods into their spirit. But the chief influence which comes to us from helpful men is that which comes to us straight out of their personality. They may be thinkers ; they may be distinctively preachers: we do not refer to them in either capacity: we call them by name. So we speak of Maurice, and Robertson, and Kingsley, and Bushnell, and Brooks. These, and the like, are men who touch us, and we are most sensitive to their touch in the days of our preparation for the ministry, especially if for any reason our thinking or our plans go wrong.

Next to the stimulus of the " master," whoever he may be, I put the contagion of the group, — the influence of the associated life of which one is a part during the process of education. Education in its earlier stages is largely a matter of society ; later, in more mature life, it may be a matter of isolation. It is good for the full-grown man to withdraw at times from the city into the desert, unless perchance the city may be to him a place of solitude. There are those who are never so much alone as when the multitudes throng and press. But the fundamental idea of the school is the group. A college or seminary or university is a society, in which the conditions are favorable for rare and inspiring fellowships. Great social and moral movements have their frequent origin in these inner groups. Oxford alone has given the Wesleys and their friends, Newman and Keble and Pusey, and Arnold Toynbee and his fellow workers. Paul lays great stress, you will recall, upon the quality of like-mindedness. The group is organized around this quality. It signifies more than a common disposition or taste or liking. It carries with it oneness of aim and purpose and consecration. The group guarantees the steady impulse and the resolute endeavor. One member may lose heart : he has the common faith to fall back upon. There are times when the individual may have an immense deal to give, there are times when he needs to make great drafts upon the general fund.

We are coming to recognize the economy of the group in the more exhausting forms of moral and religious work. Service in the midst of depressing surroundings must itself be characterized by good cheer and steady courage. The constant strain upon the sympathies is the test of the real significance of living and working under wrong social conditions. I doubt if one person can well bear the strain. It is the group which saves the individual to his work, and supplies that fund of good cheer which is indispensable to spiritual success. The social settlement is founded in the idea of the spiritual economy of the group.

The settlement has already produced some very striking results, but it is contributing a principle which, as fast as it may be applied, will reinvigorate and gladden all lowlier forms of service, wherever the idea is practicable. I wish that it could be made more practicable among those entering the ministry. What it requires on their part is the willingness to postpone " a call to a church," to delay the home, and to give the first years of one's trained life to associated work in city or country. It is difficult to say where the need is the greater. The principle is equally applicable to the congested wards of a city and to the sparser settlements of the country. I am confident that a term of service in a well-organized and wellrmanned group will give one an impulse throughout the after ministry for which there is no equivalent.