Part 8

Then he has searched Scripture, history, science, literature, and life for something that will help them in their fight. In some instances, at least, he has found it. No wonder his work catches on and succeeds. He has sensed the human side, and seen what it is that makes the need for preaching. If there were no human problems along the road that leads to God, then the pulpit might as well be abolished.

To such a man the sermon he has prepared is not a fetish, but a message. He delivers it not merely that it may be admired, but that it may be minted into a blessing for the people before him. He knows what is in the hearts behind the Sunday clothes down in the pews, and he is trying to answer their questions and meet their needs.

The Great Compulsion (1928)

What do we mean when we speak of the call to the ministry? Some mean a wonderful dream, some an angel visitation, some a strange ecstasy, and some merely the notion that they can speak well. These things may all have their places, but they are uncertain. The one sure and enduring sign is the great compulsion.

The Book of Exodus relates how Moses as a young man went out one day and looked upon his people’s burdens. That was one of the great determining hours in his life. It was so because when he saw his people’s burdens their weight rolled onto his own heart. That was the last peaceful day he ever saw, for our peace is the price we pay for greatness. Thereafter, his days and nights were troubled with that strange mingling of hope and despair that comes to a leader. He was under the great compulsion.

John tells how an angel brought him a little book and told him to eat it. He did so, and in his mouth it was sweet as honey, but as soon as he had swallowed it, the sweetness changed to bitterness. That is the way with the word of truth. We must absorb it. The study of it is sweet, but the weight of care it lays upon us is bitter. It places us under the great compulsion.

One morning Jesus slipped out in the gray dawn, stood on the slope overlooking the quiet rooftops of Jerusalem, and wept. What so moved Him? It was the difference He saw between the city that was and the city that might have been, the world that was and the world that might have been. He had dreamed of better things and had discovered how difficult was their realization. The great compulsion was upon Him.

Key words are interesting in the vocabulary of such a one as Paul. One of his favorite words was _bondslave_. Another was _must_. A heavy sense of obligation was upon him. The feeling that took the vocal form of that word drove him over land and sea, planting the seeds of the kingdom life. A great vision had gripped his soul. A dream had possessed him. He could never rest again, for the great compulsion was upon him.

The Minister and His Reading (1928)

What the world and the spirit of the times have done to the reading habits of the public in general, they have also done to the minister. In the case of the public, they have sought to substitute the motion picture, the tabloid newspaper, and the confession magazine for the bookshelf. In the case of the minister, they seek to take the hours once devoted to the enrichment of the mind and dedicate them to the puttering things so fondly called practical duties—organizations, promotion, community activities.

Where the world leaves off, the church begins, for it is not wholly free from infection with the virus of materialism. Often the very disciples of Jesus get the idea that it is more important to make a stir in the world of today than to build life for the eternities.

We hear frequent complaints that there is a dearth of commanding preaching. The wonder is not that there are so few challenging voices in the pulpit, but that there are as many as there are when so many forces are joined in a giant conspiracy to throttle the spirit of prophecy. There is not enough encouragement to men to be great preachers. Yet wherever there is a voice that speaks with authority and not as the Scribes, there are people to hear it, though it be in the slums of a city or the depths of a forest. There will be plenty of such voices when the world and the church allow men to get back to the reflective life, and when ministers themselves once more determine to spend much time with the truth of God.

Why did the world’s crowning religion come out of a poor, barren little country, when there were Egypt, and Babylonia, and Greece? It was because Israel was poor enough and secluded enough to walk with God. The shepherd and the vinedresser caught the “still small voice” that was lost in the rush and roar about the merchant in the marketplace. Egypt was too busy with her civilization. Babylonia was too busy with her pleasure. Greece was too busy with her culture. The spirit of prophecy is found where are the conditions under which men can dream dreams and see visions. Great preaching will never come out of a maze of material interests. Shall we so soon forget that the first great task of Jesus was to win the victory over the tempting power of material things and that one of His last triumphant statements was that He had overcome the world?

They used to say that the ideal plan for a minister is to divide his day equally between the cultivation of his mind and the work of his parish. If one would follow such a plan faithfully through a long pastorate he would have two things—a well-furnished mind and a well-developed church. However, it does not matter so much which plan one chooses. It matters most that he does have a plan that provides a suitable place for reading and study.

It is not the present purpose to exalt the importance of reading beyond its due. Other interests are important, but this happens to be a call back to books, back to the delight of kings’ treasuries and queens’ gardens, back to the refreshing that comes from truth’s ever-flowing well, back to the replenishing of those powers upon which a minister must rely when every other key to success lies broken and useless.

A certain college professor used to advise his students to get and use three books, even if they could have no others. He said it did not matter how cheaply made they were, if they were only genuine and complete. He told them to get an unabridged dictionary, and study it for words; to get a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, and study it for usage; and to get a copy of the King James Bible, and study it for style. These, together with a standard encyclopaedia and perhaps a good Bible dictionary, form the necessary foundation for any ministerial library.

No minister needs to be convinced of the wonders and beauties of the English Bible. All understand its value, but some find it difficult to invest the time and effort necessary to that unusual understanding of its message which the ministry must have. It is not difficult to show the public the charm of this wonderful book, but the one who reveals that charm must first have seen it himself.

Next to the Bible comes a vast and growing field of professional material dealing with the work of the ministry. This the minister must take into account. If the physician, the lawyer, the teacher, the business man, or the farmer can continue to be a success only by keeping abreast of the newest thought and discovery in his field, certainly the minister is in no position to claim exemption from the rule.

Occasionally we hear a minister boast that he knows nothing about Theology. Some even seem to regard such a claim as a qualification for the most serious and important work on earth. For a minister to make such a boast is exactly as intelligent as it would be for a lawyer to advertise that he is handling cases involving property and human rights without knowing the principles of his work, or for a physician to say that he is taking into his hands the life and happiness of human beings without a knowledge of drugs or surgery. If a minister really knows nothing about Theology, it is wisest to conceal the fact, if possible, until he learns something about it. A community soon spots a man who does not know his business.

A minister must find some way to gain a wide general information and culture. The person who said that he must know everything was not far wrong. This is true not only because he is preaching to an increasingly well-informed people, but also because he must interpret God to all of these people in the terms with which they are familiar. Each of his hearers lives and works in a limited field and can get on with a knowledge of that field alone, but the field with which the minister needs to be familiar is unlimited because it touches all the others.

No minister can afford to neglect good fiction. It often tells more truth than fact does. Upton Sinclair’s _The Jungle_ did. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ did. The parables of Jesus did. Aside from its entertainment value, fiction cultivates the imagination, and without that, no man can be a powerful public speaker. If one will speak in pictures, the people will hear and understand. One of the reasons why the common people heard Jesus gladly was the fact that His words always appealed to the imagination.

A minister needs all kinds of books, including those which make one laugh. Let us not be victims of the idea that holiness excludes the sunshine. The man who loses the song and laughter out of his life is unfit for the ministry until he gets them back. Clean and genuine humor should be on the minister’s bookshelf and in his heart.

A minister should read some of the things he dislikes and with which he disagrees. There is little growth in reading or hearing only what one already knows or believes. One owes it to truth also to know the other side. Even if he is certain that the other side is wrong, he should know its claims and how to meet them. The physician must study diseases before he can apply remedies. Many ministers have made too few clinical observations of the error and sin that are ruining the world.

It is sometimes said that this kind of thing means too much religion of the head and too little of the heart. You cannot separate these two things. They are parts of the same. Physics tells us that radiant heat and light are one and the same. All heat makes light. All light gives off heat. Whatever illuminates warms. Whatever warms illuminates.

On the evening of the first Easter, two disciples were on their way to their simple home when a stranger drew near. He took the road with them and talked to them about the meaning of the Scriptures. Entering the house with them, He ate, and departed. Then they knew it had been the risen Lord. They said: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us in the way?”

The burning heart always goes with the understanding head. One cannot face the fair page of truth, see what God has wrought, and contemplate the goodness and love of the divine heart, with a soul unswept by the tides of spiritual feeling. Perhaps more tarrying at the feet of the Great Teacher of all truth would renew the testimony of the two disciples of Emmaus.

It must be so, for religion does not belong alone to heart or head. It belongs to the whole life. We may find God in the oratory where the soul rises heavenward upon the wings of prayer. We may find Him in the temple where arch and pillar cast dim shades about us, and the altar lends us sanctuary from the world. We may find Him in the hour of unusual spiritual fervor and in the great emotional experience of a lifetime. We may find Him in the hot, white field of service to the troubled, the burdened, and the broken among men. We may find Him in the careful statement of a creed, the formal beauty of a liturgy, or the simple prayer of a moment of contrition. We may also find Him in the field of thought and knowledge where we behold Him and His kingdom of unsearchable riches through the magic gateway of the covers of a book.

Preaching to College Students (1928)

Preaching to college students is one of the most exacting of homiletic responsibilities. This is the case not so much because students are critical as because they are the world in the making, and the tomorrows will be just about as religious as they are. By some means the message must be put across to them.

Preaching to such a constituency is no longer the task of the few. Almost every preacher has more or less of it to do because the influence of the college now reaches everywhere. In the university centers we deal with students in large groups, but in the smallest country community one finds at least a few. A sermon must be as worthwhile for the few as for the many. So the problem is one of general interest.

The presence of students in his congregation should be a great blessing to a minister. It is a high challenge to him to do his best work. The mind of the student is alert, and his work, so far as it goes, is with current data. Therefore, the man who interests him must be wide awake and well informed. For such an influence any minister should be deeply grateful.

Great numbers of college students and graduates are in the churches. Still greater numbers are not unwilling to be, and will be when the motive is clear. But the reason must certainly be established. Will the student derive benefit from the sermon? If not, he is not interested and that is the end of it. If so, he is interested and will respond. This is only as it should be.

The average student likes to be preached to and dealt with as a human being. True, the species includes a few mutations who like to think they belong to some other order of creation, but most students know better and the rest will have abundant opportunity to learn better.

The college student is nothing but a boy or girl from the farm dwelling, the village home, or the city mansion, translated into a campus setting. The law of adaptation operates, and certain temporary colorations, habits and appendages develop, all of which will pass with the next change of environment. These youngsters are still flesh and blood however and it may be said of them as it may be said of anybody that their need is for the universal gospel preached in the most honest and interesting possible way.

The student is dealt with as such during the days of the week. His professors may be depended upon not to let him forget that he is a student. When the worship hour comes he is glad of an opportunity to forget it for the time being and to occupy the honorable position of a human being made in the spiritual image of his God.

It is a great mistake to preach to students in the terms and imagery of campus life. The preacher who starts in to show his audience how much he has engaged in athletics, how familiar he is with fraternity and social life, and how finally he has solved the old and largely imaginary problem of the conflict between science and religion, will only succeed in making himself ridiculous. Students do not come to church to hear about things concerning which they know more than the preacher does. They come to hear about things of which he is presumed to know more than they do. Therefore, the safest as well as the most helpful thing he can do is to keep to religion.

It is also a mistake to suppose that the student mind reacts unfavorably against serious things. It may appreciate the witticism which helps to illuminate a serious point in the discussion, and a first class reductio ad absurdum nearly always clinches a proposition, but mere buffoonery will make a small and brief appeal. The person who attempts thus to denature the gospel he preaches will not meet with permanent favor.

This is the case because the student mind is essentially serious. One might not think so after a superficial observance of student actions, but it is so nevertheless. The very laughter and jesting one hears in student circles often mask the most earnest questionings, the deepest longings, and the most serious attitudes.

So long as one keeps himself, as he should do, within the limits of honest conviction, and so long as one speaks, as he should speak, in the spirit of love and good will, no other class of people in the world is so ready to have him be brutally frank as are college students. In fact, they discount him if he shows any evidence of evasion or accommodation. They may be right about some things and wrong about other things, but they are honest in all things, and they expect him to be the same.

Any one of the fields of thought and knowledge is a serious matter with the honest investigator. It is so dealt with in the classroom and the laboratory. To the student religion is just one more field to be explored. If he does not care to explore it, he does not bother. If he does care to explore it, he does not regard it as a joke. The person who thus approaches it with a sincere purpose should receive honest help.

All this leads me to the point where I can say that one of the fine things about the student mind is that it has discarded all traditions and prejudices. It approaches any matter with a disposition to find and face the facts, whatever the consequences may be. It is a real _tabula rasa_, upon which one may write—provided he has a stylus that is sharp enough.

Surely this is an opportunity to bring delight to the soul of the honest preacher. The most deadening thing in the world, intellectually and spiritually, is the practice of preaching platitudes and maintaining traditions which are proven, outworn, or unimportant—maybe all three. The most uncomfortable position in which any sincere preacher can find himself is one in which such a type of service is demanded.

The preacher to college students finds himself in no such position. He may go anywhere he likes within the limits of the field of truth. He has no traditions to maintain. He is bound by no trammels of creed or dogma. He is not checked by any barriers of prejudice. His way is open. He has but to walk in it in the spirit of reverence and honesty. He is dealing with adventurous minds whose one concern is truth. The mind of Jesus was such a one, and such an audience really challenges a preacher to approach questions in the spirit of the Great Teacher.

This is the process that is going to break down the artificialities and fan out the chaff of unreality from religion. Perpetuating systems is poor business, but adventuring in the field of truth is a high privilege. That is what the preacher to college students must do. Granted that it is in the field of religion, his one test for homiletic material is the question whether it is true.

One of the most common mistakes made in the popular and superficial analysis of the student mind is the assumption that it is essentially a radical mind. This often becomes the basis of a great homiletic error in preaching to students.

A comparative few students are radical, just as are a comparative few taken from any group one might mention. But with the mass it is not so. The great majority of college students are probably more conservative than the majority of people outside the university world. They think carefully, act with deliberation, and go quietly about their way while a few exceptions to the rule take the soap box and loudly demand the immediate reversal of all things.

I should say that about the last place to go to start a revolution of any kind would be the average college campus. Yet the campus mind is alive to the evolution that is going on in everything—including itself.

The student mind would be properly impatient of a static or reactionary viewpoint, but it is little concerned with wildeyed radicalism of any kind. The preacher who is most likely to reach its processes is the one who is honest, fearless, and open-minded, and yet who is conservative in the sense that he abandons a position only when he has found sufficient reason for believing that another one is better. The preacher who shows a conservatism which takes care to be progressive will commend himself and his message to the student hearer.

The presence of students in one’s congregation should save him from the pitiful fate of ceasing to grow, and thereby becoming old. They are an advancing race, and it is his privilege to advance with them. If he does so, the day will come when he can look back across the years and find satisfaction in the thought that he has had a real part in the making of the history of his and succeeding times—that of building the solidness and savour of ancient truth into the life of the new world.

Some Problems of the Preacher (1928)

The day one offers himself to God for the work of the Christian ministry he takes upon himself a set of serious personal problems, along with his problems of leadership and service. He proposes to do God’s work, and that means also to be God’s man. He must be that amid difficult conditions, under constant scrutiny, and in the face of frequent misjudgment.

One of his problems is to keep the spirit of reverence in his life. Human nature tends to handle ever more familiarly the things with which it has to do. Nadab and Abihu would have been afraid to offer strange fire if they had not allowed themselves to become too familiar with the things of the sanctuary. God, the church, and human hearts are all things our relationship to which should hush our souls.

Another of his problems, and one of his chief ones, is to keep the stamp of reality upon himself and his ministry. Holy tones, unnatural attire, and affected mannerisms are all banes to the ministry. They have cost many a man his usefulness, and limited that of many others. The church would gain immeasurably if today every one of her army of ministers would undertake in a simple human way to represent normal manhood at its best. Certainly that is what Jesus did.