The west shore., January 01, 1887, Page 31, Image 25

PULPITS AND
evidently gone into the pulpit with little
professional culture, with less of that
awakened energy of mind and feeling,
and still less of a fr tnd hearty expe
rience of real, practical life, that higher
spirit of sympathy. Certainly he has
had little of what we call a wide and va
ried intercourse with his fellow crea
tures. His knowledge of human uature
is limited. A man may sit housed up in
his study and work hard upon the sub
ject of human nature, and in the end
know nothing of it As a general thing,
preachers live too much alone or in so
ciety of each other, and do not mingle
with the common, ordinary world of bus
iness stress and strain, where human na
ture may be found unadulterated. If I
had a son, and was fitting him for the
ministry, I would give him a couple of
years in actual business, in and out of
doors, and as many more in a newspaper
office as a reporter. I would do this
that he might study individual charac
ter. A man can only do this successful
ly in the street, shop, store, bank, con
cert hall, lecture hall, political gather
ing, manufacturing establishment, phy
sician's office, police court, docks, every
where, open to the reporter of a first
class newspaper. Here is where men
are in earnest about the battle of life;
here is the eloquence of real life action
and life passion. The talk in all this
vast arena of business never gets into
looks or the tapistry-huug study of the
pastor. If it does, its freshness is gone,
and it no longer illustrates principles of
thought and speech; it is no longer elo
quent with life.
Perhaps our man may have what in
-the technical is known as knowledge of
life, but it is only in that sense. He ex
hibits a lack of it in the deep and broad
sense in which the words have their right
meaning, knowledge of the common every
day joys and sorrows of the human heart;
the realities of an affections! nature; pas-
PULP1TEKKS. ;u
sion and interest; the loves and hopes
and trials which make up the common
lot Take this kuowledge and Upti
it with the spirit of the Master, and all
that is good, and you have a live, ear
nest, sympathetic, eloquent, sinewy man
iu the pulpit Without it you have
either a dry stick or a sensational strut
Among other things, the best advice to
young men preparing themselves for any
course of life, has Wen for them to study
men first, and then Itooks. It is this
that makes preaching an art of life, sad
takes it out of the domain of almtract
science, into which dull preachers thrunt
it KxHrience is the chief end of man,
and it is through experience that men
are to be convinced. A preacher with
out a study of men in the midst of their
busiueiis haunts and their perplexities,
is a learned ignoramus. A man has the
dry rot on him who undertakes to preach
about human nature as ho has learnd
it from books. People want freshness
as a characteritic of the sermon. They
rightfully complain of sermons that are
rejKjtitious of the same commonplace.
If the pulpiteer is to be interesting, and
in that way jwsuasive, he mut le able
to take even the most familiar topics of
the gospel, every aspect of which may
have been worn smooth by constant con
troversy, and invest them with a newness
and feeling. If he can do this, he will
make the hearer feel hiuiHcIf iu Mroonal
contact with this new idea, this world of
thought and feeling ojiened up to him.
The gospel uever grows old, but is jut
as applicable to the man of to-day as to
the personal followers of the Man of
Nazareth, but it must be present"! to
him as it was of old, by those wholly sud
thoroughly fitted for the work. The
man who goes into the pulpit as a "soft
place," a place where he ran keep his
hands white, and be clothed in purple
anil fine linen, or witli the idea that it
is novelty and not a fresh, culture!, earn-