In the breast of the millions there is not only a great need but a great yearning for certain things of the soul which it is for the Pulpit to supply. This paper is an attempt to talk as one of these millions to the young man who is about to mount to this sacred station.
"I have just come from church," said a friend one day, "and I am tired and disappointed. I went to hear a sermon and I listened to a lecture.
"I went to worship and I was merely entertained.
"The preacher was a brilliant man and his address was an intellectual treat; but I did not go to church to hear a professional lecturer. When I want merely to be entertained I will go to the theater.
"But I do not like to hear a preacher principally try to be either orator or artist. I am pleased if he is both; but before everything else I want him to bear me the Master's message. I want the minister to preach Christ and Him crucified."
The man who said this was a journalist of ripe years, highly educated, widely experienced, acquainted with men and life. He was world-weary with that weariness which comes of the journalist's incessant contact with every phase of human activity, good and bad, great and small.
For no man touches life at so many points and is both so rich in and worn by human experiences as the newspaper man in daily service. And I have found that this expression of the wise old man of the press whom I have quoted fairly reflects a general feeling among men of all other classes.
First, then, young man aspiring to the Pulpit, the world expects you to be above all other things a minister of the Gospel. It does not expect you to be, primarily, a brilliant man, or a learned man, or witty, or eloquent, or any other thing that would put your name on the tongues of men. The world will be glad if you are all of these, of course; but it wants you to be a preacher of the Word before anything else. It expects that all your talents will be consecrated to your sacred calling.
It expects you to speak to the heart, as well as to the understanding, of men and women, of the high things of faith, of the deep things of life and death. The great world of worn and weary humanity wants from the Pulpit that word of helpfulness and power and peace which is spoken only by him who has utterly forgotten all things except his holy mission. Therefore merge all of your striking qualities into the divine purpose of which you are the agent. Lose consciousness of yourself in the burning consciousness of your cause.
Very well; but if you do that you must be very sure of your own belief. Any man who assumes to teach the Christian faith, who in his own secret heart questions that faith himself, commits a sacrilege every time he enters the pulpit.