"Hoc age."
CHAPTER XXIX
OBSERVATION AS A SUCCESS FACTOR
Henry Ward Beecher was not so foolish as to think that he could get on without systematic study, and a thorough-going knowledge of the world of books. "When I first went to Brooklyn," he said, "men doubted whether I could sustain myself. I replied, 'Give me uninterrupted time till nine o'clock every morning, and I do not care what comes after.'"
He was a hard student during four hours every morning; those who saw him after that imagined that he picked up the material for his sermons on the street.
Yet having said so much, it is true that much that was most vital in his preaching he did pick up on the street.
"Where does Mr. Beecher get his sermons?" every ambitious young clergyman in the country was asking, and upon one occasion he answered: "I keep my eyes open and ask questions."
This is the secret of many a man's success,—keeping his eyes open and asking questions. Although Beecher was an omnivorous reader he did not care much for the writings of the theologians; the Christ was his great model, and he knew that He did not search the writings of the Sanhedrin for His sermons, but picked them up as He walked along the banks of the Jordan and over the hills and through the meadows and villages of Galilee. He saw that the strength of this great Master's sermons was in their utter simplicity, their naturalness.
Beecher's sermons were very simple, healthy, and strong. They pulsated with life; they had the vigor of bright red blood in them, because, like Christ's, they grew out of doors. He got them everywhere from life and nature. He picked them up in the marketplace, on Wall Street, in the stores. He got them from the brakeman, the mechanic, the blacksmith, the day laborer, the newsboy, the train conductor, the clerk, the lawyer, the physician, and the business man.