Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography

by Theodore L. Cuyler

MY WORK IN THE PULPIT

During the first eighteen months after I graduated from Princeton College I was balancing between the law and the ministry. Many of my relatives urged me to become a lawyer, as my father and grandfather had been, but my godly mother had dedicated me to the ministry from infancy, and her influence all went in the same line with her prayers. With the exception of my venerated and beloved kinsman, Dr. Cornelius C. Cuyler, Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, who died in 1850, no other man of my name has stood in an American pulpit. During the winter of my return from Europe to my home on the Cayuga Lake, one of my uncles invited me to go down and attend an afternoon prayer service in the neighboring village of Ludlowville. There was a spiritual awakening in the church, and the meeting was held in the parlor of a private house. I arose and spoke for ten minutes. When the meeting was over, more than one came to me and said: "Your talk did me good." On my way home, as I drove along in my sleigh, the thought flashed into my mind, "If ten minutes' talk to-day helped a few souls, why not preach all the time?" That one thought decided the vexed question on the spot. Our lives turn on small pivots, and if we let God lead us, the path will open before our footsteps. I reached home that day, and informed my good mother of my decision. She had always expected it and quietly remarked, "Then, I have already spoken to Mr. Ford for his room for you in the Princeton Seminary." My three years in the Seminary were full of joy and profit. I made it a rule to go out as often as possible and address little meetings in the neighboring school-houses, and found this a very beneficial method of gaining practice. A young preacher must get accustomed to the sound of his own voice; if naturally timid, he must learn to face an audience and must first learn to speak; afterwards he may learn to speak well. It is a wise thing for a young man to begin his labors in a small congregation; he has more time for study, a better chance to become intimately acquainted with individual characters, and also a smaller audience to face. The first congregation that I was called to take charge of, in Burlington, N.J. contained about forty families. Three or four of these were wealthy and cultivated, the rest were plain mechanics, with a few gardeners and coachmen. I made my sermons to suit the comprehension of the gardeners and coachmen at the end of the house, leaving the cultivated portion to gain what they could from the sermon on its way. One of the wealthy attendants was Mr. Charles Chauncey, a distinguished Philadelphia lawyer, who spent the summer months in Burlington. Once after I had delivered a very simple and earnest sermon on the "Worth of the Soul," I went home and said to myself, "Lawyer Chauncey must have thought that was only a camp-meeting exhortation." He met me during the week and to my astonishment he said to me: "My young friend, I thank you for that sermon last Sunday; it had the two best qualities of preaching—simplicity and down-right earnestness. If I had a student in my law-office who was not more in earnest to win his first ten dollar suit before a Justice of the Peace than some men seem to be in trying to save souls I would kick such a student out of my office." That eminent lawyer's remark did me more service than any month's study in the Seminary. It taught me that cultivated audiences relished plain, simple scriptural truths as much as did the illiterate, and that down-right earnestness to save souls hides a multitude of sins in raw young preachers.

Another instance that occurred in my early ministry did me a world of good. I was invited to preach in the Presbyterian Church at Saratoga Springs about two years after I was licensed. My topics were "Trusting Jesus Christ" in the morning and "The Day of Judgment" at the evening service. The next day, when I was buying my ticket at the railway station to leave the town, a plain man (who was a baker in the village) said to me: "Are you not the young man who spoke yesterday in our meeting-house?" I told him that I was. "Well," said he, "I never felt more sorry for any one in my life." "Why so?" I asked. His answer was: "I said to myself, there is a youth just out of the Seminary, and he does not know that a Saratoga audience is made up of highly educated people from all parts of the land; but I have noticed that if a minister, during his first ten minutes, can convince the people that he is only trying to save their souls he kills all the critics in the house." I have never ceased to thank God for the remark of that shrewd Saratoga baker, who, I was told, had come there from New Haven, Connecticut, and was a man of remarkable sagacity. That was one of the profoundest bits of sound philosophy on the art of preaching that I have ever encountered, and I have quoted it in every Theological Seminary that I have ever addressed. If we ministers pour the living truths of the Gospel red-hot into the ears and consciences of our audiences, they will have enough to do to look out for themselves and will have no time to level criticisms at us or our mode of preaching. Cowards, also, are never more pitiable than when in the pulpit.

I will not enter here into the endless controversy about the comparative merits of written or extemporized sermons. My own observation and experience has been that no rule is the best rule. Every man must find out by practice which method he can use to the best advantage and then pursue it. No man ever fails who understands his forte, and no man succeeds who does not. Some men cannot extemporize effectively if they try ever so hard; there are others who, like Gladstone, can think best when they are on their legs and are inspired by an audience. During the first few years of my ministry I wrote out nearly all of my sermons. The advantage of doing that is that it enables a young beginner to form his own style at the outset by careful and systematic writing. Spurgeon, often when a youth, read some of his sermons, although afterwards he never premeditated a single sentence for the pulpit. Dr. Richard S. Storrs was a most fluent extemporaneous speaker, but for twenty years he carefully wrote all his discourses. My own habit, after a time, was to write a portion of the sermon and turn away from my notes to interject thoughts that came in the heat of the moment and then turn to my manuscript. This was generally the habit of Henry Ward Beecher. After thirty years in the ministry I discarded writing sermons entirely and adopted the plan of preparing a few "heads" on a bit of note-paper, and tacking it into a Bagster's Bible. Dr. John Hall wrote carefully, leaving his manuscript at home; and so does Dr. Alexander McLaren, of Manchester, who is to-day by far the most superb sermonizer in Great Britain. The eloquent Guthrie, of Scotland, committed his discourses to memory, and delivered them in a torrent of Godly emotion.

In preparing my sermons my custom was, after taking some rest on Monday, to get into my study early on Tuesday morning. To every student the best hours of the day are those before the sun has reached the meridian. Then the mind is the most clear and vigorous. I have never in my life prepared sermons a dozen times after my supper. Severe mental work in the evening is apt to destroy sound sleep; thousands of brain workers are wrecked by insomnia. To secure freedom from needless interruption I pinned on my study door "Very Busy." This had the wholesome effect of shutting out all time-killers, and of shortening necessary calls of those who had some important errand. Instead of leaving the selection of my topic to the risk of any contingency, I usually chose my text on Tuesday morning, and laid the keel of the sermon. I kept a large note-book in which I could enter any passage of Scripture that would furnish a good theme for pulpit consumption. I also found it a good practice to jot down thoughts that occurred to me on any important topic that I could use when I came to prepare my sermons. By this method I had a treasury of texts from which I could draw every week. Let my readers be careful to notice that word "Text." I have known men to prepare an elaborate essay, theological, ethical or sociological, and then to perch a text from the Bible on top of it.

"Preach my word" does not signify the clapping of a few syllables as a figure-head on a long treatise spun out of a preacher's brain. The best discourses are not manufactured, they are a growth. God's inspired and infallible Book must furnish the text. The connection between every good sermon and its text is just as vital as the connection between a peach-tree and its root. Sometimes an indolent minister tries to palm off an old sermon for a pretended new one by changing the text, but this shallow device ought to expose itself as if he should decapitate a dog and undertake to clap on the head of some other animal. Intelligent audiences see through such tricks and despise them. "Be sure your sin will find you out." When a passage from the Holy Scripture has been planted as a root and well watered with prayer, the sermon should spring naturally from it. The central thought of the text being the central thought of the sermon and all argument, all instruction and exhortation are only the boughs branching off from the central trunk, giving unity, vigor and spiritual beauty to the whole organic production. The unity and spiritual power of a discourse usually depend upon the adherence to the great divine truth contained in the inspired Book. The Bible text is God's part of our sermon; and the more thoroughly we get the text into our own souls, the more will we get it into the sermon, and into the consciences of our hearers. To keep out of a rut I studied the infinite variety of Sacred Scripture; its narratives and matchless biographies, its jubilant Psalms, its profound doctrines, its tender pathos, its rolling thunder of Sinai, and its sweet melodies of Calvary's redeeming love. I laid hold of the great themes, and I found a half hour of earnest prayer was more helpful than two or three hours of study. It sometimes let a flash from the Throne flame over the page I was writing.

To me, when preparing my Sabbath messages, God's Holy Word was the sum of all knowledge, and a "Thus saith the Lord" was my invariable guide. I found that in theology the true things were not new, and most of the new things were not true. I remember how a visitor in New Haven was looking for a certain house, and found himself in front of the residence of Professor Olmstead, the eminent astronomer, whose stoves were then very popular. The visitor inquired of an Irishman, who was working in front of the house, "Who lives here?" The very Hibernian answer was, "Shure, sur, 'tis Profissor Olmstead, a very great man; he invents comets, and has discovered a new stove." In searching the Scriptures I used the very best spiritual telescopes in my possession, and gladly availed myself of all discoveries of divine truths made by profounder intellects and keener visions than my own; but I leave this self-styled "advanced age" to invent its own comets, and follow its own meteors.

In one respect I have not followed the practice of many of my brethren, for I never have wasted a single moment in defending God's Word in my pulpit. I have always held that the Bible is a self-evidencing book; God will take care of His Word if we ministers only take care to preach it. We are no more called upon to defend the Bible than we are to defend the law of gravitation. My beloved friend, Dr. McLaren, of Manchester, has well said that if ministers, "instead of trying to prop the Cross of Christ, would simply point men to that Cross, more souls would be saved." The vast proportion of volumes of "Apologetics" are a waste of ink and paper. If they could all be kindled into a huge bonfire, they would shed more light than they ever did before. It is not our business to answer every sceptic who shies a stone at the solid fortress of truth in which God places His ambassadors. If Tobiah and Sanballat are challenging us to come down into the plain, and meet them on their level, our answer must ever be: "I am God's messenger, preaching God's word and doing God's work. I cannot stop to go down and prove that your swords are made of lath."

To my younger brethren I would say: "Preach the Word, preach it with all your soul, preach it in the strength of Jehovah's Spirit, and He will give it the victory."

I found the effectiveness of my sermons increased by the use of every good illustration I could get hold of, but I tried to be careful that they illustrated something. Where such are lugged into the sermon merely for the sake of ornament, they are as much out of place as a bouquet would be tied fast to a plough-handle. The Divine Teacher set us the example of making vital truths intelligible by illustrations, when he spoke so often in parables, and sometimes recalled historical incidents. All congregations relish incidents and stories, when they are "pat" to the purpose, and serious enough for God's house, and help to drive the truth into the hearts of the audience During my early ministry I delivered a discourse to young men at Saratoga Springs, and closed it with a solemn story of a man who died of remorse at the exposure of his crime. The Hon. John McLean, a judge of the United States Supreme Court and a prominent man in the Methodist Church, was in the congregation, and the next day I called at the United States Hotel to pay my respects to him. He said to me, "My young friend I was very much interested in that story last evening; it clinched the sermon. Our ministers in Cincinnati used to introduce illustrative anecdotes, but it seems to have gone out of fashion and I am sorry for it." I replied to him, "Well Judge, I am glad to have the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of telling a story or a personal incident in the pulpit." There is one principle that covers all cases. It is this: Whatever makes the Gospel or Jesus Christ more clear to the understanding, more effective in arousing sinners, in converting souls, in edifying believers and in promoting pure honest living is never out of place in the pulpit. When we are preaching for souls we may use any and every weapon of truth within our reach.