In order to a more generally happy and successful prosecution of the duties of a minister of Christ, a preliminary fact requires to be considered. That a man is found or finds himself in any calling is no evidence whatever that he is fitted for that calling. This is just as true of the ministry as of any other vocation. Every man-of-business knows this. The clergy seem to us behind the age in being astonishingly blind to it. Men-of-business know that only a very small fraction of their number can ever attain eminent success. They know, that, in a term of twenty years, ninety-seven men in a hundred fail. Here and there one develops a remarkable talent for the specific business in which he is engaged. The ninety-and-nine discover that they have a weary contest to maintain with manifold contingencies and combinations which no foresight can preclude.
The application of this general truth to their profession the clergy are backward to perceive. The consequences of this backwardness are very hurtful to their interests. Because of this, we have an indefinite amount of puerile and undignified complaint from disappointed men, of disingenuous misrepresentation from incompetent men, who have entered upon labors they were never fitted to accomplish. Such men undertake their labors in ways that want and must want the Divine sanction; and they are tempted to ward off a just verdict of unsuitableness and of incompetency by bringing many and grievous charges against their flocks. "A mania for church-extending"; "a hankering for architectural splendor"; "or for discursive and satirical preaching"; "or for something florid or profound": these and the like imputations have been put forward, as a screen, by many an unsuccessful preacher, who failed,—simply failed,—not in selling horns or hides, shirtings or sugars,—but failed to recommend Christ and his gospel,—failed for want of head, or heart, or industry, or all three.
The man who embarks his all in hardware, drugs, or law, runs the risk of failure. If his neighbor can rise earlier, walk faster, talk faster, work harder, and hold on longer, he will get the avails that might suffice for both. This unalterable fact every business-man accepts.
Do you inquire, To what good purpose do you thrust the possibility of failure upon the attention of the candidate for the ministry? Would you utterly discourage those who are already more alive to the perils of their undertaking than we could wish them?
We answer, It is no kindness to encourage men to enter a ministry whose inexorable requirements and whose incidental possibilities they may not look in the face. It is no kindness to represent to them that the qualities which they possess ought to engage attention; and that their talents will command respect, or else it will be the fault of the people.
Men go into business in the face of a possibility of failure through uncontrollable circumstances; not in defiance of an ascertainable, insufferable incompetency. They toil on, accepting adversity with such equanimity as God gives them, so long as they are permitted to believe that their misfortunes are not chargeable upon their incapacity or self-indulgence. But when it is made apparent that they are not in their proper sphere, they think it no shame to say so, to withdraw, and to apply their energies to something suited to their tastes and capabilities. And it should be with the ministry; but as things now are, with the conceptions of the ministry now entertained, pride interposes to forbid the rectification of the most serious mistakes. It is a question of dignity and of scholarship; whereas it should be a question of love to God and man, and of real ability and conscious power to bring them together,—to reconcile man to God.
Our age is an age of great devotion to secular affairs,—of men who are great in the conduct of such affairs,—in every department in life. To counterbalance this, our ministry must be filled with an equally earnest devotion to God and salvation. In real ability our ministers ought to be not a whit behind. But ability is not necessarily scholarship; though it may, and as far as possible should, include that, and a great deal more. Let it be fully understood, once for all, that we have no disparaging remark to make of scholarship; a man must be foolish beyond expression, who pretends to argue that the highest scholarship is less than a most important and almost indispensable auxiliary to the minister of Christ. All our concern in the matter, just here, is, that it shall be fully understood that piety and real ability make the minister of Christ, and not scholarship; in the words of Augustine, "the heart makes the minister";—but we may safely assume that he meant the heart of a really able man; otherwise we can accord but a qualified respect to this remark.
The prevailing impression among the ministry appears to be, that the man who cannot write "an able doctrinal discourse" is but an inferior man, fit only to preach in an inferior place; and that it would be a great gain to the Church, if scholarship were only so general that the standard of the universities could be applied, and only Phi-Beta-Kappa men allowed to enter the ministry. No doubt, those who incline to this view are quite honest, and not unkindly in it. But those who think this grievously misunderstand the necessities of the age in which we live. Reading men know where to find better reading than can possibly be furnished by any man who is bound to write two sermons weekly, or even one sermon a week; and to train any corps of young men in the expectation that any considerable fraction of them will be able to win and to maintain a commanding influence in their parishes mainly by the weekly production of learned discourses is to do them the greatest injury, by cherishing expectations which never can be realized. Why do our educated men of other professions so seldom and so reluctantly contribute to the addresses in our religious assemblies? Precisely because they understand the difficulty of meeting the popular expectation which is created by the prevailing theory; a theory which demands that sermons, and not only that sermons, but also that all religious addresses, should be chiefly characterized as learned, acute, scholastic even. An Irish preacher is reported in an Edinburgh paper as saying lately, that "he had been led to think of his own preaching and of that of his brethren. He saw very few sermons in the New Testament shaped after the forms and fashion in which they had been accustomed to shape theirs. He was not aware of a sermon there, in which they had a little motto selected, upon which a disquisition upon a particular subject was hung. The sort of sermons which the people in his locality were desirous to hear were sermons delivered on a large portion of the Word of God, carrying through the ideas as the Spirit of God had done." And it is, in part at least, because of the prevailing disregard of this most reasonable desire, that parishes so soon weary of their ministers.
It need not discourage ministers to accept the fact that there will be failures in the ministry,—and a great many failures among those who rely for their success mainly upon the weekly production of learned disquisitions. Discouragement is not in accepting a fact that accords with all just theories of truth, but in adopting a theory which is sure to be invalidated by the almost universal experience of men in, as well as out of, the ministry. A right-minded minister may have many falls in struggling up his Hill of Difficulty; but the Lord will lift him up, and will save him from adding to the temperate grief proper to any measure of short-coming the intolerable poignancy that comes of cheating by false pretences,—of assuming to do what he knows or should know that he cannot do, namely, produce any considerable number of great sermons.
Let it, then, be frankly owned, that men, very good men, very capable men, have failed in the ministry. A. failed, because he did not study; B., because he did not visit his people; C., because he could not talk; D., because he was too grave; E., because he was too frivolous; F. could not, or would not, control his temper; G. alienated by exacting more than he received; and all of them because of not having what Scougal calls "the life of God in the soul of man."