Chapter IV: Personal Habits

The pastor is expected to be a model Christian gentleman, showing the refinement, delicacy, and culture which the Gospel inculcates and produces, and improper habits, therefore, in him are more prominent and influential for evil than in other men. Now and then a minister exhibits a foolish _bravado_ of public opinion by affecting brusque, uncouth, eccentric manners and indulging in questionable habits under the mistaken supposition that, in thus setting at defiance the common sentiments of mankind in regard to the proprieties of ministerial life, he is showing moral courage and manhood; nor are there wanting equally foolish people who will applaud this contemptible exhibition of personal vanity. But, apart from such exceptional cases, the ministerial life is always beset by strong temptations to unbecoming habits. Thus:

1. _Intemperance in eating._ The studious life, as ordinarily pursued, often tends to dyspepsia and an unnatural craving for food. The bodily and mental vigor is often thus destroyed, while the obvious absence of self-restraint degrades the man in the eyes of others. The dullness of the pulpit and the ill-health of ministers are not seldom traceable to an overloaded stomach.

2. _The use of tobacco._ The highest medical authorities now agree that this is one of the common causes of nervous prostration and early mental decay. The late Prof. Moses Stuart says: "I do not place the use of tobacco in the same scale with that of ardent spirits. It does not make men maniacs or demons. But that it does undermine the health of thousands; that it creates a nervous irritability, and thus operates on the temper and moral character of men; that it often creates a thirst for spirituous liquors; that it allures to clubs and grog-shops and taverns, and thus helps to make idlers and spendthrifts; and finally, that it is a very serious and needless expense,--are things which cannot be denied by any observing and considerate person. And if all this be true, how can the habitual use of tobacco as a mere luxury be defended by any one who wishes well to his fellow-men or has a proper regard to his own usefulness?" The duty of self-conquest in regard to such a habit is evident especially in the minister, whose very office adds emphasis to his personal example; and the principle involved is strongly set forth by Paul when he says: "All things are lawful for me, but _I will not be brought under the power of any_" (1 Cor. vi. 12). He accounted it an unworthy and dangerous thing for a Christian to come under bondage to any bodily appetite. But he adds: "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things: now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we, an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away" (1 Cor. ix. 25-27).

3. _The use of stimulants._ The pressure of intellectual work on the pastor often requires of him the most important public efforts when worn and depressed, and thus at times the temptation to stimulate is very strong. The fact of bodily weakness pleads for a stimulant as a medical necessity. Once indulged, stimulation readily passes into a habit, and the importance of the occasion is made an effectual plea for it as an alternative to failure. Now, in all such cases, the consciousness of self-indulgence, as it weakens self-respect, must needs also weaken the moral power of the minister. He feels himself enslaved and cannot speak with authority. While consciously and deliberately yielding to self-indulgence, how can he preach to others the moral teachings of the Gospel? Such an indulgence, moreover, places the man in fearful peril, for it creates the necessity of repetition, and forms an appetite which in many instances has destroyed the man. Some of the most brilliant men in the ministry have here made an utter and terrible wreck of life.

Right habits are, therefore, of primary moment. A man can respect himself and secure the respect of others only as he exercises habitual self-control, holding passion and appetite in thorough subjection; without this the pastor lacks that consciousness of independence and that true manhood in which alone resides genuine moral power; and his defects, made conspicuous and influential by his sacred office, may be disastrous in their influence on those around him.

+SECTION XX.+

THE PASTOR'S INNER LIFE.

Ancient asceticism, in demanding for the ministry a hidden life of communion with God, gave voice not only to one of the profoundest intuitions of the Christian consciousness, but also to one of the clearest teachings of Scripture. The men who deal with spiritual things must themselves be spiritual. Our age, while rightly rejecting a perverted asceticism, is tending to the opposite error. It is intensely practical. "Action!" is its watchword. This practicalness often becomes mere narrowness and shallowness. It overlooks the profounder laws of the Christian life. Spiritual force comes from within, from the hidden life of God in the soul. It depends, not on mere outward activities, but on the Divine energies acting through the human faculties, God working through the man, the Holy Ghost permeating, quickening all the powers of the preacher, and speaking by his voice to the souls of the people. The soul's secret power with God thus gives public power with men, and the mightiest influences of the pulpit often flow from a hidden spring in the solitude of the closet; for a sermon is not the mere utterance of man: there is in it a power more than human. Its vital force comes from the Holy Spirit. Jesus said: "It is not _ye_ that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you" (Matt. x. 20). Its spiritual energy springs from something deeper than logic and rhetoric. As Bushnell has well said: "Preaching is nothing else than the bursting out of life which has first burst in or up from where God is among the soul's foundations."

Such was the teaching of Christ. In His farewell words to His disciples He promised "another Comforter"--one who should take His place among them and abide with them for ever. As He had walked with them an Instructor, Friend, Helper, so after His departure the Holy Spirit should dwell among them, teaching, inspiring, guiding them, a true and living Divine Presence ever with them and mighty to help. Blessed as His own bodily presence had been, the presence of the Holy Spirit was of still higher moment, for He declared that it was better for them that He Himself depart and the Spirit come; for the Spirit, whose office it is to take of Christ and show Him, should reveal the Christ-presence within them in accordance with His promise: "He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and _will manifest Myself to him_" (John xiv. 21); "I will not leave you comfortless; _I will come to you_" (John xiv. 18). Without this Divine Helper He expressly forbade their entrance on the ministry, and as His last charge before He ascended He said, "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high" (Luke xxiv. 49).

At the Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended, and how marvelous was His power! Plain as had been the words Jesus spake, the apostles yet utterly misconceived the most vital truths; but when the Spirit of truth came, the Gospel, in its grandeur and power, stood clearly revealed before them. The men who before had timidly cowered in the presence of danger now rejoiced that they "were counted worthy to suffer shame" for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts v. 41). They whose selfish ambition had aspired to be "greatest in the kingdom of heaven" now forgot their mean rivalries, and were inspired with single-hearted consecration to the Master; and the multitudes who before had despised and rejected their words, now convicted "of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment," bowed before this unseen, mighty Power, and cried out, "Men and brethren, what must we do?" (Acts ii. 37).

Now, it is plain that the Holy Spirit, this special "power from on high," was promised, not to the Apostles only, but to the ministry in all ages. In the New Testament period He dwelt, a living, quickening Divine presence, in all the servants of Christ, revealing truth, inspiring faith, and making their words the power of God unto salvation. They prayed in the Spirit; they spake in the Spirit; they lived in the Spirit. The promise of Jesus was fulfilled: "Lo! I am with you alway" (Matt. xxviii. 20); for the Christ-presence was continually revealed in them--a revelation of Him, not, indeed, to the eye, but to the soul, and unspeakably more blessed than had been His bodily presence when on earth. Not the Apostle only, but every servant of God, could say: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii. 20); and in the hour of peril, when all men forsook him, the Christian confessor triumphantly affirmed: "Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me" (2 Tim. iv. 17). In every subsequent age the indwelling Spirit of God has been the fountain of power in the ministry; and the mightiest men in the pulpit, renouncing self-sufficiency, have confessed, with Paul: "Our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament" (2 Cor. iii. 5, 6). Conscious of need, they have turned their souls upward to God, and this Divine Helper has entered and filled them; and all the faculties and culture of the man, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, have been transfused, elevated, enlarged, by this invisible but mighty Power. It has been truly said: "The virtue of an electric wire is not in the wire, but in its connection with the voltaic battery. The power of the minister is not in the polish of his style, the pictorialness of his illustrations, the fervor of his manner, the order and arrangement of his discourse, but in his living connection with God and his capacity to act as a connecting-link between God and the human soul. It is God in the soul which is the secret of true pulpit power."

How, then, shall the pastor maintain an inner life such that he shall be "endued with power from on high" and God shall speak through him to the souls of men? In answer this I suggest as a means of chief importance: