# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 13

Every army must have its leaders; and as are the leaders, so, as the rule, will the army be. The ministers of a church are its leaders; and no church, whatever else it may have, can be a live, enterprising, consecrated, growing church, except as it has live, enterprising, consecrated ministers, giving themselves in Christ's spirit to the furtherance of its growth, through the conversion and enlistment of souls. We have had many such ministers; and our history is fragrant with their names and the influence of their labors. As I trace these lines, the faces of some such whom I have known, and of others who preceded them, shine out of the Past, and come clustering, a sacred and glorious 'cloud of witnesses,' about me:—Turner, Richards, and Hosea Ballou; dear, saintly Dr. Ballou, one of the simplest, sweetest, grandest souls that ever walked the earth; Sebastian Streeter, S. R. Smith, and Otis Skinner; Hanscom, so full of zeal and so early called; Henry Bacon, John Boyden, and James W. Putnam—these are but part of the company. And only a little while ago, after a long and weary struggle with disease, another passed on to these faithful ones—Franklin Samuel Bliss, a man of no brilliant gifts, or conspicuous position, and of many bodily infirmities; but a man of faith and prayer, who, in spite of numerous physical impediments, which most persons would have regarded as insuperable, gave himself to Christ, and the endeavor to lead others to him, with a sincerity and unction so impressive and a consecration so entire,—and loved our whole Church with a heart so large and warm, and a response so ready,—and supplemented all with a life so penetrated with the spirit and power of our faith, and therefore so pure and Christian, that his very feebleness became mighty, and the fields in which he toiled bore fruit in spiritual har​vests which will long attest how effectually he wrought. Devoted and sainted one! with what pathos come to us who knew him and the limitations by which he was hindered, those words among his last, as he thought of the work God had for him to do on the other side, "I shall not be deaf or blind in heaven; no weakness, no weariness there." Rather a thousand times would I choose the record of this humble, unpretending, comparatively obscure servant of the Lord, as it stands in God's reckonings, than that of many another man of far greater gifts and more commanding power and wider fame, but without his love for Christ and his zeal for souls. And we have had not a few such. The annals of any church may be searched in vain for ministers more apostolic, heroic, or saintly, or more worthy to be held up as models, than those who have thus honored our ministry, and helped to command respect and win success for our cause.
But like others, we have had far too many of quite another class. Singularly fortunate we have been, considering our circumstances, and how our ministry has been recruited, in respect to the immoralities which have so stained and stigmatized the ministerial profession of other names. But while we have had great cause for thanksgiving in this respect, though our skirts have not been altogether clear, what a motley assemblage we should have, were we to cull out from those who, nominally or really among our ministers, have been unsuited to the work—say during the last forty years! Imagine the gathering, grouped according to 'gifts' and character!—here, those interested solely in the negative or argumentative side of our faith, with no taste or care for its moral and spiritual meanings or applications,—intent only on controversy; here, adventurers 'taking up' the ministry simply as a means to 'get a living,' with no heart or conscience in it; here, men adrift, lodging for a time in our pulpits, as logs or chips, floating in a stream, lodge on the bank, or against a rock, until some eddy, or some fresh movement of the waters, chances to displace and send them farther on; here, minds undisciplined, often unbalanced, restless, crotchety, impracticable; here, rattle-brained lovers of novelty and excitement, catch​ing at every fresh sensation, and at length whirled off by the latest; here, pieces of inflamed, or pompous, self-conceit, enacting the part of the frog in the fable, or incessantly fretting, because denied appreciation; here, hot-heads, impetuous, frothy, unreasonable, usually unscrupulous; here, those whose perpetual thought has been of self, and whose entire lives have turned upon some personal, or local, pivot, with no breadth of view, with no public spirit, with no devotion to our Church or our cause as a whole, caring only for the patch of ground their feet have covered, or their hoe has tilled, and anxious exclusively for what they were themselves somehow to get out of it; here, schismatics, or latitudinarians, always riding some hobby, or protesting against rules, or advocating license under the name of freedom, and caring only for a nominal fellowship that they might the better serve their factious, noisy, litigious, or personal ends; here, the listless and indifferent, insensible to all appeals, though every appeal might be blown through Gabriel's trumpet, and indisposed to lift a finger in the way of co-operation, whatever the necessities demanding it; and here, finally, the drones, ignoramuses, do-nothings, 'settling' every year, and occupying any field only to exhaust it. A motley company, indeed!—greatly differing as to ability and the shadings of motives and purpose, or no-purpose, but having, most of them, these two things in common, viz., an utter lack of any thorough religious awakening or experience, and an absence of any real sympathy with the ministry, or any central, absorbing consecration to it.
Let no one suppose that I thus refer to those who have been in our ministry without being fitted for it, as if they ever had been, or—so far as we now have them—are, peculiar to us. The ministry of every church shows such. But without entering into comparisons, or debating whether we are more or less unfortunate than others in this particular, all having any familiarity with the facts will agree that we have sorely suffered on this account. Who of us, of any length of service, has not known numerous specimens of every one of the groups described, and seen the mischief they have done? And no one who has had any​thing like a personal acquaintance with those who have been enrolled in our "Register" since its first publication, can look through the successive issues and draw a pen across the names of those who should never have entered a pulpit, or who, if of right ability and character in other respects, have been lazy and irresponsive occupants of it, without finding occasion for surprise and thanksgiving that we are as strong and prosperous as we are.
And yet, how could it well have been otherwise than it has been with us in this regard? A new movement as ours was, bursting out of the heart and unlettered common-sense of the people,—led almost exclusively by uneducated men,—making fighting, of necessity, its chief business,—without schools or colleges,—without organization,—with crude and insufficient rules of fellowship and discipline,—so needing ministers and so ambitious for a show of increasing numbers,—with the doors into our ministry open to every stripling, or talker, however unripe, or unqualified, who had walked through a preacher's 'study,' or who was moved by any motive to preach, it is only a matter of amazement that we have had so many excellent and tolerable ministers as we have, and a number no larger of the other description. Since I cannot properly mention others as examples, may I be excused for illustrating how entrance was had to our ministry by referring to my own case? I was 'fellowshipped' in June, 1836, just before I was twenty years old. I had left a very poor town-school—strangely called 'High'—a few months before I was seventeen, with a meagre smattering of Latin and Greek and several other things, with a mind totally undisciplined, and thoroughly knowing nothing beyond the rudimentary studies. From March to November, 1833, as many another poor lad has done, having his own way to make, I was 'prospecting' for 'something to do,' hardly taking a book in my hand, when Providence opened the way for me to become a student in a Law Office, far away from my home. I accepted it at once because nothing else so desirable offered, though it had been my determination, from very early boyhood, to make the ministry my life-work. I found myself amidst very delightful associations, but ​where I had to hold my Universalism by a constant battle. Here, therefore, attending, for the most part, only 'the orthodox meeting,' and thrown upon my own resources, I obtained for the first time anything like discipline and logical coherence in my religious thinking. Returning to my home in the summer of 1835, I soon after began, as it was called, 'to study' with Rev. T. F. King, the Portsmouth pastor:—that is, he gave me Mosheim, and subsequently one volume of Horne, to read, and after a few weeks told me I "had better write a sermon." That was all! Not a lesson recited, not a question asked, not a hint offered, touching what I was to do. Besides the books mentioned—saying nothing of a great deal of other reading I had done, not at all bearing on my chosen work, and much of it ruinously dissipating to all taste or relish for solid reading—I had read the "Trumpet" from its commencement,—had read a few pamphlet sermons, and possibly half a dozen other books relating to theology, including Paley's "Theology" and "Evidences." This, with some superficial acquaintance with the Bible, was my preparation for the ministry! And so unprepared, I was sent out with the formal indorsement of the New Hampshire Convention, as entitled to full confidence as a minister—without a single inquiry as to personal experience, as to reading or habits of study, as to opinions, purpose, or anything else! I have always felt that it was by the special grace of God that I was kept from shaming the ministry and our cause by my utter unfitness—for a youth more immature in all essentials, or less prepared in every particular for the grave responsibilities I assumed, save that I looked considerably older than I was, and had a sincere desire to live correctly and to do good, it would be difficult to find: a fact which I unconsciously symbolized, let me add, by choosing a coat of very green, thin stuff for that first summer's wear!
And what was thus illustrated in my case was the rule, even down to a much later period than 1836. Of course, I do not intend to represent that only those thus immature, or unprepared, came into our ministry. There were occasionally those of riper years and of maturer and better-furnished minds. But the rule was about as shown in the ​illustration. Is it surprising that, as the consequence, we should have had many, not only totally unfit to enter, but equally unfit or unable to stay in our ministry? Let God be praised, that out of such material, He was able to sift so much passable wheat, besides some that was a great deal more than passable; and that, in spite of all the risks thus incurred, we have had a ministry on the whole so able and so Christian as it has been. Ah, saying nothing of ability, if all our ministers had been in other respects what they might have been, with the spirit of Dr. Ballou, and John Boyden, and our more recently departed brother, Bliss, what a different record we should have made! what a wider and profounder work we should have done! what a differently equipped Church we should now be!
Has not the time come, as we enter upon our second century, for a New Departure in this regard, aiming at a ministry which, as far as possible, bating inevitable human foibles and imperfections, shall be composed only of those possessed of such a spirit? Can we not henceforth have a ministry, all of whom shall be not only trained men, but men of conscience, men of heart, men of consecrated will, men of profound and earnest religious life, men of enthusiasm and enterprise in respect to the conversion of souls and the Christian enlargement and progress of our Church? I approach this point with much hesitation. I am aware how delicate the ground is, and I shrink from saying all that is in my thought lest I be suspected of assuming some special fitness warranting me to say it. Let it be understood that I assume no such thing, and that I take fully to myself all that I venture to suggest to others, better aware than anybody else how far I fall below my own ideals. But I feel that there are some particulars in which a change for the better in our ministry is imperatively demanded, as vital to our welfare, and that some one should be frank and brave enough to utter the words that should be said, even at the risk of receiving the old rebuke, "Physician, heal thyself." So I speak.
As to the literary and theological acquirements requisite for entrance into our ministry, there is, happily, an increasing conviction in the right direction. Years ago it was a ​question much debated whether these acquirements were really essential, and there was a widespread feeling that they were not. But this question was substantially disposed of in the establishment of our first theological school. There are still considerable numbers, it is true, who think it pushing the matter too far to insist upon these conditions as in every instance indispensable. We must not be too strenuous or particular, these friends say. We need ministers, and it is wrong to discourage or turn away any good man of decent ability who is disposed to preach, simply because he lacks scholastic training. Those with no such training had formerly free access to our pulpits, and many of them have made useful—some of them eminent—ministers. Why not bid such equally welcome now, at the same time that we carefully foster our theological schools, and do all we can to elevate our ministry through them?
Not a little sympathy would be found among us, probably, with the view which thus argues; and occasionally one does even yet enter on our ministerial work with much the old lack of suitable preparation. But the growing sentiment, alike of our ministers and people, it is fortunate, is decidedly against this view, and in favor of insisting upon the best possible training. And this mainly for three reasons: First, because circumstances have so changed, and the general tone of culture and intelligence so improved, that such unripe and illy-furnished ministers as many of us were, and such productions as we used to give under the name of sermons, thirty-five or forty years ago, would not be tolerated now, or could be tolerated only to reflect discredit on all concerned. It is no small thing that the pulpit in these days has to do; and if it is to hold its place, and maintain its power against all that is seeking to supplant it, or that the drift of events is tending to put into rivalry with it, there must be an end of admitting into it what the Country Parson once so felicitously described as 'veal,' or any but thoroughly prepared men. No pulpit can command the respect of intelligent minds, or do most for those who listen to it, unless it is at least fully up to the best average of existing thought and attainments; and of all churches, we can least afford to have our pulpit in any particular below the ​highest and latest demand of the hour. Second, because to admit any to our ministry in an abatement of the preparatory conditions, is so far to lower its standard and character as a whole, tearing down with one hand what we are trying to build up with the other, and saying in effect, that though schools and what schools can give are very well, they are in no essential respect important, and that, for our purposes, we do not care to be understood to think them necessary. And third, because it is no kindness, but, on the contrary, a great unkindness and injustice, to any man in times like these to encourage or allow him to take upon himself the exactions of the ministry except after the most careful preparation. Those who have in any measure succeeded without such previous training have done so at immense disadvantage, constantly hampered and impeded by their original deficiencies, or by the necessity of going over ground, or making up attainments, with which they should have been familiar in the outset; and every such man has reasons, which only he and those of like experience can fully appreciate, for using every influence he can properly command to deter those so inclined from entering any ministry in a similar condition of unpreparedness. The best preparation will be found meagre enough for the highest usefulness. Nor is it a consideration to be overlooked, that the more rigorous the training intellectually and theologically insisted on, the more effectually will the ministry be guarded against the flightiness and eccentricities, the crudities, and all the various results of unbalanced and undisciplined minds, from which we have suffered so severely.
We want ministers, it is true; but we want only those who will serve the truth and honor themselves,—not those who will fail in either of these respects. For this reason, it is to be hoped that the present tendency of feeling and requirement will go on, more and more elevating the standard of our ministry and the indispensable conditions of entrance into it. Ours is a great cause, destined, if there be not unpardonable blundering or unfaithfulness somewhere, to be the leading religious movement of the world. God calls us to see that it is not intrusted to the keeping of little or incompetent hands. There was a time in the history of our ​Church, as in the history of most churches, and of Christianity itself, when "the foolish things of the world were chosen to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty, and base things, and things despised, and things that were not, to bring to naught things that were." There seems to be a time in all such great reforms and spiritual awakenings when God's word is to them as of old to Zerubbabel, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." But though such may be their beginnings, if they are to proceed and to triumph, they must, while none the less invoking the Spirit of God, enlist quite other, and more effective, human instruments. Christianity was first preached by fishermen; but what would it now be, had it been preached only by such without the special help that was given them? The time is coming, I believe, in the subsidence of the present consuming fever of worldliness, when our young men will not be so generally enticed as now into mammon worship and the secular pursuits and professions, and when the pulpit will duly assert its claims, and attract its share of the best brain and heart. Then the character and influence of the ministry that is in any church will do much to attract and determine the ministry which shall be; and if we desire to have stout, healthy, thoroughly furnished, magnetic men in our pulpits, to attract and mould others like them, and to wield a power, by virtue of what they are, commensurate with the grandeur and worth of the truth they have, we cannot too soon begin to close the door against all who are not such. For myself, I am frank to say, taught by almost forty years' observation what harm comes to a church so far as it has ministers who are not true and manly men, I would admit no moral or intellectual weakling to our ministry; no stripling in years; no man of infirm will or vacillating purpose; no nerveless, forceless, inoffensive man, destitute of energy, pluck, or propelling power. The ministry has had brave, strong men, many of them; and of such, as has been intimated, our ministry has had its fair proportion. But there has been altogether too much of the idea that any 'pious' or goodish young man, without vim or push, shrinking from the hard battle of life, or for any reason unfitted to make his way in the world in ​any 'more practical calling,' furnishes good enough material for the ministry, or can most appropriately dispose of himself in it. It is time that this idea were abandoned. If any profession should have picked men, it is the ministry; and of all men, the minister should be the last to be composed of stuff that cannot make its way in any other calling. The best, the strongest, the most energetic, the most practically sagacious minds find use for all they are, or can be, in this work; and this is becoming every year more and more the fact.
And insisting, first, on the qualities thus indicated as essential, I would—because taught by painful experience what penalties one incurs by entering the ministry without due training—equally insist that no man, whatever else he may be, shall receive our fellowship without at least a full course in some theological school with a first-class curriculum, and that these partial courses, which give so many the name of a school without giving them what the school is designed to insure, must be forbidden, and wholly cease. The man who desires to be a minister of Christ looks to an office of grave importance, especially in these days; and he should be willing to pay the required price of waiting and study to attain it. Having paid this price, he can do more in ten years than he can in twenty, or perhaps in a whole lifetime, if he "climbs up some other way." If there are those who cannot pay this price, let them be content to be lay preachers, provisions for whom are now made among us, or give up the ministry altogether. Better a small ministry than a weak or an incompetent one; and better for any man that he be out of the ministry, in some honest and useful calling, than in it to be a drone or a cipher. For of all wrecks stranded on its beaches, not occasioned by serious moral offences, what wrecks has the world sadder, more useless, or more pitiable than those of men who, trying to be ministers, have succeeded only in being—nothing, and some of whom at last starve on the undeserved alms which they beg or sponge from the church they have never really served? Let us, for our part, as a Church, have done with encouraging, either directly or by toleration, those who can only be such. "Put none but Americans on guard to-night," it ​used to be said Washington once ordered. Is it too much to hope that the time is coming when it will be one of the 'general orders' of our Church, that none but those prepared for the work shall be put into the watch-towers of our Zion, and when to say that a man is a Universalist minister will be the same as to say, that whatever he may be physically, he is a robust, large-hearted, vigorous-willed man, with a masculine brain, thoroughly equipped for doing God's work in a wise, practical, manly way?
But this is the least important side of the subject. Brain, and force, and thorough intellectual and theological training, indispensable as they are, avail nothing for the final purpose of the ministry, except as they are possessed and sanctified by something deeper and more experimental. This something deeper is the great thing after all, therefore; and coming now to this, summing up many particulars in the fewest possible general statements, there are four requisites, without any one of which, no man—be his qualifications in other respects what they may—should find it henceforth possible to enter our ministry.
I. The first is faith. This is the primary thing in the order of a distinctively Christian experience. It is equally fundamental among the conditions of Christian usefulness. Christ built his Church on the rock of his confessed Messiahship. Would he have sent out men to be his ministers who did not in this respect build with him—who denied or questioned what he so affirmed? Invariably his demand was, Believe, whether he was about to perform his works of healing, or to induct souls into his kingdom. And sent forth on this basis of Faith, the Apostles enforced the same demand. The burden of their preaching, and of the whole New Testament in this regard is well summed up in Paul's charge to the Colossians (ii. 6–8), "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Our Church has from the first recognized ​this primal necessity of faith, and alike its law and its usage are now unmistakably settled on this point. Both for ministers and organized bodies, "expressed assent to the Winchester Confession of Faith" is "essential" to our fellowship. Nor is there the remotest probability that this law will ever be repealed. The believing sentiment among us is too pronounced and universal for this. Our sole danger in this respect is, that through a loose and latitudinarian construction, our established standards may be made of none effect. Those familiar with our affairs need not be told that already, in some instances, these standards have been thus made of none effect, and that men have found entrance to our ministry alike against the letter and spirit of our 'Confession,' only sooner or later to make their unbelief manifest, and to become elements of discord and occasions of mischief wherever they have labored. It is against this that we need to guard. Our standards are right and sufficient. We have only to insist that they be honestly construed.
It is unfortunate that some minds are so constituted that they cannot see the limits to which all general axioms are subject, and that, laying hold of any such axiom, they are sure to carry it to extremes. Only on this account could there be any difference of opinion among sincere and thoughtful Christian people concerning this question of ministerial fellowship. Starting with the axiom that life, as a ground of confidence, is more than opinion, and adding to it the axiom that every man has a right to think untrammelled to any conclusion to which, in his judgment, truth conducts him, or to stop short of any conclusion which he does not see reason to reach, the advocates of a 'broad' fellowship say, How can you require any good man to believe as you do, as a condition to your fellowship, without overlooking the greater for the less, or without infringing upon his liberty as a thinker? If a man's life is right, and he wishes to work with you, you must admit him to your fellowship, whatever his opinions. The number of such extremists among us has not been large. The atmosphere of our Church has never proved inviting or healthy for them. But we have had them, nevertheless, some of them desiring to sweep away our 'Confession' altogether, and all of them ​agreeing that it is gross intolerance, a despicable copying of 'orthodox' narrowness and bigotry, to insist on any dif ference between faith and unbelief as a ground of fellow ship, if one but calls himself a Christian, and desires admis sion to our ministry. Away with 'heresy-hunting'! has been their cry. Let us be 'broad'! Let us be 'liberal'! What if a man does not fully accept our standards? Let him be true to himself. His advanced thought is doubtless so much fresh gold, dug from the mines of truth without re gard to authority or prescription. Better for us, perhaps, if we were a Church without any doors; but since we have them, let us throw them open wide enough to admit every earnest soul, and all who can be induced to join us, without in quiring too minutely as to their faith, or whether they accept the 'Confession' just as it was meant to be accepted or not.
This kind of talk has enough of the sound of large and generous thinking to deceive not a few who would at once repudiate it, were it not for this superficial seeming of tolerance and magnanimity. But it only needs to be emp tied of its pretty words, and to be regarded with reference to its substance, to be seen to have but one meaning, and to tend to but one result. As the statement of a general principle, it would make any special co-operation on the basis of common convictions or sympathies impossible; and as a programme of action by our Church, or any church, it means inevitable disintegration—the loss of Christian distinctness, and the consequent loss of Christian power. Fellowship of any sort necessarily implies some ground of special sympathy on which those in fellowship stand together; and if it is no infringement of the liberty of personal thinking for those associated in scientific pursuits to require scientific tastes and sympathies as a ground of their scientific fellowship, or for those banded for some philanthropic purpose to exclude from their membership those indifferent or opposed to the objects they are associated to serve, how or why can it be a violation of any law of courtesy, or of anybody's rights as a thinker, to insist that no man shall be fellowshipped as a minister of Christ unless he has faith in Christ as the special messenger of God, and sympathy with the ends which, in God's behalf, he is seeking to accomplish? ​An association, by whatever name called, would be but a promiscuous herd of people destitute of any common thought or aim, if, without regard to its purpose, everybody so disposed, on the ground that he is a decent man, could demand admission into it; and the same principle applied to a church would make it a mockery of anything like the true church-idea, robbing Christian fellowship of all distinctive meaning, and the ministry of everything peculiar to it as the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only he, clearly, who, whatever he may be ready to say, sincerely accepts the Bible as the authoritative record of God's Word, and believes in Christ as Lord and Redeemer, can fitly be sent out to preach truth and duty on the authority of the Bible, and to summon souls to that faith in Christ which can alone quicken and sanctify them unto salvation. As well might one be graduated to teach mathematics who denies the multiplication table, or to practise medicine, believing it his business to poison instead of to cure.
Equally by our principles and our traditions, we are irrevocably committed to liberty of opinion and the largest right of free inquiry. No people are more thoroughly pervaded with the instinct of rebellion against all that would deny, or limit, or in the slightest degree trench upon this liberty; nor, under any circumstances, can we be otherwise than tolerant and catholic without being false to every suggestion and requirement of the Gospel as we receive it. But we stand also—we always have stood—for the Bible, for Christ and the Divine Authority of his religion. As a branch of the Church of Christ, we exist solely to convert men to faith in him, and to persuade them to accept and follow him as Lord. So existing, we should become a lie the moment we should lose sight of this purpose, and admit to our fellowship, no matter on what pretext, men without faith in the Bible, or in Christ as the Sent of God; for how could such men convert their hearers to faith in Christ, or plead with them to give themselves to him? Perceiving this, we have always discriminated between liberty and license—between the right of free inquiry and the right to hold infidel opinions under a garb of Christian pretence. It is to be hoped that we always shall make this distinction. ​Doing so, while we shall maintain the right of unlimited freedom of interpretation in our Church on the basis of the Bible, and the equal right of all Christians to understand the Bible for themselves, we shall no less rigorously maintain that any who cannot, without reserve, build on this Christian basis, must exercise their freedom of thought and rights of conscience outside our Christian recognition. Unbelief, infidelity is infidelity, gloss or sugar-coat it as we may. Our duty is to treat it as such, in whomsoever it may come knocking at our doors; and if it be charged that this is illiberality, the sufficient reply is, in the words of the wise and catholic Dr. Ballou, that the harm is "not in calling things by their right names, but in a wrong spirit towards the things themselves. We may be very illiberal in our treatment of one whom we acknowledge to be a Christian; we may be perfectly liberal in our relations with those whom we do not regard as Christians. If an otherwise good man is, in point of fact, not a believer, in the New Testament sense of the term, we ought to say so frankly; and then, if he suffers unjustly on that account, it is of course because there is an unjust odium against the name that properly belongs to him, and our duty is to remove that undue prejudice,—not to violate truth by striving to shelter him under a false appellation."
This is the position of a practical common sense. Occupying it, we limit nobody. We hinder nobody. We deny nobody's rights. We withhold our hand from no worthy man, who, as a worthy man, asks our recognition. We simply deal with things as they are, saying, Our Christian fellowship has a distinctive Christian meaning, and can be given only to those who stand by faith on the Christian foundation. Any other position can be occupied by us only at our peril. We gain nothing when we admit any man to our ministry who does not put himself squarely and honestly on our Christian platform. Those who would admit such tell us, sometimes, of the acquisitions we should receive, had we 'more liberal' terms of fellowship, and admonish us to think how much we are losing by shutting ​them out. But such losses are always gains, as such additions are weakness instead of strength. We trifle with momentous interests, and place much at hazard, every time we experiment with such a man; and though I have known rare instances in which young men of immature and unsettled opinions, with decided doubts and uncertainties instead of faith, have ripened into ministers of clear thought, devoted and useful, the risk of putting such men into the pulpit is too great, the proprieties sacrificed too serious, and the answer to every application of this sort should be, Settle your own faith first, before asking to be sent out as a teacher of faith to others. No man, indeed, it should be held, is in a condition even to think towards our ministry, until, as Christ asks the olden question, "Whom say ye that I am?" he is able, in full assurance, to say with Peter, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God;"—"thou hast the words of eternal life." As a matter of conviction, only such a man is qualified to preach Christ for the establishment and edification of others; and, almost as important in another sense, as a matter of moral preparedness, only such a man has the faith which can remove mountains, and so give the vigor and earnestness, the courage and persistence, by which only are ministerial success and victory won.
II. Another requisite to entrance into our ministry is a personal religious experience. Ordinarily, one's religion is not a thing for him to talk about, and one's religious experience, if he has had any, is something too sacred, as between his soul and God, for any one else to pry into. But, as when one desires to assume the vows of church membership, so when the question is, Shall this man be a minister of Christ, for the salvation of souls? all such reserve should cease. A personal, spiritual awakening, a profound and mastering religious experience is, next to faith, the primary condition of ministerial usefulness, without which there can be no such feeling, thinking, preaching, aim, or work of any sort, as the office demands. Were the minister's business simply to instruct, the case would be different. But his grand purpose is, not to instruct, or intellectually to convince. He deals with themes concerning which most of ​those to whom he speaks are already, theoretically, in substantial agreement with him. Using these—for the most part—conceded truths, his business is to arouse, to convert, to stimulate, to bend obstinate knees in contrition before the cross, and so to lead souls to Christ, consecrated to God in the Christian life. Everything else is subordinate to this. Christ is Teacher; but he is something more: is Teacher only that he may be Quickener and Inspirer. So every minister, pleading with souls in his name, should seek to be. But how can he impart what he does not possess? How quicken others if he has never himself been quickened? How prostrate other knees before the cross if his own have not first knelt there? How help his hearers into. the religious life if he is not himself religious, and his own soul has never thrilled with the fervors and the indwelling power which he is the medium to communicate?
I judge no man; but I confess that it strikes me as quite out of the line of all natural sequence and probability to look for permanent religious fruit from one with whom talk about religion is simply perfunctory and professional,—never spontaneous. Nor does it seem to me reasonable that any church is likely to be much profited by ministers who are personally never en rapport with the deepest and most vital themes of the pulpit; who care only to deny or to argue, or who would rather be in a theatre than in a conference meeting, or whose tastes run to stale jokes and low and lewd stories rather than to the 'communion of saints,' or to converse on Gospel themes; who impress nobody as religious men, and who fail to diffuse any odor of seriousness or consecration, however in talking they may simulate what they do not feel, and in some instances even appear to be the means of producing results in others which have never been produced in themselves. The law of influence is subtile, but absolute. According to what we are, magnetic currents flow from us; and in the long run, such men, however eloquent or seemingly in earnest, seldom give out anything for the spiritual help of anybody; are found, on the contrary, usually, to lower the tone of taste and character, religiously, of all with whom they are brought into closest association. If one is to communicate, he must have.
​"He is a well-meaning brother, of good ability," I remember to have once heard one of our ministers say of another, "but he has never experienced religion." Will any one say that this was 'the right man in the right place'? The remark was made many years ago; but the description, unfortunately, is precisely that which, speaking truthfully, would have to be given of many a minister whom I have since known—of not a few in our pulpits as of some in others; men not bad in any sense—most of them meaning well, but lacking any positive affinity with religion, and having no more consciousness of what it is as an experience, or as a pervading, in-working power, than the heart of an iceberg has of warmth, or than the calculating brain of a mathematician has of the kindling of a poet's soul. And a human being more utterly out of place than such a minister, who can find? Put a man, who has never seen the sea, on board a ship, to navigate it across the ocean,—put a plough-boy, who knows nothing of steam, or valves, in charge of an engine, or a locomotive,—set one up in business, who is ignorant of accounts and has no idea of bargains, and you do what is no more unreasonable, or preposterous, than when a man is put into the pulpit, who, even though his perceptions, theoretically, may be clear, and his convictions intelligent and firm, knows nothing experimentally of the religion which he is to represent, or of its quickening and saving work.
Only a little while ago, I heard of a minister who—I use the precise words reported to me from his lips—gave this account of his entrance into the ministry,—it is no concern here to say into what ministry: "I found that I had the gift of gab, and an opportunity to go to a theological school being offered me, I determined to make my gift available in that direction." "But had you no religious experience, no impulse to prayer, no spirit of devotion?" asked the friend to whom the statement was made. "None, whatever," was the frank reply. "At least, you had some positive faith,—a clear assurance of the truth of Christianity, and a firm persuasion as to the soundness of what you were to preach?" "Nothing of the kind," was the rejoinder. "I simply knew that I could talk, and seeing in ​the ministry my best field for talk, and in the particular denomination with which I identified myself as good an opening as anywhere, I went in. That's the whole of it." What shall we say of a man who could so mock all the sacred themes with which he was to deal as to go into the ministry in the state of mind, and from the motives, thus confessed? Or, what spiritual future can there be for any church the doors of whose ministry are so carelessly kept as to render it possible for such men to be among its ministers? And yet, we have had such ministers as well as other churches; and those of us most familiar with the facts would be able, if required, to put our fingers upon the names of some such occupying our pulpits this very day.
It is time that the entrance of any more such—at least into our ministry, should cease. If it is needful that a candidate be examined in opinion, or in literary and theological acquirements, why not as to spiritual condition and religious preparedness? Hitherto, for reasons sufficiently set forth in the chapter on Experimental Religion and pages preceding, far less attention has been given among us to this experimental element of Christian power, alike in the pulpit and in the pews, than was for our good. It must not be so in the time to come. If we are to be a living Christian people, doing positive Christian work, a New Departure in this respect, as I trust has hereinbefore been made apparent, is indispensable. And if there is to be such a New Departure among the people, it must begin among the ministers. As said in opening, they are the leaders. If there are to be torches carried, their hands are to carry them. If there are coals from off God's altar with which we are to be set aflame, their hearts are the censers in which they are first to burn. We cannot be a Church pervaded with religious life except as our ministers foster and impart it. Thank God for all that is telling of an increased spiritual vitality among us—the result mainly, under God, of what spiritually-awakened and religious ministers have been trying to do. But there is yet great opportunity for improvement; and if this improvement is to be made, our ministers must be the chief instruments for promoting it. ​I have tried to show that, if we are to be the Church we should aim to be, we must be a more devout, Bible-reading, praying, consecrated people; but, while fully recognizing all that individual believers, through the help of the Bible and the quickenings and nutriment of the Holy Spirit, have been and may be independent of ministerial influence, making their own way upward in the religious life, it is not too much to say, speaking of ourselves collectively, that we cannot be such a people except as we have devout, Bible-reading, praying, consecrated ministers: ministers glowing with religious fervor; ministers instinct with spiritual life; ministers knowing within themselves what it is to be baptized through and through with the baptism from on high, and, like Stephen and Barnabas, 'good men, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith,' giving themselves 'continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word;' ministers who live with their hearts close to Christ's, in the atmosphere of an habitual consciousness of God and in sweet and holy nearness to him, and who thus become channels through which the life of God may flow into the lives of those for whom they labor.
Let me not be suspected of urging that ministers should be other than fresh, natural, genial men. Whatever those not such men may do elsewhere, only those who are such can be of service to us. We have no room for ministers who think it necessary in any way to sink the man, or whose whole stock in trade is the cut of their coats, or a sanctimoniousness of countenance. We want no cant; no pretence; no sacerdotal formalism; no priestly airs, or austere affectations; no assumptions of a mystical functionaryism, as if a minister plus his office weighs a single iota more than he weighs by virtue of what he is as a man. We want no whining; no stiff, strait-laced, long-faced pietism; no fossilized acidity that reckons it the chief end of religion to suppress every mirthful emotion, calling the world meanwhile to take note how devout it is, or tragically clasping its hands and turning up its eyes, and groaning O! at the folly or the wickedness it is compelled to witness. Thoughtful people sickened of this long ago; and of all Christians, we, with our humane, sensible, cheerful faith, should revolt ​from it with the most utter disgust. Religion is genuine manliness,—a real, hearty, healthy spiritual life; and what we want in our ministry, first of all, is men—full-blooded, wholesome, hearty, sympathetic men, alive in every human fibre and faculty, willing to pass for just what they are worth, neither pedants nor pharisees, and able to see and enjoy all there is in life, in a large, free, wise understanding of what God intended our human life to be. But no matter how wholesome, hearty, or sympathetic a man may be in other respects, he has no fitness for the ministry, and can be in no proper sense useful in it, except as his 'life is hid with Christ in God.' The more of a man he is, and the fuller he is of all human juices, the better; but he must be sanctified to the core. Every beat of his heart should be a thought of God and a prayer. Conscious of the Unseen and the Imperishable, his whole being should be flooded from above; and centred on God, having his 'conversation in heaven,' his character should be saturated with religious sensibility and purpose, and every wish and thought should be keyed to the Divine. Only such a man is really in sympathy with the minister's work, or is likely to be of service in the minister's office.
Has not the time fully come for us to commit ourselves to this position, and to show, by what we exact for entrance into our ministry, that we intend to maintain it? No matter how brilliant, well-informed, or apparently promising in other respects, no man should henceforth find the door into our ministry open to him, under any circumstances, or through any influence, except as it is made satisfactorily to appear that he is, experimentally and thoroughly, a religious man. Talent, eloquence, learning, readiness of utterance, all these are desirable, and, when consecrated, are means of power. But personal religion alone infuses into them the element by which they can be made effective for the spiritual quickening and salvation of souls; and what use, finally, have we, or has any church, for ministers except for these ends?
III. Still another requisite for entrance into our ministry should be a hearty confession of obligation to co-operate in our Church-work. The Report of the Board of Trustees of our ​General Convention for 1872 contained a statement of painful significance. Speaking of various causes accounting for our failure to realize the sum voted by the Convention during the year, the Trustees say, "But after due allowance has been made for extraordinary events unfavorable to our work, the fact remains that, with some honorable exceptions, we have lacked the hearty co-operation of our clergy—a co-operation without which no church-enterprise can succeed, and with which, freely given at the beginning of the year, the Special Fund could have been easily raised." The painful significance of this statement is in the fact that it discloses a chronic lack among us, from which we are widely and very seriously suffering. More than on any other single account, our denominational work fails to be done as we have the abundant resources to do it, solely because so many of our ministers refuse or neglect to put themselves into sympathetic accord with our plans and efforts, as alike their Christian vows and their denominational obligations require. This may seem a sweeping assertion, I mean it to be so. It is time that the truth on this point should be fully told, to arrest the attention and stir to the action it calls for; and I desire to emphasize the statement just made, as one intended to affirm all that the language seems to convey. It has fallen to my lot to have peculiar occasion to know whereof I affirm touching this subject. During the past thirty years, I have been intimately associated with our Church activities in four different States, and I have also held similar relations to our general work from the hour it was begun. And from first to last, wherever I have been, whatever the effort in hand, the one thing most in our way, the one incubus which it has been found most impossible to lift, or remove, has been the indifference, the inertia, the irresponsiveness of our ministers. Noble exceptions there have been, as the Board of Trustees testified of the year of which they spoke—in the aggregate, many of them. But the rule has been, on one plea or another, inertia, unconcern, inaction, thwarting, hindering, enfeebling what has been undertaken,—in not a few instances, causing what might have been a gratifying success to end in mortifying failure. And the testimony I am thus compelled ​to give in respect to the fields and efforts with which I have been familiar, is, I am confident, in substance, precisely that which will be given by those in like relations elsewhere.
Various explanations of this state of things suggest themselves—explanations which enable us to see how men may be thus at fault, and yet be in the main good men, as the most of our ministers have been and are; but explanations, or no explanations, what has thus wrought so much to our injury, and what is still so weakening and hindering us, must henceforward cease, or our fate is sealed. Sad and instructive demonstration was more than once furnished by the Army of the Potomac of what an army, however excellent or otherwise well-appointed, is likely to accomplish if officered by men without loyalty to those in command, and therefore indisposed to enter heartily into their plans. And what is true in this regard of an army thus officered, is equally true of a church whose ministers have no sympathy with the work it proposes. The chief explanation of the vigor and growth of the Methodist Church is in the fact that it is organized on the principle that every minister in its connection not only owes it allegiance, but is formally and sacredly pledged to loyalty and co-operation in its service, rendering himself liable to discipline and suspension if he fails to keep this pledge. The same thing, after some form, is true of every church that has ever made itself a religious power. Is it to be supposed that there is success for us on any other terms? Its ministers are the propelling, executive forces of every church; and it is the testimony alike of all observation and of all experience that as are the ministers so is the church. In respect to the highest religious pleadings and appeals, it must be confessed, the most earnest ministers not unfrequently find many of their people much too impervious and irresponsive. But in all matters of denominational interest and church-work, the temper of the minister usually determines that of the people; and if, feeling right and working faithfully, ministers will wisely lead, the people will follow. There are occasional exceptions; but the rule is that a live minister makes a live people, and that a dead or indifferent minister makes a people like him​self. Under God, therefore, it rests with our ministers to determine whether we are to be a live, enterprising, growing Church, or the contrary; and if our work lags, or fails,—if our appointed collections are neglected, or, if taken, are small and unappreciative, compared with what they should be,—if our statistical reports are neglected,—if our Convention and its plans get no thought or sympathy, and the Church is the object of no loving loyalty, or generous consideration, the fault will, mainly, be theirs.
One thing is certain: If as a Church we have any right to be, there is something for us to do,—a constantly enlarging work of teaching, building, and church extension to which, according to our growth and the increase of our resources, we are summoned of God to address ourselves. We claim to have God's truth. If we have, no words can exaggerate the greatness of the trust, or the seriousness of our responsibilities. We have it for no mere purpose of theory or sentiment. Christ did not come that he might give men something to believe or argue about. We have it as the stewards of God, that 'in Christ's stead,' we may proclaim it, and help on the triumphs of God's kingdom and the redemption of our race. We are no Church of Christ if the consciousness of such a work does not possess us. And if we have such a work, how is it to be done?—how, except as every one bearing our name catches something of the impulse to help it on?—how, especially, except as every minister who seeks our fellowship counts it his duty to enlist in it, and, to the extent of his ability, to push it forward? I may have extreme, and therefore unsound, views; but on any theory of morals, or of the fitness of things, which I find it possible to hold, it seems to me the most unpardonable trifling for any man to ask our fellowship as a minister, and then coolly to assume that he owes our Church no loyalty or service, and that he has the right to treat with utter indifference all the denominational enterprises that are soliciting his furtherance and co-operation. For what end do denominations, with their fellowship, exist except that they may undertake and the better accomplish such enterprises? And why should any one seek identification with us in form, unless he is ready heartily to identify himself ​with us in spirit, and in all that, in Christ's name, we are trying to do?
The question of sects or churches is simply a question of instruments. No wise man loves any organization, be it a sect, a church, or whatever else, for itself—only for what it represents, and for its uses. The obligation to labor for the truth being conceded, the obligation to employ the best means for its service follows of course; and on the same principle upon which associated action in every other department of life is found to be most effective, a sect, or church, is proved to be not only a moral necessity if men have any positiveness of conviction and purpose, but the best means for religious work. As such a means, it has imperative claims, by so much as the truth itself has any claims, on every one in sympathy with the ideas it represents; and whoever, so sympathizing with it, fails to unite with and support it,—above all, whoever connects himself with it and then declines or neglects to do what he can to make it a power, fails to be either consistent or faithful, and incurs guilt accordingly.
The world is wide, and no man is compelled to ask our fellowship. But choosing to ask it, it can be honestly, or honorably, accepted only as, in good faith, all the responsibilities and obligations which it implies are accepted with it—alike those specially denominational as well as those in a more general sense called Christian. In such a case, denominational duties become Christian duties. Nor, though there are very good men who do it, can I conceive of conduct more flagrantly violating every principle of manly dealing than that of which those are guilty, who seek and take our fellowship only to be oblivious to every such duty. There are two classes who do this:—on the one hand, those who seem to think that they confer a favor upon us by patronizing us with their presence and consenting to occupy our pulpits, and that, doing so much, they are at liberty to hold themselves haughtily or contemptuously aloof from all our plans, as if such things could be no concern of theirs;—on the other hand, those who lazily count it enough not to render themselves liable to discipline for what is called immoral conduct, and who thereupon pocket ​the money for preaching in positions to which our fellowship has introduced them, apparently with not the most distant thought that they owe it to themselves, or to us, to speak a word, or lift a finger, in behalf of anything we are doing. Ready, and usually eager, to avail themselves of all the advantages of denominational association, both these classes are alike dead to all sense of denominational obligation, and act as if churches existed merely to serve their personal convenience.
Have we not suffered, are we not suffering enough on account of such ministers? Do we desire any more such? Are we willing that any more shall find their way among us, to hinder, weaken and discourage us? If not, should we not say so, and take measures to insure that only those of a different spirit and purpose shall henceforth receive our fellowship? It is one of the fundamental statutes of our Convention that "every clergyman applying for fellowship shall be understood as thereby pledging a due observance of all the laws of the Convention." Here is the provision sufficient, if duly enforced, for all that is demanded. Shall it be so enforced? What but comparative feebleness and failure is before us if it is not? Is it wisdom for us to neglect alike the lessons of our own experience, and the suggestions that come to us from the growth and prosperity of others? Why should we not for the upbuilding and extension of the kingdom of truth, avail ourselves of laws and principles which have been found so effective for the furtherance of error? It is often said, when the lessons from other churches in this particular are referred to, that the genius of our Church is unlike that of those representing a severer theology, and that we are not to be brought to the acceptance of such principles of responsibility as they adopt. Is it so? Certainly, the genius of our Church, theologically, is different from that of these other churches; but is it therefore different in respect to the wisest and most practical ways of compassing essential church-ends? If it is, and we really cannot be brought to accept the principles and to comply with the conditions upon which, in the nature of things, success depends, then there is no future for us as a Church, and our errand is fulfilled. But this, I trust, ​none of us believe. It used to be said that we never could be organized in any compact and positive form. We have disproved that. We shall, I hope, equally disprove the assumption that the genius of our Church is so loose and lawless that we cannot be induced to adopt the principle that there is such an obligation as denominational fealty, and that ministers who have sought our fellowship are bound to enlist in our Church-work, and must be duly dealt with as unfaithful if they do not. At all events, it is only as we proceed upon this principle that the Universalist Church can fulfil the destiny to which it is invited. It is for us to say whether we will perceive the necessity thus laid upon us, and shape our requirements accordingly; nor can I fail to add that our theological schools will not, in my judgment, do their whole duty in the way of Ministerial Education, and send forth ministers prepared for the best service, until they shall have Chairs specially charged to train young men to a proper estimate of obligation, and to a familiarity with the best methods, in this regard.
IV. The final requisite to be now mentioned for entrance hereafter into our ministry is a chivalrous sinking of self in consecration to Christ and the Church. A sorrowful illustration was given me, a year or two since, of the spirit in which some young men are entering the ministry. Talking with a theological student, I inquired about his classmates and others, and received this reply: "There isn't a man in the class who isn't good for two thousand dollars when he gets through!" I inwardly exclaimed, God help the church of which they are to be ministers, if this is what all the class are thinking of, and did not continue the conversation. Does it need to be said that any such mercenariness of motive totally unfits one for the ministry? In its very nature, the ministry is necessarily, in some sort, a renunciation of self, and all mere self-seeking. Ordinarily, indeed, the rule is, as Paul well states it, "that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel;" and, except under peculiar circumstances, no man is justified in continuing in the ministry unless he can realize enough from his labors to keep himself and his family above want: for "if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his ​own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." But, while one is warranted in duly keeping this obligation in mind, and cannot ordinarily be warranted in failing so to keep it in mind, the true minister, as he contemplates his work, never stops to consider how much he is to get for it. Impressed with the supreme importance of spiritual things, and filled with a desire to devote his life to them, he finds himself, by an irresistible impulse, precipitated into the ministry. No thought of place or pay occupies him. His thought is only of God and Christ and souls. A sense alike of duty and of privilege possesses and propels him. Paul admirably tells the story: "Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel." This is the real call to the ministry; and without this call, it is sacrilege for any man even to look towards the office—as if it were a mere profession or trade, to be chosen, as other pursuits may be, with reference to the position or 'salary' it will give. Only as one forgets every worldly advantage, in a willingness to relinquish all for Christ's sake and the Gospel's, is he in a condition to debate whether he will be a minister of the cross.
And this surrender of every worldly and secular ambition, in a relinquishment of all thought of wealth and place and the right to pursue them, does but indicate what is involved in the nature of the ministry as a renunciation of every element of a mere self-assertion. Self, as a ruling force, has no rightful place in the minister's life. To minister means to serve; and in the very act of becoming a minister, one at all conscious of what he is doing consecrates himself to service, abdicating all right to consider himself, or his own ease, or his own will, and pledging that he will think only, or most, of God and Christ and those interests whose servant henceforth he is. Whoever becomes a soldier merges his whole selfhood into his duty as a soldier—to go where, to do what, to die when, the word of legitimate command may direct or require. In like manner, every minister, so far as he is a true minister, merges himself in Christ and the Church, and the service to which he is pledged—as of old every knight lost his own will in that of the lady whose plume he bore. I am nothing,—Christ and his cause are ​everything, is the feeling that becomes uppermost in every heart that has, with any earnestness or sincerity, dedicated itself to the minister's work. It is the heroic spirit that is demanded; and, on this account, every man fitted to be a minister is to this extent a hero.
This heroism, this utter abnegation of self, is the one lesson of Christ's life and cross, as it is of the life of every Apostle. Our Lord's thought never was of himself, or of his personal preferences or ends, but always of the Gospel and of human help and salvation; and Paul's chivalrous utterance—in which spoke the spirit of all the Apostles—was, "Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the Gospel of the grace of God." They all lost themselves in their work. Why should not we lose ourselves as entirely in the same work? If we have the same Gospel, can it demand less of us than it did of them? Are not the same interests concerned? Do not the same motives appeal to us? Have we not the same ends to further? And if they only did their duty in all their earnestness, their self-renunciation, their willingness to sacrifice, and their entire identification of themselves with whatever could save souls and advance their cause, how can we do ours except as we emulate their example in a forgetfulness of self and of all self-aims and theories, in a consecration to our work, in an enthusiasm for our Church, and in an esprit de corps for our appointed plans and methods, that shall knit all our hearts into one, make everything else except our love and reverence for God secondary, and commit us, soul and body, in solid phalanx, to whatever may be needful to give strength, unity and power to our Church, and thus to make it most effective as a Christian instrumentality in the world?
No man should sacrifice his manhood, or renounce his self-respect, or sink himself into an echo or a tool, for anybody, or any cause. With such sacrifices God is not well pleased; and, if they are ever asked of us, we may be sure that whoever or whatever requires them is not of Him. Nor are such sacrifices needful for the church enthusiasm, or the denominational esprit de corps, here insisted upon. All that ​is enjoined is a becoming subordination of self in allegiance to, what is grander and more important, and simple earnestness and loyalty in honest and manly devotion to the cause which we profess to believe is the cause of truth and God. Is this too much to ask of any man?
Does some one say, I want to be large-minded and free, and such a devotion to any particular church narrows our sympathies, and renders a broad, free, catholic spirit impossible? The most obvious reply, were we compelled to concede the narrowing thus affirmed, would be, Why, then, seek to connect yourself with any particular church? But the better reply is, a denial of the affirmation. For how or why does a love for the church that best embodies his convictions hinder a man from being, in freedom or largeness of sympathy, all that any earnest and honest man need to desire? May not one love his country, and yet have room in his heart for a comprehensive sympathy with all mankind? May he not be a member of a family, faithful to every family duty, and yet be true to every broader relation? Why, then, may he not be consecrated to his church, ardently seeking its extension and welfare, and at the same time be no whit less in breadth and catholicity as a large-hearted, independent, Christian man? The verdict of experience is that he can be. Altogether too much sectarian exclusiveness and bigotry, we have to confess, there has been, dishonoring the Gospel, and fractionalizing and weakening the Church. But among the finest things in history—not second to any valor or sacrifice of heroes and patriots in the struggles of civil strife—are the records of those, of all names and forms of faith, who, while cultivating the kindly spirit of the Master, and according generous regard and recognition to all, have nevertheless, for the love of Christ and in the service of their own dear church, counted all precious things worthless, giving up home and friends, welcoming danger, enduring persecution, and facing death itself, that they might convert souls, and extend what they have believed to be the truth.
The esprit de corps and enthusiasm for our Church which I plead may henceforth be made indispensable for entrance into our ministry only require that we shall, in our turn, ​illustrate what all such, in their place, have shown to be possible. In no way narrowed, duly respecting ourselves, and with hearts full of a generous sympathy with every earnest effort to serve God and do good to man, we are to catch the baptism of their spirit—the spirit of Christ and of all the saints and martyrs who have lived and died for his sake, in a determined and self-forgetful zeal for our Church, which will render us willing to go anywhere, which will count no labor too exhausting and no sacrifice too great, if we can thus increase its vitality, widen its field of influence and augment its power. See what this zeal for Christ and this devotion to their Church are doing for others!—for the Romanists, for the Methodists, for every church thus served, as men of ability and culture and delicately reared women, no less than men of coarser grain and lower attainments, sever every domestic tie and turn their backs on all the attractions of cultivated society and desirable position and pleasant surroundings—often taking their lives in their hands, to go forth among the rude, the poor, the degraded, the heathen, that they may plant the banner of their church in new fields, enlighten the ignorant, rescue the perishing, and advance the line of Christian light in its conquests over error and sin. Is there any reason why they should feel more, or do more, than we? We are accustomed to claim that the Gospel, as we hold it, makes Christ more precious to us than he can be to those of a narrower faith: why should we not practically show that we love him at least as much as these, by a zeal as fervid, by a concern for souls as intense, by a missionary impulse as enterprising and heroic, by a readiness to labor and to sacrifice as great? We should; and no man is prepared to take up our work and to be a minister of our truth in the new and more spiritual Departure before us, as this truth suggests and demands, except as he is prepared thus to sink self and to prove his love for Christ, and his marriage, soul and body, to our Church, at any cost.
The Universalist Church is nothing on its own account; but as the organization of the world's grandest truth, and as a means of influence for the enlightenment and redemption of men, it is of inexpressible worth. For this reason, ​next to God and Christ, and in their behalf, it deserves our supreme thought, and therefore the undivided loyalty of our hearts, and the service of all we have and are. All that we can give it is, at most, but a trivial offering, compared with what this Church includes and represents. A reasonable individualism we are always to maintain; but what are we personally—our idiosyncrasies, our preferences, our independence, compared with the Gospel of Christ, and its claims on our wise, united, earnest labor? Put the best man of us all into one scale, rating him at his highest importance, and this Church of ours, with its treasures of truth and splendid possibility, into the other, and which will kick the beam? The Protestant principles of the right of private judgment, and of the final accountability of each soul to God, are great principles, never to be forgotten or disregarded; but, like all great principles, they may be carried to extremes, and are subject to the limitations of reason, and social necessity and obligation. These limitations have heretofore been widely overlooked among us. We must see that they are not overlooked hereafter. Our business as Universalists is not simply to sow seeds, but to cultivate harvests; not simply to see that ideas are diffused, but to organize them, that they may be consciously held and efficiently served: and how, as ministers, can we do this, unless we each waive something of our sharp individualism, that we may be merged—not into each other, but into our work, and, in the completeness of our consecration, and the contagion of our enthusiasm, and a forgetfulness of ourselves, flow together, to labor in a spirit of mutual accountability and service, for one common end? Give us 'ministers of the right stamp' in this particular—earnest, chivalric, full of love for Christ and the truth, and all else will come right; but without such ministers, whatever else may be in our favor, everything will go wrong. As, then, we love our Church, and desire its extension and perpetuity, so far as by wise provisions, wisely enforced, it is in our power to select and exclude, only such ministers should from this time forward be permitted entrance among us.
​With these words, I leave the subject. It has grown upon me beyond my expectations. But it is vital to our future; and no question of weightier moment presses upon us, than that which asks, Shall we have the New Departure to which we are summoned in this respect? It is a great thing to be a Universalist minister, thoroughly furnished—morally, intellectually, spiritually, for the work which our Church needs and the time demands. No higher office can be aspired to; no graver responsibilities can be assumed. Shall we who now fill the office becomingly feel this fact, and aim to be worthy of the place? Shall due care be taken that those who hereafter ask our fellowship are the kind of men the office has a right to expect and require? Better no ministers than ministers unsuited to the demand. Men—good men, of warm hearts, of large, well-trained minds, of souls awakened and consecrate,—chivalric, religious, unselfish, these are what we should henceforth insist on, or keep our doors closed. And such men, filled with the, Master's spirit, and bound together in a common enthusiasm for our Church, what may they not do? What might we not look for as the result of their united labors?
—As I ask these questions, there comes before me a scene which I try to think of as prophetic. It was in the church at Springfield, Mass., at the close of the Conference called to consider our condition and wants, and what should be done to make us, more perfectly, spiritually active and effective. Only ministers were present. The holy hush of the night was about us. The profound impression of the season we had spent together in counsel and in prayer was upon us. It was an hour of communion, of confession, of exhortation, of reflection and high resolve—the like of which none of us had ever known before, and such as few of us will ever see again. Old, middle-aged, and young, our hearts were all attuned to the same key; and while each was thinking his own thoughts and living his own life, true to his individual being, one spirit was in all our hearts, and we were melted into one brotherhood of mutual love and labor, with one aim, one desire, one consecrating purpose. It was unity complete; and as, with hands clasped, we knelt in a circle that stretched around the entire edifice, ​and the voice of supplication went up, asking God's benediction of grace and strength, there was not one of us, I am sure, who did not feel, as he had seldom felt before, the special presence of God and the Saviour, and devoutly ask their help to live and labor ever after in the frame of soul which then possessed us. That kneeling, praying, united, thoroughly attuned company of brethren is evermore the symbol in my thought of what our ministry should be. God help us, that we may each do our part to fulfil it as a prophecy of what our ministry is.