The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-11-13
DR.. FAIRBAIRN ON PULPIT PREP
ARATI0N.

PRINCIPAL A. NJ. FA1RBAIRN Of Mans
field College, England, in reply
to the question how preachers ought
to be prepared for their work, says:
"By the most rigorous discipline
moral, intellectual and spiritual-to
which they can be subjected. In
that discipline l don't count the pre-
mature exercise of their gifts in pub
lie. More men have been ruined by
being set to preach before they were
able to do SO than by any other
cause. Very seldom the youth sell
ectsd by credulous pastor or con-
gregation for his gifts of utterance
turns out an efficient preacher. [
once heard on a public platform a
man plead that our students ought
to be selected from local preachers
and encouraged to preach as much as
possible while undergraduates. The
curious thing was that he went on to
give illustrations of great English
preachers, hardly one of whom had
been so selected, not one of whom
had been so trained. His list in
cluded such names as Newman, Lid
don, and Phillips Brooks. Nature
looks after the geniuses, but she
hardly ever makes out of the genius
(who, as rule, is a hayward child
the permanent force that is needed
for pulpit ministrations. The genius
that does not consent to walk between
the shafts of the plough will never
till the soil. 1t is sure waste of po-
tential manhood in the pulpit to send
a man in his raw state to preach as
often as possible. For if he is so sent
he will form all the mannerisms of
immaturity, and these are things that
once formed are as persistent as life. -
Pulpit Themes.
As to the selection of these DR.
Fairbairn said:
"That is a question very hard to
answer in anything like exact terms.
1t may be left partly to the preacher
himself, and partly to the occasion
which calls him to preach. The pull
pit is too great an institution to be
muzzled. The very notion of being a
prophet is that he be free. But then,
if man feels vocation to speak
when he is ignorant or Uniformed
will only prove that his vocation is
not of God, and that his folly is SUI
perior to his sense. The preacher
who knows nothing of economics will
not speak truly on industrial ques-
tions simply because he means we'll.
A man must be more than in earnest
in order to be convincing. He must
be informed as well. The man who
speaks in praise of the Higher Criti-
cism-he who knows not what higher
criticism means-will only make
himself and his subject ridiculous.
The man who speaks against criti-
cism because it is higher in the be-
lief that the higher means superior,
or is a term of pride, will rightly do
damage to his own credit and the
cause he seeks to serve. In prepare
ton as the pulpit knows, twill speak !;
but also will be silent in the face Of
problems too great for it. That does
not mean that the preacher is to for
bear from bringing great principles
to the front when they are forgotten.
His very function is to keep such
principles alive in the world, to re-
prove self.interests, the mean spites
OF men and nations, to discover and
remove the causes of alienation among
classes, to find out the sources of
evils. But the real preacher will al
ways discover that what commands
the minds he addresses, and the
minds that ultimately govern the
world, are those eternal spiritual
truths that are the true sovereigns Of
conscience, and Of the SOUL"