I.
One of the highest duties we can pay Christ is to maintain the purity of his gospel. Next to this in point of importance is the “increase” of his body. The church is a great gift—among the Lord’s best. To bring it up to a high state of efficiency, so that it shall both reflect on itself and spend on the world its whole power for good, is one of the most difficult questions which can engage the attention of a thoughtful Christian. Indeed, I know of no other question so difficult; and certainly there is no other practical item of Christianity which requires for its judicious and successful management so much skill and labor. How shall each church be brought to be what Christ designs it to be, and to do all he intends it to do? These are two grave questions. While in the flesh it is probable we shall never realize an answer to them. But this should not deter us from bestowing on them the requisite amount of attention to understand them, nor from doing whatever may be in our power to make the churches approximate as nearly as possible the divine standard.
On the preacher chiefly will devolve this task. What he does not do will not likely be done; indeed, it will simply not be done at all. The responsibility is a heavy one, but the noble spirit will not shrink from it on this account; only he will get a little closer to God in prayer, and confide more in the almighty arm. The elders of our congregations are, to an extent deeply to be regretted, inefficient. For this certainly they are not always to be blamed; neither are they to be held as quite blameless. They should either not undertake the work, or perform it in a more satisfactory way. To do their whole duty would, in all cases, take much of their time; in many cases, take it all. But this time they are under no obligation to bestow as a gratuity on the churches. For it they should be paid. This is a dictate of common justice, as well as a part of the divine economy. No [100] man is to work for others, according to Christ, without a just equivalent in return. Were our elders or overseers—I like the latter term better—paid for their time, as they should be, the following might be counted among the results: 1. An order of overseers far better qualified to discharge their delicate duties than we now have. This would arise out of their having time to prepare themselves for their work; and without such special preparation overseers can never be what they should be. Indeed, why should we not have schools for the purpose, and train men for the overseership, as we train them for the work of evangelists? We are great pains to prepare men to preach; yet no one denies that to govern a church well is a work equally difficult and equally arduous. Equally high, then, is the necessity to qualify men for it. But, certainly, we act on a very different principle: we act as though the school made the preacher, but nature the overseer. The day may be at hand when we may see the necessity of acting on a very different principle. It will be a happy event for the cause of Christ when the overseer shall be as carefully prepared for his work as is the evangelist.
2. The more successful government of our churches, and hence their greater prosperity. This would inevitably result from their being managed by a class of men eminently fitted for their work. But I did not sit down to write an essay on the overseership; yet I hope these few hints will have the careful thought of our brethren.
II.
To return, then, I soberly ask the question: What substantial progress have our churches made within the last ten years? If they have moved forward one degree on the scale of progress, sure I am that they have not moved forward more. We stand now about where we stood ten years ago. In the item of liberality there has been a perceptible advance; but in that of studying the Holy Scriptures a perceptible falling back. Upon the whole, then, I set down our progress at nothing. True, in some localities we have added numbers; but I am sorry to say that with numbers we have not always added strength. Eternity alone will disclose whether many of our successful, protracted meetings [101] are a blessing to the church, or the reverse. They generally consist of a series of heated discourses, delivered exclusively to the sinner, to induce him to become obedient to Christ. They are destitute, for the most part, of instruction to the disciples. The result is, that the sinner, entering the church with little knowledge of his duties as a Christian, and receiving little proper instruction after he comes in, lives far below the sublime, active life he should live. For this, in many cases, he is to be more pitied than blamed. The character of these meetings should undergo a material change. Not that they should made less profitable to the sinner; only they should be rendered far more so to the saint. They present a happy opportunity for imbuing the mind with holy resolutions. Now is the time to make the young disciple determine that he will never, health permitting, be absent from the house of God even one Lord’s day in the year; that he will not forget his daily prayers; that he will daily read the Holy Scriptures; and, if need be, that he will toil with his own hands, that he may have to contribute to the many wants of the church. Let the Christian grow old before his attention is called to these things, and the call will have but a feeble impression on him. When the spirit is young in Christ, is glowing with love to him, is heated with a desire to do his will, then is the time to mold it for high and holy deeds.
Accordingly, for the last two years my own course has been, in all the meetings I have held, and they have all been protracted, to deliver alternately one discourse to the world and one to the church. With the effect I have had high reason to be satisfied. During these meetings the hearts of the brethren generally grow warm, their ancient zeal reburns again, and their spirits become tender and susceptible. Now is the time to urge reforms and suggest new steps. You will be kindly heard, and your propositions responded to with a heart and will never witnessed in a cold, regular meeting. A stale lecture, on the necessity of family prayer, delivered on Saturday, at eleven o’clock, at a monotonous monthly meeting, is about as fruitless of good as any act a Christian man can well perform. The wonder is that churches even live despite of such lectures, not that they do not [102] flourish under them. But a luminous and animated speech on the subject, at some fitting season during a protracted meeting, causing it to sparkle with vitality, will never fail to end in good. The purpose of a whole congregation can be formed by one such speech. Fifty unlike it, and at other times, will achieve nothing. But I seem wandering again.
III.
There now exists a broad inexorable necessity for a great material reformation in several items in our churches. The two of which I shall at present speak, are the regular weekly assembling of the saints, and universal congregational prayer.
1. The regular Lord’s day meetings. Were these meetings what they indisputably ought to be, their influence for good could be estimated only by a knowledge of the actual results. How much it is to be regretted that we have no faultless examples of the kind to which reference might be made. Our churches, in this respect, are certainly far below what they should be. Is not a grand reformation in the item an attainable result? I believe it is, and here and now call the attention of all our preachers to it. Let us all make the point a specialty for 1868. In the end I feel sure we shall have reason to be thankful, and work on.
To the preacher, then, I say, speak first, very privately, to each individual member in the church to which you minister, and request an uninterrupted attendance on every First day of the Week during the entire year. Into this request throw the whole energy of your soul. Let it be a warm, impressible appeal, one that comes gushing from a heart replete with subtle Christian love. Breathe into it the magnetism of a soul heroically bent on a great end. Mark me, your appeal will not be lost. Imbue every mind with your own earnest spirit and holy purpose; and resolve to be satisfied with nothing short of complete success, and complete success will crown your effort.
To my brethren everywhere who are not preachers, I beg to say, see to it that you each and all exert yourselves to bring to pass the end here proposed. To stimulate, if not to ennoble you, tell me how you like the following: [103]
In the modest little town of Say, State of ———, we have an elect flock of disciples, with whom it has been my happiness to meet several times, with whose life and customs I am so much pleased that I have concluded to jot down a few of them for the benefit of the reader. They are a lovely band; and my wonder is that God does not take them to himself. They seem to me to have risen so much above earth that I can not understand why it is that they are still left here the heirs of grief and tears.
1. Their singing struck me as the purest and finest I had ever heard. I felt ashamed of my own poor attainments in this sweetest of arts, while among them. Their singing possessed a volume which I believe to be without a parallel. Surely there was something sublime in that ocean of delicious sounds. Their songs are grave, simple, and grand; and through all their noble airs there warbles a note so plaintive, and breathes a melancholy so sweet, that I felt as though I listened to the anthems of unfallen spirits. I grew conscious that the current of my spiritual life became sensibly deeper and broader, as I sat among these children of God. It was a season of exquisite joy to my poor hungry soul.
I shall not soon forget an event which happened one day, as I worshipped with these pious people. A very comely youth had met with them, and announced himself as a teacher of music. They asked him for a song, as a sample of what he proposed to teach them and their children. I have now forgotten both song and air, and am thankful I have. I only remember that each verse ended in a rollicking chorus, in which I recollect these words often recurred:
“Yonder over the rolling river.”
The gusto with which this silly Jim Crow lay was executed constituted the most grotesque interlude it was ever my misfortune to witness. The young man was affectionately commended to the guidance of Him who doeth all things well, and delicately informed that his art was not then in requisition.
2. These people seemed to live for little else than the glorious First day of the Week. Its departure filled them with regret, its [104] approach with holy joy. Truly, with them, it was the golden day of the seven. They hailed its dawn with soul-felt hymns and grateful prayers. It was the day on which that happy family were to meet each other again in the flesh. The heart of the school child, full ten months absent from home, hardly looks forward to the day of its return with deeper delight than did these disciples to that holy occasion. At a very early hour they all came together into their lovely meeting-house—a house most free from all ostentation, and yet so clean and pure as to suggest no idea but that of Paradise. It stood embowered in the shade of noble forest trees, with here and there a cluster of exquisite flowering shrubs. It was a place where the pious soul would instinctively linger to muse on its hopes and destiny. There in that house and amidst these trees, most of the day was spent. Each disciple brought with him a frugal meal—a bit of cheese and piece of bread, of which all partook in common. They day thus passed amidst songs, readings of the Holy Scriptures, prayers, and conversations touching Christ, and the contents of the Bible. A more delightful scene on earth I can not imagine.
But the circumstance which most of all struck me was the fact that, be the day hot or cold, wet or dry, every disciple, unless prevented by sickness, was present at the meeting. No one ever thought of being absent, if to be present was reasonable. To this habit they were most religiously trained. They dared not, they said, offend the Savior by neglecting to assemble themselves together; and if the precept meant not every Lord’s day, they argued that it was open to a most licentious, and therefore a most dangerous construction. They hence met from the double motive, that it was a deep pleasure and the discharge of a sacred duty. The influence of their example was most salutary. The whole community pointed to them as a living illustration of the fervent love enjoined in the word of God. “These people are Christians indeed,” was the world’s never-changing verdict.
Now, why should not this be the fact and the history of every church of Christ in the whole land? Surely it is right. Bravely, then, and persistently, let us all work for it during the present year. I feel thoroughly convinced that it only needs the [105] unremitting attention of the preachers to effect in the item large and most gratifying reforms.
IV.
The next item to which I invite attention is that of universal congregational prayer. By this I mean that each member in the church, whether male or female, shall pray publicly whenever called on. But I must qualify and distinguish. I do not mean that women shall teach in public, nor even so much as publicly ask a question for information. These acts are not allowable in the churches of Christ. But I do mean that they should pray, only they are always to pray with the head vailed or covered. In this I am not following discretion, but divine prescription. But for the end here proposed, the children of the Lord will have to specially educated. The present state of imperfect church training is very unfriendly to it. Indeed it might almost be pronounced hostile. Therefore till it is made to yield to the right, complete success is not attainable. And why should not the children of God be actually and practically taught how to pray, just as they are taught how to read? We are at great pains to teach our children how to write, how to work arithmetic, how to draw diagrams in geometry, and how to till the ground. Are the interests of eternity of less moment than these? Shall not the acts, therefore, by which its blessedness is attained, be taught to say no more, with equal care? This question needs no answer. I never have been able to see why the young disciple should not be taught by actual example how to pray, just as he is taught the other duties of life. The habit thus formed would be permanent, and the effect most salutary.
A lad, say of fifteen, joins the church. He is timid and awkward, but willing. In what lies the objection to the following? I say to this babe in Christ: Come, Samuel, away with me; I have business with you. I take the boy with me into a private room—a closet of prayer, and shut the door. I say to him: My son, I am about to teach you how to pray. Kneel with me. We bow together. I say to him: Repeat after me. I slowly articulate the following, which he says after me: [106]
Our Father in heaven, smile in mercy on us now. Forgive the offenses of the day. Accept our gratitude for our bread and clothing. In all time to come, lead us in the way of life. Never suffer us to be overcome by temptation. Aid us through life to serve thee with fidelity; and at last save us in Christ. Amen.
Two points I have now gained: 1. The boy is emboldened by my example to feel that a prayer may be very short. 2. That it may be very simple. With this feeling goes half his embarrassment in praying. Cultivate him thus for a while; familiarize his mind to the fact that he is expected soon to take part in the public exercises of the church; and by the time the end of a month has been reached he will be ready for the work. Thus let each and every member of the body be trained till all can pray, and not merely all be prayed for.
Nothing could be more lovely than a church molded after the plan herein laid down; every member meeting on each First day of the Week, and each member praying whenever asked to do so. Truly would the churches then be a power on earth for good. Again, then, in conclusion, let me urge on our preachers to make these two points specialties for the present year.
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[Volume V: January, 1868]
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