THE KING’S BUSINESS
468 THE PREACHER AS A MAN. Now this Book of God has a great deal to; say to us as MEN. It rings as with a trumpet note to us first of all as MEN. In how many ways it gives emphasis to ourselves, to our manhood; “Take heed to thyself,’ “Be thou an example,” “Be the right kind of man.” How much the Bible makes- of that note. And how impor tant that we should regard it, that first of all we are MEN before we are preachers. Some of you men could say all this so much better than I can say i t ; and yet,. I am your guest for this morning and you expect some message from me. So I say, before we are preachers we are men. We are men ! Oh, how manhood in the ministry ought evermore -to be exalted. It is a crime for a preacher to be a pesky little man. The biggest man in all the town ought to be the prophet of God ; I mean the biggest in manhood in all the town. Our calling calls for that. If a preacher be ungenerous, if he be envious, if he be pesky, if he be lacking in magnanimity, in kindli ness of soul, in bigness of manhood, how terrible the lack! The world will forgive our crochets, if we are genuine men.- It will over look a lot of our slips and our lapses if down underneath we are men of moral muscle and true to the core. We are to be MEN first of all. John the Baptist! Oh, what a man he was before he was a preacher! And Paul the Apostle, the greatest single credential that Christianity has ' ever had—-what a man he was! Wouldn’t you have delighted to have seen him and have watched those eyes of his flash when he called evil to ac count and when he uttered the mighty things for truth. Coming before everything else we are to be manly men in the ministry. They tell us that “knowledge is power,” and so it is,
but character is,, power. My brother, what we are in ourselves counts so very much. We give out what we are. GREATEST ASSET. The greatest thing about a man is the atmosphere he carries; the great est thing about a church is her atmos phere; the greatest thing about an in stitution is its atmosphere ; the great est thing about a preacher is the at mosphere that radiates from him. Oh, how powerful was William Pitt, be cause he was first of all such a man; and how marvelously influential was George Washington, because there ra diated from him something that made men almost revere him. Character is power! First of all, God and men expect us to be the right kind of- men, and that means, of course, that we are to magnify our office. The Apostle Paul said, “I magnify mine office.” Now -the preacher who does not, is certainly in the wrong pew; he has got into the wrong place. The Christian minis try is the most masculine, the most heroic business in all the world. It is not a task for prigs; it is a task for great big-souled men. And -what a tragedy when a prophet of God has little unworthy conceptions of his task. What a tragedy when he is looking for a soft place; when he is taking the nearest cu t; when he will not pay the price to be the big, all- around man that he ought to be in this biggest of all businesses from God to man—the preaching of the Gospel. What a tragedy! I say to the boys in the schools, fit ting themselves to preach, (for when a man reaches 45 he can begin to ad vise the boys a little), “Gentlemen, be the best students in college. Don’t look for those soft electives. Don’t cut out the mathematics; grapple with these big questions that stir up the brain cells, now while you are in col-
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