THE HUNGRY SHEEP
BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS
Lampson Professor of English Literature at Yale University
“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.”MILTON, “Lycidas.”
“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.”MILTON, “Lycidas.”
“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.”
“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.”
MILTON, “Lycidas.”
MILTON, “Lycidas.”
ONE of to-day’s favorite questions, both in private speculation and in public debate, is this, “Why do not more men go regularly to church?” Like all questions of real interest, it is much easier to ask than to answer. The pews undoubtedly contain more women than men, though this fact by itself need occasion no alarm. It does not prove that the church has “lost its hold” or that the habit of going to church is relatively unimportant. Women have always taken more interest in religious organizations than men, both because they have more leisure for contemplation, and because public worship appeals more to a woman’s nature than it does to a man’s. If the mere fact that the minister sees in front of him more brilliant hats than bald heads be a sign that the church does not appeal to the solid intelligence of humanity, then the symphony concert and the art museum fail even more signally. The masculine proportion of listeners at a high-class musical entertainment or among the visitors at an art gallery is even less than it is at church. Indeed, it is rather interesting to observe that at almost any public spectacle the number of men is in inverse ratio to the intellectual value of the performance. At a vaudeville the men vastly outnumber the women, and amid the enormous throng at a prize-fight there are hardly any women at all. Thus the fact that the seats at a prize-fight are crowded with men, while the pews are filled with women, does not in itself indicate that the church is on the down-grade.
Still, it is unfortunate that more men do not attend church, and it is more unfortunate for the men than it is for the church. Men need the church more than the church needs men. The real difficulty is not a fundamental one; it does not lie in the nature of religion or in the nature of man. Next to questions of sex and means of subsistence, the average man is at heart more interested in religion than in any other one thing. The ordinary man is a natural theologian. He takes keen interest in constructing his God, his scheme of the universe, and the problem of life after death has always had, and probably always will have, an irresistible fascination.
The main trouble with the church to-day is not in the pews; it is in the pulpit. There is more Christian faith in the average congregation than there is in the average preacher. During the short period of Emerson’s pastorate, he was obliged to call on an old man who was dying. The young minister murmured apologetically a number of confused and clumsy commonplaces, and finally his aged client cried sharply, “Young man, if you don’t know your business, you had better go home.” Emerson, who came to give advice, took it, like the honest and sincere man that he was; and he had no peace until he left the church for good and all. He was totally unfitted to be a minister because he had no Christian faith, and as soon as he realized his unfitness, he sought another occupation, and became enormously useful to humanity in other ways.
A United States senator met three clergymen in three different parts of the country, and each complained that he could not get a large audience. The senator asked the first man if he believed that the Bible was the word of God; the cleric smiled pityingly, and said that of course he did not in the crude and ordinary sense, and then he launched a mass of vague metaphysical phrases. The senatorasked the second man if he believed in the future life, and the reverend gentleman said that he did not believe in personal immortality, but that the essence of life was indestructible, or some such notion. The senator asked the third man, a pastor of an orthodox evangelical church, if he believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ; the shepherd of souls replied that all men were divine. The three clergymen had themselves supplied abundant reasons why their audiences were small. They had nothing to offer them but wind. The hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed.
A vital Christian faith is the prime essential for a man who wishes to succeed in the ministry. It is worth more to him than all the learning in the world. If an honest man cannot believe, we surely ought not to blame him or quarrel with him; but he has no business in the pulpit. Christian faith is just as necessary a prerequisite for a clergyman as a knowledge of mathematics is for a civil engineer. Without it, he is not merely ineffective; he is futile and absurd. I remember being present once in a vast audience where Mr. Moody was talking, and at the end of his remarks he said that he would be glad to answer any questions. Some one asked, “What, in your judgment, is the best work a modern minister can do?” Before Mr. Moody had time to reply, there was a voice from the throng, which cried out, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom He hath sent.” The great evangelist hesitated a moment, and then said that he had nothing to add.
The Protestant clergy of to-day are sadly weakened by a spirit of compromise. They are afraid to preach Christianity, partly because they do not believe in it, and partly because they are afraid it won’t “draw.” They attempt to beguile men into the church by announcing secular themes, by the discussion of timely political and literary topics. As a matter of fact, the ungodly respect heartily a Christian minister who is absolutely sincere and who confines his sermons to religion, and they despise a vacillating and worldly minded pastor, who seems to apologize for his religion, and who substitutes lectures on politics and socialism for the preaching of the gospel. No mistake is greater than the mistake of the minister who conceives it to be his duty to preach politics from the pulpit. To an audience who have read the daily papers all the week, and the Sunday paper that very morning, nothing is more superfluous than a political discourse in church. I remember the case of a prominent clergyman who, during a whole Presidential campaign, preached Sunday after Sunday against one of the candidates, to a constantly diminishing audience. On the night when the returns came in, the object of his attacks was apparently successful, and he cried out in despair, “What can be done now?” He was effectively answered by one of the ungodly who happened to be present. “I don’t see that there is anything left for you now, Doctor, except to preach the gospel.”
The tremendous strength of the Roman Catholic Church lies in its fidelity to principle, in its religious vitality, and in its hatred of compromise. It should be an object-lesson to all Protestant ministers. They may not believe its dogmas, they may not accept any theological dogmas at all; but they ought to learn that the chief duty of a preacher is to hold forth Christianity, and not to discourse on sanitation, political economy, or literature. People everywhere are eager for the gospel, and always respond to it when it is convincingly set forth, whether by men like Phillips Brooks or men like Billy Sunday. The great Boston bishop never had any trouble in getting an audience; and although he was a man of the highest and broadest cultivation, interested in every modern movement in literature, politics, and art, he never preached anything but the Christian religion. He used all his remarkable gifts in that one direction. The result was that his congregations were enormous, and that he was beloved and respected by all classes of men.
The pastor should be a leader, not a follower. If he has less conviction than his audience, how can he lead them? What would be thought of the general of an army who had no definite ideas as to where he ought to take his men, and no conviction that his cause was good? If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle? The main difficulty with the church to-day is that the people in the pews do not have the gospel preached to them. The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.