p. 101 | THE MINISTER'S PERSONAL HABITS

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 12, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 7

THE MINISTER'S PERSONAL HABITS.

THIS week we give our readers another installment of Chancellor Howard Crosby's excellent lectures before the Yale theological students, as published in the Independent. He speaks thus entertainingly and profitably of a minister's personal habits:—

The habits of the preacher next call for remark, as we note the moral forces of the pulpit. By habits, we refer to modes of life, and not to disposition or personal manner. While the disposition is a bent or tendency of the moral nature, and the manner is an external matter altogether, although often the result of disposition, the habits are visible modes of life which involve moral principles, evil or otherwise, as the case may be. As in the case of the dispositions, we shall treat this portion of our subject in the negative way, and hold up to view the habits that are to be avoided. The preacher is to be well reported of by those that are without; he is to have a just and holy reputation, as one who loves the good, and hates the evil, in all their forms. He is to be unrebukable by the outside world for any blot upon his character. These are divine directions regarding the Christian preacher, and we cannot neglect them without peril to the church. When the world recognizes its own vices in the pulpit, it can receive no heavenly message from that quarter. Evil habits in the minister, even if they do not amount to crimes, have the same general effect. They lead the believer to distrust, and the unbeliever to blaspheme. We may consider, in their order, the personal, the pecuniary, and the social habits of the preacher.

We cannot divorce the preaching from the preacher. This is a fundamental truth which we cannot too often repeat in pursuing our investigation of the preacher's qualifications. The question that is the touchstone in every case is this, “Will it thwart or hinder the effect of the message?” and in accordance with the response, we make out our portrait. For this reason, we are obliged to look at the man's personal appearance and dress as well as at his style of disposition and manner toward others. A preacher who is slovenly in his attire, allowing his hair to be unkempt, his nails uncleaned, his boots unblacked, and his clothes unbrushed, will prove a very poor conductor of divine truth. He will find very small fields of labor, and under his tillage they will become “beautifully less.” “Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord,” has a literal as well as spiritual application. Men of excellent ability have wondered why they did not succeed in life, when the only reason (which their friends shrank from disclosing to them) was their personal uncleanness. It seems a childish interference and a sort of impudence to tell a man to tie his cravat, or pull down his vest; and yet a man must have very great and brilliant qualities who can live down the injurious effect of such trifling irregularities, which mark him as the sloven. At many of the sloven's habits men feel both insulted and ashamed. They expect a preacher to be neat and orderly in his appearance before them, and they have a right to such expectation from the nature of the relation between them. The torn hat or egg-stained shirt-bosom is, therefore (if customary and not an accidental necessity), a practical insult to the preacher's charge, which only remarkable gifts on the part of the preacher can prevent them from resenting. The people, moreover, are to an extent identified with their pastor, and in his reproach they suffer, so that his slovenly habits fill them with mortification. I know not who first framed the saying that “cleanliness is next to godliness,” and I am sure I would not approve the sentiment; but yet I acknowledge it is very hard to associate piety with wilful dirtiness of the person, and very, very hard to look upon an unwashed minister as a man of God.

Besides the slovenly habits we may put the unhealthy habits, which do not repel, indeed, but may, as examples, lead many a young life astray. The use of spirituous liquors and the excessive use of any stimulant, over-indulgence

at the table, and (what is seldom classed with these) overstudy or study at midnight hours, are some of the unhealthy habits which it should be a preacher's care to shun. A preacher's physical life should be a model in its wise distribution of time for work and rest, in its right arrangement of study, visits, domestic employment, public services, and general usefulness, with the recreation that is necessary for the fullness of efficiency. Persistence in a habit injurious to health is, on the part of a preacher, the robbery of the Master. It is shortening life, weakening the faculties, and thus diminishing the amount of work that is the Master's due. In the grosser forms of self-indulgence this is readily seen and acknowledged; but in the matter of a false system of study the mind is too often blind to the truth. The sermon-writing is crowded into Saturday night, and the preacher goes to bed after midnight to catch a troubled sleep, and rise on Sunday morning with aching head and drooping powers, when he ought to feel a giant's strength and rejoice in a clear and healthy brain. Or, he may tax eyes and cerebrum habitually by long sessions of night study, because then the house is quiet, and he will not be interrupted by callers, to which the temptation to every student is certainly very great, and the happy, unbroken hours are looked to as a luxury. Such abuse of health seldom receives the sternness of rebuke it deserves. It rather adds to the interest of the man in the eyes of the community, and they treat his steady decline admiringly and romantically, when they should scourge him and the reveling minister alike with censure for destroying the bodies God gave them to use for the preaching of the truth and the upbuilding of the church. It is no merit to grow pallid with study; it should be no passport to honor. Mens sana in corpore sano. The mind is best served by a healthy body, and every preacher should so intersperse his studies with the more locomotive exercises of his ministry as to preserve the tone of his physical system. The variety which he will find in his parish duties is ample for this end, and it is a sorry substitute for this natural method to betake one's self to Indian clubs or the lifting-machine.