Southern Christian Advocate

From the Nashville Christian Advocate.

A LETTER FROM AN ITINERANT'S WIFE ON EXTENDING THE PASTORAL TERM.

Mr. Editor.—I would much rather discuss a subject with you face to face, than write to you, just because you have that rare trick of conversation—no, I am wrong. that art of conversation, of so intermingling your own thoughts with those of your interlocutor, that, when the hour's talk is over, I have a pleasant impression that a great many handsome things have been said, and I do not care to sift out what were said by you or what by myself: I take it for granted that I contributed my part to the entertainment; but when I come to sit down alone and write, the thoughts do not, somehow, appear near so fine.

However, there is one advantage in writing—you can read it, or let it alone, at your pleasure; you are not bored, "will ye, nill ye."

In looking over your paper last week, after being vastly entertained by your sojourn in foreign parts, my eye fell upon a piece written in most excellent tone and temper, and signed, "A Layman." It awakened in my mind a cluster rather than a train of thoughts, which I will present to you, not as arguments, but simply as something which may, perhaps, by a more skilful hand be woven into arguments. In one respect I have rather the advantage of the writer to whom I have referred. He, it appears, is a layman, a mere "permanency," while I am decidedly a "temporary." If in itinerancy "any have whereof to boast, I more." I claim to be a very itinerant of itinerants. Not that I have been itinerating so many years, but it may be said of me, as is said of those play-actresses in Germany, who receive a pension after having been on the stage for twenty years, namely, "that they hasten through those twenty years as fast as they can go." So have I hastened through some dozen years of itinerating. So much for my experience!

The first idea, if I remember aright, in this article by "A Layman" is this, that by extending the time of appointments among the ministry of our Church, a man may be precluded the use of books, and his literary progress thereby hindered. In the first place, we must consider that it is no small matter to master one single volume that is full of thought. It is not so much the want of books that a minister feels in any part of our country, as it is the want of undisturbed time for reflection and study. We must be alone, to wrestle with the angel of thought. There is no mountain-fastness in our country, at least east of the Mississippi river, to which books may not be conveyed in a few weeks; and if a man were going to spend some years in a place, however lonely, he might gather a very comfortable little library around him. The money that is required to move his family fifty miles, will furnish him more books than he can thoroughly study in four years. But if he is this year to be sent to one mountain circuit, and the next to another, a hundred miles distant, perhaps, he will find that he has very little money to expend in buying books, and very little to expend in transporting them after they are bought. On this subject, though not a preacher, only a preacher's wife, I speak feelingly. Then we must take into consideration the interruption to study occasioned by the anxiety attendant on moving; the sleepless nights the poor fellow spends in trying to devise some way of making twenty dollars go as far as forty; the time he spends—if there be no parsonage, as is often the case—in trying to find a house that is not disgracefully shabby, and yet which comes within his means of renting; the time he takes in packing up and unpacking, in arranging and re-arranging. Then, very possibly, in the exposure of removal, his wife takes cold, or one of the children falls into a fever, and time is consumed in nursing them—time which cannot be given to study. But suppose him safely moved, and no sickness as a consequence; still, new servants are to be hunted up and hired, and these he must go in search of, while his wife stays at home "to mind the baby," or is making ineffectual attempts to turn a corn cake for supper. It is probably a time of the year when no spare servants are to be found, and the man trudges over the village, or rides over the country on Brother Somebody's horse day after day, thinking a great deal about household affairs, and, as a matter of necessity, very little about his sermon for next Sunday. In his new home everything is to be procured, without his knowing where to procure any thing; and how can he be considering his "fourth proposition," when he does not know where the first mess of potatoes are to come from? Knowledge may dwell with sorrow, but she enters not willingly into the midst of carking cares.

Another advantage of frequent change is thought by your correspondent to be found in the more finished compositions of those who are thus removed from year to year, and who are thereby enabled to preach the same sermon over and over. This seems to me to be questionable. We are naturally indolent, and require a constant mental stimulus to force us to exertion. There are few men whose perceptions of the beauty of excellence are so appreciative as to urge them forward to its attainment solely for its own sake. The sermon that told well at Springfield will generally, it is thought, do as well for Glasgow, without emendation or change. As long as there is a chance of "turning the barrel upside down," there will be little progress in thought. When Cortes entered Mexico, he destroyed his ships, that his men might feel that their only hope was to conquer the country before them, their only alternative death or victory. As long as a preacher—I speak of ordinary men—has a corps de reserve in a range of old sermons, he will be constantly falling back upon it. I have found in my own mental history, and I presume this is usual, that I have most frequently remodeled and repolished old articles when my mind has been most busily and sometimes most oppressively engaged with something new. You may rest assured that we require the lash and spur of circumstance to make us move. I believe it is conceded that nothing conduces more to the development and expansion of mind, than throwing into it new thought. Your correspondent speaks of the advantage of elaborating several leading topics in theology, and this is certainly desirable; but when we reflect upon the close connection that exists between all subjects in the moral as in the natural world, we shall, I think, come to the conclusion that it is impossible to study one without seeing the new hue which it throws upon that adjoining. This seems to me to be corrective of superficiality rather than a temptation to it. I have found that those men who permit the mind to reach forth in every direction, escape that one-sidedness which so much mars the symmetry of character. The facts of science, the subtile fancies of poetry, the glowing passages of romance, the homely detail of every-day life around us, may give us deeper insight of the human heart, and of the great truths which God in his love has revealed to us. Every new subject that a man undertakes honestly and earnestly to treat, enlarges his comprehension of some other.

I have not the Advocate by me, but it occurs to me that a third thought of the communication which I have kept in view is this—that a frequent change of ministry has the best effect in the training of Church members. Your correspondent seems to think that no one who gathers the lambs into the fold can feed them well after they are in. I do not know that this is necessarily so; but even granting that Paul can only "plant," does it follow that Apollos will certainly come after? A revivalist may not be able to train Church members; neither may his successor, though he be no revivalist; and he certainly labors under the disadvantage of not knowing the new members, and of holding in his hands no electric cords by which their hearts may be affected. I would speak earnestly on this point, for I think in no one thing have I seen the Church suffer more than in this. Members have been taken into the Church, generally at the close of the year, as your correspondent remarks—for so long does it often require to reach the sympathies of men—and young converts, glowing with enthusiasm, have been chilled to see a new Pharaoh come who knows not Joseph, have languished for the want of sympathy, and, finding themselves neglected—necessarily so, for their minister does not yet understand their wants—succumb to the allurements of the world; while the poor preacher himself, instead of being an object of rebuke, should be one of pity, for he stands himself a stranger, shrinking, shivering in his sensitiveness, and feeling that, as yet, there is no warm, sunny place for him in the hearts of this people, who still retain the warmest recollection of their late pastor, and whose affections are ever turning to the moment when he received them into the Church. How long and dreary a time must elapse before this minister can be placed in rapport with his congregation! How long before they can approach him with confidence, relate to him their little trials and difficulties, which, nevertheless, are not little to them, and ask his advice; and just as they have learned to do this, he is snatched away, and another stranger replaces him again the same freezing and thawing process is gone through!

There might be, it appears to me, changes in these things without any injury to the itinerancy. There is, I presume, no special virtue in two years, that we should adhere rigidly to that term, unless we take ground that the oftener a man is moved the better, and then it would be well to change him every week; but I see no advantage in this, except that upon the strength of one sermon he might pass through the world, preaching it to a different congregation each Sabbath.