Methodist clergyman

“ All too often the clergy are supposed to have the sole responsibility of spiritually aiding the members of a parish, whereas, the laity, whether they recognize it or not, have almost an equal responsibility. The clergyman does spiritual [Pg 92] work, not because he is a clergyman, but because he is a Christian; though his special vocation determines the exact form his work should take. If there were more intelligent sympathy among the members of the congregation one with another, what strength would come to the penitent struggling to his feet, what added power to the faithful! ”

“ Because the clergyman is the one minister of Christ in the parish who did not invent himself, who cannot help existing. He is not asserting his ordinary self by being there; he is placed there on public duty. He is charged with teaching the lesson of Christianity, and the head and front of this lesson is to get rid of 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' which, according to the Dissenter's own showing, is the very spirit which accompanies Dissent. How he is to get rid of it, how he is to win souls to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, it is for his own conscience to tell him. ”

“ But after all these allowances it remains a fact that the clergyman is not a guide only, but a teacher, an ambassador. He is to teach his people all that he knows about God and His relation to the soul of man. He is to study and meditate himself, and to set forth the conclusion he has reached fully and fearlessly. And if he discharges this duty reasonably and zealously, he need not be afraid of finding that there is a gulf fixed between doctrine and practice. ”

“ They cannot resist it, they are overwhelmed by it.”
The fact is, that there is little or no healthy religion in their most numerous and influential churches; it is all excitement. Twenty or thirty years back, the Methodists were considered as extravagantly frantic, but the Congregationalists and Presbyterians in the United States have gone far ahead of them; and the Methodist church in America has become to a degree Episcopal, and softened down into, perhaps, the most pure, most mild, and most simple of all the creeds professed. ”

“ For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox, humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on respectably. ”

“ These ambitions of yours, Michael, which I have observed on several occasions, are dangerous to your better qualities. A clergyman of our Church is a man, and—being a priest—something more than a man; therefore it behoves him to be humble and religious and intent upon his immediate work for the glory of God. ”

“ I had noticed that, at various institutions, excellent clergymen, good preachers, thorough scholars, charming men, when settled as chaplains, had, as a rule, been unable to retain their hold upon the great body of the students. The reason was not far to seek. The average parish clergyman, even though he be not a strong preacher or profound scholar or brilliant talker, if he be at all fit for his position, gradually wins the hearts of his congregation. ”

“ Often it is said nowadays, "Such and such a church is wonderful and its service lifts one to heaven, but the clergyman and his sermon are impossible." But though a clergyman can condition his congregation it is much more true that the congregation can condition the clergyman. ”

“ Though he carefully inculcates universal holiness in all his discourses, yet his practical instructions are constantly deduced from those fundamental principles of Christianity which are the root and life and spirit of all goodness. Next to a solid piety, and a deep acquaintance with the Bible, he considers it of prime importance to a clergyman to be thoroughly acquainted with human nature in general, and with the state of his own parish in particular. ”

“ There is some chance of success, therefore, in his efforts to convert; but the Protestant clergyman, if he were equally eager, has little or no probability of persuading so much larger a proportion of the population to come over to his Church. The Catholic clergyman belongs to a religion that has always been more desirous of gaining proselytes than the Protestant Church ”

“ If no one dreams now of any necessity of consulting the clergy, as such, with reference to the fashion in clothes or the economic and social policy of the nation, it is partly because those matters are no longer considered as religious, but purely temporal. The opinion of a clergyman, therefore, is of no more value than that of the well-informed layman, with his broader practical experience of life, if, indeed, of as much. ”

“ It is the misery of doctrinal Church standards that they necessarily rule so much of a man's thinking. We, outside the Episcopal Church care but very subordinately about the harmony of a clergyman's views with his Church Articles; we care very much about the harmony of his teachings concerning atonement and original sin with Divine revelation and the eternal truth of things. ”

“ The Church of England is a compromise between the old theology and the new. The Bishops have the apostolical succession, but many of them disbelieve that they derive any virtue from it. The clergyman is either a priest who can absolve men from sins, or he is a minister as in other Protestant communions. The sacraments are either means of grace, or mere outward signs. A Christian is either saved by baptism, or saved by faith, as he pleases to believe. ”

“ It is not a loud voice, a browbeating disposition, or a pompous bearing that bring success, it is the careful close reasoner, the quiet mole that undermines the solid earth foundation of his opponent, and topples it down.
The clergyman is a man of sacrifices. ”

“ The lay preacher is a by-product of Methodism, and a [Pg 102] valuable one in large and scattered circuits too poor for anything but a little chapel of four walls and a brush of whitewash. The Methodist clergy live in the towns and work around the circuit, so the people in the villages see their minister sometimes. ”

“ They are still apt to look to the clergyman to guide them in the daily affairs of secular life, not because they consider him better qualified intellectually than other men, but because they have a lurking remnant of belief in priestly infallibility. There are many who make the clergyman a referee on all subjects, of whatever nature, and look upon him as the proper head of every movement, educational, philanthropic, or otherwise, irrespective of his qualifications for such a position. ”

“ I shall now descend to some particulars, and shew how we are to devote our labour and employment, our time and fortunes, to God.
As a Christian should consider every place as holy, because God is there; so he should look upon every part of his life as a matter of holiness, because it is to be offered to God.
The profession of a clergyman is an holy profession, because it is a ministration in holy things. But worldly business is to be made holy, by being done as a service to God, and in conformity to his will. ”

“ We know that opinion has a powerful influence in the formation and development of character, and in no order of men does it operate with more direct and constant force than on the clergy; hence, if a clergyman thinks he is invested with a plenitude of power to accomplish the design of his appointment, he will live in a state of comparative, if not absolute independence of God: he will not be a man of prayer ”

“ As they felt no superstitious attachment to the places in which they assembled, nor imagined that the Episcopal form of ordination gave to the clergyman a degree of sanctity which the Dissenting minister did not possess, they intermingled in each other's society, not to wrangle or contend for superiority, but to cultivate the unity of their faith, and display the excellence of that grace which "teacheth us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." ”

“ The clergyman's is a glorious and exalted path, the happiest I know of on earth. It is his especially to bear the message of salvation from a tender Saviour. It is his to go forth with the balm of heavenly comfort, to bind up the wounds sin and grief have made. It is his indeed pre-eminently to dwell in the house of his God, to be hid away from the world and its many allurements ”

“ Years ago the social position of the great majority of the Methodists and Baptists was distinctly below that of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. In recent years many Methodists and Baptists have grown prosperous. Instead of being bare barns, their church edifices are often the most ornate and costly in the town or city. A Methodist or a Baptist can have none of the former feeling of martyrdom now, when in numbers and wealth his denomination is so powerful. 1 ”

“ We have no wish to speak ill of the Protestant clergy. Most of them are certainly honorable men, estimable husbands and good fathers; but we cannot help observing that they lack the sacerdotal character so conspicuous in the Catholic priest. Their ministry and their teaching cannot fully satisfy the soul; and whenever a calm and unprejudiced comparison is drawn between them and the Catholic clergy, it is strange if the former do not suffer by the contrast, and behold their flocks, little by little, passing over to the side of the Church. ”

“ But the clergyman whose heart is in his work, who lives for the poor and needy, and finds no greater joy than in bringing joy into the lives of others, has to make those he wishes to forget first of all that he is a clergyman and not merely a man ready, as it were, to barter a bun for an attendance at church. ”

“ What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the rest may think of this high-handed mode of dealing with their several pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits. ”

“ But the declarations of the clergy, for the most part, are all in unison, in all the various churches--Catholic and Protestant, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist--which accept God Almighty as the moral governor of the universe, the great master of our destinies, whose eternal voice speaketh to the conscience of mankind. And hence their teachings, if they are true to their calling, have reference to interests and duties and aspirations and hopes as far removed in importance from mere temporal matters as the heaven is higher than the earth. ”

“ In our times there is no such thing as changing a clergyman. Why, we should as soon think of changing our father! A clergyman is selected with great care for his piety and learning—but principally for his piety ”

“ Chapter 4 Truly, holy churlishness in a clergyman only lets him benefit himself because as much as he may benefit the church by his good life, he harms it the same because he can't withstand the destroyers of the faith. ”

“ Parents give up the idle desire which they had in your time, of hearing fine preaching at the expense of honour and delicacy. When a congregation became very much attached to their pastor, and he was doing good amongst them, it was cruel to break in upon their peace and happiness merely because it was in a person’s power to do this. We are certainly much better pleased to have a clergyman with fine talents and a graceful exterior, but we value him more for goodness of heart and honest principles. ”

“ The clergy were not evangelists the Church had no evangelism about its teaching and as a consequence all our own people on the lower stages of the social scale when converted were being driven over to Methodism. ”

“ If reason were allowed to direct the affections, many would be preserved from rash steps that embitter their whole lives. It seems amusing to a Catholic to find the prospects of a clergyman's happiness so very commonplace; but it will be a relief to learn by-and-by how very different were his ideas when he became a clergyman, and built and dwelt in that identical parsonage that now existed only in his own and his mother's mind. He gets a commission in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry before returning to Cambridge for Hilary term this year. ”

“ Thus we see that even among men who make a profession of religion the great majority are as Martian as the majority of their congregations. The average clergyman is an official who makes his living by christening babies, marrying adults, conducting a ritual, and making the best he can (when he has any conscience about it) of a certain routine of school superintendence, district visiting, and organization of almsgiving, which does not necessarily touch Christianity at any point except the point of the tongue. ”

“ Whenever private scruples and peculiar spiritual difficulties keep you from the holy communion, you are exhorted to go to some discreet and learned minister, that you may receive the benefit of absolution; and whenever you are laid on a bed of sickness, and the clergyman is summoned to your side, he is directed to move you to a special confession, if you feel your conscience troubled by any weighty matter, and if you humbly and heartily desire it, to absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. ”