p. 231 | Hunting a Text

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 25, 1882

Hunting a Text.

If the following "Tale of the Fashionable Clergyman of To-day" is strictly true, it will be seen that his position is not an enviable one. Judging from the style of many popular sermons, it might have happened if it did not:—

The good pastor was known among his perhaps envious brethren as a "sensational" preacher. One day while he was sitting in his study, immersed in thought, with a heap of crumpled newspapers on the floor beside him, Deacon Bullit came in. After a few preliminary remarks, the pastor said:—

"Bullit, I want a subject for my next Sunday's sermon, and I can't think of a thing. Can you suggest a theme?"

"I don't know," said the deacon, reflecting. "I've been through the whole of that pile of newspapers, telegraph columns, police columns, even the advertising columns, and there is nothing striking among them."

"Let's see; you preached against the Mormons three weeks ago? That was the Sunday I was away."

"There's nothing in that. I've 'gone for' the Mormons twice since last fall. Then, you know, I preached last Sunday about the big railroad accident at Dunkard's Creek, and in the afternoon I had a discourse about the snow-storm."

"Nothing more in the Guiteau case, is there?"

"No, the people are tired of it. Three sermons on that subject are as much as they can stand. Do you think I could stir things up with another discourse pitching into City Councils, or, say, the management of the water-works?"

"I don't know. Maybe you might. The last time you went for Councils the church was crowded; all the Councilmen came, and the collection was the largest since New Year's."

"But I couldn't repeat that story about the colored man and the mule, could I? That was the best thing in the sermon, I think."

"It brought down the house, that's certain."

"Laughed, didn't they? But I couldn't tell it again, and so I guess I won't take up Councils. I have half a notion to discuss the Panama Canal question. Do you think the people would feel an interest in that? I might preach about the Panama Canal in the morning, and about the small-pox epidemic in the evening. The spread of the small-pox interests everybody."

"Yes; but why not devote the sermon chiefly to the history and value of vaccination?"

"It might answer. Nobody knows how hard it is to find fresh and interesting subjects. Things happen so inconveniently. Just as likely as not there will be a big fire in the city late Saturday night, after my two sermons are written; and when it will be too late to write another with the fire as a theme."

"You could extemporize about it."

"But not so well; not so well. By the way, Bullit, have you heard the rumors that Cashier Smith, of the Tenth National Bank, is a defaulter?"

"I believe there are reports of that kind afloat."

"That would be a lively theme! Suppose I take it up in a general sort of a way, and make it sensational? That might do for the morning, and then I could give a blast at the variety theaters in the evening. Or I could devote my evening sermon to the tariff, and the morning one, to the balloon expedition to the North Pole. You would be surprised how little help I get now from the newspapers. A man may skim over fifty without finding a single theme that will draw a full house and excite the curiosity of the congregation."

"Have you looked anywhere but in the newspapers?"

"N-n-no! Excepting in the Report of the Board of Trade and in a couple of the Reviews."

"Didn't refer to the Bible, of course?"

"Well, I'll tell you, deacon, the people are tired of Scriptural subjects. They want something novel and exciting. Of course, it seems a little queer to throw the Bible over; but a man has to meet popular expectation, and my theory is, to reach sinners one way, if you can't reach them the other. That's sound, isn't it?"

Before the deacon left, the pastor had it arranged to preach one sermon on the boiler explosion at Hackensack, and another upon cultivation of the carp as a food fish.