USA > Pennsylvania > York County > Memorial of the Fiftieth Year, 1836-1886, St Paul's English Evangelical Lutheran Church > Part 4
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In this success not only are all good men concerned, but God has an- nounced His own special interest therein. Declarations of the most inspiring character are made thereof. It is His own word which shall not return unto Him void-it shall accomplish that which He pleases-it shall prosper in the thing whereto He sent it. Our own views and projects may elicit our energies and absorb our efforts and consume our time, but may not command God's favor or notice. But as regards Christian work God has pronounced His judgment and in it expressed His unchang- ing interest. We are thus elevated to the level of God's mind and pur- pose, and in the truest and highest sense are co-workers with Him, whenever we engage in sowing or reaping in His vineyard. God has not left Himself without witness (Acts xiv. 17), but with signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will (Heb. ii. 4) is ever calling to continuous sowing and reaping by the harvests that are gathered. To results as evidence of the nature and origin of their faith have Christian apologists ever pointed. The fruit of the tree declares its kind and character. That must be from God which makes men godlike. The history of every Christian enterprise is studded with trophies of special grace, from which are reflected the light of God's truth and the power of Christ's cross. Whether upon Christian or heathen soil the seed has been scattered, it has multiplied-some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred fold.
I repeat these trite and familiar thoughts upon this joyous occasion to intensify the conviction that it is a great thing to be engaged in church work, to begin and to continue the agencies and activities of a Christian congregation. It brings us into association with the best and noblest
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spirits of earth, and into fellowship with God himself. This is the privi- lege not only of the ministry, but of the entire laity. The apostle sends greetings to a long list of personal co-laborers of whom he speaks as "helpers in Christ Jesus :" and such are all who by their sympathies, their prayers, and their co-operations, assist in tilling the vineyard of the Lord.
Here then I close, with devout and unfeigned thankfulness to God for the favor of standing in the line of such an honored ministry ; and, having had the pleasure and the opportunity for twelve years of association with so generous and delightful a congregation, I invoke richest blessings upon each one here assembled.
Surrounding the Cross of our blessed Lord and Saviour, let us now clasp hands and join hearts and voices in solemn prayer and praise, and in unreserved consecration to the cause of which the Cross is the sign and the symbol. Amen.
SERMON BY REV. L. A. GOTWALD, D. D.
" Ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, that ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory." Ist Thessalonians ii. 11-12.
One always sees an object of large proportions most clearly at some considerable distance away from it. An Alpine mountain range, for ex- ample, is best seen not from its own side, nor even from one of its own loftiest summits, but from the quiet Swiss vale that lies far below it, or from some other mountain range beyond it and entirely separated from it. And so a battle is best apprehended, and the wisdom or mistakes of its generalship most correctly determined, not at the very time when it is in progress, or by any one battalion or division of the army that is waging it, and by the success or failure which it is experiencing, but, as a whole, and in its real character, it can only be rightly judged when once the smoke of the conflict has cleared away, and the roar of the artillery has hushed itself into silence, and the observer quietly and thoughtfully goes over all the field, reviews the location and action of all the forces, and sums up calmly and dispassionately all the results. General Grant's history of his own great battles was written, and could be calmly and im- partially written, only when once a score of years had intervened be- tween him and them, and he had gotten in point of time sufficiently far away from them to see them in all their full relations, and measure them in the whole wide sweep of their grand results.
And the same is true, Christian friends, with regard to all intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious movements and activities. They especially are best seen, in their real character and fruitage, after their achieve-
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ment ; and when the actors in them have once gone through the conflict, and endured the toil, and then afterward behold in quiet retrospect all their own work are they best qualified to sit in judgment and pass a true and unbiassed opinion upon it.
It is thus that I come, this morning, at the request of the committee who have arranged the programme of these delightful Semi-Centennial exercises, to review and calmly measure my own ministry during the almost twelve years in which it was my privilege as your pastor to go in and out among you. The time is, I presume, a fitting one. To have done so when I was here, and engaged in the very midst of all my busy work, would, in all probability, have made the attempt a failure ; for my range of vision then was necessarily narrowed and limited by my very proximity and identity with you as a church. And when I came, at last, to leave you as your pastor, and stood here to speak to you my farewell words as your spiritual shepherd, then, I am sure, every attempt at a calm and true measurement and exhibition of you as a church and of my ministry of so many years among you, would have been entirely partial and biased, for then both our eyes and hearts were too full of tears to see anything clearly, and our love made us mutually blind and uncon- scious of imperfection and fault.
But six months have rolled away since then, and whilst we all, to-day, feel that 'our love for each other abides unquenched and undiminished, and ever will so abide, our judgment is calmer, and we are now, in the lapse of time, far enough away from those busy years which we spent so de- lightfully together, quietly to sit down here together, to-day, and through the clear atmosphere of the unclouded word of God and of Christian re- sponsibility and duty, contemplate them, and measure them. As the angel in the Apocalypse commanded John, on the Island of Patmos, in. the vision of the church which was then made to pass before him, so he,
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to-day, bids us, saying : "Rise, and measure the Temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein." My theme this morning is : " THE MEASUREMENT OF A BY-GONE MINISTRY."
Of course I mean by this my own ministry, here, in this congregation, and my object will be to apply to it such moral measurements, taken from numerous and varied points of observation, that we will see it in its actual and true character-as GOD sees it-its elements, both of weakness and of strength, both of failure and of success-and, profiting by the les- sons which thus come to us from our history as a church in the past, be lifted up into finer Christian discipleship, and holier living, and wider and mightier reaches of influence for Christ and for the glory of God in the future. For, as TENNYSON has beautifully written :
" Men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things,"
and as Paul so vigorously puts it: "Not as though I had already at- tained, either were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may ap- prehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus;" i. e., rise up into the full realization of the divine ideal itself of all possible Christian life and power for Christ !
In contemplating my ministry here in this congregation, and in order that we may secure a true and right estimate of it, I measure it by a num- ber of considerations. And
I. Both justice and gratitude demand that I measure it by the rich pas- toral inheritance with which I was privileged to BEGIN it !
Two pastorates here preceded my own; pastorates of such an high order, and of such marked ability and efficiency, that the congregation, at my entrance upon its ministry, already occupied the very front rank in the order of churches. The first pastor, with his wise counsellors, in all
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respects laid well the foundations; the second, and those associated with him, in all respects, built well upon those foundations ; and my own work and privilege were largely in the easy line of inheritance ; simply to enter in and occupy the temple which their wisdom and toil and piety had reared. I came to reap what they had, during all the years before, faith- fully sown, and easily to gather that for which they had long and earnestly toiled. As Jesus Himself once expressed it : "And herein is that saying true, One soweth and another reapeth ; other men labored and ye are entered into their labors," an abiding law; the church of the present is ever the inheritor of the faith and sacrifice and toil of the church of the past, reaping a rich spiritual harvest from the scattered seed sown by patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, reformers, saints, making up the church of Christ in all the by-gone centuries ; and so the church of the future will be the inheritor of the same rich legacy, with added stores of spiritual wealth, from the church of the present, down to the end of time. We are all constantly entering into the labors of others in the past-and, in all our work for Christ and for His church, we, in turn, are laboring for others who shall follow after us. And so here, in the history of this church, and of my ministry as its pastor, I feel that much, very much, of whatever success may have attended my work was purely the result of the fidelity and efficiency of those who here in the pastoral office went before me. I began my ministry here with a grand inheri- tance. There was a large capital laid up in bank for me. The house of the Lord was already up, the walls solidly built, the fire kindled on the altar, and everything prepared and ready for my coming. I owe much to the labors of my predecessors, and to-day, in this review of my minis- try, I most thankfully acknowledge my indebtedness to their labors for any success or prosperity that may have attended my own. And I can- not refrain from expressing my very deep appreciation and my lasting
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THE FIFTIETH YEAR.
gratitude for their disinterested and unwavering friendship during all my ministry here, and for the constant moral support of their influence and sympathy, by which I was largely both introduced into and retained in the esteem and confidence of the congregation and community. I know not how sufficiently to thank them for this their noble brotherly kindness. Repay them I am sure I cannot, save, in small part, possibly, by giving, as I have done, and most heartily now do, to my own successor here, my warm brotherly love, my deep sympathy with him in his work, my joy in his success, and my prayer and hope that his ministry may eclipse in the moral glory of its results the ministry of us all. " What then, not withstanding, every way, only so Christ is preached ; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and I will rejoice !" "He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, and thus both he that soweth and he that reapeth shall rejoice together."
But I proceed to measure my ministry here :
II. By the many and blessed HELPS with which I was assisted and en- couraged in it.
A good Christian wifc, whose modest demeanor, and whose quiet saintly spirit, were ever an assistance and never a hindrance to me in my work ; a well ordered home, by which I was relieved of all domestic care and enabled to devote unreservedly my entire time and strength to the duties of my office ; a salary sufficient in amount, and ever promptly paid, ex- empting me from all financial embarrassment and care, and putting it in my power often in quiet ways to relieve the wants of the needy ; a church well organized, united, firm in their affection and devotion to me, and ever ready to co-operate with me in my every suggestion ; a council be- tween whom and myself there was ever the finest concord, and who ever treated me with most considerate kindness and courtesy ; a Sunday-school most efficiently engaged in the training of the young ; a Sunday morn-
,
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ing prayer-meeting and family altars, and closets of devotion in which prayer, I knew, was constantly ascending to heaven in my behalf; kind words spoken to me and many more spoken of me by many of my flock ; kind acts, countless in number, by many and on many occasions ; a steady and faithful attendance by many upon my public ministry in the sanctu- tuary ; an ever cordial welcome into your homes and into the holy confi- dence and love of your hearts ; the conversion from time to time of many from sin and Satan to Christ, and the manifest growth of many in depth and strength of Christian character, consistency of life, and comfort and assurance in the Holy Ghost ;- ah me ! what blessed helps, what encourage- ments, what sources of inspiration and power all these were to me in my . ministry among you. With a nature as sensitive as mine, so quick to feel to my heart's core every act and word and every look of those with whom I have to do, what bitterness of soul I would have experienced, how paralyzed and weak I would have been, how helpless and wretched had not all these been mine. God bless you to-day, dear old flock, and bless you ever for all your kindness, and devotion, and love, and sympa- thy, and help, in ways so numerous and touching, during all the years of my ministry among you. They were my joy and strength. Their re- membrance now is a precious solace to my heart. And the memory of them shall live with me through life, and go with me when, at last, I as- cend to my eternal home on high.
I would that all congregations but knew how much, in a thousand dif- ferent ways, the work and success of a pastor are affected and determined by themselves-by the help which, in every possible way, they either give him or withhold from him in his work. It is the congregation that al- ways largely either makes or unmakes the success of the pastor. Good, strong, steady, faithful Aarons and Hurs will always make strong the arm of their spiritual MOSES, and keep it from falling, and give Israel the
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victory over Amalek. Steady friendship, full confidence, warm sympa- thy, cordial co-operation, kind acts and words, forbearing and excusing charity, fervent Christian love, earnest and importunate prayer in his be- half, all these are mighty moral supports to a pastor, as he goes in and out before his people, and make him, under God, weak as he may be in himself, mighty in the up-building of the Redeemer's kingdom. Dear friends of this congregation, continue to remember this ; and as in the past, to me and to my predecessors in the pastoral office, you have given such varied and encouraging help in our work among you, so do also ever to him who is now your spiritual shepherd. Stand by him as you did by us, your old pastors, with your prayers, your confidence, your sym- pathy, your influence, your willing and hearty service with him in the work of the church. Be one with him in all in which he is here engaged for Christ and for the advancement and prosperity of His kingdom; and both he and you will share together in the constant and abundant bless- ing of God.
Passing on in my remarks, I come now to measure my ministry here-
III. By the MISTAKES and NEGLECTS by which, as I can now plainly see, it was characterized.
Some of these mistakes and imperfections of my ministry were wholly my own as pastor ; and for some of them you, as a congregation are re- sponsible. But whether yours or mine, they were, I can now clearly see, elements of weakness in my ministry among you, and hindered us as a church from coming into the enjoyment of that full measure of spiritual power in this community and of that wide moral and spiritual out-reach for Christ and for the salvation of souls to which, I believe, God called us, and to which, without these mistakes and defects, we might, and would also have come.
It is always humbling and painful to make confession of our faults ;
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but " if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Besides, by seeing and knowing the sins of the past, and the errors and defects of our bygone Christian life, we can avoid them in the future, and can thus serve God more perfectly in the beauty of holiness. Looking back now, over my bygone ministry among you, I would, if I had it again to live over, avoid or change, I frankly confess, a number of things. Let me name a few of them.
I would, first of all, preach Christ more earnestly and fully than I did. I would make more direct and constant personal effort to convert and save the impenitent. I would cultivate closer personal acquaintance and intimacy with the young of my congregation, and especially with the young men of my Sunday-school and church, and seek to be more helpful to them in their special temptations, dangers, and duties. I would give more pastoral care and labor to build up in Christian character those al- ready in the church, and develop them into intelligent and active disci- ples of Christ, than to labor chiefly and especially to add to the member- ship of the church. I would measure my success in the ministry less by the mere arithmetical increase of the church roll, and would worry and fret and make myself miserable less than I did over meager numerical re- sults, but would trouble myself only to be faithful, and work cheerfully and hopefully on, and leave results to God. I would utilize more largely the social element as a factor of power in the life of the church. I would tax myself more to invent new and varied methods by which to hold and deepen the interest especially of the young of the church, and through which to attract to the services of the church the great non-church going popu- lation. I would seek to devise more fields and opportunities of Chris- tian work for the membership of my church, and especially for all young Christians, thus aiming to make the whole church a working church,
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every one, in some way, according to their individual ability and gifts, doing something for Christ and for souls. I would stop trying to do all the work of the church myself, but would set my people more to work. I would watch better over the personal Christian life and character of each one of my flock. I would deal more plainly and honestly with the faults, imperfections, and besetting sins of each one, tenderly but faithfully, as a pastor, showing to the erring wherein they have gone astray, or are de- fective ; and seeking in love to lead them to the right and to Christ. I would be more Christ-like in my spirit and example before my flock. I would try to study God's word more diligently, understand it more fully, and preach and teach it more clearly and correctly. I would pray more. I would honor the Holy Ghost more, feel my dependence on Him more, and invoke His presence and power more largely upon all my work.
Ah, I can see many defects, errors, shortcomings, sins, in my ministry here ; all of which weakened, I can readily see, as I now look back over it, my usefulness, and caused me to accomplish less for the Master than I otherwise might. May these defects of my ministry, while your pastor, not be laid to my charge in the day of judgment, but, through the blood of the Lord Jesus, be graciously pardoned, and in the years which may yet remain to me to preach the precious Gospel, be sincerely repented of and avoided.
But I recall, also, to-day, dear friends, some defects and neglects of duty which lay more particularly at your door, as a church, than at mine as your pastor. I recall to-day, some things also on your part, which are elements of moral weakness and hindrances to your best spir- itual prosperity, and restrictions or limitations to your otherwise possi- ble usefulness. May I kindly but frankly speak to you of them? " Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are de- ceitful." "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness ; and let
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him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head." To begin, we always, I fear, made more of mere externals than we should have done: our fine church edifice, our attractive music, our comparatively large liberality, our relative position and rank, compared with other churches, our numerical increase and large attendance, our success in all the visible and outer signs of church prosperity. I would not in the least depreciate or undervalue all these. On the contrary I highly value them, and I thank God for all that this church has and does and is in all these things. And yet all these things are mere externals. They may exist in a church without much or any grace in the hearts of those who make up the membership of the church; and they do, when once the church comes to emphasize these as her chief glory, and boasts of them, and relies upon them as elements of power, become her sin, and become causes of spiritual weakness and loss of power! Guard, dear friends, against undue magnifying of anything merely external ; but em- phasize, covet, measure yourselves by the spiritual.
" What constitutes a Church ? Not Roman basilic or Gothic pile, With fretted roof, tall spire, and long-drawn aisle, These only mock thy search ; Fantastic sepulchres, when all is said ! Seek not the living Church among the dead.
" A band of faithful men, Met for God's worship in an upper room, Or canopied by midnight's starry dome, On hillside or lone glen, To hear the counsels of His holy Word, Pledged to each other and their common Lord.
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" These, few as they may be, Compose a Church, such as in pristine age Defied the tyrant's zeal, the bigot's rage; For where but two or three, Whatever place in faith's communion meet, There, with Christ's presence, is a Church complete."
But, let me name some other defects. I will barely suggest a few things which, while I was your pastor, I always felt were defects-defects in an otherwise grand church, and grand and good, the best I know any- where, even with its defects. But why should the apothecary's ointment have any dead flies in it at all ? Why should the sun have any spots if its whole broad disc can be luminous? So with you. With so much that is good, why have anything in or about you that is not good ?
The sad absence of the children and young people of the Sunday- school and congregation from the services here in the sanctuary ; the ne- glect by many of home piety, and of the faithful home training of the young for Christ and for the Church; the neglect by so very many of the devotional meetings of the church ; the neglect of proper attention and hearty welcome to strangers who come here to worship; the want of warm social intimacy between yourselves as members of the same church ; the sad want especially of acquaintance, and intimacy, and encourage- ment with and to new members, as, from time to time, they are added to the church ; the neglect by many of earnest personal effort to bring the non-church-going here to God's house ; the unwillingness of so many to take personal part in church work, and the disposition to leave it all to the pastor or elect few ; the disposition of some not to give towards the benevolent work of the church according to their ability ; the- occasional inconsistent conformity by some to the world, the pleasures and amuse- ments, especially of the world, by which their own Christian influence
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and the moral power of the church are weakened ; the careless attendance by some upon the means of grace-viz., the preaching of the word and the use of the Sacraments ; the failure by so many to join audibly and heartily in the beautiful liturgical or opening services which are here part of the worship; in a word, the one great defect of this church, as it is of every other one that I know of, is that the piety of too many of its mem- bers is too "easy-going;" has no proper sense of personal responsibility and activity ; lacks earnest spiritual life, and aggressiveness, and individ- ual power ; a kind of stand still, "wheel-barrow" religion, which only moves when it is pushed, instead of being, as all piety ought to be, a kind of spiritual "steam-engine " religion, moving on itself, and drawing, by its own inner spiritual force, a whole long train of other immortal souls with it to Christ and to Heaven !
This dear St. Paul's church. I have always felt, has grand possibilities before it-such possibilities indeed, as but few other churches possess. With its wealth, intelligence, influence, social position, culture, numbers, fine organization, unity, capable ministry-with all these, what possibilities of spiritual power and usefulness do you not have! Ah! you have, in God's providence, placed in your hands, as a church, a leverage by which you can, if you will, lift this whole community heavenward, and by which, in many ways, you may bless the entire world. And the one single thing which you now need, to utilize all this possible power, to develop into activity all this mighty latent force which you possess, is the one thing of more spiritual life ; more in-dwelling of the Holy Ghost ; more divine grace in your souls. "Churches are not fruitful or powerful simply because they are large or old or rich, but they are morally powerful in proportion as they are filled with the life of Christ! That is what pro- duces great spiritual results ! Saintliness: that is power ;- holiness : that moves a church on to conquest and victory!" You remember the
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