A Year in Indianapolis—Victory or Defeat?

Chapter 9, 1882-1883

The Pastoral Committee

Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, is an important commercial and political center, with much natural beauty. In 1882 there was among its 75,000 inhabitants the usual amount of worldliness and carelessness in spiritual matters. The Second Presbyterian Church had had for one of its first pastors the famous pulpit orator, Henry Ward Beecher. He had ministered to this people for eight years with marked success and although he had been away from the city for thirty-five years, the memory of his powerful preaching and striking personality was still strong. This perhaps influenced the standard set by the pastoral committee in their search for a minister. A newspaper critic declared, somewhat sarcastically and caustically, that “they went to their task with the honest deliberation of county fair judges deciding upon a prize pig.”

Eight points were agreed upon by this committee as those by which they were to judge a pastor’s qualifications. These were reasonable enough, but their sequence was somewhat unfortunate. In order they stood thus:

1. Personal appearance
2. Pulpit manner
3. Delivery
4. Voice
5. Intellectuality
6. Spirituality
7. Magnetism
8. Apparent age

The same journalistic critic, who perhaps had not had much experience in such delicate work, remarked: