Never Too Old To Lead
Story★★★★A statesman never grows too old to be appreciated and sought for. Russell Broughman, Palmerston, Webster, and Clay were leaders as long as they lived. To-day Gladstone, Disraeli, Bismarck, and Gortschakoff are the men who control in great measure the destinies of Europe. Why should it not be so in the ministry?
Why is it that men turn, in the most important interests of life affecting themselves and their families, from the counsels of age and experience to those of youth and less skill? I may not be able to answer this question satisfactorily either to you or to myself. One reason is, I believe, the neglect of study on the part of many aged ministers. They lose that stimulus which belongs to other professions.
To the physician every case is a new study. New remedies are discovered and recommended. He must keep abreast of the times, or some intruder will take away his practice. The attorney finds some new element in almost every case.
New decisions are given by the Supreme Court, and he must study them. In statesmanship new complications are constantly arising. The connections of nations are so numerous, the questions involved are so various and sometimes so vast as to require the utmost comprehension to grasp them and the closest attention to the least minutiae and detail. The statesman has no old sermon that he can pick up and apply.
He must think and study and write, and thus keep his mind ever active and fresh. There is no time for him to nod or sleep. But the old minister sits down under his vine or fig-tree, and there is no one to molest him or to make him afraid.
He hurls thunderbolts at the heads of scientists who are a thousand miles away, and who will never hear his thunder; he descants upon the sins oi the Egyptians, who have been mummies for thousands of years; or he discourses upon the pride of Babylon or Nineveh, which have been swept away for ages. He is pressed for time, and brings before his congregation of to-day a discourse which he had made twenty years ago, on an issue then living, bill now almost forgotten.
His thoughts are of the past; his sermons are of the past; and the generation of to-day feels that he is scarcely one of them.
The point
Essay contrasts aged statesmen and physicians who stay current with knowledge versus aged ministers who reuse old sermons; calls ministers to active study to remain relevant.