Receive our blog posts in your email by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
Letters written by William Spotswood White (known to history as “Stonewall Jackson’s pastor”) to his sons were first published in The Central Presbyterian, and then assembled into one volume titled The Gospel Ministry, in a Series of Letters From a Father to His Sons (1860).
In one letter to Henry Martyn White, he wrote of the importance, as a theological student training for the ministry, of — in the midst of all the needful studies and activities — cultivating and maintaining a devotional spirit. In the vein of B.B. Warfield’s later classic The Religious Life of Theological Students (1912-1913), White writes the following (pp. 26-34):
You are most in danger from a failure to cultivate a devotional spirit. A Theological Seminary, in its external arrangements — its buildings — its lecture rooms, and its recitations; the intercourse of its students in the dining hall and upon the campus, is so much like a college, that the spirit of the college is very likely to prevail. The critical study of the Bible is likely to supplant the devotional. That all the young man says and does, even his sermons and his prayers, should be subject to the criticism of his fellow students and professors, although useful and necessary, may yet become hurtful to his spirituality. Now, whatever else he neglects, he must not neglect the throne of grace. Fail in all else sooner, than in the cultivation of deep spiritual piety. Fail in this, and whatever your attainments in other respects may be, should you live to enter the ministry, comfortless and useless you will live, labour, and die. Mere intellectual endowments, leading to popular applause, more frequently entangle, bewilder, and ruin the young preacher than all other baits of the devil combined.
White goes on to add:
One has truthfully and beautifully said, that ‘prayer is the breathing forth of that grace which is first breathed into the soul by the Holy Ghost.’ Every offering then, not made in the spirit of such prayer, is destitute of the purity and fragrance of heaven; and is not only unacceptable but hateful to God; so that prayerless study, prayerless preaching and visiting are worse than useless. What does not come from God never returns to him. All our services not baptized by the Spirit, freely given in answer to prayer, will be less acceptable to God than the offerings of paganism.
Further on in this letter White elaborates on the fountain of grace that must needs (to use an older expression) fill vessels in the service of God.
Suffer me then to enlarge on a thought already suggested. When we come really near to God, he freely grants us the sweet influences of his grace — ‘all grace comes from the God of grace’ — all that begins and completes the life of God in the soul of man. The soul enlightened and warmed by a near approach to the true altar, radiates both light and heat, and thus creates an atmosphere which refreshes, beautifies, and strengthens all who breathe it. ‘The river comes originally from the ocean, and not even the range of rocky mountains can prevent its return to the ocean. So, that alone which comes from God can return to God.’ Hence we feel and exhibit just so much of heaven, as we feel and manifest of the spirit of prayer. From this source alone can come our usefulness.
Whatever else a man may have or do, he never does, he never can become the channel through which God pours his grace upon the hill of Zion, unless he lives in constant, spiritual contact with heaven. He must bring God to his people before he can lift them to heaven.
Then whatever else you neglect, fail not to study upon your knees, such expressions of the word of God as these, ‘And this is the confidence we have in him, that if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us.’ ‘Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.’ ‘Ask in faith.’
Hear White as he concludes this letter:
Such a spirit of prayer is the first, the highest endowment of the ministry to which you now look forward. It is equally essential to your present condition and pursuits. Think not that this may be acquired hereafter. Just as well defer the study of Hebrew, church history, or theology. Nay, just as well, and even better, leave the Seminary at once. As is the student, so will be the preacher. An exception to this remark occasionally occurs, but there are just exceptions enough to establish the rule. Let all you now learn be baptized in a heart burning with love to Christ, and breaking with compassion for deathless souls perishing in sin. Let every day begin and end with the thought, ‘I am here, not to acquire learning with a view to win popular applause, but through God to acquire skill in winning souls to Christ.’
This valuable counsel from a father to a son, from an experienced pastor to a young theological student, highlights the need of those training for the ministry to not allow anything to dampen or extinguish the life of God in the soul of minister of Jesus Christ. The head of a minister must needs be (as they used to say) full of academic learning, but if the heart is not united to God in the sweet communion of prayer, then the vocation itself must be reconsidered. How crucial it is then for the minister who would lead his flock in spiritual service to God to himself be on his knees seeking grace to deliver the message of grace!
Theological students, pastors and others will do well to read the full collection of White’s letters on The Gospel Ministry. They serve as a wise reminder of what is of chief importance to such a noble vocation. To know more about White’s own personal piety, and the success of his ministry, be sure also to peruse Rev. William S. White, D. D., and His Times: An Autobiography (1891), edited by the recipient of some of the letters in The Gospel Ministry, Henry Martyn White, as a testimony to his beloved father and pastoral mentor.