If I were writing formally to the committee it would be enough to decline your invitation without entering into any explanation.  But the remembrance of the pleasant week I spent at your house last summer, and the tone of your letter, makes me feel as though I were writing to a personal friend.  This is my excuse (if one is needed) for giving you more fully than I otherwise should, my reasons for declining.  Those reasons are not in any way connected with the parish at Wheathedge.  I am not insensible to the attractions which the place possesses as a residence, nor to that which the parish possesses as a field of labor.  But I resolved when I first entered the ministry that I would never preach as a candidate.  I never have, and I never will.  I began my work in a mission school in New York City, while I was yet in the Seminary.  When I left the Seminary, Mr. Marcus who is one of the trustees of the mission asked me to come up to this church.  It is a sort of mission among the miners, being half supported by Mr. Marcus who is one of the directors of the Koniwasset Coal Co.  I came for six months.  The congregation asked me to remain, and I remained.  And here I purpose to remain till God shall call me to another field.  Another field I will not seek, though I should live and die here.  I pretend to believe that Christ is my Bishop; and I shall not move without orders from him.

So long as I am pastor here I cannot preach with honor as a candidate in other parishes.  I know other ministers do it-and I do not judge them.  But I cannot.  Suppose my people were to take advantage of my absence for a week to try a candidate.  I wonder what I should say to that.  And I cannot see that settled ministers have any more right to try other parishes with reference to a change of place, than parishes with settled ministers have to try other ministers with reference to a change of pastors.  In a word I do not believe in free-love as applied to churches.

But apart from that I cannot preach as a candidate.  The minister is ordained to preach to convert impenitent sinners and to build up and strengthen Christians.  Do you suppose I should do either if I came to Wheathedge on your invitation to preach as a candidate?  Not at all.  The people would come to criticise, and I should go to be criticised.  They would be judges and would expect to put me through my ministerial faces to try me.  Come, the congregation says in effect to me in such an invitation, let us see how you can preach, exhibit your proficiency in the doctrines, try your skill in arousing sinners, see what you can do in interesting the saints, read us a hymn or two, as a test of your elocution, and display to us your “gifts in prayer;” and then when the service is over, spend a week and take tea with two or three of our principal families and show us what your social qualifications are, and give our children an opportunity to quiz you.  That it is in effect Mr. Laicus, though it may seem somewhat presumptuous in me to say it.  And to such a quizzing I am not at all inclined to submit.  I never preached but one trial sermon-that was when I was licensed and I never mean to preach another.